The Russian road to China

IN IRKUTSK

THE train pulls slowly up to the white station-house at Irkutsk. A swarm of porters, nasilchiks, white-aproned, with peaked hats, and big, numbered arm-tags, invade the carriage. They seize each piece of luggage and run with it somewhere into the crowd outside. You, encumbered with your heavy coat, laboriously follow. Irkutsk station, more than any previous one, is crowded with passengers and Cossack guards. Train officials are shouting instructions, and every few paces a sentry is standing his silent watch. This is the transfer entrepôt for all through traffic, as well as the depôt for the largest and most important city of Siberia.

Threading the press on the platform, you struggle with the outgoing human current, and in time reach the big waiting-room of the first class. It likewise is crowded with a mass of people, and its floor is cumbered with heaping mounds of baggage. One of these hillocks is constructed from your impedimenta, which are being guarded now by a porter, apparently the residuary legatee of the half-dozen original competitors within the car. The man takes the long document that witnesses your claim to two trunks, and departs. Upon you in turn devolves sentry duty for the interminable time during which those trunks are being culled out from the baggage-car.

It is an exasperating wait, but the fundamental rule for Russian traveling is, “never separate from the baggage.” The parcel-room here at Irkutsk held for six months a suit-case left by a friend to be sent to this traveler. The officials would not give it up to its owner or to any person save the forwarder, though he, oblivious to sequels, had gone on to San Francisco.

Like the rest, now, you camp, with the baggage in front of you, on the waiting-room floor. It is a very country fair, this station. At the far end is a big stand crowded with dishes, on which are cold meats, potato salad, heaps of fruit and cakes, sections of fish from which one may cut his own slices, boxes of chocolates, and cigarettes. All are piled up in heaping profusion. One can get a glass of vodka and eat of the zakuska dishes free, or while waiting he may buy a meal of surprisingly ample quantity and good quality at the long tables that run down the centre of the room. Most of the Russians order a glass of tea, and with it in hand sit down till such indefinite future time as the luggage situation shall unroll itself.

We move our baggage and join the tea caravan. Across the table is a slight, brown-faced man, with an enormous black astrakan cape falling to his ankles, and wearing a jauntily perched astrakan cap on his head. “One of the Cossack settlers,” a friend from the train remarks. Beyond are half a dozen tired-looking women, with dark-gray shawls over their heads. Near them are men with close-fitting shubas, or snugly-belted sheepskin coats, fur inside, and rough-tanned black leather outside. Beside the lunch-stand are a couple of young men with huge bearskin caps, short coats, and high leather boots tucked into fleece-lined overshoes.

A general at one of the little side tables is talking volubly to a plump dame with furs, which are attracting envy from many sides. The lady merely nods between puffs of her cigarette, and sips her tea. A large fat merchant waddles past, wrapped in a paletot made of the glistening silvery skin of the Baikal seal. The room is stifling, full of smoke, and crowded with people. Yet no one seems to feel the discomfort, even to the extent of taking off the heavy outer coats, which, with the thermometer at twenty degrees below zero, they have worn on the sleigh-ride in, from across the river.

Your friends of the train, save those whose possessions were comprised in their multitudinous valises, are all here, fur-coated likewise and sipping tea, waiting, without a thought of impatience, for the baggage to be brought out.

At last appears your nasilchik. “They are got,” he cries, and balances about himself, one by one, your half-dozen pieces of luggage. Through the noisy, gesticulating, thronging passengers and heaped belongings, he shoulders and squirms a way to the door and into the anteroom.

A couple of soldiers are good-naturedly hustling out, from the third-class waiting-room opposite, a little leather-jacketed and very dirty mujik.

“I did not owe seven kopecks. I cross myself. I am not a Jew,” he loudly proclaims.

“Nietchevo,” says the soldier. “Out with him just the same!” The peasants and crowd loafing alongside grin appreciatingly, as the mujik is escorted, collar-held, through the great doors.

The porter and yourself follow. A plunging line of sleighs, backed up against the outer platform of the station, extends far up and down the road. Their isvoschiks, leaning back, are shouting for fares. In sight are your two trunks. “How much to the Métropole?” you call. The legal fare across the river to the hotel is a rouble, but the Governor-General of eastern Siberia couldn’t tell how much it would be if you didn’t bargain beforehand. “Piat rubla!” “tree rubla!” come hurtling from all sides.

It is for you to walk down the line calling in the vernacular, “fifty, seventy kopecks!” One of the drivers will eventually shout a fare which you feel able to allow, and the porter, who has been watching the bargaining process with keen interest, gives him the two trunks. The isvoschik retires then behind the stormy hiring-line, and you renew the process for a second vehicle. The sleighs are just big enough for one person to occupy comfortably. Two can squeeze in if they be thin enough or economically minded. But a second sleigh is needed now for the hand-baggage, and a third for one’s self. At length the arrangement is completed. The porter bows low at the donation of fifty kopecks, “for vodka”; then, “Go ahead! all ready!” you call, and with a flourish the procession of sleighs dashes out of the station purlieus.

The road to the town mounts first a low hill parallel to the river. As the horses climb toward its crest the panorama of the city and stream, hidden previously by the railroad structures, unrolls. Like a great band of white, the frozen Angara sweeps to the left and right. Beyond it stand out boldly the clustered domes of the cathedral, their surmounting crucifixes glittering in the sunlight. At your feet are the sections of the pontoon bridge, which in summer spans the river but in autumn is disconnected, the parts being moored to the shore, lest the drifting ice from partly frozen Baikal cut and destroy their woodwork.

