The Mystery of Olga Chekhova by Antony Beevor Read Free Book Online

sent a telegram to St Petersburg and probably the parents are going to arrive tomorrow. How terrible it all is! Boris [his friend] and I have sworn never to get married.’
    Aunt Olya returned home in despair. She sent an emissary that evening to try to convince Olga to return to the apartment, and then in the early hours Uncle Vladimir, the opera singer, arrived to persuade the young bride to come back. Olga received little support from Misha, who was appalled by the scandal they had unleashed. The self-absorbed young actor clearly felt sorrier for himself than for his seventeen-year-old bride. ‘I said that [Olga] herself should make the decision,’ he wrote to Aunt Masha, ‘and she decided to go to see her aunt just to calm her down. I decided to allow [Olga] to go back to St Petersburg with her mother in order to prepare her father and tell him the news. Now a few words about myself. I am in such a state, that I cannot write coherently. I won’t say anything about the insults and worries that I have undergone. A lot more are still to come my way.’
    Aunt Olya, meanwhile, had sent a telegram to her sister-in-law, Lulu Knipper: ‘Come at once.’ On receiving it, Olga’s mother had taken the next train to Moscow and arrived the following evening. Her first question was evidently to find out whether Olga had married because she was pregnant. Olga assured her that was not the case.
    ‘Thank God for the lesser evil,’ replied her mother.
    The train journey by wagon-lit back to Petrograd took thirteen hours. Before they reached Tsarskoe Selo, her mother told her to go straight to bed and stay there. She would tell her father when he returned from the ministry that she was ill.
    Olga clearly needed little encouragement. She stayed in bed for two days, ‘crying her eyes out’.
    Her mother gave her a good talking-to, emphasizing that she and Misha were married and nothing could now be done about that, but she should not commit a second blunder by having a child with Misha before she had got to know him better. Olga was confined to her bedroom, but she had already seen how she could exploit her position. She threatened suicide if her parents refused to allow her to return to Misha. Even her father in all his anger had to face the fact that the marriage was lawful and could be annulled only by a Church consistory. Olga, no doubt to heighten the pathos, recounted in her memoirs how she was allowed finally to return to Moscow, taking with her no more than a single set of clothes and no jewellery, on her father’s insistence.
    Misha and his mother met her at the station in Moscow. Apparently, not a word was said in the drozhky on the way back to the apartment. It was a most unromantic homecoming. Things, however, must have improved that winter, both in their relationship and in Misha’s career. The next year, when Misha came back to Petrograd with the Moscow Art Theatre for the spring season, the young couple appear to have become completely accepted by the parents. ‘We’re already in Petrograd for a week,’ Olga wrote to Aunt Masha in Yalta. ‘Misha has given three performances. The success is unbelievable. However, you probably know that already from the newspapers. We’re staying with my parents. Papa is treating Misha very very well. There is complete peace.’
    ‘Beautiful Mashechka,’ wrote Misha at the same time to his aunt. ‘Let your genius nephew greet you and tell you that here in Olya’s family he is being received wonderfully ... Today [Olga’s] family are going to see The Cricket. I am longing to go home to Mama and if it wasn’t so wonderful with [Olga‘s] family, I would have long ago died from homesickness. Waiting for your honoured reply. Count Mikhail Chekhov.’
    Another member of the family recorded: ‘I was at the family dinner with [Olga’s] parents. I can remember being very surprised seeing Misha wearing a jacket and a collar although the collar was a soft one. [Olga] and he were