Puslapio vaizdai
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reviled his steeds punctuated, but in no way alleviated, the forest stillness, and as we turned at last into the straggling, grassgrown road of the village, solitude seemed to have worked its spell there also. Perhaps a hundred cabins were in the place. They were all alike, built of large, round logs and appearing as stout as guardhouses, scattered and jumbled in grotesque fashion, as if they might have been a cluster of toadstools sprung up overnight from the rotting earth. On all sides, closely pressing upon them, were the birch and cedar woods, already filled with dark night. Only on their topmost, motionless branches twilight rested in a golden haze. A month earlier here it had been continuous day, but now the swift autumn was approaching, with its almost continuous night.

No herald had come to announce our advent, and we had rushed on from our last stop; but in some inscrutable manner news travels swiftly among the exiles, and the cabins had delivered up their quota to welcome us, or, at any rate, to stare. My mission had to do only with "enemy aliens," Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Bulgars, and Turks,-but here, as at all the other villages, exiles of every class and condition flocked around us.

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"You are a free American. Lend me a hundred rubles; perhaps I can escape,' "Please tell your President about our sad sort," "Pray present this petition to the ministry in Petrograd"-such petitions deluged me at every stop, although they never came through the proper channel of Alexander Ivanovich, for he smacked of the Government to the petitioners, and in the very best of schools caution had been taught these forest-dwellers.

Carrying a last high stump by assault, Jehu deposited us in front of the peasant hut that served as an inn for the only visitors the village ever had, the inspecting gendarmes and forestry employees of the Government. The exiles thronged about us in a half-circle. There were several hundred Galician Jews, who bowed to the ground and gibbered unintelligible things to us. telligible things to us. Alexander Ivanovich went into the hut to inspect accommodations of a sort with which we were already too familiar. As he disappeared, I heard a voice address me from the fringe of the crowd. It was recognizable as a feminine voice, but there was nothing in it but the barest, bleakest, dullest depression.

"I am glad you have come," it said in perfect English, with only a slight accent.

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SUMMER NOT FAR FROM THE ARCTIC CIRCLE. THE WRITER IN HIS TELEGA WITH HIS OSTIAK "

INSPECTING THE NORTHERN VILLAGES OF NARYM

JEHU."

The tone was entirely uniform, as featureless as pouring sand, with no trace of inflection or varying emotion. "I am glad you have come," it repeated, but there was no gladness in the words.

To be addressed in correct English from that strange crowd was surprising enough. I could not see the owner of the voice, but a pathway was opening through the ranks of spectators, and finally I saw a woman approaching. Originally she had been tall, but this only made her more stooped now. She was not old; her face held few of the fine wrinkles that age delicately traces. Instead, across her forehead and around her mouth were deep, harsh lines, for the cruel explanation of which one had only to look into her eyes. They were unmistakably the eyes of a fanatic, a person ruled with terrible. tyranny by one idea, but a fanatic who had suffered intensely. As a sort of mist over their feverish gleam her expression showed dazed amazement, as if she were striving desperately, but futilly, to understand her surroundings. As she walked to me she did not lift her feet, but shuffled over the grass inexpressibly e Her wasted arms hung limp. At once I recognized her as a typhus convalescent. In the Balkans I had seen numerous cases like her, but with one exception I had never before seen a person convalescing from typhus show intense interest in anything. In this woman's gaze was an uncanny concentration, even a sort of triumphant exultation of which I became acutely aware as she reached me. Her dress was of one piece, which hung to her ankles, and was bound with an old patent-leather girdle. It was of cotton cloth, drabbrown and faded. In the gathering dusk the details of her features and costume were soon lost, and as she told me her story she seemed a shadow-draped statue, motionless before me, only her colorless voice showing life.

"Are you an American?" she asked. "Yes," I answered; “and I am surprised to hear such perfect English in Chigara. I see you have been terribly ill. Have you been here long?"

"Yes," she said slowly, "I have been ill; but I have been here only one month." "Then you were ill before you came?" "I have been a prisoner for eight months now, and I have been ill most of the time."

