ON LAKE BAIKAL, June 13.
I am having an idiotic time. On the evening of the 11th of June, the day before yesterday, we set off from Irkutsk, in the fond hope of catching the Baikal steamer, which leaves at four o’clock in the morning. From Irkutsk to Baikal there are only three stations. At the first station they informed us that all the horses were exhausted and that it was therefore impossible to go. We had to put up for the night. Yesterday morning we set off from that station, and by midday we reached Baikal. We went to the harbour, and in answer to our inquiries were told that the steamer did not go till Friday the fifteenth. This meant that we should have to sit on the bank and look at the water and wait. As there is nothing that does not end in time, I have no objection to waiting, and always wait patiently; but the point is the steamer leaves Sryetensk on the 20th and sails down the Amur: if we don’t catch it we must wait for the next steamer, which does not go till the 30th. Merciful Heavens, when shall I get to Sahalin!
We drove to Baikal along the bank of the Angara, which rises out of Lake Baikal and flows into the Yenissey. Look at the map. The banks are picturesque. Mountains and mountains, and dense forests on the mountains. The weather was exquisite still, sunny and warm; as I drove I felt I was exceptionally well; I felt so happy that I cannot describe it. It was perhaps the contrast after the stay at Irkutsk, and because the scenery on the Angara is like Switzerland. It is something new and original. We drove along the river bank, came to the mouth of the river, and turned to the left; then we came upon the bank of Lake Baikal, which in Siberia is called the sea. It is like a mirror. The other side, of course, is out of sight; it is ninety versts away. The banks are high, steep, stony, and covered with forest, to right and to left there are promontories which jut into the sea like Au-dag or the Tohtebel at Feodosia. It’s like the Crimea. The station of Listvenitchnaya lies at the water’s edge, and is strikingly like Yalta: if the houses were white it would be exactly like Yalta. Only there are no buildings on the mountains, as they are too overhanging and it is impossible to build on them.
We have taken a little barn of a lodging that reminds one of any of the Kraskovsky summer villas. Just outside the window, two or three yards from the wall, is Lake Baikal. We pay a rouble a day. The mountains, the forests, the mirror-like Baikal are all poisoned for me by the thought that we shall have to stay here till the fifteenth. What are we to do here? What is more, we don’t know what there is for us to eat. The inhabitants feed upon nothing but garlic. There is neither meat nor fish. They have given us no milk, but have promised it. For a little white loaf they demanded sixteen kopecks. I bought some buckwheat and a piece of smoked pork, and asked them to make a thin porridge of it: it was not nice, but there was nothing to be done, I had to eat it. All the evening we hunted about the village to find someone who would sell us a hen, and found no one.... But there is vodka. The Russian is a great pig. If you ask him why he doesn’t eat meat and fish he justifies himself by the absence of transport, ways and communications, and so on, and yet vodka is to be found in the remotest villages and as much of it as you please. And yet one would have supposed that it would have been much easier to obtain meat and fish than vodka, which is more expensive and more difficult to transport.... Yes, drinking vodka must be much more interesting than fishing in Lake Baikal or rearing cattle.
At midnight a little steamer arrived; we went to look at it, and seized the opportunity to ask if there was anything to eat. We were told that to-morrow we should be able to get dinner, but that now it was late, the kitchen fire was out, and so on. We thanked them for “to-morrow”—it was something to look forward to anyway! But alas! the captain came in and told us that at four o’clock in the morning the steamer was setting off for Kultuk. We thanked him. In the refreshment bar, where there was not room to turn round, we drank a bottle of sour beer (thirty-five kopecks), and saw on a plate some amber beads—it was salmon caviare. We returned home, and to sleep. I am sick of sleeping. Every day one has to put down one’s sheepskin with the wool upwards, under one’s head one puts a folded greatcoat and a pillow, and one sleeps on this heap in one’s waistcoat and trousers.... Civilization, where art thou?
To-day there is rain and Lake Baikal is plunged in mist. “Interesting,” Semaskho would say. It’s dull. One ought to sit down and write, but one can never work in bad weather. One has a foreboding of merciless boredom; if I were alone I should not mind but there are two lieutenants and an army doctor with me, who are fond of talking and arguing. They don’t understand much but they talk about everything. One of the lieutenants, moreover, is a bit of a Hlestakov and a braggart. When one is travelling one absolutely must be alone. To sit in a chaise or in a room alone with one’s thoughts is much more interesting than being with people.
Congratulate me: I sold my own carriage at Irkutsk. How much I gained on it I won’t say, or mother would fall into a faint and not sleep for five nights.
Your Homo Sachaliensis, A. CHEKHOV.
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