1879-80
In the April examinations, Anton had a mere '3' for anatomy. (Alek-sandr, who as a natural scientist also took anatomy, had a '5'.) He consoled himself with AJeksandr and other students in the bars of Sokolniki park, drinking punch and Russian 'cognac'. Anton and AJeksandr composed a drunken letter to the 'cross-eyed' Kolia, after rounding off the night with the whores of the Salon des Varietes: 'I salted the dives and hammered the lamp into the creme tartare of chastity,' Anton ended cryptically.
Uncle Mitrofan knew nothing of this. He dined out on Anton's selective accounts of Moscow life, and read them out to neighbours, priests and relatives. He invited Anton to Taganrog for the summer holidays. Anton was only too pleased to accept. By early June Korobov had returned to the Urals, and Zembulatov to Kotlomino; Taganrog town hall hinted that Anton had to fetch his bursary in person. Pavel's behaviour drove his sons south. One evening, fuelled by vodka, he raged at their guests. His apologies to his sons did not undo the damage: [Saveliev] is worse than any old woman. He had 3 glasses while I was there, and he got carried away, well, nobody suited him, I very much regret that I had a conversation with him, thanks to a sip of vodka he has twisted my words in me worst sense, has turned every-diing inside out. To Hell with him! I excuse him, but I'm embarrassed with regard to Maria Egorovna [Polevaeva] and Karolina Egorovna [Schwarzkopf].* In July Anton and Kolia took the train south. Anton stayed a month with Vasili Zembulatov. They dissected rats and frogs. He lingered in the steppes with the Zembulatovs, before visiting Taganrog, where he collected 75 roubles from the town hall and sent his father 15. Nevertheless, leaving for Moscow on 26 August, Anton had to beg Zembulatov to advance him the rent. August in Taganrog was expensive. Evgenia and the younger children were with Vania in Voskre-sensk. Pavel, alone in Moscow, told Anton and Kolia to visit Father Bandakov, to get news of their old nanny, to visit their grandfather's grave at Tverdokhliobovo 400 miles away, and to list outstanding debts in Taganrog. Most precise was his order for 'a gallon of Santurini wine from Titov or Iani at the Old Market at 4 roubles the two gallons.'5
76
77
DOC I OK (II I KIIOV
The girls of Taganrog in the iKKos were in a predicament that preoccupied Anton Chekhov's mature prose. Every enterprising, intelligent male school-leaver left for university in Moscow, Petersburg or Kharkov; the girls were left with their impatient parents, playing the piano, embroidering pillow cases, their only potential grooms the sons of merchants and officials, too complacent to leave. Work as schoolteacher or midwife meant poverty and exploitation. Their third choice was to elope with an actor or musician, and blot the family escutcheon. Their predicament was to be lamented in many of Chekhov's stories of provincial incarceration. In Moscow, among more calculating beauties, Anton had missed the impetuosity of Taganrog's Greek girls. Now he and Kolia had romantic hopes. Kolia addressed Liubochka Kamburova as 'Empress of my Soul, Diphtheria of my Thoughts, Carbuncle of my Heart', though he had been pursuing her friend Kotik ('Kitten'). Of the Taganrog girls, the boldest on paper was, however, the half Greek Lipochka Agali. In October she wrote: 'None of your young ladies dares write to you, for fear you will criticize their spelling. But I'm not afraid since I'm sure that you won't laugh at me, you're my defender, aren't you…'6 Selivanov cynically congratulated Kolia on his luck: 'You've had payment in kind which you enjoy, if I'm not mistaken, right left and centre, I mean on canvas and between the sheets - and she's not bad-looking - I've seen her portrait; your adolescent fancy "Kitten…'"
Anton brought back a human skull from Taganrog: it had pride of place in his room, this time in yet another house on the Grachiovka.
TEN Ô
The Wedding Season
1880-1
THE CHEKHOV FAMILY moved again in November 1880, a quarter of a mile uphill from the Grachiovka, to more reputable, long-term quarters; the landlady, Mrs Golub, had a weakness for Anton. Their lodgers did not follow: Korobov, Saveliev and Zembulatov sought a less turbulent host than Pavel.
Anton's second year of medicine was demanding: students dissected corpses by day, and studied pharmacology by night. Medicine absorbed Anton more than literature in early 1881. The weekly journals were lukewarm to Anton. The Dragonfly's rejections became ruder: in December, Vasilevsky printed an opinion, 'You are fading before you blossom. Great pity.' It took six months to find an outlet for his work. Politics was stifling the popular press. Censorship in 1881 became so harsh as to endanger the journals in which Anton made his debut. The Talk of the World had an issue confiscated for its cover picture - pens and inkwell in the shape of a gallows with the caption: 'Our instrument for deciding vital questions.'
The public mood was no longer inclined towards humour. That spring the atmosphere had become oppressive. On 1 March terrorists blew up Tsar Alexander II in Petersburg. Petersburg was shaken by the wave of arrests, and the barbarous spectacle of a multiple hanging by a drunken hangman, before the world's ambassadors. In Moscow, professors who called on Alexander III to reprieve his father's murderers were dismissed. The Tsar's family believed that God had killed Alexander II for adultery and for undermining autocracy, but would not spare his killers. Alexander III, a bluff military man with a love of the bottle, left ideology to his tutor, the Procuror of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev. The Procuror was an intellectual - he had presumed to advise Dostoevsky on the composition of The Brothers Karamazov. His views were that the State should only prepare
78
79
DOCTOK CIIIKHOV
1880-I
souls for the afterlife. 'The existence of unbridled newspapers,' he said, had no part in the salvation of the populace. Police spies were everywhere: Anisim Petrov came from Taganrog to stay with the Chekhovs for a month, almost certainly on official instructions.7 The student body was in turmoil. In student meetings held at the university during March, as far as Nikolai Korobov recalled, Anton was present but silent, 'neither indifferent nor active'. On anti-Semitism, however, Anton spoke his mind. When his school friend, Solomon Kramariov, bemoaned his hardships as a Jew studying law in Kharkov: 'The Jews are being beaten everywhere and all over, which won't gladden the heart of Christians like you, for example.'8 Anton offered vigorous support: 'Come and study and teach in Moscow: things look good for Taganrog men in Moscow… Disraelis, Rothschilds and Kramariovs don't and won't get beaten up… If you are beaten in Kharkov, write and tell me: I'll come. I like beating up those exploiters…'