Trapped in 'Black Russia' Part 8

"What did he want?" I asked.

"He wants brandy. He's leaving for the front to-morrow, and he asked me to write out a doctor's prescription so he could get a little brandy.

Poor fellow. It was impossible, of course, but I'd have done it gladly.

He said he'd been wounded and discharged, and had to go back to the front and leave his family, helpless, again. The second time must be so much worse than the first. You know what it's like out there."

RUTH.

_September._

_Darlingest ones:--_

At last I have heard from the letter about the Jewish detention camp.

The English Consul came to our rooms yesterday afternoon and said he was to act as interpreter for the head of the secret police. I was to be ready to answer his questions about eight o'clock that night. He told me to keep my temper and say as little as possible.

Shortly before eight the Consul and the chief came round together. We all sat down. I was quite calm. So often I had created my own terror of this moment that when it came I met it with relief. I even felt a sense of superiority over the chief of the secret service. I don't know why, I'm sure. Perhaps because I was no longer afraid of him. It was as though I had stuck my head under a pump of ice-cold water. I felt very clear-headed. I had a curious feeling that things were as they were and nothing I could say could change them.

"Are you a Jew?" he asked me first.

"No."

"Is your mother or father Jewish?"

"No. There is no Jewish blood in our family." I thought of Dad's Quakerism and smiled. I wondered what he would have said if he had been there.

"Then why have you such sympathy for them?" He looked at me narrowly, as though he had me _there_.

"Because they are suffering."

"Tck." He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in the most skeptical fas.h.i.+on.

He took up my letter, translated into Russian, and went through it. The whole thing was a farce. I answered the questions he asked me, but they didn't get us anywhere. Of course, everything I knew about the Jewish detention camp I had written in my letter. All I could do was to repeat what I had said there. And when he asked questions like, "Who said five old men had been killed along the way?" or, "How did you know throwing the bodies into the Dnieper had brought cholera into Kiev this summer?"

I could only reply, "I was told it." "Who told you?" "I forget."

When he got up to go he said:--

"This letter makes your case a very serious one. Of course, we can't have such things as that published about us. Have you ever written before?"

I said, "No."

"You aren't reporting for any journal?"

I a.s.sured him it was only a letter I had written my mother and father.

"It goes out of my hands to-night. I shall hand it with a report to the Chief of the General Staff."

"When shall I hear from them?"

"They will let you know as soon as possible. It's unfortunate you should have written it. Otherwise, I could have settled the matter myself. As it is, it is a matter for the military authorities. Of course, such a letter written in the war zone, at a time like this--" He stopped himself. "Good-night. Good-night." He clicked his heels and bowed himself out of the room.

"Ouf!" we all said.

"Mrs. Pierce, promise me you won't put your pen to paper again while you are in Russia," the English Consul said, smiling.

"But isn't it ridiculous--absurd--disgusting!" I said.

"People are sent to Siberia for less," the Consul said. "But don't be frightened, Mrs. Pierce. It will come out all right."

"Of course. But when?"

"_Seichas_," he replied, smiling.

"_Seichas._" How I hate the expression. "Peter, you'd better cable for some more money. Heaven knows when we'll get out now," I said.

Peter sends love too. We are hungry for news from you, and we picture greedily the piles of letters we shall find waiting for us in Bulgaria.

I try not to be anxious about you--But I wake up at night and this silence of months is like a dead weight on my heart.

RUTH.

IV

_September._

_Dear ones:--_

The Germans are advancing. Nothing seems able to stop them. And every day brings new refugees from the country. They come in bewildered, frightened hordes and pa.s.s through the city streets, directed by gendarmes. They do as they are told. There is something dreadful in their submission and in the gentle alacrity with which they obey orders.

The other day we were waiting on a street corner for a line of the refugees' covered carts to pa.s.s. Suddenly, a woman, walking by a horse's head, collapsed. She sank on to the paving-stones like a bundle of dusty rags. People stopped to look, but no one touched her. The refugees behind left their carts and came up to see what had halted the procession. They, too, stood without touching her--peasants in dusty sheepskins, leaning on their staffs, looking down at the woman who had fallen out of their ranks. A gendarme elbowed his way through the crowd.

