FIVE DAYS UNDER ARREST
NEXT morning I was sent under escort to the village of Zaramag, ten
miles distant. But before starting Priest Khariton said to me, “I see
that you have some of our copatchka in your satchel; permit me to give
it to our dog, my wife will give you something fit to eat.” And the kind
woman filled my bag with scones and cake and eggs.
I was sent in charge of a very old man to the Ataman of Zaramag. I might
easily have escaped, but it seemed more interesting to remain a
prisoner. Outside Lisri he showed me a pool of human blood on the road
where there had been a fight the night before. They are evidently rather
rough in this district. I felt rather safer as a prisoner than if I had
been at liberty.
We passed several small villages, one of which was Tli, an accumulation
of broken-down towers; twelfth-century ruins patched together for the
housing of the people of to-day. We were stopped here; someone called to
us from the cliff. “There is a man dead,” said my escort. “We must go up
here.” We climbed up accordingly, and found all the men of the village
collected together, sitting on pine logs. Two men came rapidly forward
to greet us, and we stood as it were on a threshold, while these
proclaimed something in a loud voice in the Ossetine language. I think
it meant, “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen,”
or the equivalent of that. We took off our hats and crossed ourselves, I
following the example of my companion. With that someone took our things
from us and put them aside, and we entered into the assembly and took
seats on the logs. Everyone had goats’ horns, from which they were
drinking, and a vessel of that kind was brought to me full of _araka_,
and with it hard-baked millet cake and salt. Everyone seemed to be
serious, and to judge by the activity of three men going to and fro with
copper kettles replenishing the horns, all were drinking hard. He who
had died had been a very poor old man, but if he had been twice as poor
and twice as miserable in his life I am sure his death would have none
the less proved an excuse for the glass.
The Ataman of Zaramag was present, and my guard gave him the letter, in
which he was asked if he knew anything against me, or who I was. He said
the letter was unintelligible to him, and that I should have to be sent
back, but all the same he sent me on to Zaramag to wait for him.
I waited there all day with a drunken Russian clerk who wanted to borrow
money to buy a quart of _araka_ in order to drink my health. His wife,
however, to save him the disgrace, now produced a bottle which she had
previously hidden from him, and he proceeded once more to add water to
the ocean.
It was yet early in the morning, but I spent the rest of the day with
the man and his wife, drinking tea and listening to the confused
boastings and witticisms of the drunkard. The Ataman remained at the
burial-feast.
In the afternoon I grew tired of waiting and said I would walk on to the
next village, and that if the Ataman wanted me he could send for me, and
I strolled out accordingly. The clerk seemed paralysed by faith, and
just sat and stared in amazement. I walked out of the village and took
the road. There, however, I met the Ataman, who smiled amiably and
re-conducted me to the abode of the clerk.
I spent that night in an almost sumptuous apartment in the house of the
Ataman. First he entertained me at dinner, and we ate mutton and drank
sweet Ossetinsky beer from a wooden loving-cup. Obviously being arrested
has its advantages.
The next day I was sent to the Ataman of Nuzal, asking what he had to
say about me. For some time I had thought I should have been returned to
Lisri, but the drunken clerk had intervened and advised that I be sent
further. The boy who should have taken me went without me, however, and
I was put into the charge of a carter going that way.
The road now led downhill, and I left the snow behind. The valley of
Zaramag, which might be called a nursery of rivers, has a wild beauty,
though it came harshly upon my eyes after the soft luxuriance of the
South. We followed the river Ardon through the wonderful gorge of
Kassar. The little thread of road runs unobtrusively through ten miles
of ruined cliffs. Far below the little river agonises, roars and
conquers. The height, the depth, the gloom, the chaos of decay and
ruin—these appal the vision. It is more dreadful and uninhabitable than
the gorge of Dariel, a dangerous district, moreover, where man needs
fear the bear and the wolf. Above a glacier my guide pointed out to me
specks which he said were bison.
We arrived at Nuzal in the afternoon and there a comedy enacted itself.
The Ataman refused to receive me or to have anything to do with me,
declaring he had no authority to arrest me. “What shall I do?” asked the
carter. “That’s nothing to do with me,” answered the Ataman. “Do you
hear?” said the carter to me. “The Ataman won’t take you; go and beg him
to take you, or else you’ll have to go back to Lisri.”
“I shan’t go a single step back upon the road,” said I.
“You will be forced,” said he.
“Then I shall be forced,” I replied. “They’ll have to carry me.”