A dark streak crosses the frozen river, with dots moving, as small apparently as running ants. The deceptive snow has made the distance seem much less than it is in reality. The streak is a road, and the seeming insects are the sleighs that pass and repass on the frozen river-trail. Between scattered wooden houses our cavalcade rides down to the bank, and at length onto the smooth white sheet. It is like skating. The big horses on our sleigh are imported from Russia, and trot splendidly, overtaking one after another of the citizens with their little shaggy Siberian ponies. The heaped snow is on either side. The cold air is bracing, almost welcome, until it begins to eat its way in.

It is a fair drive, this, across the river—a full verst to the northern bank. We mount the incline that leads up the slope, and come to the first log houses of the poorer quarter of Irkutsk town. Gaunt dogs bark feebly, and slink away on either side. The street is almost deserted; the houses give no sign of life.

Suddenly we come into a square crowded with people, gay with life and motion, and motley in colors. It fairly buzzes with talk and cries and chaffering. Low-built booths face every side of the open piazza. We catch a glimpse of one stocked with hardware. Opposite it stands a little shrine within which are dimly visible pictured saints and the Madonna, before which are scores of burning tapers. Our isvoschik takes off his hat as he drives past, and reverently makes the sign of the cross. He crosses himself also as he passes the white church of St. Nicholas with its green roofs and gilded crosses, and he removes his cap to the long-haired and dark-robed pope that he meets, for the Siberian pays much reverence to his Church.

The residences improve from the log cabins of the outskirts, and grow into the two-storied whitewashed structures of the main thoroughfares. The streets also have an interesting procession of people. The big troika of some high official glides past, with coal-black horses and a coachman padded out into a liveried Santa Claus, after the style of St. Petersburg. Officers of the garrison sweep by in their light-gray overcoats. Shoals of sleighs and sledges are going to and fro. At almost every corner, armed with a sabre and revolver, stands a police officer.

As one drives along he reads the Russian letters on the placards and the names on the stores. Many here are Hebrew, for the Siberians of the cities are more tolerant than their European cousins. Irkutsk has a very large and prosperous Jewish merchant community, and sent her Dr. Mendelberg to the Duma. Irkutsk has had its representation cut down, they say, post hoc,—perhaps propter hoc.

The driver, who has kept his horses at a moderate trot from the station through the town, suddenly cries out to them, and swings and snaps his lash till they break into a gallop. “We always come in handsomely,” says the city native who is with you, as the sleigh pulls up triumphantly at the door of the Hôtel Métropole.

A swarm of attendants greet you at the portal, a tall uniformed concierge, half a dozen aproned porters, a waiter or two, a page, and behind them the Hebraic Hazan, our host. Each porter seizes a parcel and the concierge leaves his post by the front door to lead the procession up the broad red-carpeted stairway. With a rattle of keys he swings open the door to a salon big enough to give a ball in, and whose ceiling is six good feet above one’s head. The average New York flat would rattle around in it. The concierge advances to its centre and bows. Then he goes on through to another room, almost its duplicate in size, with a forlorn-looking washstand and a screen across one corner.

“But the bedroom, where do we sleep?” you ask.

“Sdiece, gaspadine,” he says, “right here”; and he conducts you to the screen.

Raised about eighteen inches above the floor is a little wooden platform-like structure, about the size of a cigar-shop showcase. A dingy mattress is rolled up at one end of it. As you ruefully feel its straw texture and survey the planks which it is to cover, the hotel-keeper pushes in to tell you that sheets will be put on at once if the gaspadine has not his own. “Chass! Chass! If only the rooms suit the gaspadine, everything will be arranged.”

The porters silently deposit their loads and depart with their twenty kopecks each. The manager goes out, doubtless to gather his sheets. Only the concierge stays expectant after he has received his tribute. You throw your heavy overcoat over one of the armchairs and begin to open some of the bags. The concierge still stays and looks on. You begin to segregate laundry, and locate brushes and tooth-powder. The concierge still stays and looks on. You get out some slippers which are an improvement upon the heavy snow-boots. The concierge still lingers.

“The room is accepted,” you say finally.

“Yes, yes,” he answers. “Haracho, but for the police, I want, please, your passport.”

To show your passport, true enough, is no more of an incident than to take out your handkerchief. But to be obliged before you have been ten minutes in a place to produce a paper for the police telling of your age and infirmities, the color of your eyes, the number of your arms and legs and children, seems tiresome.

“Must all give in their passports?” you inquire.

“All, all,” he answers. “I am punished if one person stays here overnight without showing it.”

He takes the document, visibly impressed with its flying eagle and the big red seal, and bows his way out.

Now one can stroll around one’s suite and take in some of the details. There are electric lights with clusters of globes in the big pendant electrolier of the parlor, and drop-lamps for the massive writing-desk in the corner! The armchair by the high-silled window is a good place to read in. Too bad one cannot look out on the shuttling sleighs of the street below, but the cold has thickly frosted the double windows. Here is a big sofa, plush-covered, and half a dozen armchairs surround the polished table, whose top is scarred with a multitude of rings—from the hot tea-glasses, one deduces.

Mentioning tea, why not have some? There ought to be a bell somewhere. Unfortunately there is not a bell. In looking for it one finds that Siberian housekeeping does not include any dusting of the heavy red hangings which flank the doors and windows. An imperious cry resounds in the corridor. “Chelaviek!” It is followed by a patter of footsteps. So this then is the custom of the country. You open the door, and in the tone described in books upon elocution as “hortatory,” cry out into the dim distances of the corridor, “Samovar, chai!” Somewhere down the line a voice answers, “Chass, chass!” and you retire to wait and hope.

