On the whole I feel tired and annoyed. It was sickening though the play had considerable success. […] Theater-goers say that they had never seen such a ferment in a theater, such universal clapping and hissing, nor heard such discussions among the audience as they saw and heard at my play. And it has never happened before at Korsh’s that the author has been called after the second act. […]11
Chekhov’s account of the performance is for me (and maybe for Ezhov) incomparably more amusing than the actual play. He asked Alexander to tell his fellow editor Burenin that as soon as the play ended he sat down to work on his next New Times short story, which he didn’t finish until December 13, “The Kiss.”
Lazarev, who couldn’t make it to the premiere of Ivanov, sent Chekhov his work on “Hamlet, Prince of Danes” on November 21.12 Ezhov, Nikolay Chekhov, and Isaac Levitan made it to the second performance of the play on November 23. Anton wrote Alexander on November 24; his report on the second night was briefer:
Well, dearest Gusev, the dust has finally settled and everything has calmed down. Here I am as usual, sitting at my desk and placidly writing stories. You can’t possibly imagine what it was like! The devil only knows what they’ve made out of so insignificant a piece of junk as my miserable little play. […]
The second performance went well […] Reading the play won’t tell you what all the excitement was about; you won’t find anything special in it.13
He asked Alexander to note the performance in New Times and congratulated him on his promotion to Suvorin’s secretary. Chekhov would be arriving in Petersburg on November 30.
Finally, he apologized: “Have I been getting on your nerves? I’ve felt like a psychopath all November. […] Keep well and forgive the psychopathy. I’m over it now. Today I’m normal.” He signed himself “Schiller Shakespearovich Goethe.”
*
On November 26 Chekhov was dealing with Lazarev’s collaboration on their play. He didn’t like it: “1) Your ‘Hamlet’ consists entirely of dialogues that don’t have organic connections. The dialogues are unthinkable. […] 5) The end of the first act is stilted. You can’t end it that way. […]… 8) I’m afraid I’m making you sick of me and you will curse me as a swine in a yarmulke… But I take comfort in the thought that fussing with vaudeville will be useful to you. You have your hands full. 9) After the play I was so tormented that I lost the ability to rightly think or to speak sensibly.”14
This was the end of their work together, and the manuscript disappeared.
Chekhov got on the train in Moscow on November 29. He wrote to his sister the next day to say he would be sending money. He was at Alexander’s dirty, stinky, stuffy apartment, and Alexander’s wife Anna was sick.
December 1887
The Lord gave you a kind and tender heart, so why not put it to good use? Write with a gentle pen and a carefree spirit. Don’t think about the wrongs that have been done you…. Be objective, take a look at everything with the eye of a good, kind man, with your own eye, I mean, and sit down and write a story or play about life in Russia—not a criticism of Russian life, simply a joyous song, the song of the Goldfinch, about Russian life and life in general. Our life comes only once, and there is no point, honestly there isn’t, in wasting it… Dear Jean, be fair for once to yourself and your talent…. Forgive everyone who has offended you, forget about them, and, I repeat, sit down and write.
—Letter to a friend1
Chekhov was free, clear of Moscow, clear of his domestic responsibilities, clear of the pressures of Ivanov. He wrote to Davydov on December 1 to thank him for his portrayal of Ivanov and to share his misgivings and pride about the play and about how it was being discussed and reviewed there in Petersburg.
He wrote to his family on December 3 about what a great time he was having, despite staying in Alexander’s filthy apartment; at least Anna was getting better and the children were well. The night before, he had had a respite from Alexander’s and had eaten and stayed at Leykin’s.
He was meeting sometimes with Korolenko and every day with Suvorin: “I feel I’m in seventh heaven.” The food, the people, the “ladies,” the encouragement for him to bring Ivanov to the capital. “How I wish I could live here always!” He would be leaving on December 15.
It was probably on December 3, when he was sitting in the Fragments office writing to his family, that he submitted “The Lion and the Sun” (“Lev i Solntse,” December 5). There is nothing final or significant about this good comic story, but it was in fact the last story Chekhov would write for Fragments until 1892. Chekhov had arrived in Petersburg and been feted, and in “The Lion and the Sun” a Persian magnate arrives in a Russian town, where he is similarly feted by a medal-hungry mayor:
It is well known that the more orders and medals you have the more you want—and the mayor had long been desirous of receiving the Persian order of The Lion and the Sun; he desired it passionately, madly. He knew very well that there was no need to fight, or to subscribe to an asylum, or to serve on committees to obtain this order; all that was needed was a favorable opportunity. And now it seemed to him that this opportunity had come.2
Like Chekhov, the mayor is not a linguist; he doesn’t understand Persian or French, but he still lays on his welcome pretty thick:
“The frontiers of Persia”—Kutsyn continued the greeting he had previously learned by heart—“are in close contact with the borders of our spacious fatherland, and therefore mutual sympathies impel me, so to speak, to express my solidarity with you.”
The illustrious Persian got up and again muttered something in a wooden tongue. Kutsyn, who knew no foreign language, shook his head to show that he did not understand.
“Well, how am I to talk to him?” he thought. “It would be a good thing to send for an interpreter at once, but it is a delicate matter, I can’t talk before witnesses. The interpreter would be chattering all over the town afterward.”
And Kutsyn tried to recall the foreign words he had picked up from the newspapers.
“I am the mayor of the town,” he muttered. “That is the lord mayor… municipalais… Vwee? Kompreney?”
He wanted to express his social position in words or in gesture, and did not know how. A picture hanging on the wall with an inscription in large letters, “The Town of Venice,” helped him out of his difficulties. He pointed with his finger at the town, then at his own head, and in that way obtained, as he imagined, the phrase: “I am the head of the town.” The Persian did not understand, but he gave a smile, and said:
“Goot, monsieur… goot….” Half-an-hour later the mayor was slapping the Persian, first on the knee and then on the shoulder […]
The mayor shows the Persian quite a good time and eventually secures himself the coveted medal.
In “A Problem,” the uncles let off their criminally inclined nephew, but in “In Trouble” (“Beda”), which Chekhov wrote for the Petersburg Gazette (December 7), an auditor who apparently innocently (at least negligently) signed off on fraudulent deals does not anticipate being charged with fraud himself. But he is charged and his life falls apart: “His conscience was clear, and he ascribed his position to mistake and misunderstanding; to his mind, it was all due to the fact that the officials and the examining magistrates were young men and inexperienced. It seemed to him that if he were to talk it over in detail and open his heart to some elderly judge, everything would go right again.”3 It doesn’t “go right again.” His bewilderment keeps him calm throughout a trial, though his insides churn. Convicted, he is exiled to Tobolsk.