Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
they like making jokes. They are not severe with their children, they spoil
them. The children sleep on soft beds and lie as long as they like, drink
tea and eat with the men, and scold the latter when they laugh at them
affectionately. There is no diphtheria. Malignant smallpox is prevalent
here, but strange to say, it is less contagious than in other parts of the
world; two or three catch it and die and that is the end of the epidemic.
There are no hospitals or doctors. The doctoring is done by feldshers.
Bleeding and cupping are done on a grandiose, brutal scale. I examined a
Jew with cancer in the liver. The Jew was exhausted, hardly breathing, but
that did not prevent the feldsher from cupping him twelve times. Apropos of
the Jews. Here they till the land, work as drivers and ferry-men, trade and
are called Krestyany, [Translator’s Note: I.e., Peasants, literally
“Christians.” ] because they are _de jure_ and _de facto_ Krestyany. They
enjoy universal respect, and according to the “president” they are not
infrequently chosen as village elders. I saw a tall thin Jew who scowled
with disgust and spat when the “president” told indecent stories: a chaste
soul; his wife makes splendid fish-soup. The wife of the Jew who had cancer
regaled me with pike caviare and with most delicious white bread. One hears
nothing of exploitation by the Jews. And, by the way, about the Poles.
There are a few exiles here, sent from Poland in 1864. They are good,
hospitable, and very refined people. Some of them live in a very wealthy
way; others are very poor, and serve as clerks at the stations. Upon the
amnesty the former went back to their own country, but soon returned to
Siberia again--here they are better off; the latter dream of their native
land, though they are old and infirm. At Ishim a wealthy Pole, Pan
Zalyessky, who has a daughter like Sasha Kiselyov, for a rouble gave me an
excellent dinner and a room to sleep in; he keeps an inn and has become a
money-grubber to the marrow of his bones; he fleeces everyone, but yet one
feels the Polish gentleman in his manner, in the way the meals are served,
in everything. He does not go back to Poland through greed, and through
greed endures snow till St. Nikolay’s day; when he dies his daughter, who
was born at Ishim, will remain here for ever and so will multiply the black
eyes and soft features in Siberia! This casual intermixture of blood is to
the good, for the Siberian people are not beautiful. There are no
dark-haired people. Perhaps you would like me to write about the Tatars?
Certainly. There are very few of them here. They are good people. In the
province of Kazan everyone speaks well of them, even the priests, and in
Siberia they are “better than the Russians” as the “president” said to me
in the presence of Russians, who assented to this by their silence. My God,
how rich Russia is in good people! If it were not for the cold which
deprives Siberia of the summer, and if it were not for the officials who
corrupt the peasants and the exiles, Siberia would be the richest and
happiest of lands.
I have nothing for dinner. Sensible people usually take twenty pounds of
provisions when they go to Tomsk. It seems I was a fool and so I have fed
for a fortnight on nothing but milk and eggs, which are boiled so that the
yolk is hard and the white is soft. One is sick of such fare in two days. I
have only twice had dinner during the whole journey, not counting the
Jewess’s fish-soup, which I swallowed after I had had enough to eat with my
tea. I have not had any vodka: the Siberian vodka is disgusting, and
indeed, I got out of the habit of taking it while I was on the way to
Ekaterinburg. One ought to drink vodka: it stimulates the brain, dull and
apathetic from travelling, which makes one stupid and feeble.
_Stop!_ I can’t write: the editor of the _Sibirsky Vyestnik_, N., a local
Nozdryov, a drunkard and a rake, has come to make my acquaintance.
N. has drunk some beer and gone away. I continue.
For the first three days of my journey my collarbones, my shoulders and my
vertebrae ached from the shaking and jolting. I couldn’t stand or sit or
lie.... But on the other hand, all pains in my head and chest have
vanished, my appetite has developed incredibly, and my haemorrhoids have
subsided completely. The overstrain, the constant worry with luggage and so
on, and perhaps the farewell drinking parties in Moscow, had brought on
spitting of blood in the mornings, which induced something like depression,
arousing gloomy thoughts, but towards the end of the journey it has left
off; now I haven’t even a cough. It is a long time since I have coughed so
little as now, after being for a fortnight in the open air. After the first
three days of travelling my body grew used to the jolting, and in time I
did not notice the coming of midday and then of evening and night. The time
flew by rapidly as it does in serious illness. You think it is scarcely
midday when the peasants say--“You ought to put up for the night, sir, or
we may lose our way in the dark”; you look at your watch, and it is
actually eight o’clock.
They drive quickly, but the speed is nothing remarkable. Probably I have
come upon the roads in bad condition, and in winter travelling would have
been quicker. They dash uphill at a gallop, and before setting off and
before the driver gets on the box, the horses need two or three men to hold
them. The horses remind me of the fire brigade horses in Moscow. One day we
nearly ran over an old woman, and another time almost dashed into an etape.
Now, would you like an adventure for which I am indebted to Siberian
driving? Only I beg mother not to wail and lament, for it all ended well.
