Pathway to Japanese Literature

Horse-Drawn Carriages of Moscow

The door was flung open from within with great force.
A light swept swiftly across the breadth of the sidewalk.
Yet what emerged was unexpectedly a single small woman.

Two horse-drawn carriages stood parked along the sidewalk.
In the rear carriage, a driver drowsed.
The driver seated on the front bench in a black coat turned at the door's sound.
The harness fittings glinted sharply in the night.

The small woman, appearing to be in a great hurry and reluctant to even stop, called out to the driver from the sidewalk.

"Got time?"

“Where are you headed?”

“Sadovaya! Via Strastnaya Corner and Tverskaya Sixty-Eight—two roubles!”

“Fine, let’s go.”

“Two roubles! Is that okay? There.”

The driver muttered “Fine, fine” into his bearded mouth with an air of irritation.
A foreign woman.
No matter how many times she repeated it, she’d never get those Russian sounds right anyway.
His tone practically spelled it out.
With a carriage driver’s trademark sidelong glance, he watched her first wedge a newspaper-wrapped bundle into the footwell—the one she’d been clutching single-handed—then clamber into the carriage herself. When the springs finally settled, he clicked his tongue and loosened the reins.

To prevent slipping on winter-frozen roadways, Moscow's horses were fitted with horseshoes bearing three protruding cleats. On the smooth asphalt roads of the new Soviet state, those hooves rang out clearly and resonantly. In mid-November, at seven o'clock in the evening when people still walked about in light coats, an apple seller carrying a small basket appeared on the bustling thoroughfare. At the gate leading into the Geijutsu-za Shōbutai theater, a woman called out—"Programs! Programs, ten kopeks!" "Program for *Our Youth*—ten kopeks!"

A hurried, metallic voice that somehow sounded famished.
The bareheaded woman clutching a bundle of programs as she shouted like that—and all other pedestrians too—when seen from the carriage were swallowed by early evening’s thick shadows and uneven lamplight, their individual features indistinguishable.

The Japanese woman had always walked along Tverskaya Street wearing low-heeled brown shoes with a devouring gaze.

As she rode up the same slope in the carriage now, moving slowly, she felt with clarity how over three years she had walked these streets, each time carrying different emotions within her as she walked. No Soviet citizen would ride carriages that frequently. So even the Japanese woman hadn’t used them as often as she took trams. Tonight was exceptional. Decidedly exceptional. Because she had a mountain of tasks: first, extract two bottles from the awkwardly bulging briefcase on her lap to leave at Strastnaya Corner; next, absolutely deliver the newspaper-wrapped parcel to Sixty-Eight Tverskaya; then within thirty minutes, be unquestionably seated at the Shajitsu Theater to watch *The Adventures of the Brave Soldier Schweik*. And what had she been doing until barely seven in Room 73 behind that door—the one she’d burst through clutching armfuls of belongings? She’d knelt before a toppled trunk on the floor, coughing and sneezing from unidentified white powder. In that perpetually cluttered room, a typewriter had clattered urgently while Japanese phrases floated through the air.

“Why are you dawdling? Can’t you get that rope tied?”

“It’s going to snap, this rope! And damn it all!”
“Is this powder poisonous—”

“Chinese rope is such a strange thing.”
“Then just lock that one and get going!”

The large square birchwood box was the one that had been locked. It was what needed to be dispatched from Moscow to Japan tomorrow.

The Japanese woman herself was finally going to leave Moscow tomorrow, indeed.

To the left stood the Pushkin Memorial Statue.
The head of Pushkin, standing with his famous cloak draped over his shoulder, loomed dimly and darkly amidst the urban tangle of streetlamps, tram poles, and the winter-bare treetops lining the boulevard.

“Right, I wonder? Or left?”

At the driver’s voice, the Japanese woman,

“Right!”
“Right!”
the Japanese woman replied.

[He] turned the corner and pulled up to the gate just beyond.

The Japanese woman hurriedly entered the narrow entrance adjacent to the wide glass doors of the Moscow Evening News office, which were closed and dully reflecting. On the other side was another doorway leading to an inner courtyard—a stone-paved empty entrance that opened onto the street directly opposite the building. (This type of house structure had protected many victims of the proletarian liberation movement by 1917.) She climbed the stairs, pushed open the door on her right, and entered. That was an ordinary corridor. Numerous similar birch-colored ordinary doors were lined up along the corridor. A single door signified more than one household built into the interior. The foremost door was slightly ajar, and from it came the sound of a gramophone. Entering there, the Japanese woman knocked on the door facing the window frame laden with a kerosene stove or some glass bottles, onions, and other items.

Bearing the waves of Hungarian Rhapsody, Leader's face appeared—flushed as if she herself were startled by such music.

The Japanese woman grasped Leader's hand, spoke hurriedly while standing, and instead of taking out two bottles from her document case, had a small honey container pressed into it by her.

"Because you're always catching colds…"

Leader said in a tone that blended kindness with barbed teasing.

“If your nose starts sniffling halfway through Siberia, suck on this and crawl into bed!”

“We’ll meet at the station tomorrow anyway.”

“Oh, Leader—can you break a five-rouble note for me?”

Having once gone out and returned, the Japanese woman asked:
"I have to pay two roubles to the carriage driver, but he’ll surely say he has no change."

After retreating inside, Leader emerged into the corridor holding two three-rouble notes.

“Here, take this!”

“Why? That’s six roubles!”

“Doesn’t matter. I only have three-rouble notes here right now.”

“Well, thank you. I’ll take it.”

Leader followed her to the stairs and said “Sayonara” in Japanese.

Shaking the spring and boarding the carriage again, the Japanese woman was watched with that sidelong glance.

"That took quite a while, didn't it?" growled the driver in a heavy, discontented voice from his throat.

"Why?"
_I was only inside the house for about five minutes—_

But her thoughts did not settle on a single point, and she replied indifferently to his complaint:
"Fine, whatever. Next is Tverskaya 68."

For several days, the Japanese woman had slept in tiny increments.
She walked through different Moscow streets each day, imprinting various urban autumn landscapes onto her heart while working to loosen her ties to Moscow.

The day before yesterday, she had gone to the Moscow Regional Administration Department.
Passing through yellowing hedges into an even yellower colonnade beyond, she returned the SSSL residence permit attached to her passport.
When peeling off the pink large-format paper—still bearing her photo at its corner—the clerk shattered the red sealing wax affixing it to the passport.
The wax crumbled into pieces that scattered across the birch office desk.
The Japanese woman could still vividly recall how those red fragments had fallen onto the wood.

Tonight, like this, she rode in the carriage with the newspaper parcel at her feet.
By delivering the newspaper parcel to a certain house, yet another knot binding Moscow and the Japanese woman would be loosened.

The Japanese woman glanced at her wristwatch.
Then she stretched up on the carriage, peered over the bustling pedestrian traffic, and surveyed the whitewashed eaves of the tall building extending to the right.
Where could Number 68 be?
It was a place she herself had never been to before.

Ah, there, there!

By the roadside lay scattered cement barrels, bent old rails, and metal rods.
The inside of the gate was pitch-dark for some reason.
There, finding the entrance to the small rented room No.5 was likely no easy task.
When the Japanese woman, preoccupied with the gate, got down from the carriage, the driver—

“Again?” he said.

“Can’t keep waiting this long without getting more.”

Without turning back to face the Japanese woman, he spoke in a venomous tone.
She stopped momentarily as if to verify what she had heard behind her back, looked at the driver's face, then said quietly yet firmly.

“Look at this parcel,” she said. “I’m riding this carriage for errands. I’m not out here wandering around for chit-chat.”

He only shifted his weight on the driver’s seat and didn’t answer. The Japanese woman briskly entered the dark gate.

