Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchthe Kraskovsky summer villas. Just outside the window, two or threeyards from the wall, is Lake Baikal. We pay a rouble a day. Themountains, the forests, the mirror-like Baikal are all poisoned forme by the thought that we shall have to stay here till the fifteenth.What are we to do here? What is more, we don’t know what there isfor us to eat. The inhabitants feed upon nothing but garlic. There isneither meat nor fish. They have given us no milk, but have promisedit. For a little white loaf they demanded sixteen kopecks. I boughtsome buckwheat and a piece of smoked pork, and asked them tomake a thin porridge of it: it was not nice, but there was nothing tobe done, I had to eat it. All the evening we hunted about the villageto find someone who would sell us a hen, and found no one …. Butthere is vodka. The Russian is a great pig. If you ask him why hedoesn’t eat meat and fish he justifies himself by the absence of transport,ways and communications, and so on, and yet vodka is to befound in the remotest villages and as much of it as you please. Andyet one would have supposed that it would have been much easierto obtain meat and fish than vodka, which is more expensive andmore difficult to transport …. Yes, drinking vodka must be muchmore interesting than fishing in Lake Baikal or rearing cattle.At midnight a little steamer arrived; we went to look at it, andseized the opportunity to ask if there was anything to eat. We weretold that to-morrow we should be able to get dinner, but that now itwas late, the kitchen fire was out, and so on. We thanked them for“to-morrow”—it was something to look forward to anyway! Butalas! the captain came in and told us that at four o’clock in themorning the steamer was setting off for Kultuk. We thanked him.In the refreshment bar, where there was not room to turn round, wedrank a bottle of sour beer (thirty-five kopecks), and saw on a platesome amber beads—it was salmon caviare. We returned home, andto sleep. I am sick of sleeping. Every day one has to put down one’ssheepskin with the wool upwards, under one’s head one puts a foldedgreatcoat and a pillow, and one sleeps on this heap in one’s waistcoatand trousers …. Civilization, where art thou?To-day there is rain and Lake Baikal is plunged in mist. “Interesting,”Semaskho would say. It’s dull. One ought to sit down andwrite, but one can never work in bad weather. One has a foreboding184