Anton Chekhov

by Donald Rayfield

  A season of illness followed, but Olga’s physical vitality and Anton’s discretion pulled them through. Their distress lay in suspecting that, despite Ott’s airy assurance that Olga could conceive ‘triplets right away’, Olga’s fertility must be lowered, if she now had a ruptured Fallopian tube and a damaged ovary. Anton had little time to beget a child.

  Anton, depressed by Olga’s and his own ills, grew restless and decided that Yalta was too far from Moscow and Autka was too hilly for walking. Two properties nearby had burnt down because the fire brigade had no water. He wanted Masha to inspect property in Sevastopol instead. By 24 April he was alone with Olga. Masha had returned to Moscow to examine her pupils, to have an abscess treated by a lady doctor, to flirt (openly) with Stanislavsky and (secretly) with Bunin, and to celebrate Lika’s wedding. From Moscow she boisterously berated Olga: ‘Still full of fat, what are you raging about, you lay-about of a sister-in-law? Get up and earn some money for your husband and his crippled sister.’ She did not joke with Misha: ‘Olga behaves rather oddly towards me, so does Antosha and I am suffering.’ By mid May Olga seemed stronger than her husband. They waited to hand over the household to Masha. On 24 May Anton and Olga left for Moscow, the second and last time they would take this journey together. In Moscow Dr Varnek, an obstetrician, found Olga’s ovaries inflamed. He put her to bed for three weeks, prescribing summer at a Bohemian spa, Franzensbad, and rest for a year. Olga howled in distress. Anton would not go to Franzensbad.10 His diagnosis was peritonitis: she should convalesce for two years, and eat only cream.

  In Moscow Olga’s abdominal pains grew worse. Anton was too ill to nurse her. Vishnevsky, a tireless cavaliere servente, came to the rescue. At midnight on 1 June 1902 he drove round Moscow to find a doctor who had not yet left for a weekend in the country. In the morning he found one. Olga was now skeletal; she was given morphine. When she could be moved, she would be taken to the gynæcologist Maxim Strauch’s clinic. On 6 June 1902 Olga told Masha:

  All the Yalta suffering is nothing compared to one night in Moscow. I raved with pain, I tore my hair and if I could have, I’d have done myself in. I roared all night in an alien voice. The doctor says no man has any concept of this pain … Everyone is lighting a candle in church for me.

  Vishnevsky exhausted himself nursing both Chekhovs. Nemirovich-Danchenko came every day and stayed from noon till six in the evening. Stanislavsky, meanwhile, took practical action. He opened negotiations with Olga’s rival, in love and in the theatre. After visiting Olga, he wrote to his wife: ‘Komissarzhevskaia will lead the conversation around to transfer to our theatre. That wouldn’t be bad! Especially now that there is little hope of Knipper for next season … I’m very sorry for her and Chekhov.’11

  In Olga’s absence, Lika and her new husband, staying in Yalta at a villa where Anton had once rented rooms, were visiting Masha. Evgenia and the servants went on a three-day pilgrimage to a monastery. Anton hated the vigil in Moscow and dreamt of sailing down the Volga, as his brother Aleksandr was doing. Olga made a superhuman effort to rally. Maxim Strauch decided that she could go straight to Franzensbad, but she lapsed again with terrible nausea. Dr Strauch brought a Dr Taube to see her. He, like Anton, diagnosed peritonitis, an often fatal inflammation of the whole belly. Olga rallied again. Anton took to Taube; ‘a popular and very sensible German,’ he told Nemirovich-Danchenko. After four days Anton felt that Olga might be able to avoid a second operation, but he still refused to contact Olga’s mother so as ‘not to start a flood of tears’.

  As she improved, Anton began to go out. He met Vera Komissarzhevskaia, with her lover and manager Karpov. He watched a boxing match. He left town to fish. One old flame – Olga Kundasova – was bold enough to sit for hours with Chekhov’s wife (who asked her to leave). Feeling affection for both Anton and for Suvorin, Kundasova strove to keep their friendship alive. As Anton’s physical health declined, her mental health improved. For all Kundasova’s radicalism, she was beholden to Suvorin, as a man who supported her and was not afraid of sparring with her, and she reported to him on Anton’s health. She appealed to Anton to heal the rift. Suvorin longed to see Anton. He had told Konstantin Nabokov, uncle to the future novelist, ‘There are only two interesting younger men in the whole of Russia, Chekhov and Orlenev [an actor], and I have lost both of them.’12 On 11 June 1902 Kundasova wrote to Anton from Petersburg:

  To me Aleksei looked none too good and very irritable psychologically. As you wished, there was no discussion of you except for the matter of your health. I beg you with all my heart, write him a few words, perhaps he has not long to live and, clearly, your silence weighs heavily on him. Remember how wretched it is to love somebody and have no response.13

  Kundasova pumped Olga for information, and told Suvorin that Anton was in no state to go to Petersburg: Suvorin would have to come to the Crimea in August.