Everywhere in Moscow, gates one wasn’t accustomed to felt eerie at night—spacious, piled with all sorts of things, and devoid of people. She was startled to find Dr. Maria residing in its depths, where a bright chintz cloth was neatly spread over the table. In the room stood an old-fashioned pechka stove, warm and inviting. Wild strawberry jam had been set out on the table while Maria was drinking tea.

“Please have a sip of tea.”
“Even if you want tea tomorrow night, you won’t find this kind at my house.”
“But… Maria Andreevna…”

The Japanese woman walked toward the doorway while gazing longingly at the glossy strawberry jam.

“I really don’t have time.”
“Next time then.”

“Next time?”

“Ten years from now!”

“Oh dear!”
“Why?”
“Two Five-Year Plans? That makes ten years right there!”

The Japanese woman returned to the carriage.
She flung herself down onto the seat,

“There, that’s the end of it!”

she said toward the driver’s back.

“Go to Sadowya.”

The driver handled the reins and produced a soft whip-like sound against the black horse’s back.
And as he started moving, he spoke again while still facing away.

“I’m taking three roubles—you kept me waiting this long.”

The Japanese woman had already been living in Moscow for two years and six months.

“How long were you made to wait?”
“Old man.”

(In truth, he wasn’t an old man but a sturdy carriage driver still in his fifties.)

“But I have a watch—”

“You never said anything about taking such a detour in the first place!”

The driver kept insisting in a gruff voice devoid of rural inflection.

“If it’s such a detour, then anyone would demand five roubles.”

“Just think—what Soviet woman would pay two roubles for a ten-block ride down Tverskaya Street?”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

Amid the clatter of hooves, the Driver raised his voice over the noise.

“You have an obligation to pay me.”

——…………

“Do you have any idea what it costs to feed a horse these days?”

The Japanese woman’s thoughts—which had been darting about both internally and externally—began focusing squarely on the driver.
Oh—so he really meant to squeeze three roubles out of her?

In Soviet Russia, there was a slogan called "automobilization."
In addition to its long-standing periodic markets, Nizhny Novgorod became famous in modern times as home to the USSR’s foremost automobile manufacturing plant.
The Soviet Fords produced there, fluttering small red flags atop their headlights, first appeared on the projection screens of movie theaters in the Soyuzkino Weekly Newsreel before beginning to roll along Moscow’s newly paved asphalt roads.
In 1929–30, while still insufficient, the number of automobiles in Moscow grew.
However, the ratio of supply to demand among busy Muscovites remained far from equilibrium.

On the other hand, there were these circumstances.
The oat harvest of 1929 had not been abundant.
The Japanese woman found the Driver’s complaints about horse-feeding costs entirely credible on their own merit.
It wasn’t just this stubborn-looking middle-aged man making such claims.
Grain Production Cooperatives had already flagged it as an issue.

Taxis were state-operated in Moscow.
Drivers were hired on monthly salaries and worked.
Just like proletarians commuting to factories.
However, the old-fashioned horse-drawn carriages with red wheels had formed mutual aid associations among themselves while remaining individual enterprises that owned their means of production.
They either owned both horses and carriages or owned the horses and only rented the carriages.
As transportation workers, they did not belong to trade unions.
All economic organizations of the USSR were rapidly being socialized, with even individually operating artisans—cobblers, tailors, barbers, craftsmen who owned their means of production—being organized into collective production associations.

The red wheels of horse-drawn carriages and the horses' hooves no longer yielded the personal profits they once did.
Moreover, oats were expensive.
Under the Five-Year Plan’s collectivization of farms, Soviet villages were calling for all the laborers they could get.
For collective livestock farming.
Every single cow and horse was being invited.
Wouldn’t it have been better to become collective farm members and receive guaranteed livelihoods than to go into the city and struggle with unprofitable oats and taxes just to keep their carriages rolling?

From early summer of 1930, the number of horse-drawn carriages in Moscow sharply decreased, and fares doubled.

Moscow residents loaded their carriages with luggage until they overflowed, and moreover, in places like station fronts, they would employ Slavic patience to the utmost to negotiate fares.
If not for these circumstances, why would the small Japanese woman—still wearing a coat with the frayed lining—have resolved to pay two roubles for fifteen minutes?

The Japanese woman had the carriage stopped just past the Sadovaya intersection without going to the Realistic Theater.
She alighted beside a linden tree on the sidewalk and, looking up at the driver’s seat, said.

“I’ll pay two roubles as agreed.”
“Do you have change for a rouble?”

“I won’t accept a kopeck less than three roubles!”

“Whether I’m good or bad, I’ve got no intention of adding even a single kopeck.”

“Three roubles!”
“Three roubles!”

The Driver twisted his waist, lowered his bearded face toward the Japanese woman standing on the sidewalk, and boomed in a gruff voice:

“Three roubles… Is that clear?”
“You’re the one who has to pay that.”
“You never said anything about making detours from the start!”

The Japanese woman stared fixedly at the Driver with a stubborn gaze and spoke, clearly enunciating each word:

“You’re Russian, aren’t you?”
“When someone riding a carriage says to stop by, isn’t it obvious that means a detour? Don’t you get that?”

After remaining silent for a while, the Driver spoke somewhat weakly.

“No—I never said anything about that.”

Then suddenly, with exaggerated despair, he spread both hands wide to his sides and began looking around as if appealing to passersby,

"What in the world is this?!"

the Driver shouted.

“You rode my carriage all the way here, and now you refuse to pay?!”
“There’s no way such a thing could exist!”

The Japanese woman’s black eyes began to sparkle like coal beneath flames.
While stepping back onto the carriage, she commanded curtly.

“Let’s go to the officer’s post.”

The Driver responded with equal defiance.

“Let’s go!”

The Driver stealthily opened his mouth, careful not to let her notice, and the Japanese woman laughed to herself with inexpressible amusement. But really—how was one supposed to interpret this?

The carriage carrying the Japanese woman moved back along Tverskaya Street—crowded with people at 7:20 PM—in the opposite direction from which it had come. In the middle of the roadway, as though a terrifying volcano had erupted, it pressed itself flush against the edge of the sidewalk while the horse crawled at a pace so sluggish that its four legs might as well have been trudging through mud. Walking so sluggishly was unnatural and, on top of that, tedious. The horse briefly resumed its normal pace. Then the Driver hurriedly tightened the reins and made it walk slowly, ever so slowly.

The carriage moved so slowly that each face of the oncoming pedestrians passing by felt magnified and looming—that’s how excruciatingly sluggish their pace was.
Driver bastard!

That was not to say the Driver had made an entirely incorrect assumption in his line of work.
For one thing, this foreign woman was in a terrible hurry—she must be trying to get to a play, he thought.
Sadovaya had the Meyerhold Theatre.
The Realistic Theatre.
The Operetta Theatre.
In reality, it was already the time when the Japanese woman should have been seated at the Realistic Theatre.
But the Driver was gradually losing confidence in his own assumptions.
The Japanese woman refused to pay an extra rouble to avoid being late for the play.
On top of that, she seemed serious—or did she?—about going to the police.
So was I wrong to think she was heading to the theater?

The Driver remained silent, devoting himself solely to driving the horse at a sluggish pace.
He was gauging his own patience against that of the small foreign woman.
He had already cursed all he could—the reason being that they hadn’t come straight down this street from the Sadovaya intersection.
They had already taken a detour.
So it really was this slowness after all.

Turning left onto the main avenue and proceeding several blocks down a dark cobblestone street, the Driver halted the carriage in front of a solitary house painted blue on the outside.
He peered intently at the house from outside before groaning atop the driver’s seat.

“Damn it!”
“It’s moved somewhere else!”

Through the low, bright window facing the street, several young men in Russian shirts could be seen chatting and laughing.
The voices spilled clearly outside, while only the lamplight reached into the deserted street.

