Trapped in 'Black Russia' Part 5

"Like you or me." No, no. It was unbelievable. I could not put myself in their place. I could not imagine such insecurity--that lives could be broken in the middle in this way.

"How useless it all seems!" I said.

"Useless. You think so?" Mme. C---- took me up. "Do you realize that whole Galician towns have been moved into Siberia this summer? Part of the way on foot, part in baggage cars, where they stifled to death in the heat and for lack of water and food. One carload wasn't listed, or was forgotten by some careless official, and when it was finally opened it was a carload of rotting flesh. The bodies were thrown into the river by the frightened official, but a soldier reported him and he was court-martialed. One crowd of several thousand was taken to Siberia.

They reached Tomsk. Then the Government changed. What was the need to transport these Galician Jews? the new Minister argued: a useless expense to the Government: a waste of money and time. Let them go back to their homes. So the Jews were taken back over the same route, many more dying on the return journey, in the jails, and camps, and baggage cars, or by the roadsides. They found themselves once more back in their pillaged towns, with nothing to work with, and yet with their livelihood to be earned somehow. They began to dig and plant and take up the routine of their lives again. They began to look on themselves as human again. The grind of suffering and hopelessness began to let up and they had moments of hope. And then the reactionaries came into power with their systematic oppression of the Jews. Back to Siberia with them! This in midsummer heat. I saw them as they pa.s.sed through Kiev for the third time, a few weeks ago. Never shall I forget them as I saw them last. The mark of the beast was on them. You couldn't call them living or suffering or martyrs any more. They were beyond the point where they prayed to die."

The gendarme had finished his list. The tension relaxed. Some of the Jews settled back into their former apathy; others gathered in excited groups, pulling their beards and scratching their heads; still others walked up and down the paths, restless, like so many caged animals.

A man and a woman with two children approached the gendarme deprecatingly. The man asked a question, indicating the woman and children. The gendarme shook his head. The man persisted. The gendarme refused again, and started to move away. The man detained him with a hand on his arm. Another man approached. He spread out both hands, his shoulders up to his ears. All three men spoke Polish in loud, excited voices.

"What are they saying?" I asked.

"The gendarme has just read the names of the woman and children who are to leave this afternoon. The father's name is not with theirs.

Naturally, he wants to be with his wife and children to protect and care for them as best he can. If they are separated now, they can never find each other again in Siberia--if they live till they get there. The third man is alone. He is willing to give up his place to the father. But the gendarme refuses. 'His name is written. Yours is not. It is the order,'

he says."

The gendarme now left the garden. The woman was sobbing in her husband's arms. He was patting her hair. The children hung at their mother's skirt, crying and sucking their fingers.

_August 12, 1915._

_Dearest Mother and Dad:--_

They say there was no ammunition at the front. No sh.e.l.ls for the soldiers. They had nothing to do but retreat. And now? They are still retreating, fighting with empty guns and clubs and even their naked hands. And still, trainloads of soldiers go out of Kiev every day without a gun in their hands. What a butchery! Can you imagine how horrible it is to see them march through the streets, swinging their arms and singing their stirring songs,--tall, able-bodied men,--while the beggars, cripples from the Russo-j.a.panese War, stand whining at the street corners.

There seems to be no doubt about the enemy within the gates. How can the soldiers give their lives so patiently and bravely for a Government whose villainy and corruption take no account of the significance of their sacrifices. The German influence is still strong. They say German money bribes the Ministers at home and the generals at the front.

There is great distrust of the Czarina and the Monk Rasputin. The latter was a serf in Siberia, and now has a malignant, hypnotic influence in the Russian Court. If he is refused anything, he falls on the floor in a fit and froths at the mouth until he gets what he wants. The Court ladies have to lick his dirty fingers clean, for he refuses to use a finger-bowl at table. Take this for what it's worth. At any rate, there is much talk now of the Germans working through this disreputable creature.

I asked a Russian if there could be a revolution.

There seems to be no hope. Russia, apparently, lacks the coordination and singleness of purpose necessary for one. And so many unseen influences are at work. There is no agreement among the people as to what they want. Each faction is secretly encouraged to war against the other in order to weaken each other and blur the reason and end in the people's minds. Besides, of course, nothing can be done as long as the army can be used to crush any demonstration against the Government. But if I were a Russian, all my hate would be directed against the traitors of my country, rather than at the Germans, who, after all, are political enemies. I would carry a gun against those who sell my country and make capital out of her suffering.

In every newspaper there are accounts of enormous graft by Ministers and companies under contract to the Government for military supplies. One case was translated to me the other day. Some men high up in the Government took over a contract for a certain number of cavalry saddles and bridles. They sold it to the Jews, making a tremendous rake-off. The Jews, to get any profit, were obliged to furnish poor material. At the trial, where some officers were testing them, the bridles broke in their hands like paper and the saddles split into ribbons.

Then there was a sugar factory in Kiev, whose owner wrote to the Minister of the Interior, I think it was, and offered his factory, only asking an estimate of the approximate amount of sugar the Government would need turned out each day. No answer was made. The owner wrote again. Still no answer. He went to Petrograd himself to find out why the Department paid no attention to his letters. The Minister informed him his letters had lacked the required war-tax stamps and had been turned over to the proper authorities, who would speedily proceed to fine him for his evasion of the law.

