By the end of 1885 Leikin felt personally attached to Anton, who became one of his very few confidants. He wanted to show off his palatial house and the estate he had bought outside town where the river Tosna joined the Neva, surrounded by pine forests, and raided by wolves. Leikin's letters to Moscow were a torrent equal to the letters and stories that Anton sent to Petersburg. Leikin gave advice on every subject: he told Anton to treat Kolia's morphine addiction with milk. Finally he pressed Anton to make his first visit to Petersburg.
On 10 December 1885 Anton set off for Petersburg to stay a fortnight with Leikin. Although Leikin introduced Anton to men who would change his life - the elderly novelist Grigorovich, doyen of living Russian writers, the newspaper tycoon and publisher Suvorin AUGUST 1885-jANUARY 1886 and his vitriolic leader-writer, Viktor Burenin - Leikin rarely left his protege's side. Petersburg's literary circles sneered at Leikin, and Chekhov's reception suffered. On this first visit Suvorin and Grigorovich received him coolly, and he was even stood up by Kbudekov of The Petersburg Newspaper. The only tangible benefit from this first journey to Petersburg was that Leikin agreed to publish a collection of Chekhov's tales entitled Motley Stories.49
One friendship came of this fortnight in Petersburg: Viktor Bilibin, a newly qualified barrister and Post Office official, Leikin's editorial secretary and, as 'Ygrec', leader-writer. Bilibin was a year older than Anton, naive, curious and generous. Trust sprang up between them, though Bilibin had none of Anton's Bohemianism and was too gentle a writer for Chekhov, who in March 1886 criticized his 'cotton-wool-ness': 'As a columnist you are like a lover to whom a woman says "You take me too tenderly… You must be rougher!" (By the way, women are just like chickens, they like to be hit at that particular moment.)' However tenderly, Viktor Bilibin played Virgil to Anton's Dante in Petersburg's literary circles. To Bilibin alone Anton confided his doubts about Dunia Efros as a possible consort.
Bilibin had no illusions about his employer, Leikin, and he warned 1 Anton of Leikin's duplicity: Leikin might be happy to show Chekhov off to Petersburg's publishers, but he had no intention of letting him escape. Anton passed on the warning to Aleksandr: 'Living with Leikin, I experienced all the agony about which it is said in Scripture: "I have endured unto the end."… Don't rely on Leikin. He is putting every spanner in the works for me and The Petersburg Newspaper.'
Anton washed away the flavour of Leikin's hospitality by celebrating Christmas, the New Year, University celebrations on Tatiana's day (12 January) and his name day (17 January), very wildly. At twenty-six he was taking leave, if not of his senses, then of his youth.
Friends' weddings were a pretext for weeks of hedonism. Dr Dmitri Saveliev was tied and Dr Nikolai Korobov soon would be. In the New Year the artist Aleksandr Ianov in Moscow, Dr Rozanov from Voskresensk and Viktor Bilibin in Petersburg all announced their weddings. Dr Rozanov asked Anton to be best main, and Masha bridesmaid. Anton borrowed 2 5 roubles and a morning coat. On Rozanov's wedding morning he wrote to Leikin: 'Today is Tatiana's day [Moscow University's day]. By evening I'll be legless. I'm putting on morning
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i) î ñ; ã î ê ñ 11 ê ê í î v dress, off to be best man: a docttir is marrying a priest's daughter -a combination of killer and undertaker.' On Tatiana's day Kiseliov wrote and prescribed an open-air sexual encounter and an obscene purgative as a cure for the inevitable hangover.50 Kiseliov was not far off the mark. Chekhov wrote to the groom two days later: I still haven't recovered from Tatiana's day. I really stuffed myself at your wedding, showing my belly no mercy. Then I went with Dr Uspensky to the Ermitage, then to Velde's restaurant and men to the Salon des Varietes… The result: an empty purse, somebody else's galoshes, a heavy head, spots in the eyes and desperate pessimism. No-o-o, I've got to get married. Kiseliov pretended that he was more shocked by Anton than envious of him: 'There are no limits to your debauchery, after the great mystery of marriage you end up in an unused hotel room and take up fornication.' Before his head cleared, in the early hours of 18 January i H86, after his twenty-sixth name day party Chekhov brought matters to a head.
