That summer of 1875 Aleksandr had matriculated with a silver medal. Despite their poverty, the family decided to send both Aleksandr and Kolia to Moscow, Aleksandr to study mathematics and science in Moscow University, and Kolia to enrol at the Moscow College of Art and Architecture, which willingly accepted students, even if they had only completed half their secondary education, on a portfolio of work. As Tsar Alexander II and his ministers planned more wars, military conscription (for six years) was in 1874 extended: not just the peasantry, but also sons of any class who failed to secure exemption, were liable. If they enrolled in university, the spectre of military service receded; if they graduated it melted away for ever. On 7 August 1875, their luggage packed by uncle Mitrofan, Pavel’s two eldest sons took the train to Moscow. They were not friendless there. They would soon be joined by a fellow student from Taganrog, Gauzenbaum; the wealthy Ivan Loboda, a frequent traveller, would check up on them. Apart from fellow students from Taganrog they would find in Moscow their twenty-four-year old cousin from Kaluga, Mikhail [Misha] Chekhov (or Chokhov as many pronounced his surname). Misha was a clerk in Gavrilov’s wholesale haberdashery firm of Gavrilov, agent for Coats & Paisley’s threads. Gavrilov supplied many Taganrog merchants, notably the Lobodas, and had even dealt with Pavel Chekhov. Mikhail, however different in his shop boy’s background from his educated provincial cousins, was a sharp ‘likely lad’ who could find them cheap lodgings.
The shock of the big city was considerable, particularly for Kolia who was less resourceful and who had to prove himself to the College of Art. Aleksandr, however, wrote a blasé letter on his twentieth birthday:3
We arrived safely. We met Misha. When we talk to him we use the polite Vy just like papa and uncle. I think we are going to get on with him…. The hotel is real rubbish. The table somehow dances and limps on one leg. The samovar is like a drunk … My respects to his Excellence Anton as the oldest child in the house … If Vania knew how plump the women are in Moscow. But don’t tell him or he’ll be seduced … Kolia is spitting in all the corners and under the table. He kept crossing himself on the journey. We are quarrelling over that … Misha is very kind. We haven’t found a flat yet. When someone is coming to Moscow, send the violin, a balaclava, my galoshes and my pen …
That same day Kolia explained why he spat and crossed himself against the evil eye:
… the rail journey was shaky to Kursk and at one place our train nearly crashed into a goods train, if it hadn’t been for a circle blocking the track. All the passengers were very scared … after tea we went in search of cousin Misha. We asked for him [at the warehouse] and he appeared. A real dandy, quite unrecognizable from his photograph … we answer, ‘don’t you recognize us?’ ‘Yes, judging by what Ivan Loboda tells me, if I’m not mistaken.’ ‘We’re your cousins’, says Aleksandr.4
Two days later, the brothers were installed in the first of many lodgings, ‘Furnished Rooms over the Smyrna Dining Rooms’, two minutes from the Art College and twenty from the university. Moscow landladies disliked students, but the brothers’ charm worked. Their landlady told them, said Kolia: ‘No rows: play, sing, dance, the only thing that frightens me is rows. Of course you’re young men and I have no right to forbid you anything.’
Aleksandr was enrolled, but Kolia was embroiled in misunderstandings that sapped his will power. On 13 August Aleksandr (who had his father’s obsession with accounts) broached the subject of money:
Enrolling in the University cost me 1 rouble. If [Kolia] passes his examination he won’t be able to pay the whole fee: he has to pay 30 silver roubles by 19 August … The flat costs us [each] per month 5.33, board 6.50, bread and tea 1.50, laundry 1, lighting 1.50, total 15 roubles. We can’t live on less … Kolia doesn’t know about this letter. He has gone completely dozy, just crosses himself all the time and touches the icon with his forehead.
