nothing to Olga. It is a curious coincidence that when the writer Lazarevsky asked him that winter if he read the works of contemporary authoresses, he replied: "No, indeed, and I prefer to read something on physics or electrical engineering rather than female writing."
When Lidiya Avilova's sister in Petersburg suddenly announced to her one day that Chekhov had married, she "felt terribly limp," she writes in her memoirs, "cold perspiration appeared on my brow, and I dropped into the first chair." The sister chattered on, retailing the current gossip. Everybody thought it was a strange marriage, having nothing to do with either love or passion. "No, this is not a marriage," the sister declared. "It is some kind of incomprehensible escapade. Do you really think that Knipper was swept off her feet by him? It was calculation on her side. And do you think he does not understand this?" Avilova replied: "Well, so what then? Often calculations turn out successfully. On the whole, it is very fine that he married. I'm sorry that it was so late."
Shortly after, returning from a meeting of writers, Avilova talked with an author who had just been in Moscow. She could not remember his name but she had no difficulty recalling his words. He had seen Chekhov, who had spoken to him about her: "He even said that he knows you well. And for years. He asked about you. And he left me with the impression that he very . . . well, he referred to you very warmly." Yes, he replied to her query, he had seen Knipper, and Avilova quotes him as describing her in terms that involved those unpleasant innuendoes sometimes reserved for actresses: "In everything, you know, that special stamp. She strikes one strangely alongside of Anton Pavlovich. He is almost an old man, hollow-cheeked, an invalid. Hardly suitable for a young wife. Wherever she goes, Nemirovich traipses after her." Apparently feeling that she has made her point, Avilova, after several pages of such gossip, piously draws the curtain on it with the comment: "Afraid of gossip, I quickly turned the conversation on to another theme."
After some debate with herself, Avilova finally decided that she must congratulate Chekhov on his marriage, and she did it in a manner quite in keeping with her romanticized version of their relationship.10 Still convinced that Chekhov's story About Love was inspired by their rela-
10 This final chapter of Avilova's memoirs, "A. P. Chekhov in My Life," appears only in the 4th edition of A. P. Chekhov v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov (A. P. Chekhov in the Remembrances of Contemporaries), Moscow, i960, pp. 287-293. See also herein, Chapter XI, Section 6, text and notes 6 and 10.
tions, she represents Anna Alekseevna Luganovich in the tale as writing a letter to her lover, P. K. Alekhin, to congratulate him on his marriage. She describes the device: "I wrote a note [to Chekhov], in which I conveyed the request of our mutual acquaintance, A. A. Luganovich, to send her letter to P. K. Alekhin, whose address was certainly known to Anton Pavlovich. I placed Luganovich's letter in a separate envelope. Luganovich wrote Alekhin that she had learned of his marriage, and warmly, from the bottom of her heart, wished him happiness. She wrote that she herself was calm, and although she recalled him often, she recalled him with love and not with grief, for there was much joy and satisfaction in her life. She was happy and would very much like to know if he also was happy. Then she thanked him for everything he had given her. 'Was our love a real love? But whatever it was, real or imaginary, how grateful I am to you for it! It suffused my whole youth with sparkling, fragrant dew. If I were able to pray, I would pray for you. I would pray thus: Lord, let him understand how good, lofty, necessary, and beloved he is. If he understands, then he will not fail to be happy.'"
Nearly anyone who has faithfully followed the long trail of make- believe in this strange affair will probably opt for the "imaginary" love in the easy choice which Lidiya Avilova, alias Anna Alekseevna Luganovich, offers to her readers at the end: ". . . whatever it was, real or imaginary . . ."
According to Avilova, Chekhov replied to Luganovich's letter, signing it "Alekhin":
"I bow low, low, and thank you for your letter. You wish to know if I'm happy? To begin with, I'm ill. And now I know that I'm very ill. There you have it. Judge as you wish. I repeat, I'm very grateful for the letter. Very.
"You write of fragrant dew, but let me say that it is fragrant and sparkling only on fragrant, beautiful flowers.
"I always desired your happiness, and if I could do anything for it, I would do it with joy. However, I cannot.
"But what, indeed, is happiness? Who knows? At least, recalling my own life, I'm now vividly aware that I was happy during those moments when it seemed to me I was most unhappy. In my youth I was joyous — but that is something else again."11
11 When Avilova turned over copies of Chekhov's letters to his sister for her edition, this letter seems to have been one she held back, apparently bccausc she
A suitable epitaph to this whole confused and confusing episode was provided by Chekhov's sister in the last recollections of her brother to come from her pen. A few days after Chekhov's death, Lidiya Avilova wrote Masha her condolences, mentioned that she had many letters of his, and asked to be allowed to call her "Beloved sister." However, she did say frankly in this letter: "I do not at all wish to insinuate that I knew him well, that I was for him anything special. . . . But I don't know how he referred to me. This to me is very sad." Masha, in printing this letter, merely remarks that one part of A. P. Chekhov in My Life contains many facts, but that the other part is sheer fantasy. "Out of this latter part of the memoirs," Masha writes, "comes the notion that Anton Pavlovich loved her, that their relations stood on the edge of a romance, and that he himself spoke to her about this. There was nothing to it."[14]
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It may be remembered that Chekhov, on the eve of his return to Yalta in October, had written Mirolyubov to say that his wife wept and the situation was a muddle. The situation was indeed a muddle. While every thought and desire expressed the yearning of the recently married couple to be together, health condemned Chekhov to remain in Yalta until the spring, and Olga's career tied her to Moscow. He had hardly arrived home when he wrote: "My sweet, angel, my dog, darling, I beg you to believe that I love you, deeply love you; don't forget me, write and think about me more often. ... I kiss you hard, hard, embrace you and kiss you again. My bed seems so lonely, as though I were a miserly bachelor, ill-natured and old." (October 29, 1901.)[15] He had become so used to her care, he wrote the next day, that he now felt that he was on a desert island in Yalta. It was as though he had been married twenty years and that this was the first year they had ever been separated. "I passionately want to sec my wife," lie wrote Olga on November 15, "and I miss her and Moscow, but there is no help for it." And two weeks later he told her: "What pleasure it would give rne now to talk with my wife, to touch her brow and shoulder, to laugh with her. Ah, darling, darling."
If anything the separation and ache of unfulfilled desires tormented the younger and healthier Olga more than they did her husband. She could not get herself to make up the bed after his departure, she told him, for then it was easier to imagine her and him together in it. "I kiss you, my Antonka. I kiss you lovingly, softly, tenderly. . . . How I want to snuggle up to you." Two days later she wrote: "Weary, I've not wanted to get up in the mornings. Every time I turn around I want to see your dear blond-bearded face, but with sadness I see only the undisturbed part of the bed. I recall how it used to be — wonderful, warm . . ." She asked him if he caressed her in his thoughts, and she longed to have him beside her, fondling her, and calling her his dog. The image still persisted a month later when she wrote: "I terribly love to remember you as you sat on the bed in the morning after you'd washed, without your jacket, and with your back to me. You see what sinful thoughts I have, and there are still much more sinful ones about which I'll be silent. Forgive your wife for her wickedness."