Trapped in 'Black Russia' Part 10

I looked at the three children who were left. They sat in the cart silently, surrounded by the incongruous collection of pots and pans, and leaning against a painted chest. The chest was covered with dust, but you could still see a bunch of bright-painted flowers behind the children's heads.

"Poor little things," I said. "Are they cold?"

"It's hard on the children," the mother replied stolidly. "They can't stand it as we can. We are used to trouble. We know what life is. But the children--they are sick most of the time. They have no strength left. What can we do for them? We have no medicines. Have you any medicines?" she asked, with a sudden, hopeful glint in her dull, wide-set eyes. "No?" Her face regained its impa.s.sivity.

Her husband straightened himself, grunting. He had finished tying the broken wheel together with rope.

"Come, we must be moving. Hurry, or we'll be left behind," he said, going to the little horse's head.

The woman climbed back into the cart and took the youngest child in her arms. A feeble wail came from the dull-colored bundle. Her husband turned the horse into the procession again.

Still the carts were coming over the hill, gray and dusty, with the peasants and their wives walking beside the horses' heads. What a river of suffering! What a smell came from it! And automobiles and tramways rushed by.

Is this the twentieth century?

_October._

I delayed mailing my last letter, so I shall tell you about another glimpse I've had of the refugees. Yesterday, as we sat drinking tea, we heard the rumble and creak of heavy wagons outside the _pension_. The noise reached us distinctly in spite of the windows being hermetically sealed with putty for the winter. At first we thought it was the regular train of carts that climb Inst.i.tutska Oulitza every evening at six o'clock carrying provisions to the barracks. But the rumble and creak persisted so long that I went to the window at last to see why there were so many more carts than usual.

There was a procession of carts, but instead of going up the hill in the direction of the barracks, it was descending the hill, and instead of soldiers in clumsy uniforms, peasants in bell-shaped sheepskin coats walked by their horses' heads, snapping the long lash whips they carried in their hands. I recognized the covered gypsy wagons and the open carts with their bulky loads. It was too dark to see distinctly, but I knew they were refugees by the strings of kettles along the sides of the carts, which caught the electric light in coppery flashes. And in the open wagons I could see the pale disks of faces. As I watched, the procession came to a stand-still and the drivers collected in little groups under the white globes of the street lamps. I went outdoors and crossed the street to them.

I approached a group of three men.

"Good-evening," I said.

"Good-evening, Panna," they replied.

"Have you come far?"

"Far? I should say we've been two months on the road," replied the best-dressed man of the three. He had fur cuffs and collar on his long sheepskin coat, and his boots were strong and well made.

"Can you tell me where we can get some tobacco?" he asked.

I directed him down the street a little way. He took a piece of silver from a leather purse he wore round his neck, and gave it to one of his companions, who left on the errand. The other man went round to the tail of the cart and took down two bags of grain for the horses' supper.

"Good horses you have there," I said, to say something.

"Yes, indeed; the best horses a man ever had; less good ones would have died on the road long ago. I bought them for fifty roubles apiece, and I wouldn't take two hundred and fifty for them to-day. But, then, they're all I have left of back there." He spoke in a quiet voice, scratching his stubby, unshaven face, absent-mindedly.

"Is he traveling with you?" I asked, pointing to the man who was slinging the grain-bags round the horses' necks.

"Yes. I picked him up along the road. His horse had died under him and he counted himself no longer a human being. What was he, indeed, with nothing he could call his own in the world any more? I let him come along with me. I had extra room. So I let him come along with me." His voice had no expression in it.

"But haven't you a family?" I asked.

"I have three children," he replied.

"It must be hard to take care of children at such a time as this."

"G.o.d knows it is," he replied. There was a sudden desperate note in his voice. "It's a woman's business. But my wife died on the way. A month and a half ago--soon after we started. It seems soon, now, but we'd been long enough on the road to kill her with the jolting and misery of it."

"Was she sick?"

"She died in childbirth. There was no one to take care of her, and nothing for her to eat. I made a fire, and she lay on the ground. All night she moaned. She died toward morning. The baby only lived a few hours. It was better it should die. What was ahead of it but suffering?

It was a boy, and my wife and I had always wanted a boy. But I wouldn't have minded so much if the little wife had lived. It's hard without her."

The man returned with the tobacco and the three peasants lighted cigarettes. All was quiet. I heard nothing but the champing of the horses as they munched the grain and the whistling of the wind through the poplars in the convent garden.

"Kiev is a big city--a holy city, I've heard. Many from our town have made a pilgrimage here," the rich peasant observed.

For the moment I'd forgotten where I was. Now I heard the city noises; the footsteps grinding on pavements; the whistle and grinding of trains.

And the lights from the city reddened the mists that rose from the Dnieper.

The carts in front began to move on.

"Where are we going?"--"What are the orders?"--"Is there a relief station here?" every one cried at once.

"Good-bye. A good journey," I cried.

"Thank you. Good-bye."

The men stepped out into the road again. I watched cart after cart pa.s.s me. The women looked straight out between the horses' ears, and showed no curiosity or wonderment at being in a big city for the first time in their lives. Strange sights and faces had no significance for them any more.

I ducked under a horse's nose and went indoors again.

There is something shameful in our security. We have shelter and bread.

We can only feel life indirectly, after all. We are always m.u.f.fled up by things. And America. A pathologic fear clutches me, for how will it all end?

My love to you every minute.

RUTH.

_October._

_Dearests:--_

There seems no beginning or end to my stay here. How strange it is to look back to July and remember the long, hot days and the languorous nights when, in spite of the war, people walked in the gardens and listened to the music and drank punch out of tea-cups, pretending it was tea. The still, starlit nights of July.

I remember a dinner Princess P---- gave at Koupietsky Park a few nights after my arrival in Russia. Everything was so new to me. Our table was set out on the terrace, overlooking the Dnieper, with the music and stir of people in the distance. An irresponsible joy filled my heart as I looked down at the black, winding river with its shadowy banks and the fantastic s.h.i.+mmer of lights on the water. The city lights crowded down to the very water's edge; then the drifting red and green lights of steamers and ferry-boats moving on the black, magic stream, and beyond, the flat plain, silent and mysterious, with, over the horizon rim, the thunder and clang of war. But war was far away those first days I was in Russia. I hardly thought of it.

The dome and square walls of a monastery were momentarily whitened by a wheeling searchlight, and high up against the dusky, starlit sky was printed a s.h.i.+ning gold cross. Women's dresses glimmered in the darkness like gray, widespread wings of moths, and laughter came from the curve of the terrace overlooking the monastery garden.

"My child, there are tears in your eyes; how pretty!" the Princess cried, taking my hand in hers and stroking it with her small, cold fingers.

There were other Americans present beside myself, and I knew the Princess loved one of them. It was to make him jealous, I knew, that she held my hand in hers throughout dinner. She, herself, hardly ate anything, only smoked one cigarette after another. There were all sorts of _zakouski_, stuffed tomatoes and cuc.u.mbers and queer little fishes in oil, and pickled sturgeon and mushrooms, and salads and caviar, and there was _kva.s.s_ to drink,--deep red,--and a champagne cup served in a teapot, and cigarettes all through the meal.