priest--of priests finding sponsors for Jews, and receiving medals or
orders in reward for their conversion. I recalled an instance related to
me by a Russian friend who had acted, at the priest's request, as
godmother to a Jewess so fat that she stuck fast in the receptacle used
for the baptism by immersion; and I questioned the man a little. He said
that he had a sister living in New York, and gave me her name and
address in a manner which convinced me that he knew what he was saying.
He had no complaint to make of his treatment by either Russians or Jews;
and when I asked him why he did not join his sister in America, he
replied,
"Why should I? I am well enough off here."
Perhaps I ought to state that he was a plumber by trade. On the other
hand, justice demands the explanation that Russian plumbing in general
is not of a very complicated character, and in Minsk it must be of a
very simple kind, I think.
He intended to return to Minsk as soon as he was baptized. How he
expected to attend the Russian Church in Minsk when he had found it
inexpedient to be baptized there was one of the points which he omitted
to explain.
I was at last obliged to bid him a decisive "good-day," and leave the
church. He followed, and passed me in the garden, his cap cocked
jauntily over his tight bronze curls, and his hips swaying from side to
side in harmony. Under the long arch of the belfry-tower gate hung a
picture, adapted to use as an _ikona_, which set forth how a mother had
accidentally dropped her baby overboard from a boat on the Dnyepr, and
coming, disconsolate, to pray before the image of St. Nicholas, the
patron of travelers, she had found her child lying there safe and sound;
whence this holy picture is known by the name of St. Nicholas the Wet.
Before this _ikona_ my Jew pulled off his cap, and crossed himself
rapidly and repeatedly, watching me out of the corner of his eye,
meanwhile, to see how his piety impressed me. It produced no particular
effect upon me, except to make me engage a smart-looking cabby to take
me to my hotel, close by, by a roundabout route. Whether this Jew
returned to Minsk as Vladimir or as Isaac I do not know; but I made a
point of mentioning the incident to several Russian friends, including a
priest, and learned, to my surprise, that, though I was not a member of
a Russian Church, I could legally have stood godmother to a man, though
I could not have done so to a woman; and that a godmother could have
been dispensed with. Men who are not members of the Russian Church can,
in like manner, stand as godfathers to women, but not to men. Moreover,
every one seemed to doubt the probability of a Jew quitting his own
religion in earnest, and they thought that his object had been to obtain
from me a suit of clothes, practical gifts to the godchild being the
custom in such cases. I had been too dull to take the hint!
A few months later, a St. Petersburg newspaper related a notorious
instance of a Jew who had been sufficiently clever to get himself
baptized a number of times, securing on each occasion wealthy and
generous sponsors. Why the man from Minsk should have selected me, in my
plain serge traveling gown, I cannot tell, unless it was because he saw
that I did not wear the garb of the Russian merchant class, or look like
them, and observation or report had taught him that the aristocratic
classes above the merchants are most susceptible to the pleasure of
patronizing converts; though to do them justice, Russians make no
attempt at converting people to their church. I have been assured by a
Russian Jew that his co-religionists never do, really, change their
faith. Indeed, it is difficult to understand how they can even be
supposed to do so, in the face of their strong traditions, in which they
are so thoroughly drilled. Therefore, if Russians stand sponsors to
Jews, while expressing skepticism as to conversion in general, they
cannot complain if unscrupulous persons take advantage of their
inconsistency. I should probably have refused to act as godmother, even
had I known that I was legally entitled to do so.
Our searches in the lower town, Podol, for rugs like those in the
monastery resulted in nothing but amusement. Those rugs had been made in
the old days of serfdom, on private estates, and are not to be bought.
