Working at Yalta, far from the sources, Chekhov at times had to depend upon bibliographers to run down the publication data of his early tales. And in a number of cases he had to request old friends of his youth, such as Yezhov and Lazarcv-Gruzinsky, and also Masha and Alexander, to locate stories and hire people to copy them when he did not possess the publications. Apparently after some thought, he decided to ask Lidiya Avilova to arrange for someone to list his stories in the Petersburg Gazette and to copy eertain ones which he would designate. No doubt his choice in this instance was influenced by the fact that she lived in the capital and that her brother-in-law edited the Petersburg Gazette. His request was couched in friendly tones, and he stressed that he wished her merely to find some young miss to do the copying after Avilova had seeured permission for her to use the file at the newspaper's office. This appears to have been the only instance when Chekhov assumed the initiative in writing her, and perhaps a bit embarrassed now to ask a favor after their quarrelsome correspondence of some four months ago. he interjected, in a spirit of reconciliation: "At least write that vou are not angrv, if in general you don't wish to write me." (February 5. 1S99.)
This unsolicited letter filled Avilova with happiness. Y^at a joy it meant for her. she exclaims in her memoirs, to do some work for Chekhov! His simple request seemed somehow to satisfy the inextinguishable and bv now pathetic vearning in this woman for any degree of "closeness" to him. She performed the task he required with love and meticulous care, and his grateful response to her efforts effected a change in her demeanor. For in the brief correspondence that ensued over the details of the work, the strained hints and irritating demands on his affection seem to have vanished from her letters, if we may judge from his answers. Pleased with the change, and perhaps warning her away from a resumption of her former carping manner, he pointedly remarked in one of his replies: "I love letters which are not written in a preaching tone." And in another, after indulging in some critical comments on contemporary writers, among whom he included her, he suddenly caught himself up: "But I seem to have gone in for criticism; I'm afraid in reply that you'll write me something edifying." (February 26, 1S99.)
In general, however, he repaid her altered mien with chatty, cheerful letters about mutual friends, how to behave to the peasants on the estate her husband had bought, his daily life, and the work she was doing for him. Once, in reaction to her flattering comments that he seemed to know how to make the best of life, he slipped into that familiar mood of disenchantment caused by the strictures which illness imposed upon his freedom of movement. Of what use is the knowledge of making the best of life, he asked, when he had to live away from everything as though he were in exile? "Why am I in Yalta? Why is it so dull here? ... I dislike the thought of writing and I'm not writing anything." (February 18, 1S99.) This note, now frequently expressed to various people, at once evoked an unaccountably personal response in Avilova. ''Will I never, never bring him anything but grief?"' she asks in her memoirs.
At the end of three months Avilova had completed her task. Learning that he was in Moscow then, she apparently suggested a meeting when she passed through the city on the way to her new estate.1 This time Chekhov was happy to see her, for he wanted to thank her personally for her labors on his behalf. The description in her memoirs of their meeting in the compartment of the train, with her three children gamboling about, is probably a curious mixture of reality and fantasy. Its unconnected, cross-grained, and often angry dialogue is entirely inconsistent with his gratitude for a job well done and the anticipated pleasure he expressed in his letter over the thought of meeting her. The explanation may lie in the fact that her possessiveness always rubbed him the wrong way. The passage in her memoirs, as he arose to take his leave, suggests as much: "I recalled the parting of Alekhin with Anna in the compartment of the train just before it left the station: 'I embraced her and she pressed herself to my breast.'2 I suddenly felt my heart beginning to pound as though I had received a blow cn the head. 'But we are not saying good-bv forever,' I tried to console myself. . . . The train began to move slowly. I saw the figure of Anton Pavlovich float past the window, but he failed to look back. I did not know then, nor could I have imagined, that I was seeing him for the last time. . . ."
Lidiya Avilova's work for Chekhov on the Petersburg Gazette having been finished, it was months before an occasion arose for them to correspond again.
