Michael Strogoff; Or the Courier of the Czar: A Literary Classic Page 6

  In the avenues and long alleys there was already a large assemblage of people—the sun, which had risen at. Four o’clock, being well above the horizon—Russians, Siberians, Germans, Cossacks, Turcomans, Persians, Georgians, Greeks, Turks, Hindoos, Chinese, an extraordinary mixture of Europeans and Asiatics, talking, wrangling, haranguing, and bargaining. Everything which can be bought or sold seemed to be heaped up in this square. Porters, horses, camels, asses, boats, caravans, every description of conveyance that would serve for the transport of merchandise had been accumulated on the fairground. Furs, precious stones, silks, Cashmere shawls, Turkey carpets, weapons from the Caucasus, gauzes from Smyrna and Ispahan, Tiflis armour, caravan teas, European bronzes, Swiss clocks, velvets and silks from Lyons, English cottons, harness, fruits, vegetables, minerals from the Ural, malachite, lapis-lazuli, spices, perfumes, medicinal herbs, wood, tar, rope, horn, pumpkins, water-melons, etc.—all the products of India, China, Persia, from the shores of the Caspian and the Black Sea, from America and Europe, were united at this corner of the globe.

  It is scarcely possible truly to portray the moving mass of human beings surging here and there, the excitement, the confusion, the hubbub; demonstrative as were the natives and the inferior classes, they were completely outdone by their visitors. There were merchants from Central Asia, who had occupied a year in escorting their merchandise across its vast plains, and who would not again see their shops and counting-houses for another year to come. In short, of such importance is this fair of Nijni-Novgorod, that the sum total of its transactions amounts yearly to not less than a hundred million roubles.*

  On one of the open spaces between the quarters of this temporary city were numbers of mountebanks of every description; harlequins and acrobats, deafening the visitors with the noise of their instruments and their vociferous cries; gipsies from the mountains, telling fortunes to the credulous fools who are ever to be found in such assemblies; Zingaris or Tsiganes—a name which the Russians give to the gipsies who are the descendants of the ancient Copts—singing their wildest melodies and dancing their most original dances; comedians of foreign theatres, acting Shakespeare, adapted to the taste of spectators who crowded to witness them. In the long avenues the bear showmen accompanied their tour-footed dancers, menageries resounded with the hoarse cries of animals under the influence of the stinging whip or red-hot irons of the tamer; and, besides all these numberless performers, in the middle of the central square, surrounded by a circle four deep of enthusiastic amateurs, was a band of “mariners of the Volga,” sitting on the ground, as on the deck of their-vessel, imitating the action of rowing, guided by the stick of the master of the orchestra, the veritable helmsman of this imaginary vessel!

  A whimsical and pleasing custom!

  Suddenly, according to a time-honoured observance in the fair of Nijni-Novgorod, above the heads of the vast concourse a flock of birds was allowed to escape from the cages in which they had been brought to the spot In return for a few copecks charitably offered by some good people, the bird-fanciers opened the prison doors of their captives, who flew out in hundreds, uttering their joyous notes.

  It should here be mentioned that England and France, at all events, were this year represented at the great fair of Nijni-Novgorod by two of the most distinguished products of modern civilisation, Messrs. Harry Blount and Alcide Jolivet.

  Alcide Jolivet, an optimist by nature, seemed to find everything agreeable, and as by chance both lodging and food were to his taste, he jotted down in his book some memoranda particularly favourable to the town of Nijni-Novgorod.

  Harry Blount, on the contrary, having in vain hunted for a supper, had been obliged to find a resting-place in the open air. He therefore looked at it all from another point of view, and was preparing an article of the most withering character against a town in which the landlords of the inns refused to receive travellers who only begged leave to be flayed, “morally and physically.”

  Michael Strogoff, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his cherry-stemmed pipe, appeared the most indifferent and least impatient of men; yet, from a certain contraction of his eyebrows every now and then, a careful observer would have perceived that he was burning to be off.

  For about two hours he had been walking about the streets, only to find himself invariably at the fair again. As he passed among the groups of buyers and sellers he discovered that those who came from countries on the confines of Asia manifested great uneasiness. Their trade was visibly suffering from it.

  Another symptom also was to be remarked. In Russia military uniforms appear on every occasion. Soldiers are wont to mix freely with the crowd, the police agents being almost invariably aided by a number of Cossacks, who, lance on shoulder, keep order in the crowd of three hundred thousand strangers.

  But on this occasion the soldiers, Cossacks and the rest, did not put in an appearance at the great market. Doubt less, a sudden order to move having been foreseen, they were restricted to their barracks.

  Nevertheless, though no soldiers were to be seen, it was not so with their officers. Since the evening before, aides-de-camp, leaving the governor’s palace, galloped in every direction. An unusual movement was going forward which a serious state of affairs could alone account for. There were innumerable couriers on the roads both to Wladimir and to the Ural Mountains. The exchange of telegraphic despatches between Moscow and St. Petersburg was incessant.

  Michael Strogoff found himself in the central square when the report spread that the head of police had been summoned by a courier to the palace of the governor-general. An important despatch from Moscow, it was said, was the cause of it.