By dint of loitering about in the churches, monasteries, catacombs,
markets, listening to that Little Russian dialect which is so sweet on
the lips of the natives, though it looks so uncouth when one sees their
ballads in print, and by gazing out over the ever beautiful river and
steppe, I came at last to pardon Kieff for its progress. I got my
historical and mythological bearings. I felt the spirit of the Epic
Songs stealing over me. I settled in my own mind the site of Fair-Sun
Prince Vladimir's palace of white stone, the scene of great feasts,
where he and his mighty heroes quaffed the green wine by the bucketful,
and made their great brags, which resulted so tragically or so
ludicrously. I was sure I recognized the church where Diuk Stepanovitch
"did not so much pray as gaze about," and indulged in mental comments
upon clothes and manners at the Easter mass, after a fashion which is
not yet obsolete. I imagined that I descried in the blue dusk of the
distant steppe Ilya of Murom approaching on his good steed Cloudfall,
armed with a damp oak uprooted from Damp Mother Earth, and dragging at
his saddle-bow fierce, hissing Nightingale the Robber, with one eye
still fixed on Kieff, one on Tchernigoff, after his special and puzzling
habit, and whom Little Russian tradition declares was chopped up into
poppy seeds, whence spring the sweet-voiced nightingales of the present
day.
The "atmosphere" of the cradle of the Epic Songs and of the cradle of
Pravoslavnaya Russia laid its spell upon me on those heights, and even
the sight of the cobweb suspension bridge in all its modernness did not
disturb me, since with it is connected one of the most charming modern
traditions, a classic in the language, which only a perfect artist could
have planned and executed.
The thermometer stood at 120 degrees Fahrenheit when we took our last
look at Kieff, the Holy City.
X.
A JOURNEY ON THE VOLGA.
I.
We had seen the Russian haying on the estate of Count Tolstoy. We were
to be initiated into the remaining processes of the agricultural season
in that famous "black earth zone" which has been the granary of Europe
from time immemorial, but which is also, alas! periodically the seat of
dire famine.
It was July when we reached Nizhni Novgorod, on our way to an estate on
the Volga, in this "black earth" grainfield, vast as the whole of
France; but the flag of opening would not be run up for some time to
come. The Fair quarter of the town was still in its state of ten months'
hibernation, under padlock and key, and the normal town, effective as it
was, with its white Kremlin crowning the turfed and terraced heights,
possessed few charms to detain us. We embarked for Kazan.
If Kazan is an article in the creed of all Russians, whether they have
ever seen it or not, Matushka Volga (dear Mother Volga) is a complete
system of faith. Certainly her services in building up and binding
together the empire merit it, though the section thus usually referred
to comprises only the stretch between Nizhni Novgorod and Astrakhan,
despite its historical and commercial importance above the former town.
But Kazan! A stay there of a day and a half served to dispel our
illusions. We were deceived in our expectations as to the once mighty
capital of the imperial Tatar khans. The recommendations of our Russian
friends, the glamour of history which had bewitched us, the hope of the
Western for something Oriental,--all these elements had combined to
raise our expectations in a way against which our sober senses and
previous experience should have warned us. It seemed to us merely a
flourishing and animated Russian provincial town, whose Kremlin was
eclipsed by that of Moscow, and whose university had instructed, but not
graduated, Count Tolstoy, the novelist. The bazaar under arcades, the
popular market in the open square, the public garden, the shops,--all
were but a repetition of similar features in other towns, somewhat
magnified to the proportions befitting the dignity of the home port of
the Ural Mountains and Siberia.
The Tatar quarter alone seemed to possess the requisite mystery and
"local color." Here whole streets of tiny shops, ablaze with
rainbow-hued leather goods, were presided over by taciturn,
olive-skinned brothers of the Turks, who appeared almost handsome when
seen thus in masses, with opportunities for comparison. Hitherto we had
thought of the Tatars only as the old-clothes dealers, peddlers,
horse-butchers, and waiters of St. Petersburg and Moscow. Here the
dignity of the prosperous merchants, gravely recommending their really
well-dressed, well-sewed leather wares, bespoke our admiration.
The Tatar women, less easily seen, glided along the uneven pavements now
and then, smoothly, but still in a manner to permit a glimpse of short,
square feet incased in boots flowered with gay hues upon a green or
rose-colored ground, and reaching to the knee. They might have been
houris of beauty, but it was difficult to classify them, veiled as they
were, and screened as to head and shoulders by striped green _kaftans_
of silk, whose long sleeves depended from the region of their ears, and
whose collar rested on the brow. What we could discern was that their
black eyes wandered like the eyes of unveiled women, and that they were
coquettishly conscious of our glances, though we were of their own sex.
We found nothing especially striking among the churches, unless one
might reckon the Tatar mosques in the list; and, casting a last glance
at Sumbeka's curious and graceful tower, we hired a cabman to take us to
the river, seven versts away.
