I slept the night at the post-station at Kobi. Next morning, when I went out to an inn to get some tea, it was snowing, which rather surprised me, seeing that the day before had been so hot.
The inn is one of eight shops in Kobi. The innkeeper was of course delighted to see me. A customer in May is a rarity. I had hardly seated myself when a Russian lounger pounced on me and asked me the usual series of questions about my name, nationality, destination, business and so forth. He was dressed in home-made sheepskin trousers and a Russian national shirt.
“Ah,” said he, “the Englishmen know where all the gold and copper is, and the oil; they’ve got it all mapped out. The English know all. The Russians keep all—that, my friend, is politics. The Caucasus is the brightest brilliant in the Russian crown. We shall keep it to the last. When all the rest is worked out we shall begin. Here there is everything: gold, silver, coal, copper, iron—what you like. Why, I know villages where there is wild petroleum; it spurts out naturally, and the natives have used it for years for cooking and lighting. Here at Kobi we have seltzer water so strong that no one can bottle it, and we drink it by the pailful. Full of iron, my friend, that’s what makes us all strong. Nobody ever dies here; that’s because of our springs.”
Whilst I was having my tea I got him to speak of the road. He was evidently a chatterbox.
“They spend ten thousand roubles a year on the road,” said he. “But that is nearly all absorbed by overseers and generals; the poor working men get little.”
“That also is politics,” said I.
“Yes, we are all very poor,” put in the innkeeper. “Eight shops we have, and not one makes more than threepence a day profit. You see we have eight months winter.”
“It will be better soon,” I urged. “The summer is coming. But I see you don’t know much about business. Now I know comparatively little about trade, but my little finger knows better than you do how to manage a shop like this.”
The shopkeeper blinked his eyes; he was an Ossetine. Then the little man in the sheepskin trousers broke in, “You would like to introduce American methods, but you don’t understand how poor they are. They never have any money in the winter. You couldn’t get change for a rouble in the whole village now. They spend all they get in the summer, and live on credit all the winter. They owe you a fortune, Achmet, I’ll be bound.”
“It is only too true,” assented the shopkeeper.