To N. N. Obolonsky, 12–13 February 1889. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 12 or 13 February 1889, this is a brief, urgent note to the physician Nikolai Nikolaevich Obolonsky, asking him to come at once and attend to Alexei Nikolayevich Pleshcheev – the poet and editor already extensively established elsewhere in this corpus as one of Chekhov’s closest literary correspondents. Pleshcheev has just arrived in Moscow and fallen ill with vomiting and diarrhea after eating a name-day pie (a imeninnyi pirog, the festive pie traditionally served on a name-day), and Chekhov – himself a trained physician – turns to a professional colleague rather than treating him personally, perhaps because he is writing in haste or because Obolonsky is the more convenient or appropriate doctor to call.

2 The note gives Pleshcheev’s address, the Loskutnaya (a well-known Moscow hotel on Tverskaya Street that recurs elsewhere in this corpus as a place where visitors from Petersburg lodged), adds the wry aside that Pleshcheev has come to Moscow "to eat bliny" – placing the visit during Maslenitsa, the pre-Lenten pancake-week festival, which corroborates the February date and explains both the name-day pie and the specific illness – and closes with an informal invitation for Obolonsky to make Pleshcheev’s acquaintance while he is at it. The letter ends with a characteristic comic flourish ("yours from head to heel") and a final request to pass on regards to a Sofia Vitalievna, presumably Obolonsky’s wife or another member of his household, not otherwise identified here.