Chekhov’s Journey

by Ian Watson

ANTON GAZED ACROSS a grim river, the colour of slate. Barges drifted by with dozens of boatmen lining their gunwales, clutching poles like medieval soldiers armed with pikes. It was hellishly cold.

  If he could only get over to the other side! But the bargees only pulled rude faces at him and shouted abuse.

  He fled from the riverbank, pursued by their taunts, and immediately came upon a cemetery. The stone gate posts were crumbling, as were the tombs within; yet a funeral procession had just arrived, and filed inside. The mourners seemed to comprise everyone he had ever known. Suvorin was there. So was Pleshcheyev. Olga Kundasova, too—and Nikolai Leikin. Modest Tchaikovsky stood next to Maria Kiseleva. Levitan, Evgenia, Masha … And without exception everyone was weeping un-consolably.

  Anton rushed into the cemetery to try to explain that the coffin was full of stones. But the mocking laughter of the bargees still rang in his ears, confusing him. Those evil fellows were still watching him from somewhere—openly and contemptuously like police spies …

  He woke up with a start—and the majestic Yenisey lay before him, in full flood, rather than that Styx of his dreams. A stalwart ferry was ploughing against the fierce current, ever nearer to the shore, to bear him back to Krasnoyarsk. Horses stamped fretfully; harness jingled.

  “Ever thought you were being watched, Ilya?” he asked Sidorov, who was holding the reins. “You know the feeling? The old animal sense, as if something’s boring between your shoulder blades?”

  “Uh.” Sidorov made a feeble attempt to shake himself out of his stupor.

  “I ought to be in Sakhalin now, taking a census. And something’s driving me down a different road—like a bayonet sticking in my back. I must be sick in my mind. A psychopath, eh?”

  “Uh.”

  And there it was! Not insanity, but fatigue. Exhaustion was the cause of his dream and source of his mental confusion. Neurasthenia reached unique new depths on any Siberian journey—but especially on a trip through the endless forests of the taiga. Time stopped entirely. One’s brain clogged up.

  “Uh huh.” Sidorov’s face was so grimy that he might have been masquerading as a Negro, smeared with boot polish.

  Anton rubbed his own face. His knuckles came away black as a lamp wick. Whenever Summer lightning struck the forests, fires dragged sooty palls across the Road. Which was worse: the floods and gluey mud before—or this dry dusty smoking heat? Both were vile … And no matter how many trees were burned to a cinder, it never seemed to diminish by one jot the endless ranks of pines reeking of resin, of larches and firs, and those gloomy birches which were darker than the birches of Russia, less sentimental in hue …

  “My God, if a jaunt of three hundred versts to Kansk and back knocks a fellow up like this—that’s on a road, mind you!—Heaven help us once we’re off the beaten track!”

  “Don’t worry, Anton Pavlovich.” Sidorov had come alive again. “Wherever Man exists, there are tracks. The Tungusi know where the paths are … One day, I swear to you, this forest will be driven back—oh, maybe as far as Kansk itself! You’ll see fields of cabbages and potatoes. And the one thing which will bring that day closer is to call attention to Siberia!”

  “You know, back in Russia I used to think the crash of an axe was such a cruel sound …”

  “We’re all of us lost in a dark wood, blundering around. We need to let a little light in. Don’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really, our problem’s just one of timing—as our surveyor friend says. We could hop in a boat right away. The Yenisey would carry us off to the North without us lifting a finger. But as soon as we left the river …”

  “‘Ay, there’s the rub,’ as Vasily Fedotik would say.”

  “This taiga’s evil, Anton Pavlovich. The mosquitoes can eat you alive. Horses can drown in the devilish bogs.”

  “So we wait till it freezes—then the Winter swallows us. It’s madness. Besides, have you considered the cost?”

