He found two days to write a melodramatic short story, 'Sleepy', about a skivvy who murders her mistress's baby so that she can sleep (a story that Katherine Mansfield would later plagiarize). He threw off two short plays, the Beckett-like monologue for a superannuated actor alone in the theatre, Kalkhas, later called Swansong, and the first of his fine farces, The Bear, which he later dubbed The Milch-Cow for its profitability. Friends noted Chekhov's soaring self-esteem, and other changes: his flowing hair, and quizzical smile. Gruzinsky wrote to Ezhov in February 1888: 'Chekhov really looks like Anton Rubinstein… a coolness has sprung up between Bilibin and Chekhov.' Bilibin stopped signing himself 'Your Victorina', but Anton's new friend, Ivan Shcheglov, became more affectionate: 'No Frenchwoman can caress so seductively as you can.'
Friends still called on Anton's medical skills. Grigorovich, after Chekhov had examined him, decided to stave off death in Nice: from there he sent Chekhov ideas for stories. From Petersburg Aleksandr issued desolate bulletins about Anna. Surgeons and doctors disagreed. Aleksandr was tormented by temptation as well as remorse - the secretary at New Times had soft black eyes. He asked Anton for moral guidance. Anna's terror of death overcame her inhibitions: she pleaded with her mother-in-law: I beg you, take pity on your grandchildren, come to Petersburg and JANUARY-MAY l888 stay with us. I've been ill for a long time and now the doctors think I must have an operation, that I have an abscess or echinococci [bacteria] (ask Anton he will explain) on the liver and I have to have them cut out. God knows how the operation will end, but I'm terribly afraid and at best I shall have to be in hospital for a long time. Who will be with my children then?… If I had fallen ill in Moscow I wouldn't be so afraid, but here I'm utterly alone and I am so miserable. Do me one more favour, light a candle to the martyr St Panteleimon for me in the chapel and pray to the Healer for me. My regards to Pavel Chekhov and ask him to say a prayer… I thank Anton for his sympathy…24 Botkin, the most distinguished surgeon in Petersburg, examined Anna. There was a brief remission, but by 4 March it was clear that she was dying of tuberculosis of the liver.
Kolia's existence was also threatened not just by disease but by the authorities, for he had evaded conscription. All communications, even from his brothers, went via Anna Ipatieva-Golden. Putiata, Anastasia Golden's first husband, and virtually a brother-in-law, was destitute and dying: Anton felt obliged to offer him treatment and money. The indigent and importunate spoilt Anton's mood. He wanted to go back to Petersburg so badly that, after Lucullian nights together, he shared a train compartment with Leikin. He told his brother Misha that March: I had a bad journey, thanks to Leikin the chatterbox. He wouldn't let me read, eat or sleep. All the time the bastard boasted and pestered me with questions. As soon as I drop off he touches my foot and asks, 'Did you know that my "Bride of Christ" has been translated into Italian?' At the Hotel Moskva Pleshcheev, Shcheglov and Anton's new editor, Evreinova, were waiting. The next day he moved in with the Suvorins, with mixed feelings, as he suggested to Misha: A grand piano, a harmonium, a divan with a bustle, Vasili the footman, a bed, fireplace, a chic desk - these are my conveniences. As for the inconveniences, they are beyond counting. For a start, I am deprived of the chance of coming home under the influence and in female company… before dinner a long talk with Mme Suvorina about how she hates humanity and her buying today a jacket for 120 roubles.
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After dinner a talk about migraine, then the kids can't take their eyes off me and wait for me to say something unusually clever. They think I'm a genius because I wrote the story of Kashtanka. The Suvorins have named [after the animals in the story] one dog Fiodor Timofeich, another Auntie and a third Ivan Ivanych.
From dinner to tea we have pacing of Suvorin's study from corner to corner and philosophy; the spouse interrupts the conversation out of turn and puts on a bass voice or imitates a barking hound.
Tea. At tea we talk about medicine. Finally I'm free, sit in my study and can't hear voices. Tomorrow I'm running away for the whole day: I shall be with Pleshcheev… By the way I have my own loo and back door - if I didn't I might as well lie down and die. My Vasili is dressed better than me, has a genteel physiognomy and I find it strange that he walks reverendy on tiptoe around me and tries to anticipate my wishes. On the whole it's awkward being a man of literature. I want to sleep but my hosts go to bed at 3 a.m. Anton called on Aleksandr: he was amazed to find the children fed and clean, and his brother sober. Anton climbed endless stairs to see Vsevolod Garshin. Garshin was out.25
After one week, Anton took the train to Moscow, unaware that on 19 March 1888, in a fit of depression, Vsevolod Garshin had killed himself by hurling himself down the stairs Anton had climbed. Ever since his traumatic experiences as a soldier in the Turkish wars twelve years before, Garshin had distilled his madness into stories of obsession, such as 'The Red Flower'. Marriage to Russia's only woman psychiatrist did not save him. Garshin's funeral was as grotesque as his death: Leman, an author of a manual on billiards, usurped the ceremony with an inept oration; New Times, which scorned radical writers, was represented only by Aleksandr Chekhov. A quarrel over two commemorative books sucked Chekhov into literary politics. All that came of the controversy was that Chekhov got to know one significant contemporary, Korolenko, the literary lion of Nizhni Novgorod. Garshin's prose of alienation was, however, to influence Anton's later work.
Spring made Anton yearn for the country, but Orthodox Easter was late that year - 24 April - and, Anton explained to Korolenko: 'Anyone absent during the Easter holiday is considered by my household to be in mortal sin.' He had many invitations: to explore the
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JANUARY-MAY l888 Volga with Korolenko, the far north with Leikin, or Constantinople with Suvorin. Babkino now palled. Was it proximity to importunate visitors, or boredom with prurient Aleksei Kiseliov and prudish Maria? In April, to soothe the Kiseliovs, Anton agreed to house their son Seriozha when he went to school in Moscow in the autumn, leaving him free to spend July in the Crimea at Suvorin's new seaside house outside Feodosia, before setting out with Suvorin's eldest son, 'the Dauphin', across the Black Sea to Georgia, and perhaps the Caspian to Central Asia. He would leave his family behind. The dacha he had in mind for them in May and June was in the Ukraine.
Kolia's friends at The Eastern Furnished Rooms, by the conservatoire, included two hapless musicians who were to become Anton's companions. One, Ivanenko, had come to Moscow to study piano and found all the conservatoire pianos allocated; he took up the flute, and made forays into literature, signing himself 'Little lus', a redundant letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. The other was the cellist Semashko, whose lugubrious playing was the butt of the Chekhovs' jokes. Ivanenko and Semashko came from northeast Ukraine, near the town of Sumy. They put Anton in touch with the Lintvariov family, who, like the Kiseliovs, supplemented their income by renting summer cottages. Their estate, Luka, lay outside Sumy, on the river Psiol in hilly wooded countryside, warmer than Babkino, and even better for fishing.
At Easter, Misha, on his way to Taganrog, was deputed to make a detour to Sumy and report on the Lintvariov estate. He recalled: After the stylishness of Babkino, Luka made a terribly mournful impression on me. The manor house was neglected, the courtyard had a puddle which seemed never to dry up, with the most enormous pigs wallowing in it and ducks swimming about, the park was more a wild, untended forest, and there were graves in it; the liberal Lintvariovs saw my student uniform and from the start treated me like a pariah. Anton had already invited half literary Petersburg to stay with him: he was not deterred. Pleshcheev intended to come, so did Suvorin, before taking Anton to the Crimea. Anton bought tackle: he and Suvorin would fish the Psiol together.