Lack of funds, as well as a lack of desire on the part of Korolenko and Pleshcheev to make the trip, ended Chekhov's hope of going down the Volga in early spring. If possible, however, he was determined to get out of Moscow to a summer place at the beginning of May. With a twinge of conscience, he informed his old friend Kiselev that the family wanted to go to the South and not to Babkino. His father wished to see his native haunts before he died. The old couple required peace and comfort and a church nearby; all he himself needed was to be near a post office, and peasants he could treat medically. He had already written his childhood friend, Alexandra Selivanova, with whom he maintained contact, to look for a summer house in Slavyansk, and also to his cousin Yegorushka at Taganrog to hunt for one on the Sea of Azov.
Meanwhile, his close friend, A. I. Ivanenko, a Moscow Conservatory flutist with misdirected literary ambitions, enthusiastically urged on Chekhov the beauties of his native Ukraine. He knew just the place — a house on the estate of the Lintvarevs in the village of Luka on the Psyol River near his birthplace Sumy. Chekhov asked him to inquire, and upon receiving a favorable answer, impetuously rented the house for a hundred roubles.
Chekhov's imagination, no doubt stimulated by the chauvinistic Ivanenko, at once took fire over this dacha which he had never seen, and he described it in glowing terms to friends and invited them to visit him in the summer. "I assure you the place is ravishing," he wrote Pleshcheev in one of his characteristically irresistible invitations. "The Psyol, a broad and deep stream, is filled with fish; there is a pond and a rustic mill. The dacha is situated at the foot of a hill, covered with orchards. The place is surrounded with woods. There is an abundance of young ladies." And, Chekhov added: "I give you my word of honor that we shall do nothing, we shall cultivate indolence, which is so good for you. We shall eat, drink, get up early, and go to bed early, catch fish, visit the fairs, enjoy music, and nothing more." So pack your suitcase, he concludes, take only enough money for the train ride, "bring some cigars, which are unobtainable in the South," and say farewell to your Melancholy Mandolin1 for a whole month, and
"Forward! Without fear and doubt."2 (March 31, 1888.)
And for good measure, he adds, bring along your son Nikolai, and Leontiev-Shcheglov.
Taking advantage of a trip which his brother Misha was making to Taganrog in late April, Chekhov asked him to visit the dacha on the way and report back to him. The report was disillusioning in the extreme: the house in decay, a mudhole in the yard with pigs wallowing in it, the garden run down, and to make matters worse the liberal-minded Lintvarevs — one of whosje sons had been expelled from the university for radical activities — behaved coldly to Misha, who was dressed in his student uniform.
Since Pleshcheev had already accepted his invitation, Chekhov felt it
The Northern Herald.
Tbe first line of a well-known poem by Pleshcheev.
necessary to write him, on the basis of the adverse report, that though the Psyol was truly a broad and deep river, the dacha was an unpoetic ruin with no comforts, vile furniture, and only two emancipated young ladies in the neighborhood. There was no question of giving him the best room in the house since they were all equally bad. Nevertheless, however unattractive the place was, it was healthier and more spacious than Pleshcheev's Petersburg tundra, and he still hoped he would come. I Ie regretted only that Pleshcheev did not like to fish — "To catch a
perch is loftier and sweeter than love!" (April 25, 1888.)
«4»
When Chekhov and his family arrived at the Ukrainian dacha in early May, he discovered to his relief that Misha, who all along had been partial to Babkino as a summering place, had much exaggerated its unfavorable aspects. Babkino, he declared, could not hold a candle to it. The rooms were large, clean, and comfortable, but ordinary conveniences were lacking — retreating to a ditch or the bushes did not irk him in fine weather, but when it rained or when he had diarrhea he objected. However, he told Suvorin, there were compensations in the spaciousness of the surroundings, which at once aroused his enthusiasm and titillated his imagination — the beautiful green banks of the Pysol, the romance of a watermill with its miller and his daughter who sat at the window obviously waiting for something to happen, the song of nightingales, the distant barking of dogs, and "the tightly boarded, very sad and poetic country places, where dwell the souls of beautiful women, aged, doddering feudal retainers, and young girls longing for the most conventional type of love." (May 30, 1888.) Everything about the place reminded him of the ancient fairy tales he had known for so long.
With his gregarious nature Chekhov was soon on the most familiar footing with his hosts, the cultured Lintvarevs. They were more serious and more numerous than the Kiselevs of Babkino: the widowed mother, who read Schopenhauer and every issue of the Northern Herald, was noticeably pleased to have a young man of letters in her house; the oldest daughter Zinaida, a saintlike physician rendered blind by a brain tumor, astounded Chekhov by her calm expectancy of death while she laughed and joked 011 the terrace as she listened to someone reading his tales; the shy, tender second daughter, Elena, also a doctor, with whom he could never agree medically when he assisted with her
"my holy of holies . . . is absolute freedom" / 153
patients, a woman dearly loving family happiness but condemned, he thought, never to enjoy it, never to be happy; and the homely youngest daughter, Natalya (Natasha), a strong, tanned, muscular girl, bony as a shad, who liked to sing, roared with laughter at the slightest provocation, read Marx, and taught a school which she had set up in the village. At times Chekhov attended her class to observe how she taught Ukrainian to the children. Natalya, who was not indifferent to Chekhov's charm, eventually became a close friend of the family. Of the two sons, Pavel, the oldest, expelled from the university, was modest, quiet, hardworking, and seemingly content with his lot, whereas the youngest, Yegor, aspired to a Tolstoyan way of life and was fanatically determined to be a great pianist. With equal ease Chekhov also got to know the local landowners and peasants whose companionship he sought on fishing expeditions. These Ukrainian peasants, he decided, were superb types. He enjoyed their jolly disposition, cleverness, and amusing conversation.
With that ability he had to adapt himself to new and strange places, Chekhov plunged at once into the summertime pleasures of his new surroundings — bathing, fishing, flirting, attending the local fairs, and arranging musical and literary evenings, very much as at Babkino, in the manor house of the Lintvarevs. Their friends quickly became his friends. Yet he found time also for some medical practice and writing. He finished a long story, The Lights, for the Northern Herald; he did a short piece, A Trifle from Life, for New Times; and he saw through the press his new collection, Tales, which appeared in early June.
Impatiently Chekhov kept urging his laggard friends to visit, tirelessly extolling the charms of his Ukrainian paradise. Toward the end of May Pleshcheev arrived, along with Ivanenko. The venerable poet, whose verses — full of faith, progress, and love for the masses — were still popular, at oncc became the idol of the Luka inhabitants. The young girls brought him flowers, took him boating, and sang romantic ballads to him. He ate to exhaustion, smoked endless cigars which half- suffocated his youthful worshipers, and composed poetry by reading each line aloud so that people in the house thought he was talking to himself. Though Chekhov compared him to an ikon that was revered because it was old and had once hung in the company of miracle- working ikons, he sincerely liked Pleshcheev and, after his departure, wrote him an affectionate letter to tell the poet how the whole neighborhood missed him.