AT A FAIR

One misty morning in late October I arrived at Batum, pack on back, staff in hand, to all appearances a pilgrim or a tramp, and I drank tea at a farthing a gla.s.s in the fair.

"Pour it out full and running over," said a chance companion to the owner of the stall. "That's how we workmen like it; not half-full as for gentlefolk." The shopman, a silent and very dirty Turk, filled my gla.s.s and the saucer as well. And sipping tea and munching _bubliki_, we looked out upon all the sights of the _bazar_.

There lay around, in all the squalor that Turks love, the marvellous superabundance of a southern harvest--spread on sacks in the mud--grapes purple and silver-green, pomegranates in rusty thousands, large dew-fed yellow apples, luscious dirt-bespattered pears, such fruits that in London even the rich might look at and sigh for, but pa.s.s by reflecting that with the taxes so high they could not afford them, but here sold by ragam.u.f.fins to ragam.u.f.fins for greasy coppers; and not only these fruits, but quinces and peaches, the large yellow Caucasian _khurma_, the little blood-red _kizil_, and many unnamed rarities. They all surged up out of the waste of over-trodden mire, as if the pageantry of some fairy world had been arrested as it was disappearing into the earth.

Then, beside these gorgeous fruits, in mult.i.tudinous attendance, a confused array of scarlet runners, tomatoes, cabbages, out-tumbled sacks of glazy purple aubergines, mysterious-looking gigantic pumpkins, buckets full of pyramidal maize-cobs, yellow, white-sheathed.

The motley crowd of vendors, clamouring, gesticulating, are chiefly distinguished by their hats--the Arabs in white turbans, the Turks in dingy fezes jauntily c.o.c.ked over dark, unshaven faces, some fezes swathed in bright silk scarves; the Caucasians in golden fleece hats, bright yellow sheepskin busbies; the few Russians in battered peak caps, like porters' discarded head-gear; Persians in skull-caps; Armenians in shabby felts, astrakhans, or mud-coloured _bashliks_.

The trousers of the Christians all very tight, the trousers of the Mahometans baggy, rainbow-coloured--it is a jealous point of difference in these parts that the Turk keeps four or five yards of spare material in the seat of his trousers.

What a din! what a clamour!

"_Kopeika, kopeika, kopeika_."

"_Oko tre kopek, oko tre kopek, oko tre kopek._"

Thus Christians shout against Mussulmans over the grape-heaps--one farthing, one farthing, one farthing; oko (three pounds) three farthings, oko three farthings, oko three farthings. Fancy shouting oneself hoa.r.s.e to persuade pa.s.sers-by to buy grapes at a farthing a pound!

My companion at the tea-stall, a tramp-workman from Central Russia, was astonished at the price of the grapes.

"It is possible to say that that is cheap," said he. "When I return to Russia I will take forty pounds of them and sell them in the train at twopence-halfpenny (ten _copecks_); that will pay for my ticket, I think, in the fourth cla.s.s."

I watched the Turks trafficking, jingling their ancient rusty balances, manipulating their Turkish weights--the _oko_ is not Russian--and giving what was probably the most marvellous short weight in Europe. The three-pound _oko_ was often little more than a pound.

A native of Trebizond came and sat at our table. He wore carpet socks, and over them slippers with long toes curled upperward like certain specimens one may see in Bethnal Green Museum; on his head a straw-plaited, rusty fez swathed with green silk of the colour of a sun-beetle.

"The Italians have taken Tripoli," said the Russian, with a grin; "fancy letting those little people thump you so!"

"And the j.a.panese?" said a Caucasian quickly.

The Turk looked sulky.

"Italia will fall," said he. "She will fall yet, dishonourable country. They have stolen Tripoli. All you others look on and smile.

But it is an injustice. We shall cut the throats of all the Italians in Turkey. Will you look on then and smile?"

A Greek sn.i.g.g.e.red. There were many Greeks at the fair--they all wear blue as the Turks all wear red.

When the Turk had gone, the Greek exclaimed:

"There's a people, these Turks, stupid, stupid as sheep; all they need are horns ... and illiterate! When will that people wake up, eh?"

The Turks and the Greeks never cease to spit at one another, though the former can afford to feel dignified, victors of their wars with Greece. For the Italian the ordinary Turk has almost as much contempt as for the Greek. One said to me, as I thought, quite cleverly:

"A Greek is half an Italian, and the Italian is half a Frenchman, the Frenchman is half an Englishman, and you, my friend, are half a German. We have some respect for a German, for he is equal to a score of Greeks, a dozen Italians, or six Frenchmen, but we have no respect at all for the rest."

