CHAPTER XV A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE
Of the three former capitals of Poland the city of Cracow, the last of Polish territory to lose its independence, is now an Austrian fortress. One day, shortly after my arrival, I was driving in the suburbs of the city when my attention was directed to a number of low, grass-covered mounds scattered about at regular intervals in the level plain outside the city. To all appearances these mounds were nothing more than slight elevations of land sinking, in a direction away from the city, almost imperceptibly into the surrounding landscape. In all probability, if it had not been for a certain regularity in the positions which they occupied, I should not have noticed them. I had never seen a modern fortified city and I was therefore considerably surprised when I learned that these gentle elevations were fortifications and that beneath these grass-grown mounds enormous guns were concealed, powerful enough to keep a vast army at bay. These facts served to remind me that Cracow was a border city, guarding a frontier which divides, not merely two European countries, but two civilizations—I might almost say, two worlds. Cracow is, as a matter of fact, ten miles from the Russian frontier, and, although the people in Russian Poland are of the same race or nationality as those who live in the Austrian province of Galicia, speaking the same language and sharing the same traditions, the line which divides them marks the limits of free government in Europe.
Now, there were several things that made this frontier, where eastern and western Europe meet, peculiarly interesting to me. In the first place, I knew that thousands of people, most of them Poles and Jews, who were unwilling or unable to pay the high tax which Russia imposes upon its emigrants, were every year smuggled across that border in order to embark at some German or Austrian port for America. I knew at the same time that Jews and, to a lesser extent, perhaps, Poles, outside of Russia were making use of this same underground railway to send back, in return for the emigrants who came out, another kind of contraband—namely, books and bombs. In fact, I had heard that a few years ago, when Russian Poland was all aflame with civil war, it was from Cracow that the Jews, who were the leading spirits in that movement, directed the revolution.
Naturally all this served to increase my natural curiosity in this border country. So it was that one cool, clear day in September I rented a little droske for the day and started, in company with my companion, Doctor Park, for the Russian border.
We drove leisurely along a splendid military road, between broad fields, in which peasants were gathering, in the cool autumn sunlight, the last fruits of the summer's harvest. A country road in Galicia, as is true in almost any part of Europe, is a good deal more of a highway than a country road in most parts of America. One meets all sorts of travellers. We passed, for example, just beyond the limits of the city, a troop of soldiers, with the raw look of recruits—red-faced country boys they seemed, for the most, bulging out of their military suits and trudging along the dusty road with an awkward effort at the military precision and order of veterans. Now and then we passed a barefoot peasant woman, tramping briskly to or from the city, with a basket on her head or a milk can thrown over her shoulder.
Once we stopped to watch a group of women and girls threshing. One woman was pitching down sheaves of rye from the barn loft, another was feeding them to the machine, and all were in high glee at the wonderful way, as it seemed to them, in which this new invention separated the grain from the chaff. They were so proud of this little machine that, when we stopped and showed our interest in what they were doing, they insisted on showing us how it worked, and took pains to explain the advantages over the old-fashioned flail. There was a man sitting on a beam outside the barn smoking a pipe, but the women were doing the work.
On this same journey we stopped at a little straggling village and spent an hour or two visiting the homes of the people. We saw the house of the richest peasant in the village, who owned and farmed something like a hundred acres of land, as I remember; and then we visited the home of the poorest man in the community, who lived in a little thatch-roofed cottage of two rooms; one of these was just large enough to hold a cow, but there was no cow there. The other room, although it was neat and clean, was not much larger than the cow-stall, and in this room this poor old man and his daughter lived. Incidentally, in the course of our tramp about the village, Doctor Park managed to pick up something of the family histories of the people and not a little of the current gossip in the community, and all this aided me in getting an insight, such as I had not been able to get elsewhere, into the daily life and human interests of this little rural community.
At one point along the road we stopped for a few minutes at a wayside tavern. It was a log structure, with one great, long, low, desolate room, in one corner of which was a bar at which a sour-faced woman presided. Two or three men were lounging about on the benches in different parts of the room, but here again the woman was doing the work.
Every mile or two it seemed to me we met a wagon piled high with great bulging bags as large as bed ticks. In each case these wagons were driven by a little shrewd-faced Jew. These wagons, as I learned, had come that morning from Russia and the loads they carried were goose feathers.
A little farther on we came up with a foot passenger who was making toward the border with great strides. He turned out to be a Jew, a tall, erect figure, with the customary round, flat hat and the long black coat which distinguish the Polish Jew. Our driver informed us, however, that he was a Russian Jew, and pointed out the absence of the side curls as indicating that fact. Although this man had the outward appearance, the manner, and the dress of the Jews whom I had seen in Cracow, there was something in the vigorous and erect carriage that impressed me to such an extent that I suggested that we stop and talk with him. As we were already near the border, and he was evidently from Russia, I suggested that Doctor Park show him our passports and ask him if they would let us into Russia.