Four days later Aleksandr was still complaining: ‘Damn Kolia’s pomade. He’s been carefully greasing his hair and combing it in with both combs, so that I have got my hair terribly greasy.’ Pavel was not interested in his sons’ hair. He planned to get Aleksandr to buy goods wholesale on credit and send them to Taganrog. Aleksandr was set against this and, using cousin Misha as a commercial authority, told his father why:
Firstly, when Loboda finds out, he’ll undercut you in Taganrog … secondly, you can only buy for cash in Moscow …, thirdly, buying on credit costs three times more …, fourthly, Moscow will ask Loboda what sort of person you are, and Loboda will naturally say as suits him: fifthly, Loboda is an expert … sixthly, Loboda is in place and has customers; seventhly, Loboda will squash us with his prices; eighthly, you will inevitably quarrel with him. And now consider Misha’s position … he will lose his reputation and his boss will look askance … Keep struggling with the grocery.
For the first time, the tables had turned. Pavel had lost his authority and his sons were finding independence. Aleksandr could as a silver medallist always find private pupils in Moscow. Acrimony between him and his father poisoned their relations, though Aleksandr sympathized with Pavel as Taganrog’s merchants squeezed him: ‘because of some bastard who is only concerned about his ugly mug you and I have to suffer, the thought makes me spit blood.’
Kolia was paralysed by the financial obstacles: he wanted to move on to Petersburg, where entry to art college was free, but had no money for the fare. Pavel, after repeated pleas, petitioned Liubov Alferaki, the wife of Taganrog’s richest merchant, asking her to pay for Kolia’s transfer to the Petersburg Academy of the Arts:
Give him an education in the arts, which bounty you have bestowed on many … for twelve years my son and I have read and sung in the Palace church when you pronounced your prayers to the Almighty God with great ardour.
The Alferakis did not help. Kolia felt abandoned, and sank in despair at the prospect of joining Misha Chokhov in Gavrilov’s warehouse. Aleksandr was hurt by his parents’ apathy. They offered reproaches, not support. Evgenia suspected him of hating his brother; Pavel ordered him to church. Aleksandr begged them: ‘And for God’s sake I ask you to write more warmly to us, from the heart: daddy, you just give lectures which we have learnt by heart since we were children …’
Evgenia was distressed by Aleksandr’s closing remark: ‘I’ve been to the catholic church. Wonderful music’ ‘Aleksandr, pray properly, you’ve no business going round catholic churches,’ she replied. She sent Aleksandr two roubles and a torrent of complaints for his name day, and begged Aleksandr to apply to the railway millionaire Poliakov for a free ticket, so that she could come and settle Kolia in. She was desperate enough finding money and space in Taganrog, and persuading the two gimnazia to keep Maria, Anton and Vania on, when the fees could not be paid. As soon as her two eldest sons had left, she took on Selivanov’s niece Sasha as a paying guest. Anton was in the country, too ill to write. Evgenia poured her heart out to Aleksandr:
Kolia must be ill, my heart can sense it. We’ve let the annexe to tenants and we are living like sardines in a can, I’m worn out with running from living room to kitchen and I expect the people in the rooms are finding it very tight …
The younger brothers in Taganrog were still full of the joys of their summer holidays: on 16 August 1875 Vania wrote to Aleksandr and Kolia:
It was good, I rode a horse yesterday was Mama’s birthday and I spent the whole day in the shop and the day before was a dinner at uncle Mitrofan’s where our cousins had dinner and there were a lot of priests … I had the first letter from you and took it especially it interested the Kamburovs when I read out that Kolia was crossing himself at every step. I’m well Anton is not very well …
By September 1875 the two brothers were living in conditions that Aleksandr recalled as ‘a cloaca with fish floating up from beneath the floorboards’. Aleksandr wanted to send Kolia home for Christmas alone. ‘I’ve no reason to go to Taganrog, I find it repulsive now.’
