The Way of the Cross. Vlas Mikhailovich Doroshevich

and taken away what they wanted.

      At one of the points on the road I met a substantial local farmer.

      He was selling unground oats.

      No dearer than five copecks above the price of hay a pood.

      —It doesn't matter how cheap it is, cried he in despair. The fugitives rob the wagons all the same.

      At another point I was told of a local landowner:

      —He goes about with a revolver. The fugitives have dug up more than a hundred acres of potatoes belonging to him.

      There's no stopping people who've come to the end of things.

      Near Gomel a by-road goes over a ravine, and the fugitives puilled the bridge to bits.

      ​For their bonfires.

      In the towns and villages you hear of country squires who have fled by night with their families from the coming of the fugitives.

      You hear of some who have asked for a guard of soldiers.

      —If only for the night. Entirely at our expense.

      Their fear is quite understandable, when at night-time a great crowd overtakes you.

      But no personal assaults of any kind have been heard of.

      However, regarding property, no one asks:

      —Whose?

      You understand that by the carts of the fugitives.

      One is full of wood, of fresh wood just chopped, and on top of it is tied a great bundle of hay, whilst behind hang sheaves of rye.

      ​What do the peasantry think about this?

      Along the whole road to Bobruisk, no matter where I asked the question:

      —Don't the fugitives do you a lot of damage?

      —Nitchevo! Nothing, that's all right.

      —Don't they dig up your potatoes, and take away your hay?

      —Yes, they take it. How not dig them up?

      And for hundreds of versts, just as if it were a conspiracy, you will hear these phrases:

      —Let them dig them up!

      —They've got to eat, haven't they?

      —Perhaps we shall have to do it ourselves!

      I often heard:

      —They take things in extremity. They ask for more, and we make them a present of it.

      ​Not once did I hear the word which would be used to apply to beggars:

      —Podaem, We grant.

      But:

      —Daem, We give.

      Or, more often:

      —Dareem, We present.

The peasants, especially the women, are distressed by the "unsung corpses,"^[1] the dead which the fugitives have to bury by the roadside as they go.

      In many places the people have told me:

      —We said to them,—Give us your corpses. We will put them in their shrouds, sing the service, and bury them as Christians. But they have no time to do anything. They dig the grave the night before and next morning they go on.

      The channel softly receives the river into itself.

      ​In the great misfortune that has befallen these fugitives, the peasantry, by their humanity and good-will, have taken upon themselves half the burden of the calamity.

      The peasants say:

      —The first fugitives really did offend us.

      —At first, in a way, they were rude.

      Clearly, we ought specially to increase the number of relief stations,

      —To lessen all this.

      Oh, these relief stations beginning to be built after the fugitives had already arrived!

      The peasants were really affronted by the people of Holm province

      —The Holm people, these are the ones who were rude to us.

      This is the general saying

      In Kaluga province, in Mogilef, in Smolensk, and in Minsk.

      ​The Holm peasants—are the most exasperating people.

      Especially exasperating

      How they talk of their own province!

      —And is your land good?

      —Our land? There's no such land anywhere else in the world. Do you call your ground land? I shouldn't think it worth cultivating. Now ours is land. One could eat it—that's the kind of land it is. Like bread!

      —Were you well-off?

      —Were we well-off? You people who live here couldn't dream what our life there was like.

      —Did you have fine cattle?

      —Such cattle I had! And such a house I had with a grove round it and money spent on it! How our children grew up! What cattle perished on the way hither, how many we sold for a mere nothing!

      ​The rumour often went round among the Holm peasants that they were to be driven

      —To Siberia.

      And they were afraid.

      —Such winter there! Nothing will ripen.

      They are angry to have lost

      —Such riches.

      And according to the peasants, it is only those from Holm province who have been rude to them.

      1 ↑ Without the proper funeral service.