  “The fair is to be closed,” said one.

  “The regiment of Nijni-Novgorod has received the route,” declared another.

  “They say that the Tartars menace Tomsk!”

  “Here is the head of police!” was shouted on every side.

  A loud clapping of hands was suddenly raised, which subsided by degrees, and finally was succeeded by absolute silence. The head of police arrived in the middle of the central square, and it was seen by all that he held in his hand a despatch.

  Then, in a loud voice, he read the following announcements:—

  “By order of the Governor of Nijni-Novgorod.

  “1st. All Russian subjects are forbidden to quit the province upon any pretext whatsoever.

  “2nd. All strangers of Asiatic origin are commanded to leave the province within twenty-four hours.”

  * A kind of light cake.

  * About £15,720,000 sterling.

  CHAPTER VI.

  BROTHER AND SISTER.

  HOWEVER disastrous these measures might prove to private interests, they were, under the circumstances, perfectly justifiable.

  “All Russian subjects are forbidden to leave the province;” if Ivan Ogareff was still in the province, this would at any rate prevent him, unless with the greatest difficulty, from rejoining Feofar-Khan, and becoming a very formidable lieutenant to the Tartar chief.

  “All foreigners of Asiatic origin are ordered to leave the province in four-and-twenty hours;” this would send off in a body all the traders from Central Asia, as well as the bands of Bohemians, gipsies, etc., having more or less sympathy with the Tartar or Mongolian populations, and which had been collected together at the fair. So many heads, so many spies—undoubtedly the state of affairs required their expulsion.

  It is easy to understand the effect produced by these two thunder-claps bursting over a town like Nijni-Novgorod, so densely crowded with visitors, and of which the commerce so greatly surpassed that of all other places in Russia. The natives, therefore, whom business called beyond the Siberian frontier could not leave the province for a time at least The tenor of the first article of the order was express; it admitted of no exception. All private interests must yield to the public weal. As to the second article of the proclamation, the order of expulsion which it contained admitted of no evasion either. It only concerned fo
reigners of Asiatic origin, but these could do nothing but pack up their merchandise and go back the way they came. As to the mountebanks, of which there were a considerable number, and who had nearly a thousand versts to go before they could reach the nearest frontier, for them it was simply misery.

  At first there rose against this unusual measure a murmur of protestation, a cry of despair, but this was quickly suppressed by the presence of the Cossacks and agents of police.

  Immediately, what might be called the exodus from the immense plain began. The awnings in front of the stalls were folded up; the theatres were taken to pieces; the song and the dance ceased; the shows were silent; the fires were put out; the acrobats’ ropes were lowered; the old broken-winded horses of the travelling vans came back from their sheds. Agents and soldiers with whip or stick stimulated the tardy ones, and made nothing of pulling down the tents even before the poor Bohemians had left them.

  Under these energetic measures the square of Nijni-Novgorod would, it was evident, be entirely evacuated before the evening, and to the tumult of the great fair would succeed the silence of the desert.

  It must again be repeated—for it was a necessary aggravation of these severe measures—that to all those nomads chiefly concerned in the order of expulsion even the steppes of Siberia were forbidden, and they would be obliged to hasten to the south of the Caspian Sea, either to Persia, Turkey, or the plains of Turkestan. The post of the Ural, and the mountains which form, as it were a prolongation of the river along the Russian frontier, they were not allowed to pass. They were therefore under the necessity of travelling a thousand versts before they could tread a free soil.

  Just as the reading of the proclamation by the head of the police came to an end, an idea darted instinctively into the mind of Michael Strogoff.

  “What a singular coincidence,” thought he, “between this proclamation expelling all foreigners of Asiatic origin, and the words exchanged last evening between those two gipsies of the Zingari race. ‘The Father himself sends us where we wish to go,’ that old man said. But ‘the Father’ is the emperor! He is never called anything else among the people. How could those gipsies have foreseen the measure taken against them? How could they have known it beforehand, and where do they wish to go? Those are suspicious people, and it seems to me that to them the government proclamation must be more useful than injurious.”

  But these reflections, though certainly correct, were completely dispelled by another which drove every other thought out of Michael’s mind. He forgot the Zingaris, their suspicious words, the strange coincidence which resulted from the proclamation. . . . The remembrance of the young Livonian girl suddenly rushed into his mind.

  “Poor child!” he thought to himself. “She cannot now cross the frontier.”

  In truth the young girl was from Riga; she was Livonian, consequently Russian, and now could not leave Russian territory! The permit which had been given her before the new measures had been promulgated was evidently no longer available. All the routes to Siberia had just been pitilessly closed to her, and, whatever was the motive which was taking her to Irkutsk, she was now forbidden to go there.

  This thought greatly occupied Michael Strogoff. He said to himself, vaguely at first, that, without neglecting anything of what was due to his important mission, it would perhaps be possible for him to be of some use to this brave girl; and this idea pleased him. Knowing how serious were the dangers which he, an energetic and vigorous man, would have personally to encounter through a country of which however the roads were familiar, he could not conceal from himself how infinitely greater they would prove to a young unprotected girl. As she was going to Irkutsk, she would be obliged to follow the same road as himself, she would have to pass through the bands of invaders, as he was about to attempt doing himself. If, moreover, and according to all probability, she had at her disposal only the resources necessary for a journey taken under ordinary circumstances, how could she manage to accomplish it under conditions which late events would render not only perilous but expensive?

