“No,” said the conductor. “It could not be he. So you have lost your brother? It is always the same story. Since we got freedom everybody is lost. I have not had my pay for six months, and I have seven children living and my wife is sick. My children cannot eat freedom, but it is the capitalists who are keeping us poor. In the old days I had a cow. And now the Americans have come. It is said that they want to steal our railroad and take our work away from us.”
“That is a lie,” said Peter. “The Americans are your friends.”
“What kind of friend comes to steal your work? I don’t know anything about politics, but my children have nothing to eat but cabbage. I know that, and they know it. I think it was better with the Czar. These fellows who come and talk politics—they are smart men—and good men. They gave us a lot of rubles. But with freedom it costs a hundred rubles for a loaf of bread, and I get no pay. And those fellows who talked politics ate my cow, and nobody wants the rubles they gave me. What kind of business is that? Not to take rubles after my cow has been eaten!”
Peter shook his head, helpless for an answer, and finished his dressing. He went out on the platform between cars. The cold air assailed him witheringly, for it was more than sixty degrees below zero that morning. He pulled the fur strap of his cap across his nose and leaned out from the car steps to scan the snow-streaked plain.
In the distance were low hills covered with sparse fringes of pines and larches. At the base of the hills, huddled against them like a flock of sheep seeking shelter, were primitive huts of the aboriginal Buriats, and stray Mongol herdsmen in winter quarters.
The train made a detour on temporary trackage to get round the wreck of a bridge that had been blown up. The little river was frozen and peasants were cutting a hole in the ice to get water for a pair of scraggly little Siberian ponies with coats of long frost-covered hair and icicles hanging from their nostrils. The men stopped to watch the train go past, and flailed their bodies with their arms to keep warmth in their blood.
Once more the slowly moving train changed direction and drew near to low hills ahead, their crests serrated by timber and their sides slashed with snow which was held in the frozen water courses. As it rounded these hills and ran in through a low pass, a city of bizarre appearance was unmasked. It lay in a great cup between hills—in a wide valley, level as a plain.
At first sight the city looked more like the smoldering ruin of a vast settlement that had recently been destroyed by fire. Rising from a sea of small huts was what appeared to be a forest of gigantic white fungi—columns of ivory smoking from the tops, or some poisonous growths like giant toadstools, or a land filled with tiny craters from which rose gray fumes that spread high in air into motionless clouds. These queer pillars were nothing but smoke rising from the buildings of the city and the warm air from chimneys rising straight up in the still, frigid air.
Through the pillars of steam and smoke could be seen taller buildings, and here and there minaretlike spires lifted out of the ruck, and catching the morning sun, reflected the light with tints of gold and bluish green. And there were great blue domes marking the synagogue, while a cross and a crescent glinted with gilt from the top of a Moslem mosque. The old exile settlement of Chita—the Valley of Despair—had grown to a city and filled the plain.
On the slopes of the hill above, Peter saw a great yellowish stockade built of upright logs which enclosed low, rambling buildings. The sun flashed from tiny windows which were smaller than the gun ports of a frigate, or where the tiny windows were broken there were black holes like eye sockets in a skull. Many stubby chimneys built of stone gave the low buildings the appearance of castellated walls. But no smoke issued from the chimneys.