To Al. P. Chekhov, 15–28 October 1883. Moscow.

Between 15 and 28 October 1883. Moscow.

Our brother’s a scoundrel

Alexander Pavlovich!

First of all, don’t be an ass, and forgive me for taking so long to answer your letters. It isn’t laziness so much as a total absence of leisure that’s to blame for my silence. Not a free minute. I don’t even lay out patience games for want of time. I’ve got (against your wish, you brute, that I be cut down on my way into the fifth year) final examinations ahead, and once I’ve survived them I’ll get the rank of Kachilovsky. A mouse’s tears are answered by the cat; so my laziness of past years is answering me now. Woe is me! I have to learn almost everything from the beginning. Besides the exams (which, mind you, are still to come) there’s work on cadavers, clinical sessions with their inevitable historiae morbi, going about to hospitals... I work and feel my own helplessness. My memory has gone bad for cramming, I’ve aged, laziness, literature... you all reek of vodka and so on. I’m afraid I’ll come to grief on one of the exams. I want a rest, and... summer is still so far off! The thought that a whole winter still lies ahead sends shivers down my spine. But to business...

We have news here. I’ll start it on the next page.

On the 14th of October my friend and companion Fyodor Fedoseyevich Popudoglo died. For me it’s an irreplaceable loss. Fedoseich had no talent, though they do put his portrait in "The Alarm Clock." He was an old hand in literature and had an excellent literary nose, and such people are precious to the likes of us, beginners. Like a thief in the night, on the sly, I used to go to him in Kudrino, and he’d pour out his soul to me. He was fond of me. I knew everything about him, inside and out. He died of inflammation of the dura mater, though he was treated by so eminent a doctor as myself. He was treated by twenty doctors, and of all twenty I alone guessed the true ailment while he still lived. The kingdom of heaven be his, eternal rest. He died of alcohol and good friends, nomina quorum sunt odiosa whose names shall go unspoken (Latin: nomina sunt odiosa – literally, "the names are hateful, odious").. Unreason, carelessness, a slovenly attitude to his own life and to others’ – that’s what he died of, at thirty-seven years of age.

Second piece of news. N. A. Leikin was here to see me. A fine fellow, though stingy. He spent five days in Moscow and all those days begged me to plead with you not to sing your swan song, the one you wrote to him about. He thinks you’re angry with him. He likes your stories, and they aren’t being printed only out of your "misunderstanding" and ignorance of "The Chip."

Here are Leikin’s words:

"And how deftly he could have given the customs house a scratching, and what a lot of material he has, but no! – he writes about some Chinese business, ’the-tam-oz-nya,’ as if he’s afraid of something... He ought to write straight out ’customs house,’ with Russian names... The censor doesn’t forbid it."

Where there’s no Chinese business, there’s deadly lyricism. Write on, you’ll find your way to the true path. The extra earnings will make up in their own charm for the first failures. And the failures are trifling: your stories have been printed in "The Splinters."

Leikin came with my favorite scribbler too, the celebrated N. S. Leskov. The latter called on us, went with me to the Salon, to the Sobolevsky dens... Gave me his works with a facsimile inscription. I’m riding with him one night. He turns to me, half drunk, and asks: – "Do you know who I am?" – "I know." – "No, you don’t know... I’m a mystic..." – "That too I know..." He fixes his old man’s eyes on me and prophesies: – "You’ll die before your brother." – "Perhaps." – "I anoint you with oil, as Samuel anointed David... Write." This man is like a refined Frenchman and at the same time like a defrocked priest. A fellow worth attention. When I’m living in Petersburg, I’ll visit him. We parted friends.

As for the fish and the Santorini wine, you’ll have to deal with the pater, the specialist in legal matters. I confess I have no money, and no time to earn any either. I’m not looking for a position for you, straight out of selfishness: I want to spend the summer with you in the south. Don’t go looking for a dacha, since you might not manage to please yourself. We’ll look together.

You savor your little red and blue eggplants so, describing them, that it’s hard to recognize the lyricist in you. Don’t eat that filth, brother! It’s uncleanliness, it’s squalor! The little blue ones are only good for crunching between the teeth, and the pickled kind (dreadful, surely) reeks of a damp-vinegar stink. Eat meat, brother! You’ll waste away in that wretched Taganrog if you go on gorging on market trash. You eat immoderately as it is, and drunk, you’ll eat raw stuff too. Your housekeeper understands housekeeping about as much as I understand the gathering of eider-down – if only for that reason be careful in your food and eat with discrimination. Meat and bread. At the very least don’t feed Mosevna just anything, once she’s grown. Let her not know her aunt’s little roots, her father’s sauce with "little wheels," your "have a bite," or her mother’s tastiest little morsel. Bring her up to at least a stomach’s aesthetics. Speaking of aesthetics. Forgive me, my dear fellow, but be a parent in more than words. Instruct by example. Clean linen mixed with dirty, organic remains on the table, filthy rags, a wife with her stays showing and a dirty ribbon at her throat like Kontorskaya Street – all this will ruin the girl in her very first years. A child is affected above all by outward appearance, and among you poor outward form is devilishly slighted. I swear on my honor, I hardly knew you when you were living with us two months ago. Can this really be you, who once lived in a tidy room? Discipline Katka, brother! And speaking of another kind of decency... Don’t curse aloud. You’ll corrupt Katka too, and foul Mosevna’s eardrum with your language. Were I in Anna Ivanovna’s place, I’d beat you every minute. My regards to A. I. and the little niece. The girl is held in honor here. "The Alarm Clock" isn’t printing yours yet. When they begin, I’ll let you know.

Chekhov.