The Way of the Cross (Doroshevich)/V
V
THE DESOLATION OF ROSLAVL
ROSLAVL, on the River Oster, is a quiet little town in the province of Smolensk. Ordinarily, when you drive along the highroad coming from the West, in Rogachef, in Cherikof, in Propoisk, in Krichef, they will tell you that Roslavl is:
—The first Russian town.
Prom here to the eastward, Great Russia begins.
When you arrive at Roslavl you will be awakened in the morning by the soft yet powerful baritone of its marvellous bell, sounding from the height of the Transfiguration monastery on the hill.
And you will hear this, like music— for the first time on the whole of your journey from the West up till then.
A gracious little town.
Here everything has some sort of
—A name.
Not only orphanages and trade-schools bear the name of some one, of some local citizen,
But even the trading banks—and such like places,
—Bear some name or other.
A remarkably gracious little town.
Now Roslavl is choked and drowned.
There is neither sugar nor salt in the town.
In the streets fugitives stop you and ask,
—Friend, where can I buy any salt here? I've been trying to get some all day.
—Little father, where can we get any sugar? Even if it's only half a pound or a quarter of a pound.
You go into a baker's shop and ask:
—Have you any white bread?
The shopman looks at you in wonder.
—We bake no white. Only black, and even that's all taken for the fugitives.
—The fugitives will eat us up, says Roslavl in terror.
But the wave of fugitives comes on and on, and a stench is given forth from it.
Here the great river stops, and its waters turn round and round, like a whirlpool.
Roslavl is overwhelmed; the tide rises above its head.
The reason?
—The railway.
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people will remember with horror:
—The desolation of Roslavl.
Here is enacted a dreadful scene,
"The completion of the process."
—The fugitives giving up their horses.
First they were as "gipsies," but now they have turned into a Khitrof market.[1]
Numbers of the fugitives, the great majority of them, having exhausted their last strength and reached the railway:
—Have the last thing to do as peasants.
They sell their horses.
And thence go onward
—In the train.
Waiting in an open-air camp in Roslavl for a week or so, until
—They are given places.
And with what desperation do they cling to the possession of their horses.
Here I made the acquaintance of a fugitive.
—A bitter man.
His wife died two weeks before the final ruin and he has three children, two very young, and a baby.
He had owned some land and was a farmer.
—He had paid 12,000 roubles for it.
The payment had been spread over seven years and all had been paid.
—He had only just begun to make a living.
And now "this had happened."
He had managed to bring away all his cattle. And four horses.
He had gone a long way.
But in Minsk province, where a continuous marsh extends for tens and tens of versts, an order had come to clear the high-road, and the cattle had been driven on to the marsh.
—My little son—said he, who had gone on in front with the cattle, ran back to meet me at a turn of the road, crying, "Daddy, Daddy, the cattle are all drowned in the marsh." I ran to him. The herd of cattle were twisting and writhing in the bog. Bellowing. And among them I saw mine.
He spoke sadly but calmly about the death of his wife, about his land that had "cost so much money." But
—I'd rather have been blinded than see such a sight. A second ruin. All my property perishing in the quagmire, and I stand on the road and become a beggar.
Three horses died on the way.
One remained. A little shaggy horse, ten years old, but active.
In Roslavl he found a kind man who permitted him to live in his banya, bath-house.
A black banya.
—But that was a palace!
Day and night I never cease to pray to God for the kind man who saved my children,—says he.
He has found a footing at Roslavl and will remain there. Drives a cab.
—Two roubles a day shall I earn, think I. One and a half will feed the horse, and the fifty copecks which remain must suffice for us four.
—Not a large budget. And what if you were to sell the horse and go farther?
He looked at me straight in the eyes with terror.
—Master! said he, I have a horse, and so all the same I remain a man! A human being! But without a horse, what sort of a being should I be? What should I be?
On all sides you hear:
—Well, at least we have a horse! So we can still count ourselves human beings! Still peasants!
