The married sister of the hostess, Nadezhda Golubeva, tells of her introduction to these high jinks on her visit to Babkino from Petersburg during Chekhov's last summer there. A large number of guests had come, for a dance had been planned. As a newcomer to these things,, she grew frightened when during one game of charades four howling Ethiopians entered into the room, carrying a stretcher on which sat a terrible Turk. They went straight to her, and the Turk brandished a scimitar over her head. The maskers were no less bewildered than she was by her cries of terror. Finally the Turk jumped down and gallantly presented himself: "The artist Levitan!" The Ethiopians, upon removing their masks, turned out to be the four Chekhov brothers. In the confusion the whole point of the charade had been lost. Chekhov, in directing the dance that followed, invented so many amusing and exhausting figures that the laughing guests, out of breath, pleaded with him to cease. Nadezhda Golubeva recalled her sister's words about Chekhov: "He is amazingly talented and has a refined understanding of people. Although he is still so young and has only just finished medical school, he possesses an enormous fund of humor, an extraordinary poetic sadness, and a profound comprehension of the human soul."
Often the two men roamed about the picturesque countryside,' Chekhov with a fishpole and Levitan with a shotgun for which he sometimes substituted an easel and brushes. Though both were nature enthusiasts, Chekhov brought to his admiration a spontaneous quality of enchantment with all of God's wonders. Like a lad with his first sweetheart, he seemed to find in nature ever new and delightful surprises, and he returned home from a contemplation of its beauties with the exhilaration — as he aptly put it — of a lover returning from a rendezvous. In his wanderings through the fields and woods about Babkino, alone or in the company of Levitan, Chekhov learned to observe nature closely and to possess it in his imagination. Soon these impressions were transformed into sentient, descriptive passages variously mirroring the moods of his characters and serving as a contrapuntal
effeet in the action of his tales. And Levitan, Russia's greatest landscape painter, wrote him: "I do not speak about the mass of very interesting thoughts, but the landscapes in these tales are the height of perfection. . . ."
Though the languid-eyed Levitan, with his shock of black hair and nervous manner, was always a favorite visitor at Babkino during Chekhov's stays there, his volatile nature, changing swiftly from melancholy to mirth caused as much misery as merriment. For him to see an attractive woman was to make love to her. And once, meeting Masha on a wooded path at Babkino, he dropped on his knees and declared his passion: "Sweet Mafa [he pronounced the Russian sh sound as f], every feature of your face is precious to me." The shocked Masha could think of nothing better to do than run to her room and cry. When she failed to appear at dinner Chekhov investigated and Masha told him through her tears what had happened. She reports him as replying: "Of eourse, if you want to, marry him, but bear in mind that he needs a woman of the Balzac type and not one such as you." Masha did not quite know what he meant, but she sensed that he was warning her. She kept clear of Levitan for a week, giving him no answer, and he went about gloomy and morose. Eventually they resumed their old, friendly relations and Levitan aided her in her first efforts to paint, professing to see a real talent in Masha. Chekhov, whose central position in Masha's life had already begun to manifest itself, must have breathed easier — he had kept a beloved sister and also a friend who was near and dear to him. With the tenacious memory of a woman for whom the self-justification of old-maidhood became a necessity, Masha commented many years later about this "romance" with Levitan: "In truth, he more than once told me, and repeated not long before his death when he was seriously ill and I visited him: 'If I had ever married, Mafa, then it would only have been you.' "
As Chekhov's first happy summer at Babkino drew to a elose, inevitable financial difficulties began to plague him. Even money to transport the family and their effects back to Moscow was lacking. Twice he wrote Leikin for funds, threatening that if two hundred roubles were not forthcoming he would have to remain in Babkino for the winter. His worries were further aggravated, his friend Dr. Rozanov reported, by the fact that he had once again begun to cough and spit blood. By the end of September, however, the money arrived and he returned to Moscow. In his bread-and-butter letter to Mariya Kiseleva, he complained that Moscow was "hellishly boring," that he saw Sasha and Seryozha in his dreams, and that he could think of nothing except "fishing poles, perch, creels, and the worms in the expanse of green lawn." (October 1 or 2, 1885.)
«3,
In the spring of 1885 Chekhov enjoyed a piece of good fortune: Leikin offered to persuade the editor of the big daily newspaper, Petersburg Gazette, to accept him as a regular contributor of a weekly story. He grasped the opportunity, for this publication would allow him more freedom than Fragments in the selection of themes and in the length of his tales. The Last of the Mohicans, his first story in Petersburg Gazette, appeared on May 6, and he continued to write regularly for this newspaper to the end of 1888.
Leikin's good offices in this instance were a calculated risk. It was clearly to his advantage to aid the career of his brilliant young contributor, whose discovery as "another Saltykov-Shchedrin" he had been proudly taking credit for in Petersburg literary circles. Yet he also hoped that this gesture of good will would bind Chekhov closer to him with the glue of gratitude. And since the newspaper's space rates were less than those of his own publication, he did not fear its financial competition for Chekhov's services.
In a further effort to ingratiate himself, Leikin undertook to publish, under Fragments imprint, Chekhov's next collection of tales. In agreeing to his terms — the initial profits to be used to retire publication costs, and subsequent income to be divided equally between them — Chekhov wrote with perhaps more sarcasm than intentional self- depreciation: "As you've probably observed, I'm in general impractical, trusting, and a milksop." (January 28, 1886.) He requested only that his friend, the architect F. O. Shekhtel, be allowed to draw the vignette for the book — he was a patient and would do it free. Actually the thrifty Leikin took no unusual risk in this venture and anticipated a substantial profit, as well as added prestige, for his imprint. For he had been deliberately concealing from his protege Chekhov's growing popularity among Petersburg readers, who were beginning to ask about Antosha Chckhonte: "Who is this person? Where does he live? What's the point of this strange pseudonym?"
Leikin's attempts, however, to turn Chekhov into a submissive and model contributor to his magazine failed to overcome the mounting asperity in their relations. Chekhov's decision in 1885 to abandon his column, "Fragments of Moscow Life," particularly annoyed the editor. But Leikin became thoroughly angry over the repeated appearance of an assortment of tales in Moscow humorous magazines under the pseudonym Chekhonte. Chekhov tried to explain that the Moscow editors were using his pseudonym against his wishes, and that he would try in the future to restrict it to Fragments. "I would be happy to drop all work for Alarm Clock [one of the offending magazines]," he wrote, "but I don't think you would want this. The odd thirty, forty and sometimes fifty roubles a month, thank God, are of help to a proletarian like myself. . . . However much I write and however often I send you my prose, my remuneration does not cease to fluctuate between forty-five and sixty-five roubles a month." (November 23, 1885.) The comparison was pointed, and so was his hint that Fragments paid him inadequately.