More dangerous was his double life as struggling doctor and comic writer. Moscow was telling on his health. There was an exhausting winter when he covered the lengthy and sensational trial of a corrupt banker. In April 1886 he writes to Leykin, who has complained that he is late with his “copy” and getting lazy: “I am ill. Spitting of blood and weakness …”
The next year the family was alarmed. There was tuberculosis on his mother’s side of the family. He was to deny for years that he was tubercular, but it is a matter of common observation that consumptives, whether they are evading the knowledge of their disease or not, tend to conceal their fears by doubling the fervor of their imagination and especially their feverish yet detached appetite for living, seeing, feeling and (most noticeable in Chekhov) their denial of what is burning them.
Even though Chekhov pretended, or perhaps thought, that he had merely burst a blood vessel or had trouble with his spleen, it was clear that he needed to get away from his racketing life in Moscow and that he needed a long holiday in the country. Fortunately his brother Ivan had been appointed headmaster of a small school in Voskresensk, about thirty miles from the city. There he was acquainted with the Kiselev family, who had a large estate in the village of Bab-kino, now Istra. There was a hospital where Anton could work. The Kiselevs were a rich, hospitable and cultivated couple. The husband was the nephew of an ambassador, the wife was the daughter of the director of the Imperial Theater in Moscow. They loved the company of musicians, artists and writers. Mariya Kiseleva herself was a talented writer of children’s stories. There was a vacant “cottage” with large rooms which they willingly furnished and rented to the Chekhov family to stay through the spring and summer. For the first time in his life Anton was living on a landowner’s estate. The gardens of the big house were designed in “the English style.” There were hothouses. The grounds ran down to a fine river, noted for its excellent fishing, and one looked across to a splendid forest. In the cottage Chekhov had a room to himself where he could write from seven in the morning for three hours. Hearing he was a doctor, the local peasants streamed to his door for treatment. In the afternoons he went fishing with Mariya Kiseleva; in the evenings there were delightful parties at her mansion when they played charades and put on impromptu plays or listened to music. Izaak Levitan, a rising painter, was there, a man who loved practical jokes and disguises. He was recovering from one of his paranoid manias. He and Chekhov liked getting up “comic court trials.” One day Anton dressed up as a judge and tried Levitan for “evading military service, keeping an illegal distillery and running a pawnshop.” Chekhov listened to the bickerings of the Kiselev children at the card table and was soon making up stories about them and also about an unfortunate dog called Kashtanka, a memory of one of the wretched dogs who had run wild in Taganrog. These stories were despised by the critics, but one notices the excellent recording of children’s natures and talk and an imaginative power close to Kipling’s in Chekhov’s love of animals and birds. As a boy he had passed many hours in the bird market at Taganrog. The mystery of the seasonal migrations of birds excited his wonder all his life. Unlike Levitan, who was a sportsman, Chekhov always refused to shoot a bird.
In the next three years the Chekhov family spent their summers in this paradise. Anton became a close friend of the local doctor and indeed was put in charge of a small hospital when the doctor was away.
There is no doubt that Babkino transformed Chekhov’s writing and that his love of the sounds and sights of the country enlarged his powers. Babkino was to become the source and scene of The Cherry Orchard years later, and we notice too how quickly he became aware that the extravagant Kiselevs were heading for financial disaster. Mariya Kise-leva’s father was reckless in his theatrical enterprises.
For Chekhov the first fruits of Babkino were two remarkable stories, which were noticed at once in Petersburg. Both recall the manner of Turgenev’s Sportsman’s Sketches, his simple yet poetic observation of country life. The first is The Burbot (The Fish in Constance Garnett’s translation), a plain country comedy. Peasants working in the fields on a hot day drop tools and slink off to the river to catch a large fish which is hiding under water among the roots of a tree. One of the men is a hunchback and some are naked and up to their necks in water while the rest shout advice: “Pull him out by the gills, pull him out! … Poke him with your finger—you pig’s face! … Pull it by the lip.” The passion and confusion of country sport has seized the peasants. One fellow is nipped by the fish. The others are slapping gnats off their necks. The confusion increases. All work is forgotten. They have deserted the cattle, who run into the river to drink and make things worse. Presendy the master of the estate comes down to find out what is going on. The beauty of it is that the master is dressed in his Persian dressing gown, carrying a newspaper (one of Chekhov’s incidental touches that tell us much about the landowner’s idle life). He calls up the coachman to help, but that fails. So, with dignity, the master gets his clothes off and jumps naked into the pool to show the yokels he knows the trick. Skillfully he pulls the fish out at once. It is an enormous fish, a ten-pounder. He displays it on the flat of his hand. Then, suddenly, the fish jumps into the air and dives back into the stream for good. That is all, but the tale of the master’s comeuppance will be told and improved upon for years. It will become a local legend: Chekhov has caught the confusion on a memorable hot day forever.
The other story of the new Chekhov is The Huntsman. This is more subtle in its psychological and social observation. Yegor is a handsome peasant loner, a privileged gamekeeper, vain of his looks and his instinctive shooting skills. He has been raised to the status of the indispensable steward at the big house: boasts that he eats “landowner’s food.” We see him “ambling along the road” by the woods. Presendy the young peasant wife whom he has deserted and rarely troubles to visit timidly calls out to him. She sees he has shot a grouse. She knows he will not come to the village to see her. Why? Is it true that he has taken up with another girl? He has always despised women and their ties. He is a “wild man.”
“You could have called in just once,” she says.
“What for?” he asks. His freedom cannot be “taken.” She says she has “worn her eyes out” waiting for him. She has not seen him for a year and even then he had been drunk and had beaten her.
“Waiting—what for?” he says.
She replies, “Not to do anything, of course, but it is your household, after all…. Just to see how everything is…. You are the head.”
She sits down at a distance, talking to him. They have been married for twelve years. “In church,” she says. “Not freely,” he says. He tells her she’s no more than a peasant working in the fields, living in dirt, that she wears bast shoes and her back is bent. And he stands by his superiority, his fame as a huntsman. He’s in the money. He is no longer a peasant. He’s free. If they were to take his gun away he’d easily take to horse dealing. “Once that free spirit’s got into a man there’s no winkling it out,” he says. He does not admit or deny that he has built a hut for another girl. He gives his wife a ruble and goes off. The end of the story? No. What is the last sight of a loved man like? Once more Chekhov is the collector of moments “that tell,” as if continuing human life is made of them:
Pale and still, she stands there like a statue, and her eyes devour every stride he takes. But now the red of his shirt merges with the dark of his trousers, his strides become invisible, his dog cannot be distinguished from his boots. Only his little cap can be seen then…. Suddenly Yegor turns off sharply … into the scrub and his cap disappears among the green. “Goodbye, Yegor Vlasych!” whispers Pelageya and rises on tiptoe to try and catch a last glimpse of his little white cap.