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Title: The Moscow Census - From "What to do?"
Author: Lyof N. Tolstoi
Release Date: November, 2002 [Etext #3541]
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Project Gutenberg's Thoughts Evoked By The Census Of Moscow, by Tolstoi
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Please be advised that David sent the two Moscow Census pieces to me as one file, and that I split it into two, since some people have a bit of trouble when we put two titles in one file. However, I did NOT change the numbering of the footnotes, so they all appear at the end of each file.
This etext was produced by David Price, email [email protected], from the 1887 Thomas Y. Crowell edition.
THE MOSCOW CENSUS—FROM "WHAT TO DO?" by Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
Translated from the Russian by
Isabel F. Hapgood
THOUGHTS EVOKED BY THE CENSUS OF MOSCOW. [1884-1885.]
And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then?
He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise—LUKE iii. 10. 11.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?—MATT. vi. 19-25.
Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? Or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly
Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.—MATT. vi. 31-34.
For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.—MATT. xix. 24; MARK x. 25; LUKE xviii. 25.
CHAPTER I.
I had lived all my life out of town. When, in 1881, I went to live in Moscow, the poverty of the town greatly surprised me. I am familiar with poverty in the country; but city poverty was new and incomprehensible to me. In Moscow it was impossible to pass along the street without encountering beggars, and especially beggars who are unlike those in the country. These beggars do not go about with their pouches in the name of Christ, as country beggars are accustomed to do, but these beggars are without the pouch and the name of Christ. The Moscow beggars carry no pouches, and do not ask for alms. Generally, when they meet or pass you, they merely try to catch your eye; and, according to your look, they beg or refrain from it. I know one such beggar who belongs to the gentry. The old man walks slowly along, bending forward every time he sets his foot down. When he meets you, he rests on one foot and makes you a kind of salute. If you stop, he pulls off his hat with its cockade, and bows and begs: if you do not halt, he pretends that that is merely his way of walking, and he passes on, bending forward in like manner on the other foot. He is a real Moscow beggar, a cultivated man. At first I did not know why the Moscow beggars do not ask alms directly; afterwards I came to understand why they do not beg, but still I did not understand their position.
Once, as I was passing through Afanasievskaya Lane, I saw a policeman putting a ragged peasant, all swollen with dropsy, into a cab. I inquired: "What is that for?"
The policeman answered: "For asking alms."
"Is that forbidden?"
"Of course it is forbidden," replied the policeman.
The sufferer from dropsy was driven off. I took another cab, and followed him. I wanted to know whether it was true that begging alms was prohibited and how it was prohibited. I could in no wise understand how one man could be forbidden to ask alms of any other man; and besides, I did not believe that it was prohibited, when Moscow is full of beggars. I went to the station-house whither the beggar had been taken. At a table in the station-house sat a man with a sword and a pistol. I inquired:
"For what was this peasant arrested?"
The man with the sword and pistol gazed sternly at me, and said:
"What business is it of yours?"
But feeling conscious that it was necessary to offer me some explanation, he added:
"The authorities have ordered that all such persons are to be arrested; of course it had to be done."
I went out. The policeman who had brought the beggar was seated on the window-sill in the ante-chamber, staring gloomily at a note-book. I asked him:
"Is it true that the poor are forbidden to ask alms in Christ's name?"
The policeman came to himself, stared at me, then did not exactly frown, but apparently fell into a doze again, and said, as he sat on the window-sill:-
"The authorities have so ordered, which shows that it is necessary," and betook himself once more to his note-book. I went out on the porch, to the cab.
"Well, how did it turn out? Have they arrested him?" asked the cabman. The man was evidently interested in this affair also.
"Yes," I answered. The cabman shook his head. "Why is it forbidden here in Moscow to ask alms in Christ's name?" I inquired.
"Who knows?" said the cabman.
"How is this?" said I, "he is Christ's poor, and he is taken to the station-house."
"A stop has been put to that now, it is not allowed," said the cab- driver.
On several occasions afterwards, I saw policemen conducting beggars to the station house, and then to the Yusupoff house of correction. Once I encountered on the Myasnitzkaya a company of these beggars, about thirty in number. In front of them and behind them marched policemen. I inquired: "What for?"—"For asking alms."
It turned out that all these beggars, several of whom you meet with in every street in Moscow, and who stand in files near every church during services, and especially during funeral services, are forbidden to ask alms.
But why are some of them caught and locked up somewhere, while others are left alone?
This I could not understand. Either there are among
There are many varieties of beggars in Moscow: there are some who live by this profession; there are also genuine poor people, who have chanced upon Moscow in some manner or other, and who are really in want.