On the 6th of May towards daybreak I was being driven with two horses by a
very nice old man. It was a little chaise, I was drowsy, and, to while away
the time, watched the gleaming of zigzagging lights in the fields and birch
copses--it was last year’s grass on fire; it is their habit here to burn
it. Suddenly I hear the swift rattle of wheels, a post-cart at full speed
comes flying towards us like a bird, my old man hastens to move to the
right, the three horses dash by, and I see in the dusk a huge heavy
post-cart with a driver for the return journey in it. It was followed by a
second cart also going at full speed. We made haste to move aside to the
right. To my great amazement and alarm the approaching cart moved not to
its right, but its left ... I hardly had time to think, “Good heavens! we
shall run into each other,” when there was a desperate crash, the horses
were mixed up in a dark blur, the yokes fell off, my chaise reared up into
the air, and I flew to the ground, and my luggage on the top of me. But
that was not all ... A third cart was dashing upon us. This really ought to
have smashed me and my luggage to atoms but, thank God! I was not asleep, I
broke no bones in the fall, and managed to jump up so quickly that I was
able to get out of the way. “Stop,” I bawled to the third cart, “Stop!” The
third dashed up to the second and stopped. Of course if I were able to
sleep in a chaise, or if the third cart had followed instantly on the
second, I should certainly have come back a cripple or a headless horseman.
The results of the collision were broken shafts, torn traces, yokes and
luggage scattered on the ground, the horses scared and harassed, and the
alarming feeling that we had just been in danger. It turned out that the
first driver had lashed up the horses; while in the other two carts the
drivers were asleep, and the horses followed the first team with no one
controlling them. On recovering from the shock, my old man and the other
three men fell to abusing each other ferociously. Oh, how they swore! I
thought it would end in a fight. You can’t imagine the feeling of isolation
in the middle of that savage swearing crew in the open country, just before
dawn, in sight of the fires far and near consuming the grass, but not
warming the cold night air! Oh, how heavy my heart was! One listened to the
swearing, looked at the broken shafts and at one’s tormented luggage, and
it seemed as though one were cast away in another world, as though one
would be crushed in a moment.... After an hour’s abuse my old man began
splicing together the shafts with cord and tying up the traces; my straps
were forced into the service too. We got to the station somehow, crawling
along and stopping from time to time.
After five or six days rain with high winds began. It rained day and night.
The leather overcoat came to the rescue and kept me safe from rain and
wind. It’s a wonderful coat. The mud was almost impassable, the drivers
began to be unwilling to go on at night. But what was worst of all, and
what I shall never forget, was crossing the rivers. One reaches a river at
night.... One begins shouting and so does the driver.... Rain, wind, pieces
of ice glide down the river, there is a sound of splashing.... And to add
to our gaiety there is the cry of a heron. Herons live on the Siberian
rivers, so it seems they don’t consider the climate but the geographical
position.... Well, an hour later, in the darkness, a huge ferry-boat of the
shape of a barge comes into sight with huge oars that look like the pincers
of a crab. The ferry-men are a rowdy set, for the most part exiles banished
here by the verdict of society for their vicious life. They use
insufferably bad language, shout, and ask for money for vodka.... The
ferrying across takes a long, long time ... an agonizingly long time. The
ferryboat crawls. Again the feeling of loneliness, and the heron seems
calling on purpose, as though he means to say: “Don’t be frightened, old
man, I am here, the Lintvaryovs have sent me here from the Psyol.”
On the 7th of May when I asked for horses the driver said the Irtysh had
overflowed its banks and flooded the meadows, that Kuzma had set off the
day before and had difficulty in getting back, and that I could not go, but
must wait.... I asked: “Wait till when?” Answer: “The Lord only knows!”
That was vague. Besides, I had taken a vow to get rid on the journey of two
of my vices which were a source of considerable expense, trouble, and
inconvenience; I mean my readiness to give in, and be overpersuaded. I am
quick to agree, and so I have had to travel anyhow, sometimes to pay double
and to wait for hours at a time. I had taken to refusing to agree and to
believe--and my sides have ached less. For instance, they bring out not a
proper carriage but a common, jolting cart. I refuse to travel in the
jolting cart, I insist, and the carriage is sure to appear, though they may
have declared that there was no such thing in the whole village, and so on.
Well, I suspected that the Irtysh floods were invented simply to avoid
driving me by night through the mud. I protested and told them to start.
The peasant who had heard of the floods from Kuzma, and had not himself
seen them, scratched himself and consented; the old men encouraged him,
saying that when they were young and used to drive, they were afraid of
nothing. We set off. Much rain, a vicious wind, cold ... and felt boots on
my feet. Do you know what felt boots are like when they are soaked? They
are like boots of jelly. We drive on and on, and behold, there lies
stretched before my eyes an immense lake from which the earth appears in
patches here and there, and bushes stand out: these are the flooded
meadows. In the distance stretches the steep bank of the Irtysh, on which
there are white streaks of snow.... We begin driving through the lake. We
might have turned back, but obstinacy prevented me, and an incomprehensible
impulse of defiance mastered me--that impulse which made me bathe from the
yacht in the middle of the Black Sea and has impelled me to not a few acts