Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

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Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchApril 29, 1890.MY DEAR TUNGUSES!The Kama is a very dull river. To realise its beauties one wouldhave to be a native sitting motionless on a barge beside a barrel ofnaphtha, or a sack of dried fish, continually taking a pull at thebottle. The river banks are bare, the trees are bare, the earth is a dullbrown, there are patches of snow, and there is such a wind that thedevil himself could not blow as keenly and hatefully. When a coldwind blows and ruffles up the water, which now after the floods isthe colour of coffee slops, one feels cold and bored and miserable;the strains of a concertina on the bank sound dejected, figures intattered sheepskins standing motionless on the barges that meet uslook as though they were petrified by some unending grief. Thetowns on the Kama are grey; one would think the inhabitants wereemployed in the manufacture of clouds, boredom, soaking fencesand mud in the streets, as their sole occupation. The stopping-placesare thronged with inhabitants of the educated class, for whom thearrival of a steamer is an event ….… To judge from appearances not one of them earns more thanthirty-five roubles, and all of them are ailing in some way.I have told you already there are some legal gentlemen in thesteamer: the president of the court, one of the judges, and the prosecutor.The president is a hale and hearty old German who hasembraced Orthodoxy, is pious, a homoeopath, and evidently a devoteeof the sex. The judge is an old man such as dear Nikolay used todraw; he walks bent double, coughs, and is fond of facetious subjects.The prosecutor is a man of forty-three, dissatisfied with life, aliberal, a sceptic, and a very good-natured fellow. All the journeythese gentlemen have been occupied in eating, settling mighty questionsand eating, reading and eating. There is a library on the steamer,and I saw the prosecutor reading my “In the Twilight.” They begantalking about me. Mamin-Sibiryak, who has described the Urals, isthe author most liked in these parts. He is more talked of than Tolstoy.I have been two and a half years sailing to Perm, so it seems to me.We reached there at two o’clock in the night. The train went at sixo’clock in the evening. I had to wait. It rained. Rain, cold, mud …142
Anton Chekhovbrrr! The Uralsky line is a good one …. That is due to the abundanceof business-like people here, factories, mines, and so on, forwhom time is precious.Waking yesterday morning and looking out of the carriage windowI felt an aversion for nature: the earth was white, trees coveredwith hoar-frost, and a regular blizzard pursuing the train. Now isn’tit revolting? Isn’t it disgusting? … I have no goloshes, I pulled onmy big boots, and on my way to the refreshment-room for coffee Imade the whole Ural region smell of tar. And when we got toEkaterinburg there was rain, snow, and hail. I put on my leathercoat. The cabs are something inconceivable, wretched, dirty,drenched, without springs, the horse’s four legs straddling, hugehoofs, gaunt spines … the droshkies here are a clumsy parody ofour britchkas. A tattered top is put on to a britchka, that is all. Andthe more exactly I describe the cabman here and his vehicle, themore it will seem like a caricature. They drive not on the middle ofthe road where it is jolting, but near the gutter where it is muddyand soft. All the cabmen are like Dobrolyubov.In Russia all the towns are alike. Ekaterinburg is exactly the sameas Perm or Tula. The note of the bells is magnificent, velvety. I stoppedat the American Hotel (not at all bad), and at once sent word of myarrival to A. M. S., telling him I meant to stay in my hotel room fortwo days.The people here inspire the newcomer with a feeling akin to horror.They are big-browed, big-jawed, broad-shouldered fellows withhuge fists and tiny eyes. They are born in the local iron foundries,and at their birth a mechanic officiates instead of an accoucheur. Aspecimen comes into your room with a samovar or a bottle of water,and you expect him every minute to murder you. I stand aside. Thismorning just such a one came in, big-browed, big-jawed, huge, toweringup to the ceiling, seven feet across the shoulders and wearinga fur coat too.Well, I thought, this one will certainly murder me. It appearedthat this was our relation A. M. S. We began to talk. He is a memberof the local Zemstvo and manager of his cousin’s mill, which islighted by electric light; he is editor of the Ekaterinburg Week whichis under the censorship of the police-master Baron Taube, is mar-143
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Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

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