Lydia Davis - Almost No Memory

He wishes to see the ice-hills and sledges, and the frozen markets.

He goes to a Russian tragedy in five acts by mistake, thinking it is a French opera. Yet he expects in course of time to be able to converse with his friends the Sclavonians. He sees the Tauride, now lapsed to the crown, behind which is a winter garden laid out in parterres and gravel walks, filled with orange trees and other exotics, and evenly heated by a great number of stoves. The Neva is now blocked by large pieces of ice floating down from the Ladoga. Though the temperature has been down to twenty degrees Fahrenheit below freezing, that is not considered to be much at all here.

The Empress gives birth to an Archduchess. When the Court assembles to pay their respects, the person who most attracts attention is Prince Hypsilantes, the Hospodar of Wallachia, and the Greeks of his train.

There is not much variety in his mode of life. He studies Russian in the morning.

He begins to be very tired of this place and its inhabitants: their hospitality; the voracious gluttony on every side of him; their barefaced cheating; their conversation, with its miserable lack of information and ideas; their constant fear of Siberia; their coldness, dullness, and lack of energy. The Poles are infinitely the most gentlemanlike, and seem a superior order of men to their Russian masters.

He won’t remain here as long as he had intended, but will purchase two sledge kibitkas, and other supplies, and depart, not for Moscow, but for Archangel.

He imagines there must be something curious in driving reindeer on the ice of the White Sea.

To Archangel: The Mayor Makes a Speech

He buys two sledges covered with a tilt, furnishes them with a mattress, and lays in frozen beefsteaks, Madeira, brandy, and a large saucepan. For the trip he dresses in flannel, over that his ordinary clothes, over his boots fur shoes, over the fur shoes a pair of fur boots, covers his head with a cap of blue Astrachan wool, wraps himself in a sable pelisse, and over it all throws a bear skin.

On the road there are no accommodations, so he sees inside the houses of the peasantry. The whole family lives in one room in suffocating heat and smell and with a number of cockroaches, which swarm in the wooden huts. The dirt is excessive. But the people are civil, hospitable, cheerful, and intelligent, though addicted to spirits, quarrelsome among themselves, and inclined to cheat. They are more like the common Irish than anyone else he has seen. Peter the Great has by no means succeeded in forcing them to abandon their beards.

In the cottage, people come to see him dine. Twenty or thirty women crowd around him, examining him and asking him questions.

He passes through Ladoga and Vitigra. Approaching Kargossol, he counts from a distance nineteen churches, most of which have five balloon-like domes, gilt, copper, or painted in the most gaudy colors, and thinks it must be a magnificent town, but the number of churches here almost equals the number of houses.

In Archangel the Archbishop speaks Latin very fluently, but does not know whether the Samoyeds of his diocese are Pagans or Christians.

His hostess is anxious to show that they, too, have fruit, and brings in some specimens preserved. Here they have in the woods a berry with a strong taste of turpentine.

The mayor comes in during the evening and makes a speech to him in Russian three quarters of an hour long.

The temperature in Archangel is fifty-one degrees below freezing, both his hands are frozen, and Pauwells has a foot frozen. He goes northeast of Archangel, procures three sledges and twelve reindeer, and sets out over the unbeaten snow in search of a horde of Samoyeds. He finds them exactly on the Arctic circle in an immense plain of snow surrounded by several hundred reindeer. They are Pagans.

Back in Archangel, the cold has increased, and he is forced to bake his Madeira in an oven to get at it, and to carve his meat with an axe. It is nearly seventy degrees below freezing, barely three points above the point of congelation of mercury.

Moscow Is Immense and Extraordinary

Moscow is immense and extraordinary, after a journey over the worst road he has ever traveled in his life through a forest which scarcely ever suffered any interruption but continued with dreary uniformity from one capital to another.

He begins to be able to read Russian fairly easily, and speak it sufficiently. Poole has also picked up enough.

He sends his younger brother a Samoyed sledge and three reindeer cut out of the teeth of a sea horse by a peasant at Archangel.

The extent of Moscow is prodigious despite its small population because in no quarter of the city do the houses stand contiguous. The Kremlin is certainly the most striking quarter, and nearly thirty gilt domes give it a most peculiar appearance.

He is much interested by the passage of regiments composed of some of the wandering nations. One day there passed two thousand Bashkirs from the Oremburg frontiers on their lean desert horses, armed with lances and bows, some clothed in complete armor, some with the twisted coat of mail or hauberk, some with grotesque caps, others with iron helmets. These people are Mohammedans. Their chief is dressed in a scarlet caftan, their music is a species of flute which they place in the corner of their mouths, singing at the same time. They are almost always at war with the Kirghese.

A regiment of Calmucs passes through. Their features are scarcely human. They worship the Dalai Lama. He also sees a number of Kirghese of the lesser and middle hordes.

He continues his study of Russian, finds the language sonorous, but thinks it hardly repays anyone the trouble of learning it, because there are so few original authors — upon the introduction of literature it was found much easier to translate. The national epic poem, however, about the conquest of the Tartars of Casan, would be good if it weren’t for the insufferable monotony of the meter.

Another Trip to Petersburg

Proceeding along the frozen river, the postilions missed their road, came to a soft place on the ice, and the horses broke through. The kibitka in which he lay could not be opened from the inside and the postilions paid no attention to him, being concerned only with trying to save their horses. One of them woke Poole in his sledge to request an axe. Poole saw the vehicle half-floating in the water and had just time to open the leather covering. He jumped out upon the ice with his writing desk and the carriage went down to the bottom. One horse drowned.

In Petersburg, the Carnival was taking place: theaters erected on the river, ice-hills, long processions of sledges, multitudes of people, and public masquerades given morning and evening.

In Moscow Again, He Plans the Continuation of His Tour

Now Moscow is very dull during the fast.

He plans to get a large boat, embark at Casan, and float down the Volga to Astracan sitting on a sofa. He will reach the banks of the Caspian.

The carriages he will use have not a particle of iron in their whole composition.

There is a sect of Eunuchs who do this to themselves for the kingdom of heaven. They had at one time propagated their doctrines to such an extent that the government was forced to interfere, afraid of depopulation. It seized a number of them and sent them to the mines of Siberia.

He is preparing for his journey, and he will be accompanied as far as Astracan by an American of South Carolina, Mr. Poinsett, one of the few liberal and literary and gentlemanlike men he has seen emerge from the forests of the New World.

He has hired a Tartar interpreter, whom his valet de chambre is somewhat afraid of and calls “Monsieur le Tartare.”

He is waiting for letters from Casan about the condition of the roads, but because it is spring and travel by both sledge and carriage is precarious, there is almost no communication between towns.