In the province of Grodno the peasant women make such cloth.
They offer it at sixty copecks an arshin at the relief points on the road:
Even in the extremity of their need they will not part with it for less than sixty copecks.
And with this precious material they now cover their carts!
All goes to ruin!
This is a twice-humbled people.
—First of all, good man, there came through our province fugitives from other places. They ruined us: dug up our potatoes, rooted up our cabbages, took off the hay, and carried away the unground grain in their carts. And as soon as this had happened we ourselves had to be on the move!—complain the peasants.
See, here come the peasants of Lublin and Lomzha provinces. They wear long white sheepskin coats with the wool showing at the cuffs of their sleeves, with broad shawl-like collars of black sheepskin, and with a beautiful ornamentation of coloured threads. They wear four-cornered caps with pompons on the corners.
Long moustaches, and shaven chins, overgrown and scrubby.
A quiet, courteous, gentle folk. Their women are arrayed in specially sumptuous fur coats.
The sleeves, the pockets, and the waists are all adorned with embroidery in coloured thread.
Now all these are dirty, all are covered with a thick layer of dust, they are torn and ragged, but you can see that they were once beautiful, ornamental, and in themselves signs of wealth.
And that not very long ago.
—It’s the third month!
—We’ve been journeying nine weeks!
—Seven weeks since we left!
The peasants answer weariedly in reply to the question:
—Have you been long on the road?
A whole eternity!
—I can’t make it out—said one of the fugitives to me. He was serving as a soldier, and used even such phrases as "the masses."
—I can’t make it out: either my home was all a dream, or I’ve gone out of my mind now, and God knows when I shall understand. My home burnt, cattle drowned in the river, no little wife, she died on the road; my two children also died and we buried them by the wayside and put crosses over the graves. I've got one son left and one horse. That’s all we are in the world. Is it possible that I am the same man as I was?
He had the common appearance of a fugitive—a two-horse cart with a single shaft and canvas tilt.
When you meet the first party of fugitives upon the road you think that they’re gipsies.
The populations of whole provinces have become gipsies, and in the month of October are leading a nomad life on the road and in the forests.
It is necessary to form some estimate of the greatness of their unexampled trial. To a cart that should be drawn by two horses one often sees only one.
The other has fallen, or has been sold by the way.
No harness of any kind, only a horse-collar.
And that lonely horse in the shafts has the air of an orphan, and imparts that air to the whole conveyance.
By the side of the horse walks the peasant or his wife, turn by turn.
They only go on foot in the mornings.
—To get warm.
In the mornings there are five degrees of frost in the fields.
But they all are travelling in their carts.
All of them have sore feet and many are lame.
Inside the carts, under feather beds, under old clothes and rags, sit or lie five or seven human beings.
The carts are crowded with people.
The little horses find it hard to draw the people and their luggage.
What is in the carts?
—We only brought_the bedding!
—We only managed to bring the linen! these are the answers you hear.
You meet the very strangest cartloads.
They sometimes carry—layers of iron.
—The roof!
It was the most valued possession.
—Their cottage had an iron roof!
When they were forced to flee, they took this most valued thing and carried it they knew not whither.
Why?
—It was the most valuable. At the sides of the carts the peasants have slung their kitchen utensils, as gipsies do.
It cuts one to the heart to see these remains of what was lately—only yesterday—opulence and sufficiency.
One often sees enamelled ware
Enamelled kettles, frying-pans, basins.
Suddenly comes a cart with a watering-pot fastened at the side.
Just one watering-pot remains from the whole garden and vegetable plot!
Sewing machines stick out from the sides of the carts.
It’s as if there had been a fire.
A fire in which all has been destroyed, and the people have caught up
—The most precious things!
Often, behind the carts, instead of spare wheels as in the majority of cases—is tied on a Viennese chair.
They had been proud of this chair.
—It had been the chair for guests.
—They didn’t get along anyhow in their home. They had Viennese chairs. Theirs wasn’t an izba.
And now, when they sleep in the woods and travel slowly along the road, in cold and hunger, they carry these chairs with them as:
—Their most precious possession.
Under the cart sometimes dogs are tied, and they run along there as they can.
They’re tied up so that they won’t get run over by the relief cars that come swiftly along.
How moving and how instant in its appeal is this enormous and silent procession! How it grips one’s heart! The procession moving no one knows whither.
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