Russian Rambles Part 21

A woman about forty-five years of age accompanied them into the room, then planted herself with her back against the wall near us, which was as far away from her charges as s.p.a.ce permitted. She was the "sheep-dog," and we soon saw that, while discreetly oblivious of the smiles, glances, and behavior of her lambs,--as all well-trained society sheep-dogs are,--she kept darting sharp looks at us as though we were doing something quite out of the way and improper. By that time we had begun to suspect, for various reasons, that the Nizhni Fair is intended for men, not for--ladies. But we were determined quietly to convince ourselves of the state of affairs, so we stood our ground, dallied with our tea, drank an enormous quant.i.ty of it, and kept our eyes diligently in the direction where those of the sheep-dog should have been, but never were.

Their very bad singing over, the lambs disappeared to the adjoining veranda. The young merchants slipped out, one by one. The waiters began to carry great dishes of peaches, and other dainty fruits,--all worth their weight in gold in Russia, and especially at Nizhni,--together with bottles of champagne, out to the veranda. When we were satisfied, we went to bed, but not to sleep. The peaches kept that party on the veranda and in the rooms below exhilarated until nearly daylight. I suppose the duenna did her duty and sat out the revel in the distant security of the dining-room. Several of her charges added a number of points to our store of information the next day, at the noon breakfast hour, when the duenna was not present.

We began to think that we understood our Moscow friend's enigmatic smile, and to regret that we had not met him and his wife at the Fair, as we had originally arranged to do.

The far-famed Fair of Nizhni Novgorod--"Makary," the Russians call it, from the town and monastery of St. Makary, sixty miles farther down the Volga, where it was held from 1624 until the present location was adopted in 1824--was a disappointment to us. There is no denying that.

Until railways and steamers were introduced into these parts, and facilitated the distribution of goods, and of commonplaceness and monotony, it probably merited all the extravagant praises of its picturesqueness and variety which have been lavished upon it. The traveler arrives there with indefinite but vast expectations. A fancy dress ball on an enormous scale, combined with an International Exposition, would seem to be the nearest approach possible to a description of his confused antic.i.p.ations. That is, in a measure, what one sees; and, on the other hand, it is exactly the reverse of what he sees. I must confess that I think our disappointment was partly our own fault. Had we, like most travelers who have written extravagantly about the Fair, come to it fresh from a stay of (at most) three weeks in St.

Petersburg and Moscow only, we should have been much impressed by the variety of types and goods, I have no doubt. But we had spent nearly two years in the land, and were familiar with the types and goods of the capitals and of other places, so that there was little that was new to us. Consequently, though we found the Fair very interesting, we were not able to excite ourselves to any extravagant degree of amazement or rapture.

The Fair proper consists of a ma.s.s of two-story "stone" (brick and cement) buildings, inclosed on three sides by a ca.n.a.l in the shape of a horseshoe. Through the centre runs a broad boulevard planted with trees, ending at the open point of the horseshoe in the residence occupied by the governor during the Fair (he usually lives in the Kremlin of the Upper Town), the post-office, and other public buildings. Across the other end of the boulevard and "rows" of the Gostinny Dvor, with their arcades full of benches occupied by fat merchants or indolent visitors, and serving as a chord to the arc of the horseshoe, run the "Chinese rows," which derive their name from the style of their curving iron roofs and their ornaments, not from the nationality of the merchants, or of the goods sold there. It is, probably, a mere accident that the wholesale shops for overland tea are situated in the Chinese rows. It is a good place to see the great bales of "Kiakhta tea," still in their wrappings of rawhides, with the hair inside and the hieroglyphical addresses, weights, and so forth, cut into the skins, instead of being painted on them, just as they have been brought overland from Kiakhta on the Chinese border of Siberia. Here, also, rises the great Makary Cathedral, which towers conspicuously above the low-roofed town. Inside the boundary formed by this Belt Ca.n.a.l, no smoking is allowed in the streets, under penalty of twenty-five rubles for each offense. The drainage system is flushed from the river every night; and from the ventilation towers, which are placed at short intervals, the blue smoke of purifying fires curls rea.s.suringly. Great care is necessary in this department, and the sanitary conditions, though as good as possible, are never very secure. The whole low sandspit is often submerged during the spring floods, and the retreating waters leave a deposit of slime and debris behind them, which must be cleared away, besides doing much damage to the buildings.

