As Chekhov emerged from a settler's hut after his last interview and filled out the last questionnaire, his feelings about the success of this long, hard task were distinctly mixed. He wrote Suvorin, perhaps with some slight exaggeration, that he had seen everything at Sakhalin and that there was not a single convict or settler who had not talked with him. With his future book in mind, however, he was wise enough to realize that it was not what he had seen but how he had seen it that really mattered.
Only when his task had been completed did Chekhov really sense how intense was his dislike for everything connected with this accursed island. "I'm homcsick and weary of Sakhalin," he wrote his mother on October 6. "For three months now I've seen no one but convicts or
c The evidence that Chekhov wrote this play is summed up by N. I. Gitovich in "A. S. Feldman. Chekhov na Sakhaline," in Literaturnoe Nasledstvo ("A. S. Feldman. Chekhov on Sakhalin," in Literary Heritage), Moscow, i960, LXVIII, pp. 594596.
people who can talk of nothing but penal servitude, the lash, or jailbirds. It is a depressing existence."
Winter in this region would soon arrive. Chekhov had to hurry, for there was always the possibility that the Gulf of Tatary would freeze over and so delay his return trip by sea. On October 13 natives rowed him out from the Korsakov landing to the Petersburg, anchored in the gulf and bound for Odessa.
Chekhov's long and difficult journey and his experiences on Sakhalin had quite clearly brought about a catharsis of the incessant and agitating inner promptings that had sent him off on this implausible adventure. He never regretted the effort, and the extensive practical endeavor proved to be an important factor in a transition period of his life, as well as a significant influence on his social outlook.
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The homeward voyage took almost two months but it was a tourist lark compared to his overland trip to Sakhalin. Suvorin had tried to persuade him to return by way of the United States, a plan which Chekhov had originally entertained, but he now dismissed this as both dull and too expensive. For after he left Vladivostok — the Russian Far East seacoast, he declared, depressed one by its poverty and ignorance — his ports of call were famous cities of the storied East. Japan had to be bypassed becausc of cholera, but Hong Kong, with its exquisite bay, impressed him as it docs all foreigners. In the city he was moved to indignation by Russian fellow-travelers who abused the English for exploiting the natives. "I thought to myself," he commented on this fact to Suvorin, "Yes, the English exploit the Chinese, the Sepoys, and the Hindus, but they do give them roads, aqueducts, museums, and Christianity; you exploit them too, but what do you give them?"7
A typhoon overtook the Petersburg in the China Sea and the ship heeled over as far as thirty-eight degrees during the heaviest gusts. Disaster seemed imminent and the captain advised Chekhov to keep his revolver by him to hasten the end in case they went down, but the ship rode out the storm. The burial of two passengers at sea unnerved
7 This condemnation of the Russians and praise of the British is deleted — with the usual dots indicating an omission — from the Soviet edition of the letters: Polnoe sobranie sochineni i pisem Л. P. Chekhova (Complete Works and Letters of A. P. Chekhov), 1949, XV, 130. The full text of the letter, dated December 9, 1890, may be found in Pisma A. P. Chekhova (Letters of A. P. Chekhov), edited by M. P. Chekhova, vols. I-VI, Moscow, 1912-1916.
him. To watch a corpse, wrapped in sailcloth, somersaulted into the water and to remember that it was several miles to the bottom filled him with honor at the thought that such a fate might await him. The incident stirred his imagination and resulted in the fine short story Gusev, written during the course of the trip and published later that year in New Times. It is a grim tale of two discharged and hopelessly ill soldiers on shipboard on their way home. The fiery, independent Pavel Ivanich rails against the fate that has overtaken their lives in the service, but old Gusev faces death with Christian humility and complete resignation. The serenity of the burial service at sea is rendered gruesome as the dark form of a shark stealthily approaches the sinking canvas shroud that contains the remains of Gusev.
Somehow Singapore left a sad impression on Chekhov, but this was more than compensated by his next stop, Colombo, a heavenly place, he declared. And into this paradise of Ceylon, he wrote Suvorin, he traveled on a sight-seeing trip by rail "and had my fill of palm trees and bronze-skinned women. . . ."8 On the stopover in India, as he later wrote Uncle Mitrofan by way of impressing the old man, he saw wild elephants and cobras and remarkable Indian conjurors "who literally perform miracles." And on a sudden impulse he acquired here three mongooses which he brought back to Russia with him.
The remainder of the long voyage appears to have been a rather dull affair, made especially boring by his anxiety now to get home. Once, while suffering from the hot, humid weather encountered in the Indian Ocean, he brashly jumped into the water from the bow of the ship while it was in motion, getting back after his swim by climbing up a rope flung to him from the stern. The route took him to Port Said, through the Suez and past Mount Sinai, the sight of which moved him; to Constantinople, with which he fell in love; and then to Odessa, where he entrained for Moscow.
Apprised of his coming by telegraph, Chekhov's mother and Misha had gone forward to Tula to intercept him. They found him at the station restaurant with a Sakhalin priest and a naval officer whom he had picked up on the way, and with one of the mongooses sitting up
° (December 9, 1890.) Chekhov apparently boasted too much about this incident. Leontiev-Shcheglov records in his diary after meeting him: "A bronze-skinned woman under a palm tree . . ." And brother Alexander wrote him jokingly sometime after Chekhov's return from Sakhalin: "Greetings to your anonymous wife and the children produced by you in your trip around the world. I hope they are not few in number. . . . Suddenly somewhere in Ceylon there is a Chekhov. . 1 ." on the table and eating with them, much to the delight of a crowd that had gathered. The meeting of mother and son was a touching one. They resumed the rest of the short trip to Moscow together, where they took him to the new house on Malaya Dmitrovka Street which the family had moved into that fall. It was December 8. Chekhov had
been away almost eight months. His great adventure had ended.
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The first day after his arrival Chekhov wrote a long letter to Suvorin. His head was in a whirl, he declared, and his baggage filled with manuscript notes and ccnsus cards. In retrospect now, Sakhalin seemed like a regular hell. He recapitulated what had happened since his last letter. And then, out of the fullness of a wave of moral indignation, he expostulated: "God's world is good. It is only we who are bad. . . . One must work, and to hell with everything else. The important thing is that we must be just, and all the rest will come as a matter of course. I want terribly to talk with you. My soul is in an upheaval." (December 9, 1890.)
Chekhov certainly wanted to get to work at once on the mass of material he had brought back, and he half-seriously threatened to marry any intelligent girl who would classify it for him. Conditions, however, were less than ideal for undertaking the additional research he now saw was necessary and for writing the kind of book he planned