[Later]
After awakening yesterday morning and looking out of the coach window I felt an aversion to nature; the ground was white-covered, trees were cloaked in hoar frost and a genuine blizzard was catching up with the train. Wasn't it revolting! What sons of bitches these natural phenomena are! I had no overshoes, so I drew on my big boots and on my trip to the re- freshment bar for coffee I perfumed the whole Ural region with tar. Upon arriving in Ekaterinburg I found rain, snow and hail and put on my leather coat. The cabs are inconceivable as far as their squalor is concerned—filthy, dripping, no springs; the horses' front feet are arranged this way [drawing], their hoofs are enormous and their spines spindly. . . . The local droshkis are a clumsy parody of our surreys. . . .
All cities look alike in Russia. Ekaterinburg is just exactly like Perm or Tula. The bells chime magnificently, in velvet tones. I put up at the American Hotel (not half bad) and im- mediately let Alexander Simonov know of my arrival, inform- ing him that I intended sitting tight in my rooms for about two days and drinking Hunyadi water, which I am taking, and—I mention this not without pride—with great success.
The people here inspire the newcomer with something like horror; they are high-cheekboned, with jutting foreheads, broad-shouldered, have little eyes and enormously big fists. They are born at the local iron foundries and it is a mechanic, and not a midwife, who officiates. One of them will walk into your room with a samovar or water carafe and you may well fear he will murder you. I steer clear of them. This morning one such creature entered—high cheekbones, bulging brow, morose, almost as tall as the ceiling, shoulders five feet across and, to top it all, wearing a sheepskin coat.
\Vell, I think to myself, this one will certainly murder me. He turned out to be Alexander Sirnonov! \Ve had a long talk. He serves as a member of the local government council, is man- ager of his cousin's mill, which is lit by electricity, is the editor of the "Ekaterinburg \Veekly," which is censored by Police Chief Baron Taube, is married, has two children, is getting rich and fat, is aging, and lives "substantially." Says he has no time to be bored. He advised me to visit the museum, factories and mines; I thanked him for the advice. Then he invited me to take tea with him tomorrow; I invited him to have dinner with me. He did not ask me for dinner and generally did not insist on my visiting him. From this Marna may conclude that the heart of her relative has not softened and that both of us— Sirnonov and I—have no use for each other. . . .
There is snow on the streets and I have purposely pulled the curtains over the window so as not to have to look out upon all Asiatica . . . .
All night long sheets of iron are struck at every corner. People have to have iron heads not to go out of their minds with the incessant hammering. Today I attempted to boil myself some coffee; the result was like our cheap Taganrog wine. I drank it and shrugged it off. . . .
Keep well and happy, all of you, and may God look after you. . . . My money is intact. If Marna has a screen made in Nikolai's memory, I shall have nothing against it. I would like it.
Will I find a letter from you in Irkutsk!!
Your Homo Sakhaliensis,
A. Chekhov
To MARIA CHEKHOVA
May 14-17, 1890, Krasni Yar to Tomsk May 14, i8go, Village of Krasni Yar, 30 miles from Tomsk My wonderful Mama, excellent Masha, sweet Misha and everybody at home,
... I left Tyumen on May the third after a stop of two or three days in Ekaterinburg, which I applied to the repair of my coughing and hemorrhoidal personage. Both post and pri- vate drivers make the trans-Siberian trip. I elected to use the latter, as it was all the same to me. They put your humble ser- vant into a vehicle resembling a little wicker basket and off we drove with a pair of horses. You sit in the basket, and look out upon God's earth like a bird in a cage, without a thought on your mind.
