On 7 January Anton went to Petersburg for three weeks, Shcheglov could see that he 'was ailing', but Anton wanted a 'feast in the time of plague'. On arrival he went with Svobodin to Shcheglov's name-day party, and panicked the gathering: he was announced as an emissary of the Chief of Police. Anton became drunk and arrogant. Shcheglov records words30 that foreshadow Chekhov's Dr Astrov (in Uncle Vania) who, drunk, 'does the most difficult operations and has his own philosophy'. He boasted that he would seduce his Petersburg admirer, the virtuous Lidia Avilova. He laid down the law to Shcheglov: 'The theatre should be like the church - the same for the peasant and the general… You ought to have an affair with a dark-skinned woman.' The next day Anton saw Tolstoy's comedy Fruits of Enlightenment. Stanislavsky directed it, and Vera Komissarzhevskaia made her debut. Anton had no idea who they were. Carousing with friends, Anton exhausted himself and his hosts. The Suvorins' telephone broke down under the strain of Anton's
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ANNclass="underline" i \S 1)1 I'1-I.KKINAGE social whirl. Anton evaded Klcop;itra, but took up with another actress, Daria Musina-Pushkina, once of Masha's circle. Daria had come to Petersburg to escape her fiance and meet another suitor. She lived in the same building as the Suvorins, and was eager to have Anton as an escort. Daria besieged Anton with notes: Listen, cockroach, I couldn't resist the temptation and am coming to Svobodin's… I won't deny that I'd very much like you to come and fetch me, not me fetch you, but I know how stubborn you are… Darling Anton, if you came and saw me right now, how I should thank you, because I'm alone, terribly unhappy. Little cockroach, aren't you ashamed to ask if it's too late? Remember the saying: 'better late than never.'… But all the same you're better than I thought. Cicada. I expect you - you'd better come!31 In Petersburg there were women who disliked Anton: Zinaida Gip-pius, already a literary lioness, baited Chekhov: listening wide-eyed, she disingenuously asked: 'Does your mongoose eat people?'
For his Moscow womenfolk Anton found answers. He told Masha: 'I've been talking to Suvorin about you: you will not be working for him - I've decided. He is terribly fond of you, but in love with Kundasova.' Elena Shavrova rejected Anton's advice to change her pseudonym, and abandon her drama course. 'I'll make my breakthrough anywhere,' she asserted. The more she was opposed, the tougher the sixteen-year-old Elena got.32 She persuaded Anton to make Suvorin pay her 8 instead of 7 kopecks a line for the stories she was feeding New Times after Chekhov had revised them.
Lika Mizinova, however, wanted Anton, body and soul. She resumed the romance and set the tone for the coming nine years in her first letter to Anton in Petersburg: Today in the Council I wrote you a long letter and I'm glad I couldn't send it, I've just read it and am horrified - sheer weeping… I've been coughing blood (the very day after you left). Granny is angry with me for going out and not looking after myself, she prophesies consumption -1 can just imagine you laughing about that… When you get back don't forget to go to Vagankovo cemetery to say hello to my remains… In the morning I could write such a JANUARY-MAY l8oi gloomy letter, now I think it's all rubbish I shall enjoy upsetting you… write a letter without the usual little sarcasms… surely I deserve something other than irony?33 Anton's response was remorselessly teasing: As for your coughing… stop smoking and don't chatter in the street. If you die, Trofim will shoot himself and Spotty-face will get puerperal convulsions. I'll be the only one glad of your death. I hate you so much that just the memory of you is enough to make me utter sounds like your granny 'Eh… Eh… Eh'. I'd gladly scald you with boiling water… My lady writer, Misha's friend [Elena Shavrova], writes to tell me 'Things are bad -1 am seriously thinking of leaving for Australia.' You to the Aleutian islands, she to Australia! Where am I to go? You've grabbed the better half of the earth. Farewell, villainess of my heart. Your Well-known Writer. A few days later, sending him birthday greetings, Lika tried a different tack: 'I've just got back from your family… I'm writing in the dark and what's more after Levitan saw me home! And whom are you seeing home?' Anton