He was happier if less comfortable while visiting with friends on the southern steppe. In later years Taganrog’s cultural development became one of Chekhov’s charitable social projects; he funded the city’s libraries and hospitals. The return north in mid-May, however, did not bring him peace of mind. Except for a few trips to Moscow and performing medical duties nearby, he was with his family at Babkino for the entire summer. He was fulfilling his obligations of supplying short stories to New Times and the Petersburg Gazette, but he was not settling down. Marriage with Dunya Efros still crossed his mind. By September, his spirits were lower than they had ever been.
April 1887
“What is there to teach? There is nothing to teach. Sit down and write.”
—“The Letter”
While on the road, Chekhov wanted and had a light month of writing; it was Holy Season, and the first three pieces he published, “A Mystery” (“Tayna,” April 11), “The Cossack” (“Kazak,” April 13), and “The Letter” (“Pis’mo,” April 18), were appropriately religiously themed for the periodicals. Only “The Letter” inspired him to sublimity.
By April 1, Chekhov had sent “The Letter” to Suvorin. On April 2, Lazarev accompanied Chekhov to Moscow’s Kursky terminal, where Chekhov boarded the train headed south. Usually he did not date his letters, but he now recounted this leg of the trip to his family with, sometimes, hour by hour notations. For the next several weeks, he reported the events and his movements in a “diary” for the family’s entertainment. He was glad to share his impressions with his “Gentle readers and devout listeners.”1
He began writing his sister while on the train on April 3. He wrote that he hadn’t had an envelope, so sent a postcard at 4:50 in the morning from Orel (“I’m drinking coffee that tastes like smoked whitefish”);2 he wasn’t able to mail the first installment of the diary until April 7, the day after he arrived in Taganrog.
He wrote one unhappy short story on the way, but in his letters his observations of life on the train and out the window were relaxed, amusing and happy. On April 4 the train was on familiar territory:
…Twelve o’clock. Lovely weather. There is a scent of the steppe and one hears the birds sing. I see my old friends the ravens flying over the steppe.
The barrows, the water-towers, the buildings—everything is familiar and well-remembered. At the station I have a helping of remarkably good and rich sorrel soup. Then I walk along the platform. Young ladies. At an upper window at the far end of the station sits a young girl (or a married lady, goodness knows which) in a white blouse, beautiful and languid. I look at her, she looks at me…. I put on my glasses, she does the same…. Oh, lovely vision! I caught a catarrh of the heart and continued my journey. The weather is devilishly, revoltingly fine. Little Russians, oxen, ravens, white huts, rivers, the line of the Donets railway with one telegraph wire, daughters of landowners and farmers, red dogs, the trees—it all flits by like a dream…. It is hot. The inspector begins to bore me. The rissoles and pies, half of which I have not gotten through, begin to smell […].3
On the 6th, he was in Taganrog for Good Friday, but he was disappointed by his homecoming; he wrote his family on April 7:
It gives one the impression of Herculaneum and Pompeii; there are no people, and instead of mummies there are sleepy drishpaks [Garnett’s footnote: “Uneducated young men in the jargon of Taganrog”] and melon-shaped heads. All the houses look flattened out, and as though they had long needed replastering, the roofs want painting, the shutters are closed….
At eight o’clock in the evening my uncle [Mitrofan], his family, Irina, the dogs, the rats that live in the storeroom, the rabbits were fast asleep. There was nothing for it but to go to bed, too. I sleep on the drawing room sofa. The sofa has not increased in length, and is as short as it was before, and so when I go to bed I have either to stick up my legs in an unseemly way or to let them hang down to the floor. I think of Procrustes and his bed. I cover myself with a pink quilt, stiff and stuffy, which becomes intolerably obnoxious at night when the stoves lit by Irina make their presence felt. A Yakov Andreyevich [a nickname for a chamber pot] is a fond but unattainable dream. Only two persons permit themselves this luxury in Taganrog: the mayor and Alferaki. All the rest must either pee in bed or take a trip to God’s outdoors.4 […]
He had a sore on his leg and diarrhea: “There is no end to my ailments. The biblical saying that in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children is being fulfilled so far as I am concerned, for my children are my stories, and I cannot bear to think of them now. The very idea of writing is repugnant to me.”