—And if the money be all spent, and the peasant cease to be a peasant. What then?
The last thing that connects him with the past, the last thing that binds him to life.
Along the main street of Roslavl from earliest morning till the darkness of night without interruption, without ceasing, go two processions, one one way, the other the other.
On one side of the road come an endless series of grey carts, one after another endlessly—and pass away towards that stretch of the road where yesterday we saw innumerable camp bonfires.
On the other side coming from that place come refugees on horseback, some astride, some sitting sideways, on little worn-out horses. They go to the bazaar.
Betwixt the two processions is the long empty alley of the middle of the street.
On both sides there is silence
As if funeral processions going in opposite directions were meeting one another.
Not even looking at one another, in fact, as if they did not remark one another.
To the town:
—To seek salt?
To know:
—What further orders have been given? Whither should they go now?
No, no, they are carrying coffins through,
Mostly children's.
A peasant is carrying a coffin on his shoulder. Silently after him and without weeping strides his peasant wife. Clinging to her skirts also silently and without weeping come frozen barefooted children.
Look, here comes a large coffin.
From the hardly shut lid hang new and bright coloured cottons.
It is a girl that has died.
Four girls are carrying the coffin.
They will bury her in the right way, with the ritual.
In the proper place.
The little procession went past, simple, beautiful, melancholy.
No one stopped to look round, to turn the head.
No one meeting the procession crossed himself, nor drew off his hat, nor gave any attention.
As if the people had ceased to see with their eyes.
And there stretches, stretches, along the footways, along the margin of the road, without respite, without interval, without interruption, the two processions ever coming towards one another and passing.
Grey carts, carts, carts. Horses, horses, horses, fugitives wandering like shadows, horses, children's coffins, and again horses, horses, horses.
The head turns giddy looking at the endless movement.
It becomes difficult to breathe because of that which passes before the eyes.
And strange.
In this little town through which comes such an ocean of people, it is as quiet:
As if it were all one great funeral.
I had hardly come into the marketplace before the crowd swirled round me with quick movements and feverish eyes.
Whence had they come to Roslavl? Whence had so many come?
There were all dialects.
Great Russian, Russian with Little Russian accent, with Polish accent.
—Panitch! Do you want horses? You can buy them very reasonably. Ah, so reasonably! A horse that cost a hundred roubles, you can buy for twentyfive. Do you wish to buy?
—Wait for me, wait for me. I'll take you to the horses.
—Mr. Squire, Mr. Squire, here are horses. Farm horses! And cheap! Cheap! I'll bring them to you.
There's no getting through the horses in the market—no possibility of penetrating through.
There stands one great solid crowd.
Quick people even slip about under the horses.
What the prices are you may judge from separate exclamations.
—If there's such a bargain anywhere else on God's earth I'd like to hear of it! says a fugitive, turning over and turning over again the dirty notes which he has received.
—Don't get rid of them here. Better sell their skins in Kalutsk.
—Take the twelve roubles now. Take them now. To-morrow you'll be glad to sell at ten.
—By to-morrow she'll drop down dead if you go on!
—What! Fifteen roubles not good money? Did you say that? You?
—Ten roubles as they stand! From hand to hand! says a tall, dark peasant with a long beard, standing beside a cart to which are tied six horses, all skin and bone.
He says in a contemptuous tone:
—You see the horses. A red note for each. Altogether. Take them. It will mean money. Without money there's no doing anything.
I say to a fugitive:
—Don't you know that in Muchin yard, beyond the town, they're buying for the Government. There you would get a fairer price.
The fugitive does not succeed in answering for himself.
Once more the crowd of people with quick movements and feverish eyes.
—The Government? There, you'll never get a turn!
—It's necessary to stand three days.
He's got to hurry for the train. See what a lot of people are coming in.
—He will be late, and have to wait a month in the open. The autumn rains will start.
—And cold. All his children will freeze.
—From Bobruisk another five hundred thousand are coming.
