The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

Viaz’ma had many cabmen. There were five carriages on the Torgovaia and five or six on the Nikitskaia. The rest were at the station. The cabmen were good, some even excellent. All of them were first-rate psychologists. Whenever someone arrived and hired a cabbie, the latter would engage the visitor in conversation. They always wanted to know what business one had. The uninteresting ones were taken directly to the Nemirov Hotel. To the more intriguing, the cabman would say: “Instead of stopping at the hotel, master (or mistress), why don’t you go to Kolesnikov (or to Stroganov, Sinel’nikov, etc…) they will be hospitable to you.” And truly, the merchant ladies liked to entertain visitors. They liked to joke and gossip with someone from the capital or even from just another city. The cabmen never made a mistake; they always brought only good people. Old Mr. Hogue told me: “I traveled all over Russia and never stayed in a hotel except in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa. And it never cost me anything, either. The coachmen always suggested someone they knew. Having been driven to a house, I would be treated like a long-lost brother. A very hospitable people.”

In the summertime, only officers and their ladies used the coachmen to ride around. But in winter, the coachmen harnessed two or three horses to a sleigh, and the youth would race around until dark. High schoolers, clerks, young merchants—all rode around beneath fur rugs.

We had a steady coachman named Stepan. He knew all of us well. His horses were superb and his carriage had rubber tires. When we needed a coachman, we would call Nemirov: “Is Stepan free?” “He’ll be right over.” His sleigh was also a fine one, with a spirited troika.

The coachmen were all monarchists and patriots. They knew everybody in town, and lectured our youth. They were listened to, since they were smart men.

THE SUMMER OF 1914

The author’s family lived in Viaz’ma, a city mid-way between Moscow and Smolensk, but they summered on their ancestral estate to the north. This is the setting of the following passage.

This was the last summer that I spent in Glubokoe with the whole family. As always, we went there in May. The weather that year was magnificent. As usual, a crowd of people had gathered at Glubokoe. Grandmother had finally received permission from the department of the interior to start an archeolog-

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ical dig on Kamennoe Lake. The archeologist was to come from Pskov in June.

The heat which came in April melted the snows so quickly that the streams and rivers ran unexpectedly high. The lakes rose more than usual. The plywood plant had a millpond for soaking birch and aspen logs, but the lake rose over the breakwater and washed away many logs. We noticed the drifting logs the first time we went boating. Strangely enough, they floated vertically so only their ends showed. These foot-wide circles floated just above the surface. We hooked one with a gaff and pulled it back to the mill. My older brother Peter decided that it would be fun and a good turn to fish out all the logs. The next day we took iron hooks attached to ropes and went log-catching. After a day we be came so proficient that we would tow in ten or more logs at a time. In this manner we fished out more than 200 logs so that they became scarce in the lake.

One day grandmother suggested a picnic on Babinensk Lake. This lake, fairly narrow but two versts long, was on the road to Opochek. It lay amidst steep hills covered by a pine forest and for some reason was always light blue. On our side, the forest had been cut a number of years ago. The dense second-growth of pine and birch rose some fifteen to twenty feet and had not been thinned out.

There was a legend about Babinensk Lake and mountain. Supposedly a brigand named Lapin once had a hideout there. The place even had his name, “Lapin’s Mountain.” No one knew when he had lived there, but the peasants claimed that on moonlit nights Lapin would descend the mountain on horseback to water his gray stallion at the lake.