Other Voskresensk friendships extended to Vania's brothers. Once, stranded at a Christmas ball by a blizzard, Vania was offered a lift home in a guest's sledge. The stranger was Aleksei Kiseliov, who owned an estate at Babkino two miles up the river Istra from Voskresensk. Aleksei Kiseliov was a very well-connected, if impoverished, aristocrat, with a nostalgia for his rakish past. His wife Maria was an amateur writer and a prude. The Kiseliovs were charmed by Masha and Anton. These Voskresensk friendships were lifelong. Anton had glimpses of new worlds - the officers' life he was to portray so expertly in Three Sisters, and the rundown Arcadia of the landowner. Babkino taught Masha how to be a lady. Anton got to know intellectuals, for instance Pavel Golokhvastov, a magistrate who was a Slavophile activist and his wife, a playwright. The IGseliovs and Chekhovs fished and played croquet together. Anton flirted with their servants and dairymaids. He joined the Russian intellectual establishment. Nevertheless, unlike Misha and Masha, Anton also had business in Voskresensk. He was useful to Dr Arkhangelsky at the Chikino clinic. The stories of summer 1884, with Vania and the Kiseliovs in Voskresensk, show newly acquired surgical, as well as social, skills.
In Anton's absence Pavel grumbled: 'Nice children you are, you've left Mother ailing, and are having fun. It's lucky that God has saved her, but you have no pity. Pavel the Long-Suffering.'
Evgenia too was soon to leave the Moscow household. Anton persuaded Aleksandr that she would be more use to him in Taganrog than Aunt Fenichka: 'Mother badly wants to visit you. Take her on, if you can. Mother still has spirit and is not as heavy going as Aunt.' Evgenia duly went to Taganrog. It was a mistake. Aleksandr's household was sunk in irremediable filth and chaos. The servants did as
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DOC i oi«:n i KIIOV they liked, Aleksandr spent each month's salary within a few days, Àëïà could not do housework. Evgenia, never good at crises, did not even have her refuge of coffee and a clean bed. Mitrofan and his wife Liudmila were no support: a few days after her arrival on 26 June 1883, they went, with two of their children, to Moscow to see Pavel and then to Voskresensk. Before the week was out Evgenia was desperate: Antosha for God's sake send me just a rouble and quickly I'm afraid to ask your father I need to buy bread for my tea, not to speak of supper… When Mitrofan returns, send me money for the fare back. In any case, I can't leave while they're away. I've lent them my wicker trunk, such anguish, I'm afraid I shall fall ill… Aleksandr is as unhappy as can be, if only at least Kolia came. E. Chekhova. Please, answer and don't mention to anyone that I am complaining.2' Nobody could rely on Evgenia: she herself thirsted for protection. After a fortnight she begged her fare back to Moscow from her children.
Anton left Voskresensk for Moscow, from where it was easier to send Leikin a constant stream of prose. Aleksandr, Anna and baby Mosia had, however, followed Evgenia from Taganrog, so that to find peace Anton stayed in 'Natashevu' Golden's house or with Palmin at Bogorodskoe in the suburbs. Here he wrote. Leikin restricted Anton from experimenting with new forms, and was petulant if Chekhov made a debut in a Moscow weekly, tolerating only The Spectator as a Chekhov family concern. Leikin turned down the only long work Chekhov wrote that year, 'He Understood', a charming piece set in Voskresensk. A peasant shoots a starling, is detained for poaching and wins his release by persuading the angry landowner that his yearning to shoot is as incurable as the latter's alcoholism. At the end of 1883 Chekhov placed the story in Nature and Field Sports, under his real name for the first time.26
Two pieces written in summer 1883 stand out: one is a melancholy story for The Alarm Clock, 'The Dowry': the heroine loses her dowry to a drunken uncle and her fiance cannot help her. The story's effect lies in the narrator's ineffectual sympathy; the ending 'Where are you, Manechka?' introduces the helpless pathos of the typical Chekhovian 'hero'. The other piece, 'The Daughter of Albion', about an ugly
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English governess enduring the barbarity of her employer, was the first piece Chekhov wrote for Fragments to win renown. Russians joked about frigid Englishwomen - Chekhov himself had written that 'if the Russian evolved from a magpie and the German from a fox, the English evolved from frozen fish' - but 'The Daughter of Albion' has the nature poetry of a 'fishing' story based on Anton's summer angling at Babkino. Not for the last time, Anton's mockery of his hero and heroine is tempered by a lyrical celebration of the countryside.