Twenty Arabs pa.s.sed us at the stall--all pashas, a Georgian informed me. They had arrived the night before from Trebizond and the desert beyond. Their procession through the ragged market was something to wonder at--a long file of warriors all over six feet high, broad, erect, with full flowing cloaks from their shoulders to their ankles, under the cloaks rich embroidered garments. Their faces were white and wrinkled, proud with all the a.s.surance of men who have never known what it is to stoop before the law and trade.

"They have come to make a journey through Russia," said the Georgian, "but their consul has turned them back. They will pray in the mosque and then return. It is inconvenient that they should go to Europe while there is the war."

A prowling gendarme in official blue and red came up to the stall and sniffed at the company. He pounced on me.

"Your letters of identification?" he asked.

I handed him a recommendation I had from the Governor of Archangel. He returned it with such deference that all the other customers stared.

Archangel was three thousand miles away. Russian governors have long arms.

It is unpleasant, however, to be scrutinised and thought suspicious. I finished my tea and then returned to the crowd. There was yet more of the fair to see--the stalls of Caucasian wares, the silks, the guns, the knives, Armenian and Persian carpets, Turkish slippers, sandals, yards of brown pottery, where at each turn one sees huge pitchers and water-jugs and jars that might have held the forty thieves. At one booth harness is sold and high Turkish saddles, at another pannier baskets for mules. A flood of colour on the pavement of a covered way--a great disarray of little shrivelled lemons, with stalks in many cases, for they have been gathered hard by. In the centre of the market-place are all the meat and fish shops, and there one may see huge sturgeon and salmon brought from the fisheries of the Caspian.

Garish notices inform in five languages that fresh caviare is received each day. Round about the butchers are sodden wooden stalls, labelled

SNOW MERCHANTS,

and there, wrapped in old rags, is much grey muddy snow melting and freezing itself. It has been brought on rickety lorries down the rutty tracks of the mountains, down, down into the lowland of Batum, where even October suns are hot.

Near the snow stalls behold veiled Turkish women just showing their noses out of bright rags, and tending the baking of chestnuts and maize cobs, sausages, pies, fish, and chickens. Here for eightpence one may buy a hot roast chicken in half a sheet of exercise-paper. The purchasers of hot chicken are many, and they take them away to open tables, where stand huge bottles of red wine and tubs of tomato-sauce.

The fowl is pulled to bits limb by limb, and the customer dips, before each bite, his bone in the common sauce-bowl.

Those who are poorer buy hot maize cobs and cabbage pies; those who feel hot already themselves are fain to go to the ice and lemonade stall, and spend odd farthings there. I bought myself _matsoni_, Metchnikof's sour milk and sugar, at a halfpenny a mug.

The market square is vast. It is wonderful the number of scenes enacting themselves at the same time. All the morning in another quarter men were trying on old hats and overcoats, and having the most amazing haggling over articles which are sold in London streets for a pot of ferns or a china b.u.t.ter-dish. In another part popular pictures are spread out, oleographs showing the Garden of Eden, or the terror of the Flood, or the Last Judgment, and such like; in another is a wilderness of home-made bamboo furniture, a speciality of Batum. And for all no lack of customers.

What a place of mystery is a Russian Fair, be it in the capital or at the outposts of the Empire! There is nothing that may not be found there. One never knows what extraordinary or wonderful thing one may light upon there. Among old rusty fire-irons one finds an ancient sword offered as a poker; among the litter of holy and secular secondhand books, hand-painted missals of the earliest Russian times.

Nothing is ever thrown away; even rusty nails find their way to the _bazar_. The miscellanies of a stall might upon occasion be what is left behind after a house removal. On one table at Batum I observed two moth-eaten rusty fezes, a battered but unopened tin of herrings in tomato-sauce, another tin half-emptied, a guitar with one string, a good hammer, a door-mat worn to holes, the clearing of a book-case, an old saucepan, an old kerosene stove, a broken coffee-grinder, and a rusty spring mattress. Under the stall were two Persian greyhounds, also for sale. The shopmen ask outrageous prices, but do not expect to be paid them.

"How much the kerosinka?" I asked in sport.

"Ten shillings," said an old, sorrowful-looking Persian.

I laughed sarcastically, and was about to move away. The Persian was taking the oil-stove to bits to show me its inward perfection.

"Name your price," said he.

I did not want a kerosene stove, but for fun I tried him on a low figure--

"Sixpence," I said.

"Whew!" The Persian looked about him dreamily. Did he sleep, did he dream?

"You don't buy a machine for sixpence," said he. "I bought this second-hand for eight-and-sixpence. I can offer it to you for nine shillings as a favour."

"Oh no, sixpence; not a farthing more."

I walked away.

"Five shillings," cried the Persian--"four shillings."