Before I got out of the car, she assured me that her tirade was in no way personal and would I, please, not misunderstand her.
October 14th.
Michael Borodin found me after breakfast, miserably wrapped in my rug, shivering with cold and depression, and with tears irrepressibly streaming down my face. I had several grievances which had been accumulating for some days, and at last my patience had come to a head. The fact is I had heard of a courier having arrived yesterday from London, and no one had taken the trouble to find out if there were any letters for me. Ever since I left England on September 11th I have not had one word of news, nor answers to two telegrams that Kameneff sent for me asking after the children. Secondly, I had not been given the coat that Kameneff had ordered for me, so it was impossible to go out as it was too cold.
Michael for the first time seemed really moved. He wrapped me round in his fur coat, went off to the garden and fetched up a load of wood for me (I had never known him do such a thing before), and lit my fire himself. Then he telephoned to the Foreign Office. There were no letters for me, but some bundles for Kameneff. He also got hold of Comrade Alexandre on the telephone to know when I was going to have the promised coat, and altogether was very helpful. His journey to Madrid has been delayed daily, but he is to start to-morrow. It seems to me that in Russia one only knows about ten minutes beforehand what one is going to do! They are divinely vague.
October 15th.
I went to the Kremlin to meet Comrade Alexandre there at midday: he was to bring me a soldier as a model. Not feeling brave enough to go and review a platoon and make my own selection, I had described exactly what I wanted: not the bloodthirsty savage Bolshevik of English tradition, but the dreamy-eyed young Slav who knows what he is fighting for, and such as I passed every day on the parade ground. I waited in my studio impatiently till 2 o’clock, and then Alexandre arrived accompanied by a soldier who was typically neither Russian, nor military, nor intellectual, nor even fine physically. He was small, white, chétif, and had a waxed moustache. It was a bad moment. I tried to hide my disappointment and my amusement. I missed lunching in order to work on him, and began something that was not in the least like my model, but was the product of my imagination. At 5 I came home tired and hungry and cold. I lay down on my sofa and watched the dusk crawl up behind the Kremlin. At 8.30 I was called down to the telephone, which is in the kitchen. It was Borodin speaking from the Foreign Office. He said “good-bye” in his abrupt manner. “This is the right way,” he said. “This is the way it should be.” The maid was throwing her broom around the kitchen, making as much noise as possible, and a strange man glared at me out of the gloom. I found it difficult to concentrate my attention. Michael knows that I do not believe in “futures,” but nevertheless we said “someday,” and I wonder very much if that strange Communist-Revolutionary, with his mask-like face and deep voice, will ever cross my path again. To-night I regret him, but then I am lonely for the moment—friendless, and this is a place where one needs friends.
At 9 o’clock, not having eaten since 10 a.m., I went downstairs to round-up some food. There, to my surprise, I met Litvinoff, who had been in Moscow since the day before yesterday. Our pleasure at seeing each other again was mutual and spontaneous. He is coming to stay at our house, and will occupy the vacated room of Borodin.
October 16th.
Comrade Alexandre came to see me at 9 p.m., to tell me that he could not arrange with Trotsky for sittings. I gathered that Trotsky had been emphatic and brusque in his refusal, but after all, I have done Lenin, and he is the one who counts most. I can go back to England without the head of Trotsky, but I could not have gone without the head of Lenin. I have accomplished what I came for, and so to hell with Trotsky!
Alexandre said he could only stay ten minutes, but he left at midnight. He talked Communism the whole time. Now Borodin unfurled his Communist spirit to me slowly, because he knew me, and to what I belonged, and he realised that the thing hurled at me in a crude mass would stagger me. He led me up to it with great caution. Alexandre, on the other hand, with no understanding or sympathy, took all my inborn prejudices and just broke them, stamped on them, metaphorically spat on them, and gave me a big feed of unadulterated Communism. He is a fanatic, and left me breathless and wondering. All was well until we got to the children part: he said that his wife had to work, so their baby, who is six weeks old, has to go by day to the Crèche.