To F. O. Shekhtel, September 1887. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow at the end of September 1887 to Fyodor Osipovich Shekhtel, Chekhov’s old Taganrog schoolfriend and future architect of Russian Art Nouveau. This brief, anxious note concerns Chekhov’s elder brother Nikolai, a talented but chronically unreliable painter whose drinking bouts and disappearances were a recurring family worry. Nikolai had been staying with Anton for two or three days before vanishing again.

2 The letter is short and worried rather than playful: Chekhov reports Nikolai’s sudden departure, the arrival in Moscow of a Mme Ipatyeva (a detail the letter does not further explain), and Nikolai’s implausible alibi about spending ten days with an unnamed "venerable old fellow." Chekhov’s closing admission – that he has "gotten out of the habit of believing" his brother – is characteristically dry, but underneath the brevity is real concern; he promises to alert Shekhtel the moment Nikolai resurfaces. The note ends with a polite greeting to Shekhtel’s mother, Natalya Timofeevna.