Anton Chekhov by Donald Rayfield

Author:Donald Rayfield [Donald Rayfield]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571309290
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2013-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

FORTY-FIVE

The Birth of Christina

September–November 1894

ANTON’S SECOND TOUR of Europe with Suvorin was secret. His family was led to believe he was returning after a short recuperation in Feodosia, but Anton was as naïve as Potapenko in hiding his movements. When he and Suvorin reached Odessa on 13 September and left the next day for Vienna, the newspapers proclaimed their arrival and departure. Odessa’s actors lamented that they would be staging Ivanov without the author. The Odessa authorities refused Anton a foreign passport. Suvorin had to throw his full weight at General Zelenoi, Odessa’s mayor: in the night Zelenoi sent two men to break open the passport office and bring Chekhov’s documents. From Odessa Anton sent consolations to Georgi and his family; he also warned Masha not to expect him home until October (November, he told Mikhail Psalti at The Taganrog Herald) and told her how to save asparagus and tulips from autumn frosts. She was to bring a warm hat to the station when he returned.

The two men reached Vienna on 18/30 September. Lika meanwhile, seven months pregnant, languished in Switzerland. She had moved from a guest house in Lucerne, where English tourists stared at her, into lodgings at Veytaux, on Lake Geneva. With Anton’s photographs around her room, lonely and afraid, Lika pretended to be a married woman of frail health in an interesting condition. To Granny she wrote that, despite a chill, she was in paradise. She went to the post office daily. In Vienna Anton bought an inkwell and wrote to Paris:

You obstinately refuse to answer my letters, dear Lika, but I am still annoying and pestering you with my letters … I remember Potapenko telling me you and Varia Eberle would be in Switzerland. If so, write to me where in Switzerland I might find you … I beg you, don’t tell anyone in Russia that I am abroad. I left secretly, like a thief, and Masha thinks I am in Feodosia. If they find out I’m abroad, they will be hurt, for they have long been fed up with my frequent journeys.

I’m not very well. I have an almost continuous cough. I seem to have lost my health as I lost you.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.