THE CUCUMBER FAIR
THE cost of living in the Caucasus is one-half of what it is in the most
thriving agricultural district in Great Britain. This is because Russia
is a self-supporting empire; it does not depend on other countries for
its food supply. I think the comparative economic positions of England
and Russia are inadequately known. In England the land has been
sacrificed to manufactures; by adopting Free Trade it made a bargain
with other countries in these terms—that it would manufacture iron goods
and cloth in exchange for food. It gave up agriculture and it gave up
the country. It became a land of towns. The people of the English towns
_are_ the English people. Russia, on the other hand, remained an
agricultural country, and its manufactures have developed little. It is
content to take foreign manufactured goods in exchange for its own
superfluous food. The people of Russia are the peasants; the Liberals in
the towns don’t really count. For town life and factory life democracy
is most suitable, and for country life conservatism and squiredom—for
English people democracy, for Russians autocracy. Those in England who
have a strong wish to have Russia democratised are also, strange to say,
Free Traders. Are they aware that if Russia becomes a manufacturing
country it will need its food for itself, and will not need to buy our
wares? Russia is really the employer of England. What if England loses
its job?
[Illustration: “TURNING OVER COTTONS”]
[Illustration: AN OSSETINE VILLAGE]
The newspaper boom of the revolution has done much harm; it has given
English people a false idea of Russia. That notion of Russia as a place
of anarchists and _gendarmes_, secret societies, spies, plots, prisons
is ridiculous. As after the Slaves War the Romans lined the way home by
poles on which the heads of the conquered were fixed, so to the ordinary
outsider appears the boundary line of Russia—a palisade of heads on
poles. In truth, it is only fenced in by passport officers, unless the
outworks of lies in the European press must be counted. Behind the
fence, however, stands, not what so many imagine—cossacks, cannon,
prisons—but an extraordinarily fertile, fruitful country, and a people
happy enough to be unaware of their happiness or unhappiness. I have
spoken to peasants from all parts of the country, and I have not found
one who had a word to say against the Tsar, or who felt any grievance
against his country’s governors.
There are a hundred millions of peasants who swear by God and the Tsar,
and who believe implicitly in both God and Tsar, a hundred million
strong, healthy peasants, not yet taught to read or write, not yet
democratised and given a vote, not yet crammed to death in manufacturing
towns. These are Europe’s unspent capital, her little store of unspoiled
men set against a rainy day, the solid wall between China and the West.
It was with these thoughts uppermost in my mind that I came away from
one of the July fairs at Vladikavkaz. Such revelations of the bounty of
Nature in the abundance of food, and in strong limbs to be nourished by
it, I scarcely expect to see easily again. This fair took place at one
end of the great military road that traverses the Caucasus, and connects
Tiflis and the Persian marches with Rostof and the North. In a great
open square, paved unevenly with cobbles, the stalls are set up. At one
end are five open forges, where horses are strapped in and shod. Behind
these, about a hundred sheep and lambs struggle together, whilst a
shepherd milks the ewes into a bucket. At another end of the “bazaar”
there is a covered place for cotton goods, and there the Georgian girl
buys her kerchief, and the peasant woman turns over all manner of
brilliant printed cotton. Between the sheep and the drapery, for a full
hundred yards, stand carts and barrows, or, it may be, merely sacks and
baskets, full of cucumbers and tomatoes. The cucumbers are piled up on
the carts like loads of stones for road-making. The vendors stand beside
them and shout their prices. The customers fumble about and pick out the
best they can find of the stock. Behind or below the stalls the rotten
ones lie yellow and soft under the burning sun, and hens come in and
peck at them. Several thousand have to be sold before afternoon; more
than half will not be disposed of before they are spoiled by the sun.
Picture the peasants outbidding one another, fat and perspiring in the
heat. Ten for three-halfpence is the highest price, ten for a halfpenny
the lowest. By two o’clock in the afternoon one will be able to buy
forty for a penny, just to clear. Meanwhile children are dancing about,
eating them as one would bananas in England, munching them as if they
were large pears, and in a way that would have brought bewilderment to
the mind of Sairey Gamp, who so clearly loved a “cowcumber.” A fortnight
ago a single cucumber cost twopence—assuredly the tide has risen.
Scarcely less in evidence than the luscious green of cucumbers is the
reposing yellow and scarlet of the tomatoes—golden apples they call
them. These also must be disposed of; they go for a penny a pound, and
the baskets of many traffickers are adorned by the purchase of them.
Behind the cucumber row is the potato market, where, for sixpence, you
may buy two stone of new potatoes. With these are a long array of stalls
with vegetables and fruit, everything super-abundant, and at surprising
prices. Raspberries and apricots go at twopence a pound, peaches at
fourpence, cherries and plums at a penny, gooseberries at a halfpenny,
blackberries at three-halfpence, and all this fruit in at the same time.
Strawberries came suddenly at the beginning of June, and as suddenly
disappeared; the summer progresses at quick pace here. New-laid eggs are
sold at this fair at a farthing each, cheese at threepence a pound,
butter at tenpence, bacon at fourpence and fivepence a pound. Herrings
and river fish, sun-dried and cured, are sold ten on a string for
twopence halfpenny; live green crayfish, ten for threepence. At shops
near by, mutton is sold at threepence halfpenny, and lamb at fourpence
halfpenny a pound; beef at threepence.
