Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchTO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.July 28, 1888.On the Seas Black, Caspian, and of Life.… A wretched little cargo steamer, Dir, is racing full steam fromSuhum to Poti. It is about midnight. The little cabin—the only onein the steamer—is insufferably hot and stuffy. There is a smell ofburning, of rope, of fish and of the sea. One hears the engine going“Boom-boom-boom.” … There are devils creaking up aloft andunder the floor. The darkness is swaying in the cabin and the bedrocks up and down …. One’s stomach’s whole attention is concentratedon the bed, and, as though to find its level, it rolls the Seltzerwater I had drunk right up to my throat and then lets it down to myheels. Not to be sick over my clothes in the dark I hastily put on mythings and go out …. It is dark. My feet stumble against some invisibleiron bars, a rope; wherever you step there are barrels, sacks,rags. There is coal dust under foot. In the dark I knock against akind of grating: it is a cage with wild goats which I saw in the daytime.They are awake and anxiously listening to the rocking of theboat. By the cage sit two Turks who are not asleep either …. I gropemy way up the stairs to the captain’s bridge …. A warm but violentand unpleasant wind tries to blow away my cap …. The steamerrocks. The mast in front of the captain’s bridge sways regularly andleisurely like a metronome; I try to look away from it, but my eyeswill not obey me and, just like my stomach, insist on followingmoving objects …. The sky and the sea are dark, the shore is not insight, the deck looks a dark blur … there is not a single light.Behind me is a window … I look into it and see a man who looksattentively at something and turns a wheel with an expression asthough he were playing the ninth symphony …. Next to me standsthe little stout captain in tan shoes …. He talks to me of Caucasianemigrants, of the heat, of winter storms, and at the same time looksintently into the dark distance in the direction of the shore.“You seem to be going too much to the left again,” he says tosomeone; or, “There ought to be lights here …. Do you see them?”86