We turned our backs upon Kazan without regret, in the fervid heat of
that midsummer morning. We did not shake its dust from our feet. When
dust is ankle-deep that is not very feasible. It rose in clouds, as we
met the long lines of Tatar carters, transporting flour and other
merchandise to and from the wharves across the "dam" which connects the
town, in summer low water, with Mother Volga. In spring floods Matushka
Volga threatens to wash away the very walls of the Kremlin, and our
present path is under water.
Fate had favored us with a clever cabman. His shaggy little horse was as
dusty in hue as his own coat,--a most unusual color for coat of either
Russian horse or _izvostchik_. The man's _armyak_ was bursting at every
seam, not with plenty, but, since extremes meet, with hard times, which
are the chronic complaint of Kazan, so he affirmed. He was gentle and
sympathetic, like most Russian cabmen, and he beguiled our long drive
with shrewd comments on the Russian and Tatar inhabitants and their
respective qualities.
"The Tatars are good people," he said; "very clean,--cleaner than
Russians; very quiet and peaceable citizens. There was a time when they
were not quiet. That was ten years ago, during the war with Turkey. They
were disturbed. The Russians said that it was a holy war; the Tatars
said so, too, and wished to fight for their brethren of the Moslem
faith. But the governor was not a man to take fright at that. He
summoned the chief men among them before him. 'See here,' says he. 'With
me you can be peaceable with better conscience. If you permit your
people to be turbulent, I will pave the dam with the heads of Tatars.
The dam is long. Allah is my witness. Enough. Go!' And it came to
nothing, of course. No; it was only a threat, though they knew that he
was a strong man in rule. Why should he wish to do that, really, even if
they were not Orthodox? A man is born with his religion as with his
skin. The Orthodox live at peace with the Tatars. And the Tatars are
superior to the Russians in this, also, that they all stick by each
other; whereas a Russian, _Hospodi pomilui!_ [Lord have mercy] thinks of
himself alone, which is a disadvantage," said my humble philosopher.
We found that we had underrated the power of our man's little horse, and
had arrived at the river an hour and a half before the steamer was
appointed to sail. It should be there lading, however, and we decided to
go directly on board and wait in comfort. We gave patient Vanka liberal
"tea-money." Hard times were evidently no fiction so far as he was
concerned, and we asked if he meant to spend it on _vodka_, which
elicited fervent asseverations of teetotalism, as he thrust his buckskin
pouch into his breast.
Descending in the deep dust, with a sense of gratitude that it was not
mixed with rain, we ran the gauntlet of the assorted peddlers stationed
on both sides of the long descent with stocks of food, soap, white felt
boots, gay sashes, coarse leather slippers too large for human wear, and
other goods, and reached the covered wharf. The steamer was not there,
but we took it calmly, and asked no questions--for a space.
We whiled away the time by chaffering with the persistent Tatar venders
for things which we did not want, and came into amazed possession of
some of them. This was a tribute to our powers of bargaining which had
rarely been paid even when we had been in earnest. We contrived to avoid
the bars of yellow "egg soap" by inquiring for one of the marvels of
Kazan,--soap made from mare's milk. An amused apothecary had already
assured us that it was a product of the too fertile brain of Baedeker,
not of the local soap factories. May Baedeker himself, some day, reap a
similar harvest of mirth and astonishment from the sedate Tatars, who
can put mare's milk to much better use as a beverage!
In the hope of obtaining a conversation-lesson in Tatar, we bought a
Russo-Tatar grammar, warranted to deliver over all the secrets of that
gracefully curved language in the usual scant array of pages. But the
peddler immediately professed as profound ignorance of Tatar as he had
of Russian a few moments before, when requested to abate his exorbitant
demands for the pamphlet.
By the time we had exhausted these resources one o'clock had arrived.
The steamer had not. The office clerk replied to all inquiries with the
languid national "_saytchas_" which the dictionary defines as meaning
"immediately," but which experience proves to signify, "Be easy; any
time this side of eternity,--if perfectly convenient!" Under the
pressure of increasingly vivacious attacks, prompted by hunger, he
finally condescended to explain that the big mail steamer, finding too
little water in the channel, had "sat down on a sand-bank," and that two
other steamers were trying to pull her off. "She might be along at three
o'clock, or later,--or some time." It began to be apparent to us why
the success of the Fair depends, in great measure, on the amount of
water in the river.
