The meetings I attended were all Communist meetings, at each of which the same banal propagandist phraseology was untiringly reeled off. The vulgar violence of Bolshevist rhetoric and the triumphant inaccuracy of statement due to the prohibition of criticism soon became wearisome. In vain I sought meetings for discussion, or where the people’s point of view would be expressed: freedom of speech granted by the revolution had