Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Anton ChekhovTO MADAME KISELYOV.ALEXIN, July 20, 1891.Greetings, honoured Marya Vladimirovna.For God’s sake write what you are doing, whether you are all welland how things are in regard to mushrooms and gudgeon.We are living at Bogimovo in the province of Kaluga …. It’s ahuge house, a fine park, the inevitable views, at the sight of which Iam for some reason expected to say “Ach!” A river, a pond withhungry carp who love to get on to the hook, a mass of sick people,a smell of iodoform, and walks in the evenings. I am busy with mySahalin; and in the intervals, that I may not let my family starve, Icherish the muse and write stories. Everything goes on in the oldway, there is nothing new. I get up every day at five o’clock, andprepare my coffee with my own hands—a sign that I have alreadygot into old bachelor habits and am resigned to them. Masha ispainting, Misha wears his cockade creditably, father talks about bishops,mother bustles about the house, Ivan fishes. On the same estatewith us there is living a zoologist called Wagner and his family,and some Kisilyovs—not the Kisilyovs, but others, not the real ones.Wagner catches ladybirds and spiders, and Kisilyov the fathersketches, as he is an artist. We get up performances, tableaux-vivants,and picnics. It is very gay and amusing, but I have only tocatch a perch or find a mushroom for my head to droop, and mythoughts to be carried back to the past, and my brain and soul beginin a funereal voice to sing the duet “We are parted.” The “deposedidol and the deserted temple” rise up before my imagination,and I think devoutly: “I would exchange all the zoologists and greatartists in the world for one little Idiotik.”* The weather has all thewhile been hot and dry, and only to-day there has been a crash ofthunder and the gates of heaven are open. One longs to get awaysomewhere—for instance, to America, or Norway …. Be well andhappy, and may the good spirits, of whom there are so many atBabkino, have you in their keeping.*Madame Kisilyov’s son.257