Whenever we encountered Turks, we would say, “Salaam a leikum” to them. And they would hospitably answer, “A leikum salaam.” Here, in this part of the Caucasus, we found a small corner of Turkey, or so it seemed to us. Miniature houses, almost without windows, dusty gardens and stillness. Quiet, placid people and not mean, but friendly, dogs. It was apparent that the Turks were a good people and it was a pity that we warred against them and that we sang derogatory soldiers’ songs about them.
And then we reached Borzhomi. What an empty place it seemed without anyone we knew. Of course, there was something familiar in the effervescent fizz of Borzhomi mineral water, in the green glades, in the clean, sandy garden walks. But my companions, after having looked at themselves in the mirror at the railway station, decided that the luxury and indolent bliss of this spa was not for us, woodsmen, and that we would scare the local belles to death if we appeared before them as we were. We returned by train to Tbilisi and to our previous life in the military school. We were upperclassmen now, the special class of 1899, the centennial of Pushkin’s birth.
In 1898 my family had moved to the now familiar Voznesenskii Street. There I got my own minuscule room which my mother christened a “studio.” It had its own door to the staircase and was totally separate. It was so small
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that if one managed to shove a bed into it there would have been no room for anything else. So there was no bed, only a small desk and chair. Sometimes there was an easel and always a bookcase with the works of Aleksei K. Tolstoy, Lermontov, Pushkin, and Chekhov. These were my favorites. If you exited the room onto the landing you saw a medium-size mirror in a carved wooden frame. In the mirror there would be a reflection of a rounded, yet angular, face whose owner was quite unhappy with it, presuming that an attractive, handsome face was a guarantee of success in life just as a princely title was. But when you had neither one nor the other you were in for hard times. But, I would push out my chest, hold my head high and repeat to myself that I would be all right, I would be triumphant.
The Pushkin festivities swept through the academy. Throughout the city, in theaters and everywhere there were celebrations of the Pushkin centennial. Speeches were made and poems read at the Pushkin monument:
The poet has perished, the prisoner of honor Has fallen, calumniated by idle talk.
I could never hear these words of Lermontov, his “cry of the soul,” without exultation.
It was then that we decided to spend our Pushkin fund, about ten rubles, on a trip into the Caucasus Mountains which Pushkin had loved so well. And so we went to ancient Mtskheta where the parents of Gedevanov, our “enraged goose,” lived. We expected to come upon a “prince’s court” and “princely” hospitality, but when we saw a native house hardly different from the others, surrounded by several grazing sheep, with frightened faces of women in the semi-dark entrance, we realized our error. It was odd that Gedevanov himself was the initiator of this trip.
We quickly decided to celebrate the centennial in the lap of nature. After all Pushkin loved the grandeur of the Caucasus and he also loved its wine. He wrote about both in his “Journey to Erzerum.” We had brought a goatskin bota of wine with us. And so with a song, we celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Pushkin [June 6].
Graduation day was fast approaching. It was final exam time. We had already been to the studio of Mishchenko who traditionally photographed all the graduating classes. The postcard size photographs were pasted on illustration board that had been decorated with watercolor views of Tbilisi and our school and photographed once again. The original large illustration board with a group photograph of the whole class was traditionally hung in the common hall of the First Company, the place where the names of the honor cadets appeared in gold letters cut into marble tablets. These young men were the
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“luminaries” of whom our chaplain, Father Mantstvetov, loved to talk. Should there ever be a war and our graduates be made Cavaliers of the Order of St. George, their names would also be displayed on marble tablets. And so, as a friend and I joked, the possibility of myself being immortalized here was not yet lost.
But it was not a joking matter when a rumor flashed by that our group, the Pushkin graduates, would not have its class portrait hung in the hall because of our insolent behavior during the year. In truth, we did do some outrageous, scandalous things. Never through malevolence, but rather because of an excess of youthful energy and the urge to pull off the unprecedented and extraordinary. For instance, we took to “busting” the new and totally innocent class master. In the dining hall, each time that he would bring a spoon of soup to his mouth, the whole company would thunder “uugggh.”
