Chapter 5

The window-ledges of the rooms are gay with flowers. Almost always a phonograph is going, "Carmen," or "Onégin," or "Pagliacci." Sometimes, Peter and I one-step to the music on the pavement outside, and the officers and nurses crowd to the windows and clap and cry, "Encore!" Often, after sundown, when the children have gone indoors, and we go out for a walk before dinner, we see a patient with a bandage around his head, perhaps, but both arms well enough to be clasping a pretty nurse in them. They laugh and we laugh. There is no cynicism about it. It's bigger than that, it seems to me.

Into the garden come many street musicians. They play and sing, and showers of kopecks rain down from the windows. Two little girls came a few days ago. They were Tziganes, barefooted, with gay petticoats and flowered shawls and dangling earrings. Their dark hair was short and curly. One of the children played a _balalaika_ and sang in a broken, mournful voice that did not at all belong to her age. The other--who wore the prettiest dress, yellow, with a green and purple shawl--danced like a little marionette on a string, not an expression in her pointed, brown face, but every now and then accelerating the pace of her dance, and giving sharp, high cries. Then, suddenly, they stopped in the middle of a measure, and held out their aprons for money. A window on the ground floor opened and a very pretty woman leaned out. I have seen her many times. She is Polish, the daughter of a concierge, and now the mistress of a young Cossack, who is leaving shortly for the front. She has heavy, pale-yellow hair, wound around her head in thick braids, and she wears pearls, opaque like her skin. She beckoned the little girls into her room. They went eagerly. Soon I heard them singing there.

When we were with Dr. ----, from the Red Cross hospital this afternoon, a soldier came up to us and saluted. He was a miserable-looking creature, in a uniform too big for him. His face was unshaven, his beard gray and sparse, and his eyes red and blinking and full of pain. He slouched away again in a moment, his eyes staring down at the sidewalk under his feet.

"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 fashion.

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 assured 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 pass 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 pass. 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 rushing 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 Ambassador 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 Saturday, 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 God. 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 crêpe 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. "God will protect the tombs of his holy Saints." And she brushed by, paying no more attention to me.

There are placards in all the banks, offering to give people the value of their jewels and silverware.

Extra pontoon bridges are thrown across the Dnieper, ready for the retreat of the Russian troops. Though there are lines of trenches and barbed-wire entanglements before the city, no effort will be made to defend it, as it would probably mean its destruction. I wonder what the Germans will do when they get here? They are human beings, but I can't help but think of Belgium, and then I am sick with fear. At other times, it seems the one way to bring our affair with the Secret Service to a finish. How strange it will be to have no longer a Russian army between the Germans and Kiev. No more a wall of flesh to protect us. Poor soldiers, without a round of ammunition, fighting with naked hands. They will cross the Dnieper to one side of the city, crowding, fighting, falling together. And the German cannon driving them on, and crashing into the city, sometimes, wiping out whole streets of townspeople. And then, the gray lines of the Germans running into Kiev. The thousands of blue-eyed Germans and their pointed helmets and guttural speech taking possession of everything.

As we came down the hill to-day, we saw great vans drawn up before the Governor's mansion. Soldiers were loading them with the rich furnishings of the house. Evidently, the Governor had no intention of letting _his_ things fall into the Germans' hands. How strange it looked--the feverish haste with which the house was being emptied!

At the station a special train was waiting to take the Governor's things to a place of safety--and the crowds were waiting to escape with their lives! Now every one with any sort of a boat that will float is making a fortune taking the terrified townspeople down the river. There are, of course, horrible accidents, for the boats are overcrowded. One completely turned turtle with its load of men and women and children. And yet the Governor's things must be removed to a place of safety.

Aeroplanes scout over the city every day, and at night you can see their lights moving overhead in the darkness. Sometimes they fly so low that you can hear the whir of their engines. For the moment you don't know if they're Russian or enemy ones.

And all night long high-powered automobiles rush up the hill to the General Headquarters, bearing dispatches from the front.

I lie in bed, and it is impossible for me to sleep. It is as if I were up over Kiev in an aeroplane, myself. I can see millions of Germans marching along the roads from Warsaw, dragging their cannon through the mud, fording streams, with their field kitchens and ambulances, moving onward irresistibly toward the golden domes of Kiev.

You seem far away to-night. Only I love you. I can't love you enough.

RUTH.

_October._

_Darlingest Mother and Dad:--_

This afternoon I went up to the English Consulate with Sasha. As we turned the corner we saw a long gray procession of carts crawling down the hill toward us. I stopped and watched them pass me, one after the other, crowded over to the side of the road by the usual traffic of a busy street. Peasants walked by the horses' heads, men in dusty sheepskin coats, or women muffled up somehow, their hands hidden in the bosoms of their waists for warmth. They stared ahead with a curious, blind look in their eyes, as though they did not realize the noise and movement of the city life about them. How strange it was, the passing of this silent peasant procession by the side of the clanging trains and gray war automobiles!