Curiously battered the furniture looks when you inspect it closely. Here and there a flake is chipped away from the varnish, and cuts or dents show in the paint. Have sabre fights, perhaps, taken place here, or raids on assembling revolutionists? Certainly in the generations of occupants, life has been, in some fashion, tumultuous.

There is a fumbling at the door-knob, and, without any preliminary knocking, a waiter comes in with a nickel samovar, an empty teapot, and a glass. He puts them down on the battered table and walks out. The big kettle hums away pleasantly as the red charcoal in its hollow interior glows from the upward draft. The preparations seem all made, save for the tea. Perhaps the chelaviek has gone to get it. You let your eye rove around to the little ikon far up in the corner, and the sleighing and wolf-shooting etchings on the walls. But after a time this becomes tiresome. Has the secret gendarmerie descended on the waiter among his teapots and trays? Has he forgotten the matter entirely, or what? The corridor-call seems to be the only recourse. Once again you go out. “Chelaviek!” and from some region he comes trotting up.

“Where is that tea?”

“Oh, chai,” he says, illumined. “Has the gaspadine not his own?”

“Most decidedly the gaspadine has not his own,” you retort. “The gaspadine does not carry pillow-shams or bales with him. He is not a draper’s establishment or a grocer’s store.”

“Nietchevo,” says the waiter, amiably; and runs off, to return with a saucer of tea-leaves, and another containing half a dozen lumps of sugar.

“Your pardon, generally the gaspadines have their own”; and he leaves you to the brew and your meditations.

Well, it is pleasant, after a long train-ride, to stretch out in a big, if battered, armchair, and sip glasses of anything hot. The little teapot, full of a very strong decoction, is perched on the top of the samovar over its chimney. For a fresh glass you pour out a half-inch of the strong essence, throw in the sugar, and from the samovar’s spigot fill the glass with hot water. It is thus just the strength you personally prefer, and always hot. The samovar, by a judicious regulation of the draft, can be kept for hours exactly at the boil. It is a fine institution, but cannot be transplanted to a country where hot charcoal embers are not constantly available.

Comfortably ensconced and sipping one’s tea, one can leisurely, Russian fashion, think of the most amusing method of passing the time. It is getting on toward evening; for the day fades early here. To-morrow is soon enough to look at things and distribute letters of introduction. The beverage has also blighted the appetite. Perhaps a light supper and an early couch would be wise. The latter in the far room looks singularly unpromising, but, “Nietchevo!” It is rather early for dinner or supper, but what of that? As an elusive New York politician used to say to each of the office-seekers who came to ask his influence for nominations, “If you want it, there is no reason why you should not have it.” We will try another summons of the waiter.

Up he comes with the bill of fare printed in Russian and alleged French.

Perhaps some eggs would be good. You decide upon them to begin with, and you will have them poached.

“Gaspadine,” he says, “the eggs to-day cannot be poached. Will you not have an omelette instead?”

On second thoughts we will not have eggs at all this time; we will have a sterlet, a small steak, and a compote. He goes off to the nether regions again. A long time passes, but at length he returns with the sterlet, its chisel-shaped nose piercing its tail in true Siberian style. White creamy butter and Franzoski kleb, white bread, round out the course. The steak is excellent and the canned fruit is satisfying, eaten beside the singing samovar in the great room of the main hotel of Irkutsk. Half a dozen letters pass the next hours until it is time to sleep. They are written on the big desk beneath the drop-light, with a glass of tea at one’s elbow in warm cosy comfort.

The place is rather warm, and without any apparent source of heat, for there are no registers or gratings of obvious instrumentality. A search of elimination, like the game in which one is warm, warmer, very hot, leads at length to a rounded corner of porcelain built into the wall, of which only a curved segment shows in an angle of the room. Further inspection reveals that it is a big cylindrical stove fed by somebody in the hallway, and so arranged as to warm two adjoining rooms.

In mitigation of the fire-tender’s zeal, we decide to open a window. Perhaps with an hydraulic jack this might be possible; but to manual labor it is not. A single pane of the inner window, however, swings back, and then we can open a similar pane in the outer window, leaving a hole as big as the port of a ship. It is sufficient in this weather. Some further corridor-shouting, produces, in due time, sheets and blankets, and presently we lie down on the straw mattress in the little wooden-bottomed box called a bed. “Spacoine notche,” the attendant calls, and without trace of irony.

It is one thing to go to bed, another to sleep. Tales are told of powder-circled couches which the invaders, surmounting these ramparts by climbing walls, dropped upon from above. There is a legend that there are some people whom they do not bite. “Nietchevo!” Is it not Irkutsk, the Paris of Siberia? Why then complain of parasites?

Furthermore, a brass band has started up somewhere in the immediate neighborhood the tune of Viens poupoule! to which there echoes a popular accompaniment of tapped glasses and stamping feet. Perhaps one had better get up and see things after all,—“Needs must when the Devil drives.” We dress again. An exploring expedition reveals the big dining-room on the floor below full to the doors with uniformed officers, long-haired students, and assorted civilians. All are drinking and smoking. On a stage at one end of the room thirty short-skirted damsels are singing and dancing in chorus, to the great approval of the audience. As the curtain rolls down on an act, the ci-devant dancers descend to their friends on the floor. Corks pop, and sweet champagne flows. The call goes up for “Papirose!” and more cigarettes and more bottles come thick and fast.

