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back and give the Chekhovs moral support in a seemingly interminable vigil. Kolia, Anton reported to Dv Obolonsky on 4 June, was bedridden, losing weight every day. He was taking atropine and quinine, dozing, sometimes deliriously. A priest gave last rites: Kolia confessed to maltreating his mother. Then he wrote with frenzy: graphic childhood memories, letters to Uncle Mitrofan and Suvorin, begging for loans, promising paintings.
Aleksandr insisted on coming: he gave Suvorin a reason so odd that Suvorin passed it to Anton: 'ambulatory typhoid' became the Chekhov term for alcoholism: I am fettered to my bed. I had ambulatory typhoid. I was able to walk, attend events and fires and give the paper reports. Now the doctor says I have a relapse. The doctor is urging me south; give me leave and the right to take 2 months' salary (140 roubles) in advance.47 At 2 p.m. on 15 June Aleksandr arrived with the children and Natalia, and for one hour all five Chekhov brothers were together. After two harrowing months on duty, sleeping in the room next to Kolia, Anton suddenly snapped. Taking Vania, Svobodin, and George Lintvariov with him, at 3 p.m. he took the carriage to see the Smagins, a hundred miles away in Poltava. Evgenia, exhausted, could not cope; Misha refused to recognize Kolia's agony and went to an annexe to sleep. Aleksandr alone nursed Kolia for two nights. Anton had left no morphine, and few medicines. The three local doctors - including two Lintvariov daughters - stayed away.
In a long letter to Pavel (who was not summoned to Sumy that summer), Aleksandr showed himself at his best. As I drove up to the manor house I met Anton in the courtyard, then Masha, Vania and Misha came onto the porch. Mama met us in the hall and began kissing her grandchildren. 'Have you seen Kolia?' Vania asked me… I went into the room and saw that instead of the old Kolia a skeleton was lying there. He was horribly emaciated. His cheeks had sunk, his eyes fallen in and shining… To the last he didn't know he had ÒÂ. Anton hid it from him and he thought he just had typhoid.
'Brother, stay with me, I'm an orphan without you. I'm alone all the time. Mother, brothers and sister come to see me, but I'm alone.'… When I lifted him from the bed onto the pot I was always afraid
MARCH-JUNE 1889
that I might break his legs… The next morning I went crayfishing in the river, not for the crayfish but to get strength for the next night.48 Kolia talked of living in Petersburg with Aleksandr and said that he loved his father. At supper I said 'God grant Kolia lives till morning'… Our sister said I was talking rubbish, that Kolia was alive, would go on living, that he often had these attacks. I calmed down… Everyone went to bed… Kolia was completely rational. He kept going to sleep and waking. At 2 in the morning he wanted to go outside; I tried to lift him onto a wheelchair but he decided to wait and asked me to fluff up his pillows. While I was doing that he burst like a fountain. 'Look, brother, I've shat myself like a baby in bed.' At 3 a.m. he became very bad; he began choking on mucus… Around 6 a.m. Kolia started choking. I ran to the annexe to ask Misha what dose to give Kolia. Misha turned over in bed and replied, 'Aleksandr, you keep exaggerating.'… I raced back to Kolia. He seemed to be dozing. At 7 a.m. he spoke. 'Aleksandr lift me. Are you asleep?' I lifted him. 'No, I'm better lying.' I laid him down. 'Lift me up a bit.' He offered me both arms. I raised him, he sat up, tried to cough but couldn't. He wanted to vomit. I supported him with one arm and tried to get the pot from the floor with the other. 'Water, water.' But it was too late. I called, shouted 'Mama, Masha, Nata [Natalia Lintvariova].' Nobody came to help. They ran in when it was all over. Kolia died in my arms. Mama came very late and I had to wake Misha to tell him that Kolia had died.
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Shaking the Dust June-September 1889 THE DEATH OF KOLIA on 17 June 1889 shook Anton to the core: for years to come he hinted how much he was haunted by it. He knew: last year Anna, this year Kolia, in a year or two Fenichka, Svobodin, and then himself, not to mention a dozen other friends, would die of the 'white plague'. He became restless and could not stay in one place more than a month.
As soon as Kolia died, the family summoned him back to Luka from the Smagins. He wrote to Pleshcheev: For the rest of my life I shall never forget that filthy road, the grey sky, the tears on the trees; I say never forget because a ragged peasant came from Mirgorod that morning with a soaking wet telegram: 'Kolia dead.' You can imagine my feelings. I had to gallop back to the station, take the train and wait at stations for eight hours at a time… I remember sitting in a park; it was dark terribly cold, hellishly dreary; behind the brown wall where I was sitting actors were rehearsing a melodrama. The Lintvariovs took charge. Elena led Masha and Evgenia away, while peasant women laid out the body - 'dry as tinder and yellow as wax', Misha noted - on the floor. The church bells rang; the priest and cantor held a requiem. Elena offered money for the burial; Alek-sandr found a carpenter to make a cross. Aleksandr's two boys spent the night with their grandmother. Masha was taken in by the Lintvariovs. Three old women from the estate kept vigil over the corpse, while the cantor chanted psalms. At noon the next day a white coffin lined with brocade came from Sumy: Kolia was lifted in. Evgenia, in black, prostrated herself by the coffin. Letters and telegrams were sent off. Misha went to Sumy to find a photographer. That evening Anton returned. Misha flared up at Aleksandr and Natalia, and
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demanded that they move to separate quarters. After Kolia's death the two brothers loathed each other. Aleksandr wrote a note asking Anton to intervene.
After another vigil with whispering old women and a chanting cantor, a truce reigned. The Lintariovs had Kolia buried in their graveyard, on the hill behind the dacha where he had died. Misha described the funeral to Pavel in Moscow: Mother and Masha were sobbing so much that we couldn't bear to look at them. When we took the coffin out Masha and the Lintvariov girls carried the lid, while six of us - Antosha, Vania, Sasha, I, Ivanenko and George Lintvariov carried the coffin. We said a prayer for the dead at each corner of the church. There was a solemn matins, the church was fully lit and everyone held a candle. While matins was said a cross was taken to the cemetery and all the furniture was removed from the house and the floors were scrubbed… A mass of people followed the coffin, with icons, as in Taganrog: like a procession with the cross. At the cemetery, when we took our leave, everyone was sobbing, mother was in anguish and couldn't be parted from the body… all the ordinary people in the funeral were issued a pie, a headscarf and a glass of vodka, while the clergy and the Lintariovs had lunch and tea. After dinner mama and I went back to the cemetery, mama grieved, wept, and we went back.49 Aleksandr's account to his father adds one detaiclass="underline" 'Everyone is howling. The only one not crying is Anton and that is awful.'50 Anton refused to weep, perhaps for fear his grief might turn to self-pity. The new cross, with Kolia's name painted by Misha, could be seen for miles around from the north, the west and the south.