Even worse, whenever some timid house master would do his rounds at bedtime or at night he would find the doors locked and barricaded. And when, with the help of the staff, he would break into our sleeping quarters, he would be met with unbelievable shouting and pillows flung in his direction. The director would come at night to chew us out. Grand Duke Constantine, the head of all military educational institutions, visited and spoke to us of the inad-missibility of such stunts. We ourselves understood that they were “inadmissible” and repugnant. But such judgments were risky. Maybe it seemed to some of us there was valor in such behavior. I can’t say. Personally I never would have begun such doings but when some of the big guys such as Begiev or Chelokaev would start, other daredevils would join in, and all hell would break loose. There was something infectious and elemental in this “restlessness among the people” that may have been generically related to what later occurred throughout Russia.
At this time, the end of May 1899, my head was in a spin not only from exams but from various plans for the future. The class master kept asking me which military academy I had chosen. But I had other plans. Something on the order of forestry school along with “Popka” Bekilov. Besides I recalled with pride that father had deposited 100 rubles in my name in a bank. The question was what to do with them.
Before entering an academy, it would have been nice to see the world and especially those places in Europe which we studied so thoroughly in school. For instance, to go into the mountains of Schwarzwald or the Swiss Saxon Alps. There was also the town of Freiberg with its mining institute. It would be interesting to enroll there and see if I could become a mining engineer. In any case, even if I were to lose a year, I would learn German and one or two other subjects. And finally I could always enter the Pavlov Military Academy with the help of my friend Musin-Pushkin.
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I laid all these plans out to my parents both orally and on paper. To my delight, father hardly objected to the European trip. He was opposed to the Freiberg plan. And so I graduated from military school. The passport for traveling abroad and the hundred rubles were in my pocket. Everyone seemed to be moving that year. My older brother was getting married and moving to the Crimea with his bride. He was encouraging mother and my other brothers to go there with him. My aunt was going there as well. Only my father in Tbilisi and Vania in Artvin were to stay in place.
My civilian outfit was of a kind fairly widespread in Russia. It consisted of a Russian shirt [with buttons on the left side of the chest], a broad belt, and a light, sand-colored overcoat bought in Gulaspov’s store [in Tbilisi]. It was strange to see our Voznesenskii Street neighbor and buddy, Sandro, as manager there. He also sold me a stylish cap with a hard celluloid peak.
I am alone in the railroad car of a train heading westward to Batumi. I am traveling at night in order to save time and hotel expenses. It is uncomfortable on the hard bench and there are too many thoughts in my head to sleep anyway. I tour the city, write postcards and leave on a ship of the Russian Navigation and Travel Association. It is a third class ticket, but I can move into second class for an extra five rubles if the seas get rough. I do so in Poti, having sp
ent a night lying on hawsers and inhaling oil fumes. In the second-class cabin I sleep on clean sheets like a lord. In the morning I marvel at the forested mountains on my right and the blue expanse on my left, and decide to stop at New Mount Athos on the way back, money permitting. Next we hit rough water and there was great relief when the ship entered the bay of Novorossiisk.
As proper for a tourist, I immediately set off to view the city. But there was no city. It was all piers after piers, wharves, a railway shop, dirt and endless dust. I pressed on in search of the vanished city and finally reached the public gardens. They were colorless and dusty, but I never did find the city, only insignificant rural buildings, insignificant shops, and the smell of anthracite. In memory that smell is Novorossiisk to me.
Next day at dawn we reached Kerch. What a lively place. Just outside the town is Mitridat Mountain [mentioned by Pushkin]. There is no sand or pebbles on the beach—only pea-size seashells. It was good to bathe in the clear, glassy water. The people here were different from those in Tbilisi. They behaved as if they had nothing to do but bathe in the clear water, dry in the sun and drink black coffee in the Turkish taverns.