He was no Vanderbilt, Chekhov joked, after receiving the first fifteen thousand roubles from Marx,3 but with so much money, the most he had ever had in his hands at once, he could not resist the expansive tendencies of his nature. Nothing would now give him more pleasure, he declared, than to go to Monte Carlo and lose two thousand on a throw without worrying over it. In the course of building the Yalta house he contemplated buying another one in Moscow, and he rented an apartment in that city for a whole year, although he knew that he could spend only a few weeks in it. A patch of beach property near
In her memoirs (Chapter XVI) she changes the chronology of his letters at this point, perhaps in an effort to suggest that the initiative for a meeting was Chekhov's.
Quoted from Chekhov's story About Love.
No explanation is offered of why the initial installment was fifteen thousand roubles instead of the twenty thousand specified by the contact.
Yalta struck him as an ideal bathing spot to purehasc, even though the doctors had forbidden him to swim. And he also dreamed now of tearing down the little Tatar house at Kuchukoi and erecting in its placc a modern European dwelling. He welcomed the idea, whieh Masha suggested, of investing some of his money in a factory, but fortunately lie abandoned this notion.
Always partial to charitable requests, Chekhov now distributed largesse with a freer hand. Although he was devoting the income from his plays to the funds neccssary to build the Melikhovo school, he unhesitatingly contributed five hundred roubles towards the construction of a new school in a village not far from Yalta. And he offered to pay school tuition for the daughter of Gavrilyushka, the former Ukrainian apprentice who had worked in his father's grocery shop and was then doing quite well in Kharkov, where he owned a house. In Moseow Chekhov supported the consumptive S. A. Epifanov, a journalist and third-rate poet whom he hardly knew. A plea to aid the starving people of Kazan was promptly answered by a gift of a hundred roubles and an offer to organize a newspaper campaign on behalf of the sufferers. Upon his clcction to the board of trustees of the Taganrog charity school — he had already been made a member of the library board of Taganrog —he sent a donation of a hundred roubles. And in a covering letter to Iordanov, lie begged to be informed if there were any other ways in which he could aid his native town. Humorously he signed himself: L'iiomme riciie and Philanthropist in his letters to Alexander, who seems to have taken him seriously, for he borrowed a thousand roubles to help build a little dacha outside Petersburg. Chekhov's money flew away from him like a wild fledgling; in two years, lie conjceturcd, lie would have to become a philosopher.
However, most of this first installment from Marx was spent on building the Yalta house. A rather substantial structure of two stories on the north side, rising to three on the south in a kind of tower effect, it was adorned with spacious verandas and a glassed-in poreh. Yet he now described it as a "sardine can" and lamented that if he could only have anticipated the Marx windfall, lie would have set out to build one much larger. As at Melikhovo, he spent lavishly to beautify the surroundings — a stone fcncc, paths, and landseaping. He ordered hundreds of flower pots from Taganrog, saplings from Odessa, and he gratefully acccptcd gifts of flowering shrubs from Yalta friends. With two Turks in their red fezzes to assist him, he supervised uprooting the old vineyard on the plot, preparing the soil, and laying out a garden design. Like an eager child he went from hole to hole, planting the saplings, shrubs and rosebushes. "Yesterday and today," he wrote Masha, "I set out trees on the plot, and really I was filled with bliss it was so wonderful, so warm and poetic. It was simply a prolonged rapture. I planted twelve cherry, four pyramidal mulberry, two almond, and others. The trees arc fine and they will soon bear fruit. The old trees are blossoming, and the pear, almond, and also the rosebushes are flowering. The birds on their way north spend the night in the garden and sing in the morning, especially the thrushes. In general, it is very delightful, and if only Mamasha were here, she would not regret it." (March 14, 1899.) If Chekhov loved to build, plant gardens and ornament the earth, Gorky pointed out, it was because he felt the poetry of labor and was convinced of the importance of work as the foundation of all culture.