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Although Chekhov had a number of themes for stories in his head, and one for a comedy to be called The Cigarette Case, which he ultimately dropped, and although he had jotted down in his notebook observations and situations relating to several of these subjects, other matters now claimed his attention and time at Melikhovo. The commitment to civic duty which had led him into the cholera epidemic continued to involve him in community enterprises. Country doctors, especially P. I. Kurkin and I. G. Vitte, often sought his aid, and he found it difficult to deny the requests of these able members of the "rural intelligentsia" whom he so much admired. In January he attended a meeting of the Sanitary Council at Serpukhov, and in February participated in organizing a local charitable society whose purpose was to arrange for the care of convalescents and to build nurseries for the children of sick women. He also helped to organize a library for the Serpukhov hospital. Meanwhile, guests flowed in and out of Melikhovo with carefree abandonment — on February 25 Father Chekhov, whose humorless diary never seemed to distinguish between important and unimportant matters, entered the fact that eight guests had just left. Further, Chekhov's domestic and estate burdens were increased at this time by the departure of his faithful aid Misha, who had accepted a new post at Uglich.
And now the coughing, which had patently begun to worry Chekhov at the end of the previous year, grew worse. His "bronchitis," as he still described it, plagued him and wore him out. He kept threatening to go to the warmer climate of the Crimea; and suddenly, on March 2, he left for Yalta.
Spring was already well advanced at Yalta. The white summer houses with broad balconies and well-kept gardens dotted the many-tiered town and shone in the bright sunlight, reflected by the sea. Against the skyline tall dark cypresses stood on guard.
Chekhov stayed at the Hotel Russia. He tried to improve the state of his health by giving up cigars and liquor and by keeping regular hours. Both friends and unknown admirers soon upset this regimen; and, as always, he found it hard to resist what he called his "bacchanalian mood." He helped to organize a concert at the hotel for the singer Viktor Mirolyubov, and many came simply because they knew that Chekhov would be in the audience. Later Mirolyubov, as the publisher and editor of the popular monthly Journal for All, became a close friend. With the aging and half-forgotten Moscow actress, Nadezhda Medvedeva, who was staying in his hotel, Chekhov talked daily about the theater — conversations, he said, which undermined his desire to write the play he had promised himself to do at Yalta. But when Vyacheslav Fausek, a young reporter, contrived to meet Chekhov, the reporter was promptly dragooned into running a piece in the local newspaper about the old actress, because Chekhov insisted "It will be pleasant for her to be convinced that people know and have not forgotten her."
Fausek managed to see a good deal of Chekhov and left an interesting account of this visit to Yalta. For the young reporter hailed from Taganrog and had attended school there, so they had much in common to talk over. To Fausek's anxious query, when he received an invitation to visit Chekhov at the hotel, whether this would interrupt work, Chekhov cheerfully replied: "I'm always busy. But I can always put aside my work. I love to take things easy and to chatter!" And he flashed his warm smile as he glanced inquiringly through his pince-nez. Fausek had some reason to be timorous, for he had observed how Chekhov was pursued by the curious at Yalta. People, aware that he was a physician, would come to him on the pretense of illness. A rich baron called to invite him to dinner one evening, and Chekhov refused on the score that he did not accept invitations to dine with people unknown to him. Later, he discovered that the baron had invited a group of Yalta high society to the dinner "to meet Chekhov." Fausek relates that once a young lady knocked on Chekhov's door and the author politely asked what he could do for her. Agitated and confused, she blurted out: "Pardon . . . Forgive me! I wanted ... to look at you! I never . . . saw a writer!"
Chekhov also met the political exile I. M. Radetsky, who wished to give a lecture on the physical education of children. This subject interested Chekhov, and not only from the point of view of his medical practice. As his stories indicate, everything about children concerned him deeply, and he had definite opinions on their education, behavior, and psychology. Radetsky, who had to leave Yalta in a few days, despaired of obtaining the necessary official permission to give a public Iccture in time. It occurred to Chekhov to obviate this difficulty by disguising the lecture as a "colloquy," but the next problem was to find a place to deliver the talk and to assemble an audience in a hurry. Fausek solved it by offering the use of his house and informing the people invited on such short notice that "Chekhov would be present."
Upon hearing from Fausek that the literary critic Leonid Obolensky had just arrived in Yalta and wished to meet him, Chekhov hastened to oblige. For Obolensky, in 1886, had been one of the very first critics to praise Chekhov's stories in a long article in which their author was compared with Korolenko, and Chekhov had never ceased to be grateful for this early recognition. They got together several times, and at their last meeting they discussed, strangely enough, the death penalty — particularly whether it was possible to demonstrate its harmfulness from a purely utilitarian point of view.
Fausek had ample opportunity to converse with Chekhov, for he persuaded him to sit for a bust executed by Fausek's wife, a sculptress of some ability. Their house was perched high upon a cliff, and as they sat on the veranda, with a wonderful view of Yalta and the sea, the insatiably curious reporter plied Chekhov with questions about his writing. Chekhov told him that he had published only half of what he had written and that he had a suitcase full of unprinted manuscripts in various stages of completion. He said that he loved success but that he also loved to sec the succcss of others and to help them achieve it. When Fausek asked why the Russian life he portrayed in his latest stories was so gloomy, Chekhov replied: "My God! I've written enough of the cheerful sort of thing and much that was simply farcical. It is time for me to look on life more seriously." And in answer to a query on whether he drew his characters from nature or created them in a more complex way, he said: "I never draw directly from nature. However, this does not save me from certain difficulties as a writer. It occasionally happens that some of my acquaintances, with no basis whatever, recognize themselves as the heroes of my tales and get offended with me."
Early in his stay at Yalta Chekhov learned that Potapenko had gone to Italy, and not long after that he heard that Lika Mizinova also left for abroad to study voice. Shortly thereafter it did not come as any surprise to him to be informed that both of them were in Paris.
Lika's interest in improving her voice was no doubt genuine, but her presence now in Paris with Potapenko, a married man, must have signified to Chekhov something other than the pursuit of an operatic career. Did he care? If so, the record gives no evidence of it. In his reminiscences of Chekhov, Nemirovich-Danchenko remarks of him: "It seems that he had great success with women. I say 'it seems' because neither he nor I liked to chat on this theme. I offer this judgment on the basis of rumors that went the rounds."