No sooner was Kolia rescued from Anna Golden's bed and Moscow's drinking dens, than Aleksandr burst back into Anton's life. On 21 May 1886, in Novorossiisk, Aleksandr dictated a letter for Anton: Anna added a desperate postscript of her own: For God's sake, suggest what we can do. Aleksandr suddenly went blind at 5 p.m.; after dinner he went to bed as usual, after drinking a great deal, then he woke at 5, came out of the room to play with the children and asked for water, sat down on the bed and tells me he can't see. Kolia insisted that Aleksandr was acting, but the act was convincing: Aleksandr was given leave to go to Moscow and Petersburg for treatment. On 3 June he arrived at Vania's schoolhouse in Moscow. From there Pavel wrote to Anton: I ask my children to look after their eyes above all things, do your reading by day, not by night, act sensibly, to be eyeless is bad, to beg alms and assistance is a great misfortune. Kolia and Misha, look after your eyes. You still have to live long and be useful to society and yourself. If you lose your good sight it is disagreeable to me to see. Aleksandr can see nothing, he is handed bread and a spoon and that is it. These are the consequences of wilfulness and of letting his reason incline to the bad. Aleksandr, Anna, their illegitimate sons, and Anna's elder children, who drifted in and out of her care, lasted two months with Pavel and
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Vania in the school house. Pavel kept calm. Aleksandr was drying out, and his sight was returning. On 10 July 1886 he told Anton: Imagine, after supper, I was banging away with my equine penis at the 'mother of my children'. Father was reading his Monastic Rules and suddenly decided to come in with a candle to see if the windows were locked… He solemnly went up to the window, locked it as if he hadn't noticed anything, had the sense to put out the candle and left in the dark. I even fancied he said a prayer to the icon.5 In mid July Kolia vanished again - to cousin Georgi and Uncle Mitro-fan in Taganrog. Aleksandr and his family came to Babkino. Anton was aghast: he wanted other company. He failed to lure Franz Schech-tel from Moscow, even though he exhorted him, 'living in town in summer is worse than pederasty, more immoral than buggery'. Anton moved twenty miles south to Zvenigorod, ostensibly to depute for Dr Uspensky at the hospital. After Petersburg, Chekhov felt imposed upon by his brothers. Fame brought bitter poison: the prestigious The Northern Herald reviewed Motley Tales: '[Mr Chekhov] will like a squeezed-out lemon inevitably die, completely forgotten, in a ditch… In general Mr Chekhov's book is a very sad and tragic spectacle of a young talent's suicide…' Chekhov never forgave N. K. Mik-hailovsky, to whom he attributed this review.6
The more he felt put upon, the greater his need for Masha. Now she had her diploma, she had grown confident. She had a profession for the coming twenty years: she taught part-time in Moscow in the prestigious Rzhevskaia girls' grammar school, run by a family of farmers and thus known as the 'Dairy School'. Masha was now more than an agency by which Anton could meet strong-minded, intelligent young women. Evgenia was surrendering the household to her. In early August 1886 it was Masha who left Babkino to seek a quieter flat for the family. Like many a sister in the nineteenth century, she was a handmaiden so prized by her siblings that cousin Georgi proclaimed to Anton: 'I have concluded from all the attractive stories from Misha that she is your goddess of something kind, good and precious.'7
More servant than goddess to her brothers, Masha's first conflict of interests arose in Babkino in summer 1886. Taught by Levitan, Masha was painting very fine water-colour landscapes and portraits. Levitan made hundreds of propositions to hundreds of women, but only one proposal. Seventy years later, at the age of ninety-two, Masha recalled it: Levitan dropped to his knees in front of me and - a declaration of love… All I could do was turn and run. The whole day, I sat distraught in my room crying, my head deep in the pillow. Levitan, as always, came to dinner. I stayed in my room. Anton asked everyone why I wasn't there… He got up and came to my room. 'Why are you howling?' I told him what had happened and admitted I didn't know what to tell Levitan, and how. My brother replied: 'Of course, you can marry him if you like, but remember that he wants women of the Balzac age, not girls like you.' Whenever Masha referred proposals to Anton, she received a strong negative signal. Anton never expressly forbade her to marry, but his silence and his actions, if necessary, behind the wings left her in no doubt how much he disapproved and how deeply he was dismayed.
Anton could stop his sister marrying, but he could not keep his girlfriends on stand-by. Despite chocolates from Petersburg, Dunia Efros kept her distance; Olga Kundasova fell instead for Professor Bredikhin, at the Moscow observatory. LilyMarkova vanished to Ufa, among the Bashkirs in the Urals foothills. Finally, in Petersburg, she accepted the artist Sakharov. Aleksei Kiseliov thought Anton's love life hilarious and celebrated it in verse that was recited all around Babkino. To A. P. Chekhov Sakharov got married And he was not thrilled When he found that Lily Was already drilled. Who? he'd like to know. The truth is what he's after. But Lily and Anton Can't hold back their laughter. The groom is coming, scowling, And if he gets his hands on That wretched whoring Chekhov, He'll loudly thump Anton And give him such a thrashing
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MY HKO I III lis' Ê Ê Ê PER So that he'll remember To keep off others' brides With his dripping member." Others saw Anton as a threat to the married. When Bilibin's wife, Vera, read a story Anton wrote that August for New Times, 'A Misfortune', she told her husband that the ruthless seducer of the married heroine was Chekhov himself. Vera Bilibina refused to greet Anton when he visited the house. Four years later Bilibin deserted her for Anna Arkadievna Soloviova, a secretary at Fragments. Vera always felt that Anton had exerted a pernicious influence on her husband.
TWENTY Ô
Life in a Chest of Drawers September 1886-March 1887 MASHAANDMISHA rented from a surgeon, Dr Korneev, new premises for the family: a two-storey brick house, eight rooms for 650 roubles a year, on the west side of the Moscow Garden Ring, then a country road where a horse tram passed once an hour. Anton moved in on 1 September 1886. Here the Chekhovs spent nearly four years. The only Chekhov residence in Moscow to be made into a museum, its fussy red-brick facade reminded Anton of a chest of drawers. Anton lived like a gentleman in his study and bedroom. On the ground floor was an enormous kitchen and pantry leading to the chamber maid's and cook's rooms. Upstairs Masha's room adjoined the drawing room; her guests' siren voices lured Anton up from his study. The dining room was also upstairs: the tramp of feet on the stairs never ceased. Under the stairs the ageing whippet Korbo dozed. Pavel visited daily, but slept at the warehouse or at Vania's, a few minutes' walk away.
Anton was spending more than he earned. He pawned his watch and the gold Turkish lira the Ianovs gave him after their typhus. His short pieces at this period show him preoccupied with status. A story, 'The First Class Passenger' is told by an engineer whose mistress, a mediocre actress, gets all the attention when the bridge he built is opened. Anton, too, felt he deserved better. His skit, 'A Literary Table of Ranks', ranks writers on the 13-point scale of the Russian civil service: the highest rank of 'Actual State Councillor' is vacant. Next highest are Tolstoy and Goncharov, followed by the gruesome satirist Saltykov-Shchedrin and the defender of the peasants Grigorovich. Below them come the playwright Ostrovsky and novelist Leskov, together with the melodramatic poet Polonsky. The New Times journalists - Burenin and Suvorin - are ranked with a real genius, the young story writer Vsevolod Garshin. At the bottom, the anti-Semitic