Chekhov in Ceylon.
Deep Defrost
On Anton Chekhov’s journey to Ceylon and little-known sides of the writer’s life.
Text by Sergey Turkin
Now picture the young Anton Chekhov (thirty is no age at all) sailing the Indian Ocean aboard the steamer Peterburg and jumping overboard like a young daredevil. It’s hard for us to imagine Chekhov like that. All his life he conscientiously turned himself into a “man in a case”, creating the image of a refined intellectual with the obligatory little beard, pince-nez and hat, in a frock coat buttoned to the last button. Incidentally, in those years he rarely wore pince-nez.
The same image was conscientiously cultivated by Knipper-Chekhova (“the restless widow of the late writer”) and by numerous relatives, researchers and admirers. Try digging down to the real Chekhov, with his caustic practical jokes on the edge of decency and his natural interest in the people around him, the female sex included. A young, healthy man — so what if he “partook of a Japanese woman” on his journey across Siberia, or spent a night with a “bronze woman” in Ceylon? Try remaining a chaste monk on a paradise island after months of abstinence and Vladivostok women who were “rough to the touch”.
The motives behind his Sakhalin trip remain unclear to this day. After all, one can hardly take seriously his main argument — “to pay off a little of my debt to medicine, to which I am… a swine”. What does medicine have to do with it? His bantering about what might befall him — “in case of drowning or something of the sort” — is pure bravado, hiding a subconscious wish to escape encroaching fame and importunate family: since the age of sixteen he had carried the whole family on his shoulders.
Be that as it may, his main reply to those vying to talk him out of the trip was: “We must make pilgrimages to places like Sakhalin, as the Turks go to Mecca.” Convincingly put.
In general, Chekhov passionately urged every writer he knew, however slightly, to travel. “Go to Japan,” he told one. “I don’t understand why you — young, healthy and free — don’t go, say, to Australia,” he asked another — he was quite taken with Australia. “A writer must be fabulously rich, so that at any minute he can set off on a voyage around the world on his own yacht.” What can you say — sound advice for all time, and not only for writers.
His Sakhalin epic has been well studied; less attention is paid to the return leg of the route — out of a peculiarly Russian patriotism, perhaps. Yet Antoine Tschechoff (as his foreign passport named him) planned nothing less than a round-the-world voyage: from Asia via Suez around Europe to England, and then on to America itself. Alas, once again it “didn’t come together”, as Academician Aganbegyan used to say. Asia was swept by cholera, much like today’s coronavirus. Of the 24 planned ports of call only six remained open, and before Ceylon Chekhov saw only Hong Kong and Singapore, and only in passing.
Where Did the Slippers Float Off To?
When they learned of his plan, relatives, friends and acquaintances vied with one another to dissuade him from the dangerous venture, but Chekhov was adamant. Only, in his usual joking manner, he asked his friends before leaving to “think kindly of him”, and in case of “drowning or something of the sort” (in a letter to Suvorin) named his sister Maria his heir: “...she will pay my debts.”
His stay in Ceylon became overgrown with legends, helped along in no small part by assorted scholars and academicians who tried to “puff out their cheeks”, hushing up obvious facts and inventing all kinds of myths. Chekhov spent only two nights here. The first night was in Colombo — that’s a fact. But after that the interpretations diverge. To this day the Grand Oriental (fairly presentable in those days, rather shabby now) and the Galle Face (fairly modest then, grown utterly luxurious today) compete for the right to call themselves Chekhov’s hotel.
Both have Chekhov memorials: the Grand Oriental has a memorial bust in its lobby, and the Galle Face a memorial plaque in the hotel museum. The Galle Face, incidentally, has hosted practically every celebrity who has visited the island — from Che Guevara to Harrison Ford, Sting and Yuri Gagarin. Don’t even try to find Chekhov’s room at the Galle Face — it was in the old wing, which has been completely rebuilt; the Grand Oriental, on the other hand, does have a “writer’s room” (and it is very popular), though there is no evidence for it at all. A number of researchers quite reasonably believe that Chekhov actually spent the night at a different hotel altogether, in the Mount Lavinia area.
Why there? Look at the Peterburg’s logbook. On the night of 22–23 November the weather in the port of Colombo was clear, whereas Chekhov tells of a heavy downpour and of his slippers floating away in the hotel. Both hotels mentioned are right by the port where the ship was moored. Mount Lavinia, though, is a fair distance away, where a downpour could well have happened. In those days it was a suburb; now it is a district of Colombo. Besides, palm groves really did grow there at the time — the groves where Chekhov had his romantic rendezvous with the “bronze woman”.
Chekhov scholars believe the meeting was arranged by the ship’s doctor, an experienced traveler and connoisseur of the seamier spots, with whom the writer had become friends during the voyage. The girl — “of reduced social responsibility”, as they say nowadays — was a priestess of love and belonged to the caste of “outcasts”. They were allowed to practice this trade quite legally, though there were no special “houses of tolerance”. Let us finally give the uncensored quotation from Chekhov himself: “When I have children, I shall say to them, not without pride: ‘You sons of bitches, in my time I had intercourse with a dark-eyed Hindu girl… and where? In a coconut grove, on a moonlit night.’”
This Is a Document, by the Way
On the morning of 23 November 1890, Anton Chekhov and Midshipman Grigory Glinka set off for Kandy by train. The route is picturesque, and the views from the carriage windows are truly wonderful — if you look at the mountains and valleys and ignore the shacks along the embankment. Today’s carriages differ little from those of the time. It seems the rolling stock hasn’t changed since “British rule”. You rarely see trains so battered. Do you know how many kilometers of railway were built after the British left in 1948? That’s right — none. Those that exist are in a sorry state.
Our travelers most likely visited the famous Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, very probably the botanical garden too, and in the evening reached their hotel. Here we come to the only confirmed fact about Chekhov’s stay in Ceylon — that very bill for dinner at the Queen’s Hotel. The hotel, by the way, was luxurious in those days and stood right next to the Temple of the Tooth. But the facilities were shared, one for several rooms. What did the travelers enjoy at dinner? Of what we can make out: beer (at least six 0.75-liter bottles), whisky, and before that aperitifs with names unknown to today’s bartenders, fairly expensive wines and other exotic drinks.
Excuse Me, but Where’s the Food?
Evidently the travelers had a hearty meal in town before they could “knock back” so much at the hotel. They sat up late, as the candles included in the bill confirm. The next morning, barely making the train, they had two glasses of tea and eggs with sauce.
And that is all the documentary evidence. The bar bill miraculously survived in the writer’s archive. According to Mikhail Chekhov, Anton did leave notes about Ceylon, but back in Moscow they were devoured by the “mongoose” he had brought from the island — “a cross between a rat, a crocodile, a tiger and a monkey”, in Chekhov’s own words. Perhaps the beast didn’t like what Chekhov wrote about its homeland. No wonder the writer, a great lover of all kinds of creatures, affectionately called it “a scoundrel”. Still, his “million one hundred thousand memories” of Ceylon were good ones.
“I am content up to my throat, so sated and enchanted that I want nothing more and would not take offense if paralysis struck me down or dysentery carried me off to the next world. I can say: I have lived! That’s enough for me. I have been in hell, which Sakhalin is, and in paradise, that is, on the island of Ceylon.” Anton Chekhov.