Among these poor people, there are many simple, common peasants, and women in their peasant costume. I often met such people. Some of them have fallen ill here, and on leaving the hospital they can neither support themselves here, nor get away from Moscow. Some of them, moreover, have indulged in dissipation (such was probably the case of the dropsical man); some have not been ill, but are people who have been burnt out of their houses, or old people, or women with children; some, too, were perfectly healthy and able to work. These perfectly healthy peasants who were engaged in begging, particularly interested me. These healthy, peasant beggars, who were fit for work, also interested me, because, from the date of my arrival in Moscow, I had been in the habit of going to the Sparrow Hills with two peasants, and sawing wood there for the sake of exercise. These two peasants were just as poor as those whom I encountered on the streets. One was Piotr, a soldier from Kaluga; the other Semyon, a peasant from Vladimir. They possessed nothing except the wages of their body and hands. And with these hands they earned, by dint of very hard labor, from forty to forty-five kopeks a day, out of which each of them was laying by savings, the Kaluga man for a fur coat, the Vladimir man in order to get enough to return to his village. Therefore, on meeting precisely such men in the streets, I took an especial interest in them.
Why did these men toil, while those others begged?
On encountering a peasant of this stamp, I usually asked him how he had come to that situation. Once I met a peasant with some gray in his beard, but healthy. He begs. I ask him who is he, whence comes he? He says that he came from Kaluga to get work. At first he found employment chopping up old wood for use in stoves. He and his comrade finished all the chopping which one householder had; then they sought other work, but found none; his comrade had parted from him, and for two weeks he himself had been struggling along; he had spent all his money, he had no saw, and no axe, and no money to buy anything. I gave him money for a saw, and told him of a place where he could find work. I had already made arrangements with Piotr and Semyon, that they should take an assistant, and they looked up a mate for him.
"See that you come. There is a great deal of work there."
"I will come; why should I not come? Do you suppose I like to beg?
I can work."
The peasant declares that he will come, and it seems to me that he is not deceiving me, and that he intents to come.
On the following day I go to my peasants, and inquire whether that man has arrived. He has not been there; and in this way several men deceived me. And those also deceived me who said that they only required money for a ticket in order to return home, and who chanced upon me again in the street a week later. Many of these I recognized, and they recognized me, and sometimes, having forgotten me, they repeated the same trick on me; and others, on catching sight of me, beat a retreat. Thus I perceived, that in the ranks of this class also deceivers existed. But these cheats were very pitiable creatures: all of them were but half-clad, poverty-stricken, gaunt, sickly men; they were the very people who really freeze to death, or hang themselves, as we learn from the newspapers.
CHAPTER II.
When I mentioned this poverty of the town to inhabitants of the town, they always said to me: "Oh, all that you have seen is nothing. You ought to see the Khitroff market-place, and the lodging-houses for the night there. There you would see a regular 'golden company.'" {1} One jester told me that this was no longer a company, but a GOLDEN REGIMENT: so greatly had their numbers increased. The jester was right, but he would have been still more accurate if he had said that these people now form in Moscow neither a company nor a regiment, but an entire army, almost fifty thousand in number, I think. [The old inhabitants, when they spoke to me about the poverty in town, always referred to it with a certain satisfaction, as though pluming themselves over me, because they knew it. I remember that when I was in London, the old inhabitants there also rather boasted when they spoke of the poverty of London. The case is the same with us.] {2}
And I wanted to have a sight of this poverty of which I had been told. Several times I set out in the direction of the Khitroff market-place, but on every occasion I began to feel uncomfortable and ashamed. "Why am I going to gaze on the sufferings of people whom I cannot help?" said one voice. "No, if you live here, and see all the charms of city life, go and view this also," said another voice. In December three years ago, therefore, on a cold and windy day, I betook myself to that centre of poverty, the Khitroff market-place. This was at four o'clock in the afternoon of a week-day. As I passed through the Solyanka, I already began to see more and more people in old garments which had not originally belonged to them, and in still stranger foot-gear, people with a peculiar, unhealthy hue of countenance, and especially with a singular indifference to every thing around them, which was peculiar to them all. A man in the strangest of all possible attire, which was utterly unlike any thing else, walked along with perfect unconcern, evidently without a thought of the appearance which he must present to the eyes of others. All these people were making their way towards a single point. Without inquiring the way, with which I was not acquainted, I followed them, and came out on the Khitroff market-place. On the market-place, women both old and young, of the same description, in tattered cloaks and jackets of various shapes, in ragged shoes and overshoes, and equally unconcerned, notwithstanding the hideousness of their attire, sat, bargained for something, strolled about, and scolded. There were not many people in the market itself. Evidently market-hours were over, and the majority of the people were ascending the rise beyond the market and through the place, all still proceeding in one direction. I followed them. The farther I advanced, the greater in numbers were the people of this sort who flowed together on one road. Passing through the market-place and proceeding along the street, I overtook two women; one was old, the other young. Both wore something ragged and gray. As they walked they were discussing some matter. After every necessary word, they uttered one or two unnecessary ones, of the most improper character. They were not intoxicated, but merely troubled about something; and neither the men who met them, nor those who walked in front of them and behind them, paid any attention to the language which was so strange to me. In these quarters, evidently, people always talked so. Ascending the rise, we reached a large house on a corner. The greater part of the people who were walking along with me halted at this house. They stood all over the sidewalk of this house, and sat on the curbstone, and even the snow in the street was thronged with the same kind of people. On the right side of the entrance door were the women, on the left the men. I walked past the women, past the men (there were several hundred of them in all) and halted where the line came to an end. The house before which these people were waiting was the Lyapinsky free lodging-house for the night. The throng of people consisted of night lodgers, who
