Through Russia

Not at once did she reply, but when she did so she said kindly:

"And good day to YOU, my friend. Yes, I wish you good day."

To which she added an inclination of the head which resembled nothing so much as a hammer which much percussion upon an anvil has wrought to a fine polish.

NILUSHKA

The timber-built town of Buev, a town which has several times been burnt to the ground, lies huddled upon a hillock above the river Obericha. Its houses, with their many-coloured shutters, stand so crowded together as to form around the churches and gloomy law courts a perfect maze – the streets which intersect the dark masses of houses meandering aimlessly hither and thither, and throwing off alleyways as narrow as sleeves, and feeling their way along plot-fences and warehouse walls, until, viewed from the hillock above, the town looks as though someone has stirred it up with a stick and dispersed and confused everything that it contains. Only from the point where Great Zhitnaia Street takes its rise from the river do the stone mansions of the local merchants (for the most part German colonists) cut a grim, direct line through the packed clusters of buildings constructed of wood, and skirt the green islands of gardens, and thrust aside the churches; whereafter, continuing its way through Council Square (still running inexorably straight), the thoroughfare stretches to, and traverses, a barren plain of scrub, and so reaches the pine plantation belonging to the Monastery of St. Michael the Archangel where the latter is lurking behind a screen of old red spruces of which the denseness seems to prop the very heavens, and which on clear, sunny days can be seen rising to mark the spot whence the monastery's crosses, like the gilded birds of the forest of eternal silence, scintillate a constant welcome.

At a distance of some ten houses before Zhitnaia Street debouches upon the plain which I have mentioned there begin to diverge from the street and to trend towards a ravine, and eventually to lose themselves in the latter's recesses, the small, squat shanties with one or two windows apiece which constitute the suburb of Tolmachikha. This suburb, it may be said, had as its original founders the menials of a landowner named Tolmachev – a landowner who, after emancipating his serfs some thirteen years before all serfs were legally emancipated, [In the year 1861] was, for his action, visited with such bitter revilement that, in dire offence at the same, he ended by becoming an inmate of the monastery, and there spending ten years under the vow of silence, until death overtook him amid a peaceful obscurity born of the fact that the authorities had forbidden his exhibition to pilgrims or strangers.

It is in the very cots originally apportioned to Tolmachev's menials, at the time, fifty years ago, when those menials were converted into citizens, that the present inhabitants of the suburb dwell. And never have they been burnt out of those homes, although the same period has seen all Buev save Zhitnaia Street consumed, and everywhere that one may delve within the township one will be sure to come across undestroyed hearthstones.

The suburb, as I have said, stands at the hither end and on the sloping side of one of the arms of a deep, wooded ravine, with its windows facing towards the ravine's yawning mouth, and affording a view direct to the Mokrie (certain marshes beyond the Obericha) and the swampy forest of firs into which the dim red sun declines. Further on, the ravine trends across the plain, then bends round towards the western side of the town, cats away the clayey soil with an appetite which each spring increases, and which, carrying the soil down to the river, is gradually clogging the river's flow, diverting the muddy water towards the marshes, and converting those marshes into a lagoon outright. The fissure in question is named "The Great Ravine," and has its steep flanks so overgrown with chestnuts and laburnums that even in summertime its recesses are cool and moist, and so serve as a convenient trysting place for the poorer lovers of the suburb and the town, and witness their tea drinkings and frequently fatal quarrels, as well as being used by the more well-to-do for a dumping ground for rubbish of the nature of deceased dogs, cats, and horses.