The fair is, however, a poor people’s market. The richer get their
things at the shops, but it is difficult to persuade a peasant to buy at
a shop when he can get what he wants at a fair. From time immemorial the
country people have met and bargained at fairs, so that it is now in the
blood. Hence it is that Russia is the country of fairs, having as its
greatest object of that kind the fair of Nizhni Novgorod, that
stupendous revival of the old times. The difficulty of buying at a fair
is no obstacle; the crowds of people, the mountebanks among them, the
stalls without scales, the haphazard bargains, and chance of bad money,
are more alluring than deterrent. Potatoes are sold by the pailful,
cucumbers by the ten, fish by the string, bacon and cheese by the piece,
and mutton mostly by the sheep. One needs to be a connoisseur, a ready
calculator and eye-measurer, if one is going to acquit oneself
honourably in the eyes of the fair bargain-drivers. No one ever takes
anything at the price offered; everyone chaffers and bargains for at
least five minutes before settling yes or no. Then nothing bought is
wrapped up. One has to bring one’s own paper with one, or one may buy
earthenware pots or rush-baskets, and put together the things that may
touch without harm. A pound of meat without paper puts the unprovided
purchaser in a dilemma. At the fair there is no dividing line between
tradesmen and buying people. Whoever wishes may go and take his place,
or he may take no place, and simply hawk his things about through the
crowd. There are men hawking old clothes, old boots, iced beer and ices.
At ten o’clock in the morning the scene is one of the utmost liveliness.
Peasants are standing round the ice-cream men and smacking their lips;
would-be purchasers of mutton are standing among the sheep, weighing
them and feeling them with their hands in primitive fashion; at the back
of the forges meal and flour sellers, white from head to foot, are
shovelling their goods into the measures of gossips; girls are raking
over the cottons; the cucumber sellers are shouting; and those who have
finished their buying are moving off with carts and barrows, sacks or
baskets, as the case may be, and not infrequently one may see a man with
a sack of potatoes in one hand and a fat sheep under the other arm.
Later in the summer this became a Melon Fair, and later still a Grape
Fair. The melons were piled on the ground and resembled heaps of cannon
balls, reminding me forcibly of the trophies of 1812 preserved in the
Kremlin at Moscow. There were acres of the large melon, that one known
as the _arbuse_, dark, swarthy green without, blood crimson within. This
is a national fruit. It keeps well, and will be on every peasant’s table
at Christmas. The deacon at Lisitchansk ate half a melon at every meal
when I was there last Christmas. In August they are as plentiful as
apples, and sell for a halfpenny or a farthing apiece. There are so many
of them that they overflow the towns and the villages; one imagines them
rolling away and filling up all the ditches if a wind came in the night.
Then their colour is a delight, and it is very pleasant to see the
chubby children munching big red chunks of it.
Wagons of grapes, cartloads of honey, in such terms did the season
express itself as it grew older. Grapes were two pounds a penny, and
honey threepence a pound! And this also was the season of chilis, which
were bought in great quantities for pickling. Then vegetable marrows and
beetroots overflowed the plain—beetroots too sweet for English palates.
Tomatoes were eventually sold by the bucketful. Peaches came and were
sold at a penny a pound, and apples at prices that it seems absurd to
mention. I said to Alimka one morning, “Let’s buy twopennyworth of
apples,” and we received so many that we had to return home and empty
our basket before we could make any more purchases. I should only have
bought a farthing’s worth. Then a very interesting feature of the fairs
were the rosy cherry apples, no bigger than cherries, and very hard, but
making a jam that is beautiful and delicious.
It was pleasant to note the preparations for the winter. Stores were
being laid in which would not be exhausted even in the spring. The
miller was making jam in the yard three times a week; even the Tatar
woman below, whom Ali befriends, was taking immense stock of cheap
fruit, boiling it for jam or _nalivka_, infusion of fruit, or drying it
for _compôte_. Even the _koutia_, which will be eaten on Christmas Eve,
was being prepared now. In the yards of all the houses, in the fields
about the cottages, cooking and curing and pickling was going forward.
Brine was prepared for the cucumbers and the fish, syrup for the
jam—Russian housewives always make their jam by preparing a syrup first.
Apples cut into squares, wild plums and apricots, were drying on the
roofs; chains of onions three yards long, chains of dried mushrooms and
baranka biscuits were being hung up on the walls. All day one smelt the
savoury odours of food fresh cooked, all day one saw little urchin
children like Alimka and Fatima running in and out of doors with
tit-bits that they had stolen, or that an indulgent mother had dealt
out. The flies buzzed about the doors and windows as if in quest of
paradise.
Such is the picture of life in connection with the fairs; the picture is
somewhat inadequate, but I hope it may serve to show the feeling there
was of abundance. It was an exhilarating element in the atmosphere, and
together with the impression of immense mountains and deep wide skies
allowed one to live in the large things of life. And Russia is the land
of a few large things as opposed to England, a land of many small ones.
No disparagement to my native land! Russia is neither greater nor less
than England, but it is different.
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