The idvosjik, or coachman, is so bulky from this same reason that you cannot see over him. You are obliged to crane your neck to one side. His head is covered with a Tartar cap. He wears his hair down to his collar, and then chopped off in a straight line. His pelisse is of a bluish gray, fits tightly to the waist, and comes to the feet. But the skirt of it is gathered on back and front, giving him an irresistibly comical pannier effect, like a Dolly Varden polonaise. The Russian idvosjik guides his horse curiously. He coaxes it forward by calling it all sorts of pet names—“doushka,” darling, etc. Then he beats it with a toy whip, which must feel like a fly on its woolly coat, for all the little fat pony does is to kick up its heels and fly along like the wind, missing the other sledges by a hair’s-breadth. It is ghostly to see the way they glide along without a sound, for the sledges wear no bells.
One may drive with perfect safety at a breakneck pace, for they all drive down on one side of the street and up on the other. Nor will an idvosjik hesitate to use his whip about the head and face of another idvosjik who dares to turn without crossing the street.
He stops his horse with a guttural trill, as if one should say “Tr-r-r-r-r” in the back of the throat. It sounds like a gargle.
The horses are sharp-shod, but in a way quite different from ours. The spikes on their shoes are an inch long, and dig into the ice with perfect security, but it makes the horses look as if they wore French heels. Even over ice like sheer glass they go at a gallop and never slip. It is wonderful, and the exhilaration of it is like driving through an air charged with champagne, like the wine-caves of Rintz.
Our troika was like a chariot in comparison with these sledges. It was gorgeously upholstered in red velvet, and held six—three on each seat. The robes also were red velvet, bordered and lined with black bear fur. There were three horses driven abreast. The middle horse was much larger than the other two, and wore a high white wooden collar, which stood up from the rest of the harness, and was hung with bells and painted with red flowers and birds.
To my delight the horses were wild, and stood on their hind legs and bit each other, and backed us off the road, and otherwise acted like Tartar horses in books. It seemed almost too good to be true. It was like driving through the Black Forest and seeing the gnomes and the fairies one has read about. I told my friends very humbly that I had never done anything in my life to deserve the good fortune of having those beautiful horses act in such a satisfactory and historical manner. We had to get out twice and let the idvosjik calm them down. But even when ploughing my way out of snow up to my knees I breathed an ecstatic sigh of gratitude and joy. I could not understand the men’s annoyance. It was too ideal to complain about.
We drove out to the Island for luncheon, and on the way we stopped and coasted in a curious Russian sledge from the top of a high place, something like our toboggan-slides, only this sledge was guided from behind by a peasant on skates.
A Russian meal always begins with a side-table of hors d’oeuvres, called “zakouska.” That may not be spelled right, but no Russian would correct me, because the language is phonetic, and they spell the same word in many different ways. Their alphabet has thirty-eight letters in it, besides the little marks to tell you whether to make a letter hard or soft.
Even proper names take on curious oddities of spelling, and a husband and wife or two brothers will spell their name differently when using the Latin letters. If you complain about it, and ask which is correct, they make that famous Russian reply which Bismarck once had engraved in his ring, and which he believed brought him such good luck, “Neechy voe,” “It is nothing,” or “Never mind.” You can spell with your eyes shut in Russian, and you simply cannot make a mistake, for the Russians spell with all the abandonment of French dancing.
This zakouska is so delicious and so varied and so tempting that one not accustomed to it eats too much without realizing. At a dinner an American looked at my loaded plate and said, with delicious impertinence, “Confidentially, I don’t mind telling you that dinner is coming.”