Feodosiia was even more attractive. This was the real Crimea and the people on shipboard were in a mood of high anticipation: tomorrow at dawn we would be in Yalta. The Yalta where Chekhov himself lives. The city was still asleep; the sun barely breaking through the clouds in the east. It had just rained. The sand squeaked under foot and the air was such that words fail me.
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I asked the captain’s assistant how much time we had. He did not give me a clear answer. Two or three hours, he said, depending on the time it takes to unload and load. I’m off down the embankment hoping by some miracle to see Chekhov or at least his house. It would be unconscionable to disturb him at such an early hour. I ask a policeman for Chekhov’s house but, alas, this name, so precious to us, is unfamiliar to the corpulent policeman. He knows neither house, nor Chekhov. I asked several passersby and one of them ventured a guess that the house was three or four kilometers away in Autka. I was in a quandary. Would I find the house? Would the ship leave without me? And then I shamefully surrendered: had tea in a restaurant built on pilings overlooking the sea. The tea was very good, and the sweet rolls even better. I tried to console myself with the fancy that perhaps Chekhov frequented this place, sat in this very chair and looked at the sea just as I was doing.
Sevastopol. What a celebrated name. The bay, the surrounding mountains, and even the earthen mounds and the old fortress. Where and how did they fight here? The question brings the recognition that my knowledge of the defense of Sevastopol is pitiful. I’ll have to read Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Stories. I hasten on to Kiev. The frequent changing of trains is quite tiring. At Tatiana Pavlovna’s, a family friend, I rested up for two days while she spoiled me with all kinds of tasty dishes. The rooms smelled of mothballs, but even this smell seemed cozy and cool to me.
And Lida. I couldn’t admire her enough. She was already in the upper classes of the gimnazium. She read a lot, daydreamed, and surely went out with her girlfriends. She was mother’s favorite and I wrote home about her, Tatiana Pavlovna, and their farmstead.
I continued west to the border where I met a veterinary student who was a distant relative of one of my Tbilisi cadet friends. He convinced me to buy a ticket not to Freiberg, but to Zurich where he himself was going to university. In my father’s absence it seemed best to follow his wishes and forget about the mining institute in the Schwarzwald and save my parents the money which would have gone for my tuition. As it turned out later, father had changed his mind and sent me a cordial and supportive letter to Freiberg in which he praised my persistence and promised to send tuition money. I never did get that letter, and found out about it only upon returning to Tbilisi.
In Vienna the veterinary student and I stayed in a splendid hotel not far from the Cathedral of St. Stephen. In the evening we went to the famous Prater where everything was very decorous except for the roller coaster which was the source of great screeching, especially when the cars would plunge into water. It also struck me that the fashionable women along the vaunted Ringstrasse were not as stylishly dressed as we at home imagined. “Viennese chic” was not evident. There was a strange combination of colors—bright
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yellow and violet. But expensive shops, especially flower shops, drew one’s attention. The museums were overwhelming. Palaces, royal carriages, thousands of military men in strange, semi-civilian uniforms. Newspapers sold briskly on the streets. A nervousness was felt in the air, but perhaps it was Viennese everyday life.
We arrived in Zurich groggy, having spent the night in a packed car full of Tyroleans smoking their long ceramic pipes. A beautiful lake and beautiful mountains in the distance. But first we had to find a room for the week. We wandered around the city for a long time. Once, at the entrance of a house, we saw a sign advertising rooms, but we decided to investigate around the block and return. But we never found the house; it seemed to have been swallowed up by the earth. We kept wandering and for some reason attracted the attention of a dignified man in civilian clothing who asked us to go with him. We did so with mounting curiosity. It turned out that he was a policeman who brought us to a precinct where we were politely questioned and asked to show our passport and money. Then we were given the “For Rent” page of a newspaper and told how to get to a particular street. The incident struck us as curious—something to tell the folks back home. Later we encountered signs with “Entry to Russians Forbidden” written on them. This was offensive, but it became understandably cautionary when we learned that Zurich was the headquarters of Russian revolutionaries and terrorists. We once even visited a Russian students’ eating house to peek at typical Russian “nihilists” of the sort found in novels. But the prices in the eating house were high and we retreated. I was saving my money for something more productive. I wanted to hike into the mountains and paint. So I bought a box of oil paints which cost almost all of ten rubles. I traversed the nearby mountains, saw the life of this toy-like country, beautiful as a wrapped chocolate, and painted the landscape.
