A new rhythm started: Fragments came out every Saturday and various Chekhovs put Anton's contributions on Tuesday's midnight
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I. () i I i» ii Ñ 11 Ê Ê 11 Î V mail train to Petersburg so that Lcikin could set them up, submit them to the censor and get them out in time. The discipline was stricter still when Leikin asked Chekhov to provide a weekly column called 'Fragments of Moscow Life'. This was to parade the corruption and provinciality of Moscow for the amusement of Petersburg's readers, who needed to believe that they were in Europe and Moscow was in Asia. To be exposed as the author would have made life difficult: Chekhov had a new pseudonym for these articles, 'Ruver', and, when his hand was suspected after a few months by others in Moscow's 'Grub Street', switched to 'Ulysses'. Writing less for Moscow and mocking Moscow's writers and editors lost Anton friends in the offices of The Alarm Clock, where he even used editorial conferences as material for his Fragments articles. Eight kopecks a line justified betrayal. In Moscow Anton published in The Spectator where friendly relations with the Golden sisters helped, and where Davydov also paid 8 kopecks a line. Any Moscow publication, especially at the end of the year, was to Leikin a dagger in the back. Often Leikin accused Palmin and Chekhov of losing him subscribers by their promiscuity.
Socially, Anton was moving in more refined circles. His sister Masha, whom her elder brothers had spurned as the family crybaby, had grown up to be a friend and confidante. In May 1882 she matriculated from the episcopal gimnazia and started university courses (in Russia, as in Britain, female students were taught extramurally). Enrolled on the prestigious Guerrier courses, where eminent historians such as Kliuchevsky lectured, Masha had become a kursistka (a female external student). The friends Masha brought home in autumn 1882 to her brothers were more salubrious than the editorial secretaries of the weekly magazines, let alone the landladies with whom her brothers roomed, but only the more daring girls on the Guerrier courses could breathe the Bohemian atmosphere around Kolia and Anton. Masha's fellow students rivalled Anna and Natalia Golden for Kolia's and Anton's affections. To one, Ekaterina Iunosh-eva, an entomologist, Anton sent a beetle 'which has died of desperate love', but she favoured Kolia.
Olga Kundasova, known as 'the astronomer', was a kursistka who found work at the Moscow observatory. In 1883 she and Anton became lovers, a relationship that limped on for two decades. Olga Kundasova was gawky, strong-boned, highly strung, but even in her most unhappy
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and infatuated moments too penetrating and frank for Anton to be comfortable with. More seductive was a temperamental, mordant Jewish student, Dunia Efros. Both Olga Kundasova and Dunia Efros experienced much distress before finding their places on the periphery of Anton's life. Far more complex and less Bohemian than earlier women in the three brothers' lives, they also behaved as equals. They changed Anton's perception of women. If the best stories Chekhov wrote for Fragments have psychological depth, we must thank the women whom Masha brought into Anton's life. Masha was hostess, secretary, e'prouveuse and protector of Anton's private life, and began to share with him the power in the family.
