The distance between stations is determined by the distance
between the villages, usually 14 to 28 miles. The villages here are large, and there are no hamlets or farms. Churches and schools are everywhere. You see wooden cabins, some of them of two storeys.
Toward evening the pools and roads begin freezing, and at night there is a regular frost; an extra fur coat would not be amiss. Br-r-r-1 The vehicle jolts because the mud has turned into hillocks. It is heartbreaking. By dawn you are terribly tired with the cold, the jolting and the jingle of the bells on your horses; you passionately crave warmth and a bed. While the horses are being changed, you curl up in some corner and im- mediately fall asleep, but a moment later your driver is already tugging at your sleeve and saying, "Get up, friend, time to leave!" On the second night I began feeling a sharp toothache in my heels. It was intolerably painful and I wondered whether they hadn't got frost-bitten. . . .
Tomsk, May 16
The guilty party turned out to be my jack boots, too narrow in the back. Sweet Misha, if you ever have children, which I don't doubt will happen, advise them not to look for cheapness. A cheap price on Russian merchandise is a guarantee of its worthlessness. In my opinion going barefoot is preferable to wearing cheap boots. ... I had to buy felt boots in Ishim. . . . So I have been traveling in felt boots until they decompose on me from dampness and mud.
Tea drinking in the cabins goes on at five or six in the morn- ing. Tea on the road is a true boon. . . . It warms you up, dispels sleep and with it you eat a lot of bread; in the absence of other food, bread should be eaten in large amounts and that is why the peasant eats such a quantity of bread and starchy things. You drink tea and talk with the peasant women, who here are sensible, home-loving, tenderhearted, hard-working and more free than they are in Europe; their husbands do not curse or beat them because they are just as tall, and strong, and clever as their lords; when their husbands are not at home it is they who do the driving. They are great punsters. They do not raise their children strictly but are inclined to indulge them. The children sleep in comfortable beds for as long as they like, drink tea, ride with the peasants and use swear words when the latter tease them playfully. There is no diphtheria. Smallpox is widespread but curiously enough it is not as contagious here as it is elsewhere; two or three will come down with it and die—and that's the end of the epidemic. There are no hospitals or doctors. The doctoring is done by medical assistants. They go in for bloodletting and cupping on a grandiose, brutal scale. On the road I examined a Jew with cancer of the liver. The Jew was emaciated and hardly breathing, but this did not deter the medical assistant from putting twelve cupping glasses on him. By the way, on the subject of Jews. Here they work the land, drive, run ferryboats, trade and call themselves peasants,1 because they actually are de jure and de facto peasants. They cnjoy universal respect and according to the police officer are not infrequently elected village elders. I saw a tall, thin Jew scowling in revulsion and spitting when the police officer told obscene stories; he had a clean mind and his wife cooked excel- lent fish soup. The wife of the Jew with the cancer treated me to some pike roe and the most delicious white bread. Exploita- tion by Jews is unheard of.
By the way, about the Poles. You run across exiles sent here from Poland in 18G4. They are kind, hospitable and most con- siderate. Some enjoy real wealth, others are poverty-stricken and work as clerks at the stations. After the amnesty the former returned to their homeland, but soon came back to Siberia, where life is more opulent; the latter dream of their native land, although they are already old and ailing. In Ishim a cer- tain Pan Zalesski, who is rich and whose daughter resembles Sasha Kiseleva, served me an excellent dinner for a ruble and
1 Thc Russian word for pcasant derives from the word "Christian" because it was taken for granted that all peasants were Christians.
gave me a room where I slept very well; he keeps a tavern, has become a kulak to the marrow of his bones, swindles every- body, but nevertheless the gentleman makes itself felt in his manners, in the table he sets, in everything. He won't go back home out of greed, out of greed he puts up with snow on St. Nicholas Day; when he dies his daughter, born in Ishim, will remain here forever, and so black eyes and delicate features will keep on multiplying in Siberia! These random mixtures of blood are all to the good, since Siberians are not handsome. There are absolutely no brunettes. Perhaps you'd like to hear about the Tatars as well? Here goes. They are not numerous here. Good people. In Kazan Province even the priests speak well of them, and in Siberia they are "better than the Russians" —so stated the police officer in the presence of Russians, whose silence gave assent. My God, how rich Russia is in good people! If it were not for the cold which deprives Siberia of summer, and were it not for the officials who corrupt the peasants and exiles, Siberia would be the very richest and happiest of terri- tories.
Dinners are nothing in particular. . . . During the entire trip I have only had a real dinner twice, if you don't count the Yiddish fish soup which I ate after having filled up on tea. I haven't been drinking any vodka; the Siberian brand is vile, and besides I had got out of the habit of drinking before reach- ing Ekaterinburg. One should drink vodka, though. It acts as a stimulant on the brain, which, flabby and inert with the con- tinual movement, makes one stupid and weak. . . .
The first three days of the voyage, what with the shaking and jolting, my collarbones, shoulders and vertebrae started aching. I couldn't sit, walk or lie down. On the other hand, though, all my chest and head aches disappeared, my appetite took an un- believable spurt and the hemorrhoids—keep your fingers crossed—have given up the ghost. The strain, the continual worry over trunks and such, and perhaps the farewell drinking bouts in Moscow, gave rise to some blood-spitting in the morn- ings, and this infected me with a kind of despondency and stirred up gloomy thoughts; but it ceased toward the end of the trip and now I don't even have a cough; it is a long time since I have coughed as little as now, after two weeks spent in the fresh air. After the first three days of the trip my body accus- tomed itself to the jolts and the time arrived when I began not to notice the way midday arrived after morning, followed by evening and night. The days flitted by quickly, as in a linger- ing illness. . . .