visited all the famous. I witnessed a flogging, after which I dreamt of the executioner and the revolting flogging- horse for three or four nights. I chatted with men fettered to wheelbarrows. Once I was having tea in a mine and the former Petersburg merchant Borodavkin, sent here for arson, took from his pocket a teaspoon and gave it to me, and as a result my nerves were upset and I promised never to go to Sakhalin again. The Chekhovs received a telegram dated 12 October 1890 from a ship of the Voluntary Fleet, Petersburg: 'Unloaded convicts, left Korsakovsk 10th, will pick up Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, leaving [for] Odessa 13th.'8 In Vladivostok Anton got a foreign passport from the chief of police, and telegraphed to Aleksandr in Petersburg, the only sibling whose address he had: 'Sailing Singapore Chekhov'.
The family had endured its own Sakhalin. They knew little of Anton's adventures. In his absence they sought protection from Suvorin. On his way to his Crimean villa, Suvorin called on Masha. He offered both her and Vania work; he invited Misha to Feodosia. Misha was, thanks to Suvorin, a tax inspector, but he was unhappy in his provincial hotel room. All Anton's siblings were under Suvorin's wing. Only Evgenia felt abandoned. All July at Luka she nagged Pavel: for God's sake, ask Vania to find us a flat, we are leaving here on the 2nd [of September] and I'm worn out with worry… we need money badly… Masha sent a letter to Aleksandr the day after we had his letter and he still isn't sending us any money.19 In September Evgenia and Pavel found new quarters. Olga Kundasova came to live there for a few weeks; Suvorin called twice. Pavel, quelled for once, described to Vania the shouting matches between the reac232 JUNE-DECEMBER l8oO tionary tycoon and the radical feminist, whom Suvorin called 'Psychopath!' The Chekhovs moved again, but this house was expensive and small. Evgenia wrote to Vania on 8 October: On 4 October we moved to new quarters, Malaia Dmitrovka. Fir-gang's house, a detached house, 2 floors, 800 roubles. Antosha and Masha upstairs, two rooms, downstairs papa and I and the dining room, you're welcome to come, you'll be fed, it's hard for you and I miss you and I'm very sorry, Misha went to Efremov on 1 October, he'll stay there 2 weeks and then be transferred to Aleksin, somewhere the other side of Serpukhov, no news from Anton, we don't know where he is, we meant to telegraph Suvorin to ask, we don't know where Suvorin is either, we are all exhausted… I'm sorry for Masha, she has been most unhappy of all. If I miss anyone it's you. I keep mourning, my lovely hawks have all flown the nest. Lika Mizinova has been in the country for two weeks… Fenichka is barely alive, she can't hold anything.20 The new Moscow flat with its two servants, the elderly retainer and cook Mariushka and a new chambermaid, never felt like home. The carters had broken Evgenia's sewing machine and Masha's wardrobe. From Petersburg (where he was entertaining Pavel) Aleksandr urged Masha: Dearest Sister, Why are you moving like matchmakers almost every day from one flat to another?… Nobody knows where Anton is now. Probably he's not even writing to Suvorin… What ties you and mother to Moscow? Essentially, apart from many years' habit, nothing. Come and live with me in Petersburg. I have been saying this to Vater in Petersburg, but he has some weighty considerations on this account.21 Natalia added: 'Dear Masha, I am sincerely sorry for you, now you are completely alone, but God grant Anton will soon arrive and you will have your happy days.' The telegram from Vladivostok with news of Anton's return relieved Masha. She told Misha: We are very pleased with the flat, we have settled very well indeed, come and look. The day before yesterday Suvorin came. He came specially to offer me a post in his bookshop, at first just as a shop assistant… I was very pleased of course, but remembered that Anton might not be especially pleased… I asked Suvorin to wait for Anton to arrive.22
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The literary world could relax in Chekhov's absence. Only a few travel sketches from Siberia had appeared in print under his name. The dramatist and editor V. A. Tikhonov recorded in his diary: What a powerful, sheer elemental force Anton Chekhov is! But how many enviers he has attracted from among our authors… The most repellent in this respect is Shcheglov; he slobbered over Chekhov as a most devoted friend; now he has started hissing at him behind his back.23 Chekhov enjoyed the Petersburg, a sturdy 300-foot steamer built in Scotland twenty years before. It was lightly loaded - no prisoners ever came back from Sakhalin. Leaving Vladivostok on 19 October 1890, the ship held a mere 364 sailors, soldiers and guards, relieved from service in the Far East. The American whalers were to be dropped at Hong Kong. A few passengers occupied the cabins. One was Father Irakli, a Buriat Mongol who had been given a free passage to Russia to report in Moscow on his missionary work with the Gilyaks and Ainu. The Captain appeared only during a storm in the China Sea and told passengers who had revolvers to keep them loaded, since death by shooting was preferable to death by drowning. A midshipman Glinka struck up an acquaintance with Anton: he was the son of a Baroness Ikskul who in Petersburg had given (and broken) a promise to use her power to smooth Anton's passage.
