Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/25

Rh classes, and occupations. Some of them come there every day; others come occasionally.

"What do you want to come here for, eh?" asks the letter- carrier Shpaka, in a mock-severe tone, addressing an elderly woman who carries her crochet-work in her hands.

"And why did you come?" asks the woman, imitating his tone. "I've got business here."

"Well, so've I. I've got four out there."

"That's not so bad. If they write by turns you'll get something every week."

"Yes, but I've not heard from the fifty-second for three months. And the thirty-seventh is also quiet for the last four weeks. Maybe something's happend to them."

Old women and children now know much more than ever they did before: numbers of regiments, names of cities, mountains, rivers, words they never heard hitherto. And when you hear their slow conversation and their timid discussion of what is going on "there", under the tempest of shot and fire, you feel that these simple, ignorant, wearied people, while not knowing what we learn from newspapers, know something which is infinitely more certain and true, something we cannot find in any book or article on the war. And yet, oppressing uncertainty hangs even heavier over them than it does over us, the readers of newspapers ...

At last the door of the post office is opened. The crowd enters the room assigned to them, merely to see a package of mail handed over to the letter-carrier. Then they all file out after him and hurry to the village hall for the distribution. Sometimes the mail brings no bad news. But often the letter-carrier's bag contains the grim message of misfortune. Then the streets of the village are filled with women's sobs, old men's cries that resemble the dull bark of dogs, and the shrill weeping of children.

And this noisy manifestation of grief is invariably followed by the grave, business-like silence of every-day life.

On holidays, the crowds gather around the church-fence, near the well, and in other public places. Sometimes groups of different sizes are formed, and sometimes dense crowds are gathered about some wounded soldier returned from the field. In such groups the freshest and the most varied information is received and discussed. There is a considerable element of the fantastic in this news, but, generally speaking, it gives a fairly