I halted where the line of men ended. Those nearest me began to stare at me, and attracted my attention to them by their glances. The fragments of garments which covered these bodies were of the most varied sorts. But the expression of all the glances directed towards me by these people was identical. In all eyes the question was expressed: "Why have you, a man from another world, halted here beside us? Who are you? Are you a self-satisfied rich man who wants to enjoy our wretchedness, to get rid of his tedium, and to torment us still more? or are you that thing which does not and can not exist,—a man who pities us?" This query was on every face. You glance about, encounter some one's eye, and turn away. I wished to talk with some one of them, but for a long time I could not make up my mind to it. But our glances had drawn us together already while our tongues remained silent. Greatly as our lives had separated us, after the interchange of two or three glances we felt that we were both men, and we ceased to fear each other. The nearest of all to me was a peasant with a swollen face and a red beard, in a tattered caftan, and patched overshoes on his bare feet. And the weather was eight degrees below zero. {3} For the third or fourth time I encountered his eyes, and I felt so near to him that I was no longer ashamed to accost him, but ashamed not to say something to him. I inquired where he came from? he answered readily, and we began to talk; others approached. He was from Smolensk, and had come to seek employment that he might earn his bread and taxes. "There is no work," said he: "the soldiers have taken it all away. So now I am loafing about; as true as I believe in God, I have had nothing to eat for two days." He spoke modestly, with an effort at a smile. A sbiten{4}-seller, an old soldier, stood near by. I called him up. He poured out his sbiten. The peasant took a boiling-hot glassful in his hands, and as he tried before drinking not to let any of the heat escape in vain, and warmed his hands over it, he related his adventures to me. These adventures, or the histories of them, are almost always identical: the man has been a laborer, then he has changed his residence, then his purse containing his money and ticket has been stolen from him in the night lodging-house; now it is impossible to get away from Moscow. He told me that he kept himself warm by day in the dram-shops; that he nourished himself on the bits of bread in these drinking places, when they were given to him; and when he was driven out of them, he came hither to the Lyapinsky house for a free lodging. He was only waiting for the police to make their rounds, when, as he had no passport, he would be taken to jail, and then despatched by stages to his place of settlement. "They say that the inspection will be made on Friday," said he, "then they will arrest me. If I can only get along until Friday." (The jail, and the journey by stages, represent the Promised Land to him.)
As he told his story, three men from among the throng corroborated his statements, and said that they were in the same predicament. A gaunt, pale, long-nosed youth, with merely a shirt on the upper portion of his body, and that torn on the shoulders, and a cap without a visor, forced his way sidelong through the crowd. He shivered violently and incessantly, but tried to smile disdainfully at the peasants' remarks, thinking by this means to adopt the proper tone with me, and he stared at me. I offered him some sbiten; he also, on taking the glass, warmed his hands over it; but no sooner had he begun to speak, than he was thrust aside by a big, black, hook-nosed individual, in a chintz shirt and waistcoat, without a hat. The hook-nosed man asked for some sbiten also. Then came a tall old man, with a mass of beard, clad in a great-coat girded with a rope, and in bast shoes, who was drunk. Then a small man with a swollen face and tearful eyes, in a brown nankeen round-jacket, with his bare knees protruding from the holes in his summer trousers, and knocking together with cold. He shivered so that he could not hold his glass, and spilled it over himself. The men began to reproach him. He only smiled in a woe-begone way, and went on shivering. Then came a crooked monster in rags, with pattens on his bare feet; then some sort of an officer; then something in the ecclesiastical line; then something strange and nose-less,—all hungry and cold, beseeching and submissive, thronged round me, and pressed close to the sbiten. They drank up all the sbiten. One asked for money, and I gave it. Then another asked, then a third, and the whole crowd besieged me. Confusion and a press resulted. The porter of the adjoining house shouted to the crowd to clear the sidewalk in front of his house, and the crowd submissively obeyed his orders. Some managers stepped out of the throng, and took me under their protection, and wanted to lead me forth out of the press; but the crowd, which had at first been scattered over the sidewalk, now became disorderly, and hustled me. All stared at me and begged; and each face was more pitiful and suffering and humble than the last. I distributed all that I had with me. I had not much money, something like twenty rubles; and in company with the crowd, I entered the Lyapinsky lodging-house. This house is huge. It consists of four sections. In the upper stories are the men's quarters; in the lower, the women's. I first entered the women's place; a vast room all occupied with bunks, resembling the third-class bunks on the railway. These bunks were arranged in two rows, one above the other. The women, strange, tattered creatures, both old and young, wearing nothing over their dresses, entered and took their places, some below and some above. Some of the old ones crossed themselves, and uttered a petition for the founder of this refuge; some laughed and scolded. I went up-stairs. There the men had installed themselves; among them I espied one of those to whom I had given money. [On catching sight of him, I all at once felt terribly abashed, and I made haste to leave the room. And it was with a sense of absolute crime that I quitted that house and returned home. At home I entered over the carpeted stairs into the ante-room, whose floor was covered with cloth; and having removed my fur coat, I sat down to a dinner of five courses, waited on by two lackeys in dress-coats, white neckties, and white gloves.
