Perhaps the fact that The Island of Sakhalin is so little read nowadays has also contributed to the notion that it is entirely devoid of artistic merit. The high art of selectivity in the mass of material Chekhov was dealing with is everywhere in evidence; the facts, scenes, and incidents are those calculated to impress ■ and to move the readers. It is even possible to catch him at turning a dull but necessary passage from one of his learned sources into a thing of beauty. Any sensitive reader must conclude that though the book is essentially a scientific study, it could have been written only by the literary artist Chekhov. Once the work had begun to appear in print, he wrote the critical Suvorin: "I'm glad that this rough convict's garment hangs in my literary wardrobe. Let it hang there!" (January 2, i8g4.)
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Only a man of powerful will could have done all this writing and fulfilled his various other self-imposed duties during these first two years at Melikhovo, when for weeks on end Chekhov was also unwell. His illnesses were subjected to the same inexorable will that precluded any self-pity or surcease to his labors. He had always despised laziness, weaknesses and sluggishness of the emotions. In a moment of annoyance, he might burst out to a correspondent like Suvorin about a vile, despicable malady — not svphilis. but his old enemy, hemorrhoids, "with pain, itching, tension, no sitting, no walking, and such irritation throughout the entire body that one feels like lying down and dying." (April 26, 1S93.) He knew that he ought to have an operation, but again he gritted his teeth and rode out the storm till the next time.
Chekhov continued to adopt somewhat the same attitude to his cough, which all noticed was becoming worse. He airily dismissed it as "bronchitis," or would jokingly use the word "consumption." He displayed a kind of false manliness about his illnesses, as though he were ashamed to pa}- attention to such matters which concerned only people of little spirit. But the hateful word was on his mind now, and it gave him no rest. It had begun to occur not infrequently in his correspondence. A number of his peasants at Melikhovo suffered from tuberculosis and one died under his care. Potapenko relates how he and Chekhov «_еге on a train from Moscow to Melikhovo. A passenger near them coughed continually. This fact led Chekhov to make his acquaintance — he was an estate owner from Vologda — and to inquire about his health. The man told of his s\~mptoms— dizziness, trouble with his heart, hemorrhoids, and occasional blood-spitting — and that he had been to several doctors and was taking treatment. These were Chekhov's symptoms. " 'All this is nonsense,' Chekhov said. 'You must get out of Vologda Province. Go somewhere in the tropics and live there for two or three years.' " And when the man objected that he was saddled with an estate and a large family, Chekhov earnestly replied: " 'Leave your family, sell the estate, and go! Otherwise it will turn out badly for you.' "
This was ad\ice that Chekhov himself could not take, for, like the man from Vologda, he too shrank from selling an estate and deserting his family. It was a tragedy that he was a doctor and had this dread disease, for otherwise he might have sought the diagnosis of a physician, which he refused to do. He believed his own diagnosis was logical, but it was the logic of self-deception — his naive assumption that because he had lived several years since he had first experienced a hemorrhage, he would not die of tuberculosis. To be sure, as a doctor, he fully realized how inadequate was the treatment of the disease in those days, but he was aware, at least, of the therapeutic value of a warm, dry climate. The only concession he appears to have made was to give up for a time or cut down on cigars and liquor. He coughed, he said, because he was accustomed to cough, and he went to considerable lengths to conceal his affliction from friends and family, especially his mother and sister. Misha tells that at Melikhovo once, when he was a chance witness of Chekhov's coughing up blood, his brother sternly cautioned him: " 'This is only a trifle. You must not say anything to Masha or Mother."
Despite his evasions, news of Chekhov's rather frequent spells of illness at Melikhovo at this time spread. Alexander reported from Petersburg that Leikin was going around weeping and telling any who would listen that his dear friend Chekhov was dangerously ill with tuberculosis and would soon die. Chekhov replied with a quip: "Thank Leikin for his sympathy. When apoplexy gets him, I'll send a telegram." (October 29, 1893.) And he added that he did have a cough, but that he was far from tuberculosis.
On the other hand, with a kind of prophetic clairvoyance, he wrote Suvorin (August 24, 1893) that his heart bothered him and at times he found it hard to breathe. But he was not worried, he said, and continued: "The enemy that kills the body usually comes imperceptibly, wearing a mask, as for example when you are ill from consumption and it seems to you it is not consumption but merely a trifle. It follows, then, that that is terrible which you do not fear, but that which arouses your apprehension is not terrible. ... I know that I shall die of a disease which I do not fear. Hence, if I'm afraid, then it means that I shall not die. However, this is nonsense."
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But it was not really nonsense. Chekhov had obviously torn away the mask: he did fear. In the long sleepless nights of coughing, which worried his mother as she listened in her bedroom, he saw before him the stark and grim image of his fate. In these moments of truth no deception or wishful thinking could conceal from his medically trained mind the inevitable consequences of his steadily deteriorating health. The wasting form of his poor brother Nikolai must have haunted his memory. The villain was Time. How much of it was left to him?
This race with Time intensified the restlessness so characteristic of his nature. Chekhov had now realized his dreams of owning an estate. He was surrounded by the trees and flowers that he loved to nurture, and the numerous friends whose company he enjoyed, and he had climbed to the foremost place among contemporary writers. However, there were many moments of acute discontent at Melikhovo over these two years when he passionately yearned to abandon it all. He was growing old, he declared, not only in body but in spirit. His interest in life had dried up; he experienced a kind of spiritual revulsion to it. "Life is short," he wrote Suvorin on May 28, 1892, "and Chekhov, from whom you are expecting an answer, would like it to pass with a brilliant flash and crackle. ... I long terribly, terribly for a steamer and for freedom. This smooth pious life disgusts me." In one sentence he would praise the charms of Melikhovo and in the next insist that he was deluding himself, that all one could expect from life was eviclass="underline" mistakes, losses, illnesses, weakness, and all sorts of abomination. Melikhovo was all right, he self-consciously assured Suvorin on another occasion, but it would be a thousand times better to be off on a spree with him, on a boat. "I want freedom and money. To sit on a deck, pop bottles of champagne, talk about literature, and in the evenings — women." (July 28, 1893.) To some extent, perhaps, the endless struggle for money contributed to these fits of moodiness. "My soul longs for breadth and height," he declared to Suvorin on June 16, 1892, "yet I'm compelled to live in a cramped condition pursuing scoundrelly roubles and kopecks. There is nothing more banal than bourgeois life with its two- kopeck pieces, its absurd conversations, and its useless, conventional virtue. My soul has withered from the consciousness that I work for money and that money is the center of my activity. This gnawing feeling, together with my sense of justice, makes authorship a contemptible pursuit in my eyes; I do not respect what I write, and am apathetic and bored with it. . . ."