Reflecting on these circumstances, he reluctantly agreed to request Marx to reopen the terms of the contract on the basis suggested by the lawyer. Apparently early in May he gave Mirolyubov in Petersburg permission to approach Marx on the subject. The publisher responded quite stiffly, demanded that Mirolyubov present a written authorization to carry on such discussions, and indicated that he preferred to talk with Chekhov himself about the matter. In Chekhov's condition the trip was sheer folly, but he went to Petersburg for a couple of days in the middle of May. "I talked with Marx," he wrote Masha, "but nothing of consequence came of it. He gave me very many books (about 250 pounds) in rich bindings, and offered me five thousand roubles for 'medical expenses,' which I of course did not accept." (June 7, 1903.)
Shortly after his return from Petersburg, Chekhov and Olga spent a few days near Voskresensk, the little town he had got to know so well in his early Moscow life, on an estate belonging to V. A. Maklakov, the well-known lawyer and later celebrated orator of the Duma, whose acquaintance Chekhov had made in Yalta. They were planning to leave soon for Europe, a suggestion that Olga had enthusiastically accepted when he had mentioned it away back in February. For his
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medical checkup before so extensive a trip, Chekhov selected the eminent Professor Ostroumov, the doctor who had treated him several years before when he had his severe hemorrhage. The results were depressing, but the advice that followed was not entirely unwelcome to Chekhov. That very day he wrote to Masha that Ostroumov had found "that my right lung is not at all good, that I have a dilation of the lungs (emphysema) and catarrh of the intestines, and so forth and so forth. He gave me five prescriptions, and, above all, forbade me to live in Yalta in the winter, declaring that the winter there is generally bad; he ordered me to spend it in a dacha somewhere in the vicinity of Moscow. Now, make head or tail of all that! However that may be, I must now look for a refuge for the winter. Mme. Yakunchikova invites me, Teleshov offers to build a house, Sytin invites mc. I'll not go abroad and will remain near Moscow and live at Mme. Yakunchikova's at Nara, where I go tomorrow. . . . Olga has been there already and she liked it. . . . Let Mother and Granny [the old servant] get ready at the end of October, for I'll take them to my dacha near Moscow. . . . Gurzuf and Kuchukoi must be sold." (May 24, 1903.)
Masha could not make head or tail of it. But Chekhov had at last found sanction for what he had wanted to do all along —live in or near Moscow in the winter. His wife was delighted. Back in Yalta,
Dr. Altschuler regarded the decision as little short of a death warrant.
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Chekhov had been less than candid with his sister. He wrote more frankly to old friends about the medical examination. Ostroumov had roundly scolded him, he said; had declared his condition to be "very poor," his right lung "badly damaged," and that additional complications had set in. When Chekhov raised the question of going abroad, the doctor not only forbade it but strongly reminded him, "You are a cripple." Medical nostrums, and especially in the case of tuberculosis, were not immune to the skepticism with which Chekhov regarded most of the so-called sure remedies for the ills of the human condition in general. Yet even as a doctor, he now expressed some bewilderment at the conflicting advice he had received from his professional brethren. Though he was pleased at being told to live near Moscow in the winter, he confessed that he did not know whom to believe or what to do. If Ostroumov was right, he told his friend Dr. Sredin, then why had he lived four winters in Yalta? To Lavrov he wrote: "And when I settle down near Moscow and begin to get used to it, the doctors will once again send me to the Crimea or to Cairo." {July 1, 1903.)
Strangely enough, however, the new radical advice he had received did not seem to discourage him. Rather he regarded it as a challenge, something that would lift him out of the physical and emotional doldrums he had been wallowing in. It meant change and change always excited him. He began to think of different places to live, of a new house, of fresh experiences that would bring him new friends and literary material. When Masha reacted with worriment and even grief over his report on the medical examination and the impending changes, he lightly replied that he did not understand how she could write with sadness in her heart and such gloomy thoughts.
Mariya Fyodorovna Yakunchikova's estate was only a short distance from Moscow and less than a mile from the tiny station of Naro- Fominsk on the Bryansk railroad. Connected with the wealthy Mamon- tov family, she owned factories in her own right and espoused the cause of arts and handicrafts among workers. She had cultivated Olga as an actress, and it was probably Olga, since Chekhov knew the lady only slightly, who made the decision in favor of her estate that summer. There they had a separate establishment spacious enough, Chekhov remarked, to accommodate ten persons. His first impressions were good — fine walks, lovely gardens and a park where birds sang all day, and a deep river nearby which, however, yielded no fish to this expert angler. He could do some work and Olga could rest; he wrote Vishnevsky that she was well, jolly, and did not think about the theater.
From this summer retreat Chekhov and his wife explored the surrounding countryside for an ideal spot and house which they could rent or buy for occupancy during the winter months. Since those old haunts of his youth, which he much admired — Zvenigorod, New Jerusalem, and Voskresensk — were not far away, they spent a few days roaming in these localities, occasionally coming across old friends of his student years. The business of house-hunting, however, discouraged and fatigued him. The very few attractive places he saw were too expensive. He and Olga rested up for a couple of days at the estate of Savva Morozov, whose wife remembered Chekhov's telling her that he was deeply troubled by the fear that he had nothing more to say in literature.
Actually, however, Chekhov was saying some important things in The Cherry Orchard, to which he again returned that summer. The rich industrialist and well-known benefactor of the first private opera
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company in Russia, Savva Mamontov, who was visiting at Naro- Fominsk, recalled an incident connected with the play. In a sudden thunderstorm the wind blew several pages of the manuscript through the open window of Chekhov's study and they were so smudged by the rain as to be undecipherable. When asked by one of the guests whether he could recall the passages, he smilingly replied that he would have to write the scenes afresh.
Chekhov also read much, mostly the fiction of new authors, the celebrated Family Chronicle of the old writer Aksakov, and as always quantities of newspapers and magazines. It is interesting to find him turning again to Suvorin, so widely regarded now as an arch conservative, for copies of the illegal political journal Liberation, which had to be smuggled from abroad. In conspiratorial fashion, they referred to the publication as "Yezhov's Works," and Chekhov took the precaution to return the precious bound volumes through Suvorin's bookstore in Moscow. Though Chekhov faithfully read these social and political tracts aimed against the government, he wrote Suvorin that he found them as monotonous and dull as an encyclopedia. Only a scction of belles lettrcs, he declared, could rescue this periodical. On one article in Liberation he did comment — Gorky's open letter on the terrible massacre of Jews at Kishinev, a crime perpetrated by government inspired reactionaries.3 "Gorky's letter about Kishinev," he wrote, "has one's sympathy, as everything he writes, but it is contnvcd rather than written, has none of Tolstoy's youthfulness and assurance, and it is also too long." (June 29,1903.)