Night on Tsvetnoy Boulevard

A hole in a pocket. What could be more insignificant? Exactly this kind of small hole, not noticed in time, turned out to be the start of an adventure. It was August of 1883 when I returned to Moscow after a five-month absence, and devoted myself to literary work. I wrote poems and other trifles for Alarm, Entertainment, and Fragments, articles on various questions, and wrote accounts of horse races for the Moscow papers. Among my acquaintances from the track were representatives of all ranks and positions. I had to meet people from the darkest professions, but always elegantly dressed and talented handicappers. I made an effort to maintain these relationships: thanks to them, I got interesting tips for the newspaper and sometimes found my way into secret gambling houses, where my presence was tolerated, and where I met many people who had been accepted into high society, and were even members of clubs, but in reality were card sharps, con artists, or sometimes gang leaders. I could write an entire book about this world. But I will limit myself to reminiscences about one stalwart racing fan, a blonde dandy with a full mustache who owned a prize-winning trotter.

The day that the problem with the hole occurred, the die-hard fan came up to me at the track. Should he enter his horse in the next event, did she have a chance? Near the exit, after the races, we accidentally met again, and he suggested, on account of the rain, to take me to my home in his carriage. I refused, saying that I was headed for Samotek and it wasn’t on his way, but he convinced me, and after letting the driver off, feverishly sped to Samotek, where I dropped in to see an old friend, the artist Pavlik Yakovlev. On the way, we chatted the whole time about horses. He considered me a great expert and therefore respected my opinion. I left Yakovlev’s around one in the morning and trudged off in my high boots down the muddy path in the median of Tsvetnoy Boulevard. By force of habit, in my right pocket, I grasped a small knife, a gift from my friend Andreyev-Burlak. This caution seemed unnecessary: there was not one living soul around:

A light autumn rain

Drifts through the mist.

The night was impenetrable. There was not a single street light anywhere because, according to the city calendar, on those nights when the moon was visible, lamps were not lit, and this night, according to the calendar, was lunar. That night, also, there was mist. It gathered above the bushes, and hung on trees, turning them into specters. Only on such a night could one walk calmly along this boulevard not risking robbery or death at the hands of the regulars, who left their slums in Grachevsky Alley and Arbuzovsky Fortress, a huge, formerly-impressive building located on the boulevard.

Most intimidating was Lesser Kolosov Alley, coming out from Grachevsky onto Tsvetnoy Boulevard, completely filled with johns for the last call at the whorehouses. The entrances to these buildings, where they met the street, were certain to be lit by a red lamp. The dirtiest secret dens of prostitution were in these quiet courtyards, where no lights were allowed and where windows faced the inside. Typically, no dogs were kept in these courtyards. The women who lived here had lost all resemblance to human beings, and their tomcats, hiding from the police, were the kind for whom it was risky even to enter Khitrovka’s flophouses. At night, the tomcats went out on Tsvetnoy Boulevard and Samotek, where their kittens rolled drunks. Either they invited drunks to their hideouts, or the tomcats, who followed closely on the heels of their “ladies,” took care of them right there. Muscle was recruited for crimes from distant slums, and the police never even looked in their direction. If, because of the bosses, usually the procurator, raids were actually carried out, then “the managers” knew about it in time, and, despite the “surprise” raids, they never found what they were looking for. The women in these apartments, mostly former prostitutes, were fictitious lease holders. The real lease holders were their lovers, escaped criminals wanted by the police, other scammers, or thieves who had not yet been caught.

Card sharps and gambling bosses, in the worst buildings, had secret rooms, so-called “mills.” They were used for scamming thieves and robbers. They frequented the slums to satisfy their thirst for risk while certain there wouldn’t be any distractions or bystanders. A card sharp’s associates or game organizers only had to get a whiff of money in the hands of some thief after a successful job, and they would start hunting. On a pre-arranged day, they would invite him to the “mill” to play a deck or two. There were no real games at the “mills”: at the appointed hour a finely tuned company of card sharps had assembled. A dealer – someone to do the job – was invited. He could deal any card needed, and the gambling thief’s money would go to the sharps. “Mills” were run for this task. During the day, when the “mill” was not filled with “business men,” every kind of dirty game was played, and provided a dependable income – the banks were paying ten percent. Career criminals, out of caution, did not frequent the larger “mills,” run out of luxury apartments. There were dozens of such “mills” at the time on Moscow’s main streets.

The 1880s saw the greatest flowering of such establishments. At the time, slum owners seemed most well-intentioned from a political standpoint, and enjoyed a special degree of support from the police, whom they paid well. The political department did not consider them “dangerous to the state” and even protected them right up to the owners of the slums and “mills,” who helped with security when the tsar came through the area. At the time, the police were busy only catching “unreliable” elements inclined toward revolution, whom they arrested and exiled by the hundreds. The slum world on Grachevka Street and Tsvetnoy Boulevard flourished.

I marched in silence among the misty specters and suddenly felt a strange pain in my left foot near the ankle. The pain eventually became strong enough that it forced me to stop. I looked around for a place to sit and adjust my boot, but no bench was in sight and the pain in my foot was unbearable. I leaned up against a tree, tore off my boot, and immediately discovered the reason for the pain: it turned out that my small knife had fallen from my pocket into my boot. After putting the knife back in my pocket, I started to put my boot on, but heard steps through the puddles and a quiet conversation. I hunkered down behind the tree. From the direction of Bezymyanka Alley, three people, holding each other up, were silhouetted by a circle of light from a red lamp.

