Next morning we walked in to Kholmagora
over a desert of sand and marsh, eventually ferrying ourselves across the
Dwina once more. Kholmagora was once an important town,
and English firms had shops there, but now for the last hundred years it has
been dwindling away. Its ruin has been caused by the prosperity of Archangel,
for the sister town, being a more suitable port, has taken all its traffic. Once
all ships used to come up the Dwina to the ancient city, but now no ship
whatever comes, and the merchants and the tradesmen have gone away, and all
their wooden dwellings have been pulled down. All that is left to-day is one
dirty, crooked street, and two or three cathedrals in a field. The time may come
when it will completely efface itself and cease to exist. Already there is
scarcely a shop or an inn, there is not even a barber — a town without a barber!
This was a city without a barber, and even three times a city,
since it had three cathedrals. "Into what pit, from
what height fall'n."
"How is life in Kholmagora?" I asked a peasant.
"Bad," he replied. "It never was worse. We don't sow enough grain, and so
have to buy, and buy very dear. Then all the forest is cleared round about and
only saplings left. We have to go far away for timber work, and so the moujiks leave.
They like to be near the place where the
timber felling is going on." "What do you do for a
living?" I asked. "I farm, keep cows, fish, make the roads, boil
pitch —" He waved his hand to signify he did
everything, and then added, "and am
poor."
So much for the trade of Kholmagora — once a capital of Russia, but now a slum
without a West-end. It is still famous throughout the Empire for its breed of
cows, and most people are ignorant of the fact that its name is that of a town,
and not of a cow.
Kholmagora has not only three cathedrals but also several small
churches, all in a state of disrepair, but not considered any the more
interesting on that acount. My musician acquaintance stayed to pray, and as our
roads diverged at this point I left him. He was going forward on the
St.-Petersburg highway, and I, taking the post-road to
the townlet of Pinyega.
I went forward to the village of Mategor, through the wilderness of
thinned forest and
sandy waste, and there took the cross road to Ust-Pinyega, the village at the mouth of the Pinyega
river.
At Ust-Pinyega, though the night was cold and wet, I slept out
once more, and this time on a bench at the wooden landing-stage by the
river-side. There was a jolly company there, some twenty or thirty moujiks who
intended to sleep the night under boats on the sand;
they were all aboriginal peasants, not Russians, but Ziriani,
and of such a bad reputation that no one,
except he be of their own kith and kin, will shelter them for the night. They
had been engaged on some job at the mouth of the Pinyega River, and were waiting
for a boat to take them to their home villages.
I met a man who had known Pereplotchikof, when the latter was painting the
village church the year before, and he engaged me in a very serious conversation
on the religion of the English people, wanting to know what feasts we kept and
what saints we honoured. He supposed we must be Christians, though not of their
sort, but he evidently regarded us with some doubt as to our salvation. I drew
him off to talk about the campers on the sands.
"They are Ziriani," he whispered,
"not men, but muck." He waved his hand and shrugged
his shoulders to show in what small esteem he held
these gentry. "We won't have them in our houses,
they are beasts," he urged. "They get drink, and
then go mad. The Government wanted to sell them drink, and then, later on, it
was afraid to sell it them. What do you think? We
used to take them into our houses, and they would bring in vodka, and stamp, and sing
the whole right through. Or
they would pretend to go to sleep, and then in the middle of the night get up
and offend our women, or make love to them and smash the furniture, and throw
our samovars out at the windows. They are devils.
You know there isn't any vodka shop here now."
"What I Isn't there?"
"No. There used to be, but we
petitioned the Government to shut it up." "And they
actually shut it up?"
"Yes, but not at once. At first they paid no attention. You
know the shop closes at four in the afternoon. Well,
one evening, after it was closed, the Ziriani came up from the river with axes
and broke it open, and took away every bottle of
vodka there was. The Government sent down police and soldiers, but they didn't
do any good, because the Ziriani live in
inaccessible marshes, in villages many of which
aren't marked in the Government maps, and therefore are not supposed to exist.
The people are all like one another, and none of us
could identify them. Besides that, very few have got passports, and none of them
have any surnames at all. The police arrested some of them and some of us as
well, but it didn't do any good. The Ziriani broke into the public house again,
and there was cudgel-fighting all up and down our
street. It was impossible for us to go to pray in the evening, impossible for
the women to go to the wash-houses to wash themselves — they even broke into the
baths, and there were disgraceful scenes. We petitioned the Government
again."
"Would it be very bad for you if
the vodka shop were closed?" I asked.
