To Al. P. Chekhov, February 1887. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow in early February 1887 to Chekhov’s elder brother Alexander, this short note is a comic mock-financial document rather than ordinary prose: Chekhov casts the whole letter as a formal "account" (schet), complete with line items, sums, and a balance owed, addressed with mock formality to "the nobleman Alexander Chekhov."

2 The running joke concerns a small, tangled debt between the brothers over pigeons and a counterfeit coupon Alexander had apparently passed off, netting out to 10 kopecks still owed to Anton. The bill format is itself the humor – Chekhov, a trained physician moonlighting as the family’s accountant, dresses up a trivial squabble in the deadpan language of a merchant’s ledger, complete with a closing flourish about withholding his signature "fearing forgery." The joke about buying a quail 28 days of feed for the debt continues the brothers’ running private mythology of pets and birds.