"And where were you first a prisoner?" This was a safe question, whereas if I had inquired, "Why are you a prisoner?" it would have been an unpardonable faux pas. In the tiny villages where these exiles dragged out an existence that seemed to me unendurable, where their interests were restricted to the coming and going of the seasons and terribly familiar doings of one another, I never heard any person speak of the original crime or accident that had brought his neighbor there. The exiles frequently were eager to tell me their own stories, though, or what they wished me to believe were their stories. No one of them ever admitted guilt of any description. Some of them were obviously liars, many one could not but believe. The woman who was talking to me seemed entirely sincere.

"I was arrested in the Crimea," she answered. "I was kept a month in prison there, and then exiled to this place."

"But you arrived here only a month ago. Where were you the other six months?"

She answered with a little word that spells for the exiles of Siberia the thing they dread above all other phases of their punishment.

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TWO POLITICAL EXILES IN FRONT OF THEIR NARYM HOME. THE YOUNG MAN IS ONE OF THE WEALTHIEST IN RUSSIA, A MULTIMILLIONAIRE FROM MOSCOW. HE HAD LIVED EIGHTEEN MONTHS IN THE CABIN. THE YOUNG WOMAN IS AN ARTIST FROM RIGA

est in America]. I had a little school, and on Sundays I held services in the schoolroom. I did so for twelve years before the war. When the war began, a law was passed prohibiting enemy aliens from holding any sort of meeting. They told me this after I was arrested. I lived in a remote district, took no interest in the affairs of the world, and did not know it before. I had authority from my church and my God, and I thought that was enough." A tremor of emotion crept into her voice as she spoke these words. "When there was war I continued to hold meetings every Sunday, and nothing happened for many months. One morning when I went to my school I found two gendarmes there. They said they had come to take me to the police station. I protested that I had done nothing, but they said I must talk to the police master. This man told me he was going to put me into prison, and perhaps later I would be shot as a spy. He said that as I had been holding meetings without permission, I was guilty of trying to stir up a revolu

She paused, moved a step nearer to me, and looked out into the ink-black forest. The other exiles were growing restless; many went away, several came closer, waiting to tell their stories. A red moon bulged over the treetops. From stagnant pools clouds of mosquitos arose.

"He locked me up and for the month I remained there. My cell was filthy and full of vermin. I lived on black bread and cabbage soup.

During the whole time I was allowed no opportunity for exercise, and many times was told I might expect to be shot on the morrow. One morning a gendarme came to say I had been exiled to the Narym district at least until the end of the war. I asked when I should go, and he said a party of prisoners was leaving in an hour. The prison had become so horrible to me that for a while I felt glad of any change, but then I had no idea of what the journey would mean. I know

Again she stopped, as if the recital were taxing her strength, and then her featureless voice purred on:

"I think about twelve prisoners started with me. Later some of these died, and more joined us. We were always losing

some and taking up new recruits. We were marched to a third-class railwaycarriage and locked in it during a journey of fifty versts, which lasted nearly the whole day because we spent much time at stations. No food or water was brought, and of course we were not allowed to leave the car. On arriving at a fairly large town, we marched five versts through the streets to a prison and were confined together in a room so small that there was scarcely space for us to lie side by side upon the floor. Many nights Many nights later conditions were even worse, but I suffered more at first because I was new to travel by etape. Of course the men and women were together. There was never the least privacy. During the whole journey we were quartered together indiscriminately. Among us were murderers, thieves, and the most debased criminals of all sorts. The walls of the prison were covered with cockroaches, crawling in thick masses over everything, and when we lay down we were covered with more loathsome insects. For six months continually I lived in such surroundings, traveling short distances at intervals until the mere monotony of it was maddening. I soon fell ill with malarial fever, and was delirious for weeks, but I was very strong and recovered, only to contract typhus when we crossed the Ural Mountains."

Above the forest the moon shone full in her face now. Alexander Ivanovich shouted from the cabin door to the exiles that they must come back in the morning. "Please continue," I said.

"Oh, well, there is no use taking more of your time with what is past. It was all about the same except that as we came north and winter arrived we suffered terribly with the cold. The typhus left me broken in every way. For weeks I lay

on a straw bed unconscious. I remember nothing of it, not even the name of the town. As soon as I could stand alone I was forced to continue my journey here. I don't know why God did not let me die.