Soon there is an air of subdued expectancy, and eager looks are directed to the curtain. Somebody near by leans close and whispers for your enlightenment, “All-black man!” Out comes an old Southern Negro, who sings to the wondering Russians a Slavonic version of the “Suwanee River,” between verses delivering himself, with many a flourish, of a clog-dance. Johnson is the man’s name. How he drifted so far from Charleston he hardly knows himself. He followed the music-halls to ‘Frisco, and somebody, for whom he “has a razor ready,” told him he would make his fortune in Vladivostok. He kept getting further and further into the interior, picking up the language as he went, and turning his songs into the vernacular. Poor chap, the pathos he puts into the “Suwanee River”! He is thinking, in frozen Irkutsk, of the old Carolina homestead, and is singing and dancing his way back.

A girl in peasant dress takes the stage after “Sambo.” She is singing some song that is running its course across northern Asia. The lassies at the tables and the men join in. Glasses clink and heels tap. The miners who have made their stake, the prospectors who hope to, the sable-merchants of the Yakutsk, the wool-dealers from Mongolia, all meet here as the first place where the rigors of the hinterland can be compensated. It is very gay—very, very gay.

In the years after the ukase of Paul I, ordering that all officers who had made themselves notorious for lack of education or training should be sent to the Siberian garrisons, it may be imagined what a Gomorrah grew up under the Russian banners. Modern celebrations are by comparison mild and temperate, as the cold beyond these double windows is mild and temperate to that outside the Tunguses’ huts, in the Yakutsk Province. But it is fairly impressive, nevertheless.

Even in a Siberian hotel, the world goes to bed sometime. By four o’clock the music has stopped, and the traveler is tired enough to sleep on even the populous plank-bottomed bed. Thus do all things work together to weave the “web of life.”

It is nearing noon when one wakes to eat a combination of breakfast and lunch, and plan for the day. The Post-Office and the Bank are the first material objectives. One must register so that mail may be delivered. We go down and join two companions of the road. With careful directions from the porter, the party prepares for the half-mile walk to the Post-Office. The preliminaries are formidable in themselves. First the felt goloshes must be pulled over the shoes; then the big fur overcoat must be swung on and carefully buttoned down its length. Finally a fur cap, like a grenadier’s, with ear-flaps is tied, and great fleece-lined gloves are donned. The droshky-drivers assembled before the hotel seem to take it as an insult to their profession that we elect to walk, and two or three follow along outside the curb until the group reaches the corner and turns into the main street, Bolshoiskaia.

There is an air of placid quiescence at this noon hour. The policeman at the nearest corner is ruminatingly handling his sabre-hilt, and watching the sleighs go by. Here and there a woman, with the ubiquitous gray shawl over her head, passes, with a preoccupied air. Sheepskin-clad mujiks are driving along, with sledge-loads of firewood or stiffly-frozen carcasses, on their way to the bazaar markets. The shop-windows attract our gaze. Here is one with the word “Apteka” over the door, which is to say, Apothecary. Benches are set in front of it, on which one may sit and watch the people pass, as in the chairs before a New England country tavern. Further along is a solidly built white department store, the Warsawski Magazine, wherein one can get all manner of apparel,—shawls of the latest Irkutsk pattern, towels and soap, and—most important—blankets for the trip into the interior. We stroll in for a moment. An individual looking like a stalwart Chinaman, with long braided queue, shoulders his way past us to buy some cloth.

“He is a Buriat of the tribe north of Irkutsk,” explains one of the shop-girls, very close herself in type to those seen at Wanamaker’s in Manhattan.

Near-by the imposing magazine is a low one-story booth occupied by a watchmaker. Beyond that is a walled enclosure with lofty gates, as befits a school. Still further is the yellow and green sign of a government liquor-traktir. The name is said to be derived from the French word traiteur, which was current in the days when Napoleon and Bourrienne were planning conquests in their Parisian poverty.

As we turn up a side street, the shops for the poorer people appear. Gaudy pictures, of packages of tea, vegetables, and sugar-loaves, illuminate the walls, to tell the unlettered that groceries are sold within. Saws and hammers and vises are painted on the walls of the hardware-shops. Loaves of bread, crescent rolls, and rococo wedding-cakes decorate a bakery; boots and high-heeled slippers, a shoemaker’s booth. The street is an open-air gallery of rude frescoes.

Presently we come to residences, some of cement-covered brick, with high enclosing whitewashed walls and iron gates, some wooden, with their rough-hewn logs unpainted save for the brilliant white sills and window-frames.

At length, far from the town’s busy district, the Post-Office is reached. The building is thronged. Two soldiers are loading their saddle-bags with the mail for the regiment. Women are collecting money-orders. A crowd waits at the window of the girl who sells stamps. In rushing industry she makes the calculating beads of her abacus fly across the wires. Everybody is far too occupied to register a voyageur’s name,—excepting always the half-dozen soldiers posted in different parts of the room and leaning stolidly upon their bayonets. We venture to ask one of them which is the registry window.

“Russisch verstehe ich nicht,” is the answer.

A Siberian post-guard knowing no Russian and answering in German seems extraordinary.

“Where are you from?” we inquire in his native tongue.

“Courland,” he answers,—“Courland by the Baltic.”

This city of Irkutsk gave trouble in 1905. If it gives trouble again, the garrison will be safe.

The registering at length is done and we turn to go out. A tattered figure, bearded and haggard, with rags bound on his feet, opens the outer door.

“Will the gaspadine help a man get back to Russia?”

Your companion looks closely at him.

“A convict! very bad people.” He adds: “There is a murder every day here, and one cannot safely go out at night. Very bad men!”

With the contradictory charity that is so typical of the Russian, he fumbles in his pocket and gives the unfortunate a fifty-kopeck piece.

