He is the usual sort of educated beggar one finds in Moscow.
At first, I wondered why they didn’t just ask you plainly. Later I learned something of the situation, but I still didn’t understand it.
It seems that in Moscow, by law, all beggars (of whom one meets several in each street, with rows of them outside every church whenever there is a service, especially if there happens to be a funeral) are forbidden to beg.
But I never did find out why some are caught and detained, while others roam freely. Either there are legal and illegal beggars, or there are so many that they can’t catch all of them; perhaps as soon as some are caught, others spring up.
Moscow presents all kinds of beggars. There are some who live by it; and there are others, ‘real’ beggars, who have come to the town for some reason and are genuinely destitute.
Among these latter are many simple muzhiks, men and women alike, wearing muzhik clothes. I often meet them. Some of them have fallen ill here and have been let out of the hospital; they can neither support themselves nor get away from Moscow. Some are not ill but have lost everything they own in a fire, or are elderly, or are women with children. Others are healthy and able to work. These healthy ones, begging alms, interested me especially. For since I came to Moscow I had, for the sake of exercise, formed the habit of going to work at the Sparrow Hills with two muzhiks to saw wood there.
These two men were just like those I’d met in the streets. One was Peter, a soldier from Kaluga; the other was Simon, a muzhik from Vladimir. They owned nothing except the clothes on their backs and their own hands. With those hands they earned a tiny sum per day, something of which they were able to save: Peter to buy a sheepskin coat, Simon to pay for the journey back to his village. I was especially keen to talk to them.
Why did these men work and others beg?
On meeting such a fellow I usually began by asking how he came to be in such a state. Once I met a healthy muzhik whose beard was turning gray. He begged. I asked who he was, and he said he had come from Kaluga to look for work. At first he had found some work, cutting up old timber for firewood. He and his mate cut up all the wood in one spot. Then he searched for another job, but nothing could be found. His mate left him, and now he had been knocking around for two weeks, having eaten all he had, and he had nothing with which to buy either a saw or a chopper. I gave him money for the saw and told him where he could find work. (I had previously, as it happened, arranged with Peter and Simon to take on another worker.)
‘So, my friend, be sure and go. There is plenty of work for you there,’ I said.
‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘Why not? Do you think I enjoy begging? I can work.’
He swore he’d go, and I felt he was in earnest and meant to appear.
The next day I joined my friends, Peter and Simon, and asked if the man had turned up. He had not. As it happened, several other men behaved in much the same way. I was also cheated by men who said they only needed money to buy a railway ticket home, but whom I met on the street again a week later. Several of these I recognized, and they recognized me; but sometimes, having forgotten me, they told me the same story again. Some turned away on seeing me. So I learned that among this class there are many cheats, too; but I felt extremely sorry for these cheats. They were a half-dressed, thin, impoverished, sickly group: the sort of people who often freeze to death or hang themselves, as we often read in the papers.
When I spoke to the Moscovites about this destitution in their city I was usually told: ‘What you have seen is nothing! Go to Hitrof Market and visit the doss houses. That’s where you’ll see the real “Golden Company.”’ One fellow told me, somewhat dryly, that it was no longer a ‘Company’ but a ‘Golden Regiment’ – there are so many of them. The man was right, but he’d have been even more correct had he said that in Moscow these people are now neither a company nor a regiment but a vast army that numbers, I am told, fifty thousand. Old residents of Moscow, when speaking of town poverty, always spoke of it with a kind of pleasure – as if proud to know about it. I recall, too, that when I was in London, people there bragged about London pauperism: ‘Just look what it’s like here!’ they said.
I wanted to see this destitution, about which I’d been told; and several times I set out toward Hitrof Market, but each time I felt uncomfortable and ashamed. ‘Why go to look on the sufferings of people I can’t help?’ a voice within me said. ‘If you live here and see all the allurements of town life, go and see that, too,’ said another voice. And so, one frosty, windswept day in December 1881, I went to the heart of the town’s destitution – Hitrof Market. It was a weekday, almost four o’clock in the afternoon. In Solyanka Street I had already become aware of more and more people wearing strange clothes not made for them, and in yet stranger footgear – people with an odd, unhealthy complexion, all possessing a common air, an air of indifference. I noticed one man walking alone rather casually, dressed in strange, incredible clothes, evidently unfazed by what he looked like to others. All proceeded in the same direction. Without asking the way (which I didn’t know), I went with them, arriving eventually at the Hitrof Market.
There were also women of the same type, adorned in all sorts of capes, cloaks, jackets, boots, and galoshes, equally indifferent to appearances in spite of the hideousness of their garb. Old and young, they sat exchanging goods of some sort, milling about, swearing and scolding. There were few people in the market. It was apparently over, and most were walking uphill, passing through or past the market, always in one direction. I followed them, and the farther I went the more people there seemed to be, all going one way. Passing the market and following up the street, I overtook two women: one old, the other young. Both wore tattered, drab clothes. Neither was drunk. Something, however, preoccupied them, and the men who met them, as well as those behind and before them, paid no attention to their manner of speech, which to my ears was peculiar. It was evident that, here, people always talked like this.
To the left were private doss houses, and some turned into them, while others went farther on. Having climbed the hill, we came to a large house on the corner. Most of those among whom I had been walking stopped here. All along the sidewalk and in the snow-covered street, people of the same type stood or sat. To the right of the entrance door were the women, to the left the men. I passed both the women and the men (there were hundreds of them), and stopped where the line ended. The house they were waiting for was the Lyapinsky Free Night-Lodging House. The crowd were lodgers waiting for admission. At 5:00 p.m. the doors open, and people are let in. Nearly all those I had overtaken were coming here.
When I stopped, where the lines of men ended, those nearest began to stare at me, drawing me to them by their glances. The tatters covering their bodies were extremely varied, but they all looked at me with the same stare, as if to say: ‘Why have you, a man from a different world, stopped among us? Who are you? A self-satisfied rich man who wants to enjoy our misery, to kill time, to torture us – or are you that thing which can hardly exist – someone who pities us?’ These questions hung on every face. They looked, caught my eye, and turned away. I wanted to speak to some of them but could not decide what to do. Nevertheless, as widely as life had separated us, having exchanged glances I felt that we were similar, that we ceased to be afraid of one another.