  How slowly yet valiantly the ferry moved … A group of peasants shared the jetty with them, perching on baskets of spring onions. A circuit judge sat pompously upon his carriage. Anton’s thoughts drifted back over the strange chain of events of the past few weeks …

  Commencing with his visit to the offices of the Krasnoyarets newspaper on the morning after he had first heard Sidorov tell his tale … The editor insisted on holding a reception in Anton’s honour at his own home that very evening. Present at that soiree had been a fairly fatuous company of ladies, drummed up in haste, who oo-ed and ah-ed over him and tinkled pianos and recited Pushkin—and the not-so-fatuous Countess Lydia Zelenina who was playing it up as a ‘romantic exile …’

  There Anton had also met a Czech surveyor, Jaroslav Mirek by name, who had something to do with a scheme for building a railway, but who was kicking his heels in Krasnoyarsk.

  One thing had led to another, which had led in turn to a third, till a fortnight later Anton was still becalmed in Krasnoyarsk—as were Vershinin, Rodé and Fedotik. It now transpired that the three musketeers were in reality stuck for funds, having extravagantly run through their allowances of two thousand roubles apiece. But by then Vershinin was talking brashly of persuading the Governor to second him from his assignment on the Amur, ‘for a real adventure’, while Ilya Sidorov who had stopped behaving quite so superfluously, was all for hauling Anton off to Kansk on a fact-finding investigation—a trip from which they were only now returning …

  Fate, it seemed, had conspired. Yet what of the convicts and their women and children still languishing all this while in Sakhalin? Could it be that there was more than one way to pay one’s dues to Science?

  Presently the ferry grounded against the jetty. Ropes were tossed ashore, and the judge’s driver flicked his whip, catching a peasant across the rump.

  Dismounting, Anton and Sidorov hauled their own team and carriage out upon this mighty warrior of rivers.

  Once he was back in the hotel on Blagoryeshtchenskaya Anton promptly drank five glasses of tea in a row till his face glowed as red as a beetroot—and sorted through his accumulated correspondence. Those troikas of the Imperial Postal Service might run you down without a second thought, but they did deliver the goods at wonderful speed.

  His article about the Tunguska Mystery’ was already in print in New Times; already it had caused a bit of a sensation in the newspapers, so Suvorin reported—there was even talk of raising a fund.

  Apart from Suvorin’s epistle there were letters from sister Mariya—blessedly accompanying a packet of decent tobacco, to spare him from the Siberian variety which resembled pounded hay—and from mother Evgenia, also from Pleshcheyev. Then there was a long reply to his own appeal for scientific advice, from Olga Kundasova; and finally there was a bulky letter from some complete stranger who lived in Borovsk, fourscore versts to the south of Moscow.

  He read the family news first while guzzling the fourth and fifth cups of tea and enjoying a real Ukrainian smoke; then opened the lady astronomer’s letter.

  This was full of astronomical speculations about comets and meteors and meteorites and bolides and the craters on the Moon. From it he gathered that there ought to be a huge crater hidden somewhere out in the taiga, with a fortune in iron and nickel and platinum buried underneath. A fortune, that is, for any passing reindeer or Tungusi tribesman enterprising enough to build a mine and smelting works and a railway line …

  Anton was beginning to itch all over as the heat from the tea tried to sweat its way out through his blocked pores. Putting aside the letter from Borovsk till later, he hurried out to pay a call on the public bath house. On the way he fell in with Jaroslav Mirek, heading for the same destination, though the Czech was hardly one tenth as filthy as Anton.

  To Anton’s embarrassment the water turned first to brown then to inky black, as the two men soaped and scrubbed and ducked. To take their attention off the dirt, Anton went into Kundasova’s notions of meteoric wealth in lavish detail.

  “Hmm,” said Mirek. He
was a short, hairy, muscular man with keen blue eyes. “If that’s so, it’s just what this part of the world needs. Yet what incredible difficulties … It might be fifty years before we could even contemplate utilisation.”

  ‘Utilisation’ was one of Mirek’s favourite words. He habitually saw the trees of the taiga as nothing more than so many railway sleepers planted upright in the ground, waiting to be pushed over and trimmed.

  “Maybe it needs a change in the system of government, too,” he added quietly. “But that’s no business of mine.”

  They repaired to the steam room together, where they thrashed each other with birch besoms; after which Anton felt ravenous.

