In the morning we inquire about transportation across the mountains; we communicate through a German- and French-speaking gentleman we were lucky enough to meet in the hotel. There are no post horses or coaches to be had; an arriving group of sixty-four Frenchmen has telegraphically engaged all conveyances. There we were. We are referred to the posting station apropos of the matter; there we meet an official who speaks German. He explains to us that all the government horses will be busy for the next six days. Six days in Vladikavkaz! In the mountains we could have taken it easy for a while if necessary, but not here, on the flat, in a steppe town. And besides, if we stayed here for six days, that officer from Pyatigorsk would catch up with us and could scarcely be avoided.
The posting official suggests that we hire a private coach and four. It will cost a little more, but still. Further, he advises us to find a Molokan, a milk drinker, for our coachman. These people are religious sectarians and never taste alcohol in any form.
The posting official’s two suggestions sound reasonable, with one exception. The suggestion about the four horses didn’t sound reasonable. With regard to the question if we were persons of rank, I denied nothing, as he didn’t expressly ask me about it, but whether out of caprice or necessity, we wished to travel like ordinary commoners, and this I give him to understand. He then explained that four horses were necessary on the steep road, if we were two persons and had luggage; he had traveled over the mountains himself in a coach and four. That was different; then both his suggestions were reasonable. This man seemed never to have been unreasonably extravagant; on the contrary, he looked as though that one-time journey with the four horses had cost him his last penny; that was the impression he made, a shabby, emaciated civil servant with unkempt hair and a long thin nose. I thank him sincerely for his kindness to us and want to leave. Then my traveling companion suggests I give the man a couple of rubles. I haggle it down to one and hand him the silver coin in a discreet manner. Thanks, but we owed him nothing, it didn’t cost anything. To be sure, but we wished to show our gratitude. Then the man accepted the coin and put it away on his desk. Whereupon he began to busy himself with his papers again. But my traveling companion said, “There you can see for yourself, he would’ve been much happier if he got two rubles.”
From the hotel we send for a Molokan with a coach and four; the French- and German-speaking gentleman is again of assistance to us. This helpful gentleman is a civilian, dressed in the usual European manner—modern, elegant—but he gives the impression of being a military person; we size him up as a colonel. He’s somewhat gray.
The Molokan arrives.
“Are you a Molokan?” I wanted to know. Incidentally, it was the first time in my life that I inquired about a coachman’s religious views before hiring him.
Yes, he was a Molokan.
The coachman asks fifty-seven rubles for driving us over the mountains to Tiflis. But naturally, he won’t provide us with a Cossack escort for the same money.
A Cossack escort? What did we need that for? Didn’t he dare drive without one?
For his part, the coachman asks if we dared drive without.
We look at one another.
Then our interpreter, the colonel, decides the issue, saying that we don’t need any escort; we belong to those who place their fate in God’s hand. What would robbers or murderers want with us? We didn’t have a copeck on this earth, we were missionaries bound for Persia and China, and there was nothing but Bibles in our luggage. So we needed no escort.
The Molokan, on his part, refused to be outdone. What did we want with a seven-man Cossack escort in front and behind? In short, there was no danger, he’d traveled the road before and was familiar with it.
We are agreed. We give the coachman ten rubles in advance and accept his izvozchik’s badge with a number on it as a pledge. On the way he shall have five rubles to live on for himself and the horses, and when we arrive in Tiflis we’ll pay the remainder with forty-two rubles. The journey will take three days and nights. It shall start tomorrow morning at five o’clock.
But at the door the Molokan turns around to tell us in no uncertain terms that if we begin to kick over the traces up in the mountains and make excursions to auls and different tribes in the adjacent mountains, then he wants a compensation of ifteen rubles a day. We get it haggled down to twelve and are agreed.
Everything is in order.
We go out to take a look at the town. Vladikavkaz, the “Lord of the Caucasus,” has 45,000 inhabitants, is half-European, and has a theater, parks, and tree-lined boulevards. There isn’t much of interest to the sightseer, except for artisans who do their work sitting out in the street as in southern Europe, but with the difference that these artisans are handsome men like all Caucasians, tanned beauties of the Arab type. We go up to a bench where three men are doing metalwork. They chisel and chase mounts for daggers and sabers, ornaments for belts, women’s jewelry. I buy a cane that one of the artists is just finishing; it’s damascened with metal and inlaid with four green stones. It’s very inexpensive—eight rubles; its design is Byzantine. I have calculated that almost 9,000 pins and metal splints have been engraved into the knob of the cane.
The man wasn’t eager to sell his merchandise. Though he got up when we came over to his table, he just remained standing without uttering a word. I looked closely at all his canes and took my time; when I asked the price, he gave his short little answer in Russian and then fell silent. When I paid him he didn’t thank me in Russian, but said a word in another language and nodded. He remained standing throughout, and only after leaving did we see him sit down again.
We are going to buy some lap robes. It will probably be cold in the mountains, and we have barely any outerwear with us. We soon find a shop with lap robes; though the colonel is also a stranger in town, it’s quite easy for him to nose out the right place.
Boring European lap robes of many kinds are laid out for us, and we reject them all. On the other hand, we get hold of some soft, shaggy wool blankets, which are the nicest things we’ve seen. “How much do they cost?”
