Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
journey. I pay more than I need to, I do the wrong thing, and I say the
wrong thing, and I am always expecting what does not happen.
... I shall be in Irkutsk in five or six days, shall spend as many days
there, then drive on to Sryetensk--and that will be the end of my journey
on land. For more than a fortnight I have been driving without a break, I
think about nothing else, I live for nothing else; every morning I see the
sunrise from beginning to end. I’ve grown so used to it that it seems as
though all my life I had been driving and struggling with the muddy roads.
When it does not rain, and there are no pits of mud on the road, one feels
queer and even a little bored. And how filthy I am, what a rapscallion I
look! What a state my luckless clothes are in!
... For mother’s information: I have still a jar and a half of coffee; I
feed on locusts and wild honey; I shall dine to-day at Irkutsk. The further
east one gets the dearer everything is. Rye flour is seventy kopecks a
_pood_, while on the other side of Tomsk it was twenty-five and
twenty-seven kopecks per _pood_, and wheaten flour thirty kopecks. The
tobacco sold in Siberia is vile and loathsome; I tremble because mine is
nearly done.
... I am travelling with two lieutenants and an army doctor who are all on
their way to the Amur. So my revolver is after all quite superfluous. In
such company hell would have no terrors. We are just having tea at the
station, and after tea we are going to have a look at the town.
I should have no objection to living in Krasnoyarsk. I can’t think why this
is a favourite place for sending exiles to.
* * * * *
Your Homo Sachaliensis,
A. CHEKHOV.
TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.
IRKUTSK,
June 5, 1890.
MY EUROPEAN BROTHER,
It is, of course, unpleasant to live in Siberia; but better to live in
Siberia and feel oneself a man of moral worth, than to live in Petersburg
with the reputation of a drunkard and a scoundrel. No reference to present
company.
* * * * *
Siberia is a cold and long country. I drive on and on and see no end to it.
I see little that is new or of interest, but I feel and experience a great
deal. I have contended with flooded rivers, with cold, with impassable mud,
hunger and sleepiness: such sensations as you could not get for a million
in Moscow! You ought to come to Siberia. Ask the authorities to exile you.
The best of all Siberian towns is Irkutsk. Tomskis not worth a brass
farthing, and the district towns are no better than the Kryepkaya in which
you were so heedlessly born. What is most provoking, there is nothing to
eat in the district towns, and oh dear, how conscious one is of that on the
journey! You get to a town and feel ready to eat a mountain; you arrive
and--alack!--no sausage, no cheese, no meat, no herring even, but the same
insipid eggs and milk as in the villages.
On the whole I am satisfied with my expedition, and don’t regret having
come. The travelling is hard, but the resting after it is delightful. I
rest with enjoyment.
From Irkutsk I shall make for Baikal, which I shall cross by steamer; it’s
a thousand versts from the Baikal to the Amur, and thence I shall go by
steamer to the Pacific, where the first thing I shall do is to have a bath
and eat oysters.
I got here yesterday and went first of all to have a bath, then to bed. Oh,
how I slept! I never understood what sleep meant till now.
* * * * *
I bless you with both hands.
Your Asiatic brother,
A. CHEKHOV.
TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.
IRKUTSK,
June 5, 1890.
A thousand greetings to you, dear Alexey Nikolaevitch. At last I have
vanquished the most difficult three thousand versts; I am sitting in a
decent hotel and can write. I have rigged myself out all in new things and,
as far as possible, smart ones, for you cannot imagine how sick I was of my
big muddy boots, of my sheepskin smelling of tar, of my overcoat covered
with bits of hay, of dust and crumbs in my pockets, and of my extremely
dirty linen. I looked such a ragamuffin on the journey that even the tramps
eyed me askance; and then, as ill luck would have it, the cold winds and
rain chapped my face and made it scaly like a fish. Now at last I am a
European again, and I am conscious of it all over.
Well, what am I to write to you? It’s all so long and so vast that one
doesn’t know where to begin. All my experiences in Siberia I divide into
three periods. (1) From Tyumen to Tomsk, fifteen hundred versts, terrible
cold, day and night, sheepskin, felt boots, cold rains, winds and a
desperate life-and-death struggle with the flooded rivers. The rivers had
flooded the meadows and roads, and I was constantly exchanging my trap for
a boat and floating like a Venetian on a gondola; the boats, the waiting on
the bank for them, the rowing across, etc., all that took up so much time
that during the last two days before reaching Tomsk, in spite of all my
efforts, I only did seventy versts instead of four or five hundred. There
were, moreover, some very uneasy and unpleasant moments, especially when
the wind rose and began to buffet the boat. (2) From Tomsk to Krasnoyarsk,
five hundred versts, impassable mud, my chaise and I stuck in the mud like
flies in thick jam. How many times I broke my chaise (it’s my own
property!) how many versts I walked! how bespattered my countenance and my
clothes were! It was not driving but wading through mud. How I swore at it
all! My brain would not work, I could do nothing but swear. I was utterly
exhausted, and was very glad to reach the posting station at Krasnoyarsk.
