A. Chekhov
T0 MARIA CHEKHOVA
April 23, 1890, 0n the V0lga ab0ard the SS. Alexander Nevsky early in the m0rning.
Dear clan 0f Tunguses,
. . . My first impression of the Volga was spoiled by the rain, the tear-stained cabin windows and the wet nose of Gurland who came to meet me at the station. . . .
Once on the boat I paid first honors to my special talent, i.e., I went to sleep. When I awoke it was to behold the sun. The Volga is not bad, with water-drenched meadows, monasteries flooded with sunlight, white churches; a wonderful sense of expansive ease, and wherever you look you see nice places to sit and fish. . . .
The steamer itself is not so wonderful. The best thing about it is the toilet. This stands on high, four steps leading to it, so that an inexperienced person, say Ivanenko, might easily mis- take it for a royal throne. The boat's worst feature is the dinner it serves. Here is the menu, with original spelling retained: veg. soupe, frankfurts and cab, sturgon frit, baked kat pudding; kat, it develops, means kasha. Since my money has been earned by blood and sweat, I should have wished the reverse order of things, i.e., to have the dinner better than the toilet facilities, all the more so since after the wine I drank at Korneyev's my insides have become completely clogged and I'll be doing with- out the toilet all the way through to Tomsk.
Madame Kundasova1 is traveling on this boat. I haven't any idea where she is going, or why. When I start asking questions, she launches into extremely hazy conjectures on the subject of somebody who was supposed to meet her in a ravine near Kineshma, then bursts into furious laughter and stamps her foot or pokes her elbow into whatever is handy, not sparing [. . .] ribs. We have sailed past Kineshma, and the ravines as well, but she has continued on the boat, which has been very nice as far as I am concerned. By the way: yesterday, for the first time in my life, I saw her eat. She doesn't eat less than other folks, but she eats mechanically, as though she were champing oats ....
It's coldish and somewhat tiresome—but on the whole inter- esting.
The boat whistles every few minutes, sounding halfway be- tween a donkey's bray and an Aeolian harp. In five or six hours I'll be in Nizhni-Novgorod. The sun is rising. I slept artistically all night. My money is intact—because I'm always clutching at my stomach. . . .
The sun has hidden behind a cloud, the sky is overcast and the broad Volga wears a dismal look. Levitan should not be liv- ing on the Volga. The river sheds gloom on the soul. Although a nice little estate along its banks would not be too bad.
Best regards to all. Hearty greetings and a thousand salu- tations. . . .
If the steward were awake, I should have some coffee, but as
1 Kundasova was a friend of the Chekhov family, a mathematician and astronomcr.
it is I must drink water disconsolately. Greetings to Maryusha and Olga.2
Keep well and happy. I'll write regularly.
Your bored Volgaman, Homo Sakhaliensis,
A. Chekhov
Greetings to Grandma.
To MARIA CHEKHOVA
April 24, r8go, Kama S.S. Perm
My dear Tungus /riendsj
I am sailing on the Kama, but cannot tell you exactly where we are; around Chistopol, I think. Nor can I extol the beauty of the banks since it is devilishly cold; the birches haven't yet put forth their leaves, here and there lie patches of snow, ice floats in the river, in brief, all aesthetic considerations are shot to hell. I am sitting in the deck cabin where people of all classes are at table and am listening to conversations and asking myself whether it isn't time for some tea. If it were up to me I would do nothing but eat from morning to night; but as I haven't the money for continuous eating I sleep or wait for sleep. I haven't been going out on deck—it's too cold. It rains at night and daytime an unpleasant wind blows.
Ah, caviar! I keep on eating it, but can never get my fill. Like olives. It's a lucky thing it's not salty.
It's a shame I didn't think of sewing myself a little bag for tea and sugar. I have to order it one glass at a time, which is a bore and expensive to boot. This morning I wanted to buy some tea and sugar in Kazan but slept too late.
Rejoice, Mother! It seems I'll be spending twenty-four hours in Ekaterinburg and am goi.ng to see our relatives. Perhaps their
2 Maryusha and Olga were servants in the Chekhov household.
hearts have grown tender and they will give me three rubles and a little packet of tea.
From the conversations now under way, I take it that a cir- ciiit court is making the trip with us. These people are not overburdened with intellect and so the merchants who only rarely put in a word seem very clever. You run across frightfully rich people everywhere.
Small sturgeon are cheaper than dirt, but you get tired of them very fast. What more is there to write? Nothing. Oh yes, we have a general on board and an emaciated man with fair hair. The former rushes back and forth from his cabin to the deck and keeps sending photos to people; the latter . . . seeks to give the impression that he is a writer; today at dinner he lied to some lady that Suvorin had published a little book of his; I, of course, expressed the proper awe on my face.
My money is intact with the exception of what I've eaten up. The scoundrcls won't feed me free!
I am neither gay nor sad but seem to have a soul of gelatin. I am content to sit motionless and silent. Today, for example, I hardly spoke fivc words. Hold on, I'm not telling the truth: I had a talk with a priest on deck.
We are starting to meet up with natives. There are great numbers of Tatars, who appear to be a respectable and decorous people . . . .
I send my humblest greetings to all of you. I plead with Mama and Papa not to worry about me and not to imagine dangers that do not exist. . . .
Keep well and happy.
Yours,
A. Chekhov
Forgive me for writing only of food. If I didn't write of it I would have to write of the cold; there are no other themes.
The circuit court has decreed that we are to have tea. It has picked up somewhere along the line two candidates for court duties who are now serving as the office staff. One looks like our sartorial poet Byelousov and the other like Yezhov. Both re- spectfully listen to Messrs. the bosses. They don't dare have an opinion of their own and try to look as though they themselves were acquiring wisdom in listening to these sage speeches. I like model young people.
To MARIA CHEKHOVA
April 29, /890, Ekaterinburg
Dear Tungus /riends,
The Kama is the very dullest of rivers; to grasp its beauty one should be a Pecheneg, sit motionless on a barge near a barrel filled with oil or a sack with fish from the Caspian and continually take swigs of liquor. The banks are bare, the trees bare, the earth a mat-brown, patches of snow stretch ahead and the wind is such that even the devil himself couldn't blow as sharply or unpleasantly. When the cold wind blows and ripples the water, which after the spring's flooding has taken on the color of coffee slops, everything turns cold and lonely and wretched; the accordion sounds on the shore seem mournful and the figures in torn sheepskin coats standing motionless on the barges we encounter appear permanently stiff with sorrow. The cities of the Kama are gray; it looks as though their inhab- itants occupied themselves exclusively in the manufacture of lowering clouds, boredom, wet fences and street filth. The quays swarm with intelligentsia, for whom the arrival of a boat is an event. . . .
I have already written that a circuit court is aboard: presid- ing officer, judge and public prosecutor. The presiding officer is a healthy, sturdy old German fellow converted to Orthodoxy, pious, a homeopath, and obviously an assiduous ladies' man; the judge is an old fellow of the type our departed Nikolai used to draw; he walks badly bent, coughs and likes comic themes; the prosecutor is a man of forty-three, dissatisfied with life, a liberal, skeptic and really big-hearted fellow. During the entire trip this judicial group has employed its time eating, deciding important questions, eating, reading and eating. There is a library on board, and I saw the prosecutor reading my "In the Twilight." The talk was about me. Around this part of the world their favorite is Sibiryak-Mamin and his descriptions of the Urals. They have more to say about him than they do about Tolstoy. . . .