Читать книгу Slavs of the War Zone - William Frederick Bailey - Страница 13

“Russian Retreat in Poland—Desperate Fighting on the Eastern Front.” Out in the streets London pursues its normal self-complacent way. Entering a restaurant, one of a group, as they seat themselves, ventures a remark that Poland is now entirely in the hands of the enemy. Hearing the observation, a swift flash of passionate, burning fury gleams for an instant in the tragic, dark eyes of a girl at the next table. Then the lids fall and the young face becomes still, colourless as marble. A year ago she had a home where the cornfields are rich, and the forests are dense enough to afford a last shelter to wild bison. Her father was a Polish nobleman, a prominent and wealthy member of the Szlachta,[11] a class not to be confused with the aristocracy. The past tense, when referring to both home and parentage, is used because to-day neither the one nor the other exist, both having been swept away in the awful flood of war which has desolated Poland.

It was a fair land where this girl once lived—a land rapidly growing pleasanter and fairer under the influence of industry and a more brotherly understanding between Poles and Russians. And though death now strides beside its quiet rivers and through its forest glades, it is still a pleasant memory. Recall—as this poor girl refugee does—a picture of it as it was when the war came.

The weather has been perfect and the harvest is ripe. Broken only by the dark belt of the forest, a slow-moving little river, and four wide, straight white roads bordered by poplars, the great plains roll far away like a heaving ocean into the blue distance. If it were not for the sombre forest the scene would perhaps be too brilliant. There are vast fields of maize so tall that a man standing six foot high finds their yellow, tasselled heads on a level with his own. They wave gently in the summer breeze, while every now and then across their golden beauty fleecy clouds cast soft, blue, scurrying shadows. On the undulating green toloka[12] herds of cattle graze, and the tinkling of a hundred sheep and cow bells, with an occasional cry of a herd boy, rises through the air. The fields, ditches, roadsides, the river banks—fringed so thickly with hedges of silver-grey willows—are aglow with wild flowers, wild flowers so bright, so lovely, as can only blossom in Poland, the land of passion and of vivid life. Purple and golden irises, pansies—blue and creamy white as the crest of a wave—a wilderness of marguerites, pink-tipped meadow rue, campanulas, lilies, dog roses, fiercely scarlet poppies, cornflowers, wine-tinted tares, chicory, dazzle and delight. Their perfume under the almost visible heat soothes the senses into a somnolence that is neither sleep nor waking. All is peace. Away over yonder, down the more open pathways of the great forest, the trees throw an emerald, sun-flecked shade on the deep moss carpet, on regal ferns, bee-orchids, clumps of Solomon seals, and wild strawberry beds. Even now, in the splendour of a Polish summer, the branches moan overhead, and the loneliness is so oppressive as to awaken awe. Further in, along the green aisles, the growth is too dense for the sunlight to filter through, the moss gives place to fallen pine needles, wild life rules supreme, and there it were wiser not to venture unarmed—there are graves in the village cemetery occupied by victims of Tsigane robbers. No sound of human existence penetrates the stillness, only the gentle rustling of the leaves and the timid movings of shy, untamed creatures: green and sun-spotted lizards, sorrel-hued frogs, sleepy, innocent snakes, while only the flitting of birds disturbs the brooding silence. Can this be the country of which the Polish patriot has said, “Wring a clod of earth in your hands anywhere in all our lands, and blood drips out”? It seems impossible!

A mile and a half to the rear lies the village. The houses, standing in two rows facing the dusty road, are built of wood, and most of them are thatched with straw. But two or three boast log roofs, a sign of their owners’ affluence. Moreover, there is only one crudely bedaubed dwelling—a fact the villagers never fail to point out, because it signifies that there is but one Jewish family in the place. Most of the cottages have a quaint, gaily coloured pattern painted round their entrances, and about one in every three displays earthenware pots of geraniums on the window-sills, clumps of rue in the tiny fenced-in garden and a hand roughly outlined in red or blur chalk on the door, indicating that a daughter of the house is ready for marriage. There is here none of the squalor and misery so frequently noticeable in other Polish districts. Near by, flocks of fat geese, important and loquacious, browse in the company of black, curly-haired, portly pigs, and hob-nob with the children who cluster round the village pond weaving, as beauty-loving Slavs are wont to do, wreaths of wild flowers in their towsled hair.

