A noise pierced the quiet air and echoed across the steppe. Something far off banged threateningly, hit against rock and carried across the steppe with an echoing 'Takh! Takh! Takh! Takh!' When the sound died away, the old man looked questioningly at the impassive Panteley, who was standing not moving a muscle.
'That was a bucket breaking loose in the mines,' said the young man.58
Recalling that line in The Cherry Orchard, completed less than a year before he died, was Chekhov's subtle and discreet way of alluding to his own life, while also paying homage to the austere landscape which had inspired his first major work of literature and some of his finest, most poetic writing. No wonder the stage directions indicate that the sound is distant, 'as if it had come from the sky', and 'dying away, sad'.
Chapter 3 MOSCOW
I
Nomads .n the City
As soon as t finish school, I shaU fly to Moscow on wings, 1 like it very much!
Letter to Mikhail Chekhov, 4 November 1877
It was often a shock for the denizens of St Petersburg to leave behind its stately architecture and rectilinear avenues and arrive in Moscow. After the calm order, of a geometrically planned city with elegantly proportioned buildings and streets of enormous width came chaos - a mass of cobble-stoned, meandering roads on which crowded together a haphazard collection of stuccoed mansions, onion-domed churches, and tiny wooden houses with iron roofs, in a riot of red, green, yellow, white and gold. Chekhov was probably also shocked by Moscow's irregularity when he made his first visit in 1877 at the age of seventeen: Taganrog, after all, a town of the same vintage as St Petersburg, was also designed according to a grid system. Because of the large number of wooden houses, usually wi'h cows grazing in their grassy backyards, Moscow still had the feel of a country town in the late 1870s, and people from St Petersburg liked to look down on Russia's patriarchal second city as a 'big village'. Some of the capital's more snobbish residents did their best to avoid having to visit Moscow altogether, preferring to mingle with soldiers and uniformed government officials on the streets of Petersburg rather than merchants and muzhiks in bast shoes in Moscow. Chekhov, on the other hand, came from the completely opposite direction. He had barely been anywhere apart from the steppe, and Moscow seemed mesmerizing. To Muscovites, he would have seemed very provincial, his diction immediately betraying his origins. The Chekhovs all spoke with a distinct southern intonation and Anton was to retain the soft 'g' for the rest of his life, pronouncing Taganrog as 'Takhanrokh', as the locals still do.1
Chekhov's family had been in Moscow since the previous year, when Pavel Egorovich's failed business had forced them to leave Taganrog. Anton's two older brothers were then already students there: Alexander studying mathematics and science at the university, Nikolai studying painting at Moscow's main art school. Perhaps in rebellion at their repressive, harsh childhood, they were both leading dissolute lives. His brother Ivan, who had remained at school n Taganrog with him, was dispatched to Moscow to start teacher train, ng in June 1877, leaving Anton the sole family member remaining in Taganrog. He arrived in Moscow for the first time that Easter, laden down with family possessions that his father had asked him to bring:
Mamasha wants you to try and make sure you bring the brass coffee pot and the two brass bowls ... and bring the mirror, because we don't have one, all we can do is look at the moon. "You won't be able to bring the icon case, I don't suppose, because it weighs nearly forty pounds, so don't bring that, and the glass would break anyway, but don't spend money on having it sent... Bring the 'con of St Nicholas, the book with the Regulations for Communion, the big Bible (Mamasha is asking for it), the padlocks, if they are there, pen-knives and Kolya's school coat... 1 pound of olives, 1 pound of halva, 1 pound of ship's biscuits .. .2
Chekhov had come to Moscow on a one-way ticket, and family finances at that stage were so parlous that it took a while to raise the money to buy his return fare to Taganrog. This resulted in him turning up with a spurious sick note to explain his absence at the beginning of the new school term. He had enjoyed his visit to Moscow having been caken to the theatre and shown round the Kremlin and all the other main tourist attractions by his brothers. But much as he had a good time, Chekhov was clearly very shaken by his mother's frailty. 'Please be so kind as to continue offering comfort and support to my mother, who is physically and mentally in a very poor state,' he wrote to his cousin soon after his return. 'She regards you not just as a nephew, but as something much more. My mother's character is highly susceptible to the strong and positive influence wh'ch comes from moral support of any kind from a third party. Well, that is a pretty silly request, isn't it? But it is one you will understand, especially as I speak of "moral", that is to say spiritual, support To us, nothing ;n this malicious world is more dear than our mother, and therefore you would exceedingly oblige your humble servant by taking care of h s half-dead mother.'3 The effusive language of this letter (one of the very earliest to have survived) is typical of Chekhov's early epistolary style, and is matched by a suitably extravagant calligraphy full of flourishes and curls. Both the style and the calligraphy were to be drastically pared down as he grew older.
