Four months later Anton passed his final examinations quite well and graduated from the Taganrog school. The official permit which he had to obtain from the town administration for residence elsewhere in Russia included the following vital statistics: "Age: 19; Height: 5 feet 11 and three-quarter inches; Hair and Eyebrows: blond; Eyes: brown;
Nose, Mouth, Chin: regular; Face: elongated, clear; Special Marks: a scar on the forehead under the hair."
Anton must have experienced a feeling of exhilaration at the thought of impending change, the familiar sense of joy which later some of the characters of his tales expressed in bidding farewell to their former lives. He always retained mixed feelings about Taganrog, but he was not sorry to leave it now. He had acquired a contempt for the smallness and meanness of people there, had learned to be independent, and he was prepared to guard this independence against the encroachments of all. Though the struggle to finish school while supporting himself and helping his family had toughened him and intensified his quiet ambition to get ahead in the world, it had not in the least sucked him dry. That is, if circumstances and experience had taught him to regard life with perhaps excessive seriousness for his age, he was filled with an irrepressible desire to enjoy it.
Though humanitarian urgings had no doubt played their part in Anton's selection of a medical career, the material security and the dig- nit}' attaching to the profession must have been overriding reasons for his choice. Even in these youthful years at Taganrog, however, he was conscious of the spark of literary talent that smoldered within him. Though there is no evidence this early that he had been dreaming of a literary career, some inner compulsion kept driving him on to write. In 1877 he sent a number of "little trifles" to Alexander, who had already begun to submit pieces to Moscow magazines. Two of Anton's brief tales Alexander tried out on Alarm Clock. "The rest," he wrote, "are weak. Send shorter and sharper ones." Whether the two submitted were ever published is not definitely known.
The next year Anton sent Alexander a full-length drama, Without Fathers, a comedy, Diamond Cut Diamond, and a vaudeville skit, Why the Hen Clucks, a quantity of manuscript which suggests that the eighteen-year-old youth did not regard his literary efforts as an idle pastime. As usual, Alexander's criticism was merciless and to the point. Although he granted that in Without Fathers "two scenes had been fashioned with talent, on the whole it is an inexcusable though innocent fabrication." Diamond Cut Diamond he read to a group of friends, which included a popular dramatist, and their reaction, which Alexander passed on to his brother, must have encouraged the youthful author back in Taganrog: "The style is excellent, it has intelligence, but there is little keenness of observation and no sense of experience. In time, qui sait? A clever writer may emerge."1
But the realization of this dream would have to wait. Now the stern realities of medical studies faced him. After graduation Anton waited around Taganrog for part of the summer in order to collect a small scholarship of twenty-five roubles a month, awarded him by the town to aid his further study. Finally, on August 6, 1879, he set out for Moscow. Always practical, he had with him two classmates, D. T. Saveliev and V. I. Zembulatov, who also intended to study medicine, and he had persuaded them of the wisdom of renting rooms from his mother, — who by now, with her husband working, could afford a larger apartment.
The family were eagerly awaiting him. On a warm summer's day an izvozchik drove up to the Chekhov door. From the little carriage jumped a tall handsome young man, dressed in plain clothes. Smiling at a boy waiting at the gate, he greeted him in a deep voice: "How are you, Mikhail Pavlovich?" For a moment young Misha did not recognize his brother. Then he dashed into the house shouting: "Anton is here!"
chapter iii
"Father Antosha"
Young Misha's noisy excitement ran through the family like a current of electricity. They flung themselves upon Anton, hugged and kissed him. Tears of joy were in their eyes. His mother exclaimed that she had thought he would never arrive. Misha was at once despatched to send a telegram to Father across the river, where he worked at Gavrilov's warehouse — it cost only a kopeck a word for local telegrams. And that evening, when Father appeared, all the Chekhov clan had gathered. There, too, was Mother's widowed sister — dear, sweet Auntie Fedosiya, who lived with the family, loved her niece and nephews, was constantly afraid of fire and hence slept with her galoshes on. And after the two new lodgers had discreetly allowed Anton time to visit with his folks, they also arrived — short, chubby Zembulatov, more interested in making an advantageous marriage than in studying medicine, and the quiet,
1 The manuscripts of these youthful dramatic works have been lost.
studious, and attractive Saveliev. They made merry over wine and vodka — fortunately Anton had in his pocket the first installment of his scholarship — and then all sat down to a bountiful meal of the proud mother's best cooking. Misha could not remember when it had been so jolly in the Chekhov household.
The morning after tempered the joy of reunion when Anton found leisure to take stock of his new surroundings. This was the twelfth apartment the impoverished family had been forced to move to in the three years since they had left Taganrog. Their basement dwelling in one of the houses owned by St. Nicholas's Church in the Grachevka district oozed dampness and the smell of drying laundry. Through the cellar windows could be seen only the hurrying feet of passers-by. Nor was the neighborhood any more palatable. St. Nicholas's was situated in a notorious Moscow region of licensed brothels. Rundown apartment houses and their inhabitants and shabby shops and their keepers exuded the indigence and sleaziness which are the usual accompaniment of cheap immorality and corruption.
Nine people now crowded into this four-room basement. The next day a tenth was miraculously added: N. I. Korobov, a youth from Vyatka, "as tender as a girl," also destined for the School of Medicine. Somehow his father imagined that living with the Chekhovs would have a good moral influence on him during his studies. The family bartered space for material gain. The only sure source of income was what their father Pavel Chekhov could spare from his meager pay of thirty roubles a month. Occasionally Nikolai, who rarely got up before noon, would sell a painting or pick up a bit of money giving lessons in drawing. Alexander, living elsewhere, could barely support himself as a university student. The younger children — Ivan, who was studying for his teacher's diploma, Masha, and Misha — needed help to continue their schooling. So the combined income of sixty roubles a month from the three lodgers now made the difference between mere subsistence and a table the like of which the family had not enjoyed for a long time. Even at that, every morning at five o'clock young Misha had to trudge the long distance to the Sukharev market, where the peasants from the countryside sold their meats and vegetables cheaply.