A blue-eyed man in a black silk jacket stands behind the counter; he looks at the price tag and replies, “Eighteen rubles.”
“For two, that is,” the colonel says to us by way of explanation. “Eighteen rubles for both blankets.”
But the blue-eyed man understands German, may in fact be a German, and answers, “No, eighteen rubles apiece.”
The colonel had understood this from the beginning, of course, but nonetheless pretends to be surprised. He picks up his pince-nez, puts it on his nose, looks at the blankets, then looks up at the shopkeeper and cannot get over it; he doesn’t say a word. The shopkeeper returns the colonel’s look, and they both stand like that for a while.
The shopkeeper has to give way first: “Certainly, eighteen rubles apiece,” he says. And he opens the blankets wide and begins to explain the color, the kind of wool, the quality. These were no ordinary blankets, surely we realized that….
But the colonel pokes at the blankets in silence and prepares to leave. We follow suit. Then the colonel turns around and says, “Let me ask you something—how much do you want for the blankets?”
The shopkeeper replies, “Thirty-six rubles,” and begins to explain the blankets afresh.
Then the colonel says to us in French that it’s probably not possible to get them any cheaper.
“No, it’s impossible to sell them cheaper,” says the damn German, who may even be a Frenchman.
The colonel spars with him still awhile, but to no use: the blankets are packed and I am about to pay. While I count out my paper rubles, the moment I get to thirty-four the colonel suddenly calls out, “Stop!” And he hands the shopkeeper the money, saying he won’t get another copeck. The shopkeeper squirms and doesn’t accept the money.
“Then take the blankets back, keep them,” says the colonel. But at the same time he puts the big parcel under my arm and points to the door. Whereupon he tossed the bills on the counter and followed us into the street.
•
An almost sleepless night on account of the Caucasian fever and Caucasian bedbugs.
I awake at half-past three and get up. It’s dark, but the fruit and tobacco shops on the other side of the street are illuminated as usual. I hear a bell ringing somewhere in the house. So it’s not too early to ring the bell, I think to myself and pull the cord. Nobody comes. I ring once more and lean out of the open window, looking down and waiting. No one comes. I ring again.
We rang six times to get our shoes and a bit of breakfast.
We notice from our windows that, true enough, our Molokan pulls up in front of our hotel at half-past four. He talks to the doorman for a moment and drives off again. We go down and get hold of the doorman, but we cannot talk with him in any language and don’t understand a word of what he tells us. It’s now five o’clock.
The Molokan again rolls up to the hotel entrance, but when I begin to put our luggage onto the carriage, it is gently taken off again and brought back into the hotel. We cannot understand this oddity, nor do we understand what the doorman is talking with the coachman about. But we conclude that the hotel is holding on to the luggage because we haven’t yet paid our bill. Then I stretch to my full height and, acting the big shot, recite in Norwegian a big speech, a fat speech, words of affluence. Forgetting that we are missionaries, I take out my wallet and, tapping it, use the word “million,” which is almost the same in Russian, so they will be a bit impressed with us. When this doesn’t help I speak much louder and yell for the bill—“Let me just have that trifling bill!”
But when the hotel staff realize that they are unable to explain anything, in their distress they go and wake up our interpreter from yesterday. The colonel. He comes down, somewhat lightly clad, bowing and begging pardon for his toilette. And now it comes to light that it is the police who are preventing our departure. There is a horse epidemic in the area, our animals must be checked, and the police sent a summons to our coachman late yesterday evening.
There we were again.
When, then, could we leave?
Sometime in the afternoon.
But then we wouldn’t be able to reach our agreed-upon mountain station before nightfall.
The colonel racks his brain and negotiates a goodly while with the doorman and the driver. It was decided that we would drive to the residence of the chief of police and appeal to him personally. I’ll have my passport and my card sent in to him, and a waiter from the hotel will come with us and try to sway him with his guarantee for the horses.
Then it becomes necessary to find my card. As we ransack our bags it becomes evident to everybody, I’m afraid, that they do not contain Bibles. But we don’t find my cards. Where were they, then? I had a boxful of them; I always do, since they are never needed. They must be tucked away among the articles we left in Helsingfors. Instead of my own, I find by chance the card of Sibelius, the musician; of Albert Edelfelt, Wentzel Hagelstam, and Mrs. Mascha Hagelstam. The colonel selects Wentzel Hagelstam’s card, saying that it will be all right. We are afraid that the name on the card goes too poorly with the name on the passport, but the colonel replies that no comparisons will be made so early in the morning.
Then we set off.
But the chief of police isn’t up.
We drive back to the hotel. Once more the colonel has to come forward. He telephones the chief of police in bed and gets him to authorize a travel permit that can be picked up at the police station.
Then everything was in order.
We load our luggage onto the carriage and pay the hotel bill. The room itself was inexpensive, five rubles, but on the bill was entered the use of two pillows, one ruble; two towels, fifty copecks; together with other oddities. But we pay without objection, thank our wonderful colonel for the last time and roll away from the inn. It was now half past six.
At the posting station I present Hagelstam’s card. The friendly official from yesterday takes it, looks at the name and takes out the chief of police’s written permit. Then we have done with Vladikavkaz. “Have a pleasant journey!” says the posting official.