Anton wanted the play kept secret, but Nemirovich-Danchenko recounted the plot to Efros, the company's most sympathetic critic, on The Courier. Efros garbled the resume and his garbled version was reprinted in the provincial papers. Anton berated Nemirovich-Danchenko for this breach of confidence, in a telegram too violent to show to Olga; he broke off all relations with Efros. Never had he been so touchy about a play and its production. He dictated the casting, the scenery and the mood. Altshuller could not stop him planning a journey to Moscow to supervise everything.
Nemirovich-Danchenko came round to The Cherry Orchard slowly: he felt it was 'more of a play' than Anton's previous drama, that it was 'harmonious and had new characters', but he found the tears excessive, which exasperated Anton, given that Varia was the only character who wept at all. Stanislavsky's own floods of tears at Act 4, and his claim 'This is not a comedy nor a farce, as you wrote: it's a tragedy,' dismayed Chekhov. Stanislavsky's wife hit the right note: 'Many cried, even the men; I thought it full of the joy of life and I find it fun just travelling to rehearsals… The Cherry Orchard somehow seemed not a play but a musical production, a symphony, to me.'67
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Gorky was printing the play, but told his editor Piatnitsky, 'Read aloud, it doesn't impress one as a powerful piece. And what the [characters] are all moping about I don't know.'68
The day the play arrived in Moscow, Olga's period came. After five months together, she and Anton would still have no baby. Quarrels broke out. The whole family was in a crisis whose nature we can only guess at. Bunin, now frequenting Masha and Olga, may have been involved. Olga's close collaboration with Nemirovich-Danchenko undoubtedly unsettled Anton. Evgenia's letter from Yalta to Vania in Moscow suggests that Anton had had enough of his wife, his sister and his mother: Antosha told me that Masha had to find her own flat, while Olga could go and live with her mother… poor Masha does not want to leave mem, please don't talk to her about my letter I only ask you to let me come and live with you until we find somewhere… Olga has got her own way, she has persuaded Antosha to get rid of us, she can do as she wants, but he is sorry for us and never sees anything through. E. Chekhova.69 Olga seemed disturbed that her enemy Maria Andreeva (who was thirty-one) was favoured by Anton for the part of the seventeen-year-old ingenue, Ania. (Anton next proposed Andreeva for Ania's pious foster-sister Varia, but Olga was not appeased.) In a letter to Nemirovich-Danchenko Anton accused him of ignoring him for years: 'I've been asking you to get an actress for Ranevskaia.' On 5 November Nemirovich-Danchenko wired a cast list, letting Anton choose actresses for only the minor roles. Olga put forward Schnap, despite his snoring and farting, to be Charlotta's nut-eating dog: Anton said no - he specified a 'small, shaggy, sour-eyed dog'.
One of the pet cranes died. Anton moaned that Olga wrote either like Arkadina in The Seagulclass="underline" 'Do you know you are a superman?' or like a nurse and courtesan: 'Are you spraying your throat? You're not making rude gestures in the morning? Would you like your Hungarian [i.e. herself] to come in at night with pillow and candle and then vanish grumbling?'70 She heeded neither his angry entreaties not to keep valuables at home, nor his demands for a parcel of lavatory paper. Instead she gave him instructions to buy a Bukhara quilt in Yalta.
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By 9 November the play was copied and the actors began work. Anton strained at the leash but Olga would send for him only when dry frosty weather began. In the meantime she ordered a fur coat of young Arctic fox, warm enough for a Moscow winter, but light enough for a frail body. Anton stipulated that it had to have eiderdown padding, a fur collar and a matching hat.
The story of The Cherry Orchard took on a life of its own. After selling the timber from the Melikhovo plantations, Konshin declared himself insolvent, and the estate was put up for auction. Masha negotiated a sale to her Moscow neighbour Baron Stuart. Not a kopeck came of it. Baron Stuart took out a private mortgage, for five years and at 5 per cent, with Masha who at last now had funds.
Evgenia abandoned Anton to Mariushka's cooking and Arseni's caretaking and took Nastia the servant to Moscow on 18 November. She descended on Olga, who put her up in Anton's study. (Evgenia soon moved to Petersburg to spend Christmas with Misha, his children and Lika Mizinova.) Alone, Anton vented his bile. Stanislavsky was stopped from inserting spring noises - frogs and corncrakes - into a summer act. Nemirovich-Danchenko's questions revealed, Anton grumbled, that '[he] has not read my play. It began with misunderstandings and will end with them.' Anton feared that the premiere would be used as a pretext to mark his twenty-fifth year as a writer. In vain, for he hated the prospect of Jubilee celebrations, he protested that this would not be due until 1905. Olga hinted that she might soon call Anton to Moscow. 'Have you dreamt of your Hungarian? Will you be making rude signs in the morning? Although we shall sleep together here and I shan't be coming in the morning straight from the sea.' On 29 November she telegraphed: 'Frosts. Talk Altshuller and come.'
Many years had passed since Anton had last celebrated Christmas, New Year and his name day in Moscow. He experienced a surge of energy and attended rehearsals almost daily, disconcerting Stanislavsky: 'The author has come and confused us all. The flowers have fallen and now we only have new buds.' Anton was upset too. The censor had removed two of Trofimov's tirades and new words had to be spliced in, while Stanislavsky cut two magically evocative episodes from Act 2. Anton, only half in jest, offered the play outright to Nemirovich-Danchenko for 3000 roubles. At home, once he had his
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breath back after climbing the stairs, he received friends. They were perturbed. Bunin often stayed with Anton until Olga returned: Usually she left for the theatre, sometimes a charity concert. Nemirovich-Danchenko would fetch her; he wore a dress coat and smelt of cigars and expensive eau-de-Cologne. She wore evening dress, was perfumed, beautiful and young, and went up to her husband saying: 'Don't be bored while I'm out, darling, anyway you always feel fine with Bouquichon…' Sometimes he would wash his hair. I tried to amuse him… About 4 a.m., sometimes at daylight, Olga would come back, smelling of wine and perfume. 'Why aren't you asleep, darling? It's bad for you.'71 Before Christmas Bunin went abroad, never to see Anton again. Lika did not venture from Petersburg, but her husband gave her a view of Anton's condition: Potapenko says that he is finished as a writer and a man. 'It is simply pitiful to read him, to see him now, in life or a photograph… No, I put a cross on Chekhov. The man has got in an impasse and is finished. Why did that Knipper marry him? I saw them in Moscow, saw Masha [who said] "What horror! What a misfortune!"'72 Olga knew that her behaviour towards Anton was attracting unflattering comment, and told Evgenia: I can't tell you how much Anton's illness has upset me all this time. You must tfiink very badly of me when you look at your life… It's awfully hard for me suddenly to abandon my vocation… I know you have different views and understand all too well if in your heart you condemn me.73