I thought the man was jesting, but after questioning him further, I was forced to conclude that it might be true, thought it certainly was amazing. As the author in question had been sent to Siberia once or twice, on the charge of complicity in some revolutionary proceedings, it did seem as though the police ought to be able to give his address, if Russia meant to live up to the reputation for strict surveillance of every soul within her borders which foreigners have kindly bestowed upon her.
As a house-to-house visitation was impossible, I abandoned the quest, and drove to a photographer's to buy some views of the town. The photographer proved to be a chatty, vivacious man, and full of information. I mentioned my dilemma to him. He said that the policeman had told the exact truth, but that my author, to his positive knowledge, was in the Crimea, "looking up material." Then he questioned me as to what we had seen at the Fair, mentioning one or two places of evening entertainment. I replied that we had not been to those places. I had understood that they were not likely to suit my taste. Had I been rightly informed, or ought I to have gone to them in spite of warning?
"No," he replied frankly, after a momentary hesitation, "you ought not to see them. But all the American women do go to them. There was a party here last year. O-o-o-oh, how they went on! They were told, as you have been, that they ought not to go to certain places; so of course they went, and took the men in the party with them,-which was just as well. I'd have given something to see their faces at the time, or even afterwards! An Englishman, who had traveled everywhere, and had seen everything, told me that nowhere, even in India, had he seen the like of the doings at this Fair; and he was greatly shocked." He added that an officer could not appear at these places in uniform.
I begged the photographer to remember in future that there were several sorts of American women, and that not all of them worked by the law of contraries. In my own mind I wondered what those particular women had done, and wished, for the hundredth time, that American women abroad would behave themselves properly, and not earn such a reputation for their country-people.
On Sunday we went to the Armenian church, to see the service and to meet some Armenian acquaintances. We found the service both like and unlike the Russian, in many points approaching more nearly to the Greek form. The music was astonishing. An undercurrent of sound, alternating between a few notes, was kept up throughout the service, almost without a break. At times, this undercurrent harmonized with the main current of intoning and chanting, but quite as often the discord was positively distressing. Perceiving that we were strangers, the Armenians showed their hospitality in an original way. First, when one of the congregation went forward to the chancel railing and received from the priest the triple kiss of peace, which he then proceeded to communicate to another person, who passed it on in dumb show, and so on through the whole assembly, neither men nor women would run the risk of offending us by offering the simulated kiss. Secondly, and more peculiar, besides throwing light on their motives in omitting the kiss, they deliberately passed us by when they brought round the plate for the collection! This was decidedly novel! A visit to the Armenian church in St. Petersburg convinced us that the discordant music was not an accident due to bad training, but deliberate and habitual. I noticed also that the men and women, though they stood on opposite sides of the church, as with the Russian Old Ritualists, with the women on the left,-in the State Church, at Court, the women stand on the right,-they crossed themselves from left to right, like Roman Catholics, instead of the other way about, as do the Russians.
As we were exploring the Tatar shops at noon, we heard the muezzin calling to prayer from the minaret of the mosque close by, and we set off to attend the service. If we had only happened to have on our galoshes, we might have complied with etiquette by removing them, I suppose, and could have entered in our shoes. At least, the Russian policeman said so, and that is very nearly what the Tatars did. They kicked off the stiff leather slippers in which they scuff about, and entered in their tall boots, with the inset of frosted green pebbled horsehide in the heel, and soft soles, like socks. As it was, we did not care to try the experiment of removing our shoes, and so we were obliged to stand in the vestibule, and look on from the threshold. Each Tatar, as he entered, pulled out the end of his turban, and let it float down his back. Where the turban came from for the prayers, I do not know. None of the Tatars had worn a turban in the shops from which they had just come in large numbers, abandoning the pressing engagements of the busy noontide. Several individuals arrived very late, and decided not to enter. All of these late comers, one after the other, beckoned me mysteriously out of sight of the congregation and the mollah, and whispered eagerly:-
"How do you like it?"
"Very much," I answered emphatically; whereupon they exhibited signs of delight which were surprising in such grave people, and even made a motion to kiss my hand.
At least, that is what the motion would have meant from a Russian. Next to the magnificent ceremonial of the Russian Church, the opposite extreme, this simplicity of the congregational Mussulman worship is the most impressive I have ever seen.
The manner of our departure from Nizhni Novgorod was characteristically Russian,-but not by our own choice. We decided to go on up the Volga by steamer, see the river and a few of the towns, and return from some point, by rail, to Moscow.
The boat was advertised to start from the wharf, in the old town, at six o'clock in the evening. We went aboard in good season, and discovered that there were but three first-class staterooms, the best of which (the only good one, as it afterwards appeared) had been captured by some friends of the captain. We installed ourselves in the best we could get, and congratulated each other when the steamer started on time. We had hardly finished the congratulations when it drew up at another wharf and made fast. Then it was explained to us that it was to load at this wharf, at the "Siberian Landing," a point on the Volga shore of the Fair sand-spit, miles nearer our hotel than the one to which we had driven through torrents of rain. We were to make our real start at ten o'clock that night! The cold was piercing. We wrapped ourselves up in our wadded cloaks and in a big down quilt which we had with us, and tried to sleep, amid the deliberate bang-bang-bang of loading. When the cargo was in we slept. When we woke in the morning we began to exchange remarks, being still in that half comatose condition which follows heavy slumber.
"What a delightfully easy boat!" "Who would have expected such smoothness of motion from such an inferior-looking old craft?" "It must be very swift to have no motion at all perceptible. Whereabouts are we, and how much have we missed?"
I rose and raised the blind. The low shore opposite and far away, the sandy islet near at hand, the river,-all looked suspiciously like what our eyes had rested upon when we went to bed the night before. We would not believe it at first, but it was true, that we had not moved a foot, but were still tied up at the Siberian Landing. Thence we returned to the town wharf, no apologies or explanations being forthcoming or to be extracted, whence we made a final start at about nine o'clock, only fifteen hours late! And the company professed to be "American"!
Progress up the river was slow. The cold rain and wind prevented our availing ourselves of the tiny deck. The little saloon had no outlook, being placed in the middle of the boat. The shores and villages were not of striking interest, after our acquaintance with the lower Volga. For hours all the other passengers (chiefly second-class) were abed, apparently. I returned to my cabin to kill time with reading, and presently found the divan and even the floor and partition walls becoming intolerably hot, and exhaling a disagreeable smell of charred wood. I set out on a tour of investigation. In the next compartment to us, which had the outward appearance of a stateroom, but was inclosed on the outside only by a lattice-work, was the smoke-pipe. The whistle was just over our heads, and the pipe almost touched the partition wall of our cabin. That partly explained the deadly chill of the night before, and the present suffocating heat. I descended to the lower deck. There stood the engine, almost as rudimentary as a parlor stove, in full sight and directly under our cabin; also close to the woodwork. It burned wood, and at every station the men brought a supply on board; the sticks, laid across two poles in primitive but adequate fashion, being deposited by the simple process of widening the space between the poles, and letting the wood fall on the deck with a noise like thunder. The halts and "wooding up" seemed especially frequent at night, and there was not much opportunity for sleep between them. Our fear of being burned alive also deprived us of the desire to sleep. We were nearly roasted, as it was, and had to go out on the deck in the wind and rain at short intervals, to cool off.