Rayevsky rode off to the city, and I went with him. We rode into the city, which presented an amazing spectacle. Turks gloomily surveyed us from their flat roofs. Armenians noisily thronged the narrow streets. Their little boys ran in front of our horses, crossing themselves and repeating, ‘Christians! Christians!…’ We rode up to the fortress which our army was entering. To my utter astonishment here I met my Artemy, who was already riding around the city, despite strict orders that no one from our camp should absent himself without special permission.
The city streets are narrow and crooked. The houses are fairly tall. Large numbers of people were walking about – the shops had been closed. After spending a couple of hours in the city I returned to the camp; the Turkish commander and four pashas who had been taken prisoner were already there. One of the pashas, a skinny old man and a terrible busybody, was talking very excitedly to our generals. On seeing me in my tailcoat he asked who I was. Pushchin accorded me the title of poet. The pasha crossed his arms on his chest and bowed to me, telling me through his interpreter, ‘Blessed is the hour when we meet a poet. The poet is brother to the dervish. He has neither fatherland, nor earthly blessings; and whereas we, poor wretches, worry ourselves about glory, power, treasures, he is the equal of the lords of the earth, and they bow down to him.’
This Oriental greeting on the part of the pasha delighted us all. I went to have a look at the Turkish commander. As I entered his tent, I met his favourite page, a black-eyed boy of about fourteen, dressed in rich Albanian clothes. The Turkish commander, a grey-haired old man of most ordinary appearance, was sitting in a state of profound dejection. Around him was a crowd of our officers. As I left his tent, I saw a young man, half-naked, in a sheepskin cap, with a club in one hand and a wineskin (outre) on his shoulders. He was shouting at the top of his voice. I was told that he was my brother, the dervish, who had come to welcome the victors. They had difficulty driving him away.
CHAPTER FIVE
Arzrum. Asian luxury. The climate. The cemetery. Satirical
verse. The seraskier’s palace. The Turkish pasha’s harem. The
plague. Death of Burtsov. Departure from Arzrum. Return
journey. A Russian journal.
Arzrum (incorrectly called Arzerum, Erzrum, Erzron) was founded about AD 415 in the time of Theodosius the Second1 and named Theodosiopolis. Nothing of historical note is connected with its name. All I knew about it was that here, according to the testimony of Hadji-Baba,2 calves’ ears, rather than human ones, were presented to the Persian consul as reparation for some insult.
Arzrum is considered the principal city of Asiatic Turkey. It is estimated to have as many as 100,000 inhabitants, but this figure appears to be exaggerated. Its houses are of stone, the roofs covered with turf, which gives the city an extremely strange appearance if one looks on it from high up.
The main overland trade route between Europe and the East runs through Arzrum. But few goods are sold there; they are not put out for sale here, as Tournefort3 observed when he wrote that in Arzrum a sick person could die from the impossibility of obtaining a spoonful of rhubarb, while whole sackfuls of it were in stores in the city.
I know of no expression more meaningless than the words: Asiatic luxury. This saying probably came into existence at the time of the Crusades, when poor knights, having left the bare walls and oak chairs of their castles, saw for the very first time red divans, colourful carpets, daggers with coloured gemstones on their hilts. Nowadays one can say, Asiatic poverty, Asiatic swinishness and so on; but luxury, of course, is one of Europe’s possessions. In Arzrum you cannot buy for any money what you can easily find in a grocer’s in any small town in Pskov province.
The Arzrum climate is severe. The city is built in a depression, lying about seven thousand feet above sea level. The surrounding mountains are covered with snow for most of the year. The land is treeless, but fertile. It is irrigated by a great number of springs and is criss-crossed in every direction by watercourses. Arzrum is famous for its water. The Euphrates flows two miles from the city. But everywhere there are fountains. At each one a tin ladle hangs on a chain, and the worthy Muslims drink it and cannot praise it too highly. Timber is obtained from Sagan-Lu.
