THE GREAT SIBERIAN ROAD
THE band of exiles had several days' rest before the convict-barge
which was to carry them up the Volga returned. This gave them all
time to recover from their terrible railway journey. The women washed
and mended the clothes. But there was no decent privacy. In the
family kameras men and boys were confined with women and girls in an
indiscriminate herding together. More than anything else, worse than
the filth and the vermin about them, the modest Stundist women felt
this indecent exposure. But there was no help for it. They did not even
dare to hold themselves altogether aloof from the coarse, wretched
women who were forced upon their companionship.
Alexis and Khariton urged them to do any little act of kindness in
their power both to women and children. They themselves sought to gain
an influence over the men; they talked to them, wrote letters for them,
and made many efforts to interest them and wile away the tedious hours
of idleness. The days dragged heavily along, and most of the men spent
them in gambling and quarrelling.
Over the big boys and girls, Michael, Sergius, and Marfa soon exercised
a good influence. Michael especially could interest them by long
stories of his voyage out to Scotland and his twelve months' sojourn
there. He could talk for hours of that foreign country; and the boys
squatted round him in the prison-yard, listening with breathless
attention to his tales of his brave forefathers, the Covenanters, their
hairbreadth escapes and courageous deaths.
So the days passed by, spent altogether out of doors in an enclosed
yard with high palisadings, which shut out all glimpses of the world
outside, excepting the blue sky overhead. But every night they had to
herd in the unventilated kamera, reeking with foul air, and swarming
with vermin. It was better at night than in the morning, for the open
door had admitted some fresh air. But after the kamera had been closed
an hour or two, the atmosphere was poisonous. This misery would follow
them all along the route to the very end.
At last the convict-barge arrived, and the men were separated from the
women and children. More convicts joined the band from Kovylsk, and
there was much overcrowding. But this was nothing like as bad as it
would be later in the year, when the bands of exiles would be larger.
There was no yard here to pass the days in. Instead were two big cages
of strong bars, in which the exiles were able to stand upright, though
it was almost impossible to move easily about. In the railway waggons
they had been compelled to sit, and could not stand. Here they were
compelled to stand, and could not sit. But unless they stayed in the
foul atmosphere of the cabins below, which no fresh air could enter,
they must stand all day long, closely packed in these cages, more like
wild beasts than human beings.
It was early summer. Day after day—the sun shining joyously on the
rejoicing earth; the happy, free peasants pausing at their labour on
the banks of the river to watch the convict-barge go by; the merry
sound of church bells ringing—the laughter of girls at the washing
platforms—the singing of the larks and the calling of the cuckoo
filling the air—day after day, through all this gladness, the terrible
load of untold misery sailed up the Volga. Yet this was only one
amongst many that would follow in their wake until the winter came. But
the day was better far than the night, when they were fastened down
below, and the atmosphere in the cabin grew so heavy and polluted they
could hardly breathe it.
They left the barge, as they had left the train, with the sense of
relief which any change in misery brings. There was a short journey
by railway again; and then, because there had been a landslip on the
line farther on, it was decided that the convoy should take the old
route along the Great Siberian Road. The exiles left the train with
the idea that the worst lay behind them. For now they would be able to
move freely; they would live in the open air, and at present the early
summer was full of sweetness and beauty.
The country through which they passed was carpeted with gay flowers,
and the road led through meadows and forests, along valleys, and
over the flanks of mountains. Here and there were village streets
stretching for a mile or two along the sides of the road. Cattle were
browsing on the common pastureland, and corn was shooting up rapidly
under the sunshine, which was growing hotter every day. The cloudless
sky above them, and the sweet fresh air breathing softly about them,
revived the spirits of Michael and Sergius. This was something like
what they had anticipated. Little Clava, too, regained her merry ways
in some measure, as the children were free to run where they chose,
and pick the flowers, provided they kept up with the convoy. Sometimes
the convoy-guards were kindly and indulgent, but when the guards were
changed they proved often to be impatient and even brutal men. But as
the march was a steady one, and about twenty miles a day, there was not
much time for rambling among the flowers, and it was forbidden to lag
behind. There were rough, springless carts for carrying the children
under twelve, as well as the men and women who were too ill to walk.
But little Clava did not ride in the cart. Michael and Sergius said
they would carry her on their backs whenever she was tired, along the
Great Siberian Road. Tatiania was only too glad to keep her darling by
her side.
But Marfa was suffering in silence more than any of them suspected. She
had spent the winter indoors with her mother, who would not let her out
of her sight, and this confinement had sapped her strength before she
set out on this sorrowful journey. The scenes she had passed through,
of which she had formed even less idea than Michael and Sergius, had
given her a more severe mental shock than they had felt. Everything had
revolted her. But above all, the infamous and abandoned men and women
with whom she had been brought into close contact were insufferably
loathsome to her. She felt herself in a hellish atmosphere, amid a
band of monsters, from whom she could not escape. Her mind as well as
her body was ailing. Though she was not separated from her family, an
indescribable home-sickness took possession of her. She longed with a
hopeless longing to see once more her old home at Knishi.
Marfa kept her grief, which was gnawing at her heart, to herself. But
the home-sickness grew greater as every day took her farther away from
her birthplace. They had not yet passed the boundary which separates
Russia from Siberia. The exiles were still in their native land. But
presently they reached the frontier. A midday halt was called around a
square stone pillar, about twice the height of a man, on one side of
which lay Russia, and on the other Siberia. It was half-way between the
last Russian étape and the first Siberian one; and the cavalcade, with
its convoy-guard, its chained prisoners, its carts laden with children
and invalids, and its families of free exiles, rested for a short time
at this place of farewell.
The midday halt was usually a time of relief and comparative enjoyment.
But to-day there was a universal outburst of grief. Even the most
brutal and most stupid of the criminals wept at the thought of quitting
Russia—their fatherland. Scarcely one among them had ever trodden a
foreign soil. Most of the women knelt down, with sobs and prayers. The
Stundists stood bareheaded, looking away from the boundary posts to the
western land, and taking a last submissive gaze at the dear country
they were leaving for conscience' sake. Michael and Sergius, linked arm
in arm, leaned sorrowfully against the pillar. Suddenly a wild shriek
rang through the sobs and groans of the crowd, and looking round they
saw Marfa falling forward against the foot of the pillar, close to the
spot where they were standing.
She was quite insensible when they lifted her up. As soon as the order
to march forward was given, they carried her to one of the rude carts,
at the bottom of which she lay on a little straw, and Tatiania obtained
permission to go with her. She was not quite conscious when they
reached the étape in the evening. The family kamera was overcrowded as
usual, and all they could do for Marfa was to lay her on the hard, bare
planks of the sleeping-platform. All night did Khariton and Tatiania
watch waking by their delirious child, able to do nothing for her, and
only longing for the return of daylight. Fortunately the nights were
short, and a dim dawn soon shone through the dirty casements of the
étape.