Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchRAGOZINA BALKA, April 30, 1887.It is April 30. The evening is warm. There are storm-clouds about,and so one cannot see a thing. The air is close and there is a smell ofgrass.I am staying in the Ragozina Balka at K.’s. There is a small housewith a thatched roof, and barns made of flat stone. There are threerooms, with earthen floors, crooked ceilings, and windows that liftup and down instead of opening outwards.... The walls are coveredwith rifles, pistols, sabres and whips. The chest of drawers and thewindow-sills are littered with cartridges, instruments for mendingrifles, tins of gunpowder, and bags of shot. The furniture is lameand the veneer is coming off it. I have to sleep on a consumptivesofa, very hard, and not upholstered …. Ash-trays and all such luxuriesare not to be found within a radius of ten versts.... The firstnecessaries are conspicuous by their absence, and one has in all weathersto slip out to the ravine, and one is warned to make sure there isnot a viper or some other creature under the bushes.The population consists of old K., his wife, Pyotr, a Cossack officerwith broad red stripes on his trousers, Alyosha, Hahko (that is,Alexandr), Zoika, Ninka, the shepherd Nikita and the cook Akulina.There are immense numbers of dogs who are furiously spiteful anddon’t let anyone pass them by day or by night. I have to go aboutunder escort, or there will be one writer less in Russia.... The mostcursed of the dogs is Muhtar, an old cur on whose face dirty towhangs instead of wool. He hates me and rushes at me with a roarevery time I go out of the house.Now about food. In the morning there is tea, eggs, ham and baconfat. At midday, soup with goose, roast goose with pickled sloes,or a turkey, roast chicken, milk pudding, and sour milk. No vodkaor pepper allowed. At five o’clock they make on a camp fire in thewood a porridge of millet and bacon fat. In the evening there is tea,ham, and all that has been left over from dinner.The entertainments are: shooting bustards, making bonfires, goingto Ivanovka, shooting at a mark, setting the dogs at one another,preparing gunpowder paste for fireworks, talking politics, buildingturrets of stone, etc.60