Chekhov caught up on mail; he read letters from Leykin, who wrote from his estate near Petersburg: “We had a houseguest last week […] and she kept asking me about you. I told her what kind of person you are: how tall, skin color, how fat. Come to Tosna in June and we’ll show her to you, and we’ll show you to her. Why not? Maybe…”5
Leykin hadn’t guessed how sour Chekhov was feeling about marriage. Chekhov replied on April 7, sour mostly on Taganrog:
Stark Asia! All around there’s such Asia that I can’t believe my eyes. Sixty thousand inhabitants busy themselves exclusively with eating, drinking, procreating, and they have no other interests, none at all. Wherever you go there are Easter cakes, eggs, local wine, infants, but no newspapers, no books…. The site of the city is in every respect magnificent, the climate glorious, the fruits of the earth abound, but the people are devilishly apathetic. […]
On Saturday I am going to Novocherkassk, where I act as best man at the wedding of a wealthy Cossack girl. […]6
Chekhov received a letter from his father written April 7, the first such correspondence from Pavel that exists in this period. With Chekhov out of town, perhaps the actual father of the family felt the need to take charge. Pavel knew that payment for his son’s latest publications was due from Petersburg, but it still hadn’t arrived. The family had spent Easter alone: “It was boring without you.”7
But Chekhov himself was already bored in Taganrog. He wrote his parents and siblings over April 10–11:
Frightfully dull. It is cold and gray…. During all my stay in Taganrog I could only do justice to the following things: remarkably good ring-rolls sold at the market, the Santurninsky wine, fresh caviar, excellent crabs and uncle’s genuine hospitality. Everything else is poor and not to be envied. The young ladies here are not bad, but it takes some time to get used to them. They are abrupt in their movements, frivolous in their attitude to men, run away from their parents with actors, laugh loudly, easily fall in love, whistle to dogs, drink wine, etc. […]
The devil only knows what I haven’t spent a night on: on beds with bugs, on sofas, settees, boxes. Last night I spent in a long and narrow parlor on a sofa under a looking-glass….8
On the 11th, Chekhov wrote his sister to tell her that the delay in their receiving his payment had been Alexander’s fault: “Between you and me: I’m afraid he’s sick or drinking.” As usual in his letters to Maria, he sent acknowledgments to Dunya Efros.
Chekhov’s heart and soul seem to have not been fully engaged in the comic “A Mystery” (April 11), which he had dispatched to Leykin on March 31: An official is perplexed by a mysterious guest signature that doesn’t seem to belong to any of his yearly party attendees. After taking up spiritualism whole hog, the official then finds out his priest likes to sign guestbooks with his former nonreligious name.
Chekhov had written “The Cossack” (“Kazak,” April 13) while on the train south; the steppe, viewed dreamily and beautifully, was just outside the window: “The sun had not yet risen, but the east was all tinged with red and gold and had dissipated the haze which usually, in the early morning, screens the blue of the sky from the eyes. It was quiet…. The birds were hardly yet awake…. The corncrake uttered its clear note, and far away above a little tumulus, a sleepy kite floated, heavily flapping its wings, and no other living creature could be seen all over the steppe.”9 Chekhov loved Easter and so does his young newlywed hero: “Torchakov drove on and thought that there was no better nor happier holiday than the Feast of Christ’s Resurrection.” The plot, however, is solemn and its moral as heavy as lead. Torchakov’s young wife won’t let her husband give a sick Cossack any of their whole and pretty Easter cake. For once, the religious stories of Tolstoy did not inspire but instead dampened Chekhov. Torchakov gives in to his wife’s fussy lack of charitableness but then repents and feels tortured: