‘This was done very simply: the line where the corset had to be cut was traced in pencil, more having to be cut from the top and only a little from the lower part; then along this line the ends of the whalebone were broken off with pliers and the material cut off with scissors. Then the girls who worked with me under the direction of Vitvitskaïa ripped off the tapes binding the borders, cut them and sewed them on again around the shortened corset. All that remained to be done was to thread through half of the old laces, and a mignon corset of the latest Paris fashion was ready for sale—and as many as a hundred were made in a day.
‘The most comical result was that the shop-owners, having learned of the metamorphosis of their old corsets, were obliged, in view of the great demand for them, to buy them back from me, with, as is said, gnashing of teeth, but now not for ten or twenty kopeks, but at the price of three and a half roubles a corset.
‘In order to give you an idea of the outcome of all this, I need only say that I bought up and sold in the towns of Krasnovodsk, Kizil-Arvat, Ashkhabad, Merv, Chardzhou, Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent more than six thousand corsets.
‘A material profit out of all proportion to the scale of the enterprise was achieved not merely owing to the ignorance and naïveté of the local, so to say, “variegated” inhabitants, or even to my well-developed astuteness and resourceful adaptability to all kinds of situations, but chiefly owing to my merciless attitude towards those weaknesses, present in me as in everyone, which, through repetition, form in man what is called laziness.
‘It is interesting to note that, during that period, a change in the functioning of my common presence took place, inexplicable from the standpoint of ordinary science and repeated more than once in the course of my life. This was a change in the regulation of the tempo of the in-coming and out-going of energy which enabled me to sleep scarcely at all for several weeks, and even for months, yet at the same time to manifest an activity which, far from being reduced, was on the contrary even more intense than usual.
‘The last time this state reappeared I was so interested in this phenomenon that it became for me, that is, for my self-cognizing parts, a question of equal significance to that of certain other questions which had arisen in me long before and the solution of which had, from then on, been the aim and sense of my life.
‘I even intend, after arranging matters connected with the fundamental programme of the Institute, and when I shall again have the possibility of devoting half my time to my subjective interests, to give first place to the elucidation of this question.
‘This as yet incomprehensible particularity of the general functioning of my organism may be seen very clearly in the situation which existed during the period I am describing.
‘All day long an almost constant stream of customers, out-doing one another in loquacity, brought me their broken things for repair or came to pick up those already repaired, so that the greater part of my day was spent in receiving and returning orders. The intervals when there happened to be no customers gave barely enough time, even when I made exceptional haste, for going to buy new parts and the many and varied materials constantly required. Thus the work itself had to be done at night.
‘During the entire period of existence of the workshop, I had to divide my time in this way—the day for customers and the whole night for working.
‘I must say that I was greatly helped in all this work by Vitvitskaïa, who very soon became almost an expert at covering umbrellas, at remodelling corsets and ladies’ hats, and especially at making artificial flowers. I was also helped by the two boys I had taken on at the very beginning, the sons of the old Jew; the elder cleaned and prepared the metal things for galvanizing and polished them afterwards, and the younger ran errands and kindled the fire in the forge and kept the bellows going. Towards the end I was also helped, and by no means badly, by six young girls from local patriarchal families, whose parents, desiring them to have a “complete education”, sent them to my universal workshop to perfect themselves in fine needlework.
‘Even at the beginning, when there were only four of us, the quantity of work done was indeed such that it gave the impression that behind the door leading to the back rooms, on which of course there was a notice “Entrance strictly forbidden to the public”, at least several dozen expert craftsmen were working.
‘The workshop was open in Ashkhabad three and a half months, and during that time I had made fifty thousand roubles. Do you know what such a sum then meant?
‘For comparison, one must remember that at that time the salary of the average Russian public official was thirty-three roubles thirty-three kopeks a month, and that with this sum not only a single man, but one who had a family and even a crowd of children, contrived to live. The salary of a high-ranking officer, from forty-five to fifty roubles, was considered a great deal of money, and the dream of every young man was to earn this much.
‘Meat then cost six kopeks a pound, bread two or three kopeks, good grapes two kopeks; and there were a hundred kopeks in a rouble.
‘Fifty thousand roubles—that was considered a real fortune!
‘During the existence of the workshop there were frequent opportunities for making greater profits by going into enterprises on the side. But one of the conditions of the wager was that the money was to be earned only by manual skills and by such small commercial transactions as would necessarily be connected with them, so I did not once yield to this temptation.
‘The wager had long been won while still in Ashkhabad, and the agreed amount earned four times over; nevertheless, as I have said, I decided to go on with the same sort of work in another town.
‘Almost everything had been liquidated. Vitvitskaīa had gone to her sister’s, and I was getting ready to leave three days later for Merv.
‘What I have already told you is, I think, sufficient for you to have some idea of what I wished to make clear by this story: namely, that that specific feature of the common psyche of man which is an ideal for you Americans and which you call the commercial fibre, may also exist—and be even more highly developed—along with other fibres which you Americans do not have, among people living on other continents. Nevertheless, to illustrate this further and to give a fuller picture of my activities in those days, I will tell you about one more commercial trick which I played just before I left Ashkhabad.
‘I must tell you that just after I opened my workshop, I announced that I would buy all sorts of things. I did so for two reasons: firstly, I counted on finding parts needed for my repairs, as I had soon bought up in the shops and bazaars everything that could be of use to me for this purpose; and secondly, I hoped that among the old things brought in or offered for inspection at home I might—as often happened—chance upon something rare and valuable.
‘In a word, I was also an antique dealer.
‘A few days before my departure, I met at the bazaar a Georgian whom I had known before near Tiflis, where he had run the buffet at one of the stations of the Transcaucasian Railway. He was now a contractor for army provisions and he offered to sell me several old iron beds, of which he had a surplus.
‘I went to his house that same evening and we went down into the cellar to look at the beds, but there was such an intolerable stench that it was almost impossible to stay there. Hastily examining the beds, I fled as quickly as possible, and began negotiations only after we reached the street. I learned then that the stench in the cellar came from herrings that were stored there, twenty barrels of them, which he had bought at Astrakhan for the local officers’ mess. When the first two barrels were delivered and opened, the herrings were found to have gone bad and were rejected. The Georgian, fearing to lose his reputation, did not wish to offer them anywhere else, so he took them back and placed them temporarily in his cellar and then almost forgot about them. It was only now, after three months, when his whole house reeked of them, that he had made up his mind to get rid of them as soon as possible.
‘What vexed him was no
t only that he had lost money on them, but that in addition he would even have to pay to have them carted to the dump-heap, as otherwise the sanitary commission might hear about it and fine him.
‘While he was telling me all this, my thoughts began to work, according to the habit formed in me during this period, and I asked myself whether it might not be possible, by some combination or other, to derive profit even from this affair.
‘I began to calculate:
‘ “He has twenty barrels of rotten herrings which must be thrown away. But the barrels themselves are worth at least a rouble apiece. If only I could get them emptied for nothing! Otherwise, carting them away would cost almost as much as they are worth ...”
‘Then suddenly it dawned on me that surely herrings—especially rotten ones—would make good manure. And I thought that a gardener, in order to get such good manure for nothing, would surely agree in return to fetch the barrels, empty them, rinse them out, and bring them to me at the workshop. After smoking them I would be able to sell them at once, as barrels were in great demand, and in this way in half an hour I should make twenty roubles. And nobody would lose anything, but on the contrary everybody would gain by this, even the Georgian who had lost on the merchandise, but would now at least save the expense of carting.
‘Having thus thought things out, I said to the Georgian: “If you will take a little more off the beds, I will arrange for these barrels to be carted away without any cost to you.”
‘He agreed, and I promised to rid him of this source of infection the next morning.
‘I paid for the beds, loaded them on my cart, and also took along one of the unopened barrels of herrings to show to a gardener. Back at the workshop we unloaded and put everything into the shed.
‘Just at that time the old Jew, the father of the boys who were working for me, came in, as he usually did in the evenings to have a chat with his sons and sometimes even to help them with their work.
‘I sat down in my little yard to smoke, and the thought suddenly entered my head to try the herrings on my pigs; perhaps they might eat them. Without explaining anything to the old man, I asked him to help me open the barrel.
‘When the lid was raised, the old Jew bent over to inhale the odour, and immediately his face lit up and he exclaimed:
“Now that’s what I call herrings! Herrings like these I have not seen for a long time, indeed not since I got into this damned country!”
‘I was puzzled. Having lived mostly in Asia where they do not eat herrings, I could never tell good from bad even if I did happen to eat them. They all had the same nasty smell for me. So I was bound to give some credence to this emphatic announcement of the old Jew, the more so since formerly, when he lived in Russia in the town of Rostov, he had had a butcher shop where he also used to sell fish.
‘However, I was still not entirely convinced and asked him whether he might not be mistaken, but he, offended to the core, replied: “What’s that you’re saying? These are genuine, preserved, such and such ... herrings!” I do not remember what he called them.
‘Still having some doubts, I told him that I had by chance bought up a whole consignment of these herrings, and that, among us, it was a good omen when any goods were opened if some were sold at once: it was a sign that the entire sale would be successful. So now we should at once, without waiting till morning, sell at least a few herrings. And I asked him to try to do this immediately.
‘In this way I wanted to make sure that what the old man had said was true, and to act accordingly.
‘Near my workshop lived many Jews, most of them tradespeople. As it was evening, most of the shops were closed. But just opposite the workshop lived a watchmaker, a certain Friedman. He was called on first and he instantly bought a whole dozen, paying, without any bargaining, fifteen kopeks a pair.
