Pavel made decisions and paid off minor creditors, such as the old family nurse. He fantasized about becoming rich. At the end of 1877 he had decided: 'Antosha! When you finish studying at the Taganrog gimnazia, you must join the Medical faculty, for which you have our blessing. Aleksandr's choice was frivolous against our wishes and so quite unsuccessful.' In fact Aleksandr excelled in everything from
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Scripture to Physics, but no longer propitiated a father on whom he did not depend. Now that Pavel spent all day and most nights at «..ivrilov's, Aleksandr rejoined his mother, his siblings and the dog. Anion, unlike Aleksandr, went through the motions of consultation. Kven Kolia's art won Pavel's approval. In January 1878 he told Anton: 'We desire you to have the character of your brother Kolia!… by his behaviour he has won good comrades… Nothing in the world cheers us now, we have just one consolation, our children, if they are good.'4'
Pavel fought any wilfulness in his offspring. Anton had written about his 'convictions' and at the end of January Pavel responded with ïîïó: 'Our own convictions feed us no bread, which is why I work for Mr Gavrilov according to his convictions.' Pavel embarrassed Anton by asking Father Pokrovsky to protect the boy. He devised ploys for buying back the family house. He conceded that Selivanov might never let the house revert, but perhaps he could retrieve his lost capital. To Mitrofan and Liudmila Pavel wrote: So, my dear Brother, if I can buy back our house perhaps with the money collected for Mt Athos monastery and the income from the house can be the interest for the loan, when business in Taganrog improves and a starting price can be named, then ask permission to sell it.47 Mitrofan quashed the idea almost by return of post: the Athos fathers' money kept in the Taganrog branch of the State bank is held solely by Father Filaret to be sent to Odessa… But Father Filaret, for all his kindness, finds joy in the miseries of those who do not live as he does… I shall tell him frankly that I am trading badly, not covering my expenses, so that he does not reproach me for not helping you… Fgor's 1878 New Year letter to Pavel is gruesome: Your mother, Pavel, has been suffering for nearly two years with an untreatable illness, neither her arms nor her legs work, not only was her body withered, but her bones are like splinters, she lies in bed not moving, moreover recently she has a disease of the head, the tumour on her face is like a pillow and there are water blisters and now she cannot see the light of heaven. She is suffering and I am struck down by exhaustion of spirit and strength, she repeatedly asks o;
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I Ë I II I ii H» I It I MAN God Tor death, but the hour («»t her soul to depart lias not come, she is fed and watered by strangers, when there is no kin, in this grief she often calls on the Lord, she rails, groans day and night, like a fish against the ice, she recalls past happiness, and the present is not happy, she says 'I gave birth to children and saw them, but they are no more, they have scattered over the face of the earth, now they would help me and pity me in my great need.' On 26 February 1878, nearly eighty years old, Efrosinia died - of smallpox, it is reported. Efrosinia's death broke Egor. That summer, at the age of eighty, he left Countess Platova and visited each of his surviving children and grandchildren in turn: first in Taganrog, then in Kaluga, and in Moscow. In December Egor wrote to Pavel and Evgenia and their children, whose names he confused: I speak to you perhaps for the last time… as the first cause of your existence on the earth… I have eaten our daily bread from the table of kind, giving gentlemen, my kind children… forget not the sinful Egor in your prayers… console me with your letters while I am here on earth and when I am in the next world and if by God's mercy I shall be free from deepest hell, I shall write to you from there how sinners live and how the righteous rejoice with the holy angels… now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace. In early 1879 the 'mobile bronze statue' went to stay with his daughter in Tverdokhliobovo and died there of a heart attack on 12 March 1879. At nineteen Anton had lost all his grandparents and three of his uncles. Little wonder that cemeteries haunted his dreams and his waking hours.
Others close to him in Taganrog were disappearing. In early May 1878 his cousin Aleksei Dolzhenko left for Moscow to begin, at the age of thirteen, a life of drudgery at Gavrilov's. After two weeks Aleksei took to Moscow life, while his mother, Fenichka, grieved, for two months alone and chronically ill, in Taganrog. On 31 July, her bags packed by Anton, with presents from Mitrofan and old Egor, Fenichka arrived in Moscow to live with Evgenia. Her sister hesitated, for Fenichka was a 'grumbler' and a drain on the house, but when the widow arrived Evgenia was ecstatic: 'I talk and I cry when I have to tell her about past grief.' For the next thirteen years the two sisters were almost inseparable, nursing each other, visiting holy relics, cooking and sewing. Pavel was far cooler. He wrote to Anton: 'Mrs Dol1877-9 zhenko arrived… let her not yearn and may she live better than with Aleksei in Taganrog, she has already seen him and upset herself…'
Selivanov and the Kravtsovs had by this time become more of a family to Anton than his own. He was now eighteen. He even contemplated taking Sasha Selivanova with him when he went to Moscow and enquired about the curriculum in the girls' school which Masha was attending. (The Filaret school had compulsory German, strict Religious Knowledge, and no dancing - to the dismay of a vivacious (lossack girl like Sasha Selivanova.) Despite all his extra-curricular work, Anton's marks in May 1878 were excellent. He rejected his mother's pleas to join the family that summer. He roamed the steppes around Ragozina Gully with Petia Kravtsov and gun dogs.
Life in Moscow was less harrowing now that Pavel had found work. Aleksandr and Kolia socialized with the demi-monde of Moscow. By March 1878 Aleksandr had left his 'ungodly' wife. Pavel was overjoyed and called him Sashenka again, but Aleksandr's 'room' was occupied by a tenant. Despite Pavel's long absences, the family found a new subject for quarrelling. On 17 March 1878 Aleksandr told Anton: Vania simply rages. Yesterday he virtually thrashed mother and when father is there he turned out to be such an angel that I still can't get over my astonishment. He really is a nasty piece of work, brother!… He answered that he doesn't have to work, that his affairs are none of his mother's business and that he has to be fed, cared for and nurtured because he was summoned from Taganrog to Moscow!!!… Vania, now seventeen, gravitated away from school to his elder brothers' bohemian life. He went carriage-riding; he serenaded girls. In April 1879 he failed his examinations. Masha also had to retake a year, Misha only just scraped through, and even Kolia failed History of the Christian Church. Kolia was on the road to fame; Aleksandr had returned to the fold, but Vania, Kolia complained to Anton, is trouble. He can't walk past without punching Masha or Misha in the neck… You can't get through to Vania with preaching, he just does nothing, despite the unbearable family quarrels which he is the only reason for… we have rows, violence… I get myself a room which I obviously pay for, and now Vania has moved in with me…
6.,
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I' Ë III I It I II I || I MAN lie was in real danger of servitude, lor Pavel now proposed to put him in a factory. Mimicking the parental tone, Kolia copied out an interminable letter to their father: What's the point of him working two years at a factory and then being recruited for six years as a soldier?… if he is a workman, this reflects badly on you… what will he do with his limited pay?… No, Papa!48 Vania was too big to thrash. In May Pavel reprimanded his errant son: Recently you have become useless, idle and disobedient… How many times have I asked you… your conscience is asleep… you come home at midnight, you sleep the sleep of the dead until noon… Widi God's help and blessing try to find yourself a job in Moscow in a Factory or in a Shop… the Iron foundry or a Technical Institute.49 Vania was saved in 1879 by being examined and passed, thanks to Mikhail Diukovsky, a teacher and close friend of Aleksandr and Kolia. Vania was transformed from lout into student-teacher. Pavel was delighted.