"Yes, and also no. We don't want
vodka, though we like it. We drink it because it's near, and we can't resist
it."
"And the shop was closed up?"
"Yes, this time. They saw they weren't gaining anything by
it, so they shut it up."
"What then, did the Ziriani become sober?"
"No. They sent people up the river for vodka, and they were
worse than ever. Russians are drunken, Samoyedes are
drunken, but put a drunken Russian beside one of these, and you would call him
sober at once."
"One night they made a ring round
the church, and shouted and yelled and insulted the
passers-by, one of them trying to kiss Medvedka's
wife — Medvedka's my brother. They broke into the shop
and stole provisions. Then, later, they lay about
the street in the mud. You know the proverb, "A
drunken Ziriani cannot get along even on all-fours."
"How is it they are so peaceful to-night?"
"They are afraid now. One day last autumn there was a
battle. We had a council, and in the evening, after we held the council, all the
men came out with guns and axes and cudgels, and we beat them out of the
village. We drove them down past the church, over the sand into the river, and
we should have drowned them all if the police had not come up and attacked both
of us." "What happened?"
"Oh, we won; and the Ziriani haven't played us any tricks since,
though of course the police tapped a lot of money in bribes afterwards."
"Were any of them killed?"
"Oh no, none. It takes a lot to
kill them. They live in the open air all the year round, and even sleep in the
snow in the winter." "But they have houses?"
"Oh yes, what you can call houses,
but they get drunk so often, and then fall down asleep where they are, that
they've got used to it. They're beasts, not men. I've seen their women lying
flat in the deep autumn mud, and wallowing and bawling, and not able to get up.
Russians are dirty sometimes, but Ziriani — "He again waved his hand in despair.
"Why, when the vodka shop was open,
they seemed to prefer to climb in through the
windows to going by the open door; that's the sort
of people they are . . . If you're going to sleep here, be careful they
don't come and harm you. You'd much better come to the village." "Oh no," I said. I'm not afraid;
I prefer to stay." "As you will," said my companion. "But I wouldn't stay
and must be going, so God be with you!"
He went away, and I was left on my bench on the landing-pier,
and I stared across at the strange party of savages sitting on the sand by the
side of the overturned boats. The night had got to dusk, and their six pine
fires burned crimson against the dark sand. They were having an orgie,
and there were bursts of uproarious singing. I
could not help remembering Alaric, and wondering if
these had anything in common with the ancient Goths.
…
Ust-Pinyega is a prosperous-looking
village. It has three or four small shops, and most of its houses are
three-storeyed. As in all the other Dwina villages,
dairy farming is a most successful industry. The butter factories not only
purchase the cream from the villagers, but give them a certain amount of settled
work. The Kholmagora cows yield a plentiful supply
of milk, and the factories turn out an enormous quantity of butter. In
Ust-Pinyega shops, it was posssible to buy the neat
machine-wrapped pounds and half pounds, turned out by the works, and better
butter one could not find anywhere in Russia. A great quantity of this butter
comes at last to the English breakfast table, and though personally, I have
never objected to eating the butter, it is worth while noting that there is an
extraordinary number of tuberculous cows in this region, and I very much doubt
whether Russian sanitary authorities are either strict or honest.
The tramp, of course, has not much need of butter. It is one of
the things he can "do without." But I bought a quarter of a pound here, and besides that,
half a dozen hard-boiled eggs and some white bread. These I took to one of the
houses, asked for a samovar and made myself tea. So
I made my meal, the forerunner of a long series of meals, the dullest I have
ever known.
The eggs were rosy-coloured inside, and suggested to my mind
that the shopkeeper had kept them fresh just as
long as he dared, and had then boiled them for economy's sake, which struck me
as a very sharp way of increasing the life of an egg.
I poured out my tea, sat by the samovar and wrote letters. I had
slept badly, and felt very slack. The weather was hot and damp, and a warm
south-east wind blew in one's face like sickly breath. Something in the air, or
in my health, made me look forward very pessimistically. I felt disgusted with plans, with
Russian villages, with literature.
The day was a church festival, and the male population of the
village was "spread very loose on the strand." I
watched them parading up and down the village street. About twenty girls were
playing rounders; they had a cloth ball, and they
struck it with their hands.