We go now to the great market-place and the bazaars. Here where we enter is a row of hardware-shops. In the first booth a string of kettles hangs down, and knives, spoons, candlesticks, and hammers are suspended so as to catch the eye. The proprietor stands outside, chatting with a passer-by and the tenant of the adjoining booth. Further on are stationers, with tables of cheap-covered books. The wall of one is decked with chromos of galloping Cossacks, led by a long-haired pope with a crucifix. The soldiers are sabring fleeing Japanese, and red blood is lavishly provided. On the opposite wall are glittering brass and silver ikons, and lithographs of ancient martyrdom.

Row upon row of red felt boots hang in the next line of booths, and in still another—the wooden-ware bazaar—are bowls and spoons, and platters of high and low degree. Further on a dozen women are grouped around one of their class, who is bargaining for a huge forequarter of beef, a full pud weight by the big lever scales that are balancing it.

“Dorogo! dorogo!” (Too dear, too dear!) she cries. “I will give eight kopecks a pound.”

The market-woman protests that she will be beggared at less than eleven kopecks.

A half-sotnia of little Buriat Cossacks come riding by, clad in their puffy leather shubas. Yellow-topped fur caps are their only uniform garment, and across their backs are hung the carbines. They make merry at the haggling women. Two swing off their shaggy ponies, and begin in turn to bargain in broken Russian for some paper-wrapped sweetmeats. They close the deal finally, tuck these away, toss themselves back into position, and ride off. Further along, half a dozen men cluster around a fur-cap seller. He is a merry fellow, and there is much noise and banter and gossiping. Such is the bazaar, the Forum of old Rome set down in a Siberian city.

A short further stroll, and the party is at your other objective, the Bank. You take leave of the rest and enter. At the door, a grandly uniformed porter helps you off with the outer husk of furs, and motions you into the outer office, with its half-dozen clerks bending over sloping desks. One of these takes your card, and returning leads the way to a capacious sitting-room, with armchairs scattered here and there, pictures on the wall, magazines of many nations on the centre table. The American typewriter, which alone betrays that this is an office, is on a little table at one side. A tall military-looking man, gray-mustached and grave in manner, is seated beside the window reading some documents. He rises as you enter, and greets you, and for some minutes the conversation in French is upon general themes. Presently you go down into a side pocket and get out letters of introduction. One is from the Petersburg headquarters. He looks at the signature—Ignatieff.

“You are his friend?” The polished worldliness falls away as a cloak that is thrown off. “Splendid!” he says. “Welcome to our city. We must have tea.” He pushes a bell, and a page, red-bloused and wearing brightly polished jack-boots, appears. “Chai, Alexis,” he orders. “And how did you leave Ignatieff?” he begins eagerly. “Does he still drive his black stallions? It is two years that I have not seen him. When I was in Petersburg last winter, he was in Paris, and when I was in Paris, he was at Nice. One is very separated from his friends here. One might as well be a convict.”

You answer all his questions, and begin to feel as if you were at a little family party. Presently, in the midst of the double conversation,—for the Russians seem to talk and listen at the same time,—the boy comes in with a big samovar, and the other accompaniments. The banker makes the brew in the china pot. From this each of us serves himself as the compound conversation moves on.

“You have not yet seen the sights of Irkutsk?” he observes at last. “I will get my sleigh and show you around when we have finished.”

“It is the middle of the day. I cannot break into your work like that,” you protest.

But he rings a bell for the red-jacketed boy. “Order my sleigh.—We have the finest city in Siberia,” he continues; “eighty thousand people now, and growing always. And trade has come with the railroad as we had not dreamed before. In the days when they used to bring the tea overland from Kiahta, the sledges from Baikal would carry as many as five thousand bales daily. We thought when this began to be shipped through by the railroad that it would hurt the city. But there was so much other traffic that the loss was hardly felt.”

“The sleigh is ready,” the boy announces.

“May I have the honor?” he says, with his easy grace.

He leads the way to the coat-rack, and is received with the deepest bows by the uniformed worthy, who solicitously helps him on with his coat and overshoes. Then with a stereotyped motion the man holds out his hand for the tip. Though this servant is at the door of the banker’s own office and presumably upon his pay-roll, the incessant tribute is his perquisite. It is usual throughout Siberia for wealthy Russians to scatter small silver everywhere along their path—to friends’ servants, to house-porters, to beggars on the street. The most profuse miscellaneous generosity prevails. Riding to-day with the Russian banker is like watching the progress of a mediæval prince dispensing his largesse.

At the entrance to the bank is the sleigh, skeleton-framed and high-built, unlike most of the sleighs of Siberia. Three big black horses, with the snake-like Arab head that characterizes the best Orloff strains, are hitched to it, troika-fashion, the centre horse under a big bow yoke, the outside animals running free. The coachman has the square pillow-hat, and the enormous wadded corpulence of Jehu elegance.

It is an interesting ride in which we move slowly up the Bolshoiskaia, receiving, so far as the banker is concerned, neighborly greetings from most of the sleigh-riders, and respectful salutes from the foot-passers on the sidewalks. A nice social distinction our host draws in returning the formal salute for uniformed officials, the cordial wave of the hand for intimate friends, a nod for the humbler acquaintances: but none go unrecognized.

Something like the Roman’s idea of showing his city by turns up and down the Corso, is this Siberian’s. We do halt, however, and look at the big Opera House and the Geographical Society’s Museum and the many-domed Cathedral,—buildings which in no city would be other than sources of satisfaction. After an hour of driving in the piercing cold, one’s conscience begins to prick. The banker, even though absent from his affairs, does not appear to feel either business or atmosphere. At length we are brought at a gallop to the doorstep of the hotel.

