Part 7 (1/2)
We left the church and saw the iron door locked, and in the corner of the courtyard the ”touched” man still waved his feather and addressed his hoa.r.s.e speeches to the goats.
We went to a monastery on the edge of the town where a colony of monks still live. They have their own chapels and their own communal houses.
These were Christian places when France, and Germany, and England were still pagan. And the Christian stories told here have an Eastern flavor.
This long pa.s.s north of Tiflis is an archeologist's heaven, for there are remnants of civilizations for thousands of years. High on the cliffs are the square holes of burial places of remote antiquity. The Soviet government's diggers work all the time at their excavations. Only recently they found a gigantic oil jar filled with golden money-the army pay of an ancient king who had been attacked and had buried his treasure in this place. And everyday the diggers find artifacts that carry the history of Georgia back and back to unsuspected civilizations. In the light of this age, a pier of Pompey's bridge is a comparatively new structure, and the hydroelectric dam is a real newcomer against this background of antiquity.
Capa lined up four objects that he wanted to get on one camera plate: the hydroelectric dam, a statue of Lenin, a fifth-century church, and the square hole of a Sumerian grave. But they wouldn't let him photograph it, because most important of all was the hydroelectric dam, and a photograph of it was considered out of bounds.
We were wind-burned and weary in the evening, and the stomachs of Capa, and Chmarsky, and me were badly upset. We had been drinking a mineral water called Borjoom, which had a pleasant alkaline taste, and we only discovered after it had done its work that it was a mild purgative, and in the quant.i.ties we were drinking it, it was much more than a mild purgative. We were quite weak before we found out the cause of our difficulty.
In America there are many hundreds of houses where George Was.h.i.+ngton slept, and in Russia there are many places where Joseph Stalin worked. The railroad shops in Tiflis have against their outer wall a bank of flowers and a giant plaque proclaiming that in this shop Joseph Stalin once had a job. Stalin is a Georgian by birth, and his birthplace, Gori, about seventy kilometers from Tiflis, has already become a national shrine. We were going to visit it.
It seemed a long way in the jeep, for a jeep seems to go faster than it does. We went again through the windy pa.s.s, and out into farther valleys, and through other pa.s.ses, until at last we came to the town of Gori. It is a town set among the mountains. It is dominated by what we would call a mesa, a tall lone, round mountain, in the middle of the town, and topped by a great castle, which once defended the town and was its place of refuge. The castle is now in ruins. This is the town where Stalin was born, and where he spent his early youth.
The birthplace of Stalin has been left as it was, and the whole thing covered by an enormous canopy to protect it from the weather. The top of the canopy is of stained gla.s.s. The birthplace is a tiny one-story house, built of plaster and rubble, a house of two rooms with a little porch that runs along the front. And even so, the family of Stalin were so poor that they only lived in half of the house, in one room. There is a rope across the door, but one can look inside at the bed, the shallow clothes closet, a little table, a samovar, and a crooked lamp. And in this room the family lived, and cooked, and slept. Square golden marble columns support the canopy of stained gla.s.s. And this structure is set in a large rose garden. On the edge of the rose garden there is the museum of Stalin, in which is preserved every article that could be gathered that is a.s.sociated with his childhood and early manhood-early photographs and paintings of everything that he did, and his police photograph when he was arrested. He was a very handsome young man at that time, with fierce wild eyes. On the wall there is a big map of his travels, and the prisons where he was incarcerated, and the towns in Siberia where he was held. His books and papers are here, and the editorials he wrote for small papers. His life has been consistent, and from the very beginning he started the line that has continued to the present day.
In all history we could not think of anyone so honored in his lifetime. We can only think of Augustus Caesar in this respect, and we doubt whether even Augustus Caesar had during his lifetime the prestige, the veneration, and the G.o.d-like hold on his people that Stalin has. What Stalin says is true to them, even if it seems to be contrary to natural law. His birthplace has already become a place of pilgrimage. People visiting it while we were there spoke in whispers and tiptoed about. A very pretty young girl was in charge of the museum on the day we visited this place, and after her lecture to the group of us, she went into the garden and cut roses and gave everyone a blossom. And the roses were carefully put away to be saved and treasured as a remembrance of a kind of holy place. No, in all history we do not know anything quite comparable to this.
If Stalin can have this amount of power during his lifetime, what will he become when he is dead? In many speeches in Russia we have heard the speaker suddenly quote a line from a speech of Stalin's that has the stopping quality of the ipse dixit of the medieval scholar who put his argument in the lap of Aristotle. In Russia there is no appeal from the word of Stalin, and there is no argument against anything he says. And however this has been accomplished, by propaganda, by training, by constant reference, by the iconography which is ever present, it is nevertheless true. And you can only get the sense of this force when you hear, as we did many times, the remark, ”Stalin has never been wrong. In his whole life he has not been wrong once.” And the man who says it does not offer it as an argument, it is not refutable, he says it as a matter completely true and beyond argument.
We got into the jeep again, and our cavalry man drove us into one of the side valleys, for we wanted to see the vineyards where the Georgian wine comes from. We went into a narrow valley, and again on all the slopes were fortifications. And there were little farms in the valley and on the mountains on both sides. The vineyards climbed up the mountains. The grapes were just coming to ripeness. And there were orchards too, orchards in which there were orange trees, and apples, and plums, and cherries. The road was narrow and rough, and in places streams cut across it. Our driver whooped with joy, for this he loved. He drove at breakneck speed over the narrow roads, and he watched us narrowly to see if we were frightened-and we were. We had to hold on with both hands to keep from being flung out of the jeep. He struck the streams so hard that water cascaded over the whole of the car and drenched us. We went up through a series of little farming valleys with mountain pa.s.ses between. On every pa.s.s there was a fortification where in old times the people of the farms went for protection when an invasion came through.
We stopped at last at a collection of houses in a mountain vineyard, where we had planned to have lunch. About a hundred people were collected, dressed in their best clothes, standing quietly about. And pretty soon four men went into one of the houses, and they emerged carrying a casket. The whole group started up the mountain, weaving back and forth, carrying the dead to be buried high up on the slope. We could see them for a long time, getting smaller and smaller as they zigzagged up the mountain trail to the high cemetery.
We went out into the vineyard and ate a monster lunch which we had brought with us-caviar and sausage, roast saddle of lamb, fresh tomatoes, wine, and black bread. We picked the grapes that were just ready to eat and stuffed ourselves with them. And all of this, incidentally, did not do our weakened stomachs any good. The little valley was green and lush and the air was delightfully warm. There was a good smell of green things all over. And after a while we got back in the jeep and went kayoodling down the road again to Gori.
A visitor to a town in America is taken to see the Chamber of Commerce, the airfield, the new courthouse, the swimming pool, and the armory. And a visitor in Russia is taken to see the museum and the park of culture and rest. In every town there is a park of culture and rest, and we were becoming used to them-the benches, the long plots of flowers, the statues of Stalin and of Lenin, the commemorations in stone of the fighting that was done in this town at the time of the Revolution. To refuse to see the local park of culture and rest would be as bad manners as to refuse to go to see a new real estate development in an American town. Tired as we were from being shaken to death in the jeep, sunburned as we were, for we had no hats, we had to go to the park of culture and rest in Gori.
We walked along the gravel paths and looked at the flowers, and suddenly we became aware of a curious music that was being played at the back of the park. It was almost like bagpipe music, with a background of drums. We walked toward the sound, and saw three men, two playing flutes and one playing a little drum. We soon saw why the music sounded like that of bagpipes, for the flute players puffed their cheeks, and when they drew breath, their filled cheeks kept the music going, so that there was no interval. The music was savage and wild. The two flutists and the drummer stood at the entrance of a high board fence, and the trees around the fence were cl.u.s.tered with children who were looking into the enclosure.
We were glad we had come to the park, for this was the national compet.i.tion of Georgian wrestling, and it was the day of the finals. For three days the compet.i.tion had gone on, and today the champions of the republic would be chosen.
Inside the circular board fence was an arena-like place with seats on all sides. The wrestling circle itself was about thirty-five feet in diameter, and the surface was of deep sawdust. At one side was the table of judges, and behind them a little lean-to where the contestants took off their clothes.
The people were very hospitable to us; they made a place for us on a bench, and they cleared the pathway so that Capa could take photographs of the compet.i.tion.
The two flute players and the drummer sat down in the front row, and the contestants were called. They were dressed in an odd costume-short canvas jackets without sleeves, and canvas belts, and short trunks. They were barefooted.
Each pair of contestants came to the judges' table and was formally recognized. Then they took their places, one on either side of the circle. And at that moment the music started playing its savage melody, with the heavy drumbeat underneath it. The contestants approached each other and joined battle.
It is curious wrestling. Its nearest relative is, I suppose, jujitsu. The contestants are not permitted to grasp any part of the body. The only holds permitted are on the jackets and on the belts. Once the holds are established, it is a matter of tripping, of throwing of weight, of forcing your opponent off balance, until you have thrown him to the ground and pinned him down. During the whole attack and defense, the savage music plays, and only when one fighter has lost does the music stop.
The contests were not long, usually one minute was enough for one or the other of the fighters to be thrown. And in the instant that one contest was over, another pair approached the judges' table and was recognized. It is a sport which requires incredible speed, and strength, and technique. Indeed, some of the throws were so violent and fast that a man would go sailing through the air at the end of the attack and land on his back.
The audience grew more and more excited as the compet.i.tion continued and more and more contestants were eliminated. But we had to go. We were to take an evening train for the Black Sea, and before that we had been invited to the opening of the Tiflis Opera. Furthermore, our jeep had developed saddle sores and was giving trouble, and we had seventy kilometers to go before we could even attempt to go to the opera. It was gasoline-line trouble, and we limped back, stopping every little while to blow out the gasoline line.
We were very tired when we got back to Tiflis, so tired that we refused to go to the opening of the opera. My broken knee had taken a dreadful beating in the mad jeep. I was barely able to walk at all. I wanted an hour in boiling hot water to loosen up the painful kneecap.
The station, when we finally got to it, was hot and crowded. We walked along a very crowded train and came at last to our carriage, a 1912 first-cla.s.s wagon-lit of happy memory. Its green velvet was as green as we had remembered. Its dark wood polished and oiled, s.h.i.+ning metal and musty smell we well remembered. We wondered where it could have been all these years. The Belgians who built these carriages so many years ago built them for the ages. It was the finest railroad carriage in the world forty years ago, and it is still comfortable, and it is still in good shape. The dark wood grows darker year by year, and the green velvet grows greener. It is a hangover from days of grandeur and royalty.
It was very hot in the train, and we opened the window in our compartment. Immediately a guard came and closed it, scowling at us. As soon as he was gone, we opened the window again, but he seemed to sense that we would rebel. He was back instantly, closing the window and lecturing us in Russian, and shaking his finger in our faces. He was so fierce about this window that we did not dare open it again, although we were smothering in the hot train. His message translated was that on the trip that night we would be going through many tunnels. If the window were open the smoke of the engine would come into the car and get the green upholstery dirty. We begged him to let us open the window, saying we would even help to clean the upholstery, but he only shook his finger more sternly at us and lectured us again. When a Russian rule is established, there are no deviations.
That reminded us of a story that was told us by an American military man in Moscow. He said that during the war when the American plane on which he was traveling landed at Moscow, a sentry was sent with orders to let no one on the plane. And when the time came for the party to board the plane, the sentry let no one on. Our man said that he was nearly shot for trying to, in spite of his orders, and his pa.s.ses, and his identifications. Finally the sentry was changed, not the orders. The commanding officer explained that orders were fixed and that it was much easier to change sentries than to change orders. Sentry number two had orders ”Let people on the plane,” while sentry number one had orders ”Do not let anyone on the plane.” Two sets of orders, or changed orders, might confuse a man. It was much simpler to change sentries. And also it was probably much better for discipline. The man who enforces one order can do it much more faithfully than one who has to make a decision between two.
There was not any doubt about it, the guard on our train did not intend to let us get the window open. We could have smothered, and it wouldn't have made any difference at all. We did not know what the penalty would be for traveling with an open window in our car, but we judged by the seriousness of the guard's att.i.tude that it must be about ten years' imprisonment.
Our train started at last, and we settled in our little sweat box for the night. But the train had no sooner started than it stopped. And all night it stopped about every two miles. We finally fell into a sweaty sleep and dreamed of being caught in a coal mine.
We awakened very early in the morning to find ourselves in a new kind of country, a completely changed country. We had come into a tropical area where the forests stretched down to the tracks, and where we could see bananas growing, and where the air was moist. The land around Tiflis, and the air, had been dry.
The little houses beside the track were swaddled in flowers, and the foliage was dense. Hibiscus in bloom climbed up the hills, and there were orange trees everywhere. It was a most rich and beautiful country. In little patches along the track the corn stood as high as it does in Kansas, twice the height of a man in some places, and there were fields of melons. In the early morning the people came to the entrances of their open and airy houses and watched the train go by. And the women were dressed in brilliant clothing, as tropical people always are. Their head-cloths were red and blue and yellow, and their skirts were bright, figured cloth. We went through forests of bamboo and giant ferns, and through fields of tall tobacco. And now the houses were on stilts, with high ladders to get to the first floor. And under the houses children and dogs played in the early morning light.
The hills were densely wooded with great trees, and every visible thing was covered with lush growth.
And then we came to the area of the tea gardens, probably the most beautiful crop in the world. Low hedges of tea spread away for miles and climbed up over the brows of the hills. Even in the early morning lines of women were picking the new leaves from the tops of the tea plants, their fingers fluttering among the bushes like little birds.