Evgenia’s sons had done what she had asked them not to: they had ask
ed a Jew for help. Kolia described his visit to Rubinstein, a member of the distinguished composer’s family, well known for philanthropy to provincial students: ‘I already know half Moscow. I’ve been to see Rubinstein. He is a tiny little yid, about the height of our Misha, he received us rather coolly, he hardly speaks any Russian and so I talked through a Jewish interpreter …’ Kolia wanted private pupils. Rubinstein promised to help. Kolia explained to his mother, at great length, that as a stranger in Moscow he had only expenses and no prospects of earnings. Anton still had Kolia’s paints in Taganrog. ‘I sit alone at home, I’m fed up with sloping around Moscow.’ Finally on 4 September he passed a mathematics exam, was enrolled at the Art College and began to draw. Even though he could now only afford half a roll for breakfast and his shoes let in the rain, Kolia’s mood swung violently from depression to euphoria. Ivan Loboda brought him a violin from Taganrog. Kolia reassured his mother in a tone that must have aroused Anton’s envy:
a life outside the parental home, independent! And in an independent life you have to keep your ears sharp and your eyes open, because you’re dealing not with boys but with mature people … Today I had for dinner: borshch and fried eggs, yesterday I had borshch and chops …
Kolia’s high spirits lasted all autumn. He found pupils among his fellow students for calligraphy and drawing, but he still had to complete his secondary education while studying Art and Architecture: Anton sent him his Ovid and a crib. By now Kolia was known to a circle of students as ‘The Artist’, trawling Moscow’s drinking dens. The trickle of money from Taganrog dried up. While attending university only on Tuesdays, in return for board and lodging for himself and Kolia, Aleksandr worked in a crammer run by two Scandinavians, Brukker and Groening. Kolia’s eccentricities made life intolerable: he worked spasmodically, rarely washed and often wet his bed. In October 1875 Aleksandr complained to Anton:
I’m writing on my bed, half-asleep, for it is past one in the morning. Kolia has been snoring for some time after his constant ‘I can’t spare the time’. The poor boy is wiped out. He’s stunk the whole room out. He has an odd way of sleeping. He covers himself so that his head and back are covered up, but a yard of his legs are uncovered. He’s trouble, he slops about bare-foot in the evening, wears no socks, there’s mud in his boots … his feet are filthy. He went to the baths on Saturday and by Sunday his feet are like an Ethiopian’s … We have floods almost every night and all his rotten stuff is drying in my room. I swear to you by God that I’ll lose my job because of his arsehole … Mama is afraid I’m treating him badly, but she’s the one, because she doesn’t bother to do anything about acquiring an overcoat for him, while Papa tries for miracles and writes to tell us to borrow money …
Although his pupils were charged 700 roubles a year, Brukker had stopped feeding, let alone paying, his student-teacher. In a freezing November the school was no longer heated, the boys fell ill and their parents retrieved them. Groening and Aleksandr fled. Despite a libellous letter from Brukker’s wife, a Prince Vorontsov paid Aleksandr board and lodging to teach his sons for a few months. Kolia plunged into destitution, and complained to his parents:
Aleksandr has left and I wandered all day around town looking for somewhere to live and came back hungry at night, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and when I got back I asked for food and they told me there wasn’t any. Aleksandr’s at Vorontsov’s, I’m sitting in a little room and there’s revolution in the building, they’re saying Aleksandr has poached all the pupils that the parents have removed because of the bad state of things. In the next room Brukker is raging and I’m sitting and waiting for him to say, ‘Clear out.’
Ten roubles from Loboda got Kolia lodgings in December, but he was desperate: ‘I shall be spending the night in 30 degrees of frost by Sukharevka tower and I shall die of starvation if nobody lends me anything …’ The noose tightened in Taganrog. Evgenia told Aleksandr that she could not cope, let alone find the fare to come and comfort her sons:
Antosha and Vania have spent all week at home, the school is demanding payment and we have no money. Yesterday, 9 October, Pavel went and asked the headmaster to let Vania off, but Antosha is still at home, in all 42 roubles have to be paid for him and Masha. Now tell me not to moan. I’m so weak with worry that I can hardly walk, if I had my health I might earn some money, but I can’t, yesterday I spent all day in bed … I asked Selivanov for 30 roubles to pay back at 10 roubles a year. He wouldn’t … what are we to do with Kolia, he mustn’t drink tea before bedtime. Please see to his underwear, don’t let him drop it about and let it rot. I’m even crying because we haven’t sent you any money…. Daddy isn’t sending you money, but not because he’s mean, God sees that he has nothing. This month we have to pay 50 roubles interest on the house to the bank … Vania’s been sent back from school. Diakonov just threw him out. Pokrovsky spoke up for us, but Diakonov wouldn’t hear of it …
December 1875 in Taganrog was severe: Evgenia had frostbite on both hands. She had thanked Ivan Loboda for keeping an eye on her sons and Loboda lent her enough money for Kolia to come home for Christmas and the New Year. So severe were the snows, however, that the railway from Taganrog was blocked. Kolia had to leave the train south at a halt by a Scythian barrow, Matveev Kurgan: on 23 December Anton was sent by sledge with far coats to carry him back, hungry and ill, over the last forty miles. Kolia stayed with his family until February, when the lines were kept clear, and he could beg his fare back to Moscow from a family friend.
