Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
not sin against love, but, on the contrary, we express it. One must not
humiliate people--that is the chief thing. Better say to man “My angel”
than hurl “Fool” at his head--though men are more like fools than they are
like angels.
TO HIS SISTER.
TAGANROG,
April 2, 1887.
The journey from Moscow to Serpuhov was dull. My fellow-travellers were
practical persons of strong character who did nothing but talk of the
prices of flour....
... At twelve o’clock we were at Kursk. An hour of waiting, a glass of
vodka, a tidy-up and a wash, and cabbage soup. Change to another train. The
carriage was crammed full. Immediately after Kursk I made friends with my
neighbours: a landowner from Harkov, as jocose as Sasha K.; a lady who had
just had an operation in Petersburg; a police captain; an officer from
Little Russia; and a general in military uniform. We settled social
questions. The general’s arguments were sound, short, and liberal; the
police captain was the type of an old battered sinner of an hussar yearning
for amorous adventures. He had the affectations of a governor: he opened
his mouth long before he began to speak, and having said a word he gave a
long growl like a dog, “er-r-r.” The lady was injecting morphia, and sent
the men to fetch her ice at the stations.
At Belgrade I had cabbage soup. We got to Harkov at nine o’clock. A
touching parting from the police captain, the general and the others.... I
woke up at Slavyansk and sent you a postcard. A new lot of passengers got
in: a landowner and a railway inspector. We talked of railways. The
inspector told us how the Sevastopol railway stole three hundred carriages
from the Azov line and painted them its own colour. [Footnote: See the
story “Cold Blood.”]
... Twelve o’clock. Lovely weather. There is a scent of the steppe and one
hears the birds sing. I see my old friends the ravens flying over the
steppe.
The barrows, the water-towers, the buildings--everything is familiar and
well-remembered. At the station I have a helping of remarkably good and
rich sorrel soup. Then I walk along the platform. Young ladies. At an upper
window at the far end of the station sits a young girl (or a married lady,
goodness knows which) in a white blouse, beautiful and languid. [Footnote:
See the story “Two Beauties.”] I look at her, she looks at me.... I put on
my glasses, she does the same.... Oh, lovely vision! I caught a catarrh of
the heart and continued my journey. The weather is devilishly, revoltingly
fine. Little Russians, oxen, ravens, white huts, rivers, the line of the
Donets railway with one telegraph wire, daughters of landowners and
farmers, red dogs, the trees--it all flits by like a dream.... It is hot.
The inspector begins to bore me. The rissoles and pies, half of which I
have not got through, begin to smell bitter.... I shove them under somebody
else’s seat, together with the remains of the vodka.
... I arrive at Taganrog.... It gives one the impression of Herculaneum and
Pompeii; there are no people, and instead of mummies there are sleepy
_drishpaks_ [Footnote: Uneducated young men in the jargon of Taganrog.] and
melon-shaped heads. All the houses look flattened out, and as though they
had long needed replastering, the roofs want painting, the shutters are
closed....
At eight o’clock in the evening my uncle, his family, Irina, the dogs, the
rats that live in the storeroom, the rabbits were fast asleep. There was
nothing for it but to go to bed too. I sleep on the drawing-room sofa. The
sofa has not increased in length, and is as short as it was before, and so
when I go to bed I have either to stick up my legs in an unseemly way or to
let them hang down to the floor. I think of Procrustes and his bed....
April 6.
I wake up at five. The sky is grey. There is a cold, unpleasant wind that
reminds one of Moscow. It is dull. I wait for the church bells and go to
late Mass. In the cathedral it is all very charming, decorous, and not
boring. The choir sings well, not at all in a plebeian style, and the
congregation entirely consists of young ladies in olive-green dresses and
chocolate-coloured jackets....
April 8, 9, and 10.
Frightfully dull. It is cold and grey.... During all my stay in Taganrog I
could only do justice to the following things: remarkably good ring rolls
sold at the market, the Santurninsky wine, fresh caviare, excellent crabs
and uncle’s genuine hospitality. Everything else is poor and not to be
envied. The young ladies here are not bad, but it takes some time to get
used to them. They are abrupt in their movements, frivolous in their
attitude to men, run away from their parents with actors, laugh loudly,
easily fall in love, whistle to dogs, drink wine, etc....
On Saturday I continued my journey. At the Moskaya station the air is
lovely and fresh, caviare is seventy kopecks a pound. At Rostdov I had two
hours to wait, at Taganrog twenty. I spent the night at an acquaintance’s.
The devil only knows what I haven’t spent a night on: on beds with bugs, on
sofas, settees, boxes. Last night I spent in a long and narrow parlour on a
sofa under a looking-glass....
April 25.
... Yesterday was the wedding--a real Cossack wedding with music, feminine
bleating, and revolting drunkenness.... The bride is sixteen. They were
married in the cathedral. I acted as best man, and was dressed in somebody
else’s evening suit with fearfully wide trousers, and not a single stud on
my shirt. In Moscow such a best man would have been kicked out, but here I
looked smarter than anyone.
