The charge for driving on Caucasian roads is a penny per horse per
mile, so if you ride ten miles and have two horses you pay the driver
one shilling and eightpence. But if, as generally happens, the
driver's sense of cash has deprived him of a sense of humour, a
conversation of this kind commonly arises.
"One and eightpence. What's this?"
"Ten miles, and two horses at a penny per horse per mile; isn't that
correct?"
"To the devil with your one and eightpence. Give it to the horses;
a penny a mile for a horse, and how about the man, the cart, the
harness? I gave you hay to sit on. See what fine weather it has
been! What beautiful scenery! Yonder is the church ... the wineshop,
the...."
"Hold hard, my good man. The Universe, our salvation by Christ, why
don't you charge for these as well! Here's sixpence to buy yourself a
drink."
The driver takes the sixpence and looks at it, makes a calculation,
and then blurts out:
"What! Sixpence for a man and tenpence for a horse; ai, ai, what a
_barin_ I have found. Sixpence for a man and tenpence for a horse. Bad
news, bad news! Cursed be the day...."
Here you give him another sixpence, and get out of earshot quickly.
A penny a mile a horse. It is good pay in the Caucasus, and I for my
part charge myself only a halfpenny a mile. If I walk twenty-five
miles, then I allow myself a shilling wages, and, of course, some of
that I save for the occasion when I come into a town with a great
desire for good things. Then a spending of savings and a feast!
"Good machines use little fuel," said an emaciated tramp to me one
day. But I have no ambition to be accounted a good machine on those
terms. I eat and drink anything that comes in my way, and am ready
at any moment to feast or to fast. I seldom pass a crab-apple tree
without tasting its fruit, or allow myself to pass a mountain stream
without drinking.
Along this Black Sea road in the autumn it would be impossible to
starve, so lavish is Nature of her gifts. Here are many wild fruits,
plums, pears, blackberries, walnuts, grapes, ripening in such
superfluity that none value them. The peasant women pick what they
need; the surplus is allowed to fall and rot into the soil.
I made my way to Ghilendzhik through miles of wild fruit-trees ranged
in regular order. It is said that once upon a time when this territory
belonged to Turkey, or even before then, the land was laid out in
orchards and vineyards, and there was not a square foot uncultivated.
I ate of wild pears and kisil plums. The pears were more the
concentrated idea of pears than that we take from gardens; the kisil
plums, with which the bushes were flaming, are a cloudy, crimson fruit
with blood-like juice, very tart, and consequently better cooked than
raw. My dictionary tells me that the kisil is the burning bush of the
Old Testament, but surely many shrubs claim that distinction.
It was a glorious walk over the waste from Kabardinka to Ghilendzhik,
with all manner of beauty and interest along the way. I left the road
and cut across country, following the telegraph poles. In front of me
fat blue lizards scuttled away, looking like little lilac-coloured
_dachshunds_; silent brown snakes shot out of reach at the sight of my
shadow; and every now and then, poking and grubbing like a hedgehog,
behold a large tortoise out for prey like his brother reptiles. This
domiciled the tortoise for me; otherwise I had only associated him
with suburban gardens and the "Zoo." Now as he hissed at me angrily I
knew him to be a lizard with a shell on his back. I picked up several
of them and examined their faces--they didn't like that at all. They
have a peculiar clerical appearance, something of the sternness and
fixity of purpose which seems to express itself in the jaws and eyes
of some learned divines.
With what eagerness the tortoises scrambled away when I disturbed
them. They run almost speedily in their natural state. I was amused at
the strength of their claws, and the rate at which they tore a passage
into a thicket and disappeared.
Half-way to Ghilendzhik there is a stone quarry, and there one may see
thousands of what are called in England "Cape gooseberries," bright
berries of the size and colour of big ripe strawberries. They peeped
out shyly everywhere among the tall grasses and the ground-scrub.
Above them were stretches of saffron-coloured hollyhocks, a flood
of colour, and with these as sisters, evening primroses, a great
abundance. Lilac and crimson grasshoppers rushed over them, jumping
into the air and into vision, a puff of bright colour--then subsiding
into the greyness of the dust as they alighted and the sombre
wing-cases closed over their little glory. On the ground when waiting
to spring, these grasshoppers looked as if made of wood: they looked
like displaced chessmen of ancient workmanship.
What a rush of insect life there was in the air, new-born fritillary
butterflies like little flames, dragon-flies, bee-hawks, fat
sun-beetles, gorgeous flies, the sinister green praying-mantis! The
Athena of the air expressed herself in all her wonder.