  “Well,” said he, “if she takes the route to Perm, it is nearly impossible but that I shall fall in with her. Then, I will watch over her without her suspecting it; and as she appears to me as anxious as myself to reach Irkutsk, she will cause me no delay.”

  But one thought leads to another. Michael Strogoff had till now reasoned on the supposition of doing a kind action, of rendering a service; but now another idea flashed into his brain, and the question presented itself under quite a new aspect.

  “The fact is,” said he to himself, “that I have much more need of her than she can have of me. Her presence will be useful in drawing off suspicion from me. A man travelling alone across the steppe, may be easily guessed to be a courier of the Czar. If, on the contrary, this young girl accompanies me, I shall appear, in the eyes of all, the Nicholas Korpanoff of my podorojna. Therefore, she must accompany me Therefore, I must find her again at any cost. It is not probable that since yesterday evening she has been able to get a carriage and leave Nijni-Novgorod. I must look for her. And may God guide me!”

  Michael left the great square of Nijni-Novgorod, where the tumult produced by the carrying out of the prescribed measures had now reached its height. Recriminations from the banished strangers, shouts from the agents and Cossacks who were using them so brutally, together made an indescribable uproar. The girl for whom he searched could not be there. It was now nine o’clock in the morning. The steamboat did not start till twelve. Michael Strogoff had therefore nearly two hours to employ in searching for her whom he wished to make his travelling companion.

  He crossed the Volga again and hunted through the quarters on the other side, where the crowd was much less considerable. He visited every road, both in the high and low towns. He entered the churches, the natural refuge for all who weep, for all who suffer. Nowhere did he meet with the young Livonian.

  “And yet,” he repeated, “she could not have left Nijni-Novgorod yet. Well have another look.”

  Michael wandered about thus for two hours. He went on without stopping, feeling no fatigue, but obeying the potent instinct which allowed him no room for thought. All was in vain.

  It then occurred to him that perhaps the girl had not heard of the order—though this was improbable enough, for such a thunder-clap could not have burst without being heard by all. Evidently interested in knowing the smallest news from Siberia, how could she be ignorant of the measures taken by the governor, measures which concerned her so directly?

  But, if she was ignorant of it, she would come in an hour to the quay, and there some merciless agent would brutally refuse her a passage! At any cost, he must see her beforehand, and do what he could to enable her to avoid such a repulse.

  But all his endeavours were in vain, and he at length almost despaired of finding her again.

  It was now eleven o’clock, and Michael, though under any other circumstances it would have been useless, thought of presenting his podorojna at the office of the head of police. The proclamation evidently did not concern him, since the emergency had been foreseen for him, but he wished to make sure that nothing would hinder his departure from the town.

  Michael then returned to the other side of the Volga, to the quarter in which was the office of the head of police.

  An immense crowd was collected there; for though all foreigners were ordered to quit the province, they had notwithstanding to go through certain forms before they could depart.

  Without this precaution, some Russian more or less implicated in the Tartar movement would have been able, in a disguise, to pass the frontier—just those whom the order wished to prevent going. The strangers were sent away, but still had to gain permission to go.

  Mountebanks, gipsies, Tsignanes, Zingaris, mingled with merchants from Persia, Turkey, India, Turkestan, China, filled the court and offices of the police station.

  Every one was in a hurry, for the means of transport would be much sought after among this c
rowd of banished people, and those who did not set about it soon ran a great risk of not being able to leave the town in the prescribed time, which would expose them to some brutal treatment from the governor’s agents.

  Owing to the strength of his elbows Michael Strogoff was able to cross the court. But to get into the office and up to the clerk’s little window was a much more difficult business. However, a word into an inspector’s ear and a few judiciously given roubles were powerful enough to gain him a passage.

  The man, after taking him into the waiting-room, went to call an upper clerk.

  Michael Strogoff would not be long in making everything right with the police and being free in his movements.

  Whilst waiting, he looked about him, and what did he see? There, fallen, rather than seated, on a bench, was a girl, prey to a silent despair, although her face could scarcely be seen, the profile alone being visible against the wall.

  Michael Strogoff could not be mistaken. He instantly recognised the young Livonian.

  Not knowing the governor’s orders, she had come to the police office to get her pass signed. . . . They had refused to sign it No doubt she was authorized to go to Irkutsk, but the order was peremptory—it annulled all previous authorizations, and the routes to Siberia were closed to her.

  Michael, delighted at having found her again, approached the girl.

  She looked up for a moment and her face brightened on recognizing her travelling companion, She instinctively rose, and, like a drowning man who clutches at a spar, she was about to ask his help. . . . At that moment the agent touched Michael on the shoulder.

  “The head of police will see you,” he said.

  “Good,” returned Michael. And without saying a word to her for whom he had been searching all day, without reassuring her by even a gesture, which might compromise either her or himself, he followed the man through the crowd.