“To-night we dine at eight. Adieu.” With a bow he draws the bearskin robes about him, and the black horses bear him swiftly around the corner.

An acquaintance from the train is in the hallway as you climb stiffly up the steps.

“Has the drive been a bit cold?” he asks. “Come in and have a stakan of vodka.”

“Is that not rather heady for a between-meal tipple?” you suggest.

“This is Siberia. When you run with the wolves, you must cry like a wolf,—but tea, too, is good.”

You mount the stairs together, to the scene of last night’s orgy, and order a couple of glasses of tea.

It is a strange anticlimax to find the room so deserted. At three this morning it was a good imitation of the traditional “Maxim’s.” At four in the afternoon it is simply a crude wooden hall, with the stiff-backed, plush-seated chairs ranged in bourgeois regularity at the discreetly covered tables. Only the shuffle of somebody practicing a new step on the stage behind the curtains suggests the double life of this innocent-looking hotel dining-room.

A couple of glasses of tea attack the cold in strategic fashion, from the inside, and are better than the external reheating method. We sip in silence for a while.

“I am going to drive over to the Banno and have a Russian bath,” observes your companion. “I do not like the tin tub they bring around here at the hotel. Are you impelled to come along?”

“Is there attendance and room for two? I’m not minded to sit around and wait.”

“Room for five hundred,” he says, with a long sweep of the hand. “Everybody goes there. It is one of the institutions of the city.”

As you are now warm enough to consider a further drive, you go down to assist in bargaining for a sleigh to make the tour to and from the Banno.

A big brick building a verst or so away, with a number of private equipages and a stand for public sleighs and droshkys, is our destination. A beggar-woman opens the double doors and gets her service percentage from each passer.

“How much is given in this part of the world to beggars!” you remark.

The Russian smiles. “It is a part of religion to give. At every big family affair,—a wedding, a christening, a funeral,—we distribute money and gifts to the poor.”

In the entresol of the bath-house, a big tiled anteroom, there are marble-topped tables, around which men and women are smoking and reading papers. One can dine here, even; but this comes after the bath. A ticket at the kontora gives, for a rouble, the privilege of a preliminary boiling and a flaying by one of the naked attendants. A start is made by washing you with infinite thoroughness, section by section, the attendant continuing on each spot until told to stop or advance to the next. An unfortunate foreigner, in Irkutsk, had his head shampooed seven times in succession before he could recall the cabalistic word necessary to direct the man’s attention elsewhere.

One is scrubbed and rinsed, and is then conducted up onto a wooden platform, running along under the ceiling. Here, while the first inquisitioner dashes water on a steamer-oven below, the second scrapes the victim with new pine branches. One remembers an Irkutsk Russian bath at least as long as the smarting and the cold he gets from it endure.

Back at the hotel one can dig out his rather crumpled dress-suit in preparation for the evening’s entertainment. Later, he gathers in another sleigh, and sets out for the home of the banker.

In Irkutsk nobody relies on house-numbers to find his way. Even Moscow has not yet advanced to this refinement of civilization. If the driver does not know the route, he stops to ask passers-by, “Where is So-and-So’s house?” Again and again you are taken to the abode of somebody else with a name more or less similar. Then the driver will say, quite nonchalantly, “Nietchevo!”—ask the next person he encounters for directions, and start anew. You leave abundant margin of time, and usually arrive sooner or later.

Our host of to-night is, happily, well known throughout the city. So the driver whips up to a gallop and rushes down the snowy streets. It is not a long ride to the big arched doorway of the white two-storied plaster-covered house, in front of which the driver pulls up with a flourish. You ring a bell at the side of the door and wait. The isvoschik has taken a station beside the curb, has folded his arms, and is nodding on the box, apparently prepared to camp there indefinitely. “Eleven o’clock, return,” you say. “Haracho!” is his drowsy answer, given without moving. The horses have drooped their heads; they too are settled for repose. The tinkle of a piano comes from within, but minute after minute goes by, the bell unanswered, the isvoschik immovable on his little seat. Other pulls of the bell are at last of avail: the door slowly opens. A final objurgation to the coachman that he is not wanted until eleven o’clock falls on sealed ears. You go in through the massive doorway.

In the antechamber a gray-bloused attendant helps you off with wraps and goloshes, then silently disappears through a rear door, leaving you standing there unannounced. The vestibule is cumbered with coats and hats on the wall-hooks, overshoes helter-skelter on the floor, and canes and umbrellas in the corner. It is like a clothing establishment. Beyond the curtained doorway on the right are lights, and the sound of the piano is louder. This seems the most promising direction for exploration, so—forward!

Beyond the portières is a splendidly lofty room, like that of an Italian palace, brilliantly lighted with electricity. Many-paned windows run high up, starting from the level of one’s breast, and long heavy hangings half-conceal them. To the right of the door is a mahogany grand piano, at which, oblivious of the world, the host is diligently thumping away at Partant pour la Syrie! with inadvertent variations, singing carelessly as he plays. Beyond him, in an imposing armchair of German oak, like King Edward’s throne in the Abbey, is a lady, propped with many cushions. She is slender and darkly clad, and is conversing with a young man in uniform, who sits very straight on a dainty gilt chair of the Louis XVI epoch. A low lacquered table before them is gayly painted with geisha girls and eaved pagodas. It holds a massive brass samovar encircled by a row of beautifully colored tea-tumblers of the sort that one sees on exhibition in the glass-factories which front the Grand Canal at Venice. The chorus comes from the banker at the piano:—

There is no use of paltering and waiting to be announced, so we enter the room. The performer hears the steps on the polished floor and swings round on the stool. “Ah, voilà!” he says, and rises to introduce you to his wife.