It looks to me as if the Siberian plain commences right at Ekaterinburg and ends the devil knows where; I would say it is very like our South Russian steppe, were it not for the small birch groves encountered here and there and the cold wind stinging one's cheeks. Spring hasn't yet arrived here. There is absolutely no greenery, the forests are bare, the snow has not all melted and lusterless ice sheathes the lakes. On the ninth of May, St. Nicholas Day, there was a frost, and today, the four- teenth, we had a snowfall of about three inches. Only the ducks hint of spring. How many of them there are! I have never in my life seen such a superabundance of ducks. They fly over your head, take wing over the carriage, swim the lakes and pools, in short, I could have shot a thousand of them in one day with a poor gun. You can hear the wild geese honking; they are also numerous here. Often files of cranes and swans head our way. . . .In the birch groves flutter grouse and woodcock. Rab- bits, which are not eaten or shot here, sit up on their hind paws in a relaxed way and prick up their ears as they stare inquisitively at all comers. They run across the road so often that here it is not considered bad luck.
Traveling is a cold business. I am wearing my sheepskin jacket. I don't mind my body, that's all right, but my feet are always freezing. I wrap them in my leather coat but it doesn't help. I am wearing two pairs of trousers. \Vell, you go on and on. Road signs flash by, ponds, little birch groves. . . . Now we drive past a group of new settlers, then a file of prisoners. . . . We've met tramps with pots on their backs; these gentlemen promenade all over the Siberian plain without hindrance. On occasion they will murder a poor old woman to obtain her skirt for leg puttees; or they will tear off the tin numbers from the road signs, on the chance they may find them useful; another time they will bash in the head of a passing beggar or knock out the eyes of one of their own banished brotherhood, but they won't touch people in vehicles. On the whole, as far as robbery is concerned, traveling hereabouts is absolutely safe. From Tyumen to Tomsk neither the drivers of the post coaches nor the independent drivers can recall anything ever having been stolen from a traveler; when you get to a station, you leave your things outside; when you ask whether they won't be stolen you get a smile in reply. It is not good form to mention burglaries and murders on the road. I really believe that were I to lose my money at a station or in a vehicle the driver would return it to me without fail if he found it and wouldn't boast of his honesty. On the whole, the people here are good, kind, and have splen- did traditions. Their rooms are furnished simply, but cleanly, with some pretension to luxury; the beds are soft, with feather mattresses and big pillows, the floors are painted or covered with handmade linen rugs. All this is due, of course, to their prosperity, to the fact that a family gets an allotment of about 50 acres of good black earth, and that good wheat grows on it (wheat flour here is 30 kopeks for 36 pounds). But not every- thing can be explained by comfortable circumstances and plenty to eat, some reference must be made to their way of life as well. When you enter a room full of sleeping people at night your nose isn't assailed, especially not by that notorious Russian smell. I must say, one old lady wiped a teaspoon on her hind- side before handing it to me, but still you do not sit down to tea without a tablecloth, people do not bekh in your presence and don't search for things in their heads; when they hand you water or milk, they don't put their fingers inside the glass, the dishes are clean, the kvas is as transparent as beer—in fact, they practice cleanliness of a sort our Little Russians can only dream about, and certainly Little Russians are far and away cleaner than Great Russians! They bake the most delicious bread; the first few days I made a pig of myself. Delicious also are the pies and pancakes, the fritters and dinner rolls which remind one of Little Russian spongy ring rolls. The pancakes are thin. . . . On the other hand, the rest of their cuisine is not for the European stomach. For instance, I have been treated everywhere to "duck soup." This is absolutely awful, consisting of a muddy liquid in which float bits of wild duck and un- cooked onion; the duck stomachs haven't been entirely cleaned of their contents and so, when you bite into them, cause you to think your mouth and rectum have changed places. One time I asked for soup cooked with meat and some fried perch. The soup was served oversalted, dirty, with weatherbeaten bits of skin instead of meat, and the perch arrived complete with scales. They cook cabbage soup here with corned beef; they also roast corned beef. I've just been served some of the latter; it's vile stuff and after chewing a little of it I pushed it aside. Brick tea is their beverage. This is an infusion of sage and cockroaches—both in taste and color—not tea but something like our horrible Taganrog wine. I might mention that I brought a quarter of a pound of tea with me from Ekaterin- burg, five pounds of sugar and three lemons. I've run out of tea and now there's no place to buy any. In the dumpy little towns even the oflicials drink brick tea and the very best shops don't sell any more expensive than 1 ruble 50 a pound. So I've just had to drink sage.