Thirty years ago I witnessed in Paris a man's head cut off by the guillotine in the presence of thousands of spectators. I knew that the man was a horrible criminal. I was acquainted with all the arguments which people have been devising for so many centuries, in order to justify this sort of deed. I knew that they had done this expressly, deliberately. But at the moment when head and body were severed, and fell into the trough, I groaned, and apprehended, not with my mind, but with my heart and my whole being, that all the arguments which I had heard anent the death-penalty were arrant nonsense; that, no matter how many people might assemble in order to perpetrate a murder, no matter what they might call themselves, murder is murder, the vilest sin in the world, and that that crime had been committed before my very eyes. By my presence and non- interference, I had lent my approval to that crime, and had taken part in it. So now, at the sight of this hunger, cold, and degradation of thousands of persons, I understood not with my mind, but with my heart and my whole being, that the existence of tens of thousands of such people in Moscow, while I and other thousands dined on fillets and sturgeon, and covered my horses and my floors with cloth and rugs,—no matter what the wise ones of this world might say to me about its being a necessity,—was a crime, not perpetrated a single time, but one
CHAPTER III.
That very evening, on my return from the Lyapinsky house, I related my impressions to a friend. The friend, an inhabitant of the city, began to tell me, not without satisfaction, that this was the most natural phenomenon of town life possible, that I only saw something extraordinary in it because of my provincialism, that it had always been so, and always would be so, and that such must be and is the inevitable condition of civilization. In London it is even worse. Of course there is nothing wrong about it, and it is impossible to be displeased with it. I began to reply to my friend, but with so much heat and ill-temper, that my wife ran in from the adjoining room to inquire what had happened. It appears that, without being conscious of it myself, I had been shouting, with tears in my voice, and flourishing my hands at my friend. I shouted: "It's impossible to live thus, impossible to live thus, impossible!" They made me feel ashamed of my unnecessary warmth; they told me that I could not talk quietly about any thing, that I got disagreeably excited; and they proved to me, especially, that the existence of such unfortunates could not possibly furnish any excuse for imbittering the lives of those about me.
I felt that this was perfectly just, and held my peace; but in the depths of my soul I was conscious that I was in the right, and I could not regain my composure.
And the life of the city, which had, even before this, been so strange and repellent to me, now disgusted me to such a degree, that all the pleasures of a life of luxury, which had hitherto appeared to me as pleasures, become tortures to me. And try as I would, to discover in my own soul any justification whatever for our life, I could not, without irritation, behold either my own or other people's drawing-rooms, nor our tables spread in the lordly style, nor our equipages and horses, nor shops, theatres, and assemblies. I could not behold alongside these the hungry, cold, and down-trodden inhabitants of the Lyapinsky house. And I could not rid myself of the thought that these two things were bound up together, that the one arose from the other. I remember, that, as this feeling of my own guilt presented itself to me at the first blush, so it persisted in me, but to this feeling a second was speedily added which overshadowed it.
When I mentioned my impressions of the Lyapinsky house to my nearest friends and acquaintances, they all gave me the same answer as the first friend at whom I had begun to shout; but, in addition to this, they expressed their approbation of my kindness of heart and my sensibility, and gave me to understand that this sight had so especially worked upon me because I, Lyof Nikolaevitch, was very kind and good. And I willingly believed this. And before I had time to look about me, instead of the feeling of self-reproach and regret, which I had at first experienced, there came a sense of satisfaction with my own kindliness, and a desire to exhibit it to people.