Our first meal of bread and tea had been eaten at seven o'clock, and we
had counted upon breakfasting on the steamer, where some of the best
public cooking in the country, especially in the matter of fish, is to
be found. It was now two o'clock. The town was distant. The memory of
the ducks, the size of a plover, and other things in proportion, in
which our strenuous efforts had there resulted, did not tempt us to
return. Russians have a way of slaying chickens and other poultry almost
in the shell, to serve as game.
Accordingly, we organized a search expedition among the peddlers, and in
the colony of rainbow-hued shops planted in a long street across the
heads of the wharves, and filled chiefly with Tatars and coarse Tatar
wares. For the equivalent of seventeen cents we secured a quart of rich
cream, half a dozen hard-boiled eggs, a couple of pounds of fine
raspberries, and a large fresh wheaten roll. These we ate in courses, as
we perched on soap-boxes and other unconventional seats, surrounded by
smoked fish, casks of salted cucumbers, festoons of dried mushrooms,
"cartwheels" of sour black bread, and other favorite edibles, in the
open-fronted booths. A delicious banquet it was,--one of those which
recur to the memory unbidden when more elaborate meals have been
forgotten.
Returning to the wharf with a fresh stock of patience, we watched the
river traffic and steamers of rival lines, which had avoided sand-banks,
as they took in their fuel supplies of refuse petroleum from the scows
anchored in mid-stream, and proceeded on their voyage to Astrakhan. Some
wheelbarrow steamers, bearing familiar names, "Niagara" and the like,
pirouetted about in awkward and apparently aimless fashion.
Passengers who seemed to be better informed than we as to the ways of
steamers began to make their appearance. A handsome officer deposited
his red-cotton-covered traveling-pillow and luggage on the dock and
strolled off, certain that no one would unlock his trunk or make way
with his goods. The trunk, not unusual in style, consisted of a
red-and-white tea-cloth, whose knotted corners did not wholly repress
the exuberance of linen and other effects through the bulging edges.
A young Tatar, endowed with india-rubber capabilities in the way of
attitudes, and with a volubility surely unrivaled in all taciturn Kazan,
chatted interminably with a young Russian woman, evidently the wife of a
petty shopkeeper. They bore the intense heat with equal equanimity, but
their equanimity was clad in oddly contrasting attire. The woman looked
cool and indifferent buttoned up in a long wadded pelisse, with a hot
cotton kerchief tied close over ears, under chin, and tucked in at the
neck. The Tatar squatted on his haunches, folded in three nearly equal
parts. A spirally ribbed flat fez of dark blue velvet, topped with a
black silk tassel, adorned his cleanly shaven head. His shirt, of the
coarsest linen, was artistically embroidered in black, yellow, and red
silks and green linen thread in Turanian designs, and ornamented with
stripes and diamonds of scarlet cotton bestowed unevenly in unexpected
places. It lay open on his dusky breast, and fell unconfined over full
trousers of home-made dark blue linen striped with red, like the gussets
under the arms of his white shirt. The trousers were tucked into high
boots, slightly wrinkled at the instep, with an inset of pebbled
horsehide, frosted green in hue, at the heels. This green leather was a
part of their religion, the Tatars told me, but what part they would not
reveal. As the soles were soft, like socks, he wore over his boots a
pair of stiff leather slippers, which could be easily discarded on
entering the mosque, in compliance with the Moslem law requiring the
removal of foot-gear.
Several peasants stood about silently, patiently, wrapped in their
sheepskin coats. Apparently they found this easier than carrying them,
and they were ready to encounter the chill night air in the open wooden
bunks of the third-class, or on the floor of the fourth-class cabin. The
soiled yellow leather was hooked close across their breasts, as in
winter. An occasional movement displayed the woolly interior of the
_tulup's_ short, full ballet skirt attached to the tight-fitting body.