Sakhalin was the evil face of colonialism; Hong Kong impressed Chekhov as the opposite. The ship stayed there eighty hours. Anton told Suvorin, on his return: A wonderful bay, such movement on the sea as I have never seen even in pictures; nine roads, horse-trams, a railway up the mountain, museums, botanical gardens; wherever you look you see the Englishmen's most tender concern for their employees, there is even a sailors' club. I… was annoyed to hear my Russian companions cursing the English for exploiting the natives. I thought: yes, the English exploit the Chinese, the Sepoys, the Indians, but they do give them roads, piped water, museums, Christianity, you [Russians] exploit them and what do you give them? As they crossed the China Sea, the storms died away. On 20 October, just one day into the voyage home, one soldier died of 'acute pneumonia' in the ship's hospital: his body was thrown overboard in a
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sailcloth shroud. As they left Hong Kong, on 29 October, another soldier died and was buried at sea. Anton's mood plunged. He barely remembered Singapore for the tears that he was holding back (although in his few hours on shore he ordered a Javanese pony as a present for Suvorin).
Burial at sea inspired Chekhov to write the first fiction he had composed for a year, 'Gusev', an awesome portrayal of nature's indifference to death. The grim philosophy of 'A Dreary Story' was now matched with the vision of nature in 'Steppe': Chekhov's post-Sakhalin phase had begun. The story had the by-line Colombo. Fifty-eight hours spent in Ceylon, the legendary Eden, revived Anton's spirits. He took a train to Kandy in the mountains, and watched the Salvation Army: 'girls in Indian dresses and glasses, drum, harmonicas, guitars, a flag, a crowd of bare-arsed little boys… Virgins sing something wild, and the drum goes boom boom! And all that in the dark, on the shores of a lake.' After the Salvation Army Kandy offered something more to his taste: I was sated to the throat with palm groves and bronze-skinned women. When I have children then I shall tell them not without pride, 'You sons of bitches, in my day I had intercourse with a black-eyed Indian girl… and where? In a coconut plantation on a moonlit night.' This was the exploit of which he was to boast to his Petersburg friends - 'the real charmers are coloured women,' he told Ezhov.24
There was another transaction in Colombo. Midshipman Glinka and Chekhov went to an Indian animal-dealer and each bought a tame male mongoose; Chekhov went back to the dealer and bought another animal, too wild to handle and sold as a female mongoose. With these animals they returned to the Petersburg. On 12 November 1890 the ship left Colombo. Thirteen days passed without a port. Midshipman Glinka and Anton Chekhov sat on deck with their mongooses. In late November Chekhov passed through the Suez Canal. Pavel wrote: 'Greetings to Holy Palestine, in which the world's Redeemer lived. You will be passing Jerusalem'. Uncle Mitrofan was so moved, Georgi reported, that 'my father put Anton's letter on the chest of drawers, covered it with his hat and went to church.' Pavel was tracing Anton's journey on a wall map of Siberia; he wrote to Vania just before Anton
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ANNl'llS!)!?: I'fcl.K RINAGE docked in Odessa: 'I think only about Antosha, may he return safe and sound. Such separation is unbearable. Come and meet him. Misha will come too.'25 Anton saw Mt Sinai, and then sailed past the island of Santurini which supplied Taganrog with wine. On 2 December the ship reached Odessa. After three days' quarantine the passengers disembarked. Anton, Glinka, Father Irakli and the mongooses took the express to Moscow. On 7 December Evgenia and Misha intercepted the train at Tula. Misha recalled: We found Anton dining in the station restaurant with Midshipman Glinka… and a strange looking man, an aborigine with a broad, flat face and narrow slanting eyes. This was the chief priest of Sakhalin, monk-priest Irakli… wearing an ordinary suit of an absurd Sakhalin cut. As they ate, the mongooses stood on their hind legs and kept peeking at their plates. The Sakhalin priest, his face as flat as a board and without a hint of facial hair, and the mongooses seemed so exotic that a whole crowd gathered around the diners, gawping at them. 'Is he a Red Indian?' 'Are they apes?' came the questions. After a touching reunion with the writer, mother and I got in the same carriage and the five of us set off for Moscow. Apart from the mongoose Anton had brought in a cage a very wild female mongoose which soon turned out to be a palm cat.26 Misha and Anton drank and played with the mongooses for the four hour