In the Arzrum arsenal we found a large number of ancient firearms, helmets, chain-mail armour, sabres that had probably been rusting since the time of Godfrey.4 The mosques are low and dark. The cemetery is outside the city. Usually the headstones consist of columns adorned with stone turbans. The graves of two or three pashas are distinguished by greater ornamentation, but there is nothing elegant about them: no taste, no imagination… One traveller writes that of all the cities in Asia only in Arzrum did he find a tower clock – and that was broken. Innovations devised by the sultan have not yet reached Arzrum. The troops still wear their picturesque Eastern costume. Between Arzrum and Constantinople there exists the same rivalry as that between Kazan and Moscow. Here is the beginning of a satirical poem written by the janissary Amin-Oglu.5
The giaours now do Stambul’s praises sing,
But tomorrow they will crush it
With iron heel, like a sleeping serpent,
And departing will leave it thus.
Stambul fell asleep before disaster struck.
Stambul has renounced the Prophet,
There the cunning West has darkened
The wisdom of the ancient East.
Stambul, for the sweet delights of vice,
Has forsaken prayer and sabre.
Stambul has forgotten the sweat of battle
And quaffs wine during hours of prayer.
There the pure zeal of faith has faded,
There wives walk the cemeteries;
They send old women to the crossroads,
And they bring husbands to the harems.
And the bribed eunuch slumbers on.
But lofty Arzrum is not like that,
Our Arzrum where many roads do meet.
We do not sleep in shameful luxury,
We do not dip our unruly goblet into wine
To scoop out debauchery, fire and commotion.
We fast: with their sober stream
The holy waters do give us drink;
Our warrior horsemen fly into battle
A fearless and mettlesome host.
There is no access to our harems,
The eunuchs are strict and incorruptible,
And the wives do humbly dwell there.
I stayed in the seraskier’s palace, in the rooms where the harem was situated. For a whole day I wandered along countless passages, from room to room, from roof to roof, from staircase to staircase. The palace appeared to have been pillaged; the seraskier, deciding to flee, took away whatever he could. Divans were stripped of their covering and carpets taken up. While I was wandering around the city the Turks would beckon to me and poke their tongues out. (They took every Frank for a doctor.) This became tiresome and I was ready to answer in kind. I spent the evenings with the clever and amiable Sukhorukov:6 the similarity of our pursuits brought us together. He told me of his literary projects, of his historical research which he had once embarked upon with such zeal and success. The modest nature of his aspirations and needs is truly touching. It would be a pity if they are not fulfilled.
The seraskier’s palace presented a constantly lively scene: there, where the gloomy pasha used to smoke in silence amongst his wives and shameless boys, his conqueror was receiving reports of the victories of his generals, distributing pashaliks7 and discussing the latest novels. The Pasha of Mush went to Count Paskevich to ask if he could have his nephew’s place. As he walked through the palace the solemn Turk stopped in one of the rooms, uttered a few words with great animation and then became very pensive: in that very room his father had been beheaded on the seraskier’s orders. Here are truly Oriental impressions for you! The glorious Bey-Bulat,8 terror of the Caucasus, has arrived in Arzrum with two village-elders from Circassian settlements that had rebelled during th
e recent wars. They dined with Count Paskevich. Bey-Bulat is a man of about thirty-five, stunted and broad-shouldered. Either he does not speak Russian, or he pretends not to. His arrival in Arzrum really delighted me: he had already been my guarantee for my safe passage through the mountains and Kabarda.
Osman-Pasha, taken prisoner near Arzrum and sent to Tiflis together with the seraskier, pleaded with Count Paskevich for the safety of the harem he had left behind in Arzrum. For the first few days it seemed to have been forgotten, but once, over dinner, when we were discussing how quiet was the Muslim city, now occupied by ten thousand troops and where not one of its inhabitants made a single complaint of attempted rape against any of our soldiers, the count remembered Osman-Pasha’s harem and ordered Mr Abramovich to call at the pasha’s house and ask his wives if they were content and if they had been insulted in any way. I asked permission to accompany Mr A. We set off. Mr A. took as interpreter a Russian officer whose story is most interesting. At the age of eighteen he was captured by the Persians. He was castrated and for over twenty years he served as eunuch in the harem of one of the Shah’s sons. He told of his misfortune, of his stay in Persia with touching candour. From a physiological point of view his testimony was invaluable.
