THE MARKETS OF MOSCOW.
If there is nothing new under the sun, there are certainly a good many
old things to interest a stranger in Moscow. A favorite resort of mine
during my sojourn in that strange old city of the Czars was in the
markets of the Katai Gorod. Those of the Riadi and Gostovini Dvor
present the greatest attractions, perhaps, in the way of shops and
merchandise; for there, by the aid of time, patience, and money, you
can get any thing you want, from saints' armlets and devils down to
candlesticks and cucumbers. Singing-birds, Kazan-work, and Siberian
diamonds are its most attractive features. But if you have a passion
for human oddities rather than curiosities of merchandise, you must
visit the second-hand markets extending along the walls of the Katai
Gorod, where you will find not only every conceivable variety of old
clothes, clocks, cooking utensils, and rubbish of all sorts, but the
queerest imaginable conglomeration of human beings from the far East
to the far West. It would be a fruitless task to attempt a description
of the motley assemblage. Pick out all the strangest, most ragged,
most uncouth figures you ever saw in old pictures, from childhood up
to the present day; select from every theatrical representation
within the range of your experience the most monstrous and absurd
caricatures upon humanity; bring to your aid all the masquerades and
burlesque fancy-balls you ever visited, tumble them together in the
great bag of your imagination, and pour them out over a vague
wilderness of open spaces, dirty streets, high walls, and rickety
little booths, and you have no idea at all of the queer old markets of
the Katai Gorod. You will be just as much puzzled to make any thing of
the scene as when you started, if not more so.
[Illustration: OLD-CLOTHES' MARKET.]
No mortal man can picture to another all these shaggy-faced Russians,
booted up to the knees, their long, loose robes flaunting idly around
their legs, their red sashes twisted around their waists; brawny
fellows with a reckless, independent swagger about them, stalking like
grim savages of the North through the crowd. Then there are the sallow
and cadaverous Jew peddlers, covered all over with piles of ragged old
clothes, and mountains of old hats and caps; and leathery-faced old
women--witches of Endor--dealing out horrible mixtures of _quass_ (the
national drink); and dirty, dingy-looking soldiers, belonging to the
imperial service, peddling off old boots and cast-off shirts; and
Zingalee gipsies, dark, lean, and wiry, offering strings of beads and
armlets for sale with shrill cries; and so on without limit.
Here you see the rich and the poor in all the extremes of affluence
and poverty; the robust and the decrepit; the strong, the lame, and
the blind; the noble, with his star and orders of office; the Mujik in
his shaggy sheepskin capote or tattered blouse; the Mongolian, the
Persian, and the Caucasian; the Greek and the Turk; the Armenian and
the Californian, all intent upon something, buying, selling, or
looking on.
Being the only representative from the Golden State, I was anxious to
offer some Washoe stock for sale--twenty or thirty feet in the Gone
Case; but Dominico, my interpreter, informed me that these traders had
never heard of Washoe, and were mostly involved in Russian
securities--old breeches, boots, stockings, and the like. He did not
think my "Gone Case" would bring an old hat; and as for my "Sorrowful
Countenance" and "Ragged End," he was persuaded I could not dispose of
my entire interest in them for a pint of grease.
I was very much taken with the soldiers who infested these old
markets. It was something new in military economy to see the
representatives of an imperial army supporting themselves in this way;
dark, lazy fellows in uniform, lounging about with old boots, and
suspenders hanging all over them, crying out the merits of their wares
in stentorian voices, thus, as it were, patriotically relieving the
national treasury of a small fraction of its burden. They have much
the appearance, in the crowd, of raisins in a plum-pudding.
The peasant women, who flock in from the country with immense burdens
of vegetables and other products of the farms, are a very striking, if
not a very pleasing feature in the markets. Owing to the hard labor
imposed upon them, they are exceedingly rough and brawny, and have a
hard, dreary, and unfeminine expression of countenance, rather
inconsistent with one's notions of the delicacy and tenderness of
woman. Few of them are even passably well-looking. All the natural
playfulness of the gentler sex seems to be crushed out of them; and
while their manners are uncouth, their voices are the wildest and most
unmusical that ever fell upon the ear from a feminine source. When
dressed in their best attire they usually wear a profusion of red
handkerchiefs about their heads and shoulders; and from an
unpicturesque habit they have of making an upper waist immediately
under their arms by a ligature of some sort, and tying their
apron-strings about a foot below, they have the singular appearance of
being double-waisted or three-story women. They carry their children
on their backs, much after the fashion of Digger Indians, and suckle
them through an opening in the second or middle story. Doubtless this
is a convenient arrangement, but it presents the curious anomaly of a
poor peasant living in a one-story house with a three-story wife.
According to the prevailing style of architecture in well-wooded
countries, these women ought to wear their hair shingled; but they
generally tie it up in a knot behind, or cover it with a fancy-colored
handkerchief, on the presumption, I suppose, that they look less
barbarous in that way than they would with shingled heads. You may
suspect me of story-telling, but upon my word I think three-story
women are extravagant enough without adding another to them. I only
hope their garrets contain a better quality of furniture than that
which afflicts the male members of the Mujik community. No wonder
those poor women have families of children like steps of stairs! It is
said that their husbands are often very cruel to them, and think
nothing of knocking them down and beating them; but even that does not
surprise me. How can a man be expected to get along with a three-story
wife unless he floors her occasionally?
