Part 4
Kameneff came in from her work a little later. She sank into a chair and drew her hand across her brow in the most approved way to betoken physical exhaustion. I was given Alexandre’s room, through which they have to pass to get to their’s, and I have to pass through their’s to get to the wash-room, as there is no washstand in my bedroom. I suppose Alexandre slept on a sofa. Kameneff went back to his Soviet meeting at eleven, and I heard him pass through my room when he came home at 4 a.m.
SEPTEMBER 21ST.
I awakened, feeling much better. The sunshine was too wonderful. Both the Kameneffs went off to their respective work, she at 10, and he at 11. I went out into the Kremlin grounds with Alexandre, and while he played football with Serge Trotsky I sat among the columns of the Alexander Memorial and indulged in a kaleidoscope of thought. Serge is the twelve year old son of Trotsky, and is a fine little boy with a broad chest and a straight back. He looks like the heir to a throne in the guise of a peasant.
At 1 o’clock a cousin of Leo Kameneff’s who can speak French and English came to fetch me. Outside the Kremlin gate an old man, who looked like a peasant, stopped me and asked in English if I were Sylvia Pankhurst.
Hearing I was not he asked: “But you are English and I hope a good Communist?” I did not answer, I just pressed his hand.
We went to the Musée Alexandre III, the garden of which is strewn with large bronze eagles thrown down from the pediment. They are very emblematic of the mighty who are fallen.
The Museum contains replicas of classics of which the originals are in many cases in the British Museum. But the arrangement and the backgrounds are so good, that it gives one more pleasure to look at the Greek and Assyrian replicas here than to see the originals in London.
A school of boys and girls, extremely well fed and well dressed, was being shown round, and there was also a magnificent old peasant with long hair and aquiline nose, who told us that he wanted before he died to see what a museum was like. Both he and the schoolmaster asked us if we could explain things to them as there were no guides. Even had I been able to speak the language, I should have been at a loss to explain the Parthenon Temple which we were facing at that moment. The children probably, and the peasant surely, had never heard of the Parthenon, nor of Greek mythology; where would one begin? One could only have said: “Isn’t it beautiful, don’t you see how beautiful it is?” and hope that they did see it. Since I heard a guide explaining Rodin at South Kensington to Australian soldiers, I have felt sure that Art can be felt, but not explained.
In the end we procured a guidebook and sent the old peasant off with the children’s school, and left the master to do his best. When I got back it was to find no one at home. I ate some food, as I was hungry, and concluded that I was still to be a guest at the Kremlin. Late in the afternoon I found my way alone through the maze of corridors and staircases, out into the grounds alone. I wandered about, still hypnotised by the beauty of the sun-reflecting domes, and by the dead stillness which seemed to protest from the Royal stones. Over the Tsar’s palace crows pecked at the flagstaff where once the Royal Standard had flown. There is a clock in a tower at the Kremlin Gate and it has a complaining and depressing chime. It complains once at the quarter, four times at the hour. It seemed to say, “My people are gone! and I am sad, and I am sad.” It doubtless complained when Napoleon took possession, and again in Tsarist days, and probably will always lament; some people are never satisfied.
I have a sort of feeling that I am staying at Versailles just after Louis XVI. My emotions and impressions are too deep, too many, and too bewildering to be measured in words.
In the evening Alexandre took me to a play at the Théâtre des Arts. A big theatre and well filled. The piece was very well staged. The play, which is adapted from an old Polish legend called “Corrodine,” was well acted, so that without understanding a word I gathered some of the sense. In front of us sat Madame Zinoviev with a Comrade and I was glad when they talked to me in French. It was not until afterwards that I learnt who she was, much to my amusement, remembering that I had told her my errand, and that Zinoviev was among the heads promised to me. She asked me if I would not have to go to Petrograd to do him, but I said that I thought not, as he was in Moscow at the moment, and that if I could only find a place to work in, he would sit to me at once. I wondered why she laughed.
SEPTEMBER 22ND. _Moscow, The Guest House._
Mrs. Kameneff went to her work as usual at 10 a.m. At breakfast half an hour later Leo Borisvitch, as he is called, promised not to do any work or keep any engagement until he had taken me to my new headquarters in a
guest-house. We were delayed in starting by John Reed, the American Communist, who came to see him on some business. He is a well-built good-looking young man, who has given up everything at home to throw his heart and life into work here. I understand the _Russian_ spirit, but what strange force impels an apparently normal young man from the United States? There also arrived to waylay us a painter called Rosenfeld, who wore canvas shoes like a peasant, and kissed Kameneff on his arrival. He offered to show me museums and things, but our only medium was German, and his was a good deal worse than mine, which was a great drawback. At midday, however, we broke free, and started off with my luggage. I bade farewell to the Kremlin, and we drove across the river to a guest-house on the opposite bank facing the Tsar’s Palace. The guest house is the requisitioned house of a sugar king. It is inhabited by various Foreign Office officials, also by Mr. Rothstein and an American financier, Mr. W. B. Vanderlip. A beautiful bedroom and dressing-room are mine, with walls of green damask. It looks more like a drawing-room than a bedroom. The house is more or less exactly as the sugar king left it, full of a mixture of good and bad things. It is partly modern Gothic and partly German Louis XVI. The ceiling of one of the big rooms is painted by Flameng, but the best pictures (there were some Corots) have been taken to a museum. One is extremely grateful for its comfort and hospitality, even if its taste in decoration is not of the best.
