Chekhov was perfectly serious in his desire to write an authoritative work on Sakhalin, and he was only half jok- ing when he spoke of becoming a real writer after writing his account of the penal colony. He had a great affection for the still unwritten book; it was his "brain-child," the fruit of interminable labors and many furious contemplations; and he was determined in those early days that it should have an impact on society. When the ^^k was finally writ- ten he was less hopeful about the impact on society.
As the winter gave way to spring, his friends became understandably more nervous about the journey. Now at last it became clear that he must be taken seriously. He was telling his friends that he would leave Moscow as soon as the ice melted on the Kama River, so that he could make
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part of the journey by river. The ice melted shortly after Easter, and now Easter was approaching. Suvorin came to the conclusion that Chekhov was deadly serious and one last effort must be made to dissuade him. He listed all the dangers and inconveniences of the journey, doubted whether there could be any fruitful result, wondered whether Sakha- lin had the slightest interest for anybody, and advanced the claims of Chekhov's friends, who were entitled to know that he was in good health, not risking his life in some godforsaken island on the other end of the earth. The journey could be postponed; better still, it could be aban- doncd. Chekhov rcplied good-humoredly, prefacing the let- ter, as he often did, with the saint's day and a general indication of the weather he was enjoying in Moscow—by "io,ooo skylarks" he meant that spring had already come. He wrote:
/1-farch 9. TheForty Martyrs and 1 o,ooo sk;larks
Dear Alexey Sergeyet ich,
We arc both mistaken about Sakhalin, but you prob- ably more than I. I ^ leaving in the firm conviction that my expedition will not yield anything valuable in the way of literature or science; for this I have not enough knowl- edge or time or ambition. I have not carefully worked out plans like Humboldt or Kcnnan.[1] I want to write a couple of hundred pages, and in this way repay in some small part the debt I owe to medicine, which, as you know, I have ncglected like a swine.
Perhaps I shall not be able to write anything worth- while, but the journey docs not lose its glamour for me; by reading, observing, listening I shall discover and learn much. Although I have not yet left, thanks to the books I have gone through I have learned many things which every- one ought to know under a penalty of forty lashes, things which in my ignorance were hitherto unknown to me. Moreover I believe the journey will be an uninterrupted
six months of physical and mental labor, and for me this is necessary because I am a Little Russian and I have al- ready grown lazy. I have to discipline myself. Granting that my journey may be the purest nonsense, a mere whim, an act of stubbornness—think it over and tell me, what do I lose by going? Time? Money? Shall I have to undergo hardships? My time isn't worth anything, I'll never have any money anyway, as for hardships I'll be traveling by horse for twenty-five or thirty days, no longer, and for the rest of the time I shall be sitting on deck in a steamer or in a room, and I'll be bombarding you incessantly with letters.
Even if the journey turns out to be absolutely unre- warding, there are still bound to be two or three days in the course of the entire journey which I will remember for the rest of my life with joy or poignancy, surely? Etc., etc. That's how it is, my dear sir. You will say that this is not convincing, but what you write is equally unconvincing. For example, you write that Sakhalin is no use to anybody, and no one has the slightest interest in the place. Is this really true? Sakhalin may be uscless and uninteresting only to a society that docs not exile thousands of people to it and docs not spend millions maintaining it. Except for Australia in the old days and Cayenne, Sakhalin is the only place left where it is possible to study colonization by criminals: all Europe is interested in it, and we pay no attention to it.
Not more than twenty-five or thirty ye:irs ago our Rus- sian people, while exploring Sakhalin, performed wonder- ful exploits, for which one could believe men were gods, but we have no usc for this sort of thing, we don't want to know what kind of people they were, and so we sit comfort:ibly surrounded by our four walls and complain that God created man to no good purpose. Sakhalin is a place of intolerable sufferings, and man alone, whether free or enslaved, is capable of making such a place. Those who work near the island or on it have solved terrible and re- sponsible problems, and are doing so now. I am sorry I am not sentimentaclass="underline" otherwise I would say we ought to go on pilgrimage to Sakhalin as the Turks go to Mecca, while seamen and criminologists in particular should regard Sakhalin as military men look upon Sebastopol. From the books I have read and am reading, it is clear that we have sent millions of people to rot in prison, we have let them rot casually, barbarously, without giving it a thought, we have driven people in chains for thousands of miles through
the cold, infected them with syphilis, made them depraved, multiplied criminals, and we have thrust the blame for all this on red-nosed jail-keepers.
Today all of educated Europe knows that it is not the fault of the jailers, but rather of all of us—and this is none of our concern, this is not interesting! The celebrated '6os did nothing for the sick and imprisoned, thus break- ing the most imponant commandment of Christian civiliza- tion. In our time something is being done for the sick, but nothing for prisoners: the study of prison conditions does not interest our jurists in the least. No, I assure you, Sakhalin is of use, and it is interesting, and my sole regret is that it is I who am going there, and not someone else more capable of arousing public interest. I personally am going after the merest trifles. . . .
So Chekhov wrote in the longest and most carefully considered defense of his quixotic journey, when it became clear that some kind of explanation to his friends could no longer be avoided. But the explanation is not wholly con- vincing, and he was a little more convincing when he wrote a few days later to his friend Ivan Leontiev-Shcheglov:
I am not going in order to observe or get impressions, but simply so that I can live for half a year as I have never lived up to this time. So don't expect anything from me, old fellow;if I have the time and ability to achieve any- thing, then glory be to God; if not, don't find fault with me. I shall be going after Easter week. . . .
II
When Chekhov left Moscow on April 21 on the first stage of his journey to the Far East, he believed he had made all the proper arrangements and taken all the proper precautions. He was armed with a bottle of cognac, top boots, a sheepskin, a waterproof leather coat, a knife "use- ful for cutting sausages and killing tigers," as he explained to Suvorin, and a revolver, which proved to be an unneces- sary luxury, for it was never used. He was in good spirits, although in the excitement of preparing for the journey he had been spitting blood. He had been spitting blood at intervals since the previous December; he had succeeded in convincing himself that it came from his throat and not from his lungs.