Just as Chekhov was about to take off for Moseow, Olga relented and came to Yalta for her Easter vacation. She was obviously determined to settle the question of marriage onee and for all. Her first few letters after her return on April 14, however, indicate that she was still somewhat uncertain about Chekhov's intentions. She had left, she wrote him, with a sour taste in her mouth, with an impression that the whole thing had still been left hanging in the air. Come to Moscow, she pleaded in forthright terms, and let us get married.
This time Chekhov definitely promised. He wrote to Olga that he would come to Moscow early in May, marry, and they would take a trip on the Volga and he would live the whole or the greater part of the winter with her in a flat in the eity. "If only I keep well and don't get seedy," he added cautiously. "My cough takes away all my energy. I think apathetically of the future and write quite without zeal. You must think about the future, you manage for me and I'll do as you tell me, otherwise we shall never live, but go on sipping life a table- spoonful onee an hour." (April 22,1901.)
Olga was in no sense deterred by the state of his health, which in fact took a turn for the worse at this time. Her eoneerns were only that he would delay his eoming or forget the neeessary papers for marriage. On April 26 he repeated reassuringly, "Dog Olka! I'm coming early in May. ... If you wall give me your word that not a single soul in Moseow will know of our marriage until it is over, then I'll
2 By the end of 1901, with the exception of The Island of Sakhalin, Chekhov saw the remainder of the ten volumes of this edition through the press.
marry you on the very day of my arrival if you like. For some reason I have a terrible dread of a wedding and congratulations and champagne which one has to hold in one's hand while smiling vaguely."
When Olga informed him that Vishnevsky had jestingly said he himself would soon be marrying her, Chekhov retorted with macabre humor: "Obviously he's counting on your soon becoming a widow, but tell him that to spite him I'm going to leave a will forbidding you to marry again." (May 2, 1901.) Three days before he left, Chekhov wrote to his good friend Koni, whose aid he was seeking to support Bunin's candidacy for the Pushkin Prize, and he closed his letter: "I'm sick and I' ve decided that I'll not soon get well. Nevertheless, on Tuesday
I'm going to Moscow." (May 6,1901.)
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Having registered in the Dresden Hotel, Chekhov maintained a curious fagade of intense activity and correspondence over the next two weeks which seemed designed to convince his family and Moscow friends that marriage had never entered his head. He busied himself arranging a meeting between Olga Vasilieva and Dr. Chlenov, on the project of a clinic for skin diseases; pushed the publication of Beschin- sky's guide to the Crimea with Goltsev; concerned himself with a plan to secure a medical affidavit that would bring about Gorky's release from prison; saw the actress Olga Sadovskaya and promised to write a play for her benefit performance; and wrote letters to Iordanov on additions to the Taganrog museum. He also attended a rehearsal of Ibsen's Wild Duck and entertained the poets Balmont and Baltrush- aitis.
Though Masha and Ivan were in Moscow then, Chekhov appears to have seen little of them and told them nothing of his plans. To his mother in Yalta he wrote simply that his health was all right, and enclosed instructions to Arseny about the garden. However, on May 17 he had his all-important physical check-up by the specialist Dr. V. A. Shchurovsky. Three days later Chekhov wrote Masha, who by then had gone to Yalta for the summer: "Well, at last I've been to Dr. Shchurovsky's. He found a deterioration in both the left and right lungs, in the right a large lump beneath the shoulder blade, and he ordered ine to go immediately to Ufa Province for a kumiss3 treatment, and if kumiss does not agree with me, then to Switzerland. To have to
3 A fermented liquor made by the Tartars from mare's or camel's milk.
spend two months drinking kumiss is most tiresome and inconvenient. I really don't know what to do. To go there alone is dull, to live on kumiss is dull, but to take someone along for company would be egotistic and unpleasant. I would get married, but I don't have the necessary documents; they are all at Yalta in the desk."
This lighthearted, almost flippant, reference to marriage seems intentionally misleading, as well as the comment on the documents, a matter which had already been taken care of by Olga. Masha, no doubt, had her own premonitions, for, before she could receive this letter, she wrote him, on May 21, that it was wonderful in Yalta, the garden was splendid, the roses all in bloom, and the house clean, dry, and cool. And she added: "All day Mother and I wander around the whole house, and we both feel how empty it is without you, it seems as though it is not home. If you would only come back soon or at least write more often!"
According to an account by Stanislavsky, Chekhov requested Vishnevsky, in his name, to arrange a large dinner on May 25 for the relatives and close friends of Olga Knipper and himself. The guests all assembled and waited patiently for their host and hostess to appear. Meanwhile, in a Moscow church Chekhov and Olga were being married. The only people present were the four necessary witnesses — Olga's brother and uncle, and two university students. The bride and groom went directly to the home of Olga's mother to say their farewells and departed shortly thereafter for Ufa Province. Before he left Chekhov sent a telegram to Yalta: dear мама, your blessings, i'm married, everything will remain as before, i'm off to take a kumiss treatment. He also announced the marriage by telegram to Vishnevsky. The bewildered guests disbanded. Chekhov had had his way —a marriage minus congratulations and champagne.
After a day's visit at Nizhny Novgorod with Gorky, who was now only under house arrest, the couple continued the long journey on the Volga, the Kama, and the White River to the little station of Aksenovo in Ufa Province, where they took rooms in a sanatorium. Though a telegram from his mother, conveying her blessings, greeted Chekhov upon his arrival, he was disturbed not to hear anything from Masha. The next day he wrote her: "That I'm married, you already know.4 I don't think the fact will in any way change my life or the conditions
4 Masha, at Yalta, would have learned this fact from the telegram that Chekhov sent his mother on May 25.
under which I have lived up to now. Mother is no doubt saying God knows what, but tell her that there will be absolutely no changes, that everything will go on as before. I will live as I have hitherto, and Mother as well; my relations with you will remain as unalterably warm and good as they have always been." After a few comments about the kumiss treatment he had begun and arrangements for Masha to receive money if her funds were low, he rather gratuitously concluded: "At the end of July I'll be in Yalta, where I shall live until October, then in Moscow until December, and then back again to Yalta. That is, my wife and I will live apart — a situation, by the way, to which I'm already accustomed." (June 2,1901.)