I did not feel like tramping, and
therefore borrowed a boat and rowed myself down the Dwina to Chukh-Cherema once more,
and looked again at the
beautiful old church with its nine domes; each
little dome resembled a candle. The nine were huddled together, and appeared
like a stealthy eye looking out of the hidden,
half-sleeping past. Whilst I was there a terrific storm came up, and the sky was
filled with a multitude of little clouds, pressing against one another, as in
Pereplotchikof's picture. I tried to understand what
the painter intended when he depicted this "war of
good and evil clouds." But whilst I was looking at the sky, a hurricane blew up
from the south, and great drops of rain splashed on
my face. I drew the boat up on the beach and went into a shelter. I chose a
solitary windmill, and climbed its ricketty stairway
up to a level with the sails. There was a seat on the gallery, where the sacks
of grain stood waiting to be ground, and I sat down there and overlooked the Dwina and the storm.
It lasted two hours, during which
time the wind changed from a gentle obyednik
(S.E.) to a biting polunotchnik (N), and
there was rain and hail and snow — snow even in July!
The south was brown as mud, and the north slate blue, and though broad day, it
was as dusk as midnight. The rain that first fell was the densest I have ever
seen, and I was thankful to be in shelter, albeit in
a dangerous place. The lilac-coloured lightning was amazing, suffusing the whole
sky like the sudden ignition of an immense quantity of powder.
As the south-east wind changed to north, the sky cleared
somewhat, and as the rain gave way to hail and sleet, I felt my lost energy
renewed in me, and I looked forward to the southern horizon again with hope and
expectancy.
In the afternoon, when the sleet had ceased, and only the cruel
north wind blew under the black, troubled sky, I thought of returning to
Ust-Pinyega, but the Dwina was stormy, and I did what
was probably much better than rowing — got a seat on one of the floating timber
islands being tugged up stream. My boat was taken in tow, and I walked gingerly
to and fro on the floating, bobbing pine logs, and felt like Huckleberry Finn on
his raft.
 |
A thunderstorm on the Dwina
|
Away in the west, over the forest, stood a patch of dreadful
sunset, pawing forward towards us like some dreadful tiger. It seemed marvellously
angry, a thing of wonder and of awe, standing beyond the black forests. That
evening, at Ust-Pinyega, it was still there, and I
marched up and down the sands wondering at it, and repeating with new
feeling —
"Tiger, tiger, burning bright In
the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Framed thy fearful symmetry?"
About eleven o'clock at night a little steamboat arrived at the
landing-stage, and all the Ziriani left their boat
encampment on the sands and gathered round the captain to haggle as to a price
of a passage for the party. When I understood that the boat was going up the Pinyega river,
I ran to the house where my camera and
knapsack were resting, and prepared to accompany the savages.
When I came back, the Ziriani were
swarming over the side of the vessel, and still yelling and shouting prices at
the top of their voices.
The captain had said he would take the thirty of them for twenty roubles, but
when I came back he was offering to do it for nine.
The Ziriani said, "No, eight-fifty"; the captain ordered
them all off the vessel and threatened to throw them into the river. The Ziriani still
yelled "Eight-fifty," so I came
to the rescue and offered fifty copecks ior my
passage, thus bringing the total up to nine roubles, and the captain
agreed.
Nevertheless it was not till long after midnight that the vessel
started. I went downstairs, and finding a warm place near the engine, slept
there awhile on a wooden form. After we left Ust-Pinyega I took a turn above,
and then returned and
slept again, and so on for hours. The Ziriani, very
drunken, were lying higgledy-piggledy on the floor,
on the stairs, on the forms. Some of them looked like corpses as one stepped
over them. Some had even climbed up on the hot panels above the engine room and
fallen asleep there. Three or four of the less inebriate were continually
strolling about, their heads scraping the low ceiling. They were in red and
black chequered flannelette shirts, broad belts, baggy cotton trousers and jack
boots — three-storied men. They sang and shouted and drank without end. Four men
on a form next mine sang church music for hours, laboriously correcting one
another when mistakes were made. The music was chiefly that of the burial
service, which being very sweet and melancholy is extremely popular in Russia.
When afterwards they gave up singing, it was to talk politics, wild harum-scarum
stuff about the Governor's new order. The
Governor had made a ukase as to the preservation of forests, that
moujiks who stole the Crown wood, or who set fire to
it, would be severely dealt with. When one drunken fellow noticed that I was
listening, he asked if I were a detective.
Every now and then I slept, and every now and then realised how
uncomfortable I was, and I went more frequently above deck as the sun rose, and
the morning became warmer. The Pinyega is a dreamy
river, not broad like the Dwina, but like a placid
pond, and its many reeds and lilies are still and unmoved upon the surface of
the stream. The river is so narrow, one could often throw a stone across it, and
on each bank is forest, forest and again forest, forest without end. This is the
land of the tundra, the most dangerous region in Europe. The river goes
northward to Pinyega, and then turns south again.