* * * * *
Ghilendzhik is a collection of datchas (country-houses) and Caucasian
dwelling-places. Its name signifies "The White Bride," and it is a
quiet, beautiful watering-place in a pure bay, beloved of all Russians
who have ever visited it. It is the healthiest resort on the whole
Black Sea shore, continually freshened by cool breezes from the
steppes. It is yet but a village, utterly undeveloped, unpavemented,
without shops or trams or bathing-coaches, or a railway station, and
those who visit it in the season regard themselves rather as a family
party. The beach is private, and a bathing costume is rather a rarity.
It is an amazing testimony to the simplicity of the Russian that
the upper classes behave at the seaside with little more
self-consciousness than the peasant children by the village stream.
When Ghilendzhik is commercialised to a Russian Brighton it will be
difficult to imagine what an Eden it once was.
I had looked forward to my arrival, for I had a Russian friend there,
living for the summer in her own datcha, and I had received a very
warm invitation to stay there some days.
The welcome was no less warm than the invitation. I arrived one
evening all covered with dust, my face a great flush of red from the
sun, my limbs agreeably tired. The house was a little white one on the
very edge of the sea. Part of the verandah had lately been washed away
in a storm, so close was the datcha to the waves. I went in, washed,
clad myself in fresh linen--the road-stained clothes were taken away
with a promise of return clean on the morrow--borrowed some slippers,
and sitting in an easy-chair on the verandah, lounged happily and
chatted with my hostess.
Varvara Ilinitchna is a Russian of the old type--you don't find many
of them nowadays, most of her friends would add--simple, quickwitted,
full of peasant lore, kind as one's own mother, hospitable as those
are hospitable who believe from their hearts that all men are
brothers.
I was introduced to all the neighbours, to the visitors and the
natives, and of course invested with much importance as one who wrote
books, had no fear, who even intended pilgrimaging to Jerusalem.
"You sleep under the open sky--that means you have outlived fear,"
said Varvara Ilinitchna with some innocence.
Our next-door neighbour was a beautiful Greek girl, a veritable Helen,
for the sake of whose beauty one might give up all things. Young,
elegant, serpentine; clad in a single garment, a light cinnamon gown
clasped at the waist; no stockings, her legs bare and brown; on her
head a Persian scarf embroidered with red and gold tinsel; her face
white, with a delicate pink flush over it; hair and eyes black as
night, but also with a glitter of stars. Wherever she walked she was a
picture, and whether she was working about the house, or idling with
a cigarette on the verandah, or running over the sand to spank
mischievous boys who had been trespassing, she was delicately
graceful, something to watch and to remember. I shall remember
her chiefly in the setting of the night when the moon cast her
lemon-coloured beams over the sea.
"Very beautiful and very young," said my hostess, "but already she has
a history. She is only eighteen, but is married and has run away from
her husband. She wanted to marry a Russian, but her family forced
her to take for husband a Greek, an old man, and so jealous and so
frightened of the effect of her beauty upon other men that he shut her
up and made her wear a veil like a Turk. He would not let her out by
herself, and he never brought any friends home; he took to beating
her, and then she ran away. Her father received her and promised to
protect her. The old Greek cannot get at her any more; he has given
her up and gone away."
"Good for her!" I hazarded.
"Not at all good," was the answer. "She has a husband and yet has
none. She is young, but she can't marry again because she has a
husband already."
* * * * *
At Ghilendzhik all meals were served on the verandah, and one lived
constantly in touch with the varying moods of the sea.
My hostess was a talker, ready to sit to any hour of the night
chatting of her life and of Russia. It was very pleasant to listen to
her. We sat together on the balcony after tea, with a big plate of
grapes between us, and I heard all that the world had to say at
Ghilendzhik.
A burning topic was the ruin that the sea had made of the verandah
wall. "The sea has been gradually gaining on us," said my friend.
"When we came here, the village Council reckoned on that. They smiled
when we bought the house, for they held that in quite a short time it
would be washed away. The Council wishes to build a fine esplanade all
along the sea-front--our house stands in the way and they don't wish
to buy us out. 'You'd better buy the datcha,' said Alexander Fed'otch
to them. 'Oh no,' said they, 'we leave that to God'--by 'God' meaning
the sea. They bound us under a contract not to build anything in front
of the house: they said they did not wish the view to be obstructed,
but in reality they did not want us to put up any protection against
the waves. They left the rest to Providence. The result was that the
whole property was nearly washed away in a storm.
