Chekhov was sending letters to Olga from Pisa, Florence, and Rome, asking whether The Three Sisters would go on that season, while the first and second performances of the play were taking place in Moscow. Happy as always in traveling, he assured her of his old conviction that one has not lived who has not seen Italy, but in a reflective mood in Rome he said to Kovalevsky, "As a physician, I know my life will be short." Only in Rome did Nemirovich-Danchenko's telegram of success catch up with him. Chekhov's casual mention of it in a letter to Olga made The Three Sisters seem like ancient history. Then the weather suddenly turned cold. It snowed. He gave up a projected trip to Naples and sailed for Yalta by way of Odessa.
Chekhov stopped off at Odessa to make inquiries about the estate of Olga Vasilieva. His information, he wrote her, indicated that real estate values in the city were then low, and he advised her to postpone the sale of her property until more could be realized from it toward the establishment of the proposed institute for skin diseases. In Odessa he also met the two young writers A. I. Kuprin and A. M. Fyodorov. In his hotel room they sat at his feet in admiration as he talked about literary matters, coughing frequently and spitting into little paper bags which he threw in the stove. Fyodorov recalled that Chekhov twitted him about being married to an actress. Both young authors agreed that his conversation, his tone, bearing, the expression of his eyes, and his sad smile marked him as a most unusual man. The next day, February 14, Kuprin and Fyodorov and his wife and child insisted on accompanying Chekhov on the remainder of his boat trip to Yalta.
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Of the numerous friends who promptly called to pay their respects when Chekhov returned to Yalta, Bunin was no doubt the most welcome. When Chekhov was in Nice, Bunin had turned up at Yalta and Masha invited him to stay with her and her mother. His talents, genial nature, kindness, and profound devotion to Chekhov quickly made him a favorite. He and Masha became very friendly, took excursions together, and it is possible that her attachment went deeper than simple friendship for this future winner of the Nobel Prize in literature. When she had to return to her teaching in Moscow, Bunin was pressed to remain with her mother, who also enjoyed his company. Chekhov, when informed at Nice of this arrangement, was pleased and grateful, for he knew that his mother disliked remaining alone.
When Chekhov returned in February, Bunin moved to a Yalta hotel, but for a time the two friends saw each other almost daily. To a certain extent Bunin was a disciple of Chekhov, and in literature they had much in common. Both shared a reverence for Tolstoy the man and literary artist, and disliked the new decadent school — they were like healthy peasants, Chekhov told Bunin, who ought to be assigned to disciplinary battalions. Bunin, whom Chekhov nicknamed "Monsieur Bukishon," because he resembled the picture of a French marquis he had seen in a newspaper, amused him endlessly with his anecdotes narrated with much histrionic ability.
On his frequent visits Bunin observed closely Chekhov's pedantic love of order in the house, his morbid fear of appearing before anyone unless fully dressed, his dislike of portmanteau words in conversation, and his effort to behave with equal attention and politeness to all his guests whatever their rank. His sense of fun and the irresistible urge to play practical jokes, Bunin recalled, was ever-present no matter how poorly he felt. As they were coming home from a walk one night, Bunin noticed that Chekhov seemed weary, silent, his eyes half-closed. A light silhouetted a woman's form behind the canvas covering of a balcony they passed. Suddenly Chekhov opened his eyes and said in a very loud voice: "Have you heard the news? It's terrible! Bunin's been murdered! In Autka by some Tatars!" And to his dumbfounded companion he whispered: "Not a word! Tomorrow all Yalta will be talking about the murder of Bunin."
On another night in the early spring, as they were taking a carriage drive, Chekhov said to him:
"Do you know how many more years they'll read me? Seven."
"Why seven?" Bunin asked.
"Well, seven and a half."
"No," Bunin replied. "Poesy lives long and the longer it lives the more powerful it becomes."
They left, the carriage and sat on a bench in full view of the sea, brightly illumined by the moon.
"My dear sir," Chekhov continued, "you regard as poets only those who use such words as 'silvered distance,' 'accord,' or 'To battle, to battle in the struggle with darkness!' "
"You are sad tonight," Bunin said, looking at his face, which was somewhat pale in the moonlight.
He replied, laughing slightly: "It .is you who are sad. You're sad because you've wasted money on a cabby." And then turning serious again, he continued: "Even though they may read me only seven more years, I have less than that to live: six."
Kuprin, who also saw much of Chekhov at this time, spending hours with him in discussing manuscripts of his stories, writes in his reminiscences: "About midday and later his house began to fill up with visitors. And at the same time gawking girls in broad-brimmed straw hats hung for hours on the iron fence separating the grounds from the road. The most varied people called on Chekhov: scholars, writers, rural officials, doctors, army men, artists, male and female devotees, professors, society people, senators, priests, actors, and God knows who else." Kuprin gives a dismal picture of the plaguing petitioners against whom Chekhov seemed absolutely defenseless. Some eame to persuade him to political action, as though, Kuprin protests, he was indifferent to social problems and the burning questions of the day. "Who, knowing him well," asserted Kuprin, "does not remember the favorite phrases which he so often pronounced suddenly in his firm tone, even when they were out of keeping with the conversation: 'Listen, do you know what? In the next ten years there will be a Constitution in Russia.'"
In his desire to correct a common misconception, Kuprin no doubt exaggerated the ardor of Chekhov's political convictions. Gorky, a political activist himself, more correctly evaluated Chekhov's position when he wrote him, after their initial meeting: "You are, I believe, the first free man I've ever met, one who does not worship anything. How fine it is that you can regard literature as your first and primary business in life." Nevertheless, over the early spring of 1901 Chekhov was concerned with reports that reached him at Yalta of political disturbances in various parts of the country. The government's "Provisional Rules," under which demonstrating students were punished by expulsion from universities and by enforced military service, only worsened the disorders which had continued from the previous year. Bloodier riots broke out, universities were closed, an unsuccessful attempt was made to assassinate Pobedonostsev, the magazine Life was banned, and Tolstoy was excommunicated by the Church.
One of the ugliest incidents took place on March 4 before the Kazan Cathedral in Petersburg. A huge demonstration was broken up by mounted Cossacks. Several students were killed, and many people were hurt on both sides. Members of the Russian Writers' Mutual Aid Society signed a petition deploring the actions of the government, and in retaliation the organization was padlocked by the police. Gorky, who was an eyewitness and was later arrested, along with other figures in the literary world, wrote a long account of the affair to Chekhov. Also young Meierhold, who worshiped Chekhov, wrote to him: "I'm frankly indignant over what I saw the police do in Petersburg on March 4, and I cannot quietly devote myself to creative work when my blood boils and everything challenges me to enter the struggle."