—Who are you, Mister? Are you someone from the Government or a Relief Committee?
—Our little children are just freezing to death, says another fugitive.
And at this market where horses and people are crushed in one compact mass where from the heat of bodies and the smell of horses it is difficult to breathe, if any one is cheerful, it is only the purchaser.
The fugitives have not much to say for themselves, and that in a low voice.
As if stunned.
They sell their horses and stand as if in perplexity.
They go away—horseless, peasants no longer, wordless.
In appearance so calm and indifferent:
As if nothing had happened.
No expression of the grief, of the deadly melancholy which is in the soul.
A silent land.
In the same street as the market-place, by the Petrograd Hotel, from dawn until late evening, the crowd is like stone.
There's no getting through.
The hotel is occupied by the Committee:
—Of "Northern-Help."
Here it is arranged for the fugitives:
—Where each has to go.
I attempt to pass through the crowd and get as far as the gateway.
Farther is impossible.
The stench is such that the head simply goes round.
May God give strength to the Relief delegates working in this stench—to remain healthy!
—We've been waiting for days!—complain the fugitives,—and stand without a bite of food from morning.
—What's a day! You stand a day and at the end of it go away. To-morrow you come again and have had nothing to eat.
I cast a glance at the Town Hall, where is a crowd of peasant women. In a corner is a table. With the notice:
—"Employment Bureau."
A stout lady sitting there says to a peasant woman standing with a child in her arms:
—With us, my dear, the conditions of employment for servants are usually . . .
Tiny Roslavl. How is it possible to find employment here for tens of thousands of people!
The peasant women stand in the waiting rooms. They stand patiently, they stand all day.
And having obtained nothing whatever, go away.
In the street you are stopped by people, saying:
—Are you not in need of workmen in your village?
—Are you not hiring people?
And all in such melancholy, hopeless, gentle voices.
I drive back to the place where last night I saw a horde of nomads—an actual horde.
From the high bank of the Oster, on that side from which the forest has been cleared, you see for versts and versts a cloud of bluish, half-transparent smoke.
That's the evening camping ground.
I walk farther and farther into the forest over the soft wilted grass.
Everywhere are glades, everywhere people, huts of pine-branches, and from all sides is heard the sound of axes.
How many thousands of people are there here!
People tell you various enormous numbers.
Give it up.
How calculate:
—How many drops of water are there in the river?
What a terrible smoke in the forest! Because of the smoke the eyes of all are red and painful.
—It is damp at night, the smoke settles down, and there's no getting out of the wood—says a small farmer to me,—but it's warm in the smoke. Just like sitting in a dark izba. Hot, even. We warm the forest. That's what it's come to for us.
—Perhaps it's just the smoke that saves us, says his neighbour also a farmer—everyone is coughing all around, some are spitting blood, but in the smoke every microbe perishes.
Going farther into the forest I come upon a crowd.
A priest is explaining to them how and where to go that their horses may be properly inspected and priced, how to go to Muchin yard, sell their horses, and receive the money; how to go to the railway station and wait their turn for a seat in the train, how much will be given to each man for food.
All circumstantially.
—And I will drive ahead and meet you at such and such a station. That's so many versts away.
This is a priest from the province of Holm, and he is explaining to his flock.
Many of the priests of Holm province accompany their refugees.
And the help which they give is colossal.
They get some sort of understanding of the situation for themselves and explain everything to their people.
It is asked:
—Where are the numberless local officials, the people looking after the village in time of peace, where are they now in the time of terror and calamity, where have they betaken themselves—where, saving themselves, do they receive their former official salary?
How have they abandoned this illiterate people who do not even understand the Russian language well, in such a moment.
They looked after them all the time like children, and then, in the difficult moment, abandoned the children to the will of Fate!
Had they come with their own refugees, had even the least important of them come, there would have been someone to whom to turn for information, to find out things.
But abandoned, left entirely to themselves, the fugitives grope about, and feel their way like people with bandaged eyes.
