Olga Kundasova, as she watched Anton become more and more involved with Lika Mizinova, had begun to show symptoms of manic depression. After astronomy and mathematics, she now took up psychiatry - as therapy for herself, and as a career. In August 1892 Olga
272
MARCH-JUNE 1892
made her promised visit. She made friends with a local woman doctor, Pavlovskaia, and became both outpatient and assistant to Dr Iakovenko at Meshcherskoe psychiatric hospital ten miles away. Anton's affection was rekindled. 'Kundasova seemed cleverer in the country,' he told Suvorin and in May declared: 'I should be very, very glad to see Kundasova, as glad as seeing a heavenly angel, and would build a separate cottage for her here.' Their intimacy, to judge by the fragments of evidence, remained troubled. Olga responded to a gift: I implore you to treat me, if not gently (that's not in you), then not exactingly and not roughly. I have become impossibly sensitive. In conclusion let me tell you mat you have no grounds for fearing a long stay by such a psychopath as O. Kundasova.10 The piano teacher Aleksandra Pokhlebina, nicknamed 'Vermicelli' for her skinny figure, also visited. Her love for Anton rapidly became demented. Lika Mizinova was unperturbed by these rivals. She knew that Anton preferred her shy beauty, her contralto and her cantaloupe-yellow jacket to Kundasova's intellect and severe black dresses. She was amused as Anton desperately evaded 'Vermicelli'. Lika may have been helpless in love, unable to break free or to secure a response, but she had studied Anton: she guessed that by autumn he would be restless. By June, in fact, he was sounding out Suvorin about a journey to Constantinople; the Lintvariovs were calling him to Sumy. Disillusion creeps into Anton's jokes to Natalia Lintvariova on 20 June 1892: We're finished, there will be no oats… Daria the cook, though quite sober, threw out all the goose eggs: only three of the enemy [the geese] hatched out. The piglet bites and eats the maize in the garden. The dear ponies ate the cauliflowers at night. We bought a calf for 6 roubles, it bellows in a deep baritone from morning til night… In a word, the King of the Medes can only utter a wild warrior cry and flee to the wilderness… Lika acted. She dismissed her suitors, and asked her father for railway tickets to abduct Anton. She told him on 18 June 1892: Throwing aside all pride, I'll tell you I am very sad and want to see you very much. There will be tickets to me Caucasus, that is separate ones for you and me… From Moscow to Sevastopol, then from Batumi to Tiflis and finally from Vladikavkaz to Mineral Waters
273
CINCINNATWS
and l);ick to Moscow. Be ready lor die beginning of August, only for the time being please don't tell any one at home about the tickets. Anton beat a quick retreat: Write and see that nothing is done about tickets until the cholera in the Caucasus is over. I don't want to hang about in quarantine… Are the dragoons at Rzhev courting you? I permit you these attentions, but on condition that you, darling, come no later than the end of July. Do you hear?… Do you remember us walking across the fields? Until we meet, Likusia, darling little Cantaloupe. All yours, The King of the Medes. To the non-committal King of the Medes, the cholera epidemic now creeping to Russia from the Caspian Sea was a convenient excuse not to depart. In his letter to Suvorin, however, Dr Chekhov played the cholera down as more sensation than danger.
THIRTY-SEVEN Ô
Cholera July-September 1892 AFTER FAMINE, cholera struck Russia's heartland. With unusual alacrity the authorities marshalled doctors. Anton did not wait to be asked. On 8 July 1892 he offered to man a village clinic. He forwent a salary: the Serpukhov health commission thanked him, but denied him even a nurse. Council funds had to be topped up by the rich: Anton begged the owners of the tannery and cloth mill, the archimandrite of the monastery and the aristocracy for funds to build quarantine barracks. The archimandrite refused, while Princess Orlova-Davydova - Anton never hit it off with the nobility - treated him like a hired hand.
Anton was soon on good terms, however, with Doctor Vitte in Serpukhov. One local doctor, Dr Kurkin, was an old acquaintance. Few supplies were available, but the Serpukhov authorities ordered the latest anticholera equipment: thermometers, large Cantani syringes for injecting fluids under the skin, tannin enemas to disinfect the gut, carbolic acid, castor oil, calomel, coffee and brandy. All summer Anton rode round twenty-five villages, over dusty or muddy tracks, checking sanitation, treating the dysentery, worms, syphilis and tuberculosis endemic among the peasantry, falling into bed exhausted every night, rising with the sun. Grateful patients gave him a pedigree pig, and three pairs of suede gloves for Masha. Anton's Sakhalin experience served him well. With Dr Kurkin he inspected factories in nearby villages. Three times they inspected a tannery that was polluting the rivers and shamed the owners into action, if only cosmetic. In this fallow creative period, Chekhov saw environmental degradation, human misery, complacency and failed ideals - material for new fiction. The cholera never came to Melikhovo. A neighbouring district had sixteen cases, four fatal.11 Anton's energy won commendation and he was sucked into the committees for improving the
2 74
275
CINCINNA TUS
lot of the peasantry. From cholera officer he would become medical officer of health, and builder of schools, libraries, post offices, roads and bridges over ioo square miles.
Anton's medical duties left him little energy for the harvest, but with the loan of machinery from Prince Shakhovskoi, and Masha toiling in the kitchen garden, a little of what they sowed was reaped, even though the geese and cows helped themselves to the cabbages. Anton found it odd to pick cherries and not be beaten for it. Visitors were few. Muscovites feared the cholera, and Anton's friends knew that he came home only to sleep. He visited Moscow just once between 16 May and 15 October, although trains ran every three hours and reached the city centre in two to three hours. The devoted Gruzinsky and Ezhov, despite invitations, stayed away. Ivanenko the unemployed flautist came to live in Melikhovo until autumn 1893; he was enthusiastic but incompetent - Chekhov called him nedotiopa ('ninny'), the sobriquet of Epikhodov, the manager in The Cherry Orchard. Prince Shakhovskoi gave Ivanenko a sinecure as secretary, and he would accompany, on piano or flute, any visitor who sang. One relative came for a week with his son: Piotr Petrov, the husband of Anton's cousin Ekaterina Chokhova.12
Lika could not accept Anton's excuses for not travelling. Anton deflected her again: he entrusted her with Sudermann's play Sodom's End to translate: he would edit it for the stage. Lika just passed the play to a German woman friend, which angered Anton. All summer they struggled by letter; he played her like a fish he was reluctant to land; she took the bait and could not tear out the hook. They swore devotion and indifference to each other. Anton blew hot and cold on 28 June: Noble, decent Lika! As soon as you wrote to me that my letters did not tie me in any way, I breathed a sigh of relief and now I am writing you a long letter without fear of some aunt seeing these lines and marrying me to a monster like you… Do you dream of Levitan and his black eyes full of African passion? Are you still getting letters from my 70-year-old rival and hypocritically answering them? A big crocodile is inside you, Lika, and really I do well to follow common sense and not my heart, which you have bitten. Get away from me! Or no, Lika, whatever die consequences, let your perfume make my head spin and help me tighten the lasso you have thrown round my neck… don't forget your victim, The King of the Mcdes
JULY-SEPTEMBER 1892
On 2 July 1892 Lika wrote: 'Why do you want so intensely to remind me of Levitan and my "dreams"? I think about nobody. I want nobody and I need nobody.' And the next day: 'O how I'd like (if I could) to tighten the lasso as hard as I can! But I've bitten off more than I can chew! For the first time in life I have no luck!'