LV
He invited Nadia to dinner one night in the little restaurant in the Arbat, and she accepted with the permission of her mother and father, who saw no harm in it, but only a little danger from secret police.
Nadia laughed at that peril. She was under the protection of “Ara,” she said, and the Cheka could not touch her. That was true. Bertram had taken Dr. Weekes to the gipsy-like room in which Prince Alexander lived with his family, and he had been shocked by their dire poverty. He knew their name in Russian history, and their former palace in Petrograd, now used as a soup-kitchen by the American Relief.
A cheery young American of the South, with a slow, drawling speech and quiet manners, he was a man of delicate physique who seemed to have worn himself out in service to a suffering world. He was chief medical officer of “Ara,” and had devoted himself to the hunger-stricken and diseased children of Austria, Germany, Poland, and Armenia since the ending of war. Nadia had lit his eyes with enthusiasm for her courage. “Some girl,” was his verdict, and his word was enough to secure her appointment as interpreter and woman secretary on the “Ara” staff.
“There’s a heap to do for a girl like that in Kazan,” he said. “Our boys there are clamouring for interpreters and secretaries. But I fancy I’ve got a special job for her, where her medical training will count. We’ll see about that later, when we get to Kazan.”
So that part of the programme was fixed. She was to travel with them to Kazan, with two other ladies selected by the Colonel for office duty in that city, and she was very happy at the thought, in spite of the tragic nature of the adventure ahead. She had the zeal of Dr. Weekes himself who was restless until he reached the famine district.
“My job is with typhus,” he said. “I’ve declared a Holy War against it. It’s my personal vendetta. Where typhus is worst, there I go. One day, of course, it’s going to get me! But that’s the fortune of war, and meanwhile it’s a good game.”
Nadia had the same kind of philosophy, it seemed.
“I want to help Russia. The best way I can help is to make use of my medical training where the people suffer most. There’s a dreadful dearth of doctors, and the poor peasants are hopelessly ignorant of the most primitive rules of health. I can teach them, wash them, help them to kill their lice.”
In the restaurant of the Arbat, Bertram was received with friendly greetings from the husband and wife, and Katia. They were amazed and delighted to find Nadia with him. The elderly man with white hair and a pointed beard kissed her hand respectfully, as the daughter of Prince Alexander Suvaroff, but Katia flung her arms round Nadia’s neck and kissed her on both cheeks.
“You know this English gentleman, then!” cried the lady of the restaurant. “Doubtless you were old friends in England before the war!”
“Not old friends,” said Nadia, “but good comrades now.”
“Do not use that word comrade!” said the lady. “It has been debased. Tavarish! tavarish! tavarish! I am sick of it!”
“In English it is better,” said Nadia. “It has its old meaning still.”
She and Bertram sat at a little table in the corner. Katia waited on them delightedly, kissing Nadia’s neck, or hair, or hand, every time she came to the table. And Nadia was joyful because a white cloth was spread on the table, and there were cut glasses for their cider, which was the only drink, and plates without a crack in them.
“It is like a fairy-tale,” she said. “Not for four years have I sat down with snow-white linen to the board.”
Bertram wondered that she could endure so long a time of squalor, after her life in great mansions, surrounded by luxury from childhood. Did she not sometimes crave to escape from it to Paris or London, like so many others?
She shook her head.
“I want to see this through,” she told him. “It has been a great adventure of the soul. Terrible, but educating. You have been a soldier. You know what our men called ‘the front line spirit?’ I have been in the front line, the danger zone, and have nothing but contempt for those who fled to safe places in the war. Except the old and feeble, and the very young.”
A great adventure of the soul? Yes, there was something in that. Life at its bleakest and barest like a Polar expedition to which men like Shackleton and Scott had gone so blithely. For him also, this Russian visit was to be a great adventure of the soul. Perhaps with this girl who offered him her love! Queer that! It wouldn’t be bad to “see it through” with her. He had no other call now, no kind of human tie elsewhere. Why not see it through in Russia as well as anywhere in the world? It was cut off from the rest of the world almost as completely as Robinson Crusoe’s island. A shipwrecked country of a hundred and fifty million people, with himself among them!
They talked of the Bolshevik régime. He denounced it as the greatest tyranny on earth, the most brutal type of Government ever devised by evil minds.
She shook her head at that.
“Not quite so bad. They have done some good. They have taught the people to read and write—millions of them. They have fed the children first—always.”
Bertram was amazed at her tolerance.
“Surely you don’t defend these people?”
“No,” she said, “but I understand them. They have been cruel, but through fear. They were afraid of counter-revolutions, plots of every kind. They stamped out their enemies lest the Revolution should be defeated and Czardom brought back. So it was in France, under Robespierre, was it not?”
“This Communism!” said Bertram. “It seems to me an outrage against human nature. It attempts to crush the individual instinct which is the strongest thing in life.”
“Yes,” she answered, “that is true, I am sure. But the individual must subordinate his instincts to the good of the Commonwealth. One must not forget that Communism was killed by the peasants—and alas, they too were greedy and cruel when they had the only source of wealth.”
“Is there any hope at all for human nature?” asked Bertram.
She looked at him with surprise in her dark eyes.
“Do you doubt it? Oh, surely not! Out of all our ignorance and agony some knowledge will come for the future race. You and I are learning. Others will know because of our endeavours, and our failure, and our love. I am glad to think that.”
“How wise you are!” he said, without irony. “I am bewildered by life, and without any certain faith. You seem so sure!”
“I am Russian,” she said, laughing. “We talk and talk on abstract ideas. We do nothing worth doing. Nichevo!”
Katia came up again, and sat beside Nadia. A party of young men came into the restaurant and sat talking quietly, and drinking coffee. The ex-painter to the Imperial Court was washing up dishes behind the counter.
“I must learn Russian!” said Bertram.
Katia clapped her hands.
“Nadia will teach you!”
England seemed a million miles away. Joyce was in another planet. Nadia’s black eyes were very kind to him.