Not knowing even:
—Whither to go.
A man sells his horse, deprives himself of his last possession, takes the last step, and
—Whither away?
—Whither to go? Whither is he supposed to go?
He waves his arms helplessly.
—I do not know.
—Where can I find out?
—I do not know.
He knows only that:
—It is on the train that he is to go.
I made acquaintance with a priest.
He spoke bitterly. There was desperation in his voice.
—We try to preserve ourselves together. But we are assigned to places! Assigned! One part of the flock to Riazan, another to Kazan, a third to Orenburg!
Here in the wood are fugitives at the last limit of their strength, making a decision:
—To deprive themselves of the last thing.
To sell their horses.
They sell them in the market-place, in Muchin yard, to "Northern-Help," to the Government, fkaznu, as they say.
Then they are already "not muzhiks"; they wander over from this camp to the camp near the railway station.
And whilst they are encamped in the wood they go backwards and forwards between the relief points of "Northern-Help" and the Municipal Alliance.
I ask the fugitives about the relief points.
Some answer:
—Those that can help are half-hearted. They can't do much. There is a mass of people, and always more coming, and more coming.
The majority gesticulate impatiently:
—What use are the points? They offend everybody.
—Those who happen to be near the relief points profit by them. But we stand far away.
—It's necessary to take your stand at one o'clock in the night, and wait your turn till at midday you receive a bit of bread. You get your death of cold and then they give you a little to eat.
—Ah, master, you need strength there, strength. Who is stronger, he receives.
—By force.
—Crushing other people, and not letting them get anything for themselves.
—By sheer force a strong man can get more than he needs. The weak man is crushed and bruised. And he freezes.
At the relief points every one is making superhuman exertions.
But how get even with this elemental onrush?
—Salt a river! Is that possible?—said someone to me in despair, at one of these points on the road. The relief stations and barracks of "Northern-Help" and Municipal Alliance stand on the high-road facing each other.
A whole settlement.
Around them is a camp with carts—the aristocrats of misfortune.
—Fortunate ones:
Who have succeeded in obtaining for themselves places at the actual doors of the relief points.
It is colder than in the forest, but more satisfying.
On the great highway
—A promenade—as one of the numerous gendarmes keeping order put it.
Not only is it difficult to drive through, but difficult to walk through.
The people flock first one way, then the other, with downcast visage, to the forest, from the forest, from one side of the highway to the other side of the highway.
At the bonfires they warm their red and chilblained hands.
Horses pass through the crowd.
With triangular brandings on their hind legs.
These are the horses bought by the Society of Northern-Help.
Everywhere there are notices to the effect that:
—It is not permitted to sell or to buy branded horses under pain of a heavy penalty.
These purchased horses are given out to neighbouring landowners and farmers at a charge of fifteen copecks per day:
—To graze.
Whatever is there for them to graze on in late autumn?
Many horses wander about lost.
They come to the high-road, to the people, to the other horses.
They wander about quietly, somehow helplessly, looking around them with their wise, sad eyes.
As if they were seeking their own people.
Horses at the last gasp of their strength.
But no one pays any attention to them.
Neither do the horses pay attention.
They stumble upon people.
In the peasant huts occupied as relief points bread is taken in at the back door, cut up there, and handed out from a little window in the front.
So from morning to night bread flows in an uninterrupted stream.
Sentries keep the order of those who are waiting for bread.
In front of the bread windows range endless ranks of fugitives.
Thousands and thousands of people.
One person moves an inch, another person moves an inch, and from the midst is heard wails.
—You're suffocating me! Oh, suffocating.
People fall unconscious.
Here indeed only the stronger can stand the strain.
The hungry crush the hungry in order that they may squeeze into a better place in the line and receive their bit of bread sooner.
The women, the children, with wide staring eyes, with deathly pale faces.
Quietly and silently the fierce and cruel struggle goes on.
All around the people swarm like flies.
