THE SUKHAREFSKI MARKET.
enemy Englishwoman.” He would not listen to any words of appreciation, he smiled in his genial, kindly way: “Of course we were glad to receive you, and to have you among us, une femme artiste, what did it matter to us, your nationality, or your relations. There is only one thing, que nous ne pouvons pas supporter,” and for the first time in all the months I have known him, a hard look passed over his face, and he set his teeth: “The only thing we cannot stand c’est l’espionage,” and the way he said it gave me a shiver down my spine. It was only a passing shadow, and the next moment he was telling me that he really regarded me as a woman of courage for coming just on his word, adding that when he saw me on the departure platform “with two small handbags, I knew in that moment that you were not any ordinary woman!” We looked back on our London days and laughingly discussed the first sitting when he invited me to come to Moscow. I told him “I did not believe that you were serious when you asked me,” and he said, “neither did I believe you were serious when you accepted.” He then proceeded to outline for me exactly what the effect of my Moscow visit would have on my friends, on my family, in the Press, and on my career. His accuracy remains to be seen.
November 6th.
Off at last—what a hectic day. Litvinoff telephoned to me in the morning from the Commissariat to say that my big wooden cases (my coffins I call them, they are the same shape) were going to be conveyed from my studio to the station, and that I need not concern myself about them. It was not until midday that I learnt for certain that Professor Lomonosoff was going to start to-night. In Russia one makes no plans, things happen when they happen! With a rashness that nearly proved reckless, I distributed my few belongings among my friends. To a lady doctor-friend of Andrev who had been nice to me, I left all my stockings, a box of soap, a skirt, a jersey and my cloth overcoat. To the maids in the house, my shoes and goloshes, workbag, jersey, fur-lined dressing jacket, pair of gloves, and hat. To Rothstein, as a parting gift, my hot-water bottle and medicine case. I started on my journey in the clothes I stood up in. The maids, to my intense embarrassment, kissed my hands and nearly wept. I nearly kissed them in return. I started off with Litvinoff, and Rothstein came to the front door to see the last of me. He overwhelmed me with compliments: “You have been a brick, you have played up splendidly, you have never complained.” I tried to explain that I hadn’t played up, and that I had not been anything except very happy. I might have added that living Communistically had proved to me that one must either love or hate the people one sees every day for any length of time. Hate may be tempered into dislike, and Love may be more appropriately termed friendship or affection, but it was certainly affection that I had grown to feel for Rothstein. He seemed somehow to belong to our environment, we should have missed him if he hadn’t been there. Just occasionally he said things about England that roused opposition in me. I feel about England as most people do about their relations, that I may abuse my own, but no one else may. I realised, when I got to know him better, that his attitude was not so much one of hostility to England as of intense pride in Russia, and so I forgave him. During my first days in Moscow, Rothstein unfailingly cross-questioned me at supper as to how I had spent my day, where I had lunched, whom I had seen, and what time I had come home. At last I said to him: “Don’t ask me, try and find out,” and I chaffed him so that he had to give up asking. I never knew whether there was a motive in his curiosity or not. At all events, he never was anything but a kindly and helpful friend to me. I drove away from No. 14, Sofiskaya Naberezhnaya in an open car in the bright light of a full moon, glittering stars, and hard frost. Litvinoff, observing that I looked back at it rather sentimentally, said: “That is your Moscow home, the next time you come you will bring your children,” and I felt that I did not look upon it for the last time. We drove first to the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, as he had some packages of papers to pick up there which he had taken away in the morning to have sealed up for me. I waited outside in the car for some time. When he rejoined me he was agitated, my “coffins,” he had just learnt, were still at the Kremlin. Organisation had miscarried, it was “somebody’s” fault. The lorry had waited for them three hours, but the sentry at the building had refused to deliver them up. What could have happened? Everyone was at the big Opera House meeting, so all telephoning efforts to get hold of responsible help had been in vain. We had three-quarters of an hour before the train was due to start. I suggested driving to the Kremlin to see what we could do. Happily I still had my pass on me, so we got in by the sentry. The building, ever before so busy, was now utterly deserted and resonant. I unlocked the door of my studio, and there were the two coffins lying packed and sealed and unmoved. I lifted one end of one, it was far beyond our combined strengths to carry, and the motor could not have taken them. We gave it up in despair. Down in the courtyard our car refused to move, the chauffeur was tinkering at it. It seemed to have a real congested chill. Train time was drawing near. The station was some way off. “Stay,” said Litvinoff. I had visions of staying, perhaps indefinitely, having parted with all except what I stood up in.
I looked round at the beloved Kremlin, to which I had already said good-bye not expecting to see it again. It seemed more beautiful than ever, more still, more dignified, more impassive. The clock in the old Spassky tower complainingly chimed three times, it was a quarter to seven. At last the car breathed, pulsed, started, then stopped. Then pulsed, grunted, and started again. We were off, and, as the road lay down hill, it seemed possible that the car, which was misfiring badly, might just get there. It seemed to be an evening of mishaps, and I felt fated not to leave Moscow. However, we reached the station at exactly 7, and I gathered up all I could in each hand, and ran towards a crowd that stood by the only train in the station. Litvinoff shouted to me “you needn’t run.” Indeed, I need not, as the only train in the station was not the train of Professor Lomonosoff. His special came in at another platform about half an hour later, and never went out till after 9. Had we known, something could have been done in the time to get the cases to the train, also I could have gone to the meeting and heard Lenin. No one was more frantic than Lomonosoff, who prided himself on his train being punctual. But it could not be helped, the train had just returned from the Urals, and was in a state of disorder.
Litvinoff, when he said good-bye to me, promised to send on my cases by courier to Reval in time to catch the Stockholm boat. He then aroused my curiosity by telling me that he had been a better friend to me than I should ever know. I begged him to explain, but he said that I must wait ten years or so.
November 7th. In the train.