"When I came here from the hills forty years ago," said he, "long
before the Russo-Turkish War, there were three houses here--three
only, two were wine-cellars. Now Zugdida is second only to Kutais. I
remember how two more wine-cellars were built, and a small general
shop, then a bread shop, then two more wine--cellars, two little
grocer's shops, some farm-houses. We became a fair-sized village, and
wondered how we had grown. The Russians came and built stone houses
and a military barracks, a prison, a police-station, and a big church;
then came the Hotel of Russia, the Universal Stores. We built the
broad, flag-stoned market, and named a Fair day; saddlery and sword
shops opened, blacksmiths, gunsmiths, coppersmiths, jewel workers,
tailors; Singer's sewing machines came, two more hotels, and we grew
and grew. We have now over two hundred taverns. We have offered the
Government to pay for all the necessary land, and defray all minor
expenses, if they will connect us with Poti by railway, and if it were
not that so many people want bribes we should be part of Europe. As it
is, we're just a bit of the old Caucasus."
He pointed to a group of drunkards, all armed from head to foot,
but now clinging to one another and raising their voices in Asiatic
chanting.
After supper--a stew of mutton and maize, with a bottle of very sweet
rose-coloured wine--the old man took me aside and made me a long
harangue on life and death and the hereafter. Better sermon on a
Sunday evening I never heard in church. He told me the whole course of
the good man's life and compared it with that of the bad man, weighed
the two, and found the latter wanting on all counts, adding, however,
that it was impossible to be good.
"How did you come to think so seriously of life?" I inquired.
"In this way," he replied. "Once I was very 'flee-by-the-sky'--I
didn't care a rap, sinned much, and feared neither God nor the
devil--or, if anything, I feared the devil a little; for God I never
had the least respect. But one day I picked up a book written by one
Andrew, and I read some facts that astonished me. He said that in
eight thousand years after the creation of the world the sun would go
red and the moon grey, the sun would grow old and cease to warm the
world--just as you and I must inevitably grow old. In that day would
be born together, one in the East and one in the West, Christ and the
Anti-Christ, and they would fight for the dominion of the world. This
story caused me to pause and think. Hitherto I had taken all for
granted.
"It had never occurred to me that the sun might stop shining, that the
stars might go out. I had scarcely thought that I myself might stop,
might die.
"'What happens to me when I die?' I asked people. 'God will judge
you,' they said. 'If good, you go to heaven; if evil, to hell.' That
did not satisfy me. How did people know? No one had ever come back to
tell us how things were done after death.
"I had never thought at all before, but now I began to think so hard
that I could not go about the ordinary things of life, I was so
wrapped up in the mystery of my own ignorance.
"People said I was under the evil eye. But that again was nonsense.
'Whence comes man?' I asked. 'Where does he go? Where was I before I
was born?' I was part of my ancestors. Very well. 'But where shall I
go when I die? What shall I be?'
"I nearly learned to disbelieve in religion. You must know I began to
go to church every Saturday evening and on all festivals. I listened
intently to all the services and the sermons, and I read all that I
could find to read, and I asked questions of priests and of educated
people--all with the idea of solving this mystery of life. I tried to
be good at the bidding of the Church, but I gave that up. I learned
that it was impossible to avoid sin.
"You drink wine--this is a sin; give short weight--that is a sin;
look on your neighbour's wife--that is a sin; everything you do
is sin--even if you do nothing, that is sin; there is no road of
sinlessness.
"I went on living as I felt inclined, without care as to whether it
were sin or no. But still I asked myself about man's life.
"Some one said to me, 'You will never understand, because you think of
yourself as a separate individual, and not as just a little part of
the human race. You live on in all the people who come after you, just
as before you were born you lived in those who were before you.'
"That was something new, but I understood him, and I asked him a new
question: 'If what you say is true--and very likely it is--what, then,
is the past of the whole human race, and what its future? What does
the life of the human race mean?'
"That he could not answer. Can you answer it? No. No one can answer
it."
* * * * *
"You are like Socrates," I said.
"Who was Socrates?"
"He was the man whom the Oracle indicated as the wisest man alive. All
men knew nothing, but Socrates was found wiser than they, for he alone
knew that he knew nought."
A look of pleased vanity floated over the face of my Mingrelian host.
He was at least quite human.
Before going to bed we drank one another's healths.
V
"HAVE YOU A LIGHT HAND?"
This is not simply a matter of making pastry, as you shall see.
I was tramping along a Black Sea road one night, and was wondering
where I should find a shelter, when suddenly a little voice cried
out to me from the darkness of the steppe. I stopped and looked and
listened. In a minute a little boy in a red shirt and a grey sheepskin
hat came careering towards me, and called out: "Do you want a place
to sleep? My mother's coffee-house is the best you'll find. The
coffee-house down the hill is nothing to it. There it is, that dark
house you passed. I am out gathering wood for the fire, but I shall
come in a minute."
Sharp boy! He was only eight years old. How did he guess my need so
well?
I retraced my footsteps very happily, and came to the dark inn I had
missed. It stood fifty yards back from the road, and had no light
except what glimmered from the embers of a wood fire. At the door was
a parrot that cried out, "Choozhoï, choozhoï, choozhoï preeshhòl"--"A
stranger, a stranger, a stranger has arrived."
The mother, a pugnacious gossip with arms akimbo, looked at me with
perturbed pleasure. "Are you a beggar or a customer?" she asked.
