We drove through the city for a long time, rising from hill to hill. It seems that we passed through Chinatown.

"And here is Russian Hill," said our mighty driver, shifting gears into second. The machine rattled and began to climb up the cobbled roadway.

No, there was nothing here reminiscent of San Francisco. This street looked more like the end of Old Tula or Kaluga. We stopped near a small house with a portico and went in. The first room, where on the wall hung old photographs and pictures cut out of magazines, was crowded with people. Here were bearded old men in spectacles. Here were men somewhat younger in coats that disclosed Russian shirts. It was just such clothes that prerevolutionary Russian workers wore on a holiday. But the strongest impression of all was made by the women. We wanted to rub our eyes, just to make sure that such women could exist in the year 1935, and not only somewhere in some old forsaken Russian hole, but in the petrol and electric San Francisco, at the other end of the world. Among them we saw Russian peasant women, white-faced and pink-cheeked, in good holiday waists with puff sleeves and full skirts, the cut of which had years ago been brought from Russia and without any changes had become petrified in San Francisco, and we saw large old women with weird prophetic eyes. The old women wore calico kerchiefs. It was hard enough to accept that. But where did they get calico print in this polka-dot design! The women spoke softly and roundly, in chanting voices, emphasizing "o's" and, as it should be, offered their hands spade-fashion.

Many of them could not speak any English at all, although they had lived almost all of their lives in San Francisco. The gathering reminded us of an old village wedding at the point when all the guests are on hand and the celebration is about to begin.

Almost all the men were as tall and broad-shouldered as the one who had brought us here. They had tremendous arms and hands, the arms and hands of stevedores.

We were asked to come downstairs. Down there was a very spacious basement. A long narrow table was laden with pirozhki, salted pickles, sweet bread, and apples. On the wall hung the portraits of Stalin, Kalinin, and Voroshilov. Everyone took his place at the table, and a conversation began. We were asked about collective farms, about factories, about Moscow. 'They served us tea in glasses. Suddenly the ] very largest of the Molokans, a rather elderly man in steel-rimmed spectacles and with a greyish little beard, deeply inhaled a goodly quantity of air and began to sing in a voice so extraordinarily sonorous that at first he seemed to be not singing but shouting:

"Exhausted I am by sorrow,

The accursed viper!

Burn to the end, my matchwood!

I, too, will burn down with you."

The song was caught up by all the men and women. They sang in full voices, just like their choir leader. There were no nuances in their singing. They sang fortissimo, only fortissimo, with all their might, trying to outshout one another. It made a strange and a somewhat unpleasant first impression. The singing did become a little more composed as it went on. The eardrums soon became accustomed to it. Despite its sonorousness, there was something sad in it. Particularly good were the

voices of the women, who brought out the high notes almost hysterically. Such sad and penetrating voices had resounded across the fields at twilight after haying, ringing tirelessly, quieting down slowly, and finally inter mingling with the chirrup of the crickets. These people had sung this song on the Volga, later among the Kurds and Armenians near Kars.

Now they were singing it in San Francisco, in the state of California. Were they to be driven off into Australia, into Patagonia, into the Fiji Islands, they would sing that song even there.

That song was all that was left to them of Russia.

Then the man in spectacles winked at us and began to sing:

"All of us have come from the people,

Children of labour are we.

Brotherly union and freedom —

Such is our slogan for war."

Mr. Adams, who had wiped his eyes several times and was now even more profoundly affected than during conversation with the former missionary about the manly Navajo Indians, could not contain himself any longer and began to sing in chorus with the Molokans.

But here a surprise awaited us. The Molokans introduced their own ideological correction when they came to the words: "The dark days are over; the hour of deliverance has struck." They sang it thus: " The dark days are over; Christ has shown us the way." Mr. Adams, the old atheist and materialist, did not make out the words and continued to sing loudly, opening wide his mouth.

When the song was over we asked why they had changed the text.

The choir leader again winked at us significantly and said :

"We have a songbook. We sing according to the songbook. Only this is a Baptist song. We sang it especially this way for you."

He showed us a badly thumbed book. In its preface it said:

"Songs may be solemn, sad, or middling."

"Christ Has Shown Us the Way" was evidently a middling song.

In order to please us, the Molokans with great inspiration began singing Demian Biedny's song entitled "How My Own Mother Saw Me Off." They sang it in full, line by line, and for a long time after that they sang other Russian songs.

Then again we talked. We talked about various things. They asked us whether it would be possible to arrange for the return of the Molokans to their native land.

Two old men who sat beside us got into an argument.

"All the slavery under the sun has come from the priests," said one old man.

The old man agreed with this, but he agreed contentiously.

"For two hundred years we haven't paid the priests anything!" exclaimed the first old man.

The second one agreed with that, too, but again in a contentious tone of voice. We did not intervene in this two-hundred-year-old argument.

It was time to go. We bade our hospitable hosts farewell. Toward the end, already standing, the Molokans repeated for us the song "How My Own Mother Saw Me Off," and we went out into the street.

From Russian Hill there was a good view of the lighted city. It spread far and wide on all sides. Below seethed American, Italian, Chinese, and simply sailor passions, wonderful bridges were being built, on the little island of the federal prison was Al Capone, while here in a kind of voluntary prison were people, with their own Russian songs, Russian women and Russian tea, sitting there with their Russian nostalgia, huge people, almost giants in size, who had lost their homeland, hut who remembered it every minute, and who in remembrance of it had hung a portrait of Stalin.

34 Captain X

WE WERE very sorry to leave San Francisco. But the Adamses were implacable. The entire journey had to be consummated within two I months and not one day more.

"Yes, yes, gentlemen," said Mr. Adams, beaming. "We must not torment our Baby more than sixty days. Today we received a letter. Last week Baby was taken to the zoo and she was shown the aquarium. When Baby saw so many fish at once she cried out `No more fish`. Our Baby is lonesome. No, no, we must go as soon as possible."

Full of compassion and regrets, we drove for the last time across the picturesque hunchbacked streets of San Francisco. In this little square 1 we could have sat on the bench and did not sit. On this noisy street we could have promenaded but we had not been there even once. And in this Chinese restaurant we could have had a wonderful lunch but for some reason we did not have lunch there. And the dives, the dives! We forgot the main thing: the famous dives of Old Frisco, where! skippers smashed each other's thick heads with bottles of rum, where Malayans danced with white girls, where quiet Chinamen go insane smoking opium! Oh, we forgot it, we forgot it all! And there was nothing more we could do about it: we had to go!