To N. A. Leikin, 27 June 1884. Voskresensk.

27 June 1884, Voskresensk.

4, VI, 27.

L_e_t_t_e_r No. 2

Last evening, dear Nikolai Alexandrovich, I received your letter and read it with pleasure. Letters at the summer place are no small pleasure. Yesterday, at Andrei Yegorych’s, I got a whole six of them at once, along with the newspapers and "Splinters," and delighted myself with reading till well past midnight. I read everything, even the advertisements in the papers and even the witticisms of the newly minted humorist Ye-ni... I read your letter yesterday, and now I answer... I’ve just come from a forensic-medical autopsy, held ten versts from V. I rode out on a reckless troika together with a decrepit, barely breathing investigating magistrate, worn out with age and fit for nothing, a little gray-haired, kindly creature who has been dreaming for twenty-five years of a seat on the court. I performed the autopsy together with the district doctor in a field, under the greenery of a young oak, on a country road... The dead man was "not from these parts," and the peasants, on whose land the body had been found, begged us with tears, in Christ’s name, not to do the autopsy in their village... "The women and children won’t sleep from fright..." The magistrate at first balked, fearing the storm clouds, but then, realizing the report could be written in rough draft and in pencil, and seeing that we were willing to do the cutting under open sky, gave in to the peasants’ pleading. An alarmed little village, the witnesses, a constable with his badge, a widow-woman wailing two hundred paces from the place of the autopsy, and two peasants playing the part of Kustodievs around the corpse... Near the silent Kustodievs a little bonfire smolders... Guarding the corpse day and night until the authorities arrive is a peasant’s duty, unpaid by anyone... The corpse, in a red shirt and new trousers, covered with a sheet... On the sheet a towel with a small icon. We ask the constable for water... There’s water – a pond right nearby – but no one will give up a bucket: they’ll spoil it. A peasant resorts to a trick: the Manekhino men steal a bucket from the Trukhino men... A stranger’s bucket, no pity lost... How they manage to steal it, and when and where – incomprehensible... They’re terribly pleased with their feat and snicker over it... The autopsy yields, as its result, a fracture of twenty ribs, pulmonary edema, and the smell of spirits in the stomach. Death by violence, resulting from strangulation. The drunk man was pressed in the chest by something heavy, probably a good peasant knee. On the body a great many abrasions, resulting from the pumping-out. The Manekhino men found the body and worked it for two hours so zealously that the future defender of the murderer will have the right to put to the expert the question: was the breaking of the ribs perhaps a consequence of that pumping? But I think this question will not be asked... There will be no defender, and no accused either... The magistrate is so decrepit that not only the murderer but even a sick bedbug could hide from his failing eye... You’re tired of reading by now, but I’ve got the taste for writing... Let me add one more characteristic little touch and fall silent. The murdered man was a factory hand. He was walking from the Tukhlovo tavern with a small keg of vodka. The witness Polikarpov, the first to see the body by the road, stated that he saw a keg lying near the body. But passing the same spot an hour later, this same Polikarpov no longer saw the keg. Ergo Therefore (Latin).: the Tukhlovo tavern-keeper, who has no license to sell for carry-out, in order to cover his tracks, stole the keg from the dead man. But enough of this. You’re indignant about the examination of wet-nurses... And what about the examination of prostitutes? The medical men (learned ones, of course), touching on the question of "offending the moral feeling" of those examined, deliberated and settled on one point: "their goods, our money... If the medical police may, without offending the person of the seller, inspect apples and hams, then why may they not look over the goods of wet-nurses or prostitutes as well? Whoever is afraid of being offended, let him not buy..." If you’re afraid to offend a wet-nurse by feeling her over, and take her without feeling her, then she’ll treat you to such goods as would make rotten oranges, trichinous hams, and poisoned sausages look pale by comparison.

You have six hundred dahlia bushes... What do you want with that cold, uninspiring flower? This flower has an aristocratic, baronial look to it, but no substance whatever... One’s hand itches to knock its haughty, tiresome little head off with a cane. Still, de gustibus non disputantur tastes are not disputed (Latin).. I didn’t want to place an advertisement for my little book in "Splinters," not because I think it useless, as you slander me by supposing, but simply because I was afraid of crowding you: you have little space, and to charge me as you charge others, you’d be too delicate to do. Place the advertisement, and I’ll say thank you. If it’s possible to insert the phrase "out-of-town readers may obtain it through the offices of ’Splinters,’" then I’ll say double thanks. There won’t be many buyers, and that phrase won’t crowd you. If, against all expectation, someone should wish to buy the book through your offices, you’ll only have to let me know the lucky fellow’s address in your next letter – and that, it seems, is all. Though in the publishing business I understand absolutely nothing... Do as seems best... My thanks and a bow for your advice. I’ll carry out everything just as you wrote. What a terrible lot I’ve written you! Every other day I go to the district hospital, where I see patients. I ought to go every day, but I’m lazy. The district doctor and I have long been friends.

Votre A. Chekhonte.