A man in a uniform has only to appear, or even a gentleman in civil attire, and the fugitives swarm about him.
—Your high nobility! Show us your official mercy!
Where have I heard this melancholy, hopeless tone, these very words of humiliation?
Somewhere I have heard . . .
Something familiar . . .
—What is it you want?
—Give us a certificate
Food is only given out to those who have certificates:
—According to the number of souls in the family.
Such certificates ought to have been obtained from the village authorities at the point from which they started.
—They did not give us them! We had not time to get them.
—Lost!
—We shall die of hunger.
—Your high nobility!
They come for everything, they come to make complaints.
—Your high nobility! Permit me to explain. The starosta advised me to wait for the Germans and not go away. I did not agree. He got angry and refused to give me a certificate. Decide for yourself! Show God's mercy, and give me one now.
The crowd surrounded another man, some sort of engineer in charge of the building of the barracks.
—Your high nobility!
—I give no certificates whatever. They are not for me to give. Do you understand? I haven't got the right to give them. I am building barracks.
—How haven't you the right?
That means we've got to die, I suppose?
—No one has the right. No one will give a certificate.
—How haven't you the right? You have authority.
—An engineer! I am an engineer!
—It's all the same. Give us a certificate.
—A certificate.
—Your high nobility.
The engineer jumped into his car.
But the motor-car could hardly move in the crowd at a walking pace, hardly, hardly.
Following the car went the people, crying out in melancholy, monotonous, hopeless tones:
—Your high nobility! Show official kindness.
And suddenly I remembered:
—Where I had heard these very voices.
That very tone.
Sakhalin. The convicts having come:
—For their portion.
Oh God, were not these people until yesterday peasants with horses!
A dreadful place:
—Is Muchin yard.
Where the fugitive ceases to be:
—A peasant.
At ordinary times I suppose this yard is simply a large inn.
On the town side of the River Oster, on the heights.
Down below, under the cliff, is an immense marshy meadow, and there, what a wild, what a strange picture . . .
At that point I thought of the late V. V. Verestchagin.
Only he with his grey tones could have painted the grey horror of this life, only he could have painted the dreadful picture in all its horror.
For several acres the whole meadow was covered with abandoned and broken carts.
The iron parts had been unloosed and taken away, wheels lay separately, tilts separately.
How many were there there?
Tens of thousands.
The whole plain was grey with carts, with wheels, with shafts and single shafts.
Having sold their horses for cash, the fugitives abandoned their carts here, only taking with them the iron parts they could unfasten.
Among this grey wilderness of ruin fugitives were wandering.
These were people who preserved their horses and could still go on:
—In their own carts.
They sought here any bits of harness or shafts or wheels that could serve them better than their own.
Prom various separate parts they put together whole carts.
Some of the branded horses had come here.
Seeking perhaps, by scent or by instinct, the carts to which they had once been harnessed.
They wandered and stumbled.
Like shadows.
Hardly keeping their feet.
They fell.
There lies one. He breathes heavily, suddenly quivers tremulously.
In his round glassy eyes there is suffering.
He tries to raise his head from the ground.
He has not strength to hold it up, and lets it fall again.
Then suddenly he begins to wail, just like a man.
A little farther off lies a horse already stiff, and its long, long, lean legs stretch out.
In front of Muchin yard there is a crowd.
There's no making one's way through the carts.
And—a detail . . .
The horses are theirs no longer. They have been inspected, the price has been fixed, and the peasants await their money.
But to-day is cold and overcast, and all the horses are in some way sheltered from the cold.
The last service to "their" horses.
The last little care.
In all this there is a gentle and silent farewell.
The great yard is full. The solid mass of horses is almost motionless. There are a few cows.
You can tell by the melancholy expression of the horses, and their difficulty in moving, how exhausted they are.
You cannot get into the office where the money is being paid.
"Muchin yard"—that's where everything is done.
It is the place where they sell cattle, and a labour exchange and what not.