(3) From Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk, fifteen hundred and sixty-six versts,
heat, smoke from the burning woods, and dust--dust in one’s mouth, in
one’s nose, in one’s pockets; when you look at yourself in the glass, you
think your face has been painted. When, on reaching Irkutsk, I washed at
the baths, the soapsuds off my head were not white but of an ashen brown
colour, as though I were washing a horse.
When I get home I will tell you about the Yenissey and the Taiga--very
interesting and curious, for it is something quite new to a European;
everything else is ordinary and monotonous. Roughly speaking, the scenery
of Siberia is not very different from that of European Russia; there are
differences, but they are not very noticeable. Travelling is perfectly
safe.
Robbers and highwaymen are all nonsense and fairy tales. A revolver is
utterly unnecessary, and you are as safe at night in the forest as you are
by day on the Nevsky Prospect. It’s different for anyone travelling on
foot....
TO N. A. LEIKIN.
IRKUTSK,
June 5, 1890.
Greetings, dear Nikolay Alexandrovitch!
I send you heartfelt good wishes from Irkutsk, from the depths of Siberia.
I reached Irkutsk last night and was very glad to have arrived, as I was
exhausted by the journey and missed friends and relations, to whom I had
not written for ages. Well, what is there of interest to write to you? I
will begin by telling you that the journey is extraordinarily long. From
Tyumen to Irkutsk I have driven more than three thousand versts. From
Tyumen to Tomsk I had cold and flooded rivers to contend with. The cold was
awful; on Ascension Day there was frost and snow, so that I could not take
off my sheepskin and felt boots until I reached the hotel at Tomsk. As for
the floods, they were a veritable plague of Egypt. The rivers rose above
their banks and overflowed the meadows, and with them the roads, for dozens
of versts around. I was continually having to exchange my chaise for a
boat, and one could not get a boat for nothing--for a good boat one had to
pay with one’s heart’s blood, for one had to sit waiting on the bank for
twenty-four hours at a stretch in the cold wind and the rain.... From Tomsk
to Krasnoyarsk was a desperate struggle through impassable mud. My
goodness, it frightens me to think of it! How often I had to mend my
chaise, to walk, to swear, to get out of my chaise and get into it again,
and so on! It sometimes happened that I was from six to ten hours getting
from one station to another, and every time the chaise had to be mended it
took from ten to fifteen hours. From Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk was fearfully
hot and dusty. Add to all that hunger, dust in one’s nose, one’s eyes glued
together with sleep, the continual dread that something would get broken in
the chaise (it is my own), and boredom.... Nevertheless I am well content,
and I thank God that He has given me the strength and opportunity to make
this journey. I have seen and experienced a great deal, and it has all been
very new and interesting to me not as a literary man, but as a human being.
The Yenissey, the Taiga, the stations, the drivers, the wild scenery, the
wild life, the physical agonies caused by the discomforts of the journey,
the enjoyment I got from rest--all taken together is so delightful that I
can’t describe it. The mere fact that I have been for more than a month in
the open air is interesting and healthy; every day for a month I have seen
the sunrise....
TO HIS SISTER.
IRKUTSK,
June 6, 1890.
Greetings to you, dear mother, Ivan, Masha and Misha, and all of you!
In my last long letter I wrote to you that the mountains near Krasnoyarsk
are like the Donets Ridge, but that’s not true; when I looked at them from
the street I saw they were like high walls surrounding the city, and I was
vividly reminded of the Caucasus. And when towards evening I left the town
and was crossing the Yenissey, I saw on the other bank mountains that were
exactly like the Caucasus, as misty and dreamy. The Yenissey is a broad,
swift, winding river, beautiful, finer than the Volga. And the ferry across
it is wonderful, ingeniously constructed, moving against the current; I
will tell you when I am home about the construction of it. And so the
mountains and the Yenissey are the first things original and new that I
have met in Siberia. The mountains and the Yenissey have given me
sensations which have made up to me a hundredfold for all the trials and
troubles of the journey, and which have made me call Levitan a fool for
being so stupid as not to come with me.
The Taiga stretches unbroken from Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk. The trees are not
bigger than in Sokolniki, but not one driver knows how far it goes. There
is no end to be seen to it. It stretches for hundreds of versts. No one
knows who or what is in the Taiga, and it only happens in winter that
people come through the Taiga from the far north with reindeer for bread.
When you get to the top of a mountain and look down, you see a mountain
before you, then another, mountains at the sides too--and all thickly
covered with forest. It makes one feel almost frightened. That’s the second
thing original and new.
From Krasnoyarsk it began to be hot and dusty. The heat was terrible. My
sheepskin and cap lie buried away. The dust is in my mouth, in my nose,
down my neck--tfoo! We were approaching Irkutsk--we had to cross the
Angara by ferry. As though to mock us a high wind sprang up. My military
companions and I, after dreaming for ten days of a bath, dinner, and sleep,
stood on the bank and turned pale at the thought that we should have to
spend the night not at Irkutsk, but in the village. The ferry could not
succeed in reaching the bank. We stood an hour, a second, and--oh
Heavens!--the ferry made an effort and reached the bank. Bravo, we shall
have a bath, we shall have supper and sleep! Oh, how sweet to steam
oneself, to eat, to sleep!
Irkutsk is a fine town. Quite a cultured town. There is a theatre, a
museum, a town garden with a band, a good hotel.... No hideous fences, no