Leikin wanted even more from his most popular author: 'Fragments of Moscow Life' came out every week: under two pseudonyms Anton might supply half the material for an issue. Kolia, less reliable, was Leikin's best illustrator; Leikin sent him special torchon paper from St Petersburg. As August ended and Anton's final year of medicine approached, he complained to Leikin: in the next room a baby is crying (it belongs to my brother who has come to stay), in another room father is reading mother [Leskov's] 'Sealed Angel'. Someone has wound up a musical box and I can hear 'La Belle Helene'. I'd like to run off to the country, but it's 1 in the morning… For a writer it would be hard to invent anything fouler than these surroundings. My bed is occupied by my brother who keeps on coming up to me and raising the topic of medicine. 'My daughter must have colic in the belly, that's why she's crying.' I have the great misfortune to be a medic and everyone thinks they have to 'discuss' medicine with me… I solemnly promise never to have any children. The gods took note of that promise.
Peace seemed to be restored when Evgenia came back from the country and Aleksandr and his family returned to Taganrog. In autumn 1883, once university life began, Anton and Kolia mixed with Masha's kursistki. Ekaterina Iunosheva received a joking 'Last Farewell' by Kolia. (Anton had a hand in this poem - all three eldest Chekhov brothers had the stuffed owl for a muse): As from a cigar a dreamer smokes, You float about in all my dreams, Bringing with you love's cruel strokes, And on your lips a hot smile gleams…27
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Kolia did not stay in the family home for long. He hid behind the ample skirts of Anna Ipatieva-Gohlcn from his creditors and the authorities, and Anton no longer collaborated with him.
In late November Kolia left Moscow and went to stay with Alek-sandr and Anna Sokolnikova in Taganrog. Meanwhile Pavel, horrified to discover that Aleksandr and his consort had stolen something precious from him, asked Kolia to intervene: My regards to Aleksandr. I am sorry for the ruined creature and those that live with him. He has stolen my wedding certificate and is living on it and mis grieves me. Bring it, be sure to take it off him. Those that live without the law shall perish wimout the law!28 Pavel's phrase 'shall perish without the law' became a family saying. Anton kept out of these quarrels: he was drawn to wider horizons. Leikin had been leaking hints to those in Petersburg who asked about the identity of his contributor, Antosha Chekhonte. On 8 October 1883 Nikolai Leskov, revered for his novel The Cathedral Folk and for his powerful stories, such as 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk', arrived with Leikin for five days in Moscow. Leikin could not resist introducing Leskov to Chekhov. Leskov (with Ostrovsky, the only living writer whom Pavel Chekhov respected) had surly suspicions of young writers, but took to Chekhov. Anton took Leskov on a tour of the brothels in Sobolev lane. They ended up in the Salon des Varietes. Then, as Anton told Aleksandr, Leskov and he took a cab: He turns to me half drunk and asks: 'Do you know what I am?' 'I do.' 'No you don't. I'm a mystic' 'I know.' He stares at me witli his old man's popping eyes and prophesies. 'You will die before your brother.' 'Perhaps.' 'I shall anoint you with oil as Samuel did David… Write.' Despite Anton's agnosticism and Leskov's Orthodox faith, the two writers were very close in spirit: no other of Leskov's successors had his gift for narrative voice, for showing environment making character, for maintaining an ironical, but mystical appreciation of nature and fate. However inauspicious the future encounters of Leskov and Chekhov (for Leskov hated doctors and Anton was never to be fully at ease in Petersburg), this meeting settled Chekhov's fate: he was to be Leskov's successor.