Letter to Suvorin

(Anton Chekov, Sakhalin Island, off the coast of Siberia)
July 11, 1890

 

Greetings, friend, from the world's end! You were right,
the tea is terrible! We are moored at last off Sakhalin.
Because there's no true harbor we'll sleep on board,

cross the bay of reefs by daylight. Six thousand miles
of floods, thieves, mud and tedium between me
and home - I almost understand

why you say this place doesn't concern us.
On shore, forest fires march down the mountains -
perhaps these flames are eternal, no one in the village

tries to put them out. On deck, the same numbed peace:
women and children, soldiers and manacled convicts
huddle together and try to sleep.

- But even here the weeks pass. It's August now.
I woke at five this morning as I do each day to bells
from St. Vladimir's squat log cabin of a church.

Since the convicts are refused entrance, I, too, stay clear.
I pulled on two pairs of pants for warmth, smoked my pipe
watching the Tartar Straits sunrise, then worked till dark.

I've decided to interview every person on the island.
You say these lifers hold no interest, but on the contrary
I can't stop thinking of them. This morning

I met Mikhail, a man chained two years to a wheelbarrow.
Like so many others, but with his four-year-old, his Nadja,
who's always at his side, even sleeps in his barrow.

And thin Lydia, a twelve-year-old who answered
all my questions, then asked could I afford
a whole rouble to lie with her?

I forced myself last week to watch a whipping.
A doctor like myself examined the man they meant to break,
pronounced him fit for ninety lashes.

The flogger dealt five blows from the left,
five from the right, impassive as a teacher belting a child.
It's not the same, I know, but I kept seeing my father,

how he'd lift the cane above his head, reaching
for more force. I was five. He made me kiss
the rod that taught me justice. I fled the guardhouse,

the whipped man's cries following me down wood sidewalks.
In one yard I saw a rooster tied by its leg,
in another a lock and chain around a pig's neck-

I swear, everything on this island's bolted down.
I climbed to the lighthouse, my favorite spot,
spray breaking over rocks named The Three Murderers,

and along the cliff line the windblown fires
have their own grandeur.
What do you think, is even hell beautiful?

Last night, beneath Bengal lanterns and fireworks,
I dined with Sakhalin's governor high above the village.
The governor spoke on "the golden age of prison care."

My own speech, on building the island's first school,
disappeared in polite applause. A warden
who'd drunk too much French champagne

told of hanging nine men for a single crime:
"There was an entire bouquet hanging in the air."
When the bodies were lifted down

the doctor found one still alive.
Some nights, since he hanged the man
a second time, the warden can't sleep.

How I long to leave this island! Alexey, when I see you next
in Petersburg we will have tea and jam on a silver tray
- how absurdly happy I felt just now, writing that!

Imagine, candlelight on thick preserves,
raspberry or gooseberry, and everything terrible in life
again going on out of sight.

Listen, friend, I need you. Tell me how do we savor
good tea while others suffer? How do we
give thanks for the taste of gooseberries?

THEODORE DEPPE in THE WANDERER KING

(Reprinted here by the Community Development Resource Association - www.cdra.org.za)