"It happened like this. We were away at Vladikavkaz, and Vassily, the
watchman, was living in the house with his wife and family, looking
after it in our absence. There came a storm one evening. No one paid
any attention at first, but it became so bad in the night that even
Atheists were at their prayers. At three o'clock in the morning all
the villagers were up and dressed and watching it. They were afraid,
not only for our house, but for the rest of the village: no one
remembered such a storm. As for our datcha, being as it is the nearest
to the sea, the waves were already washing stones and mortar away.
Vassily worked as hard as man could, shifting the furniture, taking
out his household things, and trying to save the house. The villagers
helped him--even the councillors who had hoped for the storm, they
helped.
"The storm did not abate, so the priest was sent for, and he decided
to hold a prayer service on the seashore and ask God to make peace on
the water. They brought the Ikons and the banners from the church,
took the Service in case of great storms or danger, and when they
had sprinkled holy water on the waves, the storm drew to a lull and
gradually died away. The datcha was saved; perhaps the whole village.
_Slava Tebye Gospody!_ Glory be to Thee, O God!
"They wrote to us at Vladikavkaz what had happened, and of course we
came down quickly. Then what a to-do there was! We demanded the right
to protect our property from the sea. The Council said, 'Yes, yes,
yes, don't alarm yourself; you'll be quite safe, safe as the Kazbek
mountain; we ourselves will protect you.' The Government engineer came
round and said once more, 'Don't alarm yourself! We are going to build
an embankment. Next year there will be a whole street in front of you,
and electric trams going up and down perhaps.'"
"Did you believe him?" I asked.
"We didn't know what to do, believe him or disbelieve, but we knew he
had been granted power to make investigations and draw up plans. For
months, now, they have been measuring the depth of the water and
testing this place and that. For my part, I think the preparations are
only a device for making money. The engineer will enrich himself: the
embankment and the street will be in his bank, but not here. The money
they have spent already on his reports is appalling. But of course, if
they _do_ build an esplanade, our house will be worth three times what
it cost us. We will let it as a café or a restaurant, and it will
bring us rent all the year round. God grant it may be so!
"We resolved, however, to protect it, and we obtained permission to
build a Chinese wall in front of it. But _Bozhe moi_, what that wall
is costing us--already fifteen hundred roubles, and on the original
estimate we thought five hundred.
"Even as it is we don't know how we stand. The engineer may claim that
wall as belonging to the town. The town may have it knocked down, for
it is built just outside our boundary line. We go down to the sand,
and we have built upon the sand."
Obviously she hadn't built upon a rock.
"Now that they think of making a street in front of us, they will
call part of the seashore land, and it will be surveyed. Someone will
remark that we have encroached, and then down will go our wall and
with it our fifteen hundred roubles."
I agreed with her and sympathised. The chances were certainly against
the money having been profitably invested. But what an example of
Russian ways!
We sat in silence and looked out over the placid waves on whose future
kindliness so much of my hostess's happiness seemed to depend. It was
a beautiful night. The sun had sunk through a cloud into the sea, and,
as he disappeared, the waves all seemed to grow stiller and paler;
they seemed full of anxious terror, as the faces of women whose
husbands are just gone from their arms to the war. Dark curtains
came down over their grief: the waves disappeared. The long bay was
unruffled and grey to the horizon, like a sheet of unscored ice. Even
the boats in the harbour seemed to be resting on something solid. The
one felucca in front of us, with its five lines of rope and mast, grew
darker and darker, till at last the moon rose and gleamed on her bows
and cordage.
My hostess continued to talk to me of the fortunes of her property.
"Twenty years ago," she said, "I was sitting on a log in a field one
summer afternoon, when up comes an old peasant woman leaning on a
stick and speaks to me in an ancient, squeaky voice:
"'Good-day, _barinya_!'
"'Good-day!' I said.
"'Would you like to buy a little wooden hut and some land?'
"'Eh, _Gospody_! What should I want with a little wooden hut?' said I.
'What do you ask for it?'
"'Fifty roubles,' she squeaked. 'My son has written to me from
Poltava. He says, "Sell the hut and come and live with me," so I'm
just looking for a buyer.'
"'What did you say?' I asked. 'Fifty roubles?'
"'Fifty roubles, _barinya_. Is it too much?'
