Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Anton Chekhovmerchant. I noticed how this drunken creature despised the peasantsupon whom he was living.On the 11th I drove with posting horses. I read the books ofcomplaints at the posting station in my boredom.… On the 12th of May they would not give me horses, sayingthat I could not drive, because the River Ob had overflowed itsbanks and flooded all the meadows. They advised me to turn off thetrack as far as Krasny Yar; then go by boat twelve versts to Dubrovin,and at Dubrovin you can get posting horses …. I drove with privatehorses as far as Krasny Yar. I arrive in the morning; I am told thereis a boat, but that I must wait a little as the grandfather had sent theworkman to row the president’s secretary to Dubrovin in it. Verywell, we will wait …. An hour passes, a second, a third …. Middayarrives, then evening …. Allah kerim, what a lot of tea I drank,what a lot of bread I ate, what a lot of thoughts I thought! And whata lot I slept! Night came on and still no boat …. Early morningcame …. At last at nine o’clock the workmen returned …. Thankheaven, we are afloat at last! And how pleasant it is! The air is still,the oarsmen are good, the islands are beautiful …. The floods caughtmen and cattle unawares and I see peasant women rowing in boatsto the islands to milk the cows. And the cows are lean and dejected.There is absolutely no grass for them, owing to the cold. I was rowedtwelve versts. At the station of Dubrovin I had tea, and for tea theygave me, can you imagine! waffles …. I suppose the woman of thehouse was an exile or the wife of an exile. At the next station an oldclerk, a Pole, to whom I gave some antipyrin for his headache, complainedof his poverty, and said Count Sapyega, a Pole who was agentleman-in-waiting at the Austrian Court, and who assisted hisfellow-countrymen, had lately arrived there on his way to Siberia,“He stayed near the station,” said the clerk, “and I didn’t know it!Holy Mother! He would have helped me! I wrote to him at Vienna,but I got no answer, …” and so on. Why am I not a Sapyega? Iwould send this poor fellow to his own country.On the 14th of May again they would not give me horses. TheTom was flooded. How vexatious! It meant not mere vexation butdespair! Fifty versts from Tomsk and how unexpected! A woman inmy place would have sobbed. Some kind-hearted people found a159