To M. M. Dyukovsky, February 1886. Moscow.

1 This brief note, written in February 1886 in Moscow, is addressed to M. M. Dyukovsky, a family friend and, like Chekhov’s brother Nikolai, a painter. The opening lines – written in Nikolai’s hand rather than Anton’s – ask Dyukovsky to send over a stretcher-frame (for stretching canvas) that is urgently needed, with delivery instructions for the household at Vostorzhensky (abbreviated "Vost") No. house 59, care of a servant named Semyon if no one is home.

2 The letter’s real interest lies in what follows the practical request: a miniature mock melodrama, "Blood for Blood," complete with a portentous title, a lone numbered scene, and a stock swashbuckling exchange between two Spanish-sounding noblemen, "Don Antonio" and "Don Michel." The joke resolves neatly when Don Antonio "drops this letter into the mailbox" – folding the letter itself into the fiction – before the note breaks off with the deadpan stage direction "There will be no continuation." It is a small, playful example of the theatrical parody and love of collaborative family joking that runs through the Chekhov brothers’ correspondence of this period.