We began making our way across the lakes. Heavens, I never went through anything like that in my life! Bit- ing wind, cold, disgusting rain, and with it all, climb out of the coach (an open one) if you please, and hold the horses: over each little bridge one could only lead the horses one at a time. Where had I landed? Where was I? Wastes and desolation all around; the shores of the Irtysh are bare and sullen.
We drive into the largest lake. Now I would gladly tum back, but that's difficult. We drive over a long, nar- row tongue of land. It comes to an abrupt end and we go plop! Then there is another strip of land and again— plop! My hands grow numb with cold, and the wild ducks seem to mock us and hover overhead in huge flocks. It grows dark. The driver is silent—he has lost his head. But at last we reach the final tongue of land which separates the lake from the Irtysh. The river's sloping bank rises no more than two feet above the level of the water; it is clayey, bare, gullied, and looks slip- pery. The water is muddy. White waves beat against the clay, but the river itself does not roar or boom, but emits a queer sound as though someone were knocking on coffins under water . . . The opposite bank is an un- broken, desolate plain. . • .
But here is the ferry. We must cross to the other side. A peasant emerges from a hut and, shrinking from the rain, says that the ferry cannot make the trip as it is too windy (the ferries hereabouts are worked by oars). He advises us to wait for calm weather.
So here I am at night in a hut standing in the middle of a lake on the very shore of the lrtysh. The penetrating humidity is in my bones and loneliness is in my soul; I listen to my Irtysh knocking on the coffins and to the wind howling and I ask myself: "Where am I? What am I here for?"
In the next room the ferrymen and my driver are asleep. They are decent men. If they were bad, they could very well rob me and then drown me in the Irtysh. The hut stands solo on the shore, there are no witnesses.
The road to Tomsk is absolutely safe as far as brig- andage is concerned. It is bad form to so much as talk of robberies. They don't even steal from travelers. When you go into a hut, you can leave your belongings in the yard and everything will be safe.
Just the same, I did almost get killed. Imagine the hour before dawn. I am driving along in my carriage and thinking, thinking . . . Suddenly I see a troika head- ing for us at full speed; my driver turns right in the very nick of time and the troika dashes past us . . . It is fol- lowed by another coach also going at full speed. We turn to the right, it turns to the left. "We'll collide)" flashes through my mind. Another instant, and there is a crash, the horses tangle in a black mass, my carriage rears up and I am on the ground with all my bags and bundles on top of me. I jump up and see: a third troika bearing down on us!
My mother must have prayed for me the night before. If I had been asleep or if the third carriage had followed hard upon the second, I should have been killed or crip- pled. It appears that the first driver had whipped up his horses and the drivers in the second and third troikas were asleep and didn't see us. After the crash there was complete stupefaction on both sides, followed by fero- cious cursing. The harness was torn, the shafts broken, the yokes lay about on the road. And how drivers swear! At night, in the midst of the cursing, frenzied horde I was overcome by a sense of utter loneliness such as I have never known before.
But my paper is giving out . . . The rain is pelting the windows. May all the saints bless you! I'll write again. My address is: Aleksandrovsk, Island of Sakhalin.
Yours, A. CHEKHOV
TO IDS SISTER MARIA
Tomsk, May 16, 1890
In the morning they would not ferry me across: it was too windy. We had to take a rowboat. As I cross the river the rain lashes, the wind blows, the baggage gets soaked, the felt boots, which had been drying overnight on the stove, are again turning into jelly. Oh, my be- loved leather coat! If I didn't catch cold, I owe that to it alone. When I come back, rub it down with lard or castor oil, as a reward. I sat on the bank for a whole hour on a suitcase, waiting for horses to arrive from the village. I remember how slippery it was climbing up that bank. In the village I warmed up and had tea. De- portees came begging for alms. Every family bakes a pood [36 pounds] of white bread for them every day. A sort of tax, this.
The deportees take the bread and trade it for drink at some pothouse. One of the deportees, a raggedy, clean- shaven old man, whose eyes had been knocked out for him by his fellow convicts in a tavern, having heard that a chance traveler was in the house and taking me for a merchant, began reciting prayers and chanting. He chanted a prayer for health and another for the repose of the dead, and Easter canticles . . . What didn't he sing! Then he began telling lies about his having come of a merchant family of Moscow. I noticed the contempt in which this boozer held the peasants on whom he sponged!
On the llth I hired a post chaise and started off. Out of boredom I took to reading the complaint books at the stations. I made a discovery which astonished me and which, in raw or rainy weather, is invaluable: these sta- tions have privies in their entries. Oh, you can't ap- preciate this!
On the 12th of May they would not let me have any horses, saying that travel was out of the question, since the Ob had overflowed its banks and inundated all the meadowlands. "You turn off the post road and go as far as Krasnyi Yar; from there you will go about eight miles by boat to Dubrovino, and at Dubrovino they'll let you have post horses." I started for Kr. Yar with horses hired from a private person. Arrived there in the morning. I was told that they did have a boat, but that I'd have to wait awhile, since grandfather had sent a workman off to row the assessor's clerk to Dubrovino. Very well, we'll wait. One hour passes, then another, and a third. Noon comes, then evening. Allah kerim (Allah is generous), all the tea I drank, all the bread I ate, all the thoughts I thought! And how I slept! Night came, and still no boat. Morning came. Finally, at nine o'clock the work- man was back. Thank heavens, we're off! And how smoothly we row! The air is calm, the boatmen are skilled, the islands are beautiful • . • The flood had caught men and cattle off guard, and I see peasant women going out in boats to the islands to milk the cows. These cows are lean, despondent; because of the cold there is no feed at all to be had.
We covered eight miles. At the Dubrovino posthouse I had tea and with it I was served—just imagine!— waffies. The woman who runs the place must be a de- portee or the wife of one. At the next station the clerk, an old Pole, to whom I gave antipyrin to relieve his headache, complained of his poverty and told me that Count Sapieha, Chamberlain of the Court of Austria and a Pole, who helped Poles, had recently passed through Siberia. "He stopped near this station," the clerk told me, "but I never knew it! Holy Mother of God! He would have helped me. I wrote to him in Vienna, but got no reply—" and so on. Why am I not Sapieha? I would send this poor fellow back to his na- tive land.
On the 14th of May I was again refused horses. The Tom was in flood. What a nuisance! Not a nuisance, but a calamity! Tomsk thirty-five miles away, and then this, so unexpectedly. In my place a woman would have burst into sobs. Some kind folks found a way out for me: "You go as far as the Tom, your Honor—it's only four miles from here; there they'll row you across to Yar, and from there Ilya Markovich will take you by horse to Tomsk." I hire a private coach and go to the Tom, to the spot where the boat ought to be. I drive up: no boat. It has just gone off with the mail and isn't likely to come back soon, since there's a gale blowing. I begin my wait. The ground is covered with snow, the rain is sleety, and then there's the wind . . . An hour passes, then another, no boat. Fate is mocking me! I go back to the station. Here three troikas and a postman are getting ready to set out in the direction of the Tom. I tell them there is no boat. They remain. Fate rewards me: the clerk, in an- swer to my hesitant query as to the chances of getting a bite of something, tells me that the proprietress has cabbage soup. Oh, rapture! Oh, most radiant day! And the proprietress' daughter actually brings me excellent cabbage soup, with wonderful meat, roast potatoes, and cucumbers. . . . After the potatoes I let myself go completely and make me some coffee. A spree!