"It really must be," I said to myself, "that I am not especially responsible for this by the luxury of my life, but that it is the indispensable conditions of existence that are to blame. In truth, a change in my mode of life cannot rectify the evil which I have seen: by altering my manner of life, I shall only make myself and those about me unhappy, and the other miseries will remain the same as ever. And therefore my problem lies not in a change of my own life, as it had first seemed to me, but in aiding, so far as in me lies, in the amelioration of the situation of those unfortunate beings who have called forth my compassion. The whole point lies here,—that I am a very kind, amiable man, and that I wish to do good to my neighbors." And I began to think out a plan of beneficent activity, in which I might exhibit my benevolence. I must confess, however, that while devising this plan of beneficent activity, I felt all the time, in the depths of my soul, that that was not the thing; but, as often happens, activity of judgment and imagination drowned that voice of conscience within me. At that juncture, the census came up. This struck me as a means for instituting that benevolence in which I proposed to exhibit my charitable disposition. I knew of many charitable institutions and societies which were in existence in Moscow, but all their activity seemed to me both wrongly directed and insignificant in comparison with what I intended to do. And I devised the following scheme: to arouse the sympathy of the wealthy for the poverty of the city, to collect money, to get people together who were desirous of assisting in this matter, and to visit all the refuges of poverty in company with the census, and, in addition to the work of the census, to enter into communion with the unfortunate, to learn the particulars of their necessities, and to assist them with money, with work, by sending them away from Moscow, by placing their children in school, and the old people in hospitals and asylums. And not only that, I thought, but these people who undertake this can be formed into a permanent society, which, by dividing the quarters of Moscow among its members, will be able to see to it that this poverty and beggary shall not be bred; they will incessantly annihilate it at its very inception; then they will fulfil their duty, not so much by healing as by a course of hygiene for the wretchedness of the city. I fancied that there would be no more simply needy, not to mention abjectly poor persons, in the town, and that all of us wealthy individuals would thereafter be able to sit in our drawing-rooms, and eat our five-course dinners, and ride in our carriages to theatres and assemblies, and be no longer annoyed with such sights as I had seen at the Lyapinsky house.
Having concocted this plan, I wrote an article on the subject; and before sending it to the printer, I went to some acquaintances, from whom I hoped for sympathy. I said the same thing to every one whom I met that day (and I applied chiefly to the rich), and nearly the same that I afterwards printed in my memoir; proposed to take advantage of the census to inquire into the wretchedness of Moscow, and to succor it, both by deeds and money, and to do it in such a manner that there should be no poor people in Moscow, and so that we rich ones might be able, with a quiet conscience, to enjoy the blessings of life to which we were accustomed. All listened to me attentively and seriously, but nevertheless the same identical thing happened with every one of them without exception. No sooner did my hearers comprehend the question, than they seemed to feel awkward and somewhat mortified. They seemed to be ashamed, and principally on my account, because I was talking nonsense, and nonsense which it was impossible to openly characterize as such. Some external cause appeared to compel my hearers to be forbearing with this nonsense of mine.
"Ah, yes! of course. That would be very good," they said to me.
They all said something of this sort to me. They all agreed, but agreed, so it seemed to me, not in consequence of my convictions, and not in consequence of their own wish, but as the result of some outward cause, which did not permit them not to agree. I had already noticed this, and, since not one of them stated the sum which he was willing to contribute, I was obliged to fix it myself, and to ask: "So I may count on you for three hundred, or two hundred, or one hundred, or twenty-five rubles?" And not one of them gave me any money. I mention this because, when people give money for that which they themselves desire, they generally make haste to give it. For a box to see Sarah Bernhardt, they will instantly place the money in your hand, to clinch the bargain. Here, however, out of all those who agreed to contribute, and who expressed their sympathy, not one of them proposed to give me the money on the spot, but they merely assented in silence to the sum which I suggested. In the last house which I visited on that day, in the evening, I accidentally came upon a large company. The mistress of the house had busied herself with charity for several years. Numerous carriages stood at the door, several lackeys in rich liveries were sitting in the ante-chamber. In the vast drawing-room, around two tables and lamps, sat ladies and young girls, in costly garments, dressing small dolls; and there were several young men there also, hovering about the ladies. The dolls prepared by these ladies were to be drawn in a lottery for the poor.
The sight of this drawing-room, and of the people assembled in it, struck me very unpleasantly. Not to mention the fact that the property of the persons there congregated amounted to many millions, not to mention the fact that the mere income from the capital here expended on dresses, laces, bronzes, brooches, carriages, horses, liveries, and lackeys, was a hundred-fold greater than all that these ladies could earn; not to mention the outlay, the trip hither of all these ladies and gentlemen; the gloves, linen, extra time, the candles, the tea, the sugar, and the cakes had cost the hostess a hundred times more than what they were engaged in making here. I saw all this, and therefore I could understand, that precisely here I should find no sympathy with my mission: but I had come in order to make my proposition, and, difficult as this was for me, I said what I intended. (I said very nearly the same thing that is contained in my printed article.)
Out of all the persons there present, one individual offered me money, saying that she did not feel equal to going among the poor herself on account of her sensibility, but that she would give money; how much money she would give, and when, she did not say. Another individual and a young man offered their services in going about among the poor, but I did not avail myself of their offer. The principal person to whom I appealed, told me that it would be impossible to do much because means were lacking. Means were lacking because all the rich people in Moscow were already on the lists, and all of them were asked for all that they could possibly give; because on all these benefactors rank, medals, and other dignities were bestowed; because in order to secure financial success, some new dignities must be secured from the authorities, and that this was the only practical means, but this was extremely difficult.
