Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

I found myself with a violent headache, due to having taken cold while sitting directly under the ventilating trap, which I had forgotten to close while I talked with the Russian officer. Doubtless his haste to get back to his train was induced by the terribly cold air flowing into my room, but he had been too polite to call my attention to the open trap. He must have thought me most inhospitable.

The prospect of going away to a celebration was not alluring as I looked out the window and saw Chita almost completely hidden by a frozen fog. It was nearly sixty below zero, and rapidly getting colder.

Werkstein ordered the samovar, and I had tea in bed. I do not wonder that the Russians drink so much tea. We drank it all the time in Chita, and my ordinary day’s tea-drinking ran as high as thirty hot glasses. The effect was not good on my nerves, and I discovered that I had become garrulous. Tea and much talk go together, which is why the Russian produces conversation in great quantities.

Mr. S——, the missionary Y. M. C. A. man, came to kindly offer his services as an interpreter in case I would go to General Oba’s reception at his headquarters at eleven. I am afraid that Mr. S—— suspected the towel the faithful Werkstein had insisted on putting about my head, but he was too broad-minded a gentleman to hint at his suspicions.

The Oba reception lured me. It was but a couple of blocks away, and if I still felt badly when I got there, could leave and return to bed. So I got up and shaved, and dug out a white shirt. After all, a white shirt is a wonderful thing, especially if it comes out of a package wrapped by one’s wife on the other side of the world, and redolent of a subtle but familiar perfume.

I also decided to discard temporarily the tremendous boots I had been wearing, and got out my dress boots and spurs, considering them the only fitting footwear with a white shirt and stock. Besides, a soldier on a diplomatic mission cuts rather a sorry figure unless he can produce the proper metallic click with his heels.

So away with Mr. S—— to General Oba’s. Japanese sentries at the door of the former department store, wearing bands over their noses to keep them from freezing, came to the present arms smartly. We went up the stairs and strode down a long hall. Little staff officers, smart as paint and most affable, took our cards, and spoke in Russian to Mr. S—— who startled and delighted them by responding in their own language.

A bevy of Japanese orderlies abased themselves and took our heavy coats. The Japanese machine moves with noiseless precision, and without any waste motions—one, our garments; two, bows and clicks; three, this door, please.

The door opens. Oba stands just inside, smiling a welcome. Clicks, bows, handshakes. The season’s greetings. We enter. The room is decorated with wistaria vines and Japanese dwarf trees. At a long table running down the center of the room, and laden with bottles and food, Japanese and Cossack officers are standing talking in various languages and eating and drinking.

A Buddhist priest, chaplain to Oba’s forces, wearing a conventional frock coat, with an embroidered stole-like green and gold collar thrown over his shoulders, addresses me in English, and tells me that he lived seven years in Vancouver. He says I must have a potion of saki from a lacquered saucer, presented by a Japanese soldier. The liquor is poured from a vase-like china bottle. The Japanese custom, I am informed. As I move down the table after drinking the saki, bowing deeply the while, everybody clicks and bows. I meet another priest, who does not speak English. Mr. S—— informs me that he is the head of another Buddhist sect, and kind of an hereditary pope.