There are no pleasure trippers or any of the idle curious on board. Everyone practically is bound for Russia, and we look at one another curiously, wondering what each other’s mission is. There are Comrades returning, and there are journalists, traders and bankers; people who hope to get through from Reval, people who probably will, and others who certainly will not.
Kameneff is watched by everyone, and we have made innumerable acquaintances. Already there is around us a little group of friends, whom one has the feeling of having known a long time. To-morrow we go on to Reval. It seems to me too wonderful and unbelievable that I am really on this boat of fears and dreams: fears of not getting on board, and dreams of the world into which it would sail with me.
September 18th. Reval, Esthonia.
At dawn we left Hango, but there was such a wind blowing that the ship anchored just at the entrance of the harbour, and for a few hours we swung round. No one complained of delay and no one seemed to be in a hurry. There was no attempt to keep a scheduled time: a calm atmosphere of fatalism, which is probably Russian, seemed to hang over us.
The sun was shining brilliantly when we finally set out to sea, and I was having a most interesting conversation with Mr. Aschberg, a Swedish banker, who did me the compliment of talking to me on political economy, of which I understood nothing. He told me interesting things about Bolshevik business transactions with Germany, in which it seemed that the Bolsheviks were alienating the German workers by negotiating with the German capitalists.
In my own mind I did not see how they could do otherwise, but my ignorance on these things is so great, that I try to learn all I can without giving myself away by asking too many questions. It is a slow process, but I have hopes. The mere fact of being under the wing of a man like Kameneff, and bound for Russia, seems to make people talk to me as if I were a man. It is a great comfort no longer to meet people on a social or superficial ground. There were people even who talked to me on most obscure subjects, and asked for my intercession for them with Kameneff!
At sunset we steamed into Reval, where the pointed towers and the sound of old bells as in Italy awakened one to a new atmosphere that was no longer Scandinavian. A motor met us at the quay, the only motor there, and a man who had crossed with us, and whom I suspected of being a British agent, said to me ironically as he drove away in a droshki: “How very smart and distinguished of you to have a motor——”
Kameneff’s boy of twelve met us, and there were two small children as well, belonging to Gukovski, the Soviet representative at Reval. They took up most of the room that was needed for luggage. Alexandre Kameneff had to stand on the step outside, and a soldier of the Red Army on the other. Thus our curious car-load made its way, hooting loudly through mediæval tortuous streets.
What followed is rather nebulous in my mind. I was very tired and the town very dark; there were stars overhead, but no street lamps. We drove to some bleak building called the Hotel Petersbourg, which seemed to be the Bolshevik G.H.Q. It was dirty and grim, and full of strange-looking people who talked no language that I understood. They looked at me strangely; a great many hands shook mine. Kameneff was too busy to explain to me what our plans were, or what was going to happen next, or maybe he forgot that I could not understand. He was too surrounded for me to be able to ask him any questions, so I just looked vague, waited about and followed, relying on my eyes to convey the explanations that my ears were denied. Kameneff was the centre of perpetual discussions in which everyone spoke at the same moment, very quickly and very loud. At first I suspected a most agitating State Council, but it turned out to be merely a discussion as to where we should have supper. Finally it was decided that we should go to the apartment in an hotel where the wife of a Comrade would look after us. Off we went on foot over cobblestones. The streets were full of people who moved like shadows, and one could only see faces when they passed the glare of a lighted doorway. We followed along in couples. At my side was Alexandre Kameneff, a nice boy and friendly, but he could only talk Russian.
We got to the hotel (such an hotel, more like a wayside inn). We were taken to the Comrade’s apartment, where his wife received us with great cordiality and talked to me in good French.