Five or ten minutes after I lay down, when according to the calculations of Philos I should already be asleep, he too would lie down on this improvised bed of mine, never on the side towards my face but at my back. At the head of this ‘ultra-comfortable’ bed there was a no less comfortable little table formed of books, tied together with a string, and dealing with the questions to which I was particularly drawn at the time. On this original library table I put all the things I might need at night such as an oil lamp, a notebook, bug-powder and so on.
One morning, several days after my arrival in New Bukhara, I found on my improvised table a large Jerusalem artichoke. I remember thinking at the time: ‘Ah, that minx of a landlady! In spite of her weight, she is so perceptive that she has immediately detected my weakness for Jerusalem artichokes,’ and I ate it with great pleasure.
I was quite convinced it was the landlady who had brought me this artichoke for the simple reason that so far no one besides her had entered my room. So, when I met her the same day in the corridor, I confidently thanked her and even teased her about the artichoke, but to my great surprise she made it clear to me that she knew nothing whatever about it.
The next morning I again saw a Jerusalem artichoke in the same place and, although I ate this one with no less pleasure, I began to think seriously about its mysterious appearance in my room.
What was my astonishment when on the third day the same thing was repeated! This time I firmly resolved to investigate, and find out without fail who was playing such puzzling but pleasant tricks on me; but for several days I could not discover anything, although punctually every morning I found a Jerusalem artichoke in the same place.
One morning, in order to clear up this matter, which mystified me more and more each day, I hid behind a barrel of fermenting kvass in the corridor. After a short time I saw Philos cautiously stealing past the barrel, carrying in his mouth a large Jerusalem artichoke. He went into my room and placed it just where I usually found them. From then on I began to keep a close watch on Philos.
The next morning when I was about to leave the house, I patted Philos on the left side of his head, which meant between us that I was going far away and was not taking him with me; but going out into the street, I walked only a short distance and then returned to the shop opposite our house and began watching my door.
Very soon out came Philos, and glancing round he set off in the direction of the market; surreptitiously, I followed. At the market, near the municipal scales, were a great many provision shops and a crowd of people. I saw Philos quietly walking through the crowd and did not let him out of my sight.
Passing in front of a shop, he looked round and, when he was sure that nobody was watching him, he quickly snatched a Jerusalem artichoke from a sack standing there and set off at a run, and when I returned home I found a Jerusalem artichoke in the usual place.
I will describe one more feature of the psyche of this astonishing dog. Usually, when I left home and did not take him with me, he lay outside my door and awaited my return. In my absence anyone who wished could enter my room, but he would not allow anyone to leave it. If anyone did wish to leave my room while I was away, this huge dog would begin growling and baring his teeth, which was quite enough to make any stranger’s heart sink into his boots.
I will tell for example about an incident, connected with my late really genuine friend Philos, which also took place in New Bukhara. The day before this incident a certain Pole, who was what was then called a travelling cinematographer, came to me, on the advice of local inhabitants who knew me as the only specialist in this work, with an order to repair one of his two containers for acetylene gas, by means of which these strolling artists projected their cinematographic pictures. I had promised this Pole to call soon in my spare time and repair his container.
But it turned out that the very day after our conversation, the Polish cinematographer noticed that the gas was beginning to escape from the other container also, and, fearing that his entire next show would break down, he decided not to wait for me to come, but to bring me the container himself. When he learned that I was not at home but that my room was open, he decided not to carry back the heavy container but to leave it in my room.
That morning I had gone to Old Bukhara, where I intended to visit a certain mosque, and since it is considered a great desecration, particularly among the followers of the Mohammedan religion, for dogs to enter temples or their adjacent courts, I was obliged to leave Philos at home, and as usual he was lying outside the door waiting for my return.
And so, as was his custom, Philos allowed the travelling cinematographer to enter the room, but to leave it—not on your life! And after several vain attempts to leave, this poor Pole had to resign himself to sitting on the floor of my room, without food or drink, fretting all the time, until I returned late in the evening.
And so, I was living in New Bukhara ... and this time I really began to work at making artificial paper flowers, to earn money and for various other advantages. In selling them I was able to enter almost all the places of interest to me in Bukhara, and, besides this, the income from this trade at that season of the year promised to be good.
It was near the end of Lent and, as is well known, the inhabitants of those places like to decorate their rooms and tables with flowers for the Easter Holidays. Moreover, that year the Jewish and Christian Easter almost coincided and, as the population of New Bukhara and part of Old Bukhara consisted mostly of people belonging to these two religions, the demand for artificial flowers was particularly great.
I buckled down to work in real earnest, day and night, leaving only rarely to go and see my dervish friends, or occasionally, on evenings when I was very tired, to play billiards at a near-by restaurant. In my youth I was very fond of this game and quite skilful at it.
One night, the evening of Holy Thursday, having finished my work, I had gone to play billiards, when suddenly during the game I heard noise and shouting in the next room. Throwing down my cue, I ran in and saw four men beating up another one.