Kolia was busy in Taganrog contacting old flames. He wrote in dog-French, German and Russian reassuring Aleksandr that Maria Faist, his fiancée, loved him:
Quand je disais que tu are putting on weight elle disait toujours: Good boy! … I don’t know how I shall leave here; Vater refuses to send any money. I told him if I’m not sent off by the 15th I’ll steal it and go. Vater envoyé pour moi de tabac, deja 2 fois Vania is such a little bastard that nobody gets any peace.5
Anton too reported to Aleksandr on Maria Faist – in dog-German. On 3 March 1876 he wrote his first surviving letter:
Ich war gestern im Hause Alferakis auf einen Konzert, und sah dort deine Marie Faist und ihre Schwester Luise. Ich habe eine discovery gemacht: Luise is jealous of dich and Marie und the other way round. Sie fragten mich von dir separately, secretly. But was ist das? Du bist ein lady’s man …
Evgenia and Pavel were busy salvaging every penny owed to them. Selivanov’s niece Sasha owed rent, but Selivanov had left for warmer premises and taken her with him. Evgenia could not afford a rouble a day to heat the house for her remaining tenants: they piled into the kitchen for warmth. Somehow in these conditions Anton gained ‘5’s for Religious Knowledge and German. When Kolia left, his younger brothers and sister cried ‘Take us too!’, but it was not the children who were off to Moscow. At Easter, early in April 1876, a family council was held: Egor came from Krepkaia, leaving the blind Efrosinia. He read his grandsons’ letters from Moscow and agreed that Pavel had to seek his fortune there. Loboda saw no way out: bills of exchange were falling due. In Russia debtors’ prisons existed until 1879 and, despite Pavel’s status as police alderman, he risked confinement in the ‘pit’. Evgenia told her father-in-law that there wasn’t even money for the fare to Moscow. To her amazement, she told Aleksandr, ‘he pitied us and gave money … I don’t know how to thank him for all his benefactions, he’s old and works hard for all his children, for God’s sake write to him and thank him, he’s already given Kolia 10 roubles.’ Egor was dismayed by his sons. In Kaluga Mikhail had died; in Taganrog Mitrofan was just keeping his head above water; Pavel was about to flee in disgrace.
Plans were made to abandon ship. Loboda would not buy the stock. The family hid their unsold wares in the stable. Evgenia hovered between despair and wild hope. She wrote to Aleksandr and Kolia on 8 April: ‘Anyone who meets me will be amazed, I’ve aged all at once, could you give Papa any more, or might we find a little shop in Moscow to rent …’6
Evgenia sc
raped together 11 roubles for Kolia’s fees at College and handed the money, with Easter eggs and cake, to a Taganrog merchant leaving for Moscow. She packed Pavel’s bags. The market stall was locked up and the keys entrusted to Ivan Loboda’s younger brother, Onufri. The deadline for Pavel’s payment of 500 roubles to the Mutual Credit Society passed. The guarantor, a merchant called Kostenko, paid the 500 roubles and counter-sued Pavel. The builder, Mironov, was suing for the 1000 roubles owed to him.
On 23 April 1876, before dawn, Pavel left Taganrog by cart, so as to evade his creditors’ spies at the railway station. He went to the first country halt in the open steppe where the Moscow-bound train would stop. At 2.00 p.m. on 25 April he was in Moscow. In Taganrog Anton took over his father’s battle for survival.
Anton Chekhov Page 6
