Today you are having a ball, I can imagine you desperately flirting with Efros and Iunosheva. Who will win, I wonder? Is it true that Efros's nose has got 2 inches longer, that's terrible, a pity, she'll be kissing you and what sort of children will you have, all that worries me frightfully. I have also heard that Iunosheva's bust has got bigger, another inconvenience!… Antoshevu, if you are irrevocably lost morally, at least don't ruin your friends, especially not the married ones. You scoundrel!
I advise you not to marry, you're still too young… You write rubbish to me, as for the main thing that interests me (more than
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anything else), your health, not a word about that. You have two diseases, amorousness and spitting blood. The first is not dangerous, but about the second I ask you to give me the most detailed information… So, Antoshevu, perhaps you haven't forgotten your little skeleton, but I believe that if you come to Petersburg, you haven't, if you don't come, you have forgotten her… I shall send you stamps, otherwise I fear that the letters will be lost. Farewell, Antoshevu. Your Natasha. I'm glad medicine is looking up, maybe you'll write less and be healthier.4' Natalia was not the last woman to send Anton stamps for a reply, but none survives. The field was clear for Dunia Efros: Anton's business in Petersburg was literary.
Anton was back at Babkino until autumn. Khudekov of The Petersburg Newspaper had not paid him, and it was cheaper living with the Kiseliovs. When he finally returned to Moscow, the Chekhovs moved from quarters that were airy, convenient and cheap. On 11 October 1885, after waiting for the landlord to stain the floors, the Chekhov family crossed the river south to the Bolshaia Iakimanka, Mrs Lebed-eva's house. After five years in one house - the longest period yet in Anton's life - peregrinations had started again. The new flat was small - too small for soirees, but cheap (40 roubles a month), and closer to Gavrilov's warehouse. Doctor A. P. Chekhov's brass plate was mounted, and here he was at home except Tuesdays, Thursday evenings and some Saturdays. A month later, Anton was complaining to Leikin: 'The new flat has turned out to be rubbish: damp and cold. If I don't leave it, I shall certainly have last year's outrage developing in my chest: coughing and spitting blood… Living with the family is horribly nasty.' There was no money for firewood: The Petersburg Newspaper took months to pay Anton. He wrote again for The Alarm Clock, and collected his fee in person.
As the family thinned out rows because fewer. Misha, starting Law at Moscow University, received on 11 August, Masha's name day, Pavel's last rocket: 'In Moscow instead of the educated boy who studied so long at the gimnazia you have turned out a lout, your character in Moscow has become not modest but impatient and rude, what is your education for?'44 Pavel seemed to mellow. He sent Masha (who lingered at Babkino) an affectionate letter and a 5-rouble note: he even corresponded with Aleksandr, Anna and their illegitimate
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child, Kolia, in Novorossiisk. Vania had come back from Novorossiisk. Aleksandr and Vania gave their father good reports about each other. Aleksandr was so touched by paternal forgiveness that he sent a fond letter, giving information, so dear to Pavel, on the price of every product and the liturgy of the church services in Novorossiisk. Anna too felt emboldened: 'I hurry to use the permission you gave me to write a few lines to you… Aleksandr is not drinking vodka and on your advice just drinks a little wine. Come and see us next summer.'47 Aleksandr's letters to his brothers are not so rosy. Inducing Vania to come for a job in the Novorossiisk customs or to open a private school, he painted instead a horrific picture of his life in this newly founded port. In hopeless debt, he lived worse than in Taganrog, where relatives helped in crises. Here he had 'no table, no chairs, just bare walls and Kolka's shitty nappies, which are the towels'. Out of scrap Aleksandr made a bedstead and a chair, which broke. Only the job was undemanding: By 8 p.m. I am drunk and asleep… I drink so much that even I am ashamed… I catch gobius fish in the mornings. I hired a servant and sacked her after three days… I have instructed people only to shit in the outside latrine, and I recommend pissing in the open… Instead of two young girls I've hired a servant woman, but such a woman that I swear to God one night I shall make a mistake and climb on her instead of Anna. I don't mean to be vulgar, I'm expressing my amazement at her figure. A real Titian woman from a picture of Weib, Wein und Gesang. Aleksandr told Anton how badly doctors were needed in Novorossiisk, how little land cost, how much people would pay for treatment or accommodation. Yet Aleksandr's description of his squalor was so graphic that it beggars belief that he thought he could attract Anton. Vania and Anton refused their brother's invitations to Novorossiisk. Even their sister was not spared the details. Aleksandr told Masha on 18 December 1885 that he wanted 'to start another life, where one wouldn't be nagged day and night, or harassed by an old man's cough and by torn stockings with dirty toes showing through them'.48
Kolia lay low, living on quick caricatures for The Alarm Clock and on Leikin's money. (Palmin had vanished from Anton's and Leikin's purview since March.) Anton answered Leikin's protests about Kolia's cheating on 14 September:
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uo«; I OK cm ê iiov It's not a matter of intervention,, hut In jemme. Woman! The sexual instinct is a worse obstacle to work than vodka… A weak man goes to a woman, tumbles into her duvet and lies with her until they get colic in their groins… Kolia's woman is a fat piece of meat who loves to drink and eat. Before coitus she always drinks and eats, and it's hard for her lover to hold back and not drink and eat pickles (it's always pickles!) The Agathopod [Akksandr] is also twisted round a woman's little finger. When these two women will let go, die devil knows. The family was now Anton, Evgenia, Masha, Misha, Aunt Fenichka and, when he was not lodging overnight at Gavrilov's warehouse, Pavel. Kolia had left Anna Ipatieva-Golden for a sordid rooming house. By II April 1886, in the primary school where he was head teacher, Vania had a flat on the Arbat with five rooms, free fuel and light, a servant and, to Pavel's delight, a tricorn and tunic. Aleksandr was out of sight in Novorossiisk. At the end of November the Moscow Chekhovs moved out of Lebedeva's damp, cold house to spacious quarters on the same Iakimanka: Klimenkov's house opposite the Church of St John the Warrior. For the first time each member of the family had a room of their own. Here the Tuesday soirees resumed. Chekhov's friends, whether the louche Palmin or the flirtatious Mar-kova sisters, liked these hospitable apartments. The drawback was one floor up: Chef Piotr Podporin's dining rooms for weddings, balls and funerals, constant dancing, drinking, and the laughter or weeping of strangers.