"I was astonished. A house and land for fifty roubles. Such a matter
had to be inquired into. I felt I must go and look at the hut. I went
and saw it. It was all right, a nice little white cottage and thirty
or forty yards of garden to it.' Here's your fifty roubles,' I said.
And I bought it on the spot.
"We did nothing with it.
"Next summer, when I came down to Ghilendzhik, I said to my husband,
'Let us go and see our house and land.' Accordingly we went along to
look. What was our astonishment to find it occupied by another old
crone. I went up to the door and said:
"'Good-day!'
"'Good-day!' said a cracked old voice. 'And who might you be?'
"'I might be the landlady,' I said. 'How is it you're here?'
"'Oh, you're the _khosaika_, the hostess,' replied the old crone. 'Eh,
dear! Eh, deary, deary! My respects to you. I didn't know you were the
_khosaika_. I saw an empty cottage here one day; it didn't seem to
belong to any one, so, as I hadn't one myself, I just came in.'
"The old dame bustled about apologetically.
"'Never mind,' said I. 'Live on, live on.'
"'Live on,' said Alexander Fed'otch.
"We went away and didn't come back to it or ask about it for seventeen
years. Then one day I received a letter offering me twenty pounds (two
hundred roubles) for the property, but as I had no need of money I
paid no attention. A month later some one offered me thirty pounds.
Obviously there was something in the air; there was some reason for
the sudden lively interest in our property. Alexander Fed'otch went
down, and he discovered that the site was wanted by the Government for
a new vodka-shop. If we didn't sell, we should at last be forced to
give up the property to the Government, and perhaps find ourselves
involved in litigation over it. Alexander Fed'otch made negotiations,
and sold it for ninety pounds--nine hundred roubles--think of it. And
it only cost us five pounds to start with! Ah, here is a place where
you can get rich if you only have a little capital."
"The old woman?" I queried. "Was she evicted?"
"Oh no, she had disappeared--died, I suppose."
"You made a handsome profit!"
"Yes, yes. But that's quite another history. You think we made
eighty-five pounds profit. No, no. We ought to have invested the money
quietly, but unfortunately Alexander Fed'otch, when he was selling the
house, met another man who persuaded him to buy a plot of land higher
up, and to build a grandiose villa upon it. They thought it a splendid
idea, and Alexander Fed'otch paid the nine hundred roubles as part
of the money down for the contractor. It was a great sorrow--for no
profit ever came of it. It happened in the revolutionary time. We paid
the contractor two thousand roubles, and then suddenly all his workmen
went on strike. He was an honest man, and it was not his fault. His
name was Gretchkin. He went to Novorossisk to try to get together a
new band of men, and there he met with a calamity. He arrived on the
day when the mutinous sailors were hanged, and the sight so upset him
that he lost his head--he plunged into a barracks and began shooting
at the officers with his revolver. He was arrested, tried, and
condemned to death. The sentence, however, was commuted to penal
servitude--that was when we got our Duma and there was the general
pardon. Two thousand roubles were lost to us right away. The half-dug
foundations of our house remained--a melancholy sight.
"The datcha is finished now; to-morrow you must go and see it. But it
has cost us in all ten thousand roubles. I should be thankful to sell
it for five thousand. Ai, ai, and we are growing old now and living
through everything."
My hostess went out to fetch another plate of grapes.
"We wanted to put a vineyard round the datcha, but what with the
children and the pigs mauling and biting at everything, it couldn't be
managed. We had, however, a _pood_ of grapes from one of our gardens
this year."
The moon now bathed her yellow reflection in the mysterious sea, and
we sat and looked at it together.
"Vasia, my son, who has taken his musical degree, will stay up all
night to look at this sight," said my hostess. "It moves something in
his soul."
It moved something in mine, and yet seemed strangely alien to the tale
I was hearing. That moon had flung its mystery over an Eastern
world, and it seemed an irrelevance beside the fortunes of a modern
watering-place.
Varvara Ilinitchna went on to tell me of her early days, and how
she and her husband had been poor. Alexander Fed'otch had taught in
schools and received little money. Their two sons were never well.
They had often wept over burdens too hard to bear.
One season, however, there came a change in their life and they became
prosperous. They prayed to be rich, and God heard their prayer.
"We owe the change in our fortunes to a famous Ikon," said Varvara
Ilinitchna. "It happened in this way. Alexander Fed'otch had an old
friend who, after serving thirty years as a clerk in an office,
suddenly gave up and took to the mountains. He was a wise man and knew
much of life, and it was through his wisdom that we sent for the Ikon.
