Fires were rare in the city, perhaps because the houses stood far apart and had large gardens between them. The fire department with a high observation tower across from the city park always seemed to be closed. In actuality, a fireman was always on duty in the tower night and day. But I never saw the fire apparatus, nor the firemen racing anywhere.
All of the homesteads had stables, cowsheds, and barns. I do not know if Viaz’ma was famous for its cattle, or whether this was generally the case in provincial towns, but Viaz’ma cows were a lovely sight. Around five o’clock the herds returned from grazing. I often hung out the window looking at the cows. How gorgeous they were! As far as I remember, there were four herds in Viaz’ma of 150 cows, perhaps more: the Bel’skoe, Smolenskoe, Kaluzh-skoe, and Moskovskoe. The herdsmen gathered the cows in the morning and brought them back in the evening for milking. All had their barns filled with hay and oil-cake for winter. Besides draught horses, there were few others. Some people had a
Peasant wagons, loaded with hay and assorted viands, drifted from all directions to Sennaia Square where the Thursday market was held. Sometimes large fairs were held on the Torgovaia Square.
The city club stood on the Sennaia. All the merchants, bank directors, bureaucrats, etc. were members. I was never there, of course, but my father would go whenever serious matters concerning the town were to be decided.
The central telephone station stood on the corner of Sennaia and Kaluzh-skaia. Many, many people had telephones in the city and in the countryside. When you called, a young lady would answer: “Whom do you wish, Petr Petrovich or Mariia Nikolaevna?” “Well, Petr Petrovich.” “He’s not home. Wait, I will ask. Dasha, where did you say Petr Petrovich was going? Aah, to father Aleksei, or maybe the pharmacy. Wait, I will find him and connect you.” They all knew who was where, and who was drinking tea with whom, who was at the club, and all the news in general. The telephone station stood in a convenient spot, everything could be seen from its windows. And, in general, everybody knew each other—who got engaged, whose milk cow went dry, or who sprained a foot. Nothing malicious came to anyone from this.
The railroad station was a bit over a
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to the Trans-Siberian express. In Cheliabinsk, the train met the St. Petersburg express and, combined, crossed Siberia. The travelers all unfailingly bought the famous Viaz’ma gingerbread.
Viaz’ma had many cabmen. There were five carriages on the Torgovaia and five or six on the Nikitskaia. The rest were at the station. The cabmen were good, some even excellent. All of them were first-rate psychologists. Whenever someone arrived and hired a cabbie, the latter would engage the visitor in conversation. They always wanted to know what business one had. The uninteresting ones were taken directly to the Nemirov Hotel. To the more intriguing, the cabman would say: “Instead of stopping at the hotel, master (or mistress), why don’t you go to Kolesnikov (or to Stroganov, Sinel’nikov, etc…) they will be hospitable to you.” And truly, the merchant ladies liked to entertain visitors. They liked to joke and gossip with someone from the capital or even from just another city. The cabmen never made a mistake; they always brought only good people. Old Mr. Hogue told me: “I traveled all over Russia and never stayed in a hotel except in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa. And it never cost me anything, either. The coachmen always suggested someone they knew. Having been driven to a house, I would be treated like a long-lost brother. A very hospitable people.”
In the summertime, only officers and their ladies used the coachmen to ride around. But in winter, the coachmen harnessed two or three horses to a sleigh, and the youth would race around until dark. High schoolers, clerks, young merchants—all rode around beneath fur rugs.
We had a steady coachman named Stepan. He knew all of us well. His horses were superb and his carriage had rubber tires. When we needed a coachman, we would call Nemirov: “Is Stepan free?” “He’ll be right over.” His sleigh was also a fine one, with a spirited troika.
The coachmen were all monarchists and patriots. They knew everybody in town, and lectured our youth. They were listened to, since they were smart men.
The author’s family lived in Viaz’ma, a city mid-way between Moscow and Smolensk, but they summered on their ancestral estate to the north. This is the setting of the following passage.
This was the last summer that I spent in Glubokoe with the whole family. As always, we went there in May. The weather that year was magnificent. As usual, a crowd of people had gathered at Glubokoe. Grandmother had finally received permission from the department of the interior to start an archeolog-
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ical dig on Kamennoe Lake. The archeologist was to come from Pskov in June.
The heat which came in April melted the snows so quickly that the streams and rivers ran unexpectedly high. The lakes rose more than usual. The plywood plant had a millpond for soaking birch and aspen logs, but the lake rose over the breakwater and washed away many logs. We noticed the drifting logs the first time we went boating. Strangely enough, they floated vertically so only their ends showed. These foot-wide circles floated just above the surface. We hooked one with a gaff and pulled it back to the mill. My older brother Peter decided that it would be fun and a good turn to fish out all the logs. The next day we took iron hooks attached to ropes and went log- catching. After a day we be came so proficient that we would tow in ten or more logs at a time. In this manner we fished out more than 200 logs so that they became scarce in the lake.
One day grandmother suggested a picnic on Babinensk Lake. This lake, fairly narrow but two
There was a legend about Babinensk Lake and mountain. Supposedly a brigand named Lapin once had a hideout there. The place even had his name, “Lapin’s Mountain.” No one knew when he had lived there, but the peasants claimed that on moonlit nights Lapin would descend the mountain on horseback to water his gray stallion at the lake.
We went and arranged all the picnic paraphernalia by the lakeside. I got the urge to climb Lapin’s Mountain. It was very steep. The paths on it were only those of animals turning unexpectedly either left or right, crossed by other paths just like them. People said that there were roe deer and elk and wild oxen there, but I never saw any. There were bears and wolves and an occasional lynx. The animals did not alarm me. The apparition of Lapin scared me more, but they said he never appeared in the daytime. I scaled to the top. The view from there was gorgeous. Below was the bright-blue lake and distant inundated meadows to the right. On the other side of the mountain lay the half-moon Garusovo Lake, as if of red copper. A bright green serpentine valley opened to the south with a river snaking through it. Bluish pine forests stood in tiers on both its sides. It struck me that Lapin chose this mountain