On my return home that night, I lay down to sleep not only with a presentment that my idea would come to nothing, but with shame and a consciousness that all day long I had been engaged in a very repulsive and disgraceful business. But I did not give up this undertaking. In the first place, the matter had been begun, and false shame would have prevented my abandoning it; in the second place, not only the success of this scheme, but the very fact that I was busying myself with it, afforded me the possibility of continuing to live in the conditions under which I was then living; failure entailed upon me the necessity of renouncing my present existence and of seeking new paths of life. And this I unconsciously dreaded, and I could not believe the inward voice, and I went on with what I had begun.
Having sent my article to the printer, I read the proof of it to the City Council (Dum). I read it, stumbling, and blushing even to tears, I felt so awkward. And I saw that it was equally awkward for all my hearers. In answer to my question at the conclusion of my reading, as to whether the superintendents of the census would accept my proposition to retain their places with the object of becoming mediators between society and the needy, an awkward silence ensued. Then two orators made speeches. These speeches in some measure corrected the awkwardness of my proposal; sympathy for me was expressed, but the impracticability of my proposition, which all had approved, was demonstrated. Everybody breathed more freely. But when, still desirous of gaining my object, I afterwards asked the superintendents separately: Were they willing, while taking the census, to inquire into the needs of the poor, and to retain their posts, in order to serve as go-betweens between the poor and the rich? they all grew uneasy again. They seemed to say to me with their glances: "Why, we have just condoned your folly out of respect to you, and here you are beginning it again!" Such was the expression of their faces, but they assured me in words that they agreed; and two of them said in the very same words, as though they had entered into a compact together: "We consider ourselves MORALLY BOUND to do this." The same impression was produced by my communication to the student-census-takers, when I said to them, that while taking our statistics, we should follow up, in addition to the objects of the census, the object of benevolence. When we discussed this, I observed that they were ashamed to look the kind-hearted man, who was talking nonsense, in the eye. My article produced the same impression on the editor of the newspaper, when I handed it to him; on my son, on my wife, on the most widely different persons. All felt awkward, for some reason or other; but all regarded it as indispensable to applaud the idea itself, and all, immediately after this expression of approbation, began to express their doubts as to its success, and began for some reason (and all of them, too, without exception) to condemn the indifference and coldness of our society and of every one, apparently, except themselves.
In the depths of my own soul, I still continued to feel that all this was not at all what was needed, and that nothing would come of it; but the article was printed, and I prepared to take part in the census; I had contrived the matter, and now it was already carrying me a way with it.
CHAPTER IV.
At my request, there had been assigned to me for the census, a portion of the Khamovnitchesky quarter, at the Smolensk market, along the Prototchny cross-street, between Beregovoy Passage and Nikolsky Alley. In this quarter are situated the houses generally called the Rzhanoff Houses, or the Rzhanoff fortress. These houses once belonged to a merchant named Rzhanoff, but now belong to the Zimins. I had long before heard of this place as a haunt of the most terrible poverty and vice, and I had accordingly requested the directors of the census to assign me to this quarter. My desire was granted.
On receiving the instructions of the City Council, I went alone, a few days previous to the beginning of the census, to reconnoitre my section. I found the Rzhanoff
I approached from Nikolsky Alley. Nikolsky Alley ends on the left in a gloomy house, without any gates on that side; I divined from its appearance that this was the Rzhanoff fortress.
Passing down Nikolsky Street, I overtook some lads of from ten to fourteen years of age, clad in little caftans and great-coats, who were sliding down hill, some on their feet, and some on one skate, along the icy slope beside this house. The boys were ragged, and, like all city lads, bold and impudent. I stopped to watch them. A ragged old woman, with yellow, pendent cheeks, came round the corner. She was going to town, to the Smolensk market, and she groaned terribly at every step, like a foundered horse. As she came alongside me, she halted and drew a hoarse sigh. In any other locality, this old woman would have asked money of me, but here she merely addressed me.
"Look there," said she, pointing at the boys who were sliding, "all they do is to play their pranks! They'll turn out just such Rzhanoff fellows as their fathers."
One of the boys clad in a great-coat and a visorless cap, heard her words and halted: "What are you scolding about?" he shouted to the old woman. "You're an old Rzhanoff nanny-goat yourself!"
I asked the boy:
"And do you live here?"
"Yes, and so does she. She stole boot-legs," shouted the boy; and raising his foot in front, he slid away.
The old woman burst forth into injurious words, interrupted by a cough. At that moment, an old man, all clad in rags, and as white as snow, came down the hill in the middle of the street, flourishing his hands [in one of them he held a bundle with one little kalatch and baranki" {6}]. This old man bore the appearance of a person who had just strengthened himself with a dram. He had evidently heard the old woman's insulting words, and he took her part.