The peculiarity of this Makary Fair is that nothing is sold by sample, in modern fashion; the whole stock of goods is on hand, and is delivered at once to purchasers. The taciturn, easy-going merchants in those insignificant-looking shops of the Gostinny Dvor "rows," and, to a small extent, in the supplementary town which has sprung up outside the ca.n.a.l, set the prices for tea and goods of all sorts all over Russia and Siberia for the ensuing year. Contracts for the future are dated, and last year's bills fall due, at "Makary." It is hard to realize.

All the firms with whose shops we had been familiar in Petersburg and Moscow had establishments here, and, at first, it seemed not worth while to inspect their stocks, with which we felt perfectly acquainted. But we soon discovered that our previous familiarity enabled us to distinguish certain articles which are manufactured for the "Fair" trade exclusively, and which are never even shown in the capitals. For example, the great porcelain houses of St. Petersburg manufacture large pipe-bowls, ewers (with basins to match) of the Oriental shape familiar to the world in silver and bra.s.s, and other things, all decorated with a deep crimson bordering on magenta, and with gold. The great silk houses of Moscow prepare very rich and very costly brocades of this same deep crimson hue, besprinkled with gold and with tiny bouquets of bright flowers, or in which the crimson is prominent. They even copy the large, elaborate patterns from the robes of ancient Doges of Venice. All these, like the pipes and ewers, are made to suit the taste of customers in Bokhara and other Eastern countries, where a man's rank is, to a certain degree, to be recognized by the number and richness of the _khalati_ which he can afford to wear at one time. This is one of the points in which the civilization of the East coincides very nearly with the civilization of the West. The _khalat_ is a sort of dressing-gown, with wide sleeves, which is girt about the waist with a handsome shawl; but it would strike a European that eight or ten of these, worn one on top of the other, might conduce to the preservation of vanity, but not to comfort, in the hot countries where the custom prevails. The Bokhariots bring to the Fair _khalati_ of their own thin, strong silk, in hues more gaudy than those of the rainbow and the peac.o.c.k combined, which are always lined with pretty green and white chintz, and can be bought for a very reasonable price in the Oriental shops, together with jeweled arms and ornaments, rugs, and a great variety of fascinating wares.

The choicest "overland" tea--the true name is "Kiakhta tea"--can be had only by wholesale, alas! and it is the same with very many things.

There are shops full of rolls of _sarpinka_, a fine, changeable gingham in pink and blue, green and yellow, and a score of other combinations, which washes perfectly, and is made by the peasants far down the Volga, in the season when agricultural labor is impossible. There are furs of more sorts than the foreign visitor is likely ever to have seen before; iron from the Ural mines by the ton, on a detached sand-spit in the Oka River; dried and salted fish by the cord, in a distant, too odorous spot; goldsmiths' shops; old-clothes shops, where quaint and beautiful old costumes of Russia abound; Tatar shops, filled with fine, multi-colored leather work and other Tatar goods, presided over by the stately Tatars from whom we had bought at Kazan; shops piled with every variety of dried fruit, where prime Sultana raisins cost forty cents for a box of one hundred and twenty pounds. Altogether, it is a varied and instructive medley.

We learned several trade tricks. For example, we came upon the agency of a Moscow factory, which makes a woolen imitation of an Oriental silken fabric, known as _termalama_. The agent acknowledged that it was an imitation, and said that the price by the piece was twenty-five cents a yard. In the Moscow Oriental shops the dealers sell it for eight times that price, and swear that it is genuine from the East. A Russian friend of ours had been cheated in this way, and the dealers attempted to cheat us also,--in vain, after our Nizhni investigations.

Every one seemed to be absorbed in business, to the exclusion of every other thought. But sometimes, as we wandered along the boulevard, and among the rows, we found the ground of the Gostinny Dvor strewn with fresh sprays of fragrant fir, which we took at first to be a token that a funeral had occurred among some of the merchants' clerks who lived over the shops. However, it appeared that a holy picture had been carried along the rows, and into the shops of those who desired its blessing on their trade, and a short service had been held. The "zeal"

of these numerous devout persons must have enriched the church where the _ikona_ dwelt, judging from the number, of times during our five days'

stay that we came upon these freshly strewn paths.

The part of the Fair which is most interesting to foreigners in general, I think, is the great gla.s.s gallery filled with retail booths, where Russians sell embroidery and laces and the handiwork of the peasants in general; where Caucasians deal in the beautiful gold and silver work of their native mountains; where swarthy Bokhariots sit cross-legged, with imperturbable dignity, among their gay wares, while the band plays, and the motley crowd bargains and gazes even in the evening when all the other shops are closed.