Once on the climb up Etliberg I was passed by a German with a knapsack on his back and a walking stick in hand. He looked at the surroundings with such exultation and hummed the “Toreador” march with such exuberance that I was ashamed of my sluggish indecisiveness.
A week later I left my student friend and was on the way home with the regret that I had no major accomplishments but with an abundance of foreign impressions which were totally unlike our Russian ones. Zurich with its shadowy streets and broad embankments, with its unusual black automobiles working as cabs, its crowded Swiss Guards festivals, was left behind. Once again it was Innsbruck squeezed into a cleft amidst huge cliffs. Once again it was Salzburg, where during a two-hour layover I sketched a view of the city from the river. Passersby stared at me and I was pleased. Let them even send for a policeman. The city was famous for its sausage and I bought some thinly sliced Salami. I ate some and kept the rest for the folks at home to taste.
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Thoughts of home occupied me more and more and at times it seemed strange to be traveling abroad when I could have spent time with my mother before my departure for St. Petersburg. It was clear to me that I was going to St. Pete. But it was not clear where to—maybe the Academy of Fine Arts.
Once again I was in Vienna, where I got a table in an expensive cafe on the Ring. I ordered tea and picked up a newspaper. There was big news from Russia: Crown Prince Georgii Aleksandrovich, who was being treated for tuberculosis in Abastuman, had died. The newspaper tried to assess this from the point of view of Austrian interests. And I was sorry that Zil’berg, our German teacher, did not give us more work with newspapers.
From Vienna there was the uninspiring trip to the border. I opened my knapsack, the only luggage I had
, to pull out the trip-tattered book of Chekhov’s stories. I read them like the Gospel, as revelation, as a true reflection of our Russian life, beautiful, free and untrammeled, so unlike the stale and alien foreign countries.
Across the border at the Russian station you could get an excellent borshch for ten kopeks. Everything here was inexpensive and easily understood. Only in Odessa, on the famous harbor steps, did I have an unpleasant experience. I was in a good mood and decided to support the commercial enterprise of some character and let him shine my boots. But the scoundrel, in response to my good intentions, sneered at the five kopeks I offered him and asked such a high sum that I was flabbergasted. The shoe polish alone cost him a ruble, he said. In order to lighten my mood I recited some Pushkin lines denigrating Odessa. Then once again I was on a ship. The Crimea seen from the sea. A brief stop at Alushka, transfer to a longboat and then I was on shore.
Autumn 1899. A group of us recent cadets was traveling northward via the recently opened railway through Baku, Petrovsk and Rostov-on-the-Don. Tbilisi and the best part of my life was left behind in the sweet-smelling clouds of Tbilisi dust. The beauty of the Georgian Military Highway. Vladikavkaz. The railway. Finally, Russian cities. We take in Russia with great curiosity. What is she like? How will she reveal herself? And we had a jealous, protective sense toward “our” Caucasus which was not “Russia” at all.
St. Petersburg—a totally different place. It seemed cold, dark, and dank. The city had a powerful effect on me. It was a typical, gray St. Petersburg short day. Icy mist covered the ruler-straight streets, so unusual to our Tbilisi eyes. In the city-center the noiseless streets were paved with wood blocks. They gave off a fine smell of pitch which was used to bind them to the base pavement. This was a totally different environment and totally different people. The center was filled with civil service types and the military. Simple folk
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