Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

ater, there was the kitchen to go to for it. It was quite permissible for any one to do so. If it were rather early in the morning, six or seven o’clock, the water might not yet be hot, but one could waken the young fellow who always slept on the table, of course with a blanket, and by words. or gestures request him to make the fire. Later in the morning there might be a line of persons waiting in turn for an opportunity at the hot water faucet of the furnace. They came with basins, pails, cans, tea pots, according to the use they wanted to make of the water. The foreigner quickly learned to say “kipyatuk” if he desired hot water. But the guest could not hope to have hot water brought to the room. Each was to carry his own. Neither was the kitchen very inviting. It did not entice one to taking the meals there, even though there were no restaurants in the whole city, and the very name was taboo. Fortunately I had brought a considerable quantity of food from Riga. This I could supplement at a nearby ‘‘cafe’’ which had just opened and was said to be the first to appear since the New Economic Policy of the previous March had made that possible. There, one could get a poorly prepared meal of very doubtful quality. In a short time I learned of still another cafe. They were really restaurants very poorly equipped that dared not use the bourgeoise term “restaurant.’’ For a con- siderable time there were only two in all of Moscow so far as I could discover. By chance I learned through a friend that a family was serving meals to “paying guests.” They enjoyed the luxury of two rooms. He had been a teacher of piano in a music school and his wife was of a 134 FEEDING THE HUNGRY formerly wealthy family. The meal consisted usually of potatoes boiled with barley soup. Thus with my food basket, the two cafes, and the professor’s table I did not suffer for lack of food. Everywhere in the city were the evidences of the revolutionary upheaval—streets in bad condition, side- walks worn out, rubbish and refuse strewn about, build- ings generally dilapidated, houses a heap of ruins, here and there the gaunt skeleton of a bombarded dwelling like the quarters of the Kadets on the Tverskaya Boulevard. All the stores and shops were closed as were also the banks. A few buildings were used by the Government as distributing centers, many as offices, many were empty and boarded shut. With fewer dwellings and a larger popula- tion, Moscow was overfilled, therefore the house or room space per person was fixed by law. Small families were crowded into one or two small rooms where they all cooked, ate, slept, and lived together. Central heating systems or Dutch stoves were generally out of repair and required too much fuel. Rough brick furnaces were built into the rooms on fine hardwood floors; or stoves set up with the pipe thrust through the window pane or through a rude hole cut into the wall. Occasionally tram cars