SEVENTEEN Ô
Getting Engaged January 1886 MARRIAGE WAS TO PREOCCUPY CHEKHOV for fifteen years before he took the plunge. His behaviour reminds us of Gogol's comedy Marriage and its hero Podkolesin ['under the wheels'], who, when finally confronted with the betrothal he seeks, jumps out of the window. Chekhov was a close observer of marriage. He watched his parents' marriage for forty years. He studied well Aleksandr's and Kolia's liaisons. Ever the best man, never the groom, Anton drifted in his friends' wake. He wrote on 14 January 1886 to Dr Rozanov two days after the wedding: If Varvara [Mrs Rozanova] doesn't find me a bride, I'll certainly shoot myself… It's time I was ruled with a rod of iron, as you now are… Do you remember? A finch in a cage, a new tap on the samovar and scented glycerine soap are the signs indicating a married man's flat… Three of my friends are getting married. Once Anton's head cleared, he wrote a dramatic monologue On the Harm of Tobacco and told Bilibin: 'I've just got to know a very striking French girl, the daughter of poor but decent bourgeois… Her name is not quite decent: Mile Sirout.'5' Four days later Anton wrote again to Bilibin: 'Seeing a certain young lady home, I made her a proposal… I want to get out of the frying pan into the fire… Wish me luck for my marriage.'
Only to Bilibin did Anton reveal this engagement. Masha, a close friend of the fiancee, Dunia Efros, only suspected. To Leikin Chekhov dismissed all thought of marriage. Overhead, on 19 January, a wedding party was in full swing: 'Somebody banging their feet like a horse has just run over my head… Must be the best man. The band is thundering… For the groom who is going to screw the bride this music may be pleasant, but it will stop me, an impotent, getting any sleep.'
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The impulse to marry Dunia Kfros was not her dowry: her family were not rich. Nor did Anton have a desire for progeny (except for a puppy from Leikin's Apel and Rogulka). Aleksandr described with pride how he witnessed the birth of his second son, whom he named Anton, and then declared that after this spectacle he could never make love to Anna again. Aleksandr's picture of philoprogenitive domesticity in Novorossiisk in January 1886 was a deterrent. Aleksandr advised Anton in his next letter: 'You still aren't married. Don't… I've forgotten when I last slept.'
Anton's engagement to Dunia Efros was short and secret. His letters to Bilibin trace stormy ups and downs. On 1 February, Anton, with Kolia and Franz Schechtel, went to a ball at the barracks where Lieutenant Tyshko was now stationed. His fervour for Dunia cooled, and he told Bilibin: Thank your fiancee for the mention and the consideration and tell her that my marriage is probably alas and alack! The censor won't pass it… My she is a Jewess. Does a rich Jewgirl have the bravery to take Orthodoxy and the consequences - all right, she doesn't -and there's no need to… And anyway, we've already quarrelled… Tomorrow we'll make it up, but in a week we'll quarrel again… She's so annoyed that religion gets in the way that she breaks pencils and smashes photographs on my desk - that's typical… She's a terrible shrew… I shall divorce her 1-2 years after the wedding, that's certain. Dunia's violent spirit attracted and repelled Anton, and would infiltrate the highly sexed and assertive heroines of his stories that year. On 16 February 1886 Anton told Bilibin: 'Nothing is certain about my marriage yet', and on 11 March: I have split up to nee [sic] plus ultra with my fiancee. Yesterday we met… I complained to her of having no money and she told me that her Jewboy brother drew a 3-rouble note so perfectly that the illusion was complete: the chambermaid picked it up and put it in her pocket. That's all. I shan't write about her to you again. By early April Bilibin stopped asking about Chekhov's fiancee. Troubled by Anton's licentiousness, Bilibin questioned him on love and sex in literature and reality. As for his own love life, Chekhov would only say that 'he thawed like a Jewboy before a gold rouble' at the 'flowerbed' of beautiful women surrounding Masha. Dunia Efros remained a family friend, although she quarrelled with Masha two years later. In her letter from a North Caucasian spa that summer, four months after breaking with Anton, her conciliatory tone set the pattern for Anton's discarded lovers: I was thinking of a rich bride for you, Anton, even before I had your letter. There's a very loving merchant's daughter here, not bad-looking, rather plump (your taste) and fairly daft (also a virtue). She is desperate to get away from mummy's supervision which oppresses her terribly. Once she even drank 4 gallons of vinegar to be pale and scare mummy. She told us that herself. I think you'll like her. There's lots of money.32 Dunia's Jewishness was certainly instrumental in bringing her and Anton together and in sundering them. Like many southern Russians, Anton admired and liked Jews. Always a defender of Jews, he asked Bilibin why he used the word 'yid' three times in one letter? Yet he himself used the word 'yid' both neutrally and pejoratively and, like many southern Russians, Anton felt Jews to be a race apart with irredeemably unacceptable attitudes. 'Jew' and 'non-Jew' were categories in which he classified every new acquaintance, even though his utterances and his behaviour make him, by the standards of the times, a judophile.