He began to wave his arms and strike his boot with his whip, and shout at the weary-eyed, uncomprehending peasants. At last, two of them tucked their staffs under their arms and, leaning down, picked up the fainting woman. They carried her round to her cart and laid her down on the straw, her head on the lap of one of her children. For a moment the child looked down at her mother's white face, so strangely still, and then, terrified, suddenly jumped to her feet and her mother's head fell back against the boards with a dull thud. The children huddled together, crying. A peasant whipped up the little horse, and the procession began to move on.

There seems to be a horrible fear behind them that never lets them halt for long. The Germans--After all, they are human beings like the Russians. They, too, have their wounded and dying. People here speak of special red trains that leave the front continuously for Germany. These red trains are full of human beings whose brains have been smashed by the horrors of war. The German soldier is not supernatural. Then I think of those terrible red trains rus.h.i.+ng through the dark, filled with raving maniacs, of men who have become like little children again. And yet when you hear, "The Germans are advancing! They are coming!" the German army seems to take on a supernatural aspect, to become a ruthless machine that drives everything before it in its advance, and in its wake leaves a country stripped of life--all the people and cottages rubbed off the face of the earth.

People here in Kiev feel the same terror of the German advance. Can nothing stop it? A panic has swept over the city that makes every one want to run away and hide. They crowd the square before the railway station and camp there for days, waiting to secure a place on the trains that leave for Petrograd or Odessa. For three weeks Peter has been waiting for his reservation to get to Petrograd. Our case drags on so.

He wants to see the Amba.s.sador personally. But the trains are packed with terrified people. Men leave their affairs and go down to the square with their families and baggage. They sleep on the cobble-stones, wrapped up in blankets, their heads on their bags. It is autumn, and the nights are cold and rainy, and the children cry in discomfort. I have seen the square packed with motionless, sleeping people, and in the morning I have seen them fight for places in the train, transformed by this unbearable terror of the Germans into beasts that trample each other to death. And when the train goes off, they settle back, waiting for their next chance. Perhaps some are so much nearer the station, but others are carried away wounded or dead. Who knows what they are capable of till they are so afraid?

My dressmaker's sister was a cripple. Fear had crept even into her sick-room. When Olga came to try on my dress, she fumbled and pinned things all wrong in her haste. I spoke to her sharply and asked her to be more careful. Then she burst into tears and told me about her sister.

It appeared her sister was afraid to be left alone. Every time Olga left the room, her sister caught at her dress and made her promise not to desert her. She thought of the Germans day and night. She cursed Olga if she should ever run away and leave her to them. A few days later, Olga came again. She was so pale and thin it frightened me, and she didn't hurry nervously any more when she fitted me.

"What is it, Olga? You are sick," I said.

"My sister is dead. Last Sat.u.r.day, it was late when I left you, and I stopped on the way home to get some herring for supper. I was later than usual, and when I got home I found my sister dead. She had died from fear. She thought I had deserted her. She had half fallen out of her chair as though she had tried to move. How could she think I would desert her ever? Haven't I taken care of her for fifteen years? But it was fear. She has been like one out of her mind since they have been so near Kiev. What will they do in Kiev? They say the Germans are only two days' march away!"

All day the church-bells have been ringing for special prayers. I went into one of the churches in the late afternoon. It was dark and filled with people who had come to pray for help to stop the Germans. There were soldiers and peasants and townspeople, all with their thoughts fixed on G.o.d. I cannot tell you how solemn it was. All the people united in thought against the common menace. Women in black, soldiers and officers with bands of black crepe round their sleeves, square, stolid-looking peasants, with tears running down their cheeks. They knelt on the stone flagging, their eyes turned toward the altar with its gold crucifix and jeweled ikons. The candle-flames only seemed to make the dimness more obscure. And the deep voice of the priest chanting in the darkness: all Russia seemed to be on its knees offering its faith as a bulwark against the Germans. When I turned to leave, I came face to face with an old woman. The tears were still wet on her cheeks, but she was smiling.

"Kiev is a holy city," she said. "G.o.d will protect the tombs of his holy Saints." And she brushed by, paying no more attention to me.