DECEMBER 1889-APRIL 189O
I don't know what to do with Aleksandr. It's not just that he drinks. That would be all right, but he is inextricably stuck in surroundings where it is literally impossible not to drink. Between us: his spouse also drinks. Grey, nasty, gloomy… And that man since he was 14, practically, has wanted to marry. All his life he's been marrying and swearing that he'll never marry again. Anton alternated hard work with frivolity. He read everything about Siberia. Suvorin had a collection of forbidden books, which included pamphlets on political prisoners, as well as Tolstoy's diatribe against sex and marriage, The Kreutzer Sonata - a book it was hard to ban, since Tsar Alexander III had liked it. Anton went to Shcheglov's name-day party; he went with the Suvorins and their Tresor to the Petersburg Dog Show. Shcheglov was exhausted by the parties until three or four in the morning. Anton had surreptitious encounters with Kleopatra Karatygina. He channelled her energy into making notes on Siberia and Sakhalin, some from the Public Library, some from her own experience. She gave him lists of friends to tap for hospitality; she taught him Siberian etiquette - never ask why anyone is in Siberia; she gave him the dates for navigation on Siberia's rivers; for his birthday she made him a travelling pillow - 'for when you're sick on the boat'. In return she wanted affection. Her weapon was Anton's anxiety not to be found out: 'Where did I put the letter to you? Which envelope did I put it in?… The letter to my sister!'9 When Anton's family did find out, Kleopatra denied responsibility: 'If your mama and sister find out your secret d'un polichinelle of course it isn't my fault. You did ask me not to blurt things out in Moscow.' Like Olga Kundasova, Kleopatra resigned herself to being unloved. She wrote dozens of notes, some in doggerel, some reproachful. She touched Chekhov for loans that she never repaid. She hoped that his dream of 'a room to share with Lika Mizinova' would prove a curse.
Anton and Suvorin clung to one another: they travelled back to Moscow together, and Suvorin took a room in the Slav Bazaar. They discussed illness, real and imaginary. One night they watched Racine's Phedre; the next they went to the Literary Society's fancy dress ball; the following night they dined with Grigorovich, and healed the breach between him and Chekhov. As Anton recuperated from his 'Sakhalin fever', his women, and libraries, he summed up his Petersburg month to Pleshcheev: 'I think of the sins I have committed, of the thousand
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barrels of wine I have drunk… In one month in Petersburg I committed so many great and petty deeds that I should be both promoted to general and hanged.'
The Suvorins left. Anton lacked congenial company. Levitan was in Paris, from where he complained of 'psychopathic' impressionists and women 'overworked by centuries of screwing'.10 Anton studied atlases, ancient and modern, and dreamed of river boats. 'I feel like crossing 12 or 18 months out of my life,' he told one journalist. He wrote just one story for New Times: 'Devils', later 'Thieves', portrays a nest of horse thieves in the steppes. Suvorin was upset that Chekhov romanticized criminals. Anton just edited Suvorin's unsolicited manuscripts, and compiled a geographical introduction to a future book on Sakhalin. In Moscow he sent Masha, Olga Kundasova and Lika Mizi-nova to the Rumiantsev Museum (now the Russian State Library) to copy what he had marked about Sakhalin and Siberia in hundreds of journals and books. From Petersburg, from Aleksandr and from Kleopatra, came facts, opinions and pleas. Karatygina reverted to a motherly style: Forgive me for poking my Roman Catholic profile where I shouldn't, but I am awfully reluctant to have you in my Siberian kingdom playing the part of a hopeless floating point (out of boredom and ignorance) and therefore I have taken it on myself, my bold child, without your knowledge, to get for you letters of recommendation. Anton was deeply upset that February by a reminder of Kolia's death: Ezhov was sitting at the table crying: his young wife is ill with consumption. He has to take her south quickly. I asked him if he had money, he said yes. He spoilt my mood with his tears. He reminded me of certain things, and anyway I'm sorry for him. Of the many forces that pursued Chekhov to the Hades of Sakhalin, 'certain things' - i.e. Kolia's ghost - were the most persistent, if not the avowed motives.