“But what shall I do?” asked the carter. “I’m going to Ardon on
business. I can’t take you back.”
No one would have anything to do with the poor man. A Russian visiting
doctor came up and talked to me, and when he heard of the dilemma he was
like to die of laughter. The idea that the Ataman of a remote village
should have arrested a European tourist tickled him immensely. He
promised to write my story in the Russian newspapers. “Let him go,” said
he; “and as for that,” pointing to the letter, “throw it away.”
“I must have a receipt,” said the carter.
“I’ll give you one,” said I.
The upshot was, however, that I agreed to go a stage further, to Misure,
where there is a silver factory and a telephone to Vladikavkaz. It was a
Belgian factory, and M. Devet was a very nice man. I agreed to that, but
at Misure the telephone was out of order, and beyond drinking a bottle
of wine between us we gained no comfort there. I counted myself free
really, for certainly the carter was without authority, but it was
interesting to see what would happen next, and I forebore to escape. The
man cursed his stars for having taken me, but he was obsessed by a sense
of duty. He would take me on to Alagir and hand me over to the Pristav
there. To Alagir we went accordingly. _En_ _route_, however, we slept in
a little shop by the wayside, and it was not till next morning that we
passed through the gorge of Ardon with its hot sulphur springs, and came
to the large settlement on the steppes known as Alagir.
At the Pristav’s office we had to wait five hours, and I was assured I
should be liberated, but then I found they dared not release me. I had
to go to Ardon, fifteen miles distant.
As I was leaving Alagir there was a strange incident. A well-dressed
man, whom I mistook for a member of the Russian Secret Police, came up
to me, and tried to get me to say things against the Russian Government
and my treatment. “You can speak to me as to a mate,” said he. “I also
am a _politikan_. What happened to you? You are exhausted. Never mind.
Bear up.” He spoke a few words aside to my guard, and then went on
again. “I have arranged,” said he. “You won’t go just yet. You must come
along with me and have a meal, then I will take both of you in a cart,
and we can have a chat.” I felt suspicious and refused.
Meanwhile two young men came up and entered into conversation with him,
and they asked me my story. I told them, and one said, “We represent the
Society for the help of educated Ossetines in distress; we beg you to
receive our help.” Then one gave me five separate ten-copeck pieces and
a slip of paper with his address, saying, “If you are in difficulty
write to me. You will need money before you are released—to this little
you are welcome.”
Again I refused and thanked them profusely. Then the first man said he
must have offended me. I insisted that he hadn’t, and we parted. I have
every reason to believe that they were very honest and good people,
though their manner was not very assuring. My guard, who had patiently
waited, now went on and I followed.
From Ardon I was sent to a place called Ard-Garon, where I spent the
night at the house of a hospitable Ossetine. I arrived in the evening,
and my host took me out for a walk on the steppes to what he called a
“mayovka,” so called because it was held in the month of May. It was an
evening picnic of about fifty Ossetine men. There were no women. They
had buckets of _araka_ and baskets of mutton and bread. I politely
partook of their viands.
From Ard-Garon I was exported to Gizel, where my good fortune seemed to
suffer eclipse. I was thrust, in spite of my protests, into the village
gaol, there to exist from three in the afternoon till eight next
morning. I had had nothing to eat all day and nothing was obtainable
here. Only, in answer to my complaint, the gaoler put in a pail of dirty
water that I might drink if I wanted to.
At Ardon an official had said to me, “We can’t keep you here because
we’ve nowhere to put you. You wouldn’t like to lie in prison, would you?
Have they prisons in England?... Clean ones, I suppose. But ours are
dirty. Would you like to see ours?” He burst into a guffaw of laughter.
But the Ataman said to him, “No, no, you needn’t go out of your way to
do that.”
I suppose the place was ugly. I did not guess that on the succeeding
night I should be for the first time in a Russian gaol.
It was a verminous cell, with holes in the rotten flooring and no glass
in the barred windows. The door was cased in iron; the walls hung in
tatters of broken plaster. There were no seats, but at one end some
planks served for a bed. My companions were an Ossetine and an Ingoosh,
both charged with stealing, and a madman, who was, I understood, a
regular tenant of the den. I had obviously nothing to do with these
people and didn’t belong to their class. They were as selfish as
possible, and I suppose I should have had a bad night but for the fact
that I was so worn out. I huddled myself together on the planks and
slept. At Vladikavkaz next day, the Chief of Police inspected my
passport, and bade me take my liberty and “live with God.”
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