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The Death ofMosia
1883-4
ALEKSANDR AND KOLIA sank into maudlin drunkenness while Anton worked frenetically. In March 1883 he was writing a weekly story for Fragments and for The Spectator. At the same time Anton had a series of examinations to sit: he had a '4' (good) from Sklifosovsky for operative surgery; his gynecology was outstanding O5').22 As Tsar Alexander III was to be crowned in Moscow, a few examinations were postponed until September.
Anton could relax and turn his attention to the arts and to his family. His impatience with the feckless had not abated: he saw in actors the same weakness and lack of professionalism that he deplored in his brothers. The contemporary theatre seemed just Aleksandr and Kolia writ large, and had to be fought with, he told the dramatist Kanaev: 'our actors have everything except good breeding, culture or, if I may say so, gentility… I expressed my fears for the future of the modern theatre. The theatre is not a beer garden and not a Tatar restaurant.'
Anton forced a little gentility on his father, and, not altogether disinterestedly, Pavel acknowledged Aleksandr's family: Dear son Aleksandr! You must give Masha a briefcase for Easter, she cannot do without. I have no means to order one. Kindly send in good time what you promised. We are well, Mama has toothache. We have no letters from you. Regards to Anna, a kiss for Mosia, a blessing for you. Your loving father, P. Chekhov.23 Masha never got her briefcase, but Aleksandr received a little paternal affection. Pavel, after a few drinks, even boasted of Aleksandr's uniform in the Customs Service. Home life prospered on 60 roubles a month from Fragments: the Chekhovs kept a piano and a servant. Kolia was paid by Utkina, owner of The Alarm Clock, in kind: of Kolia's
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earnings the Chekhovs kept a desk, a candelabra and a wall clock all their lives.
Anton also helped Aleksandr at Easter 1883. He persuaded Leikin to print Aleksandr's stories; at first Leikin did not know that the author whom Anton was recommending was Aleksandr: 'Who is Agathopod Edinitsyn ("Unit")?' 1300 miles from St Petersburg, Aleksandr needed his brother's help to be a writer again. It was rumoured that civil servants were to be banned from the popular press and, as some of Aleksandr's stories were set in the Customs Service, he needed cover. Anton pointed out the miseries of journalism, mixing with rogues, earning a pittance to be devoured by dependants. Aleksandr ignored the warnings, and felt happier. He had his wife and daughter; he sent for his dog and for Nadia, Anna's daughter by her first husband, Sokolnikov; he even contemplated bringing out Aunt Fenichka to run his household. He wrote to Vania (23 April 1883): 'My little daughter is growing… and giving me much joy… I strongly resemble my Vater, Anna is becoming so attached to me that she has become inseparable and I am quite content with my fate.'
Now Anton became friendlier and broached his preoccupations with women and with sex in a long letter to Aleksandr in April 1883: Anton invited his brother to participate in a doctoral thesis he would write after qualifying - a History of Sexual Authority, modelled on Darwin's Origin of Species. Surveying the world from insects to human beings, Anton reckoned that the higher the social development in mammals the more nearly equal the sexes become, but he was convinced of the inferiority of even the educated female human being: She is not a thinker… We must help nature as man helps nature when he creates heads like Newton's, heads that approach organic perfection. If you've grasped my idea, then 1) the problem, as you see, is very real, not like the fucking-about of our female emancipationist publicists and skull-measurers… The history of universities for women. Curious: in all the 30 years they have existed, women medics (excellent medics!) haven't produced a single serious dissertation, which proves that mey are schwach in the creative line. Anton had been reading the potentially feminist arguments of Herbert Spencer and Sacher-Masoch, but his thinking is shot through with the misogyny of Schopenhauer's 'Essay on Women'. On a personal
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level Anton's difficulties with women were beginning to torment him. Not that his sexual drive was monstrous: his promiscuity stemmed from a rapid loss of interest in any one woman. Zoologists might compare Anton's sexuality with that of the cheetah, which can only mate with a stranger. Once intimacy is established, cheetahs cohabit impotently. Anton's impotence had something to do - perhaps as cause, perhaps as consequence - with his transactions with prostitutes. Not aroused by women he liked (and, worse, not liking women who aroused him), Chekhov was troubled, until he was too ill to be aroused at all. He told Aleksandr and Anna: There's no way I can tie myself to our woman, though there are a lot of opportunities… You screw her once, but the next time you can't get it in. I have all the equipment, but I don't function - my talent is buried in the ground… I fancy a Greek girl now… forgive me, jealous Anna, for writing to your patient [the sick Aleksandr] about Greek girls.24 Student pranks gave Chekhov some joy, but they too tended to have sinister outcomes. Anton, Kolia and Levitan, with another art student, bought a stallholder's oranges and sold them so outrageously cheaply to the public that the stallholder had them arrested. After the exams were over, in Voskresensk, Anton, Kolia, Vania and Misha and three young doctors from the hospital at Chikino set out on a sixteen-mile pilgrimage to the monastery of St Sawa and walked on to see a colleague, Dr Persidsky, at the hospital in Zvenigorod. At tea in Per-sidsky's garden they sang the popular, but banned, 'Show me the home, Where the Russian peasant does not suffer'. The local policeman charged them with subversion. Although a newspaper, the Russian Gazette, and powerful friends intervened, the Governor of Moscow forced Persidsky out of Zvenigorod. After Anton's first experience of injustice indignation seeps into his prose.
Summer 1883 in Voskresensk gave Anton his first footing in genteel society. If Aleksandr and Kolia dragged him down, Vania raised him up, by introducing him to the officers of the battalion stationed at Voskresensk - Lieutenants Egorov, Rudolf and Eduard Tyshko, and Colonel Maevsky and his three children. Known as Tyshko in the Headgear, Eduard Tyshko, irresistible to women, had been wounded in the Turkish war and was never seen in public without black silk .98 ?ir 1. End 1860s: sitting Efrosinia and Egor (left and centre, paternal grandparents), an Anton's Aunt Liudmila (right); standing Evgenia, Pavel, Mitrofan 2. 1874 family portrait: standing Vania, Anton, Kolia, Aleksandr, Uncle Mitrofan; sitting Misha, Masha, Pavel, Evgenia, Aunt Liudmila, cousin Georgi i êì3~4 headgear to disguise his wounds; he became a close friend of the Chekhovs. Anton's friendship with the officers was tested when Lieutenant Egorov asked for Masha's hand in marriage. She referred the proposal to Anton, who warned Egorov off. The lieutenant, not surprisingly, then behaved badly when Evgenia rented a cottage from him for the summer of 1884. She complained to Masha: 'We want to move out of this lousy flat, since Egorov has left us nothing, we'll have to move all the crockery from Moscow… He's left all the furniture locked and sealed.' Only in 1890 would Lieutenant Egorov make his peace with Anton.