  On 14 June Anton slipped the leash. He had decided, after Easter, ‘to be a hermit’ and mull over a play for their Theatre. Olga could sit up, take chicken soup, and even walk, though she was still too swollen to put on her corset. The selfless Vishnevsky would watch over her and nurse her. Anton told Nemirovich-Danchenko: ‘The main thing is that I may leave, and tomorrow, the 17th I set off with Savva Morozov for Perm [in the Urals]. I’ll be home by 5 July.’ The day Anton left, Olga’s mother came to take his place with the patient.

  Notes

  1 He distrusted radicals, too, after placing in the Yavuzlar sanatorium a ‘medical student’ called Grinevich, who had died of a twisted gut before the inmates could lynch him as a police spy.

  2 Cut from Perepiska, 1934; see OR, 331 76 20: Olga’s letters to Anton, 1–15 Mar. 1902: 8 Mar.

  3 See OR, 331 105 4: Masha’s letters to Olga, 1902.

  4 See OR, 331 82 62: Misha’s letters to Masha, 1902: 30 Mar. 1902.

  5 In contrast, Lika Mizinova visited Misha’s family and they had a ‘most amusing excellent evening’. Misha ended this letter by asking Masha to extract 5 or 6000 roubles from Anton to build a dacha, where Anton could spend the summer fishing and Misha eventually retire.

  6 Cut from Perepiska, 1934; see OR, 331 76 21: Olga’s letters to Anton, 16–31 Mar. 1902: 31 Mar.

  7 Cut from Perepiska, 1934; see OR, 331 76 22: Olga’s letters to Anton, Apr. 1902: 4 Apr.

  8 See OR, 331 77 16: Olga’s letters to Masha, 1902: 6 Apr. 1902.

  9 For this tentative diagnosis I am grateful to Dr Pavel Houris of Corfu and Sister Jane Kondou.

  10 Franzensbad was the Suvorins’ favourite watering hole.

  11 See PSSP, 10, 522.

  12 See PSSP, 11, 361.

  13 See OR, 331 48 79a: Olga Kundasova’s letters to Anton 1892–1904.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  Liubimovka

  June–September 1902

  ACCOMPANIED BY Savva Morozov and two Germans, and equipped, despite the heat, with a new overcoat and Swedish padded jacket, Anton retraced his honeymoon route of a year before. This time, however, he sailed past ‘Drunken Grove’ in the dark and headed northeast up the Kama to Perm, to the country of Three Sisters. Boats and trains slowly took Anton and his party to the Urals where Morozov owned an estate and a chemical plant. Morozov may have been one of Russia’s ‘Rockefellers’, subsidizing the arts and revolutionaries such as Gorky, but his workers lived in squalor with a drunken paramedic and an empty pharmacy to treat them. On discovering conditions at the plant, Anton made forcible protests, to which Morozov responded magnificently: the working day was cut from twelve to eight hours. Morozov then abandoned Anton and toured his lands. Anton wandered in the sultry heat ‘tormented by having nothing to do, by isolation and his cough’, noted a student engineer at the plant.1 It was all, Anton told Nemirovich-Danchenko, ‘too grey and depressing to write a play about.’ On 28 June 1902, seen off by the workers, whose school was now named after him, Anton took the train back to Moscow.