I learned here an extra lesson in the small value attached by Russians to t.i.tles in themselves. It was at the Ekaterinburg booth, where precious and semi-precious stones from the Ural and Siberia, in great variety and beauty, were for sale. A Russian of the higher cla.s.ses, and, evidently, not poor, inquired the price of a rosary of amethysts, with a cross of a.s.sorted gems fit for a bishop. The attendant mentioned the price. It did not seem excessive, but the bargainer exclaimed, in a bantering tone,--

"Come now, prince, that's the fancy price. Tell me the real price."

But the "prince" would not make any reduction, and his customer walked away. I thought I would try the effect of the t.i.tle on the Caucasians and Bokhariots. I had already dropped into the habit of addressing Tatars as "prince," except in the case of hotel waiters,--and I might as well have included them. I found to my amus.e.m.e.nt that, instead of resenting it as an impertinence, they reduced the price of the article for which I was bargaining by five kopeks (about two and a half cents) every time I used the t.i.tle, though no sign of gratification disturbed the serene gravity of their countenances any more than if they had been Americans and I had addressed them as "colonel" or "judge," at haphazard. Truly, human nature varies little under different skies! But I know now, authoritatively, that the market value of the t.i.tle of "prince" is exactly two and a half cents.

One evening we drove across the bridge to take tea at a garden on the "Atkos," or slope,--the crest of the green hill on which stands the Kremlin. In this Atkos quarter of the town there are some really fine houses of wealthy merchants, mingled with the curious old dwellings of the merely well-to-do and the poor. In the garden the tea was not very good, and the weedy-looking chorus of women, the inevitable adjunct to every eating establishment at the Fair, as we had learned, sang wretchedly, and were rewarded accordingly when one of their number came round to take up a collection. But the view! Far below, at our feet, swept broad "Matushka Volga." The wharves were crowded with vessels.

Steamers and great barges lay anch.o.r.ed in the stream in battalions.

Though the activity of the day was practically over, tugs and small boats were darting about and lending life to the scene. We were on the "Hills" side of the river. Far away, in dreamy dimness, lay the flat, blue-green line of the "Forests" sh.o.r.e. On our left was the mouth of the Oka, and the Fair beyond, which seemed to be swarming with ants, lay flat on the water level. The setting sun tinged the scene with pale rose and amber in a mild glow for a while, and then the myriad lights shone out from the city and river with even more charming effect.

Our next visit to the old town was in search of a writer who had published a couple of volumes of agreeable sketches. It was raining hard, so we engaged an _izvostchik_ who was the fortunate possessor of an antiquated covered carriage, with a queer little drapery of scarlet cotton curtains hanging from the front of the hood, as though to screen the modesty of "the young person" from the manners, customs, and sights of the Fair,--about which, to tell the truth, the less that is said in detail the better. Certainly, more queer, old-fashioned carriages and cabmen's costumes are to be seen at the Fair than anywhere else in the country. As we were about to enter our antique conveyance, my mother's foot caught in the braid on the bottom of her dress, and a long strip gave way.

"I must go upstairs and sew this on before we start," said she, reentering the hotel.

The _izvostchik_ ran after us. "Let me sew it on, Your High Well-born,"

he cried. Seeing our surprise, he added, "G.o.d is my witness,--_yay Bogu!_ I am a tailor by trade."

His rent and faded coat did not seem to indicate anything of the sort, but I thought I would try him, as I happened to have a needleful of silk and a thimble in my pocket. I gave them to him accordingly. He knelt down and sewed on the braid very neatly and strongly in no time. His simple, friendly manner was irresistibly charming. I cannot imagine accepting such an offer from a New York cabby,--or his offering to do such a job.

When we reached the old town, I asked a policeman where to find my author. I thought he might be able to tell me at once, as the town is not densely populated, especially with authors;--and for other reasons. He did not know.

"Then where is the police office or the address office?" I asked. (There is no such thing as a directory in Russian cities, even in St.

Petersburg. But there is an address office where the names and residences on pa.s.sports are filed, and where one can obtain the address wanted by paying a small fee, and filling out a form. But he must know the baptismal name and the patronymic as well as the surname, and, if the person wanted be not "n.o.ble," his profession or trade in addition!)

"There is no address office," he answered, "and the police office is closed. It is after four o'clock. Besides, if it were open, you could not find out there. We keep no record here, except of soldiers and strangers."

I thought the man was jesting, but after questioning him further, I was forced to conclude that it might be true, thought it certainly was amazing. As the author in question had been sent to Siberia once or twice, on the charge of complicity in some revolutionary proceedings, it did seem as though the police ought to be able to give his address, if Russia meant to live up to the reputation for strict surveillance of every soul within her borders which foreigners have kindly bestowed upon her.

