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Updated: June 28, 2025
"It is plain that you don't understand in the least," answered my izvostchik, turning round in his seat and imperiling our lives by his driving, while he plunged into the subject with profound earnestness. "None of them is the Virgin, and all of them are the Virgin. All the different Virgins are merely different manifestations of the Virgin to men.
It was raining hard, so we engaged an izvostchik who was the fortunate possessor of an antiquated covered carriage, with a queer little drapery of scarlet cotton curtains hanging from the front of the hood, as though to screen the modesty of "the young person" from the manners, customs, and sights of the Fair, about which, to tell the truth, the less that is said in detail the better.
Fate had favored us with a clever cabman. His shaggy little horse was as dusty in hue as his own coat, a most unusual color for coat of either Russian horse or izvostchik. The man's armyak was bursting at every seam, not with plenty, but, since extremes meet, with hard times, which are the chronic complaint of Kazan, so he affirmed.
He and a black-haired izvostchik have a fight for my custom nearly every time I go out. Fighting for custom in words is the regular thing, but the way these men do it convulses with laughter everybody within hearing, which is at least half a block. It is the fashion here to take an interest in chafferings with cabmen and in other street scenes. "'She's to ride with me! shouts one.
One evening, on my way from an informal call of farewell on a friend who was about to set out for the Crimea, I ordered my izvostchik to drive me to the Michael Palace. We were still at some distance from the palace when a policeman spoke to the izvostchik, who drove on instead of turning that corner, as he had been on the point of doing. "Why don't you go on up that street?" I asked.
I paid and dismissed my izvostchik, a poor, shabby fellow, such as Fate invariably allotted to me, walked in, gave my furs and galoshes to the handsome, big head Swiss in imperial scarlet and gold livery, and started past the throng of servants, to the grand staircase, which ascended invitingly at the other side of the vast hall.
The rival bidders for custom shrieked with laughter at his wit, the official fled, and I tried in vain wonderful to relate to get the attention of the group and offer them a fresh opportunity for discussion by trying to hire one of them. My note-book furnishes the following: "If anybody wants a merry izvostchik, with a stylish flourishing red beard, I can supply him.
The police, with their bashlyks wrapped round their heads in a manner peculiar to themselves, stand always in the middle of the street and regulate the traffic. We will hire an izvostchik and join the throng. The process is simple; it consists in setting ourselves up at auction on the curbstone, among the numerous cabbies waiting for a job, and knocking ourselves down to the lowest bidder.
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