How Chekhov in Siberia got into an accident, but still got to Sakhalin
Part I
“Our famous fiction writer A.P. Chekhov returned from his trip to Sakhalin Island. He went there through Siberia and returned by sea through Suez to Odessa. In North Sakhalin, where there are settlements of hard labor and exiles, he stayed for two months, carefully studying their life and customs ”(“ New Time ”, December 3 (15), 1890).
In the spring of 1890, Anton Pavlovich went to the Far East. The path through all of Siberia took him almost three months. At that time, the writer collaborated with the New Time, one of the largest Russian pre -revolutionary newspapers. It was on the pages of this publication in the summer of 1890 that his travel notes were published – “from Siberia”. In them, Chekhov talked about nature, morals of local residents and his adventures. Not far from the village of Abatsky (350 kilometers from Tyumen), the writer almost died in an accident:
“I am sitting in a high, non -wrap Tarantasika, a couple is lucky. The old man waves a whip and shouts, but he still doesn’t scream, but only groans or groans, like an Egyptian pigeon … Towards the whole spirit, warm along the bumps, a post office rushes. The old man is in a hurry to turn to the right, and immediately a huge, heavy postal cart in which the reverse coachman sits past us. But a new thunder is heard: another three is rushing towards and also in full spirit. We rush to turn to the right, but, to my great bewilderment and fear, for some reason it turns not right, but to the left and directly flies to us. What if we are faced? As soon as I manage to ask myself this question, how the crackle is heard, our couple and the postal three interfere with one dark mass, the tarantass becomes on its hives and I fall to the ground, and all my suitcases and nodes are on me … While I am stunned on the ground, I can hear that the third three rushing. “Well, I think this one will probably kill me.” But, thank God, I haven’t broken anything to myself, I didn’t hurt and I can stand from the ground. I jump up, run aside and scream not in my voice:
– Wait! Wait!
A figure rises from the bottom of an empty postal cart, take up the reins, and the third three stops almost at my very things. Two minutes pass in silence. Some stupid bewilderment, as if we all cannot understand what happened. The shafts are broken, the harnesses are torn, the arcs with the bells are lying on the ground, the horses breathe heavily; They are also stunned and seems to be painfully bruised. The old man, grunting and groaning, rises from the ground; The first two triples return, another fourth three arrives, then the fifth …
Then the frantic swearing begins.
– So that you are borrowed! – shouts the coachman, faced with us. – Yazvin in your mouth! Where did you have eyes, old dog?
– And who is to blame? – the old man screams in a crying voice. “You are to blame, and you swear?”
As you can understand from the swearing, the cause of the collision was the following. There were five reverse triples to the Abat, driving mail; According to the law, the reverse coachmen should go with a step, but the front coachman, missing and wanting to get into the warmth as soon as possible, drove the horses to his whole spirit, in the back four carts, the coaters were sleeping and there was no one to rule with triples; For the first, the other four ran in the whole spirit. If I slept in Tarantas, or if the third three ran immediately for the second, then, of course, the matter would not have done so well for me ”
(“New Time”, June 25 (July 7) 1890)
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