Part 21 (1/2)

To-day I changed into the steamer _Muravyov_, which they say does not rock; maybe I shall write.

I am in love with the Amur; I should be glad to spend a couple of years on it. There is beauty, s.p.a.ce, freedom and warmth. Switzerland and France have never known such freedom. The lowest convict breathes more freely on the Amur than the highest general in Russia. If you lived here, you would write a great deal of good stuff and delight the public, but I am not equal to it.

One begins to meet Chinamen at Irkutsk, and here they are common as flies.

They are the most good-natured people. If Nastya and Borya made the acquaintance of the Chinese, they would leave donkeys alone, and transfer their affection to the Chinese. They are charming tame animals.

... When I invited a Chinaman to the refreshment bar to treat him to vodka, before drinking it he held out the gla.s.s to me, the bar-keeper, the waiters, and said: ”Taste.” That's the Chinese ceremonial. He did not drink it off as we do, but drank it in sips, eating something between each sip, and then, to express his grat.i.tude, gave me several Chinese coins. An awfully polite people. They are dressed poorly, but beautifully; they eat daintily, with ceremony....

TO HIS SISTER.

THE STEAMER ”MURAVYOV,”

June 29, 1890.

Meteors are flying in my cabin--these are luminous beetles that look like electric sparks. Wild goats swim across the Amur in the day-time. The flies here are huge. I am sharing my cabin with a Chinaman--Son-Luli--who is constantly telling me how in China for the merest trifle it is ”off with his head.” Last night he got drunk with opium, and was talking in his sleep all night and preventing me from sleeping. On the 27th I walked about the Chinese town Aigun. Little by little I seem gradually to be stepping into a fantastic world. The steamer rocks, it is hard to write.

To-morrow I shall reach Habarovsk. The Chinaman began to sing from music written on his fan.

TELEGRAM TO HIS MOTHER.

SAHALIN, July 11, 1890.

Arrived well, telegraph Sahalin.--CHEKHOV.

TELEGRAM TO HIS MOTHER.

SAHALIN, September 27, 1890.

Well. Shall arrive shortly.--CHEKHOV.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.

THE STEAMER ”BAIKAL,”

September 11, 1890.

Greetings! I am sailing on the Gulf of Tartary from the north of Sahalin to the south. I am writing; and don't know when this letter will reach you. I am well, though I see on all sides glaring at me the green eyes of cholera which has laid a trap for me. In Vladivostok, in j.a.pan, in Shanghai, Tchifu, Suez, and even in the moon, I fancy--everywhere there is cholera, everywhere quarantine and terror.... They expect the cholera in Sahalin and keep all vessels in quarantine. In short, it is a bad lookout. Europeans are dying at Vladivostok, among others the wife of a general has died.

I have spent just two months in the north of Sahalin. I was received by the local administration very amicably, though Galkin had not written a single word about me. Neither Galkin nor the Baroness V., nor any of the other genii I was so foolish as to appeal to for help, turned out of the slightest use to me; I had to act on my own initiative.