Although I did not know these people at all or what the trouble was about, I ran to the rescue of the one who was being attacked. In my youth I used to be enthusiastic about Japanese ju-jutsu and Hivintzian fiz-les-loo and was always glad of an opportunity to apply my knowledge of these methods. So now also, just for the sport of it, I joined hotly in the fight, with the result that the two of us, the stranger and I, gave our opponents a good licking and soon forced them to retire.
At that time New Bukhara was still quite a new town. The population was made up of haphazard elements, including many exiles from Russia living under the surveillance of the police on what were called ‘wolf tickets’.
They were a motley crowd of people of all nationalities, some with a past, some perhaps with a future. Among them were criminals who had already served their terms, and also many political exiles either sent there by the courts or by the administrative orders widely used at that time in Russia.
The surroundings and conditions of life of these exiles were so wretched that all of them without exception gradually became drunkards; even those who formerly never drank and had no hereditary predisposition to drink fell quite naturally and easily into this common tendency.
The company in whose fight I had got mixed up belonged to this category. After the fight I wished to take my companion-in-arms to his home, fearing that if he went alone something unpleasant might happen to him on the way, but it turned out that he lived in the same place as the other four, in repair cars on the railroad tracks. As it was already night, there was nothing to be done but suggest that he come home with me, to which he agreed.
My new acquaintance—and this was Soloviev—turned out to be still a young man, but it was clear that he had already taken to drink. He had come out of the fight rather damaged; his face was all bruised and one eye badly blackened. The next morning his eye was swollen almost shut, and I persuaded him not to leave but to stay with me until it was
better, the more so since the Easter Holidays had begun and he had finished work the day before. On Good Friday he went off somewhere, but came back to spend the night with me.
The next day I had to run about almost all day long. I had to deliver the flowers ordered for Easter. I was not free until evening, and as I had no Christian acquaintances and nowhere to go to celebrate, I bought a khoulirch, paskha, some painted eggs and everything else customary for this feast, as well as a small bottle of vodka, and brought them home.
I did not find Soloviev in, and so, after washing and making myself tidy—I had no other clothes to change into—I went off alone to the evening service at the church. When I returned, I found Soloviev already asleep. As there was no table in my room, I quietly, so as not to disturb him, brought in from the court outside a large empty case, covered it with a clean sheet and placed on it all the things I had bought for the feast, and only then woke Soloviev.
He was very surprised at everything he saw, and gladly consented to participate in this solemn repast. He got up and we sat down together at the ‘table’, he on my books and I on a pail turned upside down.
First of all I poured out a glass of vodka for each of us, but to my astonishment he thanked me and refused to drink. I drank alone, and Soloviev began to eat. Philos, who was present at this celebration, received a double portion, two sheep’s heads. We sat in silence and ate. It was not a happy Easter either for me or for Soloviev. Picturing to myself the familiar scene of the family feast, I began to think of my family far away. Soloviev also was thinking about something, and we sat a rather long time without speaking.
All of a sudden, as if to himself, Soloviev exclaimed: ‘Help me, O Lord, in memory of this night, to be able never again to drink this poison which has brought me to such a life!’ He fell silent, and then with a disconsolate gesture murmured, ‘Ah ... mel’ and began telling me about his life.
I do not know what had affected him. Was it because Easter recalled to him distant and dear memories of the time when he had been a man, or was it the sight of the carefully arranged table and the unexpected feast, or both together? Whatever it was, he poured his heart out to me.
It seemed that Soloviev had once been a post-office employee, but had become so quite by chance. He came from a merchant family of Samara, where his father owned big flour mills. His mother came of an impoverished noble family. She had been educated at a finishing school for the aristocracy, and her upbringing of her children consisted exclusively in teaching them good manners and how to behave; this was all they had been stuffed with.
His father was hardly ever at home, spending his time at his mills and grain shops. Moreover, he was addicted to drink, and regularly several times a year he would drink steadily for several weeks. Even when sober he was, in the words of his son, an ‘overbearing fool’.
The parents of Soloviev, each living their own separate lives and with their own interests, merely endured one another. Soloviev had one younger brother, and both boys went to the public school. The parents had even, as it were, divided up the children. The elder son was the mother’s favourite, the younger the father’s, and on this account there were frequent scenes. The father never addressed his elder son without a sneer, so that a kind of hostility gradually grew up between them. The mother, who received money from her husband for expenses, gave Soloviev a certain amount monthly. But with the years his appetites increased, and his allowance was not sufficient for paying court to girls. Once he stole a bracelet from his mother and sold it to make some gift or other.
When she discovered this theft, she concealed it from his father; but the thefts began to be repeated and one day his father, learning of them, made a great scene and turned Soloviev out of the house, although later, through the intervention of relatives and the mother, he pardoned him.
Soloviev was in the fifth—or next to the highest—class of the school when a travelling circus stopped in Samara and he lost his head completely over a bare-back rider named Verka. When the circus moved to Tsaritsyn, Soloviev followed her there, having got hold of money in some fraudulent way from his mother.