"Who are these people?" I asked Sasha.

"They must be the fugitives," she replied. "Every day they come in increasing numbers. I have heard the Kiev authorities are trying to turn them aside and make them go round the outskirts; for what can a city do with whole provinces of homeless and hungry peasants?"

"You mean they are the refugees who have been driven out of their homes by the enemy?" I asked.

"Yes. By the Germans and Austrians."

The carts jolted slowly down the hill, the brakes grinding against the wheels, the little rough-coated horses holding back in the shafts. Sometimes, where there should have been two horses, there was only one. The others evidently had been sold or else died on the way. Only one small horse to drag a heavy double cart crowded with people and furnishings. One little horse looked about to drop. His sides were heaving painfully and his eyes were glazed. "Why don't they stop and rest," I thought. "Why does that man keep on? His horse will die, and then what will he do?"

"What do they do when their horses give out?" I asked Sasha.

"What can they do?" she replied. "What did they do when they were forced to leave their farms and lands? They bear it. The Russian people have a great capacity for suffering. Think of it--what this means now--hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people made homeless and sent wandering over the face of the earth. Think of the separations--the families broken up--the bewilderment. A month ago, perhaps, they had their houses and lands and food to eat. They were muzhiks. And now they are wandering, homeless, like Tziganes. Ah, the Russian people were born into a heritage of suffering, and to us all the future is hidden."

I kept my eyes on the endless procession. Some of the carts were open farm wagons, piled with hay, and hung with strange assortments of household utensils. Frying-pans and kettles were strung along the sides, enameled ones, sometimes, that showed a former prosperity. Inside were piles of mattresses and chairs; perhaps a black stovepipe stuck out through the slatted sides of the cart. The women and children huddled together in the midst of their household goods, wrapped up in the extra petticoats and waists and shawls they had brought along--anything for warmth. The children were pale and pinched, and some of them had their eyes closed as though they were sick. If they looked at you, it was without any curiosity or eagerness. How pitiful the indifference of the children was!

Sometimes the carts were covered with faded cloth stretched over rounded frameworks like gypsy-wagons. There, the old _babas_ sat on the front seats, eyes like black shoe-buttons, with their lives almost finished. They seemed the least affected by the misery and change. They occupied the most comfortable places, and held the bright-colored ikons in their arms--the most precious possession of a Russian home. Perhaps a dog was tied under the wagon, or a young colt trotted along by its mother's side.

It was as though there had been a great fire, and every one had caught up what he could to save from destruction: homes broken into little bits to be put together again in a strange land.

An open cart broke down in front of us. The woman got out to help her husband. She had a round, pock-marked face, as expressionless as wood. She wore a bright shawl over her hair, and a long sheepskin coat, with the sleeves and pockets beautifully embroidered in colors. It was dirty, now, but indicated she had been well-to-do once. She limped badly.

"Good-evening," I said.

"Good-evening, excellency," she replied civilly.

"Are you hurt?" I asked.

"My feet are blistered from the walking," she replied. "I take turns with my husband."

"Where are you from?"

"Rovno."

"How long have you been on the way?"

"Many weeks. Who knows how long?"

"And where are you going?"

"Where the others go. Somewhere into the interior."

The procession had not halted, but, turning out for the broken-down cart, continued uninterruptedly down the hill. Every now and then the peasant looked up anxiously.

"We must hurry. We mustn't be left behind," he muttered.

"What do you eat?" I asked the woman.

"What we can find. Sometimes we get food at the relief stations, or we get it along the way."

"Do the villages you pass through help you?" I persisted.

"They do what they can. But there are so many of us."

"Can't you find cabbages and potatoes in the fields?" I asked.

The woman looked at me suspiciously for a moment, and did not reply.

"Why do you want to know these things?" she asked, after a silence. "What business is it of yours?"

"I want to help you."

"Help us." She shook her head. "But I'll tell you," she said. "I did take some potatoes once. It was before the cold weather. I dug them out of a field we passed through after dark. No one saw me. My children were crying with hunger and I had nothing to give them. So I dug up a handful of potatoes in the dark. But God saw me and punished me. I cooked the potatoes over a fire by the roadside, but He kept the heat from reaching the inside of the potatoes. Two of my children sickened and died from eating them. It was God's punishment. We buried them along the road. My husband made the crosses out of wood and carved their names on them. They lie way behind us now--unsung. But perhaps those who pass along the road and see the crosses will offer up a prayer."

"I will burn candles for them," I said. "What were their names?"

"Sonia and Peter Kolpakova, your excellency. You are good. God bless you!" And she kissed my hands.

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 impassivity.

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 Institutska 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.