We had awakened very hungry, but it didn't do us any good. There was nothing to eat on the train. In fact, in all the time we were in Russia we did not find anything to eat on any conveyance. You either take your lunch or you go hungry. This accounts for the bundles the travelers take with them: one-tenth clothing and baggage, and nine-tenths food. We tried again to get a window open, but there were tunnels ahead, and we were forbidden again to open them. In the distance, and far below us, we could see the blue of the sea.
Our train came down to the sh.o.r.e of the Black Sea and paralleled it. The whole of this coast is one gigantic summer resort. Every little distance is a great sanatorium or a hotel, and the beaches even in the morning are thronged with bathers, for this is the rest place and this is the vacation place of nearly all of the Soviet Union.
Now our train seemed to stop every few feet. And at every stop groups of people got off, groups who were a.s.signed to one rest house or another. This is the vacation that nearly all Russian workers look forward to. It is the reward for long hard work, and it is the recuperation place for the wounded and the sick. Seeing this country, with its calm sea and its warm air, we realized why people all over Russia said to us again and again, ”Just wait until you see Georgia!”
Batum is a very pleasant little tropical city, a city of beaches and hotels, and an important s.h.i.+pping point on the Black Sea. It is a city of parks and tree-shaded streets, and the breeze from the sea keeps it from being too hot.
The Intourist Hotel here was the finest and most luxurious in the Soviet Union. The rooms were pleasant and newly decorated, and each one had a balcony with chairs. The full-length windows made it possible to open whole rooms to the outside. After the night in an old museum-piece of a coach, we looked longingly at the beds, but they were not for us. We barely got away with a bath. Our time was running short, and we had to see a great deal in a very short time.
In the afternoon we visited several of the rest houses. They are large palaces set in magnificent gardens, and nearly all of them look out to the sea. It would be dangerous to be experts in these things. Nearly everyone who has ever traveled in Russia has become an expert, and nearly every expert cancels out every other expert. We must be very careful in what we say about these rest houses. We must repeat only what we were told in the ones we saw, and even then we'll bet we get an argument from somebody.
The first one we visited looked like a very luxurious hotel. It was at the head of a long set of steps that led up from the beach, and it was surrounded by great trees, and in front of it was an enormous porch overlooking the water. This one was owned by a Moscow branch of the electricians' union, and the people who stayed in it were electricians. We asked how they got to come, and we were told that in every factory, in every workshop, there is a committee which includes not only representatives of the factory workers, but a company doctor. A number of factors are taken into consideration by the committee which designates the people who are to come on vacation. There is length of service, there is physical condition, there is quality of tiredness, and there is reward for service beyond that which is required. And if a worker has been sick and needs a long rest, the medical section of his factory committee designates him for a trip to a rest house.
One part of this rest house was set aside for single men, another for single women, and a third part for whole families, who had apartments for their vacations. There was a restaurant where everyone ate, and there were game rooms, and reading-rooms, and music rooms. In one game room people were playing chess and checkers; in another a fast ping-pong game was going on. The tennis courts were crowded with players and spectators, and the stairs were lined with people climbing up from the beach or going down to swim. The hotel had its own boats and fis.h.i.+ng equipment. Many of the people simply sat in chairs and looked off toward the sea. There were recuperating illnesses here, and there were the results of industrial accidents, sent down to get well in the warm air of the Black Sea. The average vacation was twenty-eight days, but in cases of illness the stay might be protracted for as long as the factory committee wished.
We were told that very many of the unions maintain rest houses on the sea for their members. This rest house could take about three hundred people at a time.
We drove a few miles down the coast to a sanatorium, a place that again looked like a giant hotel. And this was a state sanatorium for tuberculars and people troubled with other pulmonary difficulties. It was part hospital and part rest house. It was a very pleasant sunny place. The bed-ridden patients had their beds pulled out on balconies overlooking the gardens and the sea, and the ambulatory cases wandered about, listening to music and playing the inevitable chess, which is a game second only to soccer in importance.
The patients in this house were designated by the medical boards of their districts. This was a place of rest. When we came to it it seemed to be almost deserted, for all of the patients were in their beds. But while we were there a bell rang, and gradually they emerged to stroll about.
We were told that there were many hundreds of such sanatoriums on the edges of the sea, and driving along the coast road we could see a great many of them among the trees on the hillside slopes.
