1 One of the main streets of Moscow.-A. M.
down the steps of the staircase.1 A lean woman in a faded pink dress, with turned-up sleeves and with boots on her stockingless feet, ran out first. Following her came a shock-headed man in a red shirt and very wide trousers that looked like a petticoat, and with goloshes on his feet. At the bottom of the stairs the man seized the woman: ‘You won’t get away!’ said he, laughing. ‘Listen to the squint-eyed devil!’ began the woman, evidently flattered by his pursuit, but she caught sight of me and shouted angrily: ‘What do you want?’ As I did not want anybody I grew confused and went away. There was nothing remarkable about all this; but this incident, after what I had seen outside in the street: the scolding old woman, the merry old man, and. the sliding boys, suddenly showed me quite a new side of the affair I was engaged on.
I had set out to benefit these people by the help of the rich, and here for the first time I realized that all these unfortunates whom I wished to benefit, besides the hours they spend suffering from hunger and cold and waiting for a night’s lodging, have also time to devote to something else. There is the rest of the twenty four hours every day, and there is a whole life about which I had never thought. Here for the first time I understood that all these people, besides needing food and shelter, must also pass twenty-four hours each day which they, like the rest of us, have to live.
I understood that they must be angry, and dull, and must pluck up courage, and mourn, and make merry. Strange to say, I now for the first time understood clearly that the business I had undertaken could not consist merely in feeding and clothing a thousand people as one feeds and drives under shelter a thousand sheep; but that it must consist in doing them good. And when I understood that each of these thousand people was a human being with a past; and with passions, temptations, and errors, and thoughts and questions, like my own, and was such a man as myself-then the thing I had undertaken suddenly appeared so difficult that I realized my impotence. But it had been started, and I went on with, it.
CHAPTER V
ON the first appointed day the student Census takers began work in the morning, but I, the philanthropist, did not join them till towards noon. I could not get there sooner because I only got up at ten, and then drank coffee and had to smoke to help my digestion. I reached the gates of the Rzhanov house at twelve o’clock. A policeman showed me the tavern on the Riverside passage, to which the Census-takers had said anyone should be shown who asked for them. I went into the tavern. It was very dark, smelly, and dirty. Straight before me was a bar, on the left a small room with tables covered with dirty table-cloths, on the right a large room with columns and similar tables at the window and by the walls.
At some of the tables men, tattered or decently dressed, probably workmen or small shopkeepers, and some women, sat having tea. The tavern was very dirty but one saw at once that business was good. The look of the man at the bar was business-like and the waiters were prompt and attentive: I had hardly entered before an attendant was ready to help me off with my overcoat and to take any order I might give. It was evident that habits of prompt and attentive work had been established. I inquired about the Census-takers. ‘Vanya!’ cried a small man, dressed German-fashion, who was arranging something in a cupboard behind the bar; this was the owner of the
1 The courtyard was enclosed by the house, which had a balcony all round it looking onto the yard.-A. M.
tavern, Ivan Fedotych ?’ Kaluga peasant who leased half the lodgings in Zimin’s houses, sub-letting them to lodgers. An attendant ran up, a lad of eighteen, thin, hook-nosed, and with a yellow complexion. Take the gentleman to the Census-takers’ they are in the big building above the well-get along.’
The lad laid down his napkin and put on an overcoat over his white shirt and white trousers,1 as well as a cap with a large peak, and rapidly moving his white legs he led me through a back door that closed by a counter-weight. In the lobby of a greasy smelly kitchen we met an old woman who was carefully carrying some very malodorous tripe in a rag. From the lobby we descended into the sloping yard all covered by a wooden building, with the lower story of brick. The stench in this, yard was very strong. The centre of this stench was the privy, around which always, every time I passed, people were crowding. The privy itself was not the place where people relieved themselves, but it served to indicate the place around which it had become customary to relieve oneself. Passing through the yard it was impossible not to notice that place; it always felt stifling when one entered the acrid atmosphere of the smell that came from it.
The lad, careful of his white trousers, cautiously led me past that place over the frozen filth, and made his way to one of the buildings. The people passing through the yard and along the galleries all stopped to look at me. Evidently a cleanly dressed man was a prodigy in these parts.
The lad asked a woman whether she had not seen where the Census-takers were, and three or more men immediately answered his question; some said they were above the well, but others said that they had been there but had left and had gone to Nikita Ivanovich. An old man with nothing over his shirt, who was adjusting his clothes near the privy, said they were in No. 30. The boy decided that this information was the most probable, and led me to No. 30 under the penthouse of the basement story, into darkness and stench different from that of the yard. We descended into the lower story and went along the earth floor of a dark corridor. While we were passing along the corridor one of the doors opened abruptly and from it emerged a drunken old man with nothing over his shirt, who was apparently not a peasant. A washerwoman with bared and soapy arms was driving and pushing this man out with shrill screams. Vanya, my conductor, pushed the drunken man aside and reproved him. ‘It won’t do to make such scenes,’ said he, ‘and you an officer too!’
We came to the door of No. 30. Vanya pulled at it. The door came unstuck with a smacking sound, opened, and we became aware of an odour of soapy steam and an acrid smell of bad food and tobacco. We entered into complete darkness. The windows were on the other side; but here were boarded corridors to right and left, with small doors at various angles leading into rooms roughly constructed of thin whitewashed boards. In a dark room to our left a woman was seen washing clothes at a trough. From a small door on the right an old woman looked out. Through another open door a hairy red-faced, peasant in bast-shoes was seen sitting on a board fixed to the wall, which did duty for a bed: he had his hands on his knees, swung his feet in his bast-shoes, and looked at them gloomily.
1 In the class of tavern referred to (a traktir) the waiters always wore white cotton blouses and trousers, Russian style.
At the end of the corridor was a little door leading into the room where the Census-takers were. This was the room of the landlady of the whole of No. 30; she rented the whole of it from Ivan Fedotych and let it out to the tenants and night-lodgers. In that tiny room of hers, under a tinfoil icon, sat a student Census-taker with his cards, and like an investigating magistrate questioned a peasant in a shirt and waistcoat. This, was a friend of the landlady, who was answering the questions on her behalf. There also was the landlady-an old woman-and two inquisitive lodgers. When I had entered, the room was quite crowded. I squeezed up to the table. The student and I exchanged greetings, and he continued his questions. But I began to observe and to interrogate the lodgers who were living there, for my own purpose.
It turned out that in this first lodging I did not find a single person on whom to expend my benevolence. The landlady, in spite of the poverty, smallness, and dirt of her lodging, which struck me after the mansions in which I live, had a sufficiency even in comparison with the poor of the town; and in comparison with village poverty, which I knew well, she was living in luxury. She had a feather bed, a quilted coverlet, a samovar, a warm coat, and a cupboard with crockery. Her friend had a similarly comfortable appearance. He even had a watch and chain. The lodgers were poor, but not one of them was in immediate need of assistance. Help was asked by the woman’ washing clothes at the wash trough, who had been left by her husband with children on her