  He dined alone back at the hotel, in the restaurant, on boiled eggs with cream followed by flabby boiled chicken and cabbage. Afterwards he went up to his room and poured himself a generous glass of spirits; then he opened the letter from Borovsk …

  Most Truly Honoured Sir,

  Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, and currently I am employed as a teacher of arithmetic and geometry at the elementary school here in Borovsk …

  ‘What’s this, then? An application for a job?’ Quickly Anton skimmed through the long letter, various passages catching his eye.

  … my sincere hope is that next year may see the publication of my paper on How to Protect Fragile & Delicate Objects from Jolts & Shocks—with special reference to gravitational acceleration due to interplanetary travel …

  … my own humble, and as yet unpublished essay in the art of fiction—of a species which might perhaps best be described as ‘Science Fantasy’—entitled On the Moon …

  ‘Science Fantasy, eh? What’s that?’ wondered Anton. ‘A new school of literature? A sort of Odoyevsky and Jules Verne thing? Aha, now I see, this fellow wants me to recommend him to a publisher!’

  But surely no one in their right mind would despatch a letter thousands of versts for that reason alone? Not unless they were crackers …

  … ballistic Shockwave …

  Anton skipped through to the end.

  … therefore my conclusion, most respected Anton Pavlovich, based upon the newspaper reports from Siberia which you quote in your article, together with the other hearsay evidence you cite, is that an interplanetary space vehicle—perhaps from the planet Mars—exploded high above the forests of the taiga whilst attempting to enter the Earth’s atmosphere subsequent to its journey through the void. This disaster would have been caused by overheating, due to the resistance and friction of gas molecules encountered at high speed.

  I have carried out some experiments, employing matchsticks for trees, and I feel confident in predicting that the trees directly beneath the centre of the explosion will be found to remain erect, although stripped of their foliage and branches.

  I have also carried out some calculations, a copy of which I append to this letter. I have always felt sure, hitherto, that a ‘ship of space’ such as I envisage ought to be powered by a principle of ‘jet propulsion’ employing liquid fuel as the propellant. However, I have estimated the probable size of this ‘ship’, basing my estimate on the appearance of the Shockwave in the upper atmosphere, as described by your good self. And I have carefully calculated the explosive force of appropriate masses of various propellants—including naphtha, liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen et cetera (taking into account the certainty that this ship would already have consumed a proportion of its fuel during initial acceleration)—and in no way can I account for the force of the blast described unless some entirely new principle of Science were employed. Unless—may I hazard?—Mass be regarded as a ‘bound state’ of Energy, only a tiny fraction of which Energy is released during the normal process of combustion. Were Mass to be totally convertible into Energy (by some method which I cannot yet envisage), then sufficient force might well be available to cause the destruction described.

  This supposition set me to wondering about the sum total of heat which our planet receives yearly from the Sun—in view of the distance, size and probable age of that body. Were the Sun an ordinary ‘bonfire’ of gas, Sir, it would have consumed its whole substance long ago …!

  This was followed by an appendix of mathematical calculations of which Anton could make neither head nor tail. He read the whole letter through again slowly from the beginning.

  Perhaps he was still in a state of mental confusion due to the journey back from Kansk; and hence suggestible. Or maybe this letter from out of the blue did indeed address the question of how one could pay one’s dues to Science in a manner more worthwhile than merely prospecting for meteoric ore … Whatever the reason, the letter had an effect upon him equivalent to only one other piece of correspondence he had ever received in his life: four years before from D.V. Grigorovich hailing Anton as a new star in the literary firmament and exhorting him not to squander his talents as a hack.

  However, this letter he now held in his hands wasn’t from a Grand Old Man of the past addressing a young and careless tyro who might yet make good. It was from a man of the future, who had not yet had a chance to prove himself …

  Pouring the second instalment of his nightcap, Anton re-read the letter. Then he began scribbling calculations of his own, though these had nothing at all to do with ballistics or the energy value of naphtha.