Another of the few surviving early letters Chekhov wrote at this time shows the seventeen-year-old's charming naivety. 'Not long ago I went to the Taganrog theatre and compared it with your Moscow theatres,' he wrote to Mikhail that November. 'There is a big difference! And there is a big difference between Moscow and Taganrog.'4 Meanwhile, Chekhov continued to receive desperate letters from his out-of-work father. Even though he was only just about managing to keep his head above water himself by working as a tutor, he was expected to send money to his family in Moscow. 'We don't have a kopeck, please send us at least three roubles,' wrote Pavel Egorovich in one letter; 'we've nothing to pawn. I am dying of grief.. . even if you have to borrow, send us money, or sell something... all hope is on you.'5 It was a terrible burden for a teenager to have to assume responsibility for the welfare of his parents. But Pavel Egorovich also made it clear how much he and his wife appreciated their son's help:
Where there is money, there is honour, respect, love, friendship and all good things, but where there is none - oh, that makes things tough! The people around you become quite different. .. Antosha! Remember this when you grow older, be a benefactor to all who ask your help, never turn your back on the poor. Your parents are an example. How we now appreciate every donation, every gift, sent from God through good people.6
The very fact that these early letters have been preserved, surviving endless moves in the 1870s and 1880s says a great deal about how much Chekhov took his father's letters to heart.
Chekhov moved permanently to Moscow two years later, a year after his Aunt Fenichka had moved north to join the family. Passing his final exams at the gymnasium made him eligible to become a student at Moscow University, and in September 1879 he was admitted to the medical faculty. His destitute parents had been counting on his arrival, sending him regular letters in which they reminded him of the importance of keeping on the straight and narrow and working hard until he graduated. 'When you finish your university course and are given a job, you can do what you like,' wrote Pavel Egorovich on 1 January 1879, 'but it is bad and harmful for young people to go out on the town all night without sleep and then sleep until one o'clock the next day; that means studying is wasted, etc. It is not a rare occurrence in Moscow, but an actual fact, Antosha!'7 This was precisely the lifestyle favoured by Alexander and Nikolai, and Anton was increasingly looked upon as the family's salvation. 'Beloved son Antosha,' wrote his mother a month later, 'we are in great need now ... If you could come as soon as you can.'8 'I've had an awful time waiting for letters from you,' she wrote in June; 'I miss you very much.' Occas;onally M'sha chipped in to let his elder brother know about his latest exam results or the aquarium he had set up (only the goldfish were too expensive, he lamented), but most of the letters from Moscow exhorted Chekhov to trust and obey his Papasha and Mamasha, his true friends, rather than follow his own instincts, and to follow the true light of religion. And then, when his final exams were over, Chekhov was instructed to sell their remaining possessions, as even a few kopecks made a difference to their meagre income. They had been forced to sell his mother's silver spoons, much to Evgenia Yakovlevna's dismay, and at one point were crammed into one room, With two of the boys having to sleep m a cubbyhole under the sta-rs. Pavel Egorovich would not have parted with the family icons, but the only other decorations were their cheap pictures of London, Venice and Paris - cities which they could only dream of visiting.9