In the crowd of farmers and salesmen:
Workmen are hired.
—A cottage for two families costs thirty roubles.
—What, thirty roubles altogether?
By the tone of this sincere and deep astonishment (not vexation, but simply unheard-of wonderment) you see what sort of prices are determined here.
—Each member of the family can work for his living separately.
—What do you mean by each member of the family earning separately?
—If you don't want to, you needn't.
And here, as in the market-place, discussions are short.
In Muchin yard, as everywhere, there are gendarmes, soldiers.
But they've nothing to do.
All is quiet.
As at a funeral.
At last, the final stage.
The whole way to the station are railway buildings, naphtha warehouses, and the open ground along the Briansk road is one continuous camping-ground of fugitives.
There are two trains a week.
One party has hardly been sent off when from Muchin yard comes out three times the number of these "horseless ones."
The crowd does not melt away but increases.
Here it is cold, here there is no forest.
And the fugitives press together closely, family to family.
Only warming themselves in the smoke of their bonfires.
There are bonfires day and night.
Wandering women go from house to house in the neighbourhood.
They stop outside the doors, crying:
—Give, for Christ's sake, give us wood.
And, the heart anguished, they give.
—More still is stolen!
Here there is not:
—Giving,
As in the village.
But the people say straight out:
—We do give. We do more even than we can.
Irritated by fear for themselves, frightened at these "unheard-of people," the little towns and hamlets and the "all-understanding" villages. . . .
Can only express their astonishment at the celerity with which man adapts himself to circumstances.
Where and when have these peasants of yesterday learnt so quickly to build dens and dwelling-places from any sort of rubbish?
It's as if they were born nomads.
It simply makes one wonder.
—Out of what was all this put together? How does it hold?
Some slates stolen from one place, a paling broken somewhere else, an armful of hay, rags brought in by the children—and behold, a dwelling-place.
And O Lord, how to thank Thee that there is no longer any rain!
They freeze, get ill, watch their children die, and wait.
It's not possible to breathe.
All around is human filth.
In certain stinking horrible ponds, the peasant women with feet blue from the cold, are washing clothes.
And these ponds also are tainted with filth.
—Even here it's good to wash the linen.
—For we have been fairly eaten up!
And when I come here in the morning, whilst the ground all around is covered with hoar-frost and the half-expired bonfires glimmer beside the marsh on which the camp is set, the spectacle is dreadful.
How reckon up the sufferings?
It's no use even thinking of going across the station platform.
For passage there is only the merest margin above the rails where one might go along as on a tight-rope, and sideways.
The whole platform is occupied:
—By the fortunate ones.
By those who have gone through all the trials of the way of affliction, lost their horses, frozen in open camping-grounds for weeks whilst they waited; by the people who have at last obtained:
—Their turn.
And they will travel, no one knows where, no one knows to what end.
On immense bundles, on top of mountains of household furniture, lie people, lie or sit, and you can see that no force could prevail on them to abandon their positions.
When the bell rings, indicating the arrival of a goods train, wild scenes are enacted.
In the cattle-trucks it will at once become warm, because of the many people, and the fugitives rush to take the train by storm, crushing one another as they push forward.
And they lug along their bundles.
And how much of the strangest, most unnecessary rubbish do they pull along with them into the trucks, and heap up in the places which might otherwise be occupied by extra people!
Rubbish for us—but the last possessions for them.
That is all that remains.
I return to the town.
In endless series, meeting one another and passing on, go the two processions up and down the street.
They come, they come, they come, without respite, without interruption, the grey carts.
They are all like one. One like another. And on the other side of the road come the fugitives on horseback, the fugitives on horseback, to sell their horses.
And in this whirlpool of the river of human grief, little and dreadfull Roslavl has choked and drowned.
Such was the coming of the fugitives into Great Russia.
- ↑ A notorious district in Moscow, where beggars, tramps, and thieves congregate, and where there are many doss-houses.