Anton's older brothers were marginalized. Kolia's dissipation, and his tuberculosis, were undermining his reputation as an artist. He now took morphine, initially for the pains in his chest, as well as consuming copious amounts of alcohol. For some time the family tried to ignore him. In Taganrog Aleksandr was half-forgotten, despite regular letters which showed that he too was unhappy. Aleksandr and Anna were hopelessly inept housekeepers and Aleksandr did not present the Customs Office with the graduation certificate necessary to receive a full salary. The salary he did receive did not pay for even food and fuel. At first, the couple were lulled by Uncle Mitrofan and Aunt Liudmila's friendliness. Anna joined a confederacy of women and Aunt Liudmila confided her intimate secrets. Aleksandr tantalized Anton: Auntie even told my better half a few things about the general bliss that uncle provides her with. Naturally, I too know these details but I shall conceal them from you, for in fact they are quite unlike the slow motion which you, Antosha, make when you fold your fingers in a certain way. Anna was clearly pregnant; the couple equivocated about christening the child. Mitrofan and Liudmila were embarrassed. In October 1882 Aleksandr, living on Kontorskaia, the street where he lived when he was a boy, begged Vania to come and stay: 'Write to me, don't let our links die. Anna is pregnant and invites you to the christening… I shall hand my offspring over to your school for you to teach, with the right to beat no more than five times a day.'19 Aleksandr attempted to lure Kolia to Taganrog in the most effective way he knew: 'Liubov Kamburova was there. She is still in love with you. For God's sake
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come and copulate with her, for she is desperately seeking what in Latin is called inter pedes…figura longa et obscura. You are besought, come.'20
To Anton, as a budding gynaecologist, Aleksandr turned for sexual advice: Anna's pregnancy left him frustrated. Anton replied to Aleksandr (with a gift of money) and told him that 'medicine, while forbidding coitus, does not forbid massage.' The quality of Anton's mercy was a little strained: he was more preoccupied with medical studies by day and writing, to Pavel's fury at the paraffin consumed, by night. He asked Aleksandr and Anna to send material for stories - descriptions of spiritualist seances in Tula, schoolboy rhymes from Taganrog, photographs. Only Pavel, horrified by Anna's pregnancy, was utterly unbending. At first Aleksandr just remonstrated: 'Dear Papa… I am saddened only that you won't send your regards to Anna, knowing full well that if we are not married, it is not my fault.' On the eve of New Year 1883 Aleksandr tried emotional blackmail on his parent: you have mercilessly poisoned the rest of the holidays for me - there is no doubt about that. All December I've been poorly, I'd begun to recover in the holidays. Your reproach upset, offended, insulted and alarmed me… Today I am confirmed in Petersburg as Head of the Imports Desk and Customs Translator. My sufferings are over… What a pity your reproach came just when for the first time I breathed freely. In mid February 1883 Anna gave birth to a daughter. Pavel would not acknowledge his first grandchild or speak to her mother. None of her uncles, even Anton, expressed any joy at the birth of Mosia, as her parents called her. Aleksandr complained that Mitrofan and Liud-mila would not be godparents to the baby. Mitrofan could not face neighbours' questions if a priest came to the house. Liudmila told Father Pokrovsky that Aleksandr and Anna had married in St Petersburg. Aleksandr accepted Mitrofan's conditions: the child must go to church daily and observe all fasts. Liudmila then declared that Pavel would not let them condone sin. Aleksandr wept.
Anton sent his brother at the end of February 1883 a harsh ten-page tirade: What do you expect of father? He is against tobacco smoking and illicit cohabitation - and you want to be friends with him? You
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might manage it with mother or aunt [Fenkhka], but not with father. He's the same flint as the dissenters, no worse, and you won't budge him… You carry your cohabitation like a stolen watermelon… You want to know what I think, what Kolia, or our father thinks?! What business is it of yours? Anton detected and disliked in both Aleksandr and in Kolia a disparity between high-minded pretensions and sordid actions. Kolia was taking on prestigious commissions - to paint the sets at Lentovsky's theatre in the Ermitage, to illustrate Dostoevsky - and doing nothing except to complain that he was misunderstood. Within a year, Anton predicted, Kolia would be finished. Both brothers, in his view, were destroyed by self-pity. He alone felt in the ascendant and triumphantly told Aleksandr on 3 February 1883: I'm becoming popular and have now read a critique of myself. My medicine is going crescendo. I know how to treat and I can't believe it. You won't find, old boy, a single disease I wouldn't undertake to treat. Exams are soon. If I get into the 5th class, then finita la commedia. The family appeared to be dissolving. Aleksandr was stuck in Taganrog. Kolia moved out to live in a sordid tenement, Eastern Furnished Rooms. Vania stayed all year in Voskresensk. Masha spent all the time she could at her courses or at girlfriends' houses. Only Misha stayed home, studying for matriculation. Anton felt untrammelled, apart from the times when Pavel spent the night on Golovin lane. Then Anton sheltered at night with the artists, Levitan and Kolia, or with Natasha Golden, to study or write, where Pavel did not moan about the cost of candles. The insolvent bankrupt lectured his sons on finance. A pencilled folio runs: Kolia and Antosha, You have left things to the last day and I told you several times that 10 roubles had to be ready to pay the rent, you know that it can't be put off and I like Punctuality. You have put me in an awkward position. To blush when the landlord comes is not right for a man of my age, I am a Person with a positive Character.21