“A moi le plaisir,” she says, smiling. “Mon frère, Ivan Semyonevich,” presenting you next to the young officer, who rises abruptly and clicks his heels as he takes your hand.

You are motioned to a replica of the little chair, and your host returns to his piano, this time to play with immense satisfaction in your honor a hazy memory of some bygone variety show: “There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night.”

“A friend is very welcome,” says Madame Karetnikov, when he finishes. “We do not see many from the world here in Siberia.”

“The life, however, is interesting, is it not?”

“O monsieur, I, too, was interested at first, but there are so few people of the world here, and we see them all the time. C’est affreux! I give you a month to change that opinion.”

“You give a month, Irina; I give a week,” growls her brother.

“If it were not that we get away during the spring one would perish of ennui,” the hostess adds. “But Japan is not far. We go there or to Europe every year. Perhaps soon we shall get a transfer to another branch.”

“You bankers have hopes,” observes the brother, “but what of us poor officials of the Justice Department! We are chained to the bench like old galley-slaves, and all we get is three hundred roubles a month and a red button when we are seventy.”

As the macerated song floats anew from the piano, the hall-door opens and there is dimly visible in the anteroom a curious much-encumbered figure, with a gigantic sheepskin hat and short blue reefer coat. He divests himself of these, and of a long woolen inside muffler, and, brushing back his long hair, comes into the room. His blue tunic is resplendent with brass buttons and he wears jack-boots. A light down is growing upon his upper lip. He is nineteen or twenty.

“Good-day!” says our host, hailing him in English.

“Good-day, uncle!” he replies.

He presents himself before Madame Karetnikov, who holds out her hand, which he formally kisses.

“Zdravstvouitie, Valerian!” says the official, shaking the young man’s hand.

Then you are introduced with explanations.

“Valerian here is in his last year at the Irkutsk Realistic School, studying preparatory to engineering.”

The status of science in Siberia becomes the theme, and the newcomer infuses considerable local color into his pictures.

“Does the professor in drawing suit you now, Valerian?” the banker inquires presently. Then he adds to you: “They all went on strike because the old professor of drawing had a method they did not like. The authorities had to replace him before any of the students would go back.”

“The new professor respects our rights,” says Valerian soberly, not liking the levity of his elder.

Soon, from an adjoining room, come in the children of the host,—a very pretty girl of the age at which misses wear short dresses and braids; and a little boy of about eight. The boy very respectfully kisses his mother’s hand and is introduced to the stranger, but finds a superior attraction in his father at the piano.

The girl, Marie Pavlovna, sits down beside her cousin Valerian. Lacking the stock football amenities of a happier land, and half-embarrassed, half-superior in the status of a budding young man, Valerian is not much of a conversation-maker. Marie Pavlovna, too, is seen but not heard. She is evidently the typical product of the French system of sex-segregation and cloistered study, which keeps girls abnormally uninteresting until marriage, perhaps to make amends subsequently.

“I think we had better go in and eat. It is half-past eight,” says the host.

“Si tu veux,” replies his wife; and we stroll out into a big dining-room, at one end of which is a heavily-freighted oak sideboard.

As we approach this, the host opens a far door, and shouts down into the darkness:—

“Obeid, Dimitri.”

We turn to the zakuska sideboard. The official reaches for the vodka-bottle, and the little silver egg-like glasses.

“Vodka will it be, or do you prefer cognac?”

The various guests choose their tipple. With the gulp of a mountaineer taking his moonshine, the banker swallows the twenty-year-old French brandy, of the sort that gourmets protractingly sip with their coffee. The little boy slips out to his particular region of the house. The hostess takes her seat at the foot of the table, and the gentlemen pass and repass, bringing her assorted zakuska dishes as at a ball. Caviar from the Volga, Thon mariné from Calais, sprats from Hamburg, Columbia River salmon, are spread out and attacked by the rest of us, standing, free-lunch fashion. One by one the men finish and straggle to their places at the table.

Three menservants, with gray blouses and baggy silk trousers falling over their topboots, appear now, one with a huge tureen of bouillon, another with the little silver bowls, and a third with a plate of the piroushkies that accompany the soup. Madame Karetnikov deals out the consommé for the whole table, and also for little Paul and his governess in some outside quarters. Every one begins to eat, without waiting for the hostess or for anybody else.

“It is hard work managing a big family like ours,” she allows, in reply to your question about the domestic problem. “We always have seven or eight, and one can never tell how many friends will come in to dine with us.”

She casts a solicitous eye over the table, to see that no one has been neglected, and then serves herself.

“One must keep the men well fed,” she observes. “Remember that, Marie, when you get married.”

Marie at the far end of the table nods assent.

“But you must not think of marrying until you are told,” adds the banker.

She nods assent to this, too.

“Don’t mind him, Marie,” says the official. “He thinks he is living in the time of the Seven Boyars. Take my advice. Pick out the man you want and go for him. You can’t fail.”

“Such ideas to put in a girl’s head!” says his sister, smiling.

The soup-course is nearly over, when suddenly the banker ejaculates, and jumps up to welcome some new arrivals.

“Ah, father!”

He runs to a sturdy benignant-looking old man, and kisses him on both his white-bearded cheeks, then does the same to the little old mother.

“Come in, come in; we are just beginning.”

At once the table is in a state of unstable equilibrium. The old lady is steered to a chair at the head, and the rest are pushed along to make room. The father makes his way, under similar escort, in the direction of the vodka-bottle.

