Lydia Davis - The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

There is some reason for refusing pigeons, too, and also hares.

Samara is the winter home of a number of Calmouks. Only during the summer do they wander with their flocks in the vast steppes on the Asiatic side and encamp in their circular tents of felt. The heat of the Steppe is suffocating. The blasts of wind during the summer immediately destroy the flocks exposed to them, which instantly rot. The Tartars and Calmouks make every species of laitage known in Europe and also ardent spirits they distill from cow’s and mare’s milk.

He comes upon a village as distinguished for the excessive cleanliness of the houses and the neatness of the gardens as the Russian habitations are for their dirt and filth.

The town of Astracan is inhabited by thirteen or fourteen different nations, each description of merchants in a separate caravanserai.

His next excursion before he proceeds to the northern provinces of Persia will be a short distance into the desert to the habitation of a Calmouk Prince. He wants to go hawking with his daughter the Princess, who with her pipe at her mouth hunts on the unbroken horses of the desert.

He is staying in a village inhabited exclusively by Tartars. He visits a Calmouk camp and enters the tent of the chief Lama. It is very neat and covered with white felt, the floor matted and strewn with rose leaves. The priest shows the idols and sacred books. He brings out the banner of silk painted with the twelve signs of the zodiac. Some banners are inscribed with prayers. These are placed at the door of the tent, in the wind: letting them flutter about is supposed to be equivalent to saying the prayers. The Lama orders tea: the leaves and stalks are pressed into a large square cake and this is boiled up with butter and salt in the Mongol manner. It forms a nauseous mixture, but he drinks it and then takes his leave, all the village coming out of their tents and going down with him to the waterside. At least a third of the men in the village are priests.

He proceeds through the desert, which extends to the foot of Mount Caucasus. How different it is from Archangel: terrible heat instead of terrible cold, a plain of sand instead of a plain of snow, herds of camels belonging to the Calmouks instead of flocks of reindeer.

The ground is so flat they have no trouble getting along in their kibitkas. But they are often fooled by the appearance of extensive ranges of hills on the horizons, which are actually merely small inequalities magnified by intervening vapors.

The careless servants lose most of the water they have brought along with them, and then they suffer from extreme thirst, for the pools are as salt as sea water: their bottoms and sides are covered with beautiful crystals exhaling a strong smell of violets.

The plants all taste of salt, the dews are salt, and even some milk he gets from a Tartar is brackish.

Then there are swarms of mosquitoes, and he can’t even talk or eat without having a mouthful of them. Sleeping is out of the question.

They cross a river where the water comes up to the windows of the carriage, which floats. They cross a marsh four miles broad and three or four feet deep.

In Kizliar he sells his kibitka and sends his carriage back to Moscow. He will cross the rest of the desert on horseback.

They spend the night in an encampment of Tartars, who bring them sour mare’s milk. Early in the morning they arrive at the residence of the Tartar Prince. The people of the village bring him an enormous sturgeon that is still alive and lay it at his feet.

In the courtyard he observes a man with long hair, contrary to custom.

He sets out for Derbend with an escort. The caravan is very oddly composed: he and his American companion, a Swiss, a Dutchman, a Mulatto, a Tartar of Rezan, a body of Lesgees for escort, two Jews, an envoy from one of the native Princes returning from Petersburg, and three Circassian girls whom one of the guides has bought in the mountains and is taking to sell at Baku.

In Derbend he has lodgings in the home of an absent Persian. He is sent carpets and cushions and inundated with fruits and pilaus. His apparent magnitude is directly as his distance: if he was a great man at Kizliar with one orderly man to wait on him, here he is twice as great, since he has two.

In the evening he rides out with Persian friends on a white horse with its tail dyed scarlet. The Persians amuse themselves trying to unhorse each other, while he himself admires the view of the Caspian Sea, the steep rock on which the town is situated, the gardens surrounding it, and part of the chain of Caucasus rising behind it.

The Russian commandant has given him an escort of Cossacks and Persians as far as the River Samoor to point out the most fordable parts and help them over.

The merchant of women is still part of the group. Now, because his girls attracted some attention in the earlier part of the journey, he encloses them in great sacks of felt, though the sun is burning hot.

It would be worthwhile for a traveler to enquire into the traditions of a colony of Jews who live in the Dagestan near the Samoor. The groundwork of their language is Hebrew, though apparently not intelligible to the Jews of other countries.

The country from the River Samoor to Baku is fit to be the garden of the world. The crops cultivated seem to be rice, maize, cotton, millet, and a kind of bearded wheat. From the woods come apples, pears, plums, pomegranates, quinces, and white mulberries often covered with pods of silk. Almost every bush and forest tree has a vine creeping up it covered with clusters of very tolerable grapes. The main draft animal is the buffalo, the antelope is the main wild animal, and the howls of the jackals in the mountains would have disturbed their rest if they hadn’t been so tired.

They are met by a large party of Persians headed by two brothers, who beg them to turn back to visit the Khan of Cuba. They refuse, and one brother declares they will not go farther and must fight their passage through, which they prepare to do. Since they are better armed, they would have been able to go on unmolested, but the merchant of women begs them not to desert him or he will be ruined: they have stolen his horses and say they will put him to death if he does not sell his women at their price. The party of travelers threatens to complain to the Khan at Cuba and the Persians restore the horses.

They rest in the evening at a rock called Beshbarmak, or “the five fingers,” which is a great sea mark on the Caspian. From there to Baku is almost a desert with now and then a ruined caravanserai.

The day after he arrives, he receives a visit from Cassim Elfina Beg, the principal Persian of the place.

All the innumerable arches he has seen have been pointed.

General Gurieff, the commandant, has made a party for them to see the famous sources of naphtha, and with him and Beg and several other Persians they ride out to the principal wells. The strong smell is perceptible at a great distance and the ground about appears of the consistency of hardened pitch. One of the wells yields white naphtha; in all the others it is black, but very liquid.

He rides five miles farther to see the everlasting fire and the adoration of the Magi. For about two miles square, if the earth is turned up and fire applied, the vapor that escapes inflames and burns until extinguished by a violent storm. In this way the peasants calcine their lime.