I saw many rich and eligible young ladies. The choice is enormous, but I
was so drunk all the time that I took bottles for young ladies and young
ladies for bottles. Probably owing to my drunken condition the local ladies
found me witty and satirical! The young ladies here are regular sheep, if
one gets up from her place and walks out of the room all the others follow
her. One of them, the boldest and the most brainy, wishing to show that she
is not a stranger to social polish and subtlety, kept slapping me on the
hand and saying, “Oh, you wretch!” though her face still retained its
scared expression. I taught her to say to her partners, “How naive you
are!”
The bride and bridegroom, probably because of the local custom of kissing
every minute, kissed with such gusto that their lips made a loud smack, and
it gave me a taste of sugary raisins in my mouth and a spasm in my left
calf. The inflammation of the vein in my left leg got worse through their
kisses.
... At Zvyerevo I shall have to wait from nine in the evening till five in
the morning. Last time I spent the night there in a second-class
railway-carriage on the siding. I went out of the carriage in the night and
outside I found veritable marvels: the moon, the limitless steppe, the
barrows, the wilderness; deathly stillness, and the carriages and the
railway lines sharply standing out from the dusk. It seemed as though the
world were dead.... It was a picture one would not forget for ages and
ages.
RAGOZINA BALKA,
April 30, 1887.
It is April 30. The evening is warm. There are storm-clouds about, and so
one cannot see a thing. The air is close and there is a smell of grass.
I am staying in the Ragozina Balka at K.’s. There is a small house with a
thatched roof, and barns made of flat stone. There are three rooms, with
earthen floors, crooked ceilings, and windows that lift up and down instead
of opening outwards.... The walls are covered with rifles, pistols, sabres
and whips. The chest of drawers and the window-sills are littered with
cartridges, instruments for mending rifles, tins of gunpowder, and bags of
shot. The furniture is lame and the veneer is coming off it. I have to
sleep on a consumptive sofa, very hard, and not upholstered ... Ash-trays
and all such luxuries are not to be found within a radius of ten versts....
The first necessaries are conspicuous by their absence, and one has in all
weathers to slip out to the ravine, and one is warned to make sure there is
not a viper or some other creature under the bushes.
The population consists of old K., his wife, Pyotr, a Cossack officer with
broad red stripes on his trousers, Alyosha, Hahko (that is, Alexandr),
Zoika, Ninka, the shepherd Nikita and the cook Akulina. There are immense
numbers of dogs who are furiously spiteful and don’t let anyone pass them
by day or by night. I have to go about under escort, or there will be one
writer less in Russia.... The most cursed of the dogs is Muhtar, an old cur
on whose face dirty tow hangs instead of wool. He hates me and rushes at me
with a roar every time I go out of the house.
Now about food. In the morning there is tea, eggs, ham and bacon fat. At
midday, soup with goose, roast goose with pickled sloes, or a turkey, roast
chicken, milk pudding, and sour milk. No vodka or pepper allowed. At five
o’clock they make on a camp fire in the wood a porridge of millet and bacon
fat. In the evening there is tea, ham, and all that has been left over from
dinner.
The entertainments are: shooting bustards, making bonfires, going to
Ivanovka, shooting at a mark, setting the dogs at one another, preparing
gunpowder paste for fireworks, talking politics, building turrets of stone,
etc.
The chief occupation is scientific farming, introduced by the youthful
Cossack, who bought five roubles’ worth of works on agriculture. The most
important part of this farming consists of wholesale slaughter, which does
not cease for a single moment in the day. They kill sparrows, swallows,
bumblebees, ants, magpies, crows--to prevent them eating bees; to prevent
the bees from spoiling the blossom on the fruit-trees they kill bees, and
to prevent the fruit-trees from exhausting the ground they cut down the
fruit-trees. One gets thus a regular circle which, though somewhat
original, is based on the latest data of science.
We retire at nine in the evening. Sleep is disturbed, for Belonozhkas and
Muhtars howl in the yard and Tseter furiously barks in answer to them from
under my sofa. I am awakened by shooting: my hosts shoot with rifles from
the windows at some animal which does damage to their crops. To leave the
house at night one has to call the Cossack, for otherwise the dogs would
tear one to bits.
The weather is fine. The grass is tall and in blossom. I watch bees and men
among whom I feel myself something like a Mikluha-Maklay. Last night there
was a beautiful thunderstorm.
... The coal mines are not far off. To-morrow morning early I am going on a
one-horse droshky to Ivanovka (twenty-three versts) to fetch my letters
from the post.
... We eat turkeys’ eggs. Turkeys lay eggs in the wood on last year’s
leaves. They kill hens, geese, pigs, etc., by shooting here. The shooting
is incessant.
TAGANROG,
May 11.
... From K.’s I went to the Holy Mountains.... I came to Slavyansk on a
dark evening. The cabmen refuse to take me to the Holy Mountains at night,
and advise me to spend the night at Slavyansk, which I did very willingly,
for I felt broken and lame with pain.... The town is something like Gogol’s
_Mirgorod_; there is a hairdresser and a watchmaker, so that one may
hope that in another thousand years there will be a telephone. The walls
and fences are pasted with the advertisements of a menagerie.... On green
and dusty streets walk pigs, cows, and other domestic creatures. The houses
look cordial and friendly, rather like kindly grandmothers; the pavements
are soft, the streets are wide, there is a smell of lilac and acacia in the
air; from the distance come the singing of a nightingale, the croaking of
frogs, barking, and sounds of a harmonium, of a woman screeching.... I