relented a little. His reply ended: 'Bibikov [a consumptive poet whom Anton knew]… saw you and my sister and wrote to Petersburg "at Chekhov's I saw a girl of amazing beauty." There's a pretext for you and Masha to have a quarrel, even a fight.' Lika's next letter, on 21 January 1891, was the first (and almost the last) that she wrote to Anton in the intimate ty form: Knowing your meanness, my dear Antosha, and wishing to hang on to a chance to write to you, I am sending you a stamp which I had much need of. Will you come back soon? I'm bored and I dream of meeting you as the sterlets in the Strelna \park] pool dream of a pure transparent river. I don't know how to be tactful and when I try to be it doesn't work out. But all the same come on the 26th and you will see that I can be tactful not just verbally… So I expect you, I hope, that you will give me at least V2 an hour! She can't have it all! For my love I deserve Vi an hour. Goodbye, I kiss you and wait. Yours for ever, Lika Mizinova. Olga Kundasova, scolding the great men of Moscow and Petersburg in their dens, or Elena Shavrova, cajoling and wheedling, left Anton in total command of himself. Lika got under his skin, as no other
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ANNf I S III l»E LERINAGE woman had done. I lis responses to her are always ironic, never passionate or jealous, but their frequency, length and extravagance betray the disturbing effect Lika had on him.
Anton called on his brother Aleksandr. He told Masha: 'His kids made a very good impression on me… Aleksandr's spouse is a kind woman, but the same stories happen every day as at Luka.' Anton's sober days in Petersburg were spent lobbying for Sakhalin's children. Through Koni, the radical lawyer, he contacted Princess Naryshkina who ran the Imperial children's charities: orphanages were set up for 120 of Sakhalin's child beggars and prostitutes. Through Vania and Suvorin, Anton had thousands of books sent to Sakhalin: the authorities paid. Chekhov, loth to meet aristocrats, made Suvorin and Koni talk to influential courtiers.
In Petersburg Anton began his monograph The Island of Sakhalin: he wanted it to be dry and impersonal. He would publish it only in its entirety to heighten the impact. The Siberian penal system and Sakhalin were in the news: an illegal Russian edition of the American George Kennan's survey of Siberia's prisons had been circulating. A work so anti-establishment as a survey of Sakhalin could not expect to be published by Suvorin. Anton's unbroken association with New Times puzzled the radicals even more. One political exile (Ertel) told another (Vladimir Korolenko): 'Pity that Chekhov is tied to that nest of robbers.'
At the end of January Anton returned to Moscow. He began a new story, 'The Duel': it grew as long as a novel. He nursed the mongoose which a Russian winter had made too ill to break crockery or leap on the table. He consoled Olga Kundasova, tantalized Lika Mizinova and flirted with Daria Musina-Pushkina (who had followed him back to Moscow). When the mongoose recovered its joie de vivre the flat seemed too small.
Anton endured two cramped weeks. Suvorin came to Moscow and took him to dinner and the theatre. Then Anton decided they should take the European tour that he had missed two years previously. On 5 March he wrote to Suvorin: 'Let's go!!! I agree, wherever and whenever you like.' Accounts at New Times were chaotic: Anton believed he was still 2000 roubles in Suvorin's debt, but he would not stay in Moscow working the debt off. He prevaricated: he assured his family that he would be back for Orthodox Easter. Elena Shavrova begged JANUARY-MAY l8ol him to stay. Lika, snubbed, was proudly silent. Vania pleaded with him to come to Sudogda, where Vania's only friends were his pet starlings and canaries.
On 11 March Anton left family, mongoose and friends for Petersburg. (Kundasova and Musina-Pushkina also made their way there.) At 1.30 p.m. on 17 March, Suvorin, the Dauphin, and Anton - Father, Son and Holy Ghost - took the Petersburg-Vienna express. Daria Musina-Pushkina spotted them on their way to the station: 'I was riding down the Liteinaia and met you travelling in a cab, and you looked straight at me but for some reason didn't greet me.' Anton's pince-nez was broken, so he had left it behind in Moscow. As a result, he had trouble recognizing friends, and no doubt a blurred view of Europe.