While we were driving, a heavy tropical rain began, and we went back to our hotel and finally got a couple of hours sleep. We were awakened by an unusual kind of music. There would be a pa.s.sage of clarinet marmalade, played in unmistakable Benny Goodman style. Then the pa.s.sage would stop, and a second clarinet would take up the same pa.s.sage, but not in unmistakable Benny Goodman style. In a half doze it took us some time to realize what was happening in one of the rooms near us. Someone was listening to a pa.s.sage of a Benny Goodman record, and then trying to imitate it, with only a modest amount of success. It went on and on, one pa.s.sage repeated again and again and again. It is only when one sees the mess that is made of American swing music by most Europeans that one is able to realize how definite, how expert, and how unique American music is. Perhaps our musicians would have the same difficulty with the intricate rhythms and melodies of Georgian music. Certainly the Russians have plenty of trouble with ours, but they bring great enthusiasm to bear. We had not heard much American swing music in Tiflis, but in Batum there was a good deal. The hotels were filled with it, for many of the visitors had come down from Moscow where it is played more often.
In the evening we were invited to a concert on the seash.o.r.e by what was called the Tiflis jazz orchestra. In a little band sh.e.l.l beside the beach, the orchestra took its place, and it played its version of American jazz-”s.h.i.+ne,” and ”China Boy,” and ”In the Mood”-always ”In the Mood.” When Capa and I came in to the concert, we were given huge bunches of flowers to hold, and we felt a little silly. Neither of us is quite the type to listen to a concert peering over the edge of fifteen pounds of gladioli. They were big bouquets, and there was nothing we could do with them. We couldn't put them down, we had to peer through the spikes of flowers at the orchestra on the platform.
We realized why they could not play American music well. Our swing music is invented and improvised. The musician puts himself and his imagination into his playing, whereas this Russian orchestra slavishly imitated records that it heard, and such records are not imitatable. If they wanted to play swing music, they should have taken perhaps the theme of ”Dinah” and improvised on it, in which case they would have had music. It wouldn't have been American swing music, but it might have been Georgian swing music.
It was with relief that the orchestra turned to its own music and played the wild dances of the Georgian hills. And we were relieved too, because they were at home, and it was music. And after it was over, the leader and several of the players came back to the hotel with us to have dinner. The leader was a wiry, enthusiastic man, and with our Tinker to Evers to Chmarsky translation we tried to tell him about the background of American swing, how it had developed and what it was. He was fascinated with its theory, and he and his players would break into explosive explanations in Georgian. The idea that around a simple melody the musicians became creators of music, not to be written down, not to be preserved, but simply to be played, was new to him. And as he and his players listened, they grew more and more excited about the idea. We told them there was no reason why an American theme should be used. A Georgian theme with the same improvisation would be just as good, and probably an idea that they could better carry out. After a while they jumped up, and said good-by, and left us. And we imagine that somewhere in the night, on the sh.o.r.e of the Black Sea, there was some wild experimenting with improvisation in the American manner.
We never seemed to get enough sleep, but it was not entirely that which wearied us. We were on the go all the time, we were never able to settle back and think about things. Capa's cameras had been snapping like firecrackers, and he was getting a lot of exposed film. Maybe it was something like this. We were seeing things all the time, we were having to see things all the time. For us, in a normal inefficient kind of an existence, we'd only see things a little part of the time, and the rest of the time we would just relax and not look at anything. But with our limited time on this trip, we had to see something every minute, and we were getting extremely tired. And there was one other thing too. We were living a life which for virtue has only been equaled once or twice in the history of the world. Part of this was intentional because we had too much to do, and part of it was because vice wasn't very available. And we are fairly normal specimens. We love a well-turned ankle, or even a few inches above the ankle, clad, if possible, in a well-fitting nylon stocking. We are fond of all the tricks, and lies, and falsities that women use to fool and snare innocent and stupid men. We like these things very much-nice hair-dos, and perfume, and beautiful clothes, and nail polish, and lipstick, and eye-shadow, and false eyelashes. We had a definite hunger to be tricked and fooled. We like intricate French sauces, and vintage wines, and Perrier-Jouet champagne, approximately 1934. We like sweet-smelling bath soap, and soft white s.h.i.+rts. We like gypsy music played by a whole b.l.o.o.d.y battalion of violins. We like the crazy skirl of Louis Armstrong's trumpet, and the hysterical laughter of Pee Wee Russell's clarinet. And we were leading a life of limpid virtue. We were consciously circ.u.mspect. The most common attacks on foreigners in the Soviet press are on the basis of drunkenness and lechery. And while we are only reasonably alcoholic, and no more lecherous than most people, although this is a variable thing, we were determined to live the lives of saints. And this we succeeded in doing, not entirely to our satisfaction.