Pleasantly singing, there scours the bottom of the ravine the brook known as the Zhandarmski Spring, a brook celebrated throughout Buev for its crystal-cold water, which is so icy of temperature that even on a burning day it will make the teeth ache. This water the denizens of Tolmachikha account to be their peculiar property; wherefore they are proud of it, and drink it to the exclusion of any other, and so live to a green old age which in some cases cannot even reckon its years. And by way of a livelihood, the men of the suburb indulge in hunting, fishing, fowling, and thieving (not a single artisan proper does the suburb contain, save the cobbler Gorkov – a thin, consumptive skeleton of surname Tchulan); while, as regards the women, they, in winter, sew and make sacks for Zimmel's mill, and pull tow, and in summer they scour the plantation of the monastery for truffles and other produce, and the forest on the other side of the river for huckleberries. Also, two of the suburb's women practise as fortune tellers, while two others conduct an easy and highly lucrative trade in prostitution.

The result is that the town, as distinguished from the suburb, believes the men of the latter to be one and all thieves, and the women and girls of the suburb to be one and all disreputable characters. Hence the town strives always to restrict and extirpate the suburb, while the suburbans retaliate upon the townsfolk with robbery and arson and murder, while despising those townsfolk for their parsimony, decorum, and avarice, and detesting the settled, comfortable mode of life which they lead.

So poor, for that matter, is the suburb that never do even beggars resort thither, save when drunk. No, the only creatures which resort thither are dogs which subsist no one knows how as predatorily they roam from court to court with tails tucked between their flanks, and bloodless tongues hanging down, and legs ever prepared, on sighting a human being, to bolt into the ravine, or to let down their owners upon subservient bellies in expectation of a probable kick or curse.

In short, every cranny of every cot in the place, with the grimy panes of their windows, and their lathed roofs overgrown with velvety moss, breathes forth the universal, deadly hopelessness induced by Russia's crushing poverty.

In the Tolmachikhans' backyards grow only alders, elders, and weeds. Everywhere docks thrust up heads through cracks in the fences to catch at the legs or the skirts of passers-by, while masses of nettles squeeze their way under fences to sting little children. Apropos, the latter are all thin and hungry, in the highest degree quarrelsome, and addicted to prolonged lamentation. Also, each spring sees a certain proportion of their number carried off by diphtheria, while scarlatina and measles are as epidemic among them as is typhoid among their elders.

Thus the sounds of life most to be heard throughout the suburb are the sounds either of weeping or of mad cursing. In general, however, life in Tolmachikha is lived quietly and lethargically. So much is this the case that in spring even the cats forbear to squall save in crushed and subdued accents. The only local person to sing is Felitzata; and even she does so only when she is drunk. It may be said that Felitzata is a saucy, cunning procuress, and does her singing in a peculiarly thick and rasping voice which, with many croaks and hiatuses, necessitates much closing of the eyes, and a great protruding of the apple of the throat. Indeed, it is only the women of the place who, turbulently quarrelsome and hysterically noisy, spend most of the day in scouring the streets with skirts tucked up, and never cease begging for pinches of salt or flour or spoonfuls of oil as they rail and screech at and beat their children, and thrust withered breasts into their babies' mouths, and rush and fling themselves about, and bawl in a constant endeavour to right their woebegone condition. Yes, all are dishevelled and dirty, and have wizened, bony faces, and the restless eyes of thieves. Never, indeed, is a woman plump of figure, save at the period when she is ill, and her eyes are dim, and her gait is laboured. Yet until they are forty, the majority of the women become pregnant with every winter, and on the arrival of spring may be seen walking abroad with large stomachs and blue hollows under the eyes. And even this does not prevent them from working with the same desperate energy as when they are not with child. In short, the inhabitants of the place resemble needles and threads with which some rough, clumsy, and impatient hand is for ever trying to darn a ragged cloth which as constantly parts and rends.

The chief person of repute in the suburb is my landlord, one Antipa Vologonov – a little old man who keeps a shop of "odd wares," and also lends money on pledge.

Unfortunately, Antipa is a sufferer from a long-standing tendency to rheumatism, which has left him bow-legged, and has twisted and swollen his fingers to the extent that they will not bend. Hence, he always keeps his hands tucked into his sleeves, though seemingly he has the less use for them in that, even when he withdraws them from their shelter, he does so as cautiously as though he were afraid of their becoming dislocated.

On the other hand, he never loses his temper, and he never grows excited.

