a friend about him, Chekhov observed: "Conversation with him never wearies one. To be sure, while the talk is going on you must drink a lot, but in this way you can be assured of three to four hours of talk. And you do not hear a single lie, a single vulgar phrase, even though this is at the cost of one's sobriety." (February 1, 1886.)
One day Chekhov returned home from Alarm Clock's editorial office, a kind of club where writers and hangers-on lounged and gossiped, and said to his mother: "Tomorrow a certain Gilyarovsky will call. It would be a help if you were most hospitable to him." The day was Sunday and Mother Chekhov prepared an elaborate dinner. V. A. Gilyarovsky took the family by storm. A vital energy seemed to emanate from his stocky, powerful frame and he talked in a forceful, authoritative manner. At once he became "Uncle Gilya" to the young people, did card tricks, had them feel his muscles, and told absorbing stories about his wanderings and many jobs as barge hauler on the Volga, stevedore, factory worker, circus acrobat, horse trainer on the Kalmuck steppes, and scout in the Russo-Turkish war. To the grownups he gave snuff and shocked them with off-color anecdotes. Gilyarovsky was the "king of reporters" in Moscow, contributing accounts of local events, sketches, tales, and poetry. He knew everybody in the city and was as much at home in the drawing rooms of aristocrats as with thieves and cutthroats in the dank flophouses of Moscow's Khitrov Market. Fantastically muscular, he delighted to show off his feats of strength — such as breaking chairs, uprooting trees, and holding back a team of horses. Gilyarovsky became a steady visitor at the Chekhovs and an unfailing source of information and amusing copy when Anton was hard-pressed for material for his own journalistic efforts.
Other friends from the cheap press were added to the circle. The sweet-natured, prematurely aging F. F. Popudoglo, an accomplished stylist, helped Chekhov in the craft of writing. But he was already afflicted with alcoholism and a fatal disease, and he would sadden the vibrant Chekhov with his constant preaching of how time was passing them by. There was also the queer, volatile P. A. Sergeenko, a former student in the Taganrog school, who wrote for a living and vigorously advocated Tolstoyism. Then brother Nikolai brought home his bohemian band of young artists who drank and argued far into the night on modernism versus conservatism in art. One of the painters Nikolai introduced to Chekhov at the end of 1880 was the future great landscape artist Isaak Levitan, whose brilliant canvases seemed so often to catch the spiritual qualities of Chekhov's remarkable word-pictures of nature. And the still younger school friends of Misha and Masha added to the noise and confusion, to the talk, music, singing, and game-playing. Indeed, the family, which in the winter of 1880 had moved again to a larger place in the pleasanter district off Sretenka Street, now began the custom of maintaining a kind of perpetual "open house" — in which Chekhov, with his love of life and people and movement, took obvious delight, despite occasional complaints about too many visitors. Whatever the strain on the family's pocketbook, no visitor was ever turned away.
The association of the three elder brothers in literary endeavors was frequent and intimate at the beginning of Chekhov's career. Though Alexander and Nikolai uncomplainingly accepted Anton's leadership in family affairs, they did not always take kindly to the exercise of his superior moral qualities. Chekhov admired the talents of both and, over the years, tried to save them from the excesses of their vices, but he never overestimated his powers as a reformer. Alexander was unusually well read, even learned on some subjects, an exceptional linguist, and at his best a gifted writer; when not in his cups he could be a gay, charming, and witty companion. But a drink too much turned him into a vulgar, foul-mouthed, thoroughly objectionable person. And liquor had already become a habit with Alexander by the time Chekhov came to Moscow; he was running into debt, developing shiftless ways, and boring everyone with tales of his misfortunes. One evening, after a drunken, scandalous performance in the family circle, when Alexander had used vile language in the presence of his mother and sister and threatened to punch Chekhov in the jaw, the twenty- one-year-old "head of the family" sat down and wrote him a stern letter, recounting his offenses and declaring that he would no longer tolerate such behavior. The word "Brother," he wrote, "with which you tried to frighten me when I left the battlefield, I'm ready to throw out of my own lexicon at any time, not because I have no heart, but bccause one must be prepared for anything in this world. I do not fear anything and I give the same advice to my own brothers." (March, 1881.)
Though Nikolai's talent was greater than Alexander's, his way of life was even less defensible. Nevertheless, perhaps more than kinship, their mutual recognition of the artist's soul in each drew Nikolai and Anton very close together during these first few years in Moscow. Both loved laughter, music, and nature. Together they bargained with editors, wandered the Moscow streets for material, sat in cheap taverns, and visited the friends they held in common. More important — they worked together, Nikolai illustrating Anton's tales. Though rather original in his larger canvases in oils, Nikolai's real artistic brilliance emerged in wonderfully humorous drawings of typical city scenes and the oddities of the human beings who peopled them. But he was completely undependable, and no urging of Anton would persuade him to fulfill a commission on time or accept one that he was not in the mood to undertake. He would prefer to talk with his brother about his love affairs — he had already acquired a mistress — and his naive notion that any girl he cared for ought to be willing to sacrifice her hopes of marriage and a family for the sake of his art. Or he would disappear for several days on a prolonged drunk, returning home finally, late at night, to vomit all over the house; and, fully clothed, he would fall on the divan and pull a covering over his head, his feet sticking out grotesquely in filthy socks filled with holes.
Kinsfolk from Taganrog and Kaluga, and the two Chekhov cousins, Mikhail and his brother Grigory in Moscow, not infrequently took advantage of the "open house." In September 1881 Mother Chekhov's relatives from Shuya, Ivan Ivanych Lyadov and his brother-in-law Gun- dobin, whom Anton promptly nicknamed "Mukhtar," paid a visit. After making merry at home, Anton and Nikolai took their guests to the Salon des Varietes, Moscow's popular cancan and eating and drinking establishment, and ended a long evening of wassailing in the vicinity of the Grachevka district's licensed houses. The budding author saw in this experience good copy for a Spectator sketch. Frowzy funmakers of the Salon des Varietes are sharply etched in their drunken postures, and characterizing remarks at the tables are caught in flight — Friiulein Luisa, "tall, fat, sweaty, and as slow as a snail; the contour of her corset is clearly visible on her vast back"; "'Man!' pleads the girl with the sharp chin and rabbit eyes, 'treat me to a meal.'" And into the middle of the account Chekhov unashamedly slips Nikolai (Kolya) and the guests:
" 'A g-glass of vodka! D'ya hear! Vodka!'
" 'Shall we have a drop, Kolya? Drink, Mukhtar!'
"A man with a shaven head stupidly stares at the glass, hunches his shoulders, and with a shudder gulps the vodka.
" 'I can't, Ivan Ivanych! I've a bad heart!'