Moreover, one can enjoy it lightheartedly, for the exiled sugar king, it is rumoured, had other palaces abroad, and never came to Moscow except for a few weeks in the year. He also has money invested abroad and is not in want, and can well spare his Moscow palace for so good a purpose. His old manservant waits upon us, and takes the tenderest care of the house in the belief that the old régime will return, bringing the owners of the house with it. He says openly that he is not a Bolshevik, and takes much pride in changing our plates a great many times, and making the most of our humble fare. He insists that so far as it depends upon him we shall behave like perfect ladies and gentlemen and be treated as such.
I stayed at home all day unpacking at last, and settling down into my temporary home. Kameneff promised to come back in the course of the day, but he didn’t. He telephoned however, and arranged that I should be taken to the Ballet with the party from this house. We sat in the Foreign Office box. The ballet was “Coppelia,” beautifully produced, and the orchestra one of the finest that I ever heard. The theatre is the size of Covent Garden, and is decorated with crimson and gold. There are boxes all round the first tier, and the house was packed throughout.
The audience consisted of working people, who had admission free through the distribution of tickets to certain unions. They were a motley crowd, chiefly _en blouse_. In the Royal box, reserved for Commissars and their wives, there was a man with a cloth cap. The women were eating apples. In the box next to ours there was an old woman with a shawl over her head.
It was intensely moving to see the absorbed attention of the audience. People leaned their elbows on the ledges of the boxes and watched the ballet with an almost devouring interest. There was not a cough nor a whisper. Only when Coppelia came to life as the mechanical doll, there were delicious low ripples of controlled laughter from the children. At the ends of the acts people left the stalls to rush, not for the exits to the foyer, but to the front of the gangways nearest the stage to see the dancers close to, and to applaud them. The people were tired people, who had worked all day and had earned a good evening and were enjoying it to the full.
My only contretemps was with a little stenographer from the Foreign Office who was in our box. She observed that I had on the red enamelled star of Communism, and that I wore white gloves. One, she said, contradicted the other; the white gloves were bourgeois. I argued that it only mattered what was in my heart, and not what was on my hands. But she would not be pacified, so I removed the gloves. Considering that my costume was a red tweed skirt with a red, wool jersey and a tight-fitting cap, I had thought that gloves would not make me over-dressed.
If my evening’s pleasure was neutralised by the concentrated aroma which arose from the great unwashed, it is only fair to observe that there is no soap in the country, and most people have, for two years or so, only had the one suit of clothes in which they stand up. No wonder----! In the car coming home I met Mr. Rothstein, who is living in the same house. I wished I could recall the abusive article which I read about him in an English newspaper, but all I remember is that he is not to be readmitted to England. He seems to be an energetic and forceful little man. I expect he is pretty clever. We had supper together after the theatre, and conversation
drifted on to that eternal comedy, the Nationalisation of women. I happened to say that this had done more to harm the Bolshevik cause than almost anything, and, moreover, that quite serious people still believed it. Mr. Rothstein interposed rather sharply, “Well, a little select circle which reads the _Morning Post_ perhaps believes it.”
Is it possible, I wonder that he is right, and that the “little select circle” do not count as much as I have all my life taken for granted that they did?
SEPTEMBER 23RD.
I wasted a lot of time this morning trying to fix things up without the help of Kameneff. As things have turned out I might have saved myself the trouble. John Reed told me that I never would begin work unless I arranged everything for myself, and depended on no one here. On the other hand Mr. Vanderlip told me to keep calm, as his experience was that everything came in time. Thoroughly impatient however, I got hold of Mr. Rosenfeld who arrived simultaneously with Alexandre Kameneff and a motor. Rosenfeld took me studio hunting. The Art Schools seemed to be very far away from the parts of Moscow that are familiar to me, and although everyone was willing to help, there seemed to be little accommodation available. In the Academia, which I believe is only just re-opening, they offered me a place to work in--a gallery which obviously was not suitable. We went on to the Strogonoff School, where Mr. Konenkoff, one of their most distinguished sculptors, offered me of his best. It was like an empty kitchen looking into a bleak courtyard. The two students who followed us round were not very sympathetic. No doubt they thought it presumptuous of me to come to Russia and expect to model Lenin! They certainly did not seem to think he would sit to me. Kameneff had warned me that most of the artists I should meet would not be Bolsheviks, so that probably the students I met were not, but thought that I was. One of them, a girl and more friendly than the rest, said to me in French: “If you are a friend of those in power I suppose you will get some food; we are expected to work here all day from 9 in the morning till 6 at night without any.” I asked why she did not bring her food with her, and received some jumbled explanation about rations and distribution and State Control and no shops, which was so bewildering that I avoided further discussion. It was obvious that I did not understand the
condition of things, and that I looked rather stupid in consequence. Another one said to me: “Madame, we are waiting for deliverance. For two years we have waited. We do not know how it is to come, but we just hope that some morning we may wake up to find the nightmare over.” I said feebly that there had been six years of war, and a blockade, but I felt it was no business of mine to put up a defence for their system. I came home thoroughly depressed and disheartened, having accomplished nothing. At 10 p.m. I was sitting in the gilded drawing-room with Mr. Vanderlip when the telephone rang: it was Kameneff. He announced that he had a room for me at the Kremlin and that I must work there because all the people I had to model were there, and that it was the only way to get them as they were very busy. He promised to send someone for me in the morning to take me there. He asked if I were lonely, resentful, or bored, and pleaded his inability to get to me owing to stress of work. He begged me to be patient and good, and promised that all would come right. I went to bed feeling really better.
SEPTEMBER 24TH.
Madame Kameneff’s secretary fetched me at 10 a.m. and we found a Comrade waiting for us at the Kremlin gateway. He was a painter, young and bearded, who could speak only Russian. We got our passes to get into the big round building which used to be the Courts of Justice, and where the conferences are now held. It is the chief building, and the Red flag flies above it. Once inside we walked for ever as it seemed, along stone corridors full of busy people. We went to the room of Comrade Unachides, one of the most magnificent men that I have ever seen, a real Mestrovic type, strong features and bushy red hair. Unfortunately he also could only speak Russian. He showed me the room which is placed at my disposal. It is big and nearly empty, semi-circular in shape, with bare white-washed walls. In one corner a formidable iron door with round peep-holes in it leads into a small cell which contains a safe. The safe is sealed up with Soviet seals. The cell, I was told, was a disused prison. This probably accounted for the atmosphere of depression and grimness which persisted in spite of the sunlight which in the afternoon flooded my three big windows. Opposite, across the courtyard, is the Arsenal, and all along the Arsenal walls are ranged the masses of cannon with their “N” surrounded by the laurel wreath, which leaves one in no doubt as to their origin.
While I was looking round, Kameneff turned up; he told me to make a list of my requirements, and then carried me off in a car and was able to stay with me until 2 o’clock. These moments together snatched in between work are so rare that one almost values them. He told me I was to go to a meeting at the theatre in the evening, and promised that I should be in a box near the stage so that I could see well. He was to address the meeting on the subject of his visit to England.
The party from our house were late in starting. We got to the theatre after the meeting had begun, and were put in the Tsar’s box. This was already crammed full to overflowing, and all the chairs were occupied by Turks, Chinese and Persians. No one attempted to offer me a place. Mr. Vanderlip and I stood for some time, while people moved in and out and Turks and Persians (I shall never want to smell geranium again) pushed us about in their impatient efforts to get past or over us. All my British blood was boiling, and I realised that for the time being, at all events, I could not regard the Turks and Persians and Chinese as my brothers.
After awhile Mr. Vanderlip and I were moved to the stage box. This too was full, but not of the same kind of people. Anyway, it was nearer, and one got a better view. Clara Zetkin, the German Socialist, was speaking, spitting forth venom, as it sounded. The German language is not beautiful, and the ferocious old soul, mopping her plain face with a large handkerchief, was not inspiring. It sounded very hysterical and I only understood an outline of what she was saying. Then Trotsky got up, and translated her speech into Russian. He interested me very much. He is a man with a slim, good figure, splendid fighting countenance, and his whole personality is full of force. I look forward immensely to doing his head. There is something that ought to lend itself to a fine piece of work. The overcrowded house was as still as if it were empty, everyone was attentive and concentrated.
After Trotsky Mme. Kolontai spoke. She has short dark hair. Perhaps she spoke well, but of that I could not judge. Tired of standing and of not understanding I left the theatre at the moment when a great many repetitions of Churchill’s and Lloyd George’s names were rocking the house with laughter.
SEPTEMBER 25TH.
