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Vlas Mikhailovich Doroshevich
The Way of the Cross
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066462970
Table of Contents
THE WAY OF THE CROSS
The Way of the Cross
IN 1812 Moscow made a funeral pyre for herself, and burned
—For Russia’s sake. A hundred years have passed.
And the red glare of Moscow’s fire has paled.
The Moscow of those days!
A wooden city.
The burning of it was appalling.
The ground burned under the feet of the Napoleonic soldiers: even the roadways of Moscow were made of wood at that time.
But now!
More than ten provinces have been laid waste by the enemy.
Millions of people have become beggars. And have fled.
From the places of their birth to the far centre of Russia stretches the Way of the Cross for these people.
And on this Way, as on that other Way-of Golgotha, are places, there are:
—Stopping places,
Where the people faint under the burden of the Cross.
Bobruisk. Dovsk. Roslavl.
These are names full of affliction.
These stopping places.
Especially:
—The memory of Roslavl is terrible.
THE RIVER
I
THE RIVER
ON the roadway, outside Podolsk, a sentry, an old man, said to me with a smile.
—All Russia is on parade.
And he raised the barrier to allow a motor-car to pass.
—One province comes after another.
After some hours on the road you begin to distinguish one province from another.
There goes the province of Holm.
You recognize it by the way the peasant women do their hair.
They cut a "fringe" and let it show on their foreheads, pulling it out from under their kerchiefs, As our ladies wore their hair twenty years ago.
These are:
—The White Mountain people.
The peasant Women of the White Mountain district, whom the women of other provinces cannot tolerate, but despise them for these same "fringes."
—The plain-haired women.
The Holm people came before any of the others, they have been longer on the road and are more upset than all the rest.
Their peasant women are quarrelsome, they look about them ill-naturedly, and for every little nothing they raise hysterical cries.
It’s evident that they’re upset in the very depths of their souls.
Their nerves are all unstrung.
See, approaching slowly, in their reddish sheepskin coats with fringes of wool hanging from the cuffs of their sleeves, come the people from the province of Grodno.
You can recognize the Grodno people by their carts. The carts have coverings made of checked and striped material stretched over a basket-work frame.
This homespun material is used for the festival dresses of the peasant women.
In the province of Grodno the peasant women make such cloth.
They offer it at sixty copecks an arshin at the relief points on the road:
Even in the extremity of their need they will not part with it for less than sixty copecks.
And with this precious material they now cover their carts!
All goes to ruin!
This is a twice-humbled people.
—First of all, good man, there came through our province fugitives from other places. They ruined us: dug up our potatoes, rooted up our cabbages, took off the hay, and carried away the unground grain in their carts. And as soon as this had happened we ourselves had to be on the move!—complain the peasants.
See, here come the peasants of Lublin and Lomzha provinces. They wear long white sheepskin coats with the wool showing at the cuffs of their sleeves, with broad shawl-like collars of black sheepskin, and with a beautiful ornamentation of coloured threads. They wear four-cornered caps with pompons on the corners.
Long moustaches, and shaven chins, overgrown and scrubby.
A quiet, courteous, gentle folk.