A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 11 



greet us with shy hospitality, and made us sit down on 

 the wooden settle behind the table. While she prepared 

 the samovar, and Michael Petrovitch talked to her in 

 his cheerful breezy way, I was able to look about me. 

 Almost one-third of the room was taken up by the 

 stove and great brick oven. On the top of the latter 

 were piled a miscellaneous collection of household goods 

 — loaves of sugar, flour-trenchers, and cooking-pots. In 

 one corner stood a large four-poster bed, and in another 

 were shelves, upon which the cheap coloured crockery 

 was neatly arranged. The table was spotless, and the 

 rough floor was likewise well swept and tidy. The 

 place was not poverty stricken, in fact, it contained plenty 

 of comfort, as comfort is reckoned in Northern Siberia, 

 but I have seldom seen a room which even at first sight 

 filled one with such a sense of oppression and distaste. 

 Partly, no doubt, this discomfort may have been physical, 

 for the atmosphere was not only hot but positively 

 fetid. I do not think that those Siberian balagans 

 are ventilated from one year's end to another. If you 

 were to pull one of them down carefully, stick by stick, 

 I verily believe that the atmosphere inside would be so 

 thick and close that it would stand up by itself like a 

 blancmange turned out of its mould ! Chiefly, how- 

 ever, it was its inhabitants, who, so to speak, spread an 

 aura of depression over the room. Vassilli Vassillievitch 

 himself sat on a stool under the window and talked to 

 Antonoff". He was a small, narrow-faced man, with bad 

 teeth and a furtive manner, which was all the more 

 conspicuous beside the open geniality of Michael 

 Petrovitch. His hands were as restless as his eyes. 



