Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchsplash! Again a strip of land, again a splash …. My hands werenumb, and the wild ducks seemed jeering at us and floated in hugeflocks over our heads …. It got dark. The driver said nothing—hewas bewildered. But at last we reached the last strip that separatedthe Irtysh from the lake …. The sloping bank of the Irtysh wasnearly three feet above the level; it was of clay, bare, hollowed out,and looked slippery. The water was muddy …. White waves splashedon the clay, but the Irtysh itself made no roar or din, but gave fortha strange sound as though someone were nailing up a coffin underthe water …. The further bank was a flat, disconsolate plain ….You often dream of the Bozharovsky pool; in the same way now Ishall dream of the Irtysh ….But behold a ferry. We must be ferried across to the other side. Apeasant shrinking from the rain comes out of a hut, and tells us thatthe ferry cannot cross now as it is too windy …. (The ferries areworked by oars). He advises us to wait for calm weather ….And so I am sitting at night in a hut on a lake at the very edge ofthe Irtysh. I feel a penetrating dampness to the very marrow of mybones, and a loneliness in my soul; I hear my Irtysh banging on thecoffins and the wind howling, and wonder where I am, why I amhere.In the next room the peasants who work the ferry and my driverare asleep. They are good-natured people. But if they were bad peoplethey could perfectly well rob me and drown me in the Irtysh. Thehut is the only one on the river bank; there would be no witnesses.The road to Tomsk is absolutely free from danger as far as brigandsare concerned. It isn’t the fashion even to talk of robbery. Thereis no stealing even from travellers. When you go into a hut you canleave your things outside and they will all be safe.But they very nearly did kill me all the same. Imagine the nightjust before dawn …. I was driving along in a chaise, thinking andthinking …. All at once I see coming flying towards us at full gallopa post-cart with three horses; my driver had hardly time to turn tothe right, the three horses dashed by, and I noticed in it the driverwho had to take it back …. Behind it came another, also at fullspeed; we had turned to the right, it turned to the left. “We shallsmash into each other,” flashed into my mind … one instant, and—146