  He had already paid off a good half of his advance from Alexey Suvorin; and his books were still steadily netting cash for the New Times bookshop. Come the Spring, he’d been planning to ask Alexei Sergeyevich for another two or three thousand roubles advance, repayable over the next five years.

  Why not right now?

  Then there was this proposed fund which Suvorin mentioned … Subscribers could well be lured by the prospect of meteoric wealth.

  He must write post-haste, tomorrow, to Suvorin—and to this Konstantin Tsiolkovsky too.

  Eventually Anton crawled into bed, his head spinning. Instantly he fell asleep, exhausted.

  Ten

  SO THEY SPENT their first night at the Artists’ Retreat. Cloud had closed in hours earlier, hiding the mountains and the valley. Outside, snowflakes were swirling higgledy-piggledy in the light from the windows, though no great amount was actually settling. It was rather like being inside a child’s snow-scene which was being tipped this way and that, constantly stirring up the same finite amount of white plastic flakes.

  For supper, through in the dining room, Osip had dished up some hot beet soup with ham bones, followed by pickled sturgeon and boiled cabbage.

  The dining room of the Retreat had been a minor ballroom once, before it had been crudely partitioned—leaving a blue plastered ceiling far too high for the space which remained, one moreover which curved upwards without ever curving down again. A single electric chandelier hung well off centre. The solitary window was huge, stretching from floor to ceiling, and draped in faded purple damask like a stage.

  Conversation over supper was desultory; and this was not merely because Osip hung around to hear as much as he could.

  Mikhail could be said to be in disgrace—were it not that Kirilenko was as fascinated as he was disconcerted by the strange turn that events had taken. While Kirilenko also would have been in disgrace—were the Doctor’s expertise not the only straw left to cling to, as the film project foundered further into a chaos of unhistory …

  Meanwhile Sonya Suslova was brooding. She was worried about her mentor’s reputation, but still eagerly certain of his perspicacity. Thus she had begun to search out psychological motives by which to explain Mikhail’s aberrant response to hypnosis. But this was not easy, since Mikhail was increasingly able to ‘turn on’ Anton at will and seemed blithely assured of the validity of his Anton; which made him a difficult case to analyse—for who was one analysing?

  What’s more, Sonya was starting to feel strongly attracted to this handsome chap—whichever chap he might be!—as so many ladies, years earlier, had felt drawn to Mr Chekhov. This sentiment was only intensified for her by the fe
eling of sensory deprivation in the Retreat, with the world beyond the walls blanked out.

  Probably, Sonya decided, she was experiencing something akin to the imprinting of a newly-hatched duckling—upon its mother duck, or an old boot, whichever came first.

  Yet she felt sure that she could help Mikhail therapeutically by a more direct form of involvement with him. In the sheets is truth, after all! Where was the harm in a bold initiative?

  She knew perfectly well where the harm was, professionally. But by now absurdity seemed to have invaded all their lives, and it was certainly undermining hers. She felt detached from the realities of the present. It was as though she, Sonya, had been hypnotised—not Mikhail. Or as if the tobacco smoke curling upward from Kirilenko’s briar pipe contained narcotics …

  Anyway, Mikhail was making eyes at her, wasn’t he? He seemed bent on enjoying every moment of the limelight—as much as he savoured the pickled sturgeon.

  She puzzled. Anton had never been a ladies’ man, had he? Perhaps Mikhail was only teasing her, in keeping with his other role …

  Perhaps she ought to have a few words in private with Dr Kirilenko, about this confusion she was feeling? But he was too obviously preoccupied.

  That night Sonya managed to control herself. She refrained from tiptoeing along the corridor at midnight.

  However, when she awoke next morning, it was with a feeling of angry frustration, a sense of resentment that she had tossed an opportunity away. An opportunity to make a prime fool of herself? But she hardly cared about that. All the minor frustrations of her life seemed all at once to have reached a climax.

  That’s more than can be said for me!’ she thought bitterly.

  She came downstairs to a breakfast of black bread, cherry jam and slices of Dutch-style cheese, to find Felix and Sergey already snapping away at each other across the table. As nobody else was in the room yet, Sonya went over to the window to avoid getting involved.