I have written a play on four sheets of paper.21 It will take fifteen to twenty minutes to act. […] It is much better to write small things than big ones: they are unpretentious and successful…. What more would you have? I wrote my play in an hour and five minutes. I began another, but have not finished it, for I have no time.22
He, this man with “no time,” was writing like gangbusters.
In Petersburg, Alexander, not being able to get to Moscow for his brother’s name day, wrote him beforehand and was full of beans, catching him up on literary matters at New Times, where Alexander was now working in the evenings as a sub-editor: For one thing, Grigorovich had come to the office and excitedly greeted Alexander, mistaking him for Anton. Alexander was amused and now teased Anton, “I’m the brother of that Chekhov, who and so on, in a word, his brother. Always and everywhere I’m introduced, recommended and known primarily under this title. My individuality has fallen away. Menelaus—the husband of the queen, and I—the brother of Anton.”23
On the day after his 27th birthday, Anton answered Alexander with his usual liveliness and teasing: thanking him, first off, for sending the money owed to him from the Petersburg periodicals. He had found himself almost out of money again and was again bewildered about where it all went, and groused—in a fashion of grousing he only shared with Alexander—about the labor of his writing: “Please tell me, dear heart, when shall I live like a human being, that is, work and not be out of pocket? At present I slave and am hard up, and I ruin my reputation by having to produce trash,”24 namely the short pieces for Fragments.
Anton was probably writing Alexander in the morning, as the party was set for 1:00 P.M., and he was anticipating and dreading Leykin’s arrivaclass="underline" “With a sinking heart I am waiting for Leykin. He will again wear me out. I am not getting along with this Quasimodo. I refused a raise and also refused punctual delivery of contributions, and he bombards me with tearful-pompous letters, accusing me of the shrinkage of subscriptions, perfidy, duplicity, and the like. He lies, saying that he receives letters from subscribers asking why Chekhonte does no writing. He is cross with you for not contributing.”
Anton asked Alexander about his work and greeted and congratulated his nephews. Chekhov was in good spirits, despite the money worries and the pending confrontation with Leykin. He concluded in a postscript: “Besides a wife—medicine—I also have literature—a lover, but I don’t mention her, since those living without laws will be destroyed without the law.” (This concluding phrase, says Donald Rayfield, mimicked their father Pavel.)25
Can we imagine that name-day party in the red Moscow house in midwinter? Chekhov wrote his uncle Mitrofan the next day that they had had a violin and zither (played by his maternal cousin Aleksei Dolzhenko). Among the other guests at the “crowded and merry” party26 were his brother Nikolay, Levitan, and Schechtel, the old poet Palmin and the forgiving Dunya Efros.
He thanked Mitrofan for the birthday letter and explained how busy he had been. Knowing what would most impress his uncle, he told him once again about his fame and financial success: “During the holidays I was so overwhelmed with work that on Mother’s name-day I was almost dropping with exhaustion. I must tell you that in Petersburg I am now the most fashionable writer. One can see that from papers and magazines, which at the end of 1886 were taken up with me, bandied my name about, and praised me beyond my deserts. The result of this growth of my literary reputation is that I get a number of orders and invitations—and this is followed by work at high pressure and exhaustion. My work is nervous, disturbing, and involving strain. It is public and responsible, which makes it doubly hard. Every newspaper report about me agitates both me and my family…. My stories are read at public recitations, wherever I go people point at me, I am overwhelmed with acquaintances, and so on, and so on. I have not a day of peace, and feel as though I were on thorns every moment.”27
He was unabashedly proud of the man who would become his best friend: “My good acquaintance Suvorin, the editor-publisher of the New Times, will publish Pushkin’s works on January 29 [the 50th anniversary of Pushkin’s death], at a fabulously cheap price—two rubles, postage included. […] Such things can be done only by such a great and wise man as Suvorin, for he spares nothing for literature.” Chekhov was not being sarcastic. “He has five book shops, a daily paper, a monthly, a tremendous publishing concern, a fortune of a million—and all this he gained by honest, sympathetic work. He comes from Voronezh, where he was a teacher in the country school.”28 He wanted Suvorin to be admired by Mitrofan and was laying out the reasons, concluding with one that would most resonate, the pay. For his Christmas story (“On the Road”), Chekhov (knowing his uncle’s skepticism), sent the receipt showing “I was paid 111 rubles.”
He told Mitrofan (and the extended family reading or hearing the letter) that he had given up writing the humorous stories. “I’m sending you my book [Motley Stories]—a collection of my unserious fluff, which I chose not so much for reading as for remembering the beginning of my literary work…. Those I like in my book I marked in the contents with a blue pencil. The rest don’t require attention.”
Chekhov was also in a philosophical mood. He seems to have seen his uncle as someone with whom it was worth discussing serious matters. Mitrofan’s son Volodya had apparently brought up the matter of excess letters in the Russian alphabet and the matter of insincerity or even irreverence in addressing people as “great” or “exalted.” Chekhov took a surprising but convincing opposing tack: “Peoples and history have the right to call their elect by whatever name they like, without fear of offending the greatness of God or of raising man to God. The point is that we extol not the man but his virtues, the divine principle which he succeeded in developing in himself to a high degree. […] In using these titles we do not lie, do not exaggerate, but express our ecstasy, as a mother does not lie when she says to her child: ‘My golden one!’ A sense of beauty speaks in us, and beauty does not suffer the common and banal; beauty permits us to make these comparisons, which Volodya can with his mind analyze into powder, but will understand them with his heart. […] The sense of beauty in man knows no bounds, no limitations. That is why the Russian prince may be called the ‘Lord of the World’; my friend Volodya also bears that name, for names are not given for merits but in honor and in memory of remarkable men who once lived. […] in extolling man, even to God, we do not sin against love but, on the contrary, express it.”
And then Chekhov sneaked in a principle that he tried to observe in his fiction: “Don’t belittle people, that’s the main thing. It’s better to say ‘my angel’ to a person than label him ‘an idiot,’ though a person more resembles an idiot than an angel.”29 Truly, there are many idiots in Chekhov’s stories, and some of them turn out to seem more like angels.
Leykin told Chekhov sometime during the visit to Moscow that he would be recommending Chekhov for membership in the prestigious Literary Fund. A week later Leykin wrote him that he and Bilibin would be voted on as members on February 2, and then, during the second week of Lent, Chekhov would be asked to come and read “something” to the assembled group.30 Sensing Chekhov’s eagerness to fly the coop, Leykin continued trying to keep him cooped. The thought of having to speak in public, however, would fluster Chekhov for weeks.