"I'll give it to you, you imps, that I will!" he screamed at the boys, seeming to direct his course towards them, and taking a circuit round me, he stepped on to the sidewalk. This old man creates surprise on the Arbata by his great age, his weakness, and his indigence. Here he was a cheery laboring-man returning from his daily toil.
I followed the old man. He turned the corner to the left, into Prototchny Alley, and passing by the whole length of the house and the gate, he disappeared through the door of the tavern.
Two gates and several doors open on Prototchny Alley: those belonging to a tavern, a dram-shop, and several eating and other shops. This is the Rzhanoff fortress itself. Every thing here is gray, dirty, and malodorous—both buildings and locality, and court- yards and people. The majority of the people whom I met here were ragged and half-clad. Some were passing through, others were running from door to door. Two were haggling over some rags. I made the circuit of the entire building from Prototchny Alley and Beregovoy Passage, and returning I halted at the gate of one of these houses. I wished to enter, and see what was going on inside, but I felt that it would be awkward. What should I say when I was asked what I wanted there? I hesitated, but went in nevertheless. As soon as I entered the court-yard, I became conscious of a disgusting odor. The yard was frightfully dirty. I turned a corner, and at the same instant I heard to my left and overhead, on the wooden balcony, the tramp of footsteps of people running, at first along the planks of the balcony, and then on the steps of the staircase. There emerged, first a gaunt woman, with her sleeves rolled up, in a faded pink gown, and little boots on her stockingless feet. After her came a tattered man in a red shirt and very full trousers, like a petticoat, and with overshoes. The man caught the woman at the bottom of the steps.
"You shall not escape," he said laughing.
"See here, you cock-eyed devil," began the woman, evidently flattered by this pursuit; but catching sight of me, she shrieked viciously, "What do you want?"
As I wanted nothing, I became confused and beat a retreat. There was nothing remarkable about the place; but this incident, after what I had witnessed on the other side of the yard, the cursing old woman, the jolly old man, and the lads sliding, suddenly presented the business which I had concocted from a totally different point of view. I then comprehended for the first time, that all these unfortunates to whom I was desirous of playing the part of benefactor, besides the time, when, suffering from cold and hunger, they awaited admission into the house, had still other time, which they employed to some other purpose, that there were four and twenty hours in every day, that there was a whole life of which I had never thought, up to that moment. Here, for the first time, I understood, that all those people, in addition to their desire to shelter themselves from the cold and to obtain a good meal, must still, in some way, live out those four and twenty hours each day, which they must pass as well as everybody else. I comprehended that these people must lose their tempers, and get bored, show courage, and grieve and be merry. Strange as this may seem, when put into words, I understood clearly for the first time, that the business which I had undertaken could not consist alone in feeding and clothing thousands of people, as one would feed and drive under cover a thousand sheep, but that it must consist in doing good to them.
And then I understood that each one of those thousand people was exactly such a man,—with precisely the same past, with the same passions, temptations, failings, with the same thoughts, the same perplexities,—exactly such a man as myself, and then the thing that I had undertaken suddenly presented itself to me as so difficult that I felt my powerlessness; but the thing had been begun, and I went on with it.
CHAPTER V.
On the first appointed day, the student enumerators arrived in the morning, and I, the benefactor, joined them at twelve o'clock. I could not go earlier, because I had risen at ten o'clock, then I had drunk my coffee and smoked, while waiting on digestion. At twelve o'clock I reached the gates of the Rzhanoff house. A policeman pointed out to me the tavern with a side entrance on Beregovoy Passage, where the census-takers had ordered every one who asked for them to be directed. I entered the tavern. It was very dark, ill- smelling, and dirty. Directly opposite the entrance was the counter, on the left was a room with tables, covered with soiled cloths, on the right a large apartment with pillars, and the same sort of little tables at the windows and along the walls. Here and there at the tables sat men both ragged and decently clad, like laboring-men or petty tradesmen, and a few women drinking tea. The tavern was very filthy, but it was instantly apparent that it had a good trade.
There was a business-like expression on the face of the clerk behind the counter, and a clever readiness about the waiters. No sooner had I entered, than one waiter prepared to remove my coat and bring me whatever I should order. It was evident that they had been trained to brisk and accurate service. I inquired for the enumerators.
"Vanya!" shouted a small man, dressed in German fashion, who was engaged in placing something in a cupboard behind the counter; this was the landlord of the tavern, a Kaluga peasant, Ivan Fedotitch, who hired one-half of the Zimins' houses and sublet them to lodgers. The waiter, a thin, hooked-nosed young fellow of eighteen, with a yellow complexion, hastened up.
"Conduct this gentleman to the census-takers; they went into the main building over the well."
The waiter, carefully guarding his white trousers, led me cautiously past this place of frozen and unfrozen uncleanness to one of the buildings. The people who were passing through the yard and along the balconies all stopped to stare at me. It was evident that a respectably dressed man was a curiosity in these localities.
