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The Women Scatter January-February 1894 ON NEW YEAR'S DAY 1894, Potapenko and Lika left Melikhovo together: Anton told Suvorin the next day: I can't take any more guests. Though there was one pleasant guest - Potapenko, who sang all the time… In the dining room the astronomer [Kundasova] is drinking coffee and laughing hysterically. Ivanenko is with her and in the next room my brother's wife, and so on. As guests and relatives left, they were met in Moscow by Pavel, happier that winter in the company of Vania, his 'positive' son. Pavel stayed in Moscow until 10 January: in Moscow, not Melikhovo, Aleksandr met his father. The last irksome guest left Melikhovo for Taganrog on Tatiana's day, 12 January, when Anton reappeared in the city, in the Hotel Louvre, room No. 54, near his sirens. Anton's brother, Misha, whom Anton made feel unwanted at Melikhovo, decided to leave for good. Despite his work on the estate, Anton was disparaging him for selfishness. (Potapenko also took a dislike to him, calling him 'enigmatic, like all tax inspectors'.) Misha applied for a transfer from Serpukhov tax office. On 15 February 1894 he went for an interview in Uglich, a northern city where mediaeval Tsars had exiled undesirables. Misha was appointed tax inspector in Uglich and left Melikhovo for good on 28 February. His labour at Melikhovo was distilled into a manual for smallholders, The Granary, A Dictionary of Agriculture. A year passed before The Granary was published by Russian Thought. It sold 77 copies in four years.
Anton's fallow period was over: from 28 December 1893 to the first week of January 1894, Moscow readers had a new instalment of The Island of Sakhalin, and three stories, 'Big Volodia and Little Volo-dia' in the newspaper The Russian Gazette; 'The Black Monk' in The
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Performing Artist, and 'A Woman's Kingdom' in Russian Thought. None of the stories was acclaimed: the editors of'Big Volodia and Little Volodia' took fright at the story's sexuality and cut it. (Anton gave his French translator, Jules Legras from Bordeaux, the manuscript for a full version in French.) 'The Black Monk' only later became famous - the first Chekhov story to be published in English. Its medical expertise in the study of ÒÂ and megalomania is striking, even though its plot is a tragic love story. A brilliant academic marries the daughter of the man who brought him up, and then, mad and sick, deserts her. The story has a Hoffmanesque mix of music (Braga's elegy) and of the supernatural (the vision of a black monk). But it is as pregnant with political meaning as 'Ward No. 6' or The Cherry Orchard, for much of the story centres on a great orchard, which goes to rack and ruin together with the hero. No reader could fail to align the tyrannical gardener, the hero's father-in-law with autocracy, or the mad hero with rebellion, and Russia with the orchard - an association that would become explicit in The Cherry Orchard. 'The Black Monk' 's publisher, Kumanin, told Shcheglov, however: 'Very watery and unnatural. But, you know, Chekhov is still a name. It would be awkward not to print it.'
'A Woman's Kingdom' is a new departure: in three episodes set in an iron foundry it sketches the disparity and parallel between the workers' misery and the desolation of the owner, a young woman. The story shows the influence of Zola and Dostoevsky - Zola in his portrait of an industrial hell, Dostoevsky in the heroine's disastrous attempt to mete out charity. If Sazonova's guess in her diary is right, and the heroine is based on Anna Suvorina, then the iron foundry is an allegory of the Suvorin empire. The radicals saw none of this: they felt that Chekhov's depiction of the foundry was 'immoral' and 'obsessed with detail', and for the critics 'The Black Monk' was too melodramatic a psychiatric case history. Anton was disappointed that his new works aroused muted reactions. In vain Suvorin lobbied for The Island of Sakhalin to be awarded a prize, while Moscow University rejected the work as a thesis that would entitle Chekhov to lecture on social medicine.