I feel very discouraged. Everyone I meet asks me what I have come to Moscow for. They assure me that there is no chance of modelling Lenin, and still less of doing Dzhirjinsky, who is a
recluse. Nevertheless, I have spent the day getting everything in order. Sackfuls of bone-dry clay have been delivered at my door. Five men and one girl stood inert and watched me break it up with a crow-bar. Finally I was able to send them all away except one, a really intelligent carpenter, who, instead of trying to talk to me, watched me and understood what I wanted. He was splendid, made three armatures for me, and then beat and stirred the clay for three hours until it was in condition. When Kameneff looked in, bringing Zinoviev, I was up to my elbows in clay, my clothes were covered, and my hair was standing on end. Zinoviev laughed, and said it was obvious that I should not be ready for him to sit to me for days, but I assured him all would be in order to-morrow, and added that a man of the carpenter’s intelligence was worthy to be a Government minister. Kameneff repeated this to the carpenter, and then said to me: “Here everything is possible.” Before leaving he gave me a pass into the Kremlin that will last until December, so I am independent at last, and can go in and out alone when I please. I did not come home until I had built up two heads ready to work on. I am very tired but full of hope, remembering that I have heard that things come slowly in Russia, but they come eventually.
SEPTEMBER 26TH.
I went to church at St. Saviour’s, the big church beyond the bridge, which was built with the private money of the Tsar as a thanksgiving for deliverance from Napoleon. It has five gold domes which are a beacon to me when I am lost. A service was going on and we mingled with the crowd, which had an amazing preponderance of men. The richness of the church with its golden and crimson robed priests seemed to throw into relief the poverty of the people with their faces so full of sadness. What absurdly stupid things animate one’s thoughts in the most precious moments: for instance, when the priest made the sign of the Cross with the three branched candlesticks in each hand, I instinctively looked to see if he had dropped candle-grease on the carpet--he had! When the contribution plate began to circulate I watched an old peasant next to me. He drew out his pocket-book, and fumbled for a few roubles. He held five of these like a card-hand and fingered them hesitatingly. It was obvious that he was trying to make up his mind whether he could afford to part with them all, or only with some of them. In the end he put them all into the plate, a little act of sacrifice which I am sure will not pass unblessed.
The choir singing without accompaniment was
very beautiful. The masses seemed to be very fervent, one could see Faith and Hope in all their faces. It is surely the deep religious feeling in Russia that has sustained these people through all their years of privation, and prevented a greater chaos.
After church we walked along, rejoicing in the sun, to the Tretiakovskaya Gallery, full of various schools of painting. Among the pictures is the famous one of Ivan the Terrible killing his son, but everything that I saw was obliterated by the memory of three modern busts, the work of Konenoff, the sculptor I met at the Strogonoff School. These busts are carved out of blocks of wood. They are indescribable masterpieces in conception, composition and carving. I remained for sometime in admiration and wonderment over this modern work, and then went away, as I could not look at anything else.
At 3 o’clock I hurried to the Kremlin, as Kameneff had telephoned telling me to expect Zinoviev. I waited until four and then he arrived, busy, tired and impatient, his overcoat slung over his shoulders as though he had not had time to put his arms through the sleeves. He flung off his hat and ran his fingers through his black curly hair, which already was standing on end. He sat restlessly looking up and down, round and out and beyond; then he read his newspaper, every now and again flashing round with an imperative look at me to see how I was getting on. He seemed to me an extraordinary mix-up of conflicting personalities. He has the eyes and brow of the fighting man, and the mouth of a petulant woman.
Little by little he became more tractable, and when he had finished reading we talked a little. At moments he threw his head back and seemed to be dreaming. Then he looked like a poet. He is only thirty-eight. It is amazing how young all these Revolutionaries are. I gleaned from him the news that Millerand is the new President of the French, to which he shrugged his shoulders and said that it made no difference, and that the British strike fixed for to-morrow has been postponed for a week. Before he left he said he was pleased with the start of his bust, and that I must do Lenin.
I walked home in face of a lovely sunset; the fiery ball was reflected in the gold dome of St. Saviour’s. I sang as I walked, because I have begun work at last, but people looked at me, although they had never looked at me before. I suppose it was peculiar to hear anyone sing.
SEPTEMBER 27TH.
Things begin to move more rapidly now, and my patience is being rewarded. To-day Dzhirjinsky came. He is the President of the Extraordinary Commission, or as we should call it in English, the organiser of the Red Terror. He is the man Kameneff has told me so much about. He sat for an hour and a half, quite still and very silent. His eyes certainly looked as if they were bathed in tears of eternal sorrow, but his mouth smiled an indulgent kindness. His face is narrow, with high cheek bones and sunk in. Of all his features his nose seems to have the most character. It is very refined, and the delicate bloodless nostrils suggest the sensitiveness of over-breeding. He is a Pole by origin.
As I worked and watched him during that hour and a half he made a curious impression on me. Finally, overwhelmed by his quietude, I exclaimed: “You are an angel to sit so still.” Our medium was German, which made fluent conversation between us impossible, but he answered: “One learns patience and calm in prison.”