It is a Saturday afternoon, and every one is finishing his or her week’s work. A group of women, with petticoats hitched high above their shapely brown legs, are washing clothes in a second pool, close by the gallows-like well. Crimson, pink, yellow, and white—the warm colours of their garments flash gaily in the sunshine. Some men, clad in yellowish frieze breeches and short, white linen tunics girthed about the waist with a foot-wide red leather belt, are rattling homeward in their bryczka,[13] drawn by a troop of wiry, honey-tinted ponies whose coats shine like spun silk. Joyous smiles, a fleeting glimpse of sun-bronzed, merry faces framed in round, dark hats gay with poppy wreaths, appear and vanish as the cart and its occupants proceed in a whirlwind of white dust towards the next village eight kilometres away.

The villagers are scattered at this hour. Men and boys are out on the fields, shepherds are rounding up their flocks on the gentle uplands. Only the black kaftan-clad Jew, who resides in the ugly, blue-painted house, and amasses a small fortune by smuggling diseased swine across the frontier, by dispensing bad spirits, lending money to needy peasants, and by other similar industries, is snoozing among his progeny on the threshold of their residence. To-day is their Sabbath, to-morrow will be the Christian Polish Sunday.

To-morrow the sun will shine even more brightly; to-morrow the girls will come out resplendent, prayer-book and lace handkerchief in hand, their pretty heads swathed in spotless linen, wearing their wonderful, dazzling shawls or sleeveless, embroidered sheepskins, coral and blue bead necklaces, clean chemisettes, and knee-high, glossy foot-gear. And the men will don their best black or blue homespun breeches,[14] shining top-boots, scarlet, silver-bedecked waistcoats, their jaunty little hats wound round with blue and white shells, beads, and ribbons, their dashing huzzar jackets fastened at the throat by silver clasps. To-morrow the bell in the little wooden church, whose spire rises in the distance, will ring, and all who have legs and health will go to church, for where is the Pole who forgets to pray to the good God on Sunday? They will gaze in reverent admiration, like little children, at the big crucifix set aloft above the altar screen, with its gaudy pictures of unwholesomely complexioned saints and angels. The chancel candles in the six-foot-high green earthenware candlesticks will splutter and drop lumps of brown wax on to the heads of the school children, who, with plump hands full of nosegays and green branches, will squat in a row upon the altar steps and behave themselves only because they know from past experience that if they prove obstreperous an uncomfortable afternoon will have to be passed sitting, without the intervention of breeches or petticoats, on stools of repentance made out of prickly maize heads.

And as the incense floats up blue and perfumed, as the air becomes heavy with the odour of perspiring, exuberant humanity, of well-oiled hair and woolly Kiptars,[15] a sleepy devotion will creep over the worshippers and cause them to vow vows swiftly to be forgotten, and they will imagine for just a little while that they long to die and go to live in heaven with impossible saints and angels such as simper on the sacred screen. But in reality, down deep in their pagan, beauty-loving, passionate Slav souls, they adore this world and God because He created it very good and very pleasant. Then the young girls will come round in procession bearing lighted tapers, little cross-barred wooden crucifixes, and wooden alms bowls, and every one will kiss the crucifixes and bowls and give according as their emotions have been stirred. Then the congregation will shuffle into the sunshine, and as many as can will seat themselves on the long blue and green wooden benches which encircle the outer walls of the church. The girls will pull off their stiff, smart boots and set free their slim, sunburnt limbs, preparatory to tramping home on bare feet, and the boys will flirt and chaff with them, while staider married folk exchange gossip and discuss crops and, being Poles, of course politics.

This is a thrifty village, consequently its Sunday dinners are substantial. Every one, except the Jew in his blue house, will eat pork—Kolesha—mixed with sweet milk, the universal Slavonic dish of fermented and horribly smelling cabbage, and—despite constant and urgent Government warnings in connection with cholera—plenty of ripe, unripe, and over-ripe fruit, washed down by a few precautionary glasses of vodka. The two rooms which comprise the accommodation of the ordinary Polish peasant’s house: whitewashed rooms with roughly carved chests, a couple of deep alcoves, each containing its gigantic wooden bed piled with gorgeous coloured rugs and immense feather-stuffed pillows, filled with collections of pottery, copper and earthen cooking utensils and sacred pictures, with an overpowering reek of goat, geese, sour cheeses, cabbage, and humanity—these rooms will be deserted in favour of the clean, pure air. Before each door, under the shade of chestnut and fragrant acacia trees, the tables will be set. And later, when their elders have slid into sleep after having partaken of much food and drink, the younger generation will stroll off towards the inn courtyard, where the dark-skinned Tsiganes are already tuning their fiddles and tapping their zithers. Then the feet will fly. Spangled aprons, necklaces of blue, and silver beads, long, gay ribbons floating from glossy hair plaits, short white skirts, high red and black boots, crimson, orange, and azure jackets, peacock feathers and flowers in the men’s hats, tiny, tinkling silver and brass bells on the girls’ embroideries and boots, all will eddy and unite into a glowing, sparkling whole, as the dancers sway and swirl their lissom, muscular bodies in time to the wild music. And they will fling back their heads and lift their voices in strange old pagan songs, and dance, dance until the sun has set in a red ball of fire, till the flickering oil lamps have been lit and gone out again in the inn kitchen, till the old folk have clambered up the little bed ladders and snuggled down into the unhealthy feather beds of their ancestors, till the white moon has sailed off on the opal sky, till the winking stars have twinkled themselves tired, till the cocks have crowed themselves hoarse on the barn doors, till the first grey of morning streaks the east. Only then will the final passion-mad notes of the Tsigane song die with a wail into silence on the quiet breast of another day.

And the earliest sunbeams will laugh into faces fresh—even after such a night’s revelry—as themselves; into boy faces straight-featured, dark eyes, with black or blond hair cut across the forehead as in a Velasquez portrait; into girl faces pale and red-lipped. And the birds will sing, and the company will troop away to begin another week’s toil—for life and the good earth call. With handshakes, kissing, shouting, and, perchance, a gabbled prayer, they will part where the four roads meet under the shadow of the great wayside Cross with its tall, slender pole holding up a brightly painted birchwood shrine, inside of which is a roughly carved crucifix guarded from above by wooden figures of the Dove, God the Father, two hovering angels, and St. Peter’s cock, and adored from beneath by other figures—the Blessed Virgin and St. Mary Magdalene, at the feet of which lie the scourge, crown of thorns, spear, nails, and sponge, half hidden by wilted rosemary posies placed there by faithful hands—in remembrance.

It is a memory more pleasing than some Polish memories. These are people evidently happy and healthy; they are on the fair way to becoming wealthy, and wealth means power. Who and what has been the means of bringing this about? Who has taught and helped these folk to adopt the practical, and yet retain all the idealism for which thousands upon thousands, generations upon generations of their nation have gone gladly to death and exile? Who has caused them to perceive that this ideal—an ideal purely spiritualistic and in direct opposition to the Germanic ideal which has blighted and terrorized their dear Poland, which has dominated and given a false and evil reputation to Russian rule in the ancient Kingdom, which has too long set Slav against Slav, brother against brother, can best be maintained by the furtherance of silent, patient industry, and strengthened by common sense? Who has taught these peasants that not only their only battle for national independence, but also the larger battle for the liberation of their Russian kinsfolk, must be fought by means of commerce, discipline, and tireless labour? Who has assisted them to realize their strength, that strength which Bismarck always felt was but dormant in the Poland lying agonized beneath his heel? Who has led the Polish advance against Germany thus described in the National Zeitung some years ago: “Irresistibly, like a Juggernaut car, the Slavonic element rolls onward; step by step it conquers the towns and villages of the Prussian East . . . a quiet, noiseless, political and social conquest of those regions. . . . Whenever the place of a lawyer or of a chemist is free, the Pole steps into it; whenever a piece of land in town or country is for sale, Polish money is offered for it, and this money streams into the country from secret sources which seem to be simply inexhaustible. The Pole stays, the German goes; that is the wretched Polish question in a nutshell.” Who has educated the Poles to recognize in the true Russia their friend, relative, and, maybe, future liberator, and to discover in the “Russian” bureaucrats the secret agents of hated Prussia? Who has accomplished this stupendous task? Leaving the women at their week-end washing, the children playing on the green, the Jewish family dozing, take the road leading out of the village. Ten minutes’ walk brings into view a tall birchwood gateway emblazoned with a coat of arms. This gateway opens into a chestnut and acacia avenue, where, under the shade of the trees, nestles an unpretentious, one-storied, white stucco house. A green-painted wooden verandah, grass-green shuttered windows, a glass porch filled with flowers, lend to its colourless walls perhaps a touch of frivolity. Before the porch, in the centre of the drive, and beneath the verandah, are beds of standard roses, carnations, stocks, mignonette, and sweet peas.

This is the country residence of the estate proprietor. And the secret of modern Poland’s industrial and agricultural progress may perhaps be discovered in the work carried on by such as he living amongst the people.

Forty odd years ago this gentleman commenced life in Warsaw as a humble linen merchant, and proved successful. Little by little he built up a fine business and fortune. Then he founded a factory which brought employment to thousands of his compatriots. For his services as a public benefactor he was ennobled, permitted to become a member of the Szlachta, which honour did not, however, bring him a title, but merely the right to display a pedigree and coat of arms. Though an ardent patriot and Nationalist, he stands high in Imperial Russia’s favour. For the big, lazy, placid Motherland knows, encourages, and is, indeed, at heart immensely proud of the new-born industrial Slav spirit which has arisen in Poland. No iron regulations, such as exist in the Germanic part of the ancient kingdom, no spying Government officials are permitted to retard its progress. Undeterred by Teutonic intrigue, diabolically planned Teutonic strikes, and Teutonic-poisoned “Russian” bureaucrats, Poland’s industrial campaign proceeds and succeeds. Severe laws are severe only in the letter, and are scarcely ever put into operation. Whereas the Polish industries subject to German rule are deliberately prevented from becoming rivals of German and Austrian factories, those in Russian Poland receive their chief support from their kindly, if loudly growling, “Oppressor.” The Muscovite Bear’s growl is much worse than its hug, and the quick-witted Poles, grasping this fact, realize that Poland’s day is about to dawn, not in blood and revolution, but in peace and goodwill. A subject people have become indispensable to their rulers. The hour has practically struck when, free from bitterness, with ancient wrongs relegated to oblivion, they can dictate terms which naturally must be generous, seeing that both the old and the new conquerors have grown needful each to each.

In the van of Polish industry marches a leader more useful than any of those bygone heroic, chivalrous, brilliant, pomp-loving, volatile, blue-blooded, oft-defeated Polish knights, who lived so recklessly and died so gallantly on every European battlefield. Not content with having converted one poor village into a thriving business centre, this proprietor is about to found yet another factory on his estate, and the site is already laid out.

All days are filled by work, but with the Szlachta, as with the peasantry, Saturday is the busiest. At five this morning the silver samovar was hissing and the rye bread and honey were laid in the landowner’s dining-room, and five-thirty found the master, his wife, and daughters at their daily tasks. Where is the luxury, thriftlessness, and degeneracy so universally attributed to the Polish nobility? Amongst the ancient aristocratic circles it may be met with, but seldom amongst the Szlachta. Almost everything in this household is of home growth and manufacture—wine, cordials, smoked hams, pickles, bread, jams, bottled fruit, cheese, butter, preserved vegetables, homespun linen and wool, clothing, embroidery, bedding, and carved furniture. Servants swarm—the women bare-legged to the knee and brightly clothed, the men in livery with the crest of the house engraved on their shining silver buttons—and, if wild and irresponsible, they are faithful and affectionate friends, rather than servitors to their employers. They never complain, and give of their best, because, like the peasantry, they find their masters human beings such as themselves whom they may address at ease, whom at all hours they may greet in a tone of cheerful equality. The footman talks at table and offers entrées or cigarettes with the air of a grandee. The maids criticize the dress or appearance of the ladies when handing round coffee in the saloon, remarking perhaps to a visitor: “Oh! what a pretty colour is the noble madame’s hat; it becomes her admirably; it pleases me greatly!” A noble lady in Poland has just those pretty distinctions of race and tradition that please and do not offend. She is too simple, too democratic to condescend. Her inferiors are entitled to the same courtesy as her equals, and she has not the slightest objection to pay them in full the measure of consideration which they tacitly claim.

During the forenoon, while the master is seeing to his business, his womenfolk are employed indoors. In the spacious blue-and-pink-tiled kitchen, to the usual deafening accompaniment of chatter and clatter, everything, from pâtés, ragoûts, jellies, and macédoines, down to black bread and odoriferous cabbage soup, is cooking, under the châtelaine’s supervision. At the back of the premises, in a tiny dispensary, the eldest daughter, who has taken her degree in medicine, is soothing the pains and aches of a crowd of peasants. A younger sister is helping the maids with the dusting of the bedrooms, and what fresh, quaint places are these country-house rooms, made to suit a people whose hospitality is immense, made for a people who live as one family, who, where a visit is concerned, do not worry about the amount of accommodation and privacy they may be able to give or receive, who, in fact, have never lost their primitive racial instinct for the patriarchal, communal mode of existence! There are no stairs, no passages, no bathrooms here, and no sanitary conveniences indoors. One airy room opens into the next, and so on, the distinction between sitting-rooms and bedrooms is by no means hard and fast, and toilet accessories have a droll fashion of drifting into living apartments. Things costly and rare are scattered about in curious contrast to things of small value. On rough, wooden, muslin-covered dressing-tables stand four-foot-high solid silver mirrors. Invaluable old Sèvres china, wonderful silver, and enamels are displayed on coarse homespun linen table cloths. Yet all is artistic, for all is good and free from vulgarity.

Late afternoon brings leisure. Every door and window stands open to the scented air. Laughing, high-pitched yet sweet, Polish servant voices summon to coffee. Suddenly, in the hall decorated with stags’ heads, hunting crops, knives, whips, skins, and guns, a tremendous commotion occurs. A four-wheeled bryczka, full up and brimming over with guests, is seen driving up the avenue. Without a moment’s hesitation the entire family and household rush out, screaming and clapping hands, in delighted welcome. It is “a Tartar raid.” The bryczka disgorges a score of persons, of course come to stay the night. But home stores are limitless here, the women will sleep five or six in a room, and the men will double up in the saloons or in the dry, clean outhouses.

Every one talks at once, every one laughs at once. Whisking their scarlet, blue, and white petticoats about their naked legs, jangling their necklaces, showing dazzling teeth in smiles, adding to the uproar by vivacious cries of “Dobrej nocz,” half a dozen maids arrange the coffee table on the verandah. Dainty olive, anchovy, or caviare sandwiches, tiny glasses of vodka, rose preserve spread between flaky pastry, dark-hued bread, sheep milk cheeses, golden tea, as hot as the boiling water in the indispensable samovar can make it, and cigarettes are there, while the babble of conversation never ceases, growing more vociferous, more animated. Every face is alert, merry, vivid. Then the party separates for tennis, a stroll in the woods, or a visit to the factory. Towards dusk, horses are brought round, and as many as like gallop off across the toloka or into the forest.

The gloaming fades into the brief twilight, the twilight deepens into the sapphire night. A tired-looking procession is seen slowly wending its way across the toloka. It is one of the innumerable Gipsy (Tsigane) bands. It is commandeered by the riding party, brought back to the house, and, after a good supper, is brought into the great saloon, where the floor has been cleared for dancing. In a few minutes, loud and fierce rings out a Polish Mazur. It is the wail of a many-century-hunted race to a race which has also suffered. In this mocking, illusive Tsigane music, in the indomitable defiance and beauty of this Polish dance, live the souls of two persecuted but virile races.

The blossom-sweet night breeze floats in through the open windows; outside, a crowd of country folk and domestics are giggling, beating time to the wild rhythm, and dancing.

“Del o del Bakk!”[16]

There is a strange, mocking note in the familiar greeting. Who spoke it? One of the Egyptians.[17] An old hag who crouches just within the lights of the windows. Her piercing black eyes and hawk-like features might have been conceived in ancient Assyria half a century of centuries ago. She is a famous witch—bori chovihani. It will be wise to cross her palm. But she has vanished—fled—like one possessed, as if in terror of something—of what? Is not all well? But no one laughs, for she is a bori chovihani!

The autumn wind soughs through the naked forest and across the stubble fields. The plain rolls dark to the edge of the earth. A misty, chilly rain is falling. There is a stagnation upon all things, as though an unseen, mysterious force were compelling life to stillness. Even the cranes by the river have ceased their melancholy crying. Nature lies smitten. Some objects blacker than the night are flying up from the south-west. A whirl of strong, heavy wings, and a great flight of ravens sweeps past, keeping low and moving swiftly towards the north-east.

Door after door in the village is cautiously opened, pale faces, seen like ghostly grey blurs through the darkness, peer out, and voices whisper across the silence.

“What is it?”

“It is the ravens, little ones; we must fly. Within a week the stench of death will arise hereabouts. See, the vultures are also on the wing.”[18]

But the villagers have property; they are prosperous people and value their household goods, and they tarry over-long endeavouring to save them. Cockcrow finds them still loading their carts, and dawn sees the Uhlans in possession. The screams of the people rise above the crackling of the raging flames, the falling walls and roofs, above the shouts of the fiends who stand in a ring about the place that was once a happy village. Their bayonets render escape impossible, and the fire is hungry.

Sobbingly, the old, old national song of the Nation of Many Sorrows rises, at first softly, then louder and higher, higher than belching flames and suffocating smoke can reach, further than the Kaiser’s armies can march, up to the ear of Him to Whom vengeance belongeth.

Perchance, after all, their good fortune has not altogether deserted them; perhaps even the fiery death is preferable to flight—to that hideous Polish exodus that drifted shelterless, starving, wolf-beset, devil-hunted, maddened, across the solitude of a howling wilderness to escape from the civilization of the German. Old, young, the sick, mothers with new-born infants at the breast—they must go on—on—till exhaustion or the enemy give them rest.

In the preface to Cherbuliez’s Ladislaus Bolski the question is asked: “Is Poland an ideal or a reality?”

The spiritual Poland cannot die, but it is now the only Poland existing. But to the nations who have loved and value the spiritual Poland falls the task of bringing back once more to life and liberty the material Poland.

The newsboys continue to sell papers. The men at the adjoining restaurant table continue to discuss the military situation on the Eastern front. The dark-eyed, white-faced girl rises quietly to pay her bill at the cash desk. For a few minutes she had been dreaming of her old home under the chestnuts and acacias, of the beauty of the roses and their fragrance, of the merry, dancing peasants: then the dream becomes a nightmare, a vision of hell, and she awakes to the recollection that she, a daughter of the proud Szlachta, is an orphan, sisterless, brotherless, homeless, penniless, dependent on the miserable pittance she earns by teaching the alphabet in a Jewish family in a drab London suburb.

“Thou Whose eternally just hand has so often crushed the empty pride, and the powerful of the earth, in spite of the enemy vilely murdering and oppressing, do Thou breathe, even in this our darkest hour, hope into every broken Polish breast.

“At Thy altar we raise our prayer. Deign to restore us, O Lord, Our Country!”

Thus Poland’s Litany, the Litany of the Captivity, goes up through the murk of the careless city from the heart of this girl exile.

Montenegrin Peasants about to practise rifle shooting.

Peasant Women in Herzegovina.

[To face page 56.