  The object of Anton’s trip had been not to discover new horizons so much as to escape
from a tedious bedside. Nevertheless, he and Olga had exchanged telegrams and letters daily. ‘I’m not worried about you, since I know my little dog is well,’ Anton wrote on his first day away. He now called her ‘stick’ as well as ‘dog’. She colluded with him, declaring herself in the hands of decent doctors. To others Olga revealed her nausea, boredom and despair. She was allowed only to read and play patience, forbidden to start guitar lessons. ‘How foul, grey and boring everything is,’ was her lament to Masha. Her hair was falling out and her intestines needed enemas of olive oil. She was ‘indifferent to everything or morbidly irritable’. She told her mother-in-law: ‘I sit like a sad widow, I mostly lie down … If Vishnevsky comes, we sit and read in silence … I am a complete cripple. I keep thinking I shall never get better. And what use am I without health?’2

  On 2 July Anton returned to Moscow and the sun shone. The Stanislavskys were themselves off to Franzensbad and invited Anton and Olga to stay in their country house at Liubimovka during their absence. The house stood on the river Kliazma, northeast of Moscow, surrounded by forests and meadows. Here Stanislavsky’s servants Egor and Duniasha attended them. Olga lay and later swam and rowed. Anton fished and handed each catch over to Egor to be cooked. Visitors were turned away, and church bells were muted. Olga lived downstairs, Anton and Vishnevsky upstairs, all ‘sleeping like bishops’. Dr Strauch checked on his patient. The neighbours, the Smirnovs, were considerate. Their two teenage daughters courted Anton. So did their eccentric English governess, Lily Glassby, who spoke pigeon Russian. Olga was too taken aback to interfere as Lily fed Anton ice cream, addressed him in the intimate form, and wrote him affectionate notes: ‘Christ be with you, brother Antony, I love you.’3

  Anton wrote almost no letters, and did no work on the play which the theatre was waiting for: he was absorbing material. Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky invested their hope for the following season in Gorky’s Lower Depths. Anton read the proofs and told Gorky he had ‘almost hopped with pleasure’ at the play. Confident that Gorky would fill the Moscow Arts Theatre for the autumn, he could take his time germinating his new comedy. Liubimovka’s household and suburban trains imbue the setting for The Cherry Orchard. Anton encouraged Egor’s ambition to be literate and independent, offering him Vania’s services as a teacher. Egor’s clumsiness and precious language were absorbed into the character of Epikhodov, while Lily Glassby’s pathos infuses Charlotta. Duniasha gave her name to the fictional servant.

  The river fish, mushrooms and fresh milk of Liubimovka delighted Anton. He told Masha that it was paradise after Yalta: he longed to own a dacha near Moscow. By August Olga was out of danger. Strauch said she could start rehearsals in two weeks. Even in paradise, however, Anton was restless. He had hidden two hæmorrhages from Olga, wanted to escape scrutiny and decided to visit Yalta alone. The theatre and Dr Strauch, he knew, would forbid Olga to risk a rough railway ride. She felt deserted, though the Stanislavskys returned home just as Anton left, and Anton implied that he would soon be back. Although she put a brave face on Anton’s departure from Liubimovka, Olga was very angry.

  Left in Yalta to cope alone with a drought-stricken garden, Masha had not had a happy summer. Her letters to Olga also hint at an unhappy love affair with Bunin. Bunin, between leaving his first wife and finding his second, had a succession of affairs, abroad and in Russia. Masha wrote to him: ‘Dear Bouquichon, I was very sad when you left … Of course it’d be nice to be one woman in ten, but nicer still to be the only one, to combine the Yakut girl, the Temir girl, the Sinhalese girl. etc …’4 Anton’s arrival would have raised Masha’s spirits, had it not coincided with a letter from Olga so hurtful that Masha destroyed it – too late, for Anton had casually read it. Olga sensed a plot: she accused Masha and Evgenia of luring Anton from her when they knew she was confined to bed. Masha replied in distress:

  For the first time in our lives mother and I have been called cruel for, as you put it, expecting Anton all the time. Even though we took such loving care of you when you were ill in Yalta and in Moscow!! What are we to do – I can’t rub myself off the face of the earth. I’ll tell you frankly that it is quite enough for me just to hear about my brother that he is happy and healthy and occasionally to see him.5

  Olga could not bear brother and sister to be in concert. She told Masha:

  Why entangle Anton in our relationship? … I was hurt because your stubborn waiting seemed to imply that you didn’t want Anton to be in the Moscow dust fussing around me, his sick wife … If you’d trusted me as you used to and tried to understand me just a bit, you’d never have shown that letter to Anton … You’re chasing me out of your heart as hard as you can … This letter at least you won’t show him, I beg you.6

