Chapter XXXIII: The Road to Zostrov

Even before we left Riga,--where we were delayed for a couple of days getting our goods through the Customs and on to the train,--I realized somewhat at least of the meaning of Mishka's enigmatic utterance. Not that we experienced any adventures. I suppose I played my part all right as the American mechanic whose one idea was safeguarding the machinery he was in charge of. Anyhow we got through the necessary interviews with truculent officials without much difficulty. Most of them were unable to understand the sort of German I chose to fire off at them, and had to rely on Mishka's services as interpreter. The remarks they passed upon me were not exactly complimentary,--low-grade Russian officials are foul-mouthed enough at the best of times, and now, imagining that I did not know what they were saying, they let loose their whole vocabulary,--while I blinked blandly through the glasses I had assumed, and, in reply to a string of filthy abuse, mildly suggested that they should get a hustle on, and pass the things promptly.

I quite appreciated the humor of the situation, and I guess Mishka did so, too, for more than once I saw his deep-set eyes twinkle just for a moment, as he discreetly translated my remarks, and, at the same time, cordially endorsed our tyrants' freely expressed opinions concerning myself.

"You have done well, 'Herr Gould,' yes, very well," he condescended to say, when we were at last through with the troublesome business. "We are safe enough so far, though for my part I shall be glad to turn my back on this hole, where the trouble may begin at any moment."

"What trouble?" I asked.

"God knows," he answered evasively, with a characteristic movement of his broad shoulders. "Can you not see for yourself that there is trouble brewing?"

I had seen as much. The whole moral atmosphere seemed surcharged with electricity; and although as yet there was no actual disturbance, beyond the individual acts of ruffianism that are everyday incidents in all Russian towns, the populace, the sailors, and the soldiery eyed each other with sullen menace, like so many dogs, implacably hostile, but not yet worked up to fighting pitch. A few weeks later the storm burst, and Riga reeked with fire and carnage, as did many another city, town, and village, from Petersburg to Odessa.

I discerned the same ominous state of things--the calm before the storm--at Dunaburg and Wilna, but it was not until we had left the railroad and were well on our two days' cross-country ride to Zostrov that I became acquainted with two important ingredients in that "seething pot" of Russian affairs,--to use Mishka's apt simile. Those two ingredients were the peasantry and the Jews.

Hitherto I had imagined, as do most foreigners, whose knowledge of Russia is purely superficial, and does not extend beyond the principal cities, that what is termed the revolutionary movement was a conflict between the governing class,--the bureaucracy which dominates every one from the Tzar himself, an autocrat in name only, downwards,--and the democracy. The latter once was actively represented only by the various Nihilist organizations, but now includes the majority of the urban population, together with many of the nobles who, like Anne's kindred, have suffered, and still suffer so sorely under the iron rule of cruelty, rapacity, and oppression that has made Russia a byword among civilized nations since the days of Ivan the Terrible. But now I realized that the movement is rendered infinitely complex by the existence of two other conflicting forces,--the _moujiks_ and the Jews. The bureaucracy indiscriminately oppresses and seeks to crush all three sections; the democracy despairs of the _moujiks_ and hates the Jews, though it accepts their financial help; while the _moujiks_ distrust every one, and also hate the Jews, whom they murder whenever they get the chance.

That's how the situation appeared to me even then, before the curtain went up on the final act of the tragedy in which I and the girl I loved were involved; and the fact that all these complex elements were present in that tragedy must be my excuse for trying to sum them up in a few words.

I've knocked around the world somewhat, and have had many a long and perilous ride through unknown country, but never one that interested me more than this. I've said before that Russia is still back in the Middle Ages, but now, with every verst we covered, it seemed to me we were getting farther back still,--to the Dark Ages themselves.

We passed through several villages on the first day, all looking exactly alike. A wide thoroughfare that could not by any stretch of courtesy be called a street or road, since it showed no attempt at paving or making and was ankle-deep in filthy mud, was flanked by irregular rows of low wooden huts, reeking with foulness, and more like the noisome lairs of wild beasts than human habitations. Their inhabitants looked more bestial than human,--huge, shaggy men who peered sullenly at us with swinish eyes, bleared and bloodshot with drunkenness; women with shapeless figures and blunt faces, stolid masks expressive only of dumb hopeless endurance of misery,--the abject misery that is the lot of the Russian peasant woman from birth to death. I was soon to learn that this centuries' old habit of patient endurance was nearly at an end, and that when once the mask is thrown aside the fury of the women is more terrible, because more deliberate and merciless, than the brutality of the men.

At a little distance, perhaps, would be a small chapel with the priest's house adjacent, and the somewhat more commodious houses of the tax-gatherer and _starosta_--the head man of the village, when he happened to be a farmer. Sometimes he was a kalak keeper, scarce one degree superior to his fellows. One could tell the tax-gatherer's house a mile away by its prosperous appearance, and the kind of courtyard round it, closed in with a solid breast-high log fence; for in these days the hated official may at any moment find his house besieged by a mob of vodka-maddened _moujiks_ and implacable women. If he and his guard of one or two armed _stragniki_ (rural police) are unable to hold out till help comes,--well, there is red murder, another house in flames, a vodka orgy in the frenzied village, and retribution next day or the day after, when the Cossacks arrive, and there is more red murder. Then every man, woman, and child left in the place is slaughtered; and the agglomeration of miserable huts that form the village is burned to the ground.

That, at least, is the explanation Mishka gave me when we rode through a heap of still smouldering and indescribably evil-smelling ruins, where there was no sign of life, beyond a few disreputable-looking pigs and fowls grubbing about in what should have been the cultivated ground. The peasant's holdings are inconceivably neglected, for the _moujik_ is the laziest creature on God's earth. In the days of his serfdom he worked under the whip, but as a freeman he has reduced his labor to a minimum, especially since the revolutionary propagandists have told him that he is the true lord of the soil, who should pay no taxes, and should live at ease,--and in sloth.

The sight and stench of that holocaust sickened me, but Mishka rode forward stolidly, unmoved either physically or mentally.

"They bring it on themselves," he said philosophically. "If they would work more and drink less they could live and pay their taxes well enough and there would be no trouble."

"But why on earth didn't they make themselves scarce after they'd settled scores with the tax collector, instead of waiting to be massacred?" I mused.

"God knows," said Mishka. "The _moujik_ is a beast that goes mad at the sight and smell of blood, and one that takes no thought for the morrow. Also, where would they run to? They would soon be hunted down. Now they have had their taste of blood, and paid for it in full, that is all. There were no Jews there," he jerked his head backwards, "otherwise they might have had their taste without payment."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He shrugged his broad shoulders.

"Wait, and perhaps you will see. Have you never heard of a _pogrom_?"

And that was all I could get out of him at the time.