Then began the real drive through Godaur Pass, up and over rocks and embankments, roots of trees, sand and water, precarious detours in a night as jet as any I have ever seen. The militia had been ordered by Moscow to keep the route open—green skyrockets for us to come ahead, red ones to stop, and swinging lanterns in front of the worst danger spots—great drops down into ravines. At last we reached the end and mounted a new set of buses, but only three of them. Grant was among those who stayed behind. We arrived at Tiflis at two in the morning. Dinner was ready as well as clean beds, and we slept until the humid sun stirred us out for breakfast, just as the rest came straggling in.
It was Sunday morning. Lining the steps of the old Georgian cathedral were beggar women—lame, blind, filthy—never had I seen any others in Russia. Children were curiously looking on at the Mass, but we were told parents were forbidden to make them go to church. The few elderly women attending were carrying flowers and had twined them also around the frames of the saints’ pictures. We tourists presented an incongruous contrast to the priests with their long beards and splendid robes.
Tiflis had slipped the yoke of Moscow. Here among the mosques and the camels and the bazaars, which gave it a definitely Oriental tinge, we finally saw signs of private enterprise. Back in the mountains were tribes the Soviet was trying to civilize—warlike, uncultured, barbaric. Stalin, sentimental for the country of his origin perhaps, was choosing as many Georgians as he could for high places and sending in teachers and moving pictures to educate the others, but the task was herculean.
It was hot, torrid noon when we arrived at Batum on the Black Sea. The sun was pouring down; we wanted to go swimming to cool off, and were directed to a stony beach. The water was darkened by the heavy, rich deposit which coated the bottom, and the sand, of the same color, was strewn with masses of people just like Coney Island, thousands of them on the seaweed-covered rocks. It did not look pleasant and we walked further. A partition of slats through which there was perfect visibility was supposed to divide the women from the men, but despite having heard so much about the nude bathing there, we discovered everyone had on suits—astounding, old-fashioned garments.
Mrs. Clyde declined to go in, but sat watching in her hat and glasses. Tanya kept on pink panties and a brassiere. The rest of us determined to throw off our inhibitions. Once you did this you were freed from them for the time being; it was the doing that was so hard. Most surprising were the New England schoolteachers, who had certainly never before removed their clothes in public. They dashed their long, lean bodies boldly into the water as though to say, “Russia, here we come!”
The steamer on which we left Batum was dirty, loaded with passengers who had to be stepped over as they slept on deck. If you left your stateroom even a few moments somebody grabbed it and took your bed.
But the scenery of the Russian Riviera was very lovely. The spurs of the Caucasus along the coast glittered with marble palaces. I shall always remember the mighty, sable cypress trees, slender columns silhouetted against the creamy white walls; they were not funereal to me, but more like sentinels.
Only the chosen of the chosen, the executives and the intelligentsia, could stay at Yalta for holidays. Many individuals, Agnes Smedley, for one, had reason to be grateful to the Soviet for their rest periods. Although not a Communist she had written sympathetic articles, and the Russian Health Department, hearing she was ill in China, had sent her an invitation to come and recuperate, and here she had stayed a year without cost, recovering from a strained heart.
I spent a day in the majestic Byzantine summer palace of Nicholas II at near-by Livadia. It was perfectly landscaped with statues, fountains, terraces. As we drove up multitudinous shaved heads popped out open windows. In the marvelous ballroom were a hundred and fifty enamel cots, side by side, the sleeping quarters of the men on vacation. We saw the room belonging to the former Tsarina, with fragile, brocaded walls and delicate panels. In the center of the parquet floor, bare of any covering, stood a deal table with checked gingham cloth.
Now and then you caught a glimpse of people in the palace, but mostly they were reclining in the gardens. As we wandered round and round we came upon a cluster of twenty-five asleep, pale, and not too well-fed. They did not twitch an eyelid as we approached. I asked Tanya, “Who are these?”