I went up to a military hospital to-day. I wonder how I can write you about it. The insignificance of personalities--whether any one lives or dies seems to have no importance. Just life seems to matter any more, and the forward movement of humanity--at least, you must believe the movement is forward in spite of the horror of mangled bodies and destroyed minds; otherwise, you would go mad, though you are outside of it all. How the proportions of things are twisted after going through a hospital. Things that counted before don't seem to count any more. You take refuge in generalities to get out of your mind a look you have seen in a soldier's eyes.

It was an improvised hospital,--some building or other turned into a place to receive the hundreds of wounded that are pouring into Kiev every day. It was a big room, with rows and rows of beds, and in every bed a man. One man was wounded in the back, and his breath whistled through the open hole like steam through an escape valve. His face was wound in white bandages. Others were there, dying from terrible stomach wounds. One man's head moved from side to side incessantly, as though he could never again find comfort on earth. Some moan. Others lay absolutely motionless, their faces terrible dead-white masks. Their bodies looked so long and thin under the sheets, with their toes turned up. It was indescribably terrifying to think that human beings could go through so much and continue to live. I was more frightened than ever before in my life. The smell of blood--the closeness of the hot sick-room--flies buzzing about. I saw brown varnish-like stains on some of the white bandages. The indifferent, business-like att.i.tude of the nurses infuriated me. But, of course, they can't be any other way and deal with it all.

I can't write any more. But is there any excuse for this?

RUTH.

_August 10, 1915._

Lately, our conversation at table has been suppressed by the appearance of a young woman whom the rest suspect of being a spy. She is dark, and never utters a word. All through dinner she keeps her eyes on her plate. I said something in French to her the other day, but, apparently, she did not understand. Across the table, the Morowski boys laughed at me. I suspect that they, too, had tried to speak to her, for she is pretty, and had been snubbed like me. I don't know how the idea of her being a spy got round. She may have been sent here to keep her eyes on the Polish refugees in the _pension_. Her room is in our corridor, and this morning Marie saw, through the open door, Panna Lolla and Janchu talking to her. It appears that Janchu had been inveigled in by bonbons, and Panna Lolla had gone in after him. Panna Lolla said the young woman was so lonely. She is a Pole and wants to leave Russia. She hates it here. But she has no pa.s.sport. She showed Panna Lolla an old one that she wants to fix up for the police authorities. But she can't speak Russian, and is very frightened. She asked Panna Lolla if she knew any one who could write Russian. Marie forbade Panna Lolla to go near the woman again. It is just as well, for Panna Lolla likes excitement, and is capable of saying anything to keep it going.

III

_August._

_Darlingest Mother and Dad:--_

We were arrested four days ago--and you will wonder why I keep on writing. It relieves my nerves. Ever since the _revision_ Marie and I have gone over and over the same reasoning, trying to get at why we were arrested. To write it all out may help the restlessness and anxiety and--yes--the panicky fear that rises in my throat like nausea. Life is so terribly insecure. I feel as though I had been stripped naked and turned out into the streets, with no person or place to go to.

It was four o'clock, and we had just finished dinner. In an hour and a half we were leaving for Odessa. All our trunks and bags were packed, and our traveling suits brushed and pressed. Panna Lolla was crying at having to part from Janchu, and mending some stockings for him. He was asleep. Marie and I were sitting in our little salon, rejoicing that we should be in Bucharest in a few days where there was no war and we could speak French again. War--blood-tracks on the snow, and cholera and typhus camps under a burning sun. To shut it out for one instant and pretend that the world was the way it used to be. What a heaven Bucharest seemed!

And suddenly the door of our apartment opened. Six men came into the room, two in uniform, the other four in plain clothes. It never occurred to me that they had anything to do with me. I thought they had mistaken the door. I looked at Marie questioningly. There was something peculiar about her face.

The four plain-clothes men stood awkwardly about the door which they had closed softly behind them. The two men with white cord loops across the breast of their uniforms went over to the table on the right and put down their black leather portfolios. They seemed to make themselves at home, and it angered me.

"What are these people doing here?" I asked Marie sharply.

She addressed the officer in Polish, and he answered curtly.

"It's a _revision_," she replied.

"A what?"

"A _revision_," she repeated.

I remember that I consciously kept my body motionless, and said to myself, "There is nothing surprising in this. There is nothing surprising in this." Everything had gone dark before my eyes. My heart seemed to stop beating.

Marie laughed and the sound of her cracking, high-pitched laugh came to me from far off.

The officer said something to her, and she stopped abruptly as though some one had clapped a hand over her mouth.

"What did he say?" I managed to articulate. My own language seemed to have deserted me.

"He says it is a matter for tears, not laughter."

Her voice was sharp and anxious. I was relieved at the spite and vanity in his words. They made the situation more normal. I felt myself breathing again, and my stomach began to tremble uncontrollably.

I kept my eyes where they were, fighting for my self-control. So many terrifying thoughts were trying to penetrate my consciousness. I tried to shut out everything but my realization of what I was looking at. I kept my eyes glued on the officer's boots; s.h.i.+ny black boots they were, that fitted him without a crease, with spurs fastened to the heels. I shall never forget the stiff, red striped trouser-legs and those s.h.i.+ny black boots that didn't seem to belong on the body of a living man, but on the wooden form of some dummy.

Janchu began to cry from the bedroom, and Marie got up to go to him.

Quickly a plain-clothes man with horn-rimmed spectacles slipped in between her and the door. The officer, who had now seated himself behind the table, raised his hand.

"Let no one leave the room," he said in German.

"But my baby is crying," Marie began.