A silent land. In the same street as the market-place, by the Petrograd
Hotel, from dawn until late evening, the crowd is like stone. There's
no getting through. The hotel is occupied by the Committee--of
"Northern-Help." Here it is arranged for the fugitives where each has
to go.
I attempt to pass through the crowd and get as far as the gateway.
Farther is impossible. The stench is such that the head simply goes
round. May God give strength to the Relief delegates working in this
stench--to remain healthy!
"We've been waiting for days!"--complain the fugitives,--"and standing
without a bite of food from morning."
"What's a day! You stand a day and at the end of it go away. To-morrow
you come again and have had nothing to eat."
I cast a glance at the Town Hall, where is a crowd of peasant women. In
a corner is a table. With the notice:
"Employment Bureau."
A stout lady sitting there says to a peasant woman standing with a
child in her arms:
"With us, my dear, the conditions of employment for servants are
usually ..."
Tiny Roslavl. How is it possible to find employment here for tens of
thousands of people! The peasant women stand in the waiting rooms.
They stand patiently, they stand all day. And having obtained nothing
whatever, go away.
In the street you are stopped by people, saying:
"Are you not in need of workmen in your village?"
"Are you not hiring people?"
And all in such melancholy, hopeless, gentle voices. I drive back to
the place where last night I saw a horde of nomads--an actual horde.
From the high bank of the Oster, on that side from which the forest
has been cleared, you see for versts and versts a cloud of bluish,
half-transparent smoke. That's the evening camping-ground.
I walk farther and farther into the forest over the soft wilted grass.
Everywhere are glades, everywhere people, huts of pine-branches, and
from all sides is heard the sound of axes. How many thousands of people
are there here! People tell you various enormous numbers.... How many
drops of water are there in the river?
What a terrible smoke in the forest! Because of the smoke the eyes of
all are red and painful.
"It is damp at night, the smoke settles down, and there's no getting
out of the wood," says a small farmer to me, "but it's warm in the
smoke. Just like sitting in a dark _izba_. Hot, even. We warm the
forest. That's what it's come to for us."
"Perhaps it's just the smoke that saves us," says his neighbour, also a
farmer--"everyone is coughing all around, some are spitting blood, but
in the smoke every microbe perishes."