"Neither of those things suits me," he will say, "for my heart is dilated, and might at any moment fail."

As for his face, it has high cheekbones which in places blossom into dark red blotches; an expression as calm as that of the face of a Khirghiz; a chin whence dangle wisps of mingled grey, red, and flaxen hair of a perpetually moist appearance; oblique and ever-changing eyes which are permanently contracted; a pair of thick, parti-coloured eyebrows which cast deep shadows over the eyes; and temples whereon a number of blue veins struggle with an irregular, sparse coating of bristles. Finally, about his whole personality there is something ever variable and intangible.

Also, his gait is irritatingly slow; and the more so owing to his coat, which, of a cut devised by himself, consists, as it were, of cassock, sarafan [jacket], and waistcoat in one. As often as not he finds the skirts of the garment cumbering his legs; whereupon he has to stop and give them a kick. And thus it comes about that permanently the skirts are ragged and torn.

"No need for hurry," is his customary remark. "Always, in time, does one win to one's pitch in the marketplace."

His speech is cast in rounded periods, and displays a great love for ecclesiastical terms. On the occurrence of one such term, he pauses thereafter as though mentally he were adding to the term a very thick, a very black, full stop. Yet always he will converse with anyone, and at great length – his probable motive being a desire to leave behind him the reputation of a wise old man.

In his shanty are three windows facing on to the street, and a partition-wall which divides it into two rooms of unequal size. In the larger room, which contains a Russian stove, he himself lives; in the smaller room I have my abode. By a passage the two are separated from a storeroom where, closeted behind a door to which there are a heavy, old-fashioned bolt and many iron and brass screws, Antipa preserves pledges left by his neighbours, such as samovars, ikons, winter clothing and the like. Of this storeroom he always carries the great indentated key at the back of the strap which upholds his cloth breeches; and, whenever the police call to ascertain whether he is harbouring any stolen goods, a long time ensues whilst he is shifting the key round to his stomach, and again a long time whilst he is unfastening it from the belt. Meanwhile, he says pompously to the Superintendent or the Deputy Superintendent:

"Never do I take in goods of that kind. Of the truth of what I say, your honour, you have more than once assured yourself in person."

Also, whenever Antipa sits down the key rattles against the back or the seat of his chair; whereupon he bends his arm with difficulty, and feels to see whether or not the key has come unslung. This I know for the reason that the partition-wall is not so thick but that I can hear his every breath drawn, and divine his every movement.

Of an evening, when the misty sun is slanting across the river towards the auburn belt of pines, and distilling pink vapours from the sombre vista to be seen through the shaggy mouth of the ravine, Antipa Vologonov sets out a squat samovar that is dinted of side, and plated with green oxide on handle, turncock, and spout. Then he seats himself at his table by the window.

At intervals I hear the evening stillness broken by questions put in a tone which implies always an expectation of a precise answer.

"Where is Darika?"

"He has gone to the spring for water." The answer is given whiningly, and in a thin voice.

"And how is your sister?

"Still in pain."

"Yes? Well, you can go now."

Giving a slight cough to clear his throat, the old man begins to sing in a quavering falsetto:

Once a bullet smote my breast,

And scarce the pang I felt.

But ne'er the pang could be express'd

Which love's flame since hath dealt!

As the samovar hisses and bubbles, heavy footsteps resound in the street, and an indistinct voice says:

"He thinks that because he is a Town Councillor he is also clever."

"Yes; such folk are apt to grow very proud."

"Why, all his brains put together wouldn't grease one of my boots!"

And as the voices die away the old man's falsetto trickles forth anew, humming:

"The poor man's anger… Minika! Hi, you! Come in here, and I will give you a bit of sugar. How is your father getting on? Is he drunk at present?"

"No, sober, for he is taking nothing but kvas and cabbage soup."

"And what is he doing for a living?"

"Sitting at the table, and thinking."

"And has your mother been beating him again?"

"No – not again."

"And she – how is she?"

"Obliged to keep indoors."