“No French brandy for me!” he says, and puts the fiery Russian liquid where it will do the most good. He, too, goes to the far end of the table.

The student tells in a low voice that the newcomer is a veteran of Sevastopol, was once the personal friend of Czar Alexander, the Liberator, and was decorated by him for gallantry at Plevna.

“What a splendid old Russian he is!” one thinks, noting all the kindliness and courtesy of his honored age, and the grip of a bear-trap in his hand. Yet there is an indescribable air of melancholy about him, as if a great sadness were being bravely and uncomplainingly faced. A remark from the hostess turns you to her.

“Father is one of the Colonization Commission. We are all very much interested in hearing about his discussions with the settlers!”

“Colonization for the settlers or for the exiles here?” you ask.

“It is the government assistance for the voluntary emigrants, not for the unfortunate ones.”

“But the latter must be a problem in themselves?”

Madame seems embarrassed.

The student leans over and in a low tone whispers: “His youngest son, the brother of Vladimir, is in hiding, is under sentence of death. They don’t speak of him here.”

“He has just come from the Governor,” adds Madame Karetnikov, “who is a great friend of his. The Governor has heard from Petersburg that they may bestow the cross of St. Stanislaus.”

“That is the autocracy here, which you do not know in your country,” adds the student, in a low voice. “He is an intimate friend of the Governor and two of his sons are officials, yet his last son is beyond pardon. The old man himself knows not where he is. Yet they decorate the father. He still believes in the Emperor.”

“Do not let my nephew talk politics to you,” says the hostess, rather anxiously.

Valerian is silent.

A supplementary tureen of soup makes its appearance, and the two newcomers are served with it. The rest of the party have advanced to boiled sturgeon, with a thin sauce, compensated by Russian Château Yquem from the Imperial domain in the Crimea. Roast beef follows the fish, with the old general and his wife at length even with the rest.

Then come duck and claret, and finally dessert and champagne. The toast of the evening is drunk to the old general, who brightens as the meal advances. In the big reception-room, Turkish coffee is brought, which is poured from the brazen ladle and served in exquisite little cups without handles.

“We got them in Damascus on one of our trips,” says the host.

Conversation goes round the table. The official is in eager talk with Madame Karetnikov about a common friend in a smart Petersburg regiment, who has got badly in debt.

“He ought to apply for a transfer to the Siberian service. The officers get more pay, and it costs less to live,” she is urging.

“But for Serge we must consider how much greater is the cost of champagne here,” retorts the official.

“We can marry him to Katinka, and make her father get him a promotion,” the sister suggests. “I think he ought to have left the army and gone into the contracting,—every contractor I know is as rich as sin and goes to Monte Carlo.”

So the conversation rambles on. Cigarettes are passed. The hostess will not have one.

“I used to smoke, but it is so common now,” she explains. “Every peasant’s wife hangs over her oven with a cigarette in her mouth. Even a vice cannot survive after it has become unfashionable.”

The host comes up to show you his curios.

“This Alpine scene is one of Segantini’s. We got it in Dresden before he had earned his repute. I am very proud of my wife’s discrimination. The statuettes are from a little sculptor in the Via Sistina in Rome. Rien d’extraordinaire. The vase came from the Imperial Palace in Peking. I bought it from a Cossack for fifty kopecks. I have been told it belongs to the Tsin Dynasty, and is better than those they have in Petersburg Hermitage.”

So you are shown the spoil of two continents in connoisseur purchases.

“Hardly to be suspected in Irkutsk,” he allows, complacently.

Every year host and hostess visit the Riviera, taking a turn at Monte Carlo and Nice and Cannes. The banker speaks English, French, German, and Italian fluently, and half a dozen other languages passably. His wife acknowledges only French and Italian.

The conversation turns to the idealism of Pierre Loti’s description of the road to Ispahan. The banker has followed this road himself, and he has a much less poetic memory of it. The veteran—his father—is not up in French or English, but he has a good knowledge of German left from academy times. In this language he tells of the old days of the serfs and of the Crimea. He talks with the kind frankness of age that does not need self-suppression to prompt respect. When the guests rise to leave, and the buoyancy of the entertainment is passed, his cloud comes back. His voice has just a touch of bitterness as he says good-bye.

“I am glad we can welcome to our country a man traveling for pleasure. So many who come are here under less pleasant auspices.”

“De svidania,” you say at last to everybody, and out you go into the midnight frost. The droshky-driver is still there waiting. He has slept since you entered, unmoving through the hours. “Gastinitza,” you direct; and he drives to the hotel through the bleak starlit night.

Valerian comes a few days later to visit us, and volunteers to be our guide for Irkutsk.

“If I miss a few days at the Academy, what matter? I shall improve my English,” he explains.

Valerian is typical of the student class, all ideal and aspiration. He has gathered the heat of the epoch, and has concentrated it upon his philosophy. He is saturated with the French Revolution. Does he mention Danton, for example, it is with intentness of loyalty for the great Mountain speaker, which makes one almost think that the year is 1792, and that the place is sans-culottic France; “debout contre les tyrans!” He sings fiercely with his comrades, to the tune of the Marseillaise, the Russian revolutionary anthem, ending it with a swirl. “For the palace is foe to our homes!” America he considers one of the free nations, but he has reserves. Though he is not at one with our political system, yet he thinks that all learned about it is a great gain.

“Your land is free politically,” he specifies, “but it is not yet emancipated from capital,—it is not free socially. You have an industrial feudalism and a proletariat. So will it not be when we have won our revolution.”

Many are his anecdotes of the uprising of 1905, whose tragic drama will never be fully pictured and whose history is to be gleaned only from the mouths of cautious witnesses.