After dinner he was sent for by Tchicherin, and I spent the evening with Michael Borodin. Michael Markovitch, as Borodin is called, lives in our house. He is a man with shaggy black hair brushed back from his forehead, a Napoleonic beard, deep-set eyes, and a face like a mask. He talks abrupt American-English in a base voice. I have not seen much of him as he works half the day and all the night, like the other Foreign Office officials. He is usually late for meals, eats hurriedly and leaves before we have finished. As soon as Vanderlip had gone Borodin switched out all the drawing-room lights that Vanderlip had put on, except one. I asked him why he did this, and he looked round the garish room and gave a slight shudder: “It is parvenu,” he said; then sinking back into his chair he looked at me intently, and asked: “What is your economic position in the world?” It is the first time he has talked to me, and I found myself answering as if my life depended on my answers. Happily no one in this country knows anything about my family, up-bringing, or surroundings. I have not got to live down my wasted years. I can stand on my own feet and be accepted on my own merits. Borodin mystifies me, I cannot make out, when all his questions have been answered, what he thinks.
September 28th.
Dzhirjinsky came at 10 a.m. for an hour. He is leaving Moscow for a fortnight, so that I can get no more sittings, but seeing how keen I was, he stayed on and on, doling out ten minutes and quarter-hours as so much fine gold. He sits so well that two sittings are worth four of Zinoviev’s.
When the Savonarola of the Revolution left, I felt a real sadness that I may never see him again. Zinoviev sat again in the afternoon, and brought with him Bucharin and Bela Kun. They seemed to approve of Dzhirjinsky’s bust, and insisted on looking through all the photographs of my work. The “Victory” is what really interests them.
I was frightfully disappointed in Bela Kun. I had imagined a romantic figure, but he looks most disreputable. Bucharin is attractive with his trim, neat little beard and young face.
This afternoon, after all had left, three soldiers brought a gilt Louis XVI sofa and a Turkestan carpet to my workroom. These had been ordered to help to make it more habitable and to dispel the severity. I had to laugh, the sofa looked so absurdly refined and out of place. I wondered whose drawing-room it once furnished, and to what little tea-time gossips it had listened. At that moment a sculptor called Nicholas Andrev came in and introduced himself to me. He was sent by Kameneff and mercifully speaks French. A big man with small laughing eyes and a red-grey beard, typically Russian. After we had talked for awhile he described to me the difficulties
BUST OF DZHIRJINSKY.