Spurned by critics and academics, Anton connived, to say the very least, at being superseded in Lika's affections too. Olga Kundasova noticed an opportunity to regain Anton's love and made herself known
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at the end of January 1894: 'If you want to behold me at your place, send horses to meet the post-train and collect your mail on Friday 4 [February]. I shall stay the night and then leave for Meshcherskoe. Until we meet beyond the tomb.' Anton told Suvorin she was mad. She did not come. Although she was still attached to Iakovenko's hospital, a year passed before she re-entered Anton's life.
Everyone at Lopasnia and Melikhovo noticed that on 29 January and 22 February Lika Mizinova came and left not with Anton, but with Ignati Potapenko. On Anton's thirty-fourth birthday, 16 January 1894, and for one last time, on 25 February, she saw Anton without Potapenko. When she and Potapenko left Melikhovo on 31 January they took with them on the sleighs to the station what was to be Anton's standard consolation present, two puppies from Quinine, who had mated in the kitchen with one of the farm dogs, Catarrh. The closer Potapenko became to Lika, the more Anton lauded him. 'You are absolutely wrong about Potapenko, there's not an ounce of devi-ousness about him,' he told Suvorin on 10 January. Potapenko and Lika were not deceiving Anton. Potapenko invited 'Signor Antonio' to celebrate Tatiana's day in Moscow and warned Anton: '(8 January)… Lika is away travelling, as a consequence of which I am pining, since I am almost head over heels in love with Lika.' Potapenko was writing frantically to finance his new life. He went on acting as Anton's agent, collecting royalties, handling manuscripts, even in mid February negotiating with the hard-headed publisher Adolf Marx an advance for a novel that Anton would write by 1895 for the popular monthly journal The Cornfield. On the back of Marx's letter of agreement, Potapenko wrote to Chekhov: I told him I thought Chekhov needed to get away to some blissful country but is prevented by worries about family business… Anton, dear boy, go away somewhere to clear skies, to Italy, to Egypt, to Australia, does it matter? It's vital, for I notice a weariness in you… Forgive my interfering in your life, but I love you almost as I would a girl. Lika's letters hinted that Anton could still retrieve her: I am completely in love with Potapenko! What can we do, daddy! All the same you will always know how to get rid of me and dump me on somebody else! I am sorry for poor Ignati - he had to go
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CINCIN NA I USSUch a long way (that is, to Melikhovo) and, worse, talk! Awful! Ask him to forgive you for suhiiiittiiu; linn to such a punishment for two days. (22 January) Dear Anton. I have something important to ask you. When I was in Melikhovo I forgot my cross and I feel very bad without it… For God's sake, tell Aniuta to have a look and then you wear it and bring it to me. You must wear it, or else you will lose it or forget it some other way. Come and see me, uncle, and don't forget about me. Your Lika?? In Anton's notes to Lika, on 20 and 21 February, when he, Lika and Potapenko were together in Moscow, a note of regret, even desire creeps in: Lika, give me your little hand [in Russian 'rucbka' also means 'pen']; the one I was given smells of herring. I got up a long time ago, I had coffee at Filippov's. A. Chekhov… Darling Lika, today at 6.30 p.m. I shall leave for Melikhovo. Would you like to come with me? We'd return together to Moscow on Saturday. If you don't want to go to Melikhovo, come to the station. A clay after Anton, Lika came to Melikhovo for five days with Potapenko. In the last days of this strange menage Lika conceived a child by Potapenko.
Masha became resentful. She felt angry at what she believed to be Lika's desertion and Potapenko's betrayal of Anton; at the same time she envied Lika her passionate love life. Masha made the new couple feel awkward. On 25 January Potapenko and Lika left Melikhovo; the next day Anton followed them to Moscow. Anton and Potapenko stayed with Suvorin in the same apartment. On 27 January, Potapenko left Moscow for Petersburg and Paris, where his second wife was waiting. He made Masha a present of English watercolour paints and a disquisition on how women artists might eventually rival men. Masha was icy. On Tuesday 1 March 1894 Lika appealed to her: Dear Masha. Take pity on me and come for God's sake to say goodbye for ever to an unfortunate woman like me. On Saturday evening I am leaving, first for home, and from there straight to Paris. The affair was settled only yesterday… Surely your dressmakers would let you say goodbye to a person whom you used to