Ragged little boys, prematurely arrested in their growth, you see too,
in myriads--shovel-nosed and bare-legged urchins of hideously
eccentric manners, carrying around big bottles of _sbiteen_ (a kind of
mead), which they are continually pouring out into glasses, to appease
the chronic thirst with which the public seem to be afflicted; and
groups of the natives gathered around a cucumber stand, devouring
great piles of unwholesome-looking cucumbers, which skinny old women
are dipping up out of wooden buckets. The voracity with which all
classes stow away these vicious edibles in their stomachs is amazing,
and suggests a melancholy train of reflections on the subject of
cholera morbus. It was a continual matter of wonder to me how the
lower classes of Russians survived the horrid messes with which they
tortured their digestive apparatus. Only think of thousands of men
dining every day on black bread, heavy enough for bullets, a pound or
two of grease, and half a peck of raw cucumbers per man, and then
expecting to live until next morning! And yet they do live, and grow
fat, and generally die at a good old age, in case they are not killed
in battle, or frozen up in the wilds of Siberia.
Outside the walls of the Katai Gorod, in an open square, or plaza, are
rows of wooden booths, in which innumerable varieties of living stock
are offered for sale--geese, ducks, chickens, rabbits, pigeons, and
birds of various sorts. I sometimes went down here and bargained for
an hour or so over a fat goose or a Muscovy duck, not with any
ultimate idea of purchasing it, but merely because it was offered to
me at a reduced price. It was amusing, also, to study the manners and
customs of the dealer, and enjoy their amazement when, after causing
them so much loss of time, I would hand over five kopeks and walk off.
Some of them, I verily believe, will long entertain serious doubts as
to the sanity of the Californian public; for Dominico, my guide,
always took particular pride in announcing that I was from that great
country, and was the richest man in it, being, to the best of his
knowledge, the only one who had money enough to spare to travel all
the way to Moscow, merely for the fun of the thing.
I may as well mention, parenthetically, that Dominico was rather an
original in his way. His father was an Italian and his mother a
Russian. I believe he was born in Moscow. How he came to adopt the
profession of guide I don't know, unless it was on account of some
natural proclivity for an easy life. A grave, lean, saturnine man was
Dominico--something of a cross between Machiavelli and Paganini. If he
knew any thing about the wonders and curiosities of Moscow he kept it
a profound secret. It was only by the most rigid inquiry and an adroit
system of cross-examination that I could get any thing out of him, and
then his information was vague and laconic, sometimes a little
sarcastic, but never beyond what I knew myself. Yet he was polite,
dignified, and gentlemanly--never refused to drink a glass of beer
with me, and always knew the way to a traktir. To the public
functionaries with whom we came in contact during the course of our
rambles his air was grand and imposing; and on the subject of money he
was sublimely nonchalant, caring no more for rubles than I did for
kopeks. Once or twice he hinted to me that he was of noble blood, but
laid no particular stress upon that, since it was his misfortune at
present to be in rather reduced circumstances. Some time or other he
would go to Italy and resume his proper position there. In justice to
Dominico, I must add that he never neglected an opportunity of praying
for me before any of the public shrines; and at the close of our
acquaintance he let me off pretty easily, all things considered. Upon
my explaining to him that a draft for five hundred thousand rubles,
which ought to be on the way, had failed to reach me, owing,
doubtless, to some irregularity in the mail service, or some sudden
depression in my Washoe stocks, he merely shrugged his shoulders, took
a pinch of snuff, and accepted with profound indifference a fee
amounting to three times the value of his services.
I was particularly interested in the dog-market. The display of living
dog-flesh here must be very tempting to one who has a taste for poodle
soup or fricasseed pup. Dominico repudiated the idea that the Russians
are addicted to this article of diet; but the very expression of his
eye as he took up a fat little innocent, smoothed down its skin,
squeezed its ribs, pinched its loins, and smelled it, satisfied me
that a litter of pups would stand but a poor chance of ever arriving
at maturity if they depended upon forbearance upon his part as a
national virtue. The Chinese quarter of San Francisco affords some
curious examples of the art of compounding sustenance for man out of
odd materials--rats, snails, dried frogs, star-fish, polypi, and the
like; but any person who wishes to indulge a morbid appetite for the
most disgusting dishes over devised by human ingenuity must visit
Moscow. I adhere to it that the dog-market supplies a large portion of
the population with fancy meats. No other use could possibly be made
of the numberless squads of fat, hairless dogs tied together and
hawked about by the traders in this article of traffic. I saw one
man--he had the teeth of an ogre and a fearfully carnivorous
expression of eye--carry around a bunch of pups on each arm, and cry
aloud something in his native tongue, which I am confident had
reference to the tenderness and juiciness of their flesh. Dominico
declared the man was only talking about the breed--that they were fine
rat-dogs; but I know that was a miserable subterfuge. Such dogs never
caught a rat in this world; and if they did, it must have been with a
view to the manufacture of sausages.