I stayed in one hundred and thirty-five prisons, and saw more than half my companions die. Had not one of them who Idied left me these clothes I should have nothing to wear now. I have been made to witness and live in intimacy with awful sin and degradation. I am now wrecked in health, without money or friends. No one interested in me seems to know where I am. I suppose I shall be here so long as I live. I know a woman who has been here fifty years."

She had been growing excited throughout the last of her speech, and now suddenly her tone flamed into tense emotion, and she trembled so that I thought she would fall.

"But I do not care, I do not care," she cried so loudly that I heard an echo in the forest. "They shall persecute me, they can kill me; it is nothing. The more I suffer, the greater is my glory, the brighter stars are in my crown." Her trite evangelical phrase took on an amazing vividness and reality in that remote Northern wilderness. It was full of an awful fanatic sincerity that brought a new sense of the exiles' limitless misery and lent an uncanny aspect to the whole gloomy place.

There were other interesting stories in Chigara. Because Brusiloff swept over the Galician plains four thousand miles away, Chigara had its population suddenly increased by nearly a thousand Jews in a state of abject poverty and want, ragged, filthy, starved, utterly bewildered. Means of transportation swifter than the etape had brought them there. At a moment's notice they had been torn from the frontier regions where they lived and as swiftly as possible deposited in the heart of primeval forests not far distant from the arctic circle. They were suspected of espionage, of having aided the enemy, and of revolutionary plots. They were suspects only; had guilt been proved, they would have been shot. The Galician Jews have been crushed and debased as completely as is possible for people possessing any civilization at all. Most of those at Chigara were of the lowest type, ignorant to an unheard-of degree, di

seased, and weakened by insufficient food. They were dressed in their national costumes, which were intended for a very different world than the Siberian marshes. Where Ostiaks and Siberian peasants wore clothes of skins and leather, these Jews roamed about in long, black smocks like a priest's robe, in tatters, and caked with dirt. The thousand existed aimlessly in the forest, but, curiously, were not hopeless. The Russian Government allowed each of them nine and a half rubles a month to house, clothe, and feed themselves. This amounted to about three dollars in Russia last year. I was assured that all of them saved something each month against the day when they would be allowed to live in the world once more. To do this they lived twenty to a small cabin and subsisted entirely on fish and wild fowl. The

forest formed a

natural prison from which there was no escape except by way of the river, so that the Government did not watch very closely each village. Thus the Jews of Chigara were left to govern themselves

His

inal cowardice, with the odds astoundingly in favor of the weak brave man. name was Zweig, and there was scarcely five feet of him; but he had a fine brow, a dignified and even noble face, and his finely shaped hands twitched incessantly with nervous energy. He was a thorough Hebrew scholar. In Galicia he had been wealthy, and an important man among his people.

One thing that I did for him was to forward a bill to the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Government for a hundred and fifty horses which he had sold the army just before Brusiloff invaded his region. He wrote them that he wished the money promptly, "as there was great suffering among his people." In Chigara he was shorn of his wealth, and his hold on his people was purely spiritual. I do not know why the old Russian Government deported him to Siberian torture. Perhaps he was a dangerous enemy. I only know that when I met him in that howling wilderness I met a

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A RUSSIAN PEASANT OF THE EXILE COUNTRY DISPLAYING HIS WARES. CRUDE POTTERY HAS GROWN TO BE A CONSIDERABLE INDUSTRY HERE

to a large extent. There were cutthroats and crafty rascals among them who preyed on the stupid majority at every opportunity. Yet I found excellent order among them. They were ruled by an under-sized invalid too weak to walk about. It was the clearest sort of case of fearlessness, unselfishness, and a wonderful personality pitted single-handed against brutal, crim

man, a gentleman, and, I believe, a genius.

When Zweig arrived at Chigara he found the Jewish horde without a shepherd. There were quarrels hourly, resulting in fights and wounded men. The many wretched women were in a terrible situation, and the children, who were fairly numerous, were running wild. Nature, as nature has a habit of doing, was taking her way with these pitiful peo

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