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MY Â È ñ» I 11 I Ê S ' Ê 1. E I» E R Okreits, known to Chekhov as Judophob Judophobovich, is left with no rank at all.
Women guests exerted demi-monde charm, but Anton's correspondence for the year to come shows that, for once, he was unresponsive. Only Maria Kiseliova evoked any reaction: she rebuked him for his dissipation and lubricious stories. On 21 September he undid any illusions she might have about his hedonism: I am living in the cold with fumes from the stove… the lamp smokes and covers everything with soot, the cigarette crackles and goes out, I burn my fingers. I could shoot myself… I write a lot and take a lot of time over it… I've ordered the doctor's sign taken down for the time being! Brrr… I'm afraid of typhus. Oil 29 September he wrote to her again: Life is grey, no happy people to be seen… Kolia is living with me. I Ie's seriously ill (stomach haemorrhages that exhaust him to hell)… I think that people who feel revulsion for death are illogical. As I understand the logic of things, life consists just of horrors, quarrels and vulgarities… The Kiseliovs, too, were desperate: they could not pay off their children's governess. Aleksei Kiseliov wrote on 24 September 1886: I sat my writer-wife down and made her write a tearful letter to the Aunt in Penza, saying save me, my husband and children, save us from this hissing hag [the governess]. Perhaps she'll take pity and send not just 500 to pay her off but enough to buy us all sweets. This letter sowed seeds for The Cherry Orchard, where Gaev appeals for money to an aunt in Iaroslavl and spends his fortune on boiled sweets.
The Chekhov family is reflected in Anton's fiction of autumn 1886. Me acknowledged Pavel's touchy obstinacy, for he sensed it in himself. His story for New Times in October 1886, 'Difficult People', relives appalling rows between father and son: they admit that they share a tyrannical temperament. In Anton's second story for New Times that month, 'Dreams', a sick convict trudges to Siberia, while his guards know that he will soon die. Anton was thinking of Kolia, if not himself. Kolia had crawled home after writing a desperate note: 'Dear Anton I've been in bed for five days… vomiting mercilessly and turning
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my guts inside out.' Doctors in the 1880s deceived ÒÂ patients that the blood they coughed was from the stomach or throat, not from the lungs: 'I even thought I had consumption,' Kolia told Anton. Kolia was hiding from death in the arms of Anna Golden or of his mother, or fled them all to his student haunts. Within days Kolia ran away again.
Aleksandr threw himself on Suvorin's mercy. Suvorin gave him work as a copy editor and a freelance reporter, and found him a second job editing Russian Shipping. From the latter Aleksandr was soon dismissed, but he was paid enough by Suvorin to bring his family from Tula, where Anna's relatives lived, for the Christmas goose. Aleksandr, as Anton's agent in Petersburg, collected royalties and gossip. He hoped to edit New Times, if Fiodorov went to prison, but Suvorin was too canny: Aleksandr remained a hack.
Petersburg, however bad its air for the lungs and its water for the gut, had in spring lifted Anton's spirits: the company of Suvorin, successful writers and lively actresses excited him. At the end of November he went for a third visit, this time taking Masha with him: her gratitude and joy were vehement. In Petersburg Chekhov's new stories were sensations: stories of lost children, such as 'Vanka', or of 1 a lone man and a child ('On the Road'), quenched the public's thirst for Dickensian Christmas sentiments, yet dumbfounded critics with their desolation. Acclaim restored Anton's self-esteem: 'I am becoming as fashionable as [Zola's] Nana!' Literature was like fornication. Soon Anton saw himself as an unholy trinity, 'Antonius and Medicine Chekhov, Medicine the wife and Literature the mistress'.
After Petersburg Anton met the festivities in Moscow, from Christmas to his name day, in gayer spirits. Grigorovich visited the Chekhovs then. Vamped by laughing women, he walked the actress Daria Musina-Pushkina to her home and recalled his youth, when he was notorious for seducing the wife of the poet A. K. Tolstoy on a garden swing. In Petersburg Grigorovich told Anna Suvorina, 'My dear, if you only knew what it's like at the Chekhovs: Bacchanalia, my darling.'9
Men as well as women were attached to Anton. Bilibin wrote 'I must secretly tell you, I love you,' but as 'the husband of a learned wife' he was tugged out of Chekhov's circle. Unhappy with Vera and with Leikin (for whom he worked until the latter's death in 1906),
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MY II It (I I 11 I It S ' Ê I I! P E Ê ÂØÛë presented tedious psychosomatic symptoms, and was passed over for new acolytes. Chekhov's new disciple was Aleksandr Lazarev, who signed himself Gruzinsky. A provincial seminary teacher, who aspired to be a writer, Gruzinsky visited the Chekhovs on New Year's Day 1887. He brought with him another schoolteacher-writer, his close friend, Nikolai Ezhov, who worshipped Chekhov just as fervently. The affection of Ezhov, as prickly as his name 'Hedgehog', was to sour in a few years, as he resented Chekhov's ascent and his own obscurity.
An old admirer came to stay: Sasha Selivanova, Anton's pupil in Taganrog, who now taught in Kharkov. Back home, she wrote to Anton, Vania and Misha: 'My heart is torn to pieces, I miss you so much. But I can't say it's torn into three even pieces. One is bigger. (iuess which one of you three is the reason? So you all played the part of the holiday husband excellently.'10 Anton wired back: 'Angel, darling, miss you terribly, come soon… Your lover.'
I he climax of January was Anton's twenty-seventh name-day party 'with Jewgirls, Turkeys and Ianova girls'. His cousin Aleksei Dol-z.henko brought violin and zither. Over the holidays Anton produced only one story with any literary impact or personal input, 'Enemies': a bereaved doctor is tricked into an unnecessary visit and conceives a violent hatred of mankind. Chekhov placed a story in the Moscow weekly The Alarm Clock. Once again Leikin was furious with Chekhov for giving Fragments nothing in December, when new subscribers had to be lured. Before turning up at Anton's name-day party, he wrote: 'You really have stabbed Fragments in the back. Of course, you're not a journalist, you can't fully understand what you have done to me."1
Chekhov no longer felt dependent on Leikin: he told Uncle Mitro-fan, 'I am now the most fashionable writer.' Leikin tried to rein (Ihckhov in: 'Your last piece in New Times is weak, in general your little pieces [for Leikin] are more successful'. He tried to bind Anton closer, suggesting a tour of the northern lakes or the southern provinces together - a proposal that Chekhov evaded for a decade - promising him a puppy, pestering him with his hypochondria. Leikin was worried about his obesity. Frivolously, Chekhov prescribed two weeks' fasting. Eventually, in May 1888, fed up with Leikin's and Bilibin's hypochondriac missives, he would order: 'Take a French maid, 25-26, and, when you're bored, screw her as hard as you can. That's
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good for the health. And when Bilibin comes, let him screw the maid too.' Leikin, Russia's most prolific humorist, did not understand such quips, but he forgave Anton and raised his fee to 11 kopecks a line.