At this time he had already begun to drink. In Tsaritsyn he learned that his Verka had taken up with a captain of the mounted police and, out of bitterness, he took to drinking heavily. He began to frequent the port taverns and found a great many companions like himself.
It ended one fine day in everything being stolen from him while drunk, and he found himself in a strange town without a kopek and not daring to send word of himself to his family.
Having gradually sold his personal belongings and clothing, he was finally compelled to exchange even the clothes he was wearing for mere rags, and thus became an outcast in the full sense of the word.
Hunger forced him to work in a fishery, and, passing from one job to another, he finally came, in the company of other outcasts, to the town of Baku. Here fate smiled on him a little; someone gave him clothes and he succeeded in becoming a telephone operator in the district of Balakhna.
The adversities of his recent past made him think and he began to work steadily. One day he met someone from Samara who, having learned who he was, that is, of what family he came, decided to help him get a better position.
As Soloviev had a fifth-class education, he was taken on in Baku as an assistant in the postal-telegraph service, but for the first few months he had to work without a salary. After this, he received a post in Kushka and worked there as a clerk. Thanks to his abstinence, he was able to dress decently and even saved a small sum of money.
When he was twenty-one he received a notice from the military authorities that he was about to be called up for military service. This obliged him to return to his native town, and on arriving in Samara he put up at a hotel and wrote to his mother. His mother, who had been receiving letters from him before this, was glad that her son had apparently turned over a new leaf, and succeeded in obtaining his father’s pardon for him.
Soloviev was again received into the house and his father, seeing that his son had come to his senses, was glad that things had turned out no worse and began to treat him well.
On reporting to the military authorities Soloviev drew a lot to serve, but being a telegraphist in the postal service he had to wait several months for his appointment, since recruits of this category were appointed to vacancies by the central administration of the army. So he lived with his parents another three or four months before being ordered to a post with the railway battalion in charge of the Transcaspian Railway, which at that time was still militarized.
When he arrived at his post and had done several weeks of compulsory service as a private soldier in the second company, he was assigned to what was called the Kushka Line, but soon afterwards he fell ill with jaundice and was sent to the hospital at Merv, where his company was stationed. When he recovered he was sent to the battalion headquarters at Samarkand, and then to the military hospital there, to be examined for his fitness for further military service.
In the main building of the hospital, in which Soloviev was placed, there was also a ward for prisoners. Walking along the corridor, and occasionally talking with the prisoners through a little window, he made the acquaintance of one of them, a Pole, who had been accused of counterfeiting.
When Soloviev was given leave from service on account of poor health and discharged from the hospital, this prisoner asked him to take a letter to a friend of his who lived near the station in Samarkand. As thanks for delivering the letter, he stealthily handed him a phial of blue liquid, explaining that this liquid could be used to counterfeit the green three-rouble notes—but not any other kind—and that this was done in the following way:
Special paper, moistened with this liquid, was applied to both sides of the note and then everything was pressed together in a book. The negatives obtained in this way from both sides of the note gave three or four good copies.
In Central Asia, where people were not well acquainted with Russian money, these notes were
very easy to pass. Soloviev, who first tried this process out of curiosity, found himself in need of money just before his departure for home and with no particular risk passed a small quantity of his counterfeits.
At home he was warmly welcomed, and his father urged him to stay and help him as the younger brother was doing. Soloviev consented and was given the direction of one of the mills somewhere outside Samara. But after working there several months he began to get bored and, longing for his vagabond life, went to his father and told him frankly that he could not go on any longer. His father let him go and even gave him a good deal of money.
After this, Soloviev went to Moscow and to St. Petersburg, again took to drink, and finally arrived, drunk, in Warsaw. It was about a year after he had been given leave from military service. In Warsaw he was stopped on the street by a man who turned out to be the prisoner he had known in the Samarkand hospital. It seemed he had been acquitted by the court and had come to Warsaw chiefly for paper and for a note-printing machine which he was expecting from Germany. He invited Soloviev to enter into partnership with him and help him in his ‘work’ in Bukhara.
Soloviev was tempted by this criminal but easy profit. He went to Bukhara to wait for his companion, but the Polish counterfeiter was delayed in Warsaw waiting for his machine. Soloviev continued to drink and, having squandered what was left of his money, got some job with the railway, where he had been working for three months before I met him—drinking incessantly all the while.
Soloviev’s frank story touched me deeply. At that time I already knew a great deal about hypnotism and, after bringing a man into a certain state, could influence him by suggestion to forget any undesirable habit. I therefore proposed to Soloviev that I should help him, if he really wished to get rid of this pernicious habit of drinking vodka, and explained to him how I would do it. He agreed, and the next day and each day thereafter I brought him into the hypnotic state and made the necessary suggestions. He gradually came to feel such an aversion to vodka that he could not even bear to look at this ‘poison’, as he called it.
Meetings With Remarkable Men Page 16