But at Pinyega one is already further north than at Archangel itself, and in an
altogether bleaker and stranger region. North of Pinyega, and east of it is
trackless forest and bog. Only the Ziriani, the Samoyedes and other aborigines live there—one must
except the hopeless townlet of Mesen, on the river Mesen,
where another band of unhappy revolutionaries is cooped up. So remote is
Mesen that sometimes a whole winter passes without one delivery of the post. The
Government sends revolutionaries there if they misbehave themselves in better
places.
The little steamer struggled up stream, and gradually the
scenery changed. The forests began to climb up steep banks, and presently
appeared a whole series of white cliffs, stretching
almost the whole way to Pinyega. The Dwina cliffs are of clay, but the Pinyega
cliffs of marble. Marble cliffs! Idle Russians talk
of them in Moscow, as they do of the naphtha of Solvichegodsk. "Ah! if
Russia were only developed," they say, "we should
all be rich!" But the
Russian infinitely prefers dreaming of doing, to doing itself. I did not look at
the marble covetously, but rather as at something
extremely beautiful, a redeeming feature in the
monotony of pine and birch.
A strange sight here are the subterranean rivers which gush out
of caverns in the marble and pour into the Pinyega.
Some of them flow fifty or sixty miles or more under the accumulation of a
thousand years' leaf mould. They are rivers that have lost themselves under
ground, and have eventually worked a passage through
the rock. Up some of these rivers it is possible to row a boat underground, and
one finds a tunnel much more extensive than the opening would have suggested.
There are even great dark lakes in immense white marble basins, all
underground.
Indeed I heard a very strange story at a place called Soila.
I had landed there with a party of Ziriani, for I wanted to see the country. I went into a
cottage, and after asking for the samovar, entered
into conversation with the owner. He told me of a moujik who had been cutting
timber in the wood, and had
been swallowed up in the tundra. A party were cutting virgin forest, when
suddenly Steoppa slipped and cried, and sank out of
sight before the eyes of his comrades. It happened so quickly that there was not
time to save him. They all gave him up as dead. He was prayed for in church — for
there was danger of his soul being lost since he was not buried in consecrated
ground. But he wasn't dead after all. What was the surprise of the villagers
when he turned up at his own funeral feast! He had
fallen through the bog into the bed of an underground stream, and had fumbled his way in the darkness right along its
course till it emerged into God's air once more.
I heard another story of the tundra. There are many settlements
of Ziriani between Pinyega and Mesen — Mesen, by the way, is called the capital of the
tundras — many settisments that are swamp-engirdled,
and consequently cut off from outside intercourse all the summer;
just as there are several roads over the quaking
tundras themselves in winter, heard of several villages where the Ziriani lived
like Hereward on the marsh of Ely. One of these near
Pinyega is without name, unmarked on Government maps, untaxed, just because the
Russian surveyor did his work in the summer and couldn't get across to
it.
Last winter had been an extraordinarily mild one, and passing to
and fro from this tundra village had been somewhat
perilous in the months of March and April. There were many very adventurous
rides during the thaw period. The solid earth itself bent and waved like rotten
ice on the last day of a frost.
One family started out too late, and with many a bound and
splash accomplished half the journey to the remote village and then found
themselves too late; the road was water.
Too late! And to go back was almost as difficult as to go on —
"So far advanced from either shore,
Returning were as difficult as go o'er."
They chose to go back, and made a desperate struggle through the
slush and mud a whole afternoon. Evening came on and found them still very far
from the village from which they had started. Then by good fortune the night was
frosty, and they won their way back.
So it turned out that they could not
get back home the whole summer, but the amusing thing was that these people were
not legally recognised as existent. They had no passports. They hadn't even any
surnames, the father being known as "White Whiskers" and the mother as Kulka.
The eldest son ought apparently to have been
serving in the army. Add to all that, the priest questioned them as to their
religion and pronounced them pagans!
Some official addressed them in this way —
"Who are you?"
"We are White-Whiskers and Kulka and family."
"That is nothing."
"That is all, your
Excellency."
"But that is nothing. You don't exist. You only seem. You
aren't."
The official grinned, and then
turning to his clerk, said, "Write down his name as
Bielliusoff( i.e. son of White-Whiskers), and
the village Bielliusoffsky (i.e.
White-Whiskers village).
Next chapter
