—More still is stolen!
Irritated by fear for themselves, frightened at these "unheard-of people," the little towns and hamlets and the "all-understanding" villages ... one can only express astonishment at the celerity with which man adapts himself to circumstances. Where and when have these peasants of yesterday learnt so quickly to build dens and dwelling-places from any sort of rubbish? It's as if they were born nomads. It simply makes one wonder. Out of what was all this put together? How does it hold? Some slates stolen from one place, a paling broken somewhere else, an armful of hay, rags brought in by the children—and behold, a dwelling-place.
"And, O Lord, how to thank Thee that there is no longer any rain!"
—They freeze, get ill, watch their children die, and wait. It's not possible to breathe. All around is human filth. In certain stinking horrible ponds, the peasant women with feet blue from the cold, are washing clothes. And these ponds also are tainted with filth....
And when I come here in the morning, whilst the ground all around is covered with hoar-frost and the half-expired bonfires glimmer beside the marsh on which the camp is set, the spectacle is dreadful. How reckon up the sufferings? It's no use even thinking of going across the station platform. For passage there is only the merest margin above the rails where one might go along as on a tight-rope, and sideways. The whole platform is occupied by the fortunate ones. By those who have gone through all the trials of the way of affliction, lost their horses, frozen in open camping-grounds for weeks whilst they waited; by the people who have at last obtained:
—Their turn.
And they will travel, no one knows where, no one knows to what end. On immense bundles, on top of mountains of household furniture, lie people, lie or sit, and you can see that no force could prevail on them to abandon their positions. When the bell rings, indicating the arrival of a goods train, wild scenes are enacted.
In the cattle-trucks it will at once become warm, because of the many people, and the fugitives rush to take the train by storm, crushing one another as they push forward. And they lug along their bundles.
And how much of the strangest, most unnecessary rubbish do they pull along with them into the trucks, and heap up in the places which might otherwise be occupied by extra people! Rubbish for us—but the last possessions for them. That is all that remains.