To F. O. Shekhtel, 13 June 1890. Listvenichnaya.

1 A short, wry travel letter written on 13 June 1890 from Listvenichnaya (a village on the western shore of Lake Baikal) to Franz (Fyodor) Osipovich Shekhtel, the architect and close friend of the Chekhov family, during Chekhov’s overland journey across Siberia to the penal colony on Sakhalin Island. It is a stranded-traveler’s note: Chekhov is waiting on a delayed steamer to cross or continue past Baikal and reports the discomforts of the wait in his characteristic deflating, comic register.

2 After the double dateline (1-2), Chekhov opens by noting that Shekhtel has never had a letter from the shores of Baikal, so here is one; he explains he is writing while sitting on the shore waiting for the steamer to "take pity" and carry him onward, that he arrived on Tuesday but the boat does not leave until Friday, that it is raining and foggy, that he is being given nothing to eat, and that cockroaches and bedbugs are as plentiful as could be wished. He sums up the whole business as "not a life but an operetta – both tedious and funny," then signs off to "uncle" (3). The signature follows (4), then a request to pass on regards to Natalya Timofeevna Shekhtel (5) and a one-line aside, "Sick of traveling" (6). The remainder (7-10) is the envelope address as preserved in the source: "On the reverse," Moscow, the street and house, and the addressee’s name.

4 No corrupted or garbled text was found in this letter; no editorial gap markers appear in the source. a very short letter (double dateline, one paragraph, signature, a closing greeting, a one-line aside) followed by its envelope address, all plainly part of the same physical piece of correspondence – no sign of concatenated or unrelated back-matter.