‘The next buyer was the proprietor of the pharmacy on the corner, who at once bought fifty.
‘From the delighted tone of these buyers I knew that the old man was right. The next morning, at daybreak, I hired carts and brought over to my place all the barrels except the two already opened, which were really quite spoiled and from which had come that terrible stench. These I immediately sent off to the town dump.
‘The remaining eighteen barrels of herrings turned out to be not only good, but of the very best quality.
‘Evidently, neither the buyer for the officers’ mess nor the Georgian merchant, a native of Tiflis, where they do not eat herrings, knew any more about them than I did, that is, nothing at all; and from their peculiar smell they had considered them spoiled, and the Georgian had resigned himself to his loss.
‘In three days, with the help of the old Jew, to whom I paid half a kopek per herring-which made him extremely happy—all the herrings were sold, wholesale and retail.
‘By this time I had liquidated all my affairs, and on the eve of my departure I invited that Georgian, with my many other acquaintances, to a farewell supper. At table I related how well this affair had turned out for me, and, pulling the money out of my pocket, I offered to share my profits with him. But the Georgian, holding to a commercial principle firmly established among the old inhabitants of Transcaucasia and the Transcaspian region, refused to accept the money. He said that, when he had let me have the goods, he was certain they were quite worthless, and, if it had proved otherwise, it was a stroke of good luck for me and of bad luck for him, and therefore he considered it unfair to take advantage of my kindness. Moreover, the next day, when I left for Merv, I found among my things in the carriage a goat-skin of wine from this Georgian.
‘After the episode of this peculiar workshop of mine, several years passed, in which, while working unceasingly to prepare all the conditions necessary for the accomplishment of the fundamental aim of my life, I had to occupy myself quite often with all kinds of money-making affairs.
‘Although the many adventures and unexpected happenings of these years might be of great interest to you from both the psychological and the practical points of view, yet, not wishing to digress from the question raised this evening, I will not speak of them now, the more so since I intend to write an entire book about these years and similar periods of my life.
‘I will only say that by the time I set myself the task of creating a definite amount of capital I had already acquired much experience and self-confidence. And therefore, when I directed all my faculties towards making money for this purpose, then—even though this aspect of human striving in itself had never been of interest to me—I carried it out in such a way that the results might have aroused the envy of even your best American dollar-business experts.
‘I engaged in the most varied enterprises, sometimes very big ones. For instance: I carried out private and government contracts for the supply and construction of railways and roads; I opened a number of stores, restaurants and cinemas and sold them when I got them going well; I organized various rural enterprises and the driving of cattle into Russia from several countries, chiefly from Kashgar; I participated in oil-wells and fisheries; and sometimes I carried on several of these enterprises simultaneously. But the business I preferred above all others, which never required my specially devoting to it any definite time or needed any fixed place of residence, and which moreover was very profitable, was the trade in carpets and antiques of all kinds.
‘Finally, after four or five years of, so to say, feverish activity, I liquidated all my affairs; and when, near the end of the year 1931, I went to Moscow to begin to actualize in practice what I had taken upon myself as a sacred task, I had amassed the m suof a million roubles and had acquired in addition two invaluable collections, one of old and rare carpets, and the other of porcelain and what is called Chinese cloisonné.
‘It seemed then that with such a capital I would not have to think any more about financial matters, and would be free to put into practice the ideas which had already taken definite form in my consciousness and upon which my Institute would be based: namely, I wished to create a
round myself conditions in which a man would be continually reminded of the sense and aim of his existence by an unavoidable friction between his conscience and the automatic manifestations of his nature.
‘That was about a year before the World War.
‘In Moscow, and a little later in St. Petersburg, I arranged a series of lectures which attracted a number of intellectuals and men of science, and the circle of people interested in my ideas soon began to grow.
‘Following my general plan, I then took steps towards the creation of my Institute.
‘Little by little I began to prepare everything required for the accomplishment of my project. Among other things, I purchased an estate, ordered from different European countries whatever could not be obtained in Russia, and bought instruments and other necessary equipment. I even began to arrange for the publication of my own newspaper.
‘In the thick of this work of organization, the war broke out, and I had to suspend everything, though in the hope of resuming as soon as the political situation became more settled.
‘By this time, half the capital I had collected had already been spent on the preparatory organization.
‘The war continued to gain ground, and, as hope of an early peace grew fainter and fainter, I was compelled to leave Moscow and go to the Caucasus to await the end of hostilities.
‘In spite of the fact that political events filled everyone’s mind, interest in my work continued to grow in certain circles of society. People really interested in my ideas began to collect at Essentuki, where I was then settled; they came not only from the immediate neighbourhood, but from St. Petersburg and Moscow, and, little by little, circumstances obliged me to form an organization there without waiting for the return to Moscow.
Meetings With Remarkable Men Page 30