  To Anton she wrote on 28 August 1902:

  Why didn’t you tell me straight out that you were going for good? … How it hurts me that you treat me like a stranger or a doll that mustn’t be disturbed. You are going to hate my letters. But I cannot be silent. You and I have to face a long separation. I’d have understood if you’d spent September in Liubimovka. Our life just doesn’t make sense any more. If only I knew you needed me, and not just as an enjoyable woman … How horrible, Anton, if everything I write should arouse no more than a smile, or perhaps you show this letter to Masha as she did [mine to you].7

  Olga attacked Anton for misleading her into expecting him back at Liubimovka. Anton’s replies are a disconcerting mix of resentment, fair-mindedness and manipulation.

  I can’t think why you’re angry with me, I wouldn’t have left but for business and hæmhorrhages … I won’t write a play this year, I don’t feel like it … Masha did not show me your letter, I found it on mother’s desk and realized why Masha was upset. It was a horrible rude letter, and above all, unfair … naturally I understood your mood. But you must not, must not do that, darling, you must fear unfairness … Don’t tell Masha I have read your letter to her. Or, anyway, do as you like. Your letters chill me … Don’t let’s separate so early before we’ve had a proper life, before you give birth to a boy or girl for me. And when you do, then you can act as you wish.

  Only in September 1902 did Olga, Anton and Masha declare a truce. Anton forced himself to make extravagant protestations of affection to Olga:

  I take my little dog by the tail, swing her round several times and then stroke and caress her … I do a salto mortale on your bed, stand on my head, grab you, turn over several times and throw you to the ceiling before catching you and kissing you.

  The Stanislavskys had returned, cursing Europe. Liubimovka came to life. They took Olga on expeditions to buy honey, to fish and to explore Moscow’s dosshouses before starting work on Gorky’s Lower Depths.

  Moscow injected Olga with new spirit. Franz Schechtel’s Art Nouveau conversion gave the Moscow Arts Theatre a permanent home: a large theatre with fine dressing rooms and electricity. Olga could go to the baths. She enjoyed an uninhibited evening with her mother and uncles – ‘Bohème in full swing … I love the spirit of our house … we all sincerely love each other.’ After a vigil by his sister’s deathbed, Nemirovich-Danchenko was back: Olga talked to him at length. She was, on Dr Strauch’s advice, looking for a new apartment. She felt secure by September and wrote, in her sole response to Anton’s chilling offer of her freedom: ‘I shall present you with a good son for next year. You write that if we have a child I can do as I like.’ Olga tried to put her conflicts with Masha in a good light: ‘I am not a beast, and Masha is not an underdog. She is stronger than me. I just seem stronger because I talk loudly and boil over.’ A long chat with Masha, Anton thought, got rid of festering ‘little splinters’, but relations between Anton and Olga were cool. Anton forgot her thirty-fourth birthday on 9 September, though he had asked for the date months before. She nagged him to answer his translators’ queries. Olga’s and Anton’s letters exchange medical details: her enemas and his creosote.

  In Yalta Anton’s health was so bad that he forbade Altshuller to examine hi
m. On 4 September Masha left Yalta to join her sister-in-law and resume teaching in Moscow. Coughing uncontrollably and unable to eat what the new cook, Polia, prepared, Anton was buoyed up only when the actor-manager Orlenev, a likeable rogue, engineered a visit from Suvorin. The day Masha left, Suvorin and Orlenev came to lunch and stayed. Suvorin’s diary is terse: ‘I spent two days there, almost all the time with Chekhov, in his house.’ Of this encounter Anton revealed only that Suvorin ‘talked about all sorts of things, and much that was new and interesting.’

  Anton’s interest in the outside world revived. He belatedly resigned from the Academy over Gorky’s disqualification.8 He took up his share in the theatre. He lamented Zola’s mysterious death from carbon monoxide poisoning, possibly murder. He wanted to travel. Inspired by Suvorin, cautioned by Altshuller, he decided to visit Moscow when the first frosts dried the air, then winter in Italy. Anton warned Olga that Altshuller had allowed him only a few days in Moscow on his way abroad – which augured badly for begetting a child. Masha assured him that Olga was ‘quite healthy and very cheerful, she can climb to the third floor.’ Dr Strauch came to the Crimea and called, formally dressed, on Anton. He pronounced Olga cured. Anton asked her: