Blagoveschensk is built on much the same lines as all the other Siberian towns that I have seen, a wooden town mostly of one-storeyed houses straggling over the plain in wide streets that cut one another at right angles. Again it was not at all unlike an Australian town, a frontier town to all intents and purposes. The side-roads were deep in dust, and the principal shop, a great store, a sort of mild imitation of Harrod's, where you could buy everything from a needle to an anchor—I bought a dog-collar with a bell for Buchanan—was run by Germans. It was a specimen of Germany's success in peaceful penetration. It seemed as if she were throwing away the meat for the shadow, for they were interning all those assistants—400 of them. Now probably they form the nucleus of the Bolshevist force helping Germany.
The Governor's house was on the outskirts of the town, and it was thronged with people, men mostly, and Buchanan and I were passed from one room to another, evidently by people who had not the faintest notion of what we wanted. Everybody said “Bonjour,” and the Governor and everybody else kissed my hand. I said I was “Anglisky,” and it seemed as if everybody in consequence came to look at me. But it didn't advance matters at all.
I began to be hungry and tired, and various people tried questions upon me, but nothing definite happened. At last, after about two hours, when I was seriously thinking of giving up in despair, a tall, good-looking officer in khaki came in. He put his heels together and kissed my hand as courteously as the rest had done, and then informed me in excellent English that he was the Boundary Commissioner and they had sent for him because there was an Englishwoman arrived, and, while very desirous of being civil to the representative of their new Ally, nobody could make out what on earth she was doing here and what she wanted!
I told my story and it was easy enough then. He admired Buchanan properly, drove us both to his house, introduced me to his wife and made me out a most gorgeous protection order written in Russian. I have it still, but I never had occasion to use it.
Opposite Blagoveschensk is a Chinese town which is called Sakalin, though the maps never give it that name, and in Vladivostok and Peking they call it various other names. But its right name is Sakalin, I know, for I stayed there for the best part of a week.
At Sakalin the head of the Chinese Customs is a Dane, Paul Barentzen, and to him and his wife am I greatly beholden. I had been given letters to them, and I asked my friend the kindly Russian Boundary Commissioner if he knew them. He did. He explained to me I must have a permit to cross the river and he would give me one for a week. A week seemed overlong, but he explained the Russian Government did not allow free traffic across the river and it was just as well to have a permit that would cover the whole of my stay. Even now, though I did stay my week, I have not fathomed the reason of these elaborate precautions, because it must be impossible to guard every little landing-place on the long, long, lonely river—there must be hundreds of places where it is easy enough to cross—only I suppose every stranger is liable sooner or later to be called upon to give an account of himself.
The ferries that crossed the Amur to the Chinese side were great boats built to carry a large number of passengers, but the arrangements for getting across the river did justice to both Chinese and Russian mismanagement. Unlike the efficient Japanese, both these nations, it seems to me, arrive at the end in view with the minimum amount of trouble to those in authority—that is to say, the maximum of trouble to everybody concerned. The ferry-boats owing to local politics had a monopoly, and therefore went at their own sweet will just exactly when they pleased. There was a large and busy traffic, but the boats never went oftener than once an hour, and the approaches were just as primitive as they possibly could be. There was one little shed with a seat running round where if you were fortunate you could sit down with the Chinese hawkers and wait for the arrival of the boat. And when it did come the passengers, after a long, long wait, came climbing up the rough path up the bank looking as if they had been searched to the skin. They let me through on the Chinese side and I found without any difficulty my way to Mr Paul Barentzen's house, a two-storeyed, comfortable house, and received a warm invitation from him and his wife to stay with them.
It was a chance not to be missed. I was getting very weary, I was tired in every bone, so a chance like this to stay with kindly people who spoke my own language, on the very outskirts of the Chinese Empire, was not to be lightly missed, and I accepted with gratitude, a gratitude I feel strongly. Mr Barentzen was a Dane, but he spoke as good English as I do, and if possible was more British. His wife was English. And that night he celebrated the coming into the war of Britain. He asked me and the Russian Boundary Commissioner and his wife and another Russian gentleman all to dinner in the gardens at Blagoveschensk.
The place was a blaze of light, there were flags and lamps and bands everywhere, the whole city wasen fêteto do honour to the new addition to the Grande Entente. When we were tired of walking about the gardens we went inside to the principal restaurant that was packed with people dining, while on a stage various singers discoursed sweet music and waved the flags of the Allies. But the British flag had not got as far as the capital of the Amur Province. Indeed much farther west than that I found it represented by a red flag with black crosses drawn on it, very much at the taste of the artist, and “Anglisky” written boldly across it to make up for any deficiency.
Mr Barentzen had foreseen this difficulty and had provided us all with nice little silk specimens of the Union Jack to wear pinned on our breasts. About ten o'clock we sat down to a most excellent dinner, with sturgeon and sour cream and caviare and all the good tilings that Eastern Siberia produces. A packed room also dined, while the people on the stage sang patriotic songs, and we were all given silk programmes as souvenirs. They sang the Belgian, the French and the Russian national anthems, and at last we asked for the British.
Very courteously the conductor sent back word to say he was very sorry but the British national anthem was also a German hymn and if he dared play it the people would tear him to pieces. Remembering my tribulations a little way down the river, I quite believed him, so I suggested as an alternativeRule, Britannia, but alas! he had never heard of it. It was a deadlock, and we looked at one another.
Then the tall Russian who was the other guest pushed his chair from the table, stood up, and saluting, whistledRule, Britannia!How the people applauded! And so Britain entered the war in Far Eastern Siberia.
We certainly did not go home till morning that day. For that matter, I don't think you are supposed to cross the river at night, not ordinary folk, Customs officials may have special privileges. At any rate I came back to my bunk on the steamer and an anxious little dog just as the day was breaking, and next day I crossed to Sakalin and stayed with the Barentzens.
The Russians then took so much trouble to keep the Chinese on their own side of the river that the Russian officers and civil servants, much to the chagrin of their wives, were nowhere in the province allowed to have Chinese servants. The fee for a passport had been raised to, I think, twelve roubles, so it was no longer worth a Chinaman's while to get one to hawk a basket of vegetables, and the mines on the Zeya, a tributary of the Amur on the Russian side, had fallen off in their yield because cheap labour was no longer possible. The people who did get passports were the Chinese prostitutes, though a Chinese woman has not a separate identity in China and is not allowed a passport of her own. However, there are ways of getting over that. A man applied for a passport and it was granted him. He handed it over to the woman for a consideration, and on the other side any Chinese document was, as a rule, all one to the Russian official. Remembering my own experience and how I had difficulty in deciding between my passport and my agreement with my muleteers, I could quite believe this story.
Blagoveschensk is a regular frontier town and, according to Mr Barentzen, is unsafe. On the first occasion that I crossed the river with him I produced a hundred-rouble note. Almost before I had laid it down it was snatched up by the Chinese Commissioner of Customs.
“Are you mad?” said he, and he crumpled up the note in his hand and held out for my acceptance a rouble. I tried to explain that not having change, and finding it a little awkward, I thought that this would be a good opportunity to get it, as I felt sure the man at receipt of custom must have plenty.
“I dare say,” said my host sarcastically. “I don't want to take away anybody's character, but I'll venture to say there are at least ten men within hail”—there was a crowd round—“who would joyfully cut your throat for ten roubles.”
He enlarged upon that theme later. We used to sit out on the balcony of his house looking out, not over the river, but over the town of Sakalin, and there used to come in the men from the B.A.T. Factory, a Russian in top-boots who spoke excellent English and a young American named Hyde. They told me tales, well, something like the stories I used to listen to in my childhood's days when we talked about “the breaking out of the gold” in Australia, tales of men who had washed much gold and then were lured away and murdered for their riches. Certainly they did not consider Blagoveschensk or Sakalin towns in which a woman could safely wander. In fact all the Siberian towns that they knew came under the ban.
But of course mostly we talked about the war and how maddening it was only to get scraps of news through the telegraph. The young American was keen, I remember. I wonder if he really had patience to wait till his country came in. He talked then in the first week of the war of making his way back to Canada and seeing if he could enlist there, for even then we felt sure that the Outer Dominions would want to help the Motherland. And the Germans were round Liège—would they take it? Association is a curious thing. Whenever I hear of Liège I cannot help thinking, not of the Belgian city, but of a comfortable seat on a balcony with the shadows falling and the lights coming out one by one on the bath-houses that are dotted about a little town on the very outskirts of the Chinese Empire—the lights of the town. There are the sounds and the smells of the Chinese town mingling with the voices of the talkers and the fragrance of the coffee, and the air is close with the warmth of August. There comes back to me the remembrance of the keen young American who wanted to fight Germany and the young Russian in top-boots who was very much afraid he would only be used to guard German prisoners.
Sakalin was cosmopolitan, but it had a leaning toward Russia, hence the bath-houses, an idea foreign to Chinese civilisation; and when I got a piece of grit in my eye which refused to come out it was to a Japanese doctor I went, accompanied by my host's Chinese servant, who, having had the trouble stated by me in English, explained it to another man in Chinese, who in his turn told the doctor what was the matter in Russian. Luckily that man of medicine was very deft and I expect he could have managed very well without any explanation at all. I have the greatest respect for the Japanese leech I visited in Sakalin.
On the Sunday we had a big picnic. The Russian Boundary Commissioner came across with his wife and little girls, Mrs Barentzen took her little girl and the Chinese Tao Tai lent us the light of his countenance. He was the feature of the entertainment, for he was a very big man, both literally and socially, and could not move without a large following, so that an escort of mounted police took charge of us. The proper portly Chinaman of whom this retinue was in honour spoke no English, but smiled at me benevolently, and wore a petticoat and a Russian military cap! The picnic was by a little brook about seven miles from the town and I shall always remember it because of the lush grass, waist-high, and the lovely flowers. I had looked at the Siberian flowers from the steamer when they were ungetatable, I had gathered them with joy in Saghalien, and now here they were again just to my hand. In June they told me there were abundant lilies of the valley, and I regretted I had not been there in June. Truly I feel it would be a delight to see lilies of the valley growing wild, but as it was, the flowers were beautiful enough, and there were heaps of them. There were very fine Canterbury bells, a glorious violet flower and magnificent white poppies. Never have I gathered more lovely flowers, never before have I seen them growing wild in such amazing abundance. No one is more truly artistic than the average Chinese, and I think the Tao Tai must have enjoyed himself, though it is against the canons of good taste in China to look about you.
Presently I was asking the chief magistrate's good offices for Buchanan, for he, my treasured Buchanan, was lost. In the Barentzens' house there was, of course, as in all well-regulated Chinese houses run by foreigners, a bathroom attached to every bedroom, and when I wanted a bath the servants filled with warm water the half of a large barrel, which made a very excellent bath-tub. And having bathed myself, I bathed Buchanan, whose white coat got very dirty in the dusty Chinese streets. He ran away downstairs and I lingered for a moment to put on my dress, and when I came down he was gone. High and low I hunted; I went up and down the street calling his name, and I knew he would have answered, he always did, had he been within hearing. All the Customs men were turned out and I went to the Chinese Tao Tai, who promptly put on all the police. But Buchanan was gone for a night and I was in despair. Mr Barentzen's head boy shook his head.
“Master saying,” said he, “mus' get back that dog.” So I realised I was making a fuss, but for the moment I did not care. The Tao Tai gave it as his opinion that he had not been stolen. There were many little dogs like him in the town, said he, no one would steal one, which only shows a Chinese magistrate may not be infallible, for I was sure Buchanan would not stay away from me of his own free will.
And then at last the servants turned up triumphant, Buchanan, in the arms of the head boy, wild with delight at seeing his mistress again. The police had searched everywhere, but the servants, with their master's injunction in mind and my reward to be earned, had made further inquiries and found that a little boy had been seen taking the dog into a certain house occupied by an official, the man who was responsible for the cleaning of the streets. This was the first intimation I ever had that the Chinese did clean their streets: I had thought that they left that job to the “wonks” and the scavenger crows. The police made inquiries. No, there was no little dog there. But the servants—wise Chinese servants—made friends with the people round, and they said: “Watch. There is a dog.” So a junior servant was put to watch, and when the gate of the compound was opened he stole in, and there was poor little James Buchanan tied up to a post. That servant seized the dog and fled home in triumph.
The T'ai T'ai (the official's wife), said the people round, had wanted the pretty little dog.
I was so delighted to get my little friend back that I should have been content to leave things there. Not so Mr Barentzen. He sent for that official, and there in his drawing-room he and I interviewed a portly Chinese gentleman in grey petticoats, a long pigtail, a little black silk cap and the tips of the silver shields that encased the long nails of his little fingers just showing beyond his voluminous sleeves.
“An officious servant,” he said. He was extremely sorry the Commissioner of Customs and his friend had been put to so much inconvenience. The servant had already been dismissed. And so we bowed him out, face was saved, and all parties were satisfied. It was very Chinese. And yet we knew, and we knew that he must have known we knew, that it was really his wife who received the little dog that everyone concerned must have realised was valuable and must have been stolen.
Here in Sakai in I heard about the doings of the only wolves that came into my wanderings. In the little river harbour were many small steamers flying the Russian flag and loading great barrels with the ends painted bright red. These barrels, explained the Customs Commissioner, contained spirits which the Russians were desirous of smuggling into Russian territory. The Chinese had not the least objection to their leaving China after they had paid export duty. They were taken up and down the river and finally landed at some small port whence they were smuggled across. The trade was a very big one. The men engaged in it were known as the wolves of the Amur and were usually Caucasians and Jews. In 1913, the last year of which I have statistics, no less than twenty-five thousand pounds export was paid on these spirits, and in the years before it used to be greater. I wonder whether with the relaxing of discipline consequent on the war and the revolution the receipts for the export have not gone up.
The wide river was beautiful here, and Blagovesehensk, lying across the water, with its spires and domes, all the outlines softened, standing against the evening sky, might have been some town of pictured Italy. I am glad I have seen it. I dare not expiate on Mr Barentzen's kindness. My drastic critic, drastic and so invaluable, says that I have already overloaded this book with tales of people's kindness, so I can only say I stayed there a week and then took passage on the smaller steamer which was bound up the Amur and the Shilka to Stretensk and the railway.
I had, however, one regret. I had inadvertently taken my plates and films on which I had all my pictures of the Amur and Saghalien across the Sakalin and I could not take them back again. The Russian rule was very strict. No photographs were allowed. Everything crossing the river must be examined. Now to examine my undeveloped films and plates would be to ruin them. I interviewed a Japanese photographer on the Sakalin side, but he appeared to be a very tyro in the art of developing, and finally very reluctantly I decided to leave them for Mr Barentzen to send home when he got the chance. He did not get that chance till the middle of 1916, and I regret to state that when we came to develop them every single one of them was ruined.
The steamer that I embarked on now was considerably smaller, for the river was narrowing. The deck that ran round the cabins was only thirty inches wide and crowded with children; worse, when James Buchanan and I went for our daily promenades we found the way disputed by women, mothers, or nursemaids, I know not whieh, propelling the children who could not walk in wheeled chairs, and they thought Buchanan had been brought there for their special benefit, a view which the gentleman himself did not share. However, he was my only means of communication with them, for they had no English or French.
But I was lucky, for one of the mates, brass-bound and in spotless white, like so many Russians had served in British ships and spoke English very well with a slight Scots accent. With him I used to hold daily conversations and always we discussed the war. But he shook his head over it. It was not possible to get much news at the little wayside places at which we stopped. There were no papers—the Russian peasant under the beneficent rule of the Tsar was not encouraged to learn to read—and for his part he, the mate, put no faith in the telegrams. All would be well, of course, but we must wait till we came to some large and influential place for news upon which we could rely.
But that large and influential place was long in coming, in fact I may say it never materialised while I was on the river. There are at least eleven towns marked on the way between Blagoveschensk and Stretensk, but even the town at the junction where the Aigun and the Shilka merge into the Amur is but a tiny frontier village, and the rest as I know the river banks are only a few log huts inhabited by peasants who apparently keep guard over and supply the stacks of wood needed by the steamers.
It was a lovely river now going north, north and then west, or rather we went north, the river flowed the other way, it was narrower and wound between wooded hills and it was very lonely. There were occasional, very occasional, little settlements, on the Chinese side I do not remember even a hut, though it was a lovely green land and the river, clear as crystal, reflected on its breast the trees and rocks among which we made our way.
Once on the Russian side we landed from a boat a woman with two little children and innumerable bundles. They had been down, I suppose, to visit the centre of civilisation at Blagoveschensk and now were coming home. In the dusk of the evening we left her there looking down thoughtfully at her encumbrances, not a living creature in sight, not a sign of man's handiwork anywhere. I hoped there were no tigers about, but she has always lived in my memory as an unfinished story. I suppose we all of us have those unfinished stories in our lives, not stories left unfinished because they are so long drawn out we could not possibly wait for developments, but stories that must finish suddenly, only we are withdrawn. Once I looked from a railway carriage window in the Midlands and I saw a bull chasing a woman; she was running, screaming for all she was worth, for a fence, but whether she reached it or not I have no means of knowing. Another time I saw also from a railway carriage window two men, mother naked, chasing each other across the greensward and left them there because the train went on. Of course I have often enough seen men without clothes in the tropics, but in the heart of England they are out of the picture and want explaining. That explanation I shall never get. Nor is it likely I shall ever know whether that unknown woman and her little children ever reached their unknown home.
We were luxuriously fed upon that little steamer. The Russian tea with lemon and the bread and butter were delicious, and we had plenty of cream, though gone was the red caviare that farther east had been so common. But I was tired and at last feeling lonely. I began to count the days till I should reach home.
On the Amur the weather had been gorgeous, but when we entered the Shilka we were north of 53° again and well into the mountains, and the next morning I awoke to a grey day. It rained and it rained, not tropical rain, but soft, penetrating rain; the fir-clad hills on either side were veiled in a silvery mist. The river wound so that as we looked ahead we seemed to be sailing straight into the hills. The way looked blocked with hills, sometimes all mist-covered, sometimes with the green showing alluringly through the mist, and occasionally, when the mist lifted and the sun came out, in all the gullies would linger little grey cloudlets, as if caught before they could get away and waiting there screened by the hills till the mist should fall again. Occasionally there were lonely houses, still more occasionally little settlements of log huts with painted windows hermetically sealed, and once or twice a field of corn ripe for the harvest but drowned by the persistent rain. But the air was soft and delicious, divine; only in the cabins on board the crowded steamer was it pestilential. The mate told me how, six weeks before, on his last trip up, an Englishman had come selling reapers and binders, and he thought that now I had made my appearance the English were rather crowding the Amur.
Sometimes when we stopped the passengers went ashore and went berrying, returning with great branches laden with fruit, and I and Buchanan too walked a little way, keeping the steamer 'well in sight, and rejoicing in the flowers and the green and the rich, fresh smell of moist earth. I do not know that ever in my life do I remember enjoying rain so much. Of course in my youth in Australia I had always welcomed the life-giving rain, but thirteen years in England, where I yearned for the sunshine, had somehow dimmed those memories, and now once again the rain on the river brought me joy. The mist was a thing of beauty, and when a ray of sunshine found its way into a green, mist-veiled valley, illuminating its lovely loneliness, then indeed I knew that the earth was the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
Sometimes we passed rafts upon the river. They were logs bound together in great parallelograms and worked with twelve long sweeps fixed at each end. Twelve men at least went to each raft, and there were small houses built of grass and canvas and wood. They were taking the wood down to Nikolayeusk to be shipped to Shanghai and other parts of the world for furniture, for these great forests of birch and elm and fir and oak must be a mine of wealth to their owners. I do not know whether the wood is cut on any system, and whether the presence of these great rafts had anything to do with the many dead trees I saw in the forests, their white stems standing up ghostlike against the green hill-side.
I have no record of these lovely places. My camera was locked away now in my suit-case, for it was war, and Russia, rightly, would allow no photographs.
Seven days after we left Blagoveschensk we reached Stretensk and I came in contact for the first time with the World's War.
At Stretensk I awakened to the fact that I was actually in Siberia, nay, that I had travelled over about two thousand miles of Siberia, that dark and gloomy land across which—I believed in my youth—tramped long lines of prisoners in chains, sometimes amidst the snow and ice of a bitter winter, sometimes with the fierce sun beating down upon them, but always hopeless, always hungry, weary, heartbroken, a sacrifice to the desire for political liberty that was implanted in the hearts of an enslaved people.
It is an extraordinary thing that, though for many years I had believed Saghalien was a terrible island, a sort of inferno for political prisoners, something like Van Diemen's Land used to be in the old convict days one hundred and ten years ago, only that in the Asiatic island the conditions were still more cruel and it was hopeless to think of escaping, while I was actually in that beautiful island I was so taken up with its charm, it was so extremely unlike the place of which I had a picture in my mind's eye, that I hardly connected the two. All up the Amur river was a new land, a land crying out for pioneers, pastoralists and farmers, so that the thought that was uppermost in my mind was of the contrast between it and the old land of China, where I had spent so long a time; but at Stretensk I suddenly remembered this was Siberia, the very heart of Siberia, where men had suffered unutterable things, might still be so suffering for all I knew, and I stepped off the steamer and prepared to explore, with a feeling that at any moment I might come across the heavy logs that made up the walls of a prison, might see the armed sentries, clad to the eyes in furs, who tramped amidst the snow. But this was August and it was fiercely hot, so the snow and the sentries clad in furs were ruled out, and presently as Buchanan and I walked about the town even the lonely prison built of logs had to go too. There may have been a prison, probably there was, but it did not dominate the picture. Not here should I find the Siberia I had been familiar with from my youth up.
Stretensk is like all other Siberian towns that I have seen. The houses are mostly of one storey and of wood, of logs; the streets are wide and straight, cutting each other at right angles, and the whole is flung out upon the plain; it is really, I think, rather high among the mountains, but you do not get the sensation of hills as you do from the steamer.
The rain had cleared away and it was very hot, though we had started out very early because I was determined to go west if possible that very afternoon; We went gingerly because the dangers of Siberian towns for one who looked fairly prosperous had been impressed upon me at Blagoveschensk, and I hesitated about going far from the steamer, where the mate could speak English. Still we went. I was not going to miss the Siberia of my dreams if I could help it.
I saw something more wonderful than the Siberia of my dreams.
In consequence of the ceaseless rain the roads between the log-houses with their painted windows were knee-deep in mud, a quagmire that looked impassable. In the air was the sound of martial music, and up and down in what would have been reckless fashion but for the restraining glue-like mud galloped officers and their orderlies. It was the war, the first I had seen of it. The war was taking the place of the political exiles, and instead of seeing Siberia as a background for the exiles as I had dreamed of it for so many years, I saw it busy with preparations for war. The roads were like sloughs out of which it would have been impossible to get had I ever ventured in. Naturally I did not venture, but took all sorts of long rounds to get to the places I wanted to reach. It is not a bad way of seeing a town.
The heavily built houses, built to defy the Siberian winter, might have come out of Nikolayeusk or Kharbarosvk, and though the sun poured down out of a cloudless sky, and I was gasping in a thin Shantung silk, they were hermetically sealed, and the cotton wool between the double windows was decorated with the usual gay ribbons. I dare say they were cool enough inside, but they must have been intolerably stuffy. The sidewalks too had dried quickly in the fierce sunshine. They were the usual Siberian sidewalks, with long lines of planks like flooring. Had they ever been trodden, I wonder, by the forced emigrant looking with hopeless longing back to the West. Finally we wandered into the gardens, where I doubt not, judging by the little tables and many seats, there was the usual gay throng at night, but now early in the morning everything looked dishevelled, and I could not find anyone to supply me with the cool drink of which I stood so badly in need, and at last we made our way back to the steamer, where the mate, having got over the struggle of arrival—for this was the farthest the steamer went—kindly found time enough to give himself to my affairs. I wanted a droshky to take me to the train, and as nowhere about had I seen any signs of a railway station I wanted to know where it was.
The mate laughed and pointed far away down the river on the other side. I really ought to have known my Siberia better by now. Railways are not constructed for the convenience of the townsfolk. There was nothing else for it. I had to get there somehow, and as the train left somewhere between five and six, about noon, with the mate's assistance, I engaged a droshky. The carriages that are doing a last stage in this country are not quite so elderly here as they are in Saghalien, but that is not saying much for them. The one the mate engaged for me had a sturdy little ungroomed horse in the shafts and another running in a trace alongside. On the seat was packed all my baggage, two small suit-cases and a large canvas sack into which I dumped rugs, cushions and all odds and ends, including my precious kettles, and the rough little unkempt horses towed us down through the sea of mud to the ferry, and then I saw the scene had indeed shifted. It was not long lines of exiles bearing chains I met, that was all in the past, at least for an outsider like me, but here in the heart of Asia Russia in her might was collecting her forces for a spring. The great flat ferry was crossing and recrossing, and down the swamp that courtesy called a road came endless streams of square khaki-coloured carts, driven by men in flat caps and belted khaki blouses, big fair men, often giants with red, sun-tanned faces and lint-white hair, men who shouted and laughed and sang and threw up their caps, who were sober as judges and yet were wild with excitement; they were going to the war. I could not understand one word they said, but there is no mistaking gladness, and these men were delighted with their lot. I wondered was it a case of the prisoner freed or was it that life under the old regime in a Russian village was dull to monotony and to these recruits was coming the chance of their lifetime.
Some will never come east again, never whether in love or hate will they see the steppes and the flowers and the golden sunshine and the snow of Siberia, they have left their bones on those battle-fields; but some, I hope, will live to see the regeneration of Russia, when every man shall have a chance of freedom and happiness. I suppose this revolution was in the air as cart after cart drove on to the ferry and the men yelled and shouted in their excitement. A small company of men who were going east looked at them tolerantly—I'm sure it was tolerantly—and then they too caught the infection and yelled in chorus.
I watched it all with interest.
Then half-an-hour passed and still they came; an hour, and I grew a little worried, for they were still pouring over. Two hours—I comforted myself, the train did not start till late in the afternoon—three horns, and there was no cessation in the stream. And of course I could make no one understand. It looked as if I might wait here all night. At last a man who was manifestly an officer came galloping along and him I addressed in French.
“Is it possible to cross on the ferry?”
He was very courteous.
“It is not possible to cross, Madame. It is not possible. The soldiers come first.”
I took another look at the good-humoured, strapping, fair-haired soldiers in khaki, with their khaki-coloured carts. The ferry crossing was laden with them, hundreds of others were waiting, among them numbers of country people. They had bundles and laden baskets and looked people who had shopped and wanted to go home again. Were these exiles? I did not know. They looked simple peasants. Whoever they were, there did not seem much chance for them or me, and I said the one Russian word I knew, “steamer,” and indicated that I wanted to go back there. Much as I wanted to go home, tired as I was of travelling, I decided I would postpone my railway journey for a day and take advantage of that comfortable Russian custom that allows you to live on a steamer for two days while she is in port. Theishvorniknodded, back we went helter-skelter to the wharf and—the steamer was gone!
I have had some bad moments in my life, but that one stands out still. Why, I hardly know, for sitting here in my garden it does not seem a very terrible thing. I had plenty of money in my pocket and there were hotels in the town. But no! more than ever, safe here in Kent, do I dread a Siberian hotel! Then I was distinctly afraid. I might so easily have disappeared and no one would have asked questions for months to come. I tried to tell the boy I wanted to go to one of those dreaded hotels—I felt I would have to risk it, for I certainly could not spend the night in a droshky—and I could not make him understand. Perhaps, as in Saghalien, there were no hotels to accommodate a woman of my class, or perhaps, as is most probable, they were all full of soldiers, anyhow he only looked at me blankly, and Buchanan and I looked at each other. Buchanan anyhow had no fears. He was quite sure I could take care of him. I looked at the boy again and then, as if he had suddenly had an inspiration, he drove me back to the place opposite the ferry whence we had come. The soldiers were there still, crowds and crowds of them, with their little carts and horses, and they were amusing themselves by stealing each other's fodder; the ferry had come back, but there were no soldiers on it, only the country people were crowding down. I had been forbidden to go upon it, and never should I have dreamt of disobeying orders, but my driver had different views. He waited till no officer was looking, seized my baggage and flung it down on the great ferry right in front of the military stores, beside the refreshment stall where they were selling sausages and bread in round rings such as peasants eat, and tea and lemonade. I had not expected to find so commonplace a thing on a river in Siberia. Now I had sat in that dilapidated carriage for over four hours and I was weary to death, also I could not afford to be parted from my luggage, so I put Buchanan under my arm—it was too muddy for him to walk—and followed as fast as I could. My good angel prompted me to pay that driver well. I paid him twice what the mate had said it ought to cost me if I waited half-a-day, and never have I laid out money to better advantage. He turned to a big man who was standing by, a man in sea-boots, a red belted blouse and the tall black Astrakhan cap that I have always associated in my own mind 'with Circassians, and spoke to him, saying “Anglisky.” Evidently he said it might be worth his while to look after me. I don't know whether this gentleman was a Caucasian, one of the “wolves of the Amur,” but whoever he was, he was a very hefty and capable individual, with a very clear idea of what a foreign lady ought to do, and he promptly constituted himself my guardian.
After all, the world, take it on the whole, is a very kindly, honest place. So many times have I been stranded when I might quite easily have been stripped of everything, and always some good Samaritan has come to my aid, and the reward, though I did my best, has never been commensurate with the services rendered.
The ferry across the Shilka at Stretensk is a great affair, like a young paddock afloat, and beside the horses and carts upon it were a number of country people with their bundles. I sat there a little uncomfortably because I did not know what would happen, only I was determined not to be parted from my baggage. Presently the huge float drifted off, amidst wild shouts and yells. When I was there, a great deal in Russia was done to the accompaniment of much shouting, and I rather fancy that this ferry was going off on an unauthorised jaunt of its own. The Shilka is a broad river here, a fortnight's steamer journey from its mouth, but the ferry came to a full stop in the middle of the stream and a motor boat which did not look as if it could hold half the people came alongside.
“Skurry! Skurry!” was the cry, and the people began leaping overboard into the boat. The military were getting rid summarily of their civilian crowd. In a few seconds that boat was packed to the gunwales and I was looking over at it. I had Buchanan under my arm; he was always a good little dog at critical moments, understanding it was his part to keep quiet and give as little trouble as possible. In my other hand I had my despatch-case, and, being anything but acrobatic by temperament, I felt it was hopeless to think of getting into it. If the penalty for not doing so had been death, I do not think I could have managed it. However, I didn't have a say in the matter. The big Russian in the red blouse picked me up and dropped me, little dog, box and all, into the boat, right on top of the people already there. First I was on top, and then, still hanging on to my little dog, I slipped down a little, but my feet found no foothold; I was wedged between the screaming people. After me, with my luggage on his shoulder, came my guardian, and he somehow seemed to find a very precarious foothold on the gunwale, and he made me understand he wanted two roubles for our fares. If he had asked for ten he would have got it, but how I managed to get at my money to this day I do not know. The boat rocked and swayed in a most alarming manner, and I thought to myself, Well, we are on top now, but presently the boat will upset and then we shall certainly be underneath. I gathered that the passengers were disputing with the boatman as to the price to be paid for the passage across, though this was unwise, for the ferry was threatening momentarily to crush us against the rocky bank. He was asking sixty kopecks—a little over a shilling—and with one voice they declared that forty was enough. Considering the crowd, forty I should have thought would have paid him excellently. That I had given my guardian more did not trouble me, because any extra he earned was more than justified, for one thing was certain, I could never have tackled the job by myself.
Just as I was growing desperate and Buchanan began to mention that he was on the verge of suffocation the difficulty of the fares was settled and we made for the bank. But we did not go to the usual landing-stage; that, I presume, was forbidden as sacred to the soldiers, and we drew up against a steep, high bank faced with granite.
“Skurry! Skurry!” And more than ever was haste necessary, for it looked as if the great ferry would certainly crush us. The people began scrambling up. But I was helpless. Whatever happened, I knew I could never climb that wall. I could only clutch my little dog and await events. My guardian was quite equal to the situation. The boat had cleared a little and there was room to move, and, dropping the baggage, he picked me up like a baby and tossed me, dog and all, up on to the bank above. Whether that boat got clear away from the ferry I do not know. When I visited the place next morning there were no remains, so I presume she did, but at the time I was giving all my attention to catching a train.
My guardian engaged a boy to carry the lighter baggage, and shouldering the rest himself, he took me by the arm and fairly raeed me up the steep incline to the railway station that was a seething mass of khaki-clad men.
“Billet! Billet!” said he, raping the sweat from his streaming face and making a way for me among the thronging recruits. There was a train coming in and he evidently intended I should catch it.
Such a crowd it was, and in the railway station confusion was worse confounded. It was packed with people—people of the poorer class—and with soldiers, and everyone was giving his opinion of things in general at the top of his voice. My stalwart guardian elbowed a way to the pigeon-hole, still crying, “Billet! Billet!” and I, seeing I wanted a ticket to Petrograd, produced a hundred-rouble note. The man inside pushed it away with contumely and declined it in various unknown tongues. I offered it again, and again it was thrust rudely aside, my guardian becoming vehement in his protests, though what he said I have not the faintest idea. I offered it a third time, then a man standing beside me whisked it away and whisked me away too.
“Madame, are you mad?” he asked, as Mr Barentzen had asked over a week before, but he spoke in French, very Russian French. And then he proceeded to explain volubly that all around were thieves, robbers and assassins—oh! the land of suffering exiles—the mobilisation had called them up, and any one of them would cut my throat for a good deal less than a ten-pound note. And he promptly shoved the offending cash in his pocket. It was the most high-handed proceeding I have ever taken part in, and I looked at him in astonishment. He was a man in a green uniform, wearing a military cap with pipings of white and magenta, and the white and magenta were repeated on the coat and trousers. On the whole, the effect was reassuring. A gentleman so attired was really too conspicuous to be engaged in any very nefarious occupation.
He proceeded to explain that by that train I could not go.
It was reserved for the troops. They were turning out the people already in it. This in a measure explained the bedlam in the station. The people who did not want to be landed here and the people who wanted to get away were comparing notes, and there were so many of them they had to do it at the top of their voices.
“When does the next train go?” I asked.
My new friend looked dubious. “Possibly to-morrow night,” said he. That was cheering.
“And where is there a hotel?”
He pointed across the river to Stretensk.
“Are there none this side?”
“No, Madame, not one.”
I debated. Cross that river again after all it had cost me to get here I could not.
“But where can I stay?”
He looked round as if he were offering palatial quarters.
“Here, Madame, here.”
In the railway station; there was nothing else for it; and in that railway station I waited till the train came in the following evening.
That little matter settled, I turned to reward my first friend for his efforts on my behalf, and I felt five roubles was little enough. My new friend was very scornful, a rouble was ample, he considered. He had my ten-pound note in his pocket, and I am afraid I was very conscious that he had not yet proved himself, whereas the other man had done me yeoman's service, and never have I parted with ten shillings with more satisfaction. They were certainly earned.
After, I set myself to make the best of the situation. The station was crowded with all sorts and conditions of people, and a forlorn crowd they looked, and curious was the flotsam and jetsam that were their belongings. Of course there was the usual travellers' baggage, but there were other things too I did not expect to come across in a railway station in Siberia. There was a sewing-machine; there was the trumpet part of a gramophone; there was the back of a piano with all the wires showing; there was a dressmaker's stand, the stuffed form of a woman, looking forlorn and out of place among the bundles of the soldiers.
But the people accepted it as all in the day's work, watched the soldiers getting into the carriages from which they were debarred, and waved their hands and cheered them, though the first train that started for anywhere did not leave till one-fifteen a.m. next morning. They were content that the soldiers should be served first. They settled themselves in little companies on the open platform, in the refreshment-room, in the waiting-rooms, fathers, mothers, children and dogs, and they solaced themselves with kettles of tea, black bread and sausages.
It was all so different from what I had expected, so very different, but the first effect was to bring home to me forcibly the fact that there was a great struggle going on in the West, and Eastern Siberia was being drawn into the whirlpool, sending her best, whether they were the exiles of my dreams or the thieves and robbers my newest friend had called them, to help in the struggle! To wait a night and day in a railway station was surely a little sacrifice to what some must make. How cheerfully and patiently that Siberian crowd waited! There were no complaints, no moans, only here and there a woman buried her head in her shawl and wept for her nearest and dearest, gone to the war, gone out into the unknown, and she might never see him again, might never even know what became of him. Truly “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
I went into the refreshment-room to get some food, and had soup with sour cream in it, and ate chicken and bread and butter and cucumber and drankkvassas a change from the eternal tea. I watched the people on the platform and as the shades of night fell began to wonder where I should sleep. I would have chosen the platform, but it looked as if it might rain, so I went into the ladies' waiting-room, dragged a seat across the open window, and spread out my rugs and cushions and established myself there. I wanted to have first right to that window, for the night up in the hills here was chilly and I felt sure somebody would come in and want to shut it. My intuitions were correct. Buchanan and I kept that open window against a crowd. Everybody who came in—and the room was soon packed—wanted to shut it. They stretched over me and I arose from my slumbers and protested. For, in addition to a crowd, the sanitary arrangements were abominable, and what the atmosphere would have been like with the window shut I tremble to think. I remembered the tales of the pestilential resthouses into which the travelling exiles had been thrust, and I was thankful for that window, thankful too that it was summer-time, for in winter I suppose we would have had to shut it. At last one woman pulled at my rugs and said—though I could not understand her language her meaning was plain enough—that it was all very well for me, I had plenty of rugs, it was they who had nothing. It was a fair complaint, so with many qualms I shared my rugs and the summer night slowly wore to morning.
And morning brought its own difficulties. Russian washing arrangements to me are always difficult. I had met them first in Kharbin in the house of Mr Poland. I wrestled with the same thing in the house of the Chief of Police in Saghalien, and I met it in an aggravated form here in the railway station waiting-room. A Russian basin has not a plug—it is supposed to be cleaner to wash in running water—and the tap is a twirly affair with two spouts, and on pressing a little lever water gushes out of both and, theoretically, you may direct it where you please. Practically I found that while I was directing one stream of water down on to my hands, the other hit me in the eye or the ear, and when I got that right the first took advantage of inattention and deluged me round the waist. It may be my inexperience, but I do not like Russian basins. It was running water with a vengeance, it all ran away.
However, I did the best I could, and after, as my face was a little rough and sore from the hot sun of the day before, I took out a jar of hazeline cream and began to rub it on my cheeks. This proceeding aroused intense interest in the women around. What they imagined the cream was for I don't know, but one and all they came and begged some, and as long as that pot held out every woman within range had hazeline cream daubed on her weather-beaten cheeks, and they omitted to rub it off, apparently considering it ornamental. However, hazeline cream is a pleasant preparation.
Having dressed, Buchanan and I had the long day before us, and I did not dare leave the railway station to explore because I was uneasy about my luggage. I had had it put in the corner of the refreshment-room and as far as I could see no one was responsible for it, and as people were coming and going the livelong day I felt bound to keep an eye upon it. I also awaited with a good deal of interest the gentleman with the variegated uniform and my ten-pound note. He came at last, and explained in French that he had got the change but he could not give it to me till the train came in because of the thieves and robbers, as if he would insist upon tearing the veil of romance I had mapped round Siberia. And God forgive me that I doubted the honesty of a very kindly, courteous gentleman.
It was a long, long day because there was really nothing to do save to walk about for Buchanan's benefit, and I diversified things by taking odd meals in the refreshment-room whenever I felt I really must do something. But I was very tired. I began to feel I had been travelling too long, and I really think if it had not been for Buchanan's sympathy I should have wept. No one seemed at all certain when the next train west might be expected, opinions, judging by fingers pointing at the clock, varying between two o'clock in the afternoon and three o'clock next morning. However, as the evening shadows were beginning to fall a train did come in, and my friend in uniform, suddenly appearing, declared it was the western train. Taking me by the hand, he led me into a carriage and, shutting the door and drawing down the blinds, placed in my hands change for my ten-pound note.
“Guard your purse, Madame,” said he, “guard your purse. There are thieves and robbers everywhere!”
So all the way across Siberia had I been warned of the unsafe condition of the country. At Kharbin, at Nikolayeusk, at Blagoveschensk men whose good faith I could not doubt assured me that a ten-pound note and helplessness was quite likely to spell a sudden and ignominious end to my career, and this was in the days when no one doubted the power of the Tsar, a bitter commentary surely on an autocracy. What the condition of Siberia must be now, with rival factions fighting up and down the land, and released German prisoners throwing the weight of their strength in with the Bolshevists, I tremble to think.
When he made sure I had carefully hidden my money and thoroughly realised the gravity of the situation, my friend offered to get my ticket, a second-class ticket, he suggested. I demurred. I am not rich and am not above saving my pennies, but a first-class ticket was so cheap, and ensured so much more privacy, that a second-class was an economy I did not feel inclined to make. He pointed round the carriage in which we were seated. Was this not good enough for anyone? It was. I had to admit it, and the argument was clinched by the fact that there was not a first-class carriage on the train. The ticket only cost about five pounds and another pound bought a ticket for Buchanan. We got in—my friend in need got in with me, that misjudged friend; it seemed he was the stationmaster at a little place a little way down the line—and we were fairly off on our road to the West.