As spring progressed into summer with all its glory of growing things, Chekhov jubilantly wrote Suvorin: "Every day there are surprises', one better than the other. The starlings have returned; everywhere there is the gurgling of water. . . . One's mood is calm, contemplative, and animal, in the sense that one does not regret yesterday or look forward to tomorrow. From here, far away, people seem very good; and that is natural, for in going away into the country we are not hiding from people but from our own vanity, which in the city, among people, is unjust and active beyond measure. Looking at the spring, I have a dreadful longing that there should be a paradise in the other world. In fact, at moments I am so happy that I superstitiously pull myself up and remind myself of my creditors. . . ." (March 17, 1892.)
« 2 »
By summer, life at Melikhovo had settled clown to a pleasant and comfortable routine. Besides the two hired hands, a cook and a chambermaid served the family. Masha, Ivan, and Misha lived at Melikhovo during their summer vacations, but even before their vacation periods Masha, and often Ivan — both were teaching in Moscow less than fifty miles away — regularly made the trip on Fridays for the weekend. Chekhov frequently used these occasions to ask them to bring nfecessary supplies from the city — five pounds of coffee he ordered in one letter, a plain copper coffeepot, onions and horseradish, and a pound of Epsom salts. Everything about the estate deeply concerned Masha — the porridge would not boil without her, said Chekhov. With her heavy peasant boots on and a white kerchief over her head, she spent whole days in the fields or on the threshing floor, always anxious to spare her famous brother any physical labor. Ivan, with his Christlike head and with something of his sister's quiet and serious mien, contributed more advice than work. The younger, clever, and talented Misha, however, was a tower of strength in solving the problems of estate management and became quite indispensable to Chekhov. He soon arranged a transfer from his tax job at Aleksin to one at Serpukhov, which allowed him to live permanently at Melikhovo.
Though the low-slung, comfortable house, now completely renovated, had no architectural attractions, it was furnished with taste and kept spotlessly clean. Chekhov showed guests around the rooms, jokingly repeating the visits to each room to create the notion of a huge house. The place had already taken on the semblance of having been lived in by the Chekhov family all their lives. The room of each resembled its possessor — the monastic, cell-like room of Father, with its ikon and lamp, its great religious tomes, and a smell of herbs (he was preparing mysterious liqueurs so that Melikhovo would have something no other estate had); the bright, airy room of Mother, with its immaculate starched curtains, sewing machine, huge hampers filled with household linen, and a comfortable armchair in which this indefatigable old lady rarely had time to rest; the dazzlingly white virginal room of Masha with its narrow white bed, vases of flowers, and an enormous portrait of Chekhov occupying the principal wall space as well as the chief place in her heart; and the large study of Chekhov ablaze with light from its huge window, with a stove and a spacious divan, several well-filled bookcases, a writing table covered with manuscript pages, and walls adorned with paintings of Levitan and drawings by the dead Nikolai. The living room, looking out on the terrace leading into the garden, was modestly furnished with piano, easy chairs, and tables, without frills or superfluous articles.
It was nice to be lord of the manor, Chekhov commented. People were not continually pulling at the doorbell, and he did not mind at times divesting himself of his lordship's status to become a porter. But when he recalled the bills he had run up to renovate the estate, he worried over dying and leaving his family encumbered with debt. The owls hooting at night seemed to him to prophesy that Melikhovo would be sold at auction. He comforted himself, however, by the assurance that to be rich did not mean to have money, but simply to have the means to live in a place like Melikhovo. To be sure, there were minor annoyances. The cook got drunk a bit too often and the chambermaid could not resist stealing small sums from guests — he had a vague notion that some two hundred roubles of his own had vanished. Rabbits nibbled away at the vegetable garden, the cattle strayed into the cabbage patch, and he could not keep trespassers and hunters off his land. Then there was the "miracle of the horse," as he described it — one morning he discovered that his fine mare had been transformed into a broken- down stallion on the point of collapse.
A burgeoning harvest banished these concerns. There were so many cherries he did not know what to do with them, and it pleased him to eat his fill off the trees without anyone's driving him away or whipping him. The earth poured forth produce. "Our farming efforts have been crowned with complete success," he wrote Suvorin. "The harvest is a solid one, and when we sell our grain it will net us more than a thousand roubles. The vegetable garden turned out brilliantly. We have a veritable mountain of cucumbers and wonderful cabbages." (August i, 1892.) Because of famine conditions in the area, however, he ordered not a little of the harvest to be sold at very reduced prices to the peasants, who thought him simple-minded.
Indeed, at the end of this first summer at Melikhovo, Chekhov could triumphantly inform Suvorin that, despite the hard work, he had never in his life spent a summer so well. "I have liked the life and wanted to live. How many trees I have planted! Thanks to our system of cultivation, Melokhovo has become unrecognizable, and it seems now extraordinarily snug and beautiful, though very likely it is good for nothing. Great is the power of habit and the sense of property. And it is marvelous how pleasant it is not to have to pay rent." (October 10, i892.)
Winter, however, was the real test of living in the country, and as it approached Chekhov's spirits quailed. The snow got so deep that hares, standing on their hind legs, peered in at his study window. He told himself that his serf grandfather had put up with such conditions and they ought not to be any punishment for the grandson. Strangely enough, he informed Alexander, it was not dull and he now had plenty of time to write. However, the bare fields and trees and the chickens huddling in the cold filled him with melancholy. Not even sleeping to excess or eating his fill of the traditional country dishes of roast duck and salted mushrooms rejoiced him. Through October and November he found various reasons for going to Moscow on literary business and to see friends. Then he remembered that his original plan for living in the country had called for a visit to Petersburg over the winter months, and he left for that city on December 19.
Chekhov spent five weeks in Petersburg. One of his purposess was to write, but he squandered most of his time in infinite talk and smoking with Suvorin and in social gatherings with friends. While he complained, in one letter, of leading a dull life, yet he made plans to stay longer on his next visit, and in another letter boasted that at Suvorin's he ate, slept, and made merry like a rich beggar and hardly wrote a line. Mariya Kiseleva's married sister, Nadezhda Golubeva, who had not seen Chekhov for six years, coaxed him to dinner — she had been assisted by him in her literary endeavors. "Ah, how delighted I am!" he declared when he discovered that her rather stuffy, socially prominent spouse would not be at home. "You know, I don't have the fine manners of your husband. My papa and mama sold herring." And all through the meal, much to the discomfort of his hostess, he kept jumping up, pacing the room, and returning to the table for a bite — a nervous habit he had always had at meals. After dinner they talked of writing, and he rather unfeelingly criticized women who turned out stories just to pass the time. His offended hostess told him how much he had changed since those jolly Babkino days when they first met, and, after he left, she commented in her account: "Such weariness was apparent in his whole figure! I thought: The spring of his life had passed, there had been no summer, and he is now in his autumn."