Once when I was returning home, I happened to stray into an estate I had never come across before. The sun was already beginning to disappear, and evening shadows stretched along the flowering rye. Two rows of old and very tall fir trees closely planted together stood like so'id walls, forming a dark, beautiful avenue. I climbed over the fence without any difficulty and set off down this avenue, slipping on the needles which lay on the ground several inches thick. It was quiet and dark, except high up at the tops of some of the trees, where there was a glimmer of bright golden light, which made rainbows in the spiders' webs. The scent from the needles was so strong it was almost overpowering. Then I turned down the long linden avenue. Here too there were s;gns of neglecr and old age; last year's fallen leaves rustled sadly under my feet, and shadows hid in the twilight between the trees. To my right in an old orchard there was an oriole singing, reluctantly and feebly; it was probably old too. But at this point the lindens came to an end; I walked past a white house with a veranda and a mezzanine, and before me suddenly unfolded a1 ista of the house's front courtyard, a large pond with a bathing hut and a cluster of green willows, a village on the other side, and a taU narrow bell tower, at the top of which there was a cross, burning in the reflection of the setting sun. For a second I was bewitched by the sense that all this was something fam-liar and cherished - as though T had seen Biis exact vista at some point in my childhood.83
As with the previous dacnas, there was some interesting company at Bogimovo. A picnic organized so that all the dachniks could get to know each other led to a riotous ride in a tarantas at three in the morning, during which the horses bolted, topping the carriage; Chekhov landed on his nose.84 (A tarantas was a four-wheel carriage pulled by three horses that could travel at 8 nv'es an hour. It had a folding hood but no springs or seats, and travellers simply reclined on its floor on straw or cushions.) Among the dachn'ks at Bogimovo, Chekhov particularly enjoyed talking to a zoolog.st with whom he had nightly debates about evolution and degenerat on - debates which find their echo in the arguments of his character von Koren -i the story 'The Duel', which he was currently working on. Friends came for brief visits, and Chekhov did his best to lure Lika Mizinova, to whom he had begun to grow increasingly attached:
We have' a marvellous garden, shady paths, secluded nooks, a river, a mill, a boat, moonlit nights, nightingales, turkeys ... There are some very clever frogs in the river and in the pond. We often go for walks, and I usually close my eyes and crook my right arm, imagining you are walking beside me.85
If Lika had hoped to arouse Chekhov's jealousy by consorting with his friend Levitan earlier in the summer, she had been successful, but Chekhov remained in high spirits. Wr.' ing to his sister who had gone to stay with the Lintvaryovs in July, he urged her to return as soon as possible, because the household had fallen into disarray. 'As before we very rarely have quarrels,' he wrote to her in his typically deadpan style; 'only at lunch and at dinner.'86 When Masha returned, she went back to her painting, while their father talked endlessly about bishops, Ivan fished and their mother fussed about.87
Soon came St Elijah's Day on 20 July, the last Orthodox feast of the summer, traditionally marking the beginning of the harvest and the turn towards autumn. 'A cold wind started blowing after Elijah,' Chekhov wrote in a letter a few days later. 'It smells of autumn. But I love the Russian autumn, "here is something unusually sad, inviting and beautiful about it. I'd like to fly away somewhere with the cranes. Back in my childhood I used to catch singing birds in the autumn and sell them at the market. What joy! Better than selling books.'88 It is not difficult to recall here the numerous stories Chekhov wrote in which he attached particular smells to the seasons, and the discussion about migrating cranes m Three Sisters, which Masha associates with having a meaning in one's lite: 'I feel that man should have a faith or be trving со find one, otherwise his life just doesn't make sense,' she says in Act 2. 'Think of living without knowing why cranes fly, why children are born or why there are stars in the sky. Either you know what you're living for, or else the whole thing's a waste of time and means less than nothing.'
By the end of August, it had become draughty in the enormous ballroom and Chekhov started longing for carpets, fireplaces and learned discussions. Within a few days he would return to rented accommodation in Moscow for the last time.
Chapter 5 ST PETERSBURG
I
Fragments of Fame
A young man dreams of dedicating himself to literature, writes constantly to his father about it, finally gives up his job, goes to Petersburg and dedicates himself to literature - he becomes a censor.
Notebook No. 1
Thank you for the invitation to Petersburg. I would love to come and visit you, but... all I have in my pocket are conductors' and policemen's wl .istles . . . !
Letter to N. Leikin, 11 August 1884
Chekhov spent three days visiting St Petersburg during the last six years of his life, when he was based in Yalta. He had always been more closely tied to Moscow, and if the association was made indelible by repeated expressions of nostalgia in letters sent from his Crimean exile, it was set in stone with the plaintive refrain of 'To Moscow!' in his play Three Sisters, whoso main characters gave voice to his own yearnings. Olga Knipper, who played the first-ever Masha, a role specially created for her, simply assumed that Chekhov did not care for St Petersburg. Immediately after the premiere of Three Sisters in January 1901, the Moscow Art Theatre went on tour to St Petersburg for the first time, taking their Chekhov productions with them. When Olga was not on stage or attending parties, she enjoyed going for walks along the embankment of the frozen Neva River, wrapped up in furs. She liked the physical appearance of St Petersburg, she wrote to Chekhov in Yalta, particularly its wide pavements and the European lustre that everything in the city seemed to possess, but she did not think that he shared her
Nikolaevsky Station, Moscow, where Chekhov boarded trains for St Petersburg
enthusiasms.1 'You write that I don't like Petersburg. Who told you that?' Chekhov wrote back. 'I do love Petersburg, I have a distinct weakness for the place. And I have so many memories bound up with the city!'2 Those memories stretched back fifteen years, to the start of his literary career, and telling Oiga in that same letter that he had just been reading about the assassination attempt on Pobedonostsev probably tuggered the earliest of them.
There were distinct reasons why the assassination attempt on the Procurator of the Holy Synod and.chief adviser to Alexander III might have made Chekhov think back to the first visit he made to St Petersburg ifl 1885, shortly before bis twenty-sixth birthday. He had arrived back in Moscow just before Christmas that year, full of excitement and bursting to tell his family about the new acquaintances he had made dun lg his two-week stay in the capital. And he was still reeling from the unexpectedly warm reception he had received there as a talented new writer. Chekhov's pious father, however, who had never been to St Petersburg, was more interested in hearing about the Senate and the Holy Synod. These government departments were located in two mammoth buildings and were connected by an arch. They looked out over the most famous monument in the city, the statue of the Bronze Horseman, down by the Neva. Chekhov's father was angry that his son had not paid a visit.3 But Pobedonostsev (his name in Russian comes from the word for 'victor') was the last person Chekhov would have wanted to call on, not least because he had just experienced the first real shock of having his work censored, following a 'pogrom' on the journal to which he contributed.4 Far less impressed by authority figures than his conservative father, Chekhov studiously avoided the world of Russian officialdom,throughout his life.