VII

AT A FAIR

One misty morning in late October I arrived at Batum, pack on back, staff in hand, to all appearances a pilgrim or a tramp, and I drank tea at a farthing a glass in the fair.

“Pour it out full and running over,” said a chance companion to the owner of the stall.  “That’s how we workmen like it; not half-full as for gentlefolk.”  The shopman, a silent and very dirty Turk, filled my glass and the saucer as well.  And sipping tea and munching bubliki, we looked out upon all the sights of the bazar.

There lay around, in all the squalor that Turks love, the marvellous superabundance of a southern harvest—­spread on sacks in the mud—­grapes purple and silver-green, pomegranates in rusty thousands, large dew-fed yellow apples, luscious dirt-bespattered pears, such fruits that in London even the rich might look at and sigh for, but pass by reflecting that with the taxes so high they could not afford them, but here sold by ragamuffins to ragamuffins for greasy coppers; and not only these fruits, but quinces and peaches, the large yellow Caucasian khurma, the little blood-red kizil, and many unnamed rarities.  They all surged up out of the waste of over-trodden mire, as if the pageantry of some fairy world had been arrested as it was disappearing into the earth.

Then, beside these gorgeous fruits, in multitudinous attendance, a confused array of scarlet runners, tomatoes, cabbages, out-tumbled sacks of glazy purple aubergines, mysterious-looking gigantic pumpkins, buckets full of pyramidal maize-cobs, yellow, white-sheathed.

The motley crowd of vendors, clamouring, gesticulating, are chiefly distinguished by their hats—­the Arabs in white turbans, the Turks in dingy fezes jauntily cocked over dark, unshaven faces, some fezes swathed in bright silk scarves; the Caucasians in golden fleece hats, bright yellow sheepskin busbies; the few Russians in battered peak caps, like porters’ discarded head-gear; Persians in skull-caps; Armenians in shabby felts, astrakhans, or mud-coloured bashliks.  The trousers of the Christians all very tight, the trousers of the Mahometans baggy, rainbow-coloured—­it is a jealous point of difference in these parts that the Turk keeps four or five yards of spare material in the seat of his trousers.

What a din! what a clamour!

“Kopeika, kopeika, kopeika.”

“Oko tre kopek, oko tre kopek, oko tre kopek.”

Thus Christians shout against Mussulmans over the grape-heaps—­one farthing, one farthing, one farthing; oko (three pounds) three farthings, oko three farthings, oko three farthings.  Fancy shouting oneself hoarse to persuade passers-by to buy grapes at a farthing a pound!

My companion at the tea-stall, a tramp-workman from Central Russia, was astonished at the price of the grapes.