The most famous public-house in Moscow is the “Yama” (The Pit), in the street called Rozhdestvensky, a public-house which Tolstoy much wanted to visit, a tavern frequented not only by the common people but by scholars and seekers, especially by those who style themselves Bogoiskateli, seekers after God. Here appeared at times such well-known Russians as Solovyov, Bulgakof, Chertkof, Velikanof—it was the last who asked me to the “Yama,” and through whom I was able to hear a multifarious collection of the common people discuss religion and Russia and ghosts and the eternal questions.
From the “Yama” have sprung several interesting sects, for example, the Bezsmertniki, or deathless ones. Their doctrines, promulgated by a wretched consumptive who had both feet in the grave, was that it was possible to escape death. He held that health was faith in life, and that disease was faith in death. Death came simply from lack of faith. There were people living eternally but we did not know where to find them. The Bezsmertniki make pilgrimages to the East to seek those who have been living for ages. Alas! the founder died before the eyes of his followers. “He lacked faith,” said they, and the new religion continued. One of the most ardent of them is a frequent visitor of the “Yama,” Alexey Yegorovitch, a stocking-hawker.
So much trouble came from the discussions in the “Yama” that the public-house was closed by the Government. But as in the case of Sasha, so in the case of the “Yama” and the God-seekers. You can kill or mutilate the body, but you cannot kill the soul, the thing in itself. The “Yama,” crushed in one tavern, broke out in another.
I visited the “Yama” one Sunday. It was resuscitated in the “Bay” public-house in Malo-Golovinskaya by the Candlemas Gate. We sat down in the tavern at 12 o’clock, and over two glasses of tea talked for six hours and a half—our only other sustenance being occasional hot cabbage pies brought to us in trayfuls by a little serving-boy from the kitchen. The tavern swarmed with religious characters, home missionaries, propagandists, Bible-hawkers. There was a strong detachment of Old Believers; an old Baptist hawker of women’s hose; many stall-keepers from Sukareva Market; Velikanof, a friend of Pereplotchikof; Victor Karlovitch, greasy and fat, who believes in evil spirits and feels attracted to Theosophy.
The talk went on evil spirits and was enlivened by many stories. A mad woman had been taken to the New Jerusalem monastery near Moscow, and had had a fit in church. After the fit she was found to be in her right mind, and it was said that the unclean spirit had been caught as it came out of her, and was now preserved in a jar of spirit and exhibited to pilgrims as one of the sights of the monastery. Were there evil spirits or were there not? Was it not said that they passed out of Legion into the swine? Did not the devils cry from the bodies of the insane, giving witness to Christ as He passed them by?
Velikanof told an amusing story of two peasants and a steam-engine. One of them held that it was an unclean spirit that made the engine go foward; the other said it was just steam, no more, he knew.
“It is an unclean spirit,” the former repeated; “I’ll bet it is an unclean spirit.”
“How will you prove that it is?”
“I’ll bet you a quarter the engine won’t be able to pass the ikon of Mikhail the Ugodnik.”
“Very well; done!”