We arrived at Osman-Pasha’s house; we were led into an open room, furnished very decently, tastefully even – in the stained glass windows were passages from the Koran. One of them struck me as most ingenious for a Muslim harem: ‘It behoves you to tie and to untie’. We were brought coffee in small cups inlaid with silver. An old man with a venerable white beard, Osman-Pasha’s father, had come on behalf of the wives to thank Count Paskevich – but Mr A. said flatly that he had been sent to interview Osman-Pasha’s wives and wanted to see them, to have their personal assurance that, in their husband’s absence, everything was to their satisfaction. Hardly had the Persian prisoner managed to translate all this when the old man, to show his indignation, clicked his tongue and declared that in no way could he accede to our demands and that if the pasha were to discover on his return that other men had seen his wives he would order that the old man, together with all the harem servants, had his head chopped off. The servants, among whom there was not one eunuch, confirmed the old man’s words, but Mr A. was immovable. ‘You fear your Pasha,’ he told them, ‘and I my seraskier, and I dare not disobey his orders.’ There was nothing one could do about it. We were led through a garden, where two feeble little fountains were flowing. We approached a small stone building. The old man stood between us and the door, cautiously opened it without taking his hands off the catch, and we saw a woman covered in a white yashmak from her head to her yellow slippers. Our interpreter repeated the question to her: we heard the mumbling of a seventy-year-old woman; Mr A. interrupted her. ‘She’s the Pasha’s mother, but I’ve been sent to speak to his wives. Bring me one of them.’ Everyone was astonished at the giaour’s quick-wittedness. The old woman went away and a minute later returned with a woman covered just as she was; from beneath her veil came a pleasant young voice. She thanked the count for his concern for the poor widows and praised the behaviour of the Russians. Mr A. was skilful enough to engage her in further conversation. Meanwhile, as I looked around me, I suddenly saw, right over the door, a small round window, and in this small round window were five or six round heads with inquisitive black eyes. I wanted to tell Mr A. of my discovery, but the little heads started nodding and winking, and several tiny fingers started threatening me, giving me to understand that I must keep quiet. I did as I was told and did not share my discovery. All of them had pleasant faces, but there wasn’t a single beauty among them; the woman at the door who was conversing with Mr A. was probably mistress of the harem, the treasury of hearts, the Rose of Love – at least, that’s what I imagined.
Finally Mr A. concluded his questioning. The door closed. The faces at the window disappeared. We looked around the garden and the house, and returned extremely satisfied with our diplomacy.
And so I saw a harem: few Europeans have succeeded in doing that. There’s the basis of an Oriental novel for you!
The war appeared to be over. I started making preparations for the return journey. On July 14th I went to the public baths and I did not feel happy with life. I cursed the filthiness of the towels, the wretched service and so on. How can one compare Arzrum baths to those in Tiflis!
When I returned to the palace I learned from Konovitsyn, who was on guard duty, that the plague had broken out in Arzrum. At once I visualized all the horrors of quarantine and that same day decided to leave the army. The thought that the plague is nearby can be very unpleasant for one who is not used to it. Wishing to shake off these feelings I went for a stroll in the bazaar. I stopped in front of an armourer’s and had begun to inspect a dagger, when suddenly someone struck me on the shoulder. I looked round: before me stood a dreadful beggar. He was as pale as death; tears streamed from his red, festering eyes. The thought of the plague once again flashed through my mind. I pushed the beggar away with a feeling of indescribable revulsion and returned home extremely unhappy with my stroll.