From intimations of mortality Anton was rescued by Lika Mizinova. She and Anton began to exert a pull on each other. Granny Sofia's diary traces day by day Lika falling in thralclass="underline" 5 March. Monday. Lika at 8 p.m. went to the Chekhovs, she came back at 3 a.m., very pleased that she had been mere…
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10 March. Saturday. Lidia [Lika's mother] is writing… advice for Lika, to bring her to her senses, to pull her back from an idle, disorientated life, she is never home and every night comes back late; she doesn't like the house or home life. This upsets us terribly, especially her mother, and it's impossible to talk to her, she starts yelling immediately and it ends widi her walking out angry with family life, saying tliat it's hell, not life. 13 March. Tuesday. Lika has been out and about until 2 a.m., she went to the Rumiantsev museum to make notes about Sakhalin island… 28 March. Wednesday. I happened to make the acquaintance of die mother of Maria Chekhova, Lika and I met her in the arcade, very nice, simple manners, we were introduced and had a chat there and then. 29 March. Thursday. Lika was to go to All Night Vigil at some nunnery with her girl friends. She deceived us! She went with the Chekhovs and came back at 1.30 a.m. 31 March. Saturday. The brazen Kundasova appeared to ask us to let Lika come to the Chekhovs, to which Lidia [her mother] said that we had a long-standing custom of a family Easter at home… 5 April. Thursday… We liked Anton very much - he's a doctor and a writer, such a nice personality, simple manners, considerate… 21 April. Saturday. Today, finally, Anton Chekhov is setting off. So Lika will have some rest. At 1 Anton came to say goodbye. His family and many friends, among them Olga Kundasova, she really is infatuated, are off to the station at 7 to see him off. He spent half an hour with us and set off with Lika… I'm afraid, is our Lika involved with him? It looks very like it… But he's a fine man, an alluring personality." Anton was swamped with affection on the eve of his departure. He told Suvorin 'such girls that if I rounded them all up to my country cottage I'd have a really wild ball, pregnant with consequences.'
It was easier to part with his brothers and men friends: he promised to bring back Manila cigars and ivory carvings of naked Japanese girls. Shcheglov, Ezhov and Gruzinsky lauded Anton's courage. Pavel Svobodin declared that he would be called Chekhov of Sakhalin. Anton fobbed off Misha, who fancied meeting in Japan and returning to Russia together. Lily Markova's husband, Sakharov, asked to be the expedition's artist (for a fee of 1000 roubles): the husband of an ex-mistress was no travelling companion for Anton in Siberia: he begged Suvorin to put Sakharov off the idea.
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Suvorin could not see the point of the crusade, of expense, suffering and wasted time. To him Anton addressed a fiery missive: You write that Sakhalin is of no use, no interest to anyone. Can that be true? Sakhalin can be useless and uninteresting only to a society that does not exile thousands of people there and spend millions on it. After Australia in the past and Cayenne, Sakhalin is the only place where criminal colonization can be studied… Sakhalin is a place of the most unendurable sufferings free or enslaved man can endure… I'd say that places like Sakhalin should be visited for homage, as Turks go to Mecca… We have rotted alive millions of people, rotted them for nothing, without thinking, barbarically; we have herded people through the cold in fetters tens of thousands of miles, infected them with syphilis, debauched them, bred criminals and blamed all this on red-nosed prison warders. All educated Europe now knows that it's not the warders but all of us that are guilty, but we don't care, we're not interested. Rarely had Anton been so emotionally stoked up. He felt mortally insulted by a reviewer's phrase 'priests of unprincipled writing like Mr Chekhov' in the March issue of the radical monthly Russian Thought, and raged to Vukol Lavrov, its editor: I would not reply even to slander were it not that I am soon leaving Russia for a long time, perhaps never to return, and I have not the strength to refrain from replying… After your accusation not only are business relations but the most ordinary nodding acquaintance between us is impossible. Had Chekhov perished on Sakhalin, Russian Thought would have been blamed, as Burenin was blamed for killing Nadson. It was to take two years' diplomacy by Pavel Svobodin to undo the damage done to Chekhov and to Russian Thought by a careless remark and Anton's pride. Anton left in high dudgeon and high spirits.