Sakhalin, he exhorted his readers to take a look at the literature on prisons and exile: 'Two or three little aiticles, two or three authors, and goodness me, it's as if prisons, exile did not exist in Russia! Our thinking intelligentsia has been saying for 20-30 years now that criminals are a product of society, but how indifferent it is to that product!'33
Chekhov returned home in 1890 with his faith in Russia badly dented. In the first letter he wrote after returning home (addressed, of course, to Suvorin), he lamented how little justice and humility there was in Russia, and how poorly patriotism was understood. Having caught a glimpse of some of the British Empire's colonies, and heard Russian complaints about exploitation of the natives, Chekhov concluded that at least the British brought transport, sanitation, museums and Christianity with them, whereas the Russians indulged purely n exploitat ion:
A drunken, debauched wreck of a man may love his wife and children, but what gooc is his love? The newspapers all tell us how much we love our great Motherland, but what is our way of expressing this love? In place of knowledge there is limitless impudence and arrogance, in place of work there is ' dleness and bestiality; there is no justice and the idea of honour goes no further than 'pride in one's uniform' - a uniform Much is most usually to be found decorating the docks in our courts. What we must do is work, and let everything else go to the devil. Above all we must be just, and everything else will follow.34
In 1904, the truth of Chekhov's words was demonstrated when the steamroller of Russian ij npenalism was finally brought to an abrupt and humiliating halt by the Russo-Japanese War. Hostilities broke out a few months before his death. Establishing a naval base on the Pacific and occupying Manchuria in 1900 had been an encouraging prelude to Russia's ambition to conquer Asia: such was the empire's false sense of superiority when it acqBrfcd a twenty-five-year lease from China to expand into its north-eastern provinces, that the foreign minister declared that one flag and one sentry was all that was required to secure Port Arthur: Russian prestige would do the rest.35 But Japan was no longer prepared to tolerate Russia's expansionist aims. Having enjoyed spending time with the Japanese Consul to Sakhalin back in 1890,
Chekhov was one of the few people in Russia who did not still see Japan through a 'yellow fog of ignorance' - as a quaint place where people whiled away their time with ge shas, elaborate tea ceremonies and flower arranging.36 He read news of the war's progress avidly, and with great concern. The way in which the Orient had taken hold of his imagination can be seen from the fact that he expressed a serious intention to travel to the front and work as a doctor that summer, even though by that time he barely had the strength to go for a walk, let alone carry out medical duties. The alarming news about the war's
ч -
progress .troubled him greatly during his last days, and no doubt partly lay behind his delirious mutterings about a sailor just before he aied.
Sakhalin was the only Russian territory that Japan :nvaded during the war, and it temporarily acquired the southern half of the island under the terms of the peace treaty drawn up In September 1905. In the chaos before the penal colony was finally shut down the following year, over 30,000 Russian inhab'tants managed to escape.38
Chekhov attempted very little creative work in the year that he travelled to Sakhalin, but his story 'Gusev', which was began just before the last leg of his fifty-two-day sea journey back to Odessa, and fimshed in Colombo, bore the stamp of his recent experiences, and stands out as one of his most unusual and artistically ambitious pieces of fiction. The story is set n the sick-bay of a ship similar to the Petersburg, and at the beginning of a similar voyage: through the Sea of Japan to Hong Kong and on to Singapore. The patients in the sickbay - a sailor, three privates and an impoverished clergyman - have all served in the Far East and are now returning to Russia. The anger the cleric Pavel Ivanych expresses towards the Russian author, ti ;s, who have washed their hands of consumptive peasant coldiers by loa ding them on to sh'os of the Voluntary Fleet, undoubtedly echoed Chekhov's own feelings. Over 400 discharged Russian servicemen had come on board the Petersburg at Vlad rastok, and two had died and been thrown overboard by the it ime the ship reached S igapore. Partly acting on Chekhov's advice, five sick bulls were slaughtered and chrown overboard as well.39 Three out of the fi it patients in the sickbay die during the course of 'Gusev', which has more sentences trailing off into rows of 'mpressionistic dots than any other story he wrote, echoing the delirious state of its central character. The peasant soldier Gusev is, in fact, so delirious when Pavel Ivanych dies that he does not even notice his body being removed trom tne sick- bay. Within a matter of days he too :s dead, and his body is being sewn up in sailcloth to be thrown into the deep to be eaten by a shark. Chekhov finished this story in Colombo, and its fantastic ending seems nsp.red by that exotic locale:
Then another dark body appears. It 5 a shark. It glides underneath Gusev grandly and nonchalantly, as if not noticing him, and Gusev lands on its back; then it turns belly up, basks in the warm, clear water and lazily opens ts j iws, showing two rows of teeth. The pilot fish are thrilled; they stop and look to see what is go ng to happen next. The shark teases the body a little, then nonchalantly places its mouth underneath it, carefully grazes к with its teeth and the sa;lcloth js ripped along the whole length of the body from head to toe; one of the weights falls out and frightens the pilots by striking the shark or ts siae before descending quickly to the seabed.
But meanwhile up above, clouds are clustering together over where che sun is rising; one cloud is like a triumphal arch, another like a h'on and a third like scissors ... A broad green sti tp of 'ight emerges from behind the clouds and stretches out to the middle of the sky; a little later a violet one joins it, then a gold one, and a pink one ... The sky turns a delicate lilac colour. The ocean frowns at first as it looks at this magnificent, mesmerizing sky, but then itself takes on those tender, radiant, passionate colours wl ch are difficult to describe in human terms.40
II
Europe
I'm in Venice. Put me in a madhouse.
Letter to Maria Kiselyova, 25 March 1891
Abbazia and the Adriatic are wonderful, but Luka and the Psyol are
better.
Letter to Natalya Lintvaryova, 21 September 1894
After travelling as far east as he could almost possibly go, where else could Chekhov visit next but Western Europe? He had done privation; now it was time for decadence. It was a relatively quick turnaround. He arrived back in Moscow in early December 1890. After the open spaces of Siberia, he felt very cramped resum> ng his city life in the small fiat that his family had rented while he was away, and he was soon itching to travel again. By March he was on Ьз way to St Petersburg to meet up with Suvorin and catch the express train to Vienna. And it was not just any old train - Suvorin's sybaritic tastes dictated that they travel in style, and -so their carriage boasted comfortable beds, carpets, mirrors and enormous windows. A far cry from the tarantas of the previous year. Chekhov travelled to Western Europe on f ve occasions in his life. There were two visits undertaken with Suvorin in 1891 and 1894, both whistlestop tours of the great ckies, and then there were two much longer soiourns he spent on the French Riviera for health reasons. He had longed to take off from the south of France and visit Afr'ca, but by this time he was tragically unfit for the rugged adventures that had been the stuff of Lis boyhood dreams. The last time Chekhov travelled to Western Europe was to die.