As a house-to-house visitation was impossible, I abandoned the quest, and drove to a photographer's to buy some views of the town. The photographer proved to be a chatty, vivacious man, and full of information. I mentioned my dilemma to him. He said that the policeman had told the exact truth, but that my author, to his positive knowledge, was in the Crimea, "looking up material." Then he questioned me as to what we had seen at the Fair, mentioning one or two places of evening entertainment. I replied that we had not been to those places. I had understood that they were not likely to suit my taste. Had I been rightly informed, or ought I to have gone to them in spite of warning?

"No," he replied frankly, after a momentary hesitation, "you ought not to see them. But all the American women do go to them. There was a party here last year. O-o-o-oh, how they went on! They were told, as you have been, that they ought not to go to certain places; so of course they went, and took the men in the party with them,--which was just as well. I'd have given something to see their faces at the time, or even afterwards! An Englishman, who had traveled everywhere, and had seen everything, told me that nowhere, even in India, had he seen the like of the doings at this Fair; and he was greatly shocked." He added that an officer could not appear at these places in uniform.

I begged the photographer to remember in future that there were several sorts of American women, and that not all of them worked by the law of contraries. In my own mind I wondered what those particular women had done, and wished, for the hundredth time, that American women abroad would behave themselves properly, and not earn such a reputation for their country-people.

On Sunday we went to the Armenian church, to see the service and to meet some Armenian acquaintances. We found the service both like and unlike the Russian, in many points approaching more nearly to the Greek form.

The music was astonishing. An undercurrent of sound, alternating between a few notes, was kept up throughout the service, almost without a break.

At times, this undercurrent harmonized with the main current of intoning and chanting, but quite as often the discord was positively distressing.

Perceiving that we were strangers, the Armenians showed their hospitality in an original way. First, when one of the congregation went forward to the chancel railing and received from the priest the triple kiss of peace, which he then proceeded to communicate to another person, who pa.s.sed it on in dumb show, and so on through the whole a.s.sembly, neither men nor women would run the risk of offending us by offering the simulated kiss. Secondly, and more peculiar, besides throwing light on their motives in omitting the kiss, they deliberately pa.s.sed us by when they brought round the plate for the collection! This was decidedly novel! A visit to the Armenian church in St. Petersburg convinced us that the discordant music was not an accident due to bad training, but deliberate and habitual. I noticed also that the men and women, though they stood on opposite sides of the church, as with the Russian Old Ritualists, with the women on the left,--in the State Church, at Court, the women stand on the right,--they crossed themselves from left to right, like Roman Catholics, instead of the other way about, as do the Russians.

As we were exploring the Tatar shops at noon, we heard the muezzin calling to prayer from the minaret of the mosque close by, and we set off to attend the service. If we had only happened to have on our galoshes, we might have complied with etiquette by removing them, I suppose, and could have entered in our shoes. At least, the Russian policeman said so, and that is very nearly what the Tatars did. They kicked off the stiff leather slippers in which they scuff about, and entered in their tall boots, with the inset of frosted green pebbled horsehide in the heel, and soft soles, like socks. As it was, we did not care to try the experiment of removing our shoes, and so we were obliged to stand in the vestibule, and look on from the threshold. Each Tatar, as he entered, pulled out the end of his turban, and let it float down his back. Where the turban came from for the prayers, I do not know.

None of the Tatars had worn a turban in the shops from which they had just come in large numbers, abandoning the pressing engagements of the busy noontide. Several individuals arrived very late, and decided not to enter. All of these late comers, one after the other, beckoned me mysteriously out of sight of the congregation and the _mollah_, and whispered eagerly:--

"How do you like it?"

"_Very_ much," I answered emphatically; whereupon they exhibited signs of delight which were surprising in such grave people, and even made a motion to kiss my hand.

At least, that is what the motion would have meant from a Russian. Next to the magnificent ceremonial of the Russian Church, the opposite extreme, this simplicity of the congregational Mussulman worship is the most impressive I have ever seen.

The manner of our departure from Nizhni Novgorod was characteristically Russian,--but not by our own choice. We decided to go on up the Volga by steamer, see the river and a few of the towns, and return from some point, by rail, to Moscow.