The Driver lashed out at the Japanese woman.

“Huh?”
“What am I supposed to do?!”
“The police station that was here until just the other day has up and disappeared!”

“There’s more than one police station in Moscow, isn’t there?”
The Japanese woman answered in a calm tone.

“There are officers right out on the street.”

“Just look at you—still young, yet you make people suffer like this! Shame on you!”
“You’re dishonest.
“I’ve never come across a customer like this before!”

The Japanese woman’s response was singular.

“I stated the correct price and boarded based on a proper agreement, so I won’t back down. I’ll stick to what’s right alongside your Soviet authority to the very end.”

They had ended up back beneath the Pushkin monument (Sadovaya and Strastnaya were, it turned out, that close). The Driver pulled the carriage into a hollow in the thoroughfare—now a taxi stand devoid of even a single taxi—looked around the area, and eventually climbed down from the driver’s seat with deliberate slowness before heading off toward the square. He led the young traffic officer ahead and returned to the carriage.

The Japanese woman crouched down from the carriage and explained the situation to the officer.
The Driver stood to the side, his back turned toward the officer.
By now, a crowd had gathered around them.
The young traffic officer, having puffed out the chest of his black overcoat fastened with a leather belt and twiddled the tip of the red baton inserted at its front, finished listening; he then brought his hand to his cap and shifted it to the back of his head in the Russian style.

“……Discuss this at the police station.”

Turning to face the Driver,

“Go to the police station.”
“I’m busy here.”

He returned to the square’s intersection.

“What’s this?”

“Could it be she doesn't understand the language?”

The crowd began to chatter.

“What’s going on?”
“What does she want?”

The Japanese woman, remaining seated in the carriage, gazed with a level look at the crowd gathering around her.
She knew the crowd.
During the times she had stood in bread lines, during the times she had been jostled in the tram, the Japanese woman had come to understand the temperament of this Moscow crowd.

“Why are you gathered here like this?”

The Driver, having alighted from the carriage and remaining standing by the horse, answered in a low voice.

“The foreign woman won’t pay.”

“Don’t you understand Russian?”

“I understand.”

The Japanese woman answered.

The Driver said nothing.――

A young man wearing a brown leather cap—likely a Communist Youth League member—emerged from behind the ring of onlookers, angling his body through.
After briefly eyeing the foreign woman atop the carriage, he flicked away his cigarette butt and ground it out underfoot,

“Go on, you’d better head to the police station.”

He said to the Driver.

“It’s on this Tverskaya Street.”

“It’s not there anymore. I went there, but...”

“It’s further ahead.”

From behind, someone shouted in a voice that seemed to stretch upward.

“It’s Number 110, on Tverskaya.”

The Driver, as if swept along by their words, climbed back onto the driver’s seat once more. He turned the horse with clattering hooves. Again came “Izvestia” – the newspaper company’s towering clock face. Pedestrians walked past, their overcoat shoulders and chests glowing crimson under lights cascading from the Ars Cinema.

Without quickening his pace in the slightest, he crossed Sadovaya again and halted precisely at that streetlamp by the linden tree – the exact spot where the Japanese woman had earlier alighted. Still facing forward,

“Go home.”

The Japanese woman did not immediately understand what the Driver was saying.

“Go home. I’m not going any further.”

In a manner that seemed dejected yet remained stubbornly determined not to lose its contempt, the Driver spoke firmly.

“I don’t need your money—you’re the one who wants it! Take it back!”

The Japanese woman alighted from the carriage still clutching her document case swollen with honey containers, stepped back slightly, and went to the apple seller standing by the transformer tower with a bag.

“How much?”
“That one.”
It was a terrible apple, bruised here and there.
“Fifteen kopecks.”
“Then two.”

Ceaseless passersby.

From beyond a cluster of people waiting for the bus, there now came into view the eyes and black beard of the carriage driver - his entire body turned this way as he waited intently for the small Japanese woman to finish breaking coins.
[January 1931]