“I’m freezing, let’s rest… it’s not fit for a dog on this street.”

“Oh, you skinny weakling. Alright, let go.”

The furthest of the group bent forward and carefully lowered the middle one to the ground.

“They’re helping a drunk,” I thought.

I got a good look at an enormous man in a coat and, next to him, a hunchbacked figure. He shook his hand and blew on it.

“What a giant, stretched both my arms.” The big one lay flat in a puddle.

“Fokach, let’s dump him here or maybe in the bushes right over there.”

“This is too close to the police guardhouse, you simpleton! Tomorrow they’ll be kicking around under every shrub.”

“Into a pipe would be a better idea and ‘ends in the water.’”

“If we’re doing it, let’s do it quietly. Grab on! Now you can use your hands.” The big one took him by the head, the small one by the legs and carried him like a log.

I followed behind, in the grass to avoid noise. The rain stopped. The water burbled, flowing through the gutter next to the sidewalk, and with a gurgle fell through an iron grate into the collector shaft for the underground Neglinka. Right next to it, the “laborers” stopped and threw the body onto the stones.

“Raise the grate.”

The small one bent forward and then straightened up. “It’s slippery, I can’t”

“Oh, you rotten scrap of flesh!”

The giant tore out the grate and moved it aside. “Aha,” I thought, “here’s what ‘ends in the water’ means.” I stepped into the bushes, steadied myself, and yelled across the whole boulevard, “Over here, guys! Grab them!” Pulling from my pocket a police whistle, which I always carried just in case, racing through the slums I gave three long, sharp, whistles. Both criminals at first took off down the sidewalk, and then crossed the street and hid in an empty lot’s bushes. I ran up to the prone figure and felt his face. The beard and mustache were shaven. A large strong man. Shoes, pants, vest, and a white spot on his starched shirt. I took his hand and he moved his fingers. Alive!

I gave one more triple whistle and got instant replies from two directions. I heard hurried steps. A janitor was running from the next building, and, from the direction of the boulevard, a city cop. I hid in the bushes to confirm that they saw the man by the grate. The janitor ran along the sidewalk right into him and started whistling. The cop ran up. Both bent over the prone man. I wanted to walk over, but once more felt the pain in my foot. The knife had fallen through the hole again. This decided it: no reason to take a risk for nothing, I would find out the next day. I knew that side of the boulevard belonged to the first precinct of the Sretensky Division. The other side of Bezymyanka, where they dragged the body from, belonged to the second precinct. I grabbed a cab on Trubnaya Square and headed home.

At ten the next morning, I was at the Sretensky watchtower in the office of the precinct captain, Larepland. I was well acquainted with him and had more than once gotten information from him for the papers. He had one weakness. A former cantonist, he had served for ten years in the Moscow police, rose from a street cop to captain, received the rank of collegial assessor, and was happy when he was appointed a captain even though he wore the stripes of a civil organization.*

“Captain, I just received information that last night a murder victim was found on Tsvetnoy Boulevard.”

“First, no murder victim was found. We did pick up a drunk who was mugged on Grachevka, dragged into my precinct, and abandoned. That’s how thieves do it – so there are fewer problems for both them and us. Who needs to go searching in someone else’s precinct? No one can prove that he was dragged here. That’s the first thing. Second: a most humble request to you not to write a word about this for the papers. I didn’t even write a report, and closed the case myself. How you found out – I give up! No one except the officers who picked him up and the victim knew. And he asked me himself for the case to be closed. No, no, please do not write anything, or you might undermine my authority. I did not report it to my commander.” Larepland told me that they brought in an unconscious drunk, an almost naked man whom they had picked up on the sidewalk in a puddle.

“Initially, we thought he was dead, so we put him in the morgue with the bodies of two drunks, but he started moving and talking. He fell asleep right away in the reception area. They left him alone, and I spoke with him this morning. Turns out he’s a wealthy German, his brother works in the Vogel office. They just came for him. The brother showed up in a carriage and took him away. The German was out last night for a good time, wound up in a dive when the girls dragged him in, and there they put “malinka” in his drink, took everything, and dumped him into my precinct. That’s the way it is here sometimes. Captain Kapeni (also a cantonist) is a friend, and, well, we closed the case. It will do no one any good; anyway, everything will stay the same. Anything else will only cause trouble. He’s lucky to be alive. He showed signs of life just in time. A young, good looking German, ended up in a den of criminals in a drunken condition, they forced him to drink beer with the girls. All he remembers is that they all drank out of beer glasses, but they served him in a glass mug with a metal lid, topped by a decorative bird. That was the only thing he really remembered. I promised to write nothing about this event and, of course, did not say anything to the captain about what I saw that night. But I then decided to study Grachevka, which was so similar to Khitrovka, Arzhenovka, Khapilovka and the other slums that I had often visited. RL

* The cantonist system mandated military conscription of Jews and other targeted minorities. It was put in place in 1827, and boys as young as 12 were forced to serve a 25-year term in the Russian imperial army. In 1856, Tsar Alexander II declared the end of the system. During its existence, tens of thousands of boys had been forced from their homes, faced the worst kinds of military hazing, endured religious persecution and the threat of forced conversion. Many never returned home.

Vladimir Gilyarovsky’s classic account of life in the pre-revolutionary capital, Moscow & Muscovites, was translated by Brendan Kiernan with grant support from The Translation Institute (Moscow). The first-ever translation into English of this important work will be published by Russian Life Books in December and can be purchased via mail, phone or online:

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