The boat was advertised to start from the wharf, in the old town, at six o'clock in the evening. We went aboard in good season, and discovered that there were but three first-cla.s.s staterooms, the best of which (the only good one, as it afterwards appeared) had been captured by some friends of the captain. We installed ourselves in the best we could get, and congratulated each other when the steamer started on time. We had hardly finished the congratulations when it drew up at another wharf and made fast. Then it was explained to us that it was to load at this wharf, at the "Siberian Landing," a point on the Volga sh.o.r.e of the Fair sand-spit, miles nearer our hotel than the one to which we had driven through torrents of rain. We were to make our real start at ten o'clock that night! The cold was piercing. We wrapped ourselves up in our wadded cloaks and in a big down quilt which we had with us, and tried to sleep, amid the deliberate bang-bang-bang of loading. When the cargo was in we slept. When we woke in the morning we began to exchange remarks, being still in that half comatose condition which follows heavy slumber.

"What a delightfully easy boat!" "Who would have expected such smoothness of motion from such an inferior-looking old craft?" "It must be very swift to have no motion at all perceptible. Whereabouts are we, and how much have we missed?"

I rose and raised the blind. The low sh.o.r.e opposite and far away, the sandy islet near at hand, the river,--all looked suspiciously like what our eyes had rested upon when we went to bed the night before. We would not believe it at first, but it was true, that we had not moved a foot, but were still tied up at the Siberian Landing. Thence we returned to the town wharf, no apologies or explanations being forthcoming or to be extracted, whence we made a final start at about nine o'clock, only fifteen hours late! And the company professed to be "American"!

Progress up the river was slow. The cold rain and wind prevented our availing ourselves of the tiny deck. The little saloon had no outlook, being placed in the middle of the boat. The sh.o.r.es and villages were not of striking interest, after our acquaintance with the lower Volga. For hours all the other pa.s.sengers (chiefly second-cla.s.s) were abed, apparently. I returned to my cabin to kill time with reading, and presently found the divan and even the floor and part.i.tion walls becoming intolerably hot, and exhaling a disagreeable smell of charred wood. I set out on a tour of investigation. In the next compartment to us, which had the outward appearance of a stateroom, but was inclosed on the outside only by a lattice-work, was the smoke-pipe. The whistle was just over our heads, and the pipe almost touched the part.i.tion wall of our cabin. That partly explained the deadly chill of the night before, and the present suffocating heat. I descended to the lower deck. There stood the engine, almost as rudimentary as a parlor stove, in full sight and directly under our cabin; also close to the woodwork. It burned wood, and at every station the men brought a supply on board; the sticks, laid across two poles in primitive but adequate fashion, being deposited by the simple process of widening the s.p.a.ce between the poles, and letting the wood fall on the deck with a noise like thunder. The halts and "wooding up" seemed especially frequent at night, and there was not much opportunity for sleep between them. Our fear of being burned alive also deprived us of the desire to sleep. We were nearly roasted, as it was, and had to go out on the deck in the wind and rain at short intervals, to cool off.

There was nothing especially worthy of note at any of the landings, beyond the peculiar windmills, except at Gorodetz, which is renowned for the manufacture of spice-cakes, so the guide-book said. I watched anxiously for Gorodetz, went ash.o.r.e, and bought the biggest "spice-cake"

I could find from an old woman on the wharf. All the other pa.s.sengers landed for the same purpose, and the old woman did a rushing business.

After taking a couple of mouthfuls, I decided that I was unable to appreciate the merits of my cake, as I had been, after repeated efforts, to appreciate those of a somewhat similar concoction known under the name of "Vyazemsky." So I gave the cake to the grateful stewardess, and went out on deck to look at a ray of sunlight.

"Where's your cake?" asked a stern voice at my elbow. The speaker was a man with long hair and beard, dressed like a peasant, in a conical fur cap and a sheepskin coat, though his voice, manner, and general appearance showed that he belonged to the higher cla.s.ses. Perhaps he was an "adept" of Count Tolstoy, and was merely masquerading in that costume, which was very comfortable, though it was only September.

"I gave it to the stewardess," I answered meekly, being taken by surprise.

"What! Didn't you eat it? Don't you know, madam, that these spice-cakes are renowned for their qualities all over Russia, and are even carried to the remotest parts of Siberia and of China, also, I believe, in great quant.i.ties? [He had got ahead of the guide-book in that last particular!] _Why_ didn't you eat it?"

"It did not taste good; and besides, I was afraid of indigestion. It seemed never to have been cooked, unless by exposure to the sun, and it was soggy and heavy as lead. You know there has been a great deal of rain lately, and what sun we have even now is very pale and weak, hardly adapted to baking purposes."

This seemed to enrage my hairy mentor, and he poured out a volume of indignant criticism, reproach, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, all tangled up with fragments of cookery receipts, though evidently not the receipt for the Gorodetz cakes, which is a secret. The other pa.s.sengers listened in amazement and delight. When he paused for breath, I remarked:--