for some 25 km until we reach Zaręby Kościelne. [5] There I encounter the first Russian officer, who calls out: Kuda ti idyosh?65 And each of us answers: Domoy.66 They frisk us, search us, and let us through. We are now on the road to Czyżew.67 Mud, mud up past the knees. In every village there are new huts, no longer with straw roofs but roofed with tarpaper or tiles. The Soviets haveerected those huts for the peasants. Despite that, the peasants whose homes we go into to get warm tell us that no elections have been held there and no village soviet or revolutionary committee has been set up. We – says our host – don’t need any new order here. The sołty68 can carry on, because the Reds will have to leave soon anyway. With that, he charges us a salty price for tea without sugar and a piece of rye bread.
Muddy, limping, and dead tired, we reach the station in Czyżew. The road is very narrow, the houses small, the town is tiny, and the mud deeper and deeper. We just about manage to get on board the train leaving for Białystok. It’s getting on towards three in the morning. The train is packed, and we are hitching a ride, like almost everyone else. We pass through the townships of Szepietowo and Łapy,69 and arrive in Białystok at seven in the morning, dirty, muddy, and short of sleep. The streets are already full of people although it is only just daylight. A large part of them are immediately recognisable as bezhentsy. Dirty, black with grime, and groggy from lack of sleep. Some of them have spent the night in the station, where the militia wake them every few minutes [6] and throw them out of the waiting rooms, not letting them sleep there. Every few minutes hundreds of them crowd in and sleep on the bare floor until they are thrown out again. The same thing happens again and again during the night. Some of them don’t sleep at all but walk the streets all night, not having 10 or 20 roubles to pay for a place to sleep. The people of Białystok charged a fortune for every bit of floor, and those to whom money