"Because if you're a beggar," etc. I cut her short as soon as I could.
I assured her I should be much pleased to be a customer.
I ordered tea. The boy came in and claimed me as his find, but was
snubbed. My hostess proceeded to ask me every question known to
her. To my replies, which were often not a little surprising, she
invariably replied with one of these exclamations, "Say it again, if
you please." "Indeed!" "With what pleasure!"
That I was a tramp and earned my living by writing about my adventures
pleased her immensely. I earned my living by having holidays, and
gained money where other travellers never did anything but spend.
"With what pleasure" did she hear that literary men were paid so many
roubles a thousand words for their writings. One could easily write an
immense quantity, she thought.
The little boy looked at me with bright eyes, and listened. Presently,
when his mother was dilating on the inferiority of painting as a
profession, he broke in.
The mother was saying, "Not only does the painter catch cold standing
still so long in marshy places, but when he has finished his pictures
he has to hawk them in the fairs, and even then he may not be able to
sell them."
"What fairs?" asked the boy.
"The fairs of Moscow, Petersburg, Kiev, and the great towns. Some sell
for fifty roubles, some for five hundred, some for five thousand and
more. A little picture would go for five roubles perhaps."
"What size pictures would one buy for fifty roubles?" asked the boy.
"Oh, about the same size as from the floor to the ceiling."
"What size would one be that cost five thousand roubles?"
"Oh, an immense picture; one could build a country house out of it."
The boy reflected.
"And five hundred thousand roubles?" he asked. But his mother remained
profitably silent over the preparation of the family soup. The fire
now blazed with the additional wood that had been heaped upon it. The
little voice repeated the absurd question, and the mother shouted,
"Silence! Don't make yourself a nuisance."
"But how big would it be?" whined the boy. "Tell me."
"Oh, the same, but bigger, stupid!"
Thereupon my little friend was very happy, and he apparently ascribed
his happiness to me.
A few minutes later he abruptly asked permission to take me up a
mountain to show me a castle next morning, and his mother agreed,
pointing out how extremely profitable it would be for me. The little
boy rejoiced; he had apparently wanted to go up to that castle for a
long while. How excited and happy he was!
His mother paid little attention to her child, however, and her
interest lay in the bubbling cauldron where the soup was cooking. "You
have a very clever boy," I said, but she did not agree with me. His
pranks and high spirits were to her evidence of stupidity. I must say
I felt we were the stupid party, and the boy was a little wonder. We
went on gossiping, and presently he proved us stupid.
He started up with one finger to his ear and then darted out, leaving
the door open and letting the steppe air pour in.
The mother listened, and then said discontentedly after a pause, "That
child is not usual."
The boy came back with fifteen shaggy customers, however; fifteen
red-faced waggoners, half-frozen in their sheepskins, and all
clamoured for food and drink.
The boy, all excitement, danced up to me and said, "Have you a light
hand? You must have a light hand!" I didn't know what he meant, but he
was off before I had time to ask.
He began serving tea and cutting bread and asking questions. Did
any one want soup? Nobody wanted soup at first, but at the boy's
solicitations nine of them agreed to have portions at twopence a
plateful. The mother persuaded others to have pickled herrings,
cheese, wine.
The inn was of two rooms: one a bedroom and retiring-room without a
door. The Ikon of this room served the economical hostess for both
rooms.
The waggoners were all surly till they had fed. "Show me where we can
bow to God," said one of them very gruffly, not seeing the Ikon. The
little boy led him and all his mates into the little bedroom, and they
all bowed their hairy faces and crossed themselves before the Ikon of
St. Nicholas.
Then they returned and consumed the soup and the herrings and bread
and cheese and wine and tea. I looked on. My hostess was turning a
pretty penny. I was looking on at a very pleasant and surprising
interlude.
Every now and then one of the mouzhiks would stump out to see how the
horses were, for they had a long train of waggons carrying building
materials to the Tsar's estate of Livadia. At length all had supped,
and they came up to the counter one by one and thanked the hostess
heartily, paying her the while.
Only one of the men was dissatisfied--the last one to come up.
"Your soup is dear," said he.
"Dear! What do you mean?" said the woman. "How much would you pay for
such soup in Yalta, and with beef at fivepence a pound, too?"
"In Yalta they give one soup."
"And here!"
"Here ... as God wills ... something...." The mouzhik slammed the
door.
"There's a man," said my hostess, but she wasn't enraged. Had she
not just sold the family's soup for eighteenpence, and made tenpence
profit on it, and wouldn't her husband be pleasantly surprised when he
saw there were three shillings more on the counter than usual? It was
not often that such custom had come to her.
The boy explained the reason to her in a whisper: "He has a light
hand."
"Very like," said she, looking at me with new interest.
"What do you mean?" I asked the boy.
"Why, don't you know?" said he wonderingly. "Wherever you go you bring
good fortune. After I met you on the road I immediately began to
find wood much more plentifully. When I came in I learned how to buy
pictures. Then mother said she would let me go with you to see the
castle. Then, not only are you a good customer staying the night, but
after you came all this crowd of customers. Generally we have nobody
at all...."
"And I met this wonderful boy," thought I. "I should like to carry him
away. He is like something in myself. He also had the light hand,
but what a testimony he gave the tramp! Wherever he goes he brings
happiness."
As once I wrote before, "tramps often bring blessings to men: they
have given up the causes of quarrels. Sometimes they are a little
divine. God's grace comes down upon them."