The Way of the Cross (Doroshevich)/VII
VII
AT THE CROSS-ROADS
DOVSK is a large village. Here the high-road divides into two, one branch goes to Kief, the other to Moscow.
Here the river of fugitives flows off in two directions.
One takes the direct way to Roslavl, the other turns to the right for Kief.
Which means that after Dovsk the fugitives will be even thicker on the road.
Dovsk is a memorial to the Emperor Alexander II., with a great white wall around it, and around the wall is a camp of peasant carts.
At a turn on the Kief road a great new cemetery of new white crosses lies concealed.
Dovsk will long live in the memory of the fugitives.
Such a cemetery we have not yet met upon the road.
—But what's that! say the fugitives,—now near Baranovitchi there is a cemetery, at Novi Puti, on the road to Slutsk.
At Baranovitchi perished the weakest.
Every one remembers Baranovitchi with terror.
When we passed Baranovitchi it was still hot.
There was a terrible thirst.
The water of the wells had been scooped even to the bottom.
They let down boys with the buckets, and the boys got the last of the dirty water and were hoisted up.
The fugitives ate nothing but potatoes and cucumbers.
—We dug up the potatoes whilst they were green.
The potatoes were not boiled, but were made hot in dirty water in pots put at the edge of bonfires.
They ate half-raw potatoes and cucumbers.
—To-day he ate, to-morrow he was gone!
The fugitives are always saying this:
—That's why I'm safe and sound today. I ate no potatoes.
—I was hungry, but I did not eat.
—All those who ate, died.
—I, pan,[1] ran after the children all the time and didn't let them out of my sight. Just so as they shouldn't take anything to eat from neighbours.
Is it possible to die here? There they died,—say the strongest, those who have gone through it all.
We pass through Rogachef, a little town overwhelmed with fugitives, with the dust, and with the smell of the bonfires burning in the camps around.
Rogachef is like a little white building, like a prison built on the high and beautiful bank of the Dnieper.
All the meadow-land beneath is alight with bonfires, bonfires, bonfires, and flocking with fugitives.
Here also is an exit for the great river.
The railway,—and a portion of the people find a place here:
Na mashinu, on the train.
That means that ahead, the river is even thicker.
—The fugitives eat us up, says Rogachef, trembling.
In this town also you can buy nothing.
There's no small change.
In the chemist's shop where I go to buy benzine, the public is given "kvitki, money-tickets."
—Ninety copecks change. There are the tickets. Sit down and wait a little whilst we deal with other customers.
—The fugitives will eat us up, wails Rogachef, as the other towns and villages wail also.
- ↑ Polish for Sir or Master.