“Imagine that I am God!”
One seldom, however, hears such a dramatic utterance. Much commoner is lighter banter. I remember a cheeky boy came up to me smiling and certain.
“A copeck, dear count!”
“Haven’t got one, your Majesty,” I replied.
Many of the beggars have a selection of tales of woe carefully worked up to suit the susceptibilities of different passers-by. Of this kind was an old stalwart whom we, of the Kislovka room, used to patronise. His usual style was:
“I was a soldier at the Turkish War and astonished three generals by my bravery, but now devil a penny will my country give me to keep my old bones together.”
But the two girl students who occupied the room next to ours always averred that he told them a yarn about his daughter dying from want of food and his wife in consumption, but never said a word about his exploits.
Nicholas and I dressed ourselves in our worst and went to a night-house one night. At five o’clock in the evening there was a queue like a first night pit-crowd at His Majesty’s Theatre in London, a street full of beggars pushing, jostling, shouting and singing. Next door to the doss-house was a tavern, to which every now and then someone unable to oppose temptation would dash to get a glass of vodka. Admission to this house cost one penny. It was rather a fearsome den to go into, and I wonder at ourselves now. I thought we should be too far down the line to get in, but I was mistaken. Everyone was admitted. We passed through a turnstile, and, strange to say, showed no passports. I fancy most of the beggars are passport-less. A policeman stood at the door and scrutinised the face of each who passed in. He had had too much vodka to do this to any great effect, and he let us through without demur, probably taking us for famished students, if he thought about us at all. Directly we got in we were confronted by a huge bar stocked with basins. A boy was serving out cabbage soup at a farthing a basinful. Another boy was serving out kasha, also at a farthing a basin. On a green noticeboard, among an array of vodka bottles, I read the following queer price-list:
| farthing(s) | |
| Lodging | 3 |
| black bread | 3 |
| soup | 1 |
| kasha | 1 |
| fish | 2 |
| tea | 1 |
| beer | 3 |
| shirt (dirty) | 3 |
| A pair of old trousers | 30 |
| coat | 30 |
| A pair of old boots | 10 |
The doss-house was owned by a merchant who made a handsome profit out of it, I am told. So well he might! The accommodation was nil. Straw to sleep upon. No chairs beyond three park seats. Two rooms lit by two jets of gas each. A small lavatory that might even make a beggar faint. Men and women slept in the same room, though they were, for the most part, so degraded that it scarcely occurred to one that they were of different sex.