Curiosity, however, prevailed; next day I went off with a doctor to the camp where plague victims were kept. I did not dismount and took the precaution of standing with my back to the wind. A sick man was led to us from a tent; he was very pale and staggered as if he were drunk. Another victim lay unconscious. After inspecting the plague victim and assuring the poor wretch of a speedy recovery, I turned my attention to the two Turks who led him under the arms, undressed him, and touched him as though the plague were nothing worse than a cold. I must confess that I felt ashamed of my European timidity in the presence of such indifference and hastily returned to the city.
On July 19th, when I went to bid Count Paskevich farewell, I found him deeply distressed. He had received the sad news that General Burtsov had been killed at Bayburt.9 It was a pity about the valiant Burtsov, but the incident could prove equally disastrous for our entire small army which had penetrated deeply into foreign territory and was surrounded by hostile people ready to rise up the moment they heard rumours of the first defeat. And so war resumed! The count suggested I witness further military undertakings. But I was in a hurry to return to Russia… The count presented me with a Turkish sabre as a souvenir. I keep it now as a memento of my journeying in the footsteps of that brilliant hero across the conquered wastes of Armenia. That very same day I left Arzrum.
I travelled back to Tiflis along a road that was already familiar to me. Places that not long before had been enlivened by the presence of fifteen thousand troops were now silent and melancholy. I crossed Sagan-Lu and could barely recognize the place where our camp had stood. In Gumry I had to endure a three-day quarantine. Once again I saw Bezobdal and left the high plains of cold Armenia for sultry Georgia. I arrived in Tiflis on August 1st. Here I stayed for several days in amiable and cheerful company. I spent a few evenings in the gardens, to the sound of music and Georgian songs. Then I pushed on further. My crossing of the mountains was memorable for the fact that near Kobi I was overtaken by a storm during the night. In the morning, as I rode past Kazbek, I witnessed a wonderful sight. Ragged white clouds were drifting across the summit of the mountain and a solitary monastery,10 lit up by the sun’s rays, seemed to be floating in the air, borne along by the clouds. The Frenzied Gorge also appeared to me in all its grandeur: the gully, filled with rain water, surpassed in its ferocity the Terek itself which was thundering menacingly close by. The banks had been torn to pieces; huge rocks had been shifted and blocked the flow of water. A large number of Ossetians were working on the road. I crossed safely. At last I emerged from the narrow defile into the open expanses of the broad plains of Great Kabarda. At Vladikavkaz I found Dorokhov11 and Pushchin. Both had travelled to the spa to receive treatment for wounds inflicted in the current campaigns. On a table in Pushchin’s room I found some Russian journals. The first article I came across was a review of one of my works. In it myself and my poetry were reviled in ever
y conceivable way. I started reading it aloud. Pushchin stopped me, demanding that I read it with greater mimetic skill. I should point out that the review12 was embellished with the usual conceits of our critics: it was a conversation between a sacristan, a woman baker of communion bread and a proof-reader, the Zdravomysl of this little comedy. Pushchin’s request struck me as so amusing that the annoyance aroused in me by reading the article disappeared completely and all of us roared with whole-hearted laughter.
Such was the first welcome I received in my dear fatherland.
NOTES
THE TALES OF THE LATE IVAN PETROVICH BELKIN
FROM THE EDITOR
1. The Minor: Comedy (1782) by Denis Fonvizin (1745–92).
2. corvée: Compulsory service due to a landowner.
3. quit-rent: Money payments in lieu of service.
THE SHOT
1. Baratynsky: From the poem The Ball (1828) by E. A. Baratynsky (1800–44).
2. ‘An Evening on Bivouac’: A military sketch (1822) by A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsksy (1797 – 1837).
3. Burtsov… his poetry: A. P. Burtsov (died 1813), hussar officer, friend of the poet Denis Davydov (1784 – 1839) and famous for his dissolute life. Davydov addressed to him the verse epistles ‘To Burtsov. Invitation to Lunch’ (1804) and ‘To Burtsov’ (1804).