We sheltered him all through the winters because he had no home, and
he came to love us and enter into our life. He rejoiced with us on
festivals when we were gay; when we were sad he sympathised. When we
shed tears he shed tears also. One evening when we were more than
ordinarily desperate he said to me, 'Take my advice; send for an Ikon
of St. Spiridon of Tremifond.' The Ikon costs ten shillings, and ten
shillings was much to us in those days. I told Alexander Fed'otch what
our friend had said, and he, being a religious man, agreed. We sent
ten shillings to Moscow and had the Ikon sent to us, and we took it to
church and had it blessed.
"That happened in the autumn. Those were the days when the Vladikavkaz
Railway was a novelty. The children, and even the grown-up people, did
nothing but play at trains all day. We used to take in the children of
the employees and look after them while their fathers and mothers were
away. Well, in the following May a director of the railway called on
Alexander Fed'otch and said he had a post to offer him.
"'We are thinking of taking all the children of the railway employees,
and establishing a school and _pension_ for them where they can
get good meals and be taught. We will provide you with a house and
appointments, and you will get a good salary into the bargain. Your
wife will be mother to our railway children, and you will be general
manager of the establishment. Will you take the post?'
"'With pleasure!' answered Alexander Fed'otch. But I for my part
took some time to consider. It was hard enough to be mother to three
children of my own. How could I be mother to fifty?
"However, we agreed to take the offer, and then suddenly we found
ourselves rich and important people, and we remembered the Ikon of St.
Spiridon of Tremifond and thanked God. If you are ever poor, if ever
you want money, send for the Ikon of St. Spiridon. I advise you. Its
virtues are famous."
"An evil Ikon, nevertheless, that Spiridon of Tremifond," I thought,
but I wouldn't say so to my hostess.
"And you've been happy ever since?" I asked.
"Not happy. Who even hopes to be happy? But we did well. The railway
company opened new establishments, and the directors have loved my
husband, and one of them even said at a public meeting, 'Would to God
there were more men in the world like Alexander Fed'otch!' We took
larger charges and higher posts. We were even thanked publicly in the
press for our services."
Varvara Ilinitchna sighed. Then she resumed her talking in a different
tone.
"But we live through our fortune. Well, I understand it. It is
our Karma after the Revolution. Property shall avail us nothing.
Everything we have shall be taken from us. Look at this Chinese wall
taking away all our money. Think of that foolish contractor Gretchkin
and our costly datcha. Behold our sickly children. How much money have
we not spent trying to heal our children, eh, eh! Doctors have all
failed. Even a magic healer in the country failed."
"Tell me of him," I urged.
Varvara Ilinitchna went on only too gladly. She had found a listener.
"It was a peasant woman. She healed so many people that, though she
was quite illiterate, the medical faculty gave her a certificate
to the effect that she could cure. I know for a fact that when
specialists gave their patients up as hopeless cases, they recommended
her as a last resort. She was a miracle worker: she almost raised the
dead. You must know, however, that she could only cure rheumatism
cases. For other diseases there are other peasant women in various
parts of Russia. We went to this one and lived a whole summer with her
on a very dirty, dismal countryside. We were all bored to death, and
we came away worse than we went. And all such things cost much, I
assure you."
My hostess verily believed in the effect of the holy water on the
stormy waves, in the gracious influence of St. Spiridon, and in the
magical faculties of certain peasants. Yet observe she uses the word
_Karma_: she calls herself a Theosophist. My long vagabondage she
calls my _Karma_.
"My happiness," I corrected her.
"Happiness or unhappiness, it is all the same, your _Karma_."
She went on to talk of the great powers of Mme. Blavatsky, and she
told me that Alexander Fed'otch had just ordered _The Secret Doctrine_
to read. Good simple man, he will never get through a page of that
abstruse work; and my hostess will understand nothing. Is it not
strange--these people were peasants a generation ago; they are
peasants now by their goodness, hospitality, religion, superstition,
and yet they aspire to be eclectic philosophers? Varvara Ilinitchna
has life itself to read, and she turns away to look at books. Life
does not satisfy her--there are great empty places in it, and she
would be bored often but that she has books to open in these places.
She was very interesting to me as an example of the simple peasant
mind under the influence of modern culture. Perhaps it is rather a
shame to have put down all her old wife's talk in this way, for she is
lovable as one's own mother.