The young man asked a woman "whether she had seen the census-takers?" And three men simultaneously answered his question: some said that they were over the well, but others said that they had been there, but had come out and gone to Nikita Ivanovitch. An old man dressed only in his shirt, who was wandering about the centre of the yard, said that they were in No. 30. The young man decided that this was the most probable report, and conducted me to No. 30 through the basement entrance, and darkness and bad smells, different from that which existed outside. We went down-stairs, and proceeded along the earthen floor of a dark corridor. As we were passing along the corridor, a door flew open abruptly, and an old drunken man, in his shirt, probably not of the peasant class, thrust himself out. A washerwoman, wringing her soapy hands, was pursuing and hustling the old man with piercing screams. Vanya, my guide, pushed the old man aside, and reproved him.
"It's not proper to make such a row," said me, "and you an officer, too!" and we went on to the door of No. 30.
Vanya gave it a little pull. The door gave way with a smack, opened, and we smelled soapy steam, and a sharp odor of spoilt food and tobacco, and we entered into total darkness. The windows were on the opposite side; but the corridors ran to right and left between board partitions, and small doors opened, at various angles, into the rooms made of uneven whitewashed boards. In a dark room, on the left, a woman could be seen washing in a tub. An old woman was peeping from one of these small doors on the right. Through another open door we could see a red-faced, hairy peasant, in bast shoes, sitting on his wooden bunk; his hands rested on his knees, and he was swinging his feet, shod in bast shoes, and gazing gloomily at them.
At the end of the corridor was a little door leading to the apartment where the census-takers were. This was the chamber of the mistress of the whole of No. 30; she rented the entire apartment from Ivan Feodovitch, and let it out again to lodgers and as night-quarters. In her tiny room, under the tinsel images, sat the student census- taker with his charts; and, in his quality of investigator, he had just thoroughly interrogated a peasant wearing a shirt and a vest. This latter was a friend of the landlady, and had been answering questions for her. The landlady herself, an elderly woman, was there also, and two of her curious tenants. When I entered, the room was already packed full. I pushed my way to the table. I exchanged greetings with the student, and he proceeded with his inquiries. And I began to look about me, and to interrogate the inhabitants of these quarters for my own purpose.
It turned out, that in this first set of lodgings, I found not a single person upon whom I could pour out my benevolence. The landlady, in spite of the fact that the poverty, smallness and dirt of these quarters struck me after the palatial house in which I dwell, lived in comfort, compared with many of the poor inhabitants of the city, and in comparison with the poverty in the country, with which I was thoroughly familiar, she lived luxuriously. She had a feather-bed, a quilted coverlet, a samovar, a fur cloak, and a dresser with crockery. The landlady's friend had the same comfortable appearance. He had a watch and a chain. Her lodgers were not so well off, but there was not one of them who was in need of immediate assistance: the woman who was washing linen in a tub, and who had been abandoned by her husband and had children, an aged widow without any means of livelihood, as she said, and that peasant in bast shoes, who told me that he had nothing to eat that day. But on questioning them, it appeared that none of these people were in special want, and that, in order to help them, it would be necessary to become well acquainted with them.
When I proposed to the woman whose husband had abandoned her, to place her children in an asylum, she became confused, fell into thought, thanked me effusively, but evidently did not wish to do so; she would have preferred pecuniary assistance. The eldest girl helped her in her washing, and the younger took care of the little boy. The old woman begged earnestly to be taken to the hospital, but on examining her nook I found that the old woman was not particularly poor. She had a chest full of effects, a teapot with a tin spout, two cups, and caramel boxes filled with tea and sugar. She knitted stockings and gloves, and received monthly aid from some benevolent lady. And it was evident that what the peasant needed was not so much food as drink, and that whatever might be given him would find its way to the dram-shop. In these quarters, therefore, there were none of the sort of people whom I could render happy by a present of money. But there were poor people who appeared to me to be of a doubtful character. I noted down the old woman, the woman with the children, and the peasant, and decided that they must be seen to; but later on, as I was occupied with the peculiarly unfortunate whom I expected to find in this house, I made up my mind that there must be some order in the aid which we should bestow; first came the most wretched, and then this kind. But in the next quarters, and in the next after that, it was the same story, all the people had to be narrowly investigated before they could be helped. But unfortunates of the sort whom a gift of money would convert from unfortunate into fortunate people, there were none. Mortifying as it is to me to avow this, I began to get disenchanted, because I did not find among these people any thing of the sort which I had expected. I had expected to find peculiar people here; but, after making the round of all the apartments, I was convinced that the inhabitants of these houses were not peculiar people at all, but precisely such persons as those among whom I lived. As there are among us, just so among them; there were here those who were more or less good, more or less stupid, happy and unhappy. The unhappy were exactly such unhappy beings as exist among us, that is, unhappy people whose unhappiness lies not in their external conditions, but in themselves, a sort of unhappiness which it is impossible to right by any sort of bank-note whatever.