To N. A. Leikin, 10 April 1889. Moscow.

1 A short Easter-week letter of 10 April 1889 from Moscow to Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin, editor of "Oskolki" ("Fragments") and Chekhov’s longtime publisher, opening with an exchange of Paschal greetings (the traditional "Christ is risen" / "he is risen indeed" formula) and a note of thanks for 250 roubles received, followed by a business request: Leikin’s assistant Anna Ivanovna is to ship five copies of Chekhov’s story collection "Pyostrye rasskazy" ("Motley Tales"), cash-on-delivery and at a 30% discount, to a bookshop in Rostov-on-Don.

2 The letter’s real subject is the illness of "my artist" – Chekhov’s younger brother Nikolai Pavlovich Chekhov, a painter, who had fallen ill with typhoid fever around 25 March 1889 and whose condition had just taken a dangerous turn, with lung involvement (an "apical process," dullness on percussion, rales) that Chekhov, writing as the family’s physician, describes in the same clinical terms he uses in companion letters of this week to Pleshcheyev (3-630) and to his brother Alexander (3-632, where Nikolai appears under the family nickname "Kosoy"). Chekhov has moved the patient into his own quarters and is treating him, and notes that a trip to the Crimea is medically advisable but financially impossible. Nikolai would die of the same underlying tuberculosis two months later, on 17 June 1889.

3 The letter closes with lighter business and social notes: a wry dismissal of a rumor (via the writer Viktor Bilibin) that Chekhov intends to travel to Kiev to stage "Ivanov" himself, tentative summer plans to visit the Caucasus mineral-water spas, holiday greetings to Leikin’s wife Praskovya Nikiforovna and son Fedya, and a closing apology that he still owes five more letters, including one to Alexei Suvorin. Chekhov signs off admitting his mood is foul – the sole plain acknowledgment, undercutting the festive Easter framing, of how heavily his brother’s illness weighs on him.