would write you more, but in the cabin sits a lady roaring away with laughter and prattling without mercy. I haven't the strength to continue. She hasn't stopped laughing boisterously and chattering since last night.
This letter is traveling across America, but I probably won't. Everybody says the American trip is more expensive and more tiresome.
Tomorrow I shall see Japan from afar—Matsmai Island. It is now twelve midnight. The sea is dark and a wind is blowing.
Landsberg was an ex-army officer, Hembruck an aristocrat, Borodavkin a prominent businessman. They were all exiled to Sakhalin for criminal offenses.
I cannot understand how this boat can keep on going and orient itself when it is pitch-dark, and moreover in such wild, little-known waters as Tatar Sound.
When I remind myself that six thousand miles separate me from my world, apathy overcomes me. I feel as though I won't get home for a hundred years.
Respectful salutations and hearty greetings to Anna Ivanovna and all of you. God grant you happiness and all the best.
Yours,
A. Chekhov
I'm lonesome. To ALEXEI SUVORIN
December 9, 1890, Moscow
Greetings, my very dear friend,
Hurrah! Well, here I am, back at my own desk at last, with a prayer to my fading penates and a letter to you. I feel very well, as if I had never left home, healthy and happy to the very mar- row of my bones. Now for a very brief report. I stayed in Sakhalin not two months, as was reported in your paper, but three months plus two days. It was high-pressurc work; I made a full, detailed census of the entire Sakhalin population and saw everything except capital punishment. \Vhen we get to- gether I will show you a whole trunkful of penal colony para- phernalia which should be unusually valuable as raw material. I know a lot now, but brought back a nasty feeling. While I was on the island I felt a kind of bitter taste, as of rancid butter, in the pit of my stomach, but now in retrospect Sakhalin seems a regular hell. I worked intensively for two months without sparing myself, but the third month, began giving way to the bitter taste I mention above, to the tedium and to thinking about the cholera due by way of Vladivostok, so that I stood the risk of wintering in the convict colony. But thank heaven the cholera came to an end and on the thirteenth of October the steamer bore me off from Sakhalin. I stopped in Vladivostok. Of the Maritime Province and our eastern shore generally, with its fleets, problems and Pacific Ocean aspirations, I have but one thing to say: crying poverty! Poverty, ignorance and nothing- ness, enough to drive one to despair. There is one honest man for ninety-nine thieves befouling the name of Russia. . . . 'Ve sailed past Japan, as it has some cholera cases, and so I didn't buy you anything Japanese, and the five hundred rubles you gave me for the purpose I spent on myself, for which reason you have a legal right to have me transported to Siberia. The first foreign port on my journey was Hong Kong. It has a glorious bay, the movement of ships on the ocean is beyond anything I have seen even in pictures, excellent roads, trolleys, a railway to the mountains, museums, botanical gardens; wherever you turn you will note evidences of the most tender solicitude on the part of the English for men in their service; there is even a sailors' club. I drove around in a rickshaw, i.e., was borne by humans, bought all sorts of rubbish from the Chinese and got indignant listening to my Russian traveling companions abusing the Eng- lish for exploiting the natives. Thought I to myself, yes, the English exploit the Chinese, the Sepoys and the Hindus, but they do give them roads, plumbing and Christianity; you ex- ploit them too, but what do you give them?
As we left Hong Kong the sea got really rough. The steamer wasn't carrying a load and dipped at a 38° angle, so that we were afraid it might turn over. The discovery that I am not sus- ceptible to seasickness surprised me pleasantly. On our way to Singapore two dead bodies were flung into the sea. 'Vhen you look at a corpse sewed into canvas flying head over heels into the water and when you realize it is a couple of miles to the bottom, your sensation is one of horror, as if, somehow, you yourself were about to die and be thrown into the ocean. Our cattle got sick and upon the sentence of Dr. Shcherbak and your humble senrant were killed and thrown into the sea.
I recall Singapore only vaguely as I was sad somehow, close to tears, as I traveled past it. But then Ceylon followed, a heavenly place. In this paradise I made more than seventy miles by train and steeped myself in palm forests and bronze-hued women up to the neck [. ..] From Ceylon we sailed thirteen days and nights without a halt and were stupefied with boredom. I stand the heat very well. The Red Sea is dismal; looking upon Mt. Sinai I was moved.
God's earth is good. It is only we on it who are bad. How little justice and humility we have, how poor our understanding of patriotism! A drunken, worn-out, good-for-nothing husband loves his wife and children, but what good is this love? The newspapers tell us we love our mighty land, but how does this love express itself? Instead of knowledge, there is insolence and boundless conceit, instead of labor, idleness and caddishness; there is no justice, the understanding of honor does not go be- yound "the honor of the uniform," a uniform usually adorning our prisoners' dock. We must work, the hell with everything else. The important thing is that we must be just, and all the rest will be added unto us.
I want terribly to speak with you. My soul is in upheaval. I don't want to see anyone but you, because you are the only one I can talk to. The hell with Pleshcheyev. And the hell with the actors, too.
I got your telegrams in deplorable condition, all of them torn. . . .
God keep you.
Yours,
A. Chekhov
To ALEXEI SUVORIN
December 24, /8go, 1\foscow We felicitate you and all your respected family on the occa- sion of the holidays and wish you many more of them to be enjoyed in good health and happiness.
I believe both in Koch and in sperm and praise God I do. The public regards all this, i.e., Kochini, spermini, etc., as some miracle leaping without warning from the brain of a Pallas Athene, but people in the know see it only as a logical result of everything that has been done during the past twenty years. And much has been done, my dear man! Surgery alone has ac- complished so much that the very thought of it is frightening. The period of twenty years ago appears just pitiful to anybody studying medicine nowadays. My dear man, if I were presented the choice of one of the two: the "ideals" of the celebrated sixties, or the worst community hospital of the present time, I wouldn't hesitate a moment in choosing the latter.
Do Kochini cure syphilis? Possibly. As to cancer, permit me to have my doubts. Cancer is not a microbe; it is tissue growing in the wrong place which, like a weed, chokes all the tissues in its vicinity. If Hay's uncle shows improvement, it would be merely because the erysipelas germ, i.e., the elements producing the disease of erysipelas—are also elements of the Kochini. It has long been noted that the growth of malignant tumors halts for a time when this disease is present....
I brought some utterly fascinating animals with me from India. They are called mongooses and are the natural enemies of cobras; they are very inquisitive, are fond of humans and break dishes.... During the day the mongoose wanders through the rooms and sticks close to people, at night he sleeps on any bed handy and purrs like a kitten. He might bite through Tresor's throat, or vice versa. . . . He cannot stand animals.
Following your custom of previous years, would you send me some stories for polishing. I like this occupation.