[Illustration: CABINET-MAKERS.]
A Russian peasant is not particular about the quality of his food, as
may well be supposed from this general summary. Quantity is the main
object. Grease of all kinds is his special luxury. The upper classes,
who have plenty of money to spare, may buy fish from the Volga at its
weight in gold, and mutton from Astrakan at fabulous prices; but give
the Mujik his _batvina_ (salt grease and honey boiled together), a
loaf of black bread, and a peck of raw cucumbers, and he is happy.
Judging by external appearances, very little grease seems to be wasted
in the manufacture of soap. Indeed, I would not trust one of these
Mujiks to carry a pound of soap any where for me, any more than I
would a gallon of oil or a pound of candles. Once I saw a fellow
grease his boots with a lump of dirty fat which he had picked up out
of the gutter, but he took good care first to extract from it the
richest part of its essence by sucking it, and then greasing his
beard. The boots came last. In all probability he had just dined, or
he would have pocketed his treasure for another occasion, instead of
throwing the remnant, as he did, to the nearest cat.
In respect to the language, one might as well be dropped down in
Timbuctoo as in a village or country town of Russia, for all the good
the gift of speech would do him. It is not harsh, as might be
supposed, yet wonderfully like an East India jungle when you attempt
to penetrate it. I could make better headway through a boulder of
solid quartz, or the title to my own house and lot in Oakland. Now I
profess to be able to see as far into a millstone as most people, but
I can't see in what respect the Russians behaved any worse than other
people of the Tower of Babel, that they should be afflicted with a
language which nobody can hope to understand before his beard becomes
grizzled, and the top of his head entirely bald. Many of the better
classes, to be sure, speak French and German; but even in the streets
of Moscow I could seldom find any body who could discover a ray of
meaning in my French or German, which is almost as plain as English.
Some people know what you want by instinct, whether they understand
your language or not. Not so the Russians. Ask for a horse, and they
will probably offer you a fat goose; inquire the way to your
lodgings, and they are just as likely as not to show you the Foundling
Hospital or a livery-stable; go into an old variety shop, and express
a desire to purchase an Astrakan breast-pin for your sweet-heart, and
the worthy trader hands you a pair of bellows or an old blunderbuss;
cast your eye upon any old market-woman, and she divines at once that
you are in search of a bunch of chickens or a bucket of raw cucumbers,
and offers them to you at the lowest market-price; hint to a
picture-dealer that you would like to have an authentic portrait of
his imperial majesty, and he hands you a picture of the Iberian
Mother, or St. George slaying the dragon, or the devil and all his
imps; in short, you can get any thing that you don't want, and nothing
that you do. If these people are utterly deficient in any one quality,
it is a sense of fitness in things. They take the most inappropriate
times for offering you the most inappropriate articles of human use
that the imagination can possibly conceive. I was more than once
solicited by the dealers in the markets of Moscow to carry with me a
bunch of live dogs, or a couple of freshly-scalded pigs, and on one
occasion was pressed very hard to take a brass skillet and a pair of
tongs. What could these good people have supposed I wanted with
articles of this kind on my travels? Is there any thing in my dress or
the expression of my countenance--I leave it to all who know me--any
thing in the mildness of my speech or the gravity of my manner, to
indicate that I am suffering particularly for bunches of dogs or
scalded pigs, brass skillets or pairs of tongs? Do I look like a man
who labors under a chronic destitution of dogs, pigs, skillets, and
tongs?
[Illustration: PIGS, PUPS, AND PANS.]
It is quite natural that the traveler who finds himself for the first
time within the limits of a purely despotic government should look
around him with some vague idea that he must see the effects strongly
marked upon the external life of the people; that the restraints
imposed upon popular liberty must be every where apparent. So far as
any thing of this kind may exist in Moscow or St. Petersburg, it is a
notable fact that there are few cities in the world where it is less
visible, or where the people seem more unrestrained in the exercise of
their popular freedom. Indeed, it struck me rather forcibly, after my
experience in Vienna and Berlin, that the Russians enjoy quite as
large a share of practical independence as most of their neighbors. I
was particularly impressed by the bold and independent air of the
middle classes, the politeness with which even the lower orders
address each other, and the absence of those petty and vexatious
restraints which prevail in some of the German states. The constant
dread of infringing upon the police regulations; the extraordinary
deference with which men in uniform are regarded; the circumspect
behavior at public places; the nice and well-regulated mirthfulness,
never overstepping the strict bounds of prudence, which I had so often
noticed in the northern parts of Germany, and which may in part be
attributed to the naturally orderly and conservative character of the
people, are by no means prominent features in the principal cities of
Russia.
Soldiers, indeed, there are in abundance every where throughout the
dominions of the Czar, and the constant rattle of musketry and clang
of arms show that the liberty of the people is not altogether without
limit.