The peasants who thus tranquilly endured the heat of fur on a midsummer
noon would, did circumstances require it, bear the piercing cold of
winter with equal calmness clad in cotton shirts, or freeze to death on
sentry duty without a murmur. They were probably on their way to find
work during the harvest and earn a few kopeks, and very likely would
return to their struggling families as poor as they went. As we watched
this imperturbable crowd, we became infected with their spirit of
unconcern, and entered into sympathy with the national _saytchas_--a
case of atmospheric influence.
At last the steamer arrived, none the worse for its encounter with the
bar. Usually, the mail steamers halt three hours--half-merchandise
steamers four hours--at Kazan and other important towns on the Volga,
affording hasty travelers an opportunity to make a swift survey in a
drosky; but on this occasion one hour was made to suffice, and at last
we were really off on our way to the estate down the river where we were
to pay our long-promised visit.
We were still at a reach of the river where the big steamer might sit
down on another reef, and the men were kept on guard at the bow, with
hardly an intermission, gauging the depth of the water with their
striped poles, to guide the helmsman by their monotonous calls:
"_Vosim!_" "_Schest-s-polovino-o-o-iu!_" "_Sim!_" (Eight! Six and a
half! Seven!) They had a little peculiarity of pronunciation which was
very pleasing. And we soon discovered that into shallower water than
five and a half quarters we might not venture.
The river was extremely animated above the mouth of the Kama, the great
waterway from the mines and forests of the Ural and Siberia. Now and
then, the men on a float heavily laden with iron bars, which was being
towed to the Fair at Nizhni Novgorod, would shout a request that we
would slacken speed, lest they be swamped with our swell. Huge rafts of
fine timber were abundant, many with small chapel-like structures on
them, which were not chapels, however. Cattle steamers passed, the
unconfined beasts staring placidly over the low guards of the three
decks, and uttering no sound. We had already learned that the animals
are as quiet as the people, in Russia, the Great Silent Land. Very brief
were our halts at the small landings. The villagers, who had come down
with baskets of fresh rolls and berries and bottles of cream, to supply
hungry passengers whose means or inclination prevented their eating the
steamer food, had but scant opportunity to dispose of their perishable
wares.
As the evening breeze freshened, the perfume of the hayfields was wafted
from the distant shores in almost overpowering force. The high right
bank, called the Hills, and the low left shore, known as the Forests,
sank into half-transparent vagueness, which veiled the gray log-built
villages with their tiny windows, and threw into relief against the
evening sky only the green roofs and blue domes of the churches,
surmounted by golden crosses, which gleamed last of all in the vanishing
rays of sunset. A boatload of peasants rowing close in shore; a
red-shirted solitary figure straying along the water's edge; tiny
sea-gulls darting and dipping in the waves around the steamer; a vista
up some wide-mouthed affluent; and a great peaceful stillness brooding
over all,--such were the happenings, too small for incidents, which
accorded perfectly with the character of the Volga. For the Volga cannot
be compared with the Rhine or the Hudson in castles or scenery. It has,
instead, a grand, placid charm of its own, imperial, indefinable, and
sweet. One yields to it, and subscribes to the Russian faith in the
grand river.
No one seemed to know how much of the lost time would be made up. Were
it spring, when Mother Volga runs from fifty to a hundred and fifty
miles wide, taking the adjoining country into her broad embrace, and
steamers steer a bee-line course to their landings, the officers might
have been able to say at what hour we should reach our destination. As
it was, they merely reiterated the characteristic "_Ne znaem_" (We don't
know), which possesses plural powers of irritation when uttered in the
conventional half-drawl. Perhaps they really did not know. Owing to a
recent decree in the imperial navy, officers who have served a certain
number of years without having accomplished a stipulated amount of sea
service are retired. Since the Russian war vessels are not many, while
the Naval Academy continues to turn out a large batch of young officers
every year, the opportunities for effecting the requisite sea service
are limited. The officers who are retired, in consequence, seek
positions on the Volga steamers, which are sometimes commanded by a
rear-admiral, in the imperial uniform, which he is allowed to retain, in
addition to receiving a grade. But if one chances upon them during their
first season on the river, their information is not equal to their fine
appearance, since Mother Volga must be studied in her caprices, and
navigation is open only, on the average, between the 12th of April and
the 24th of November. Useless to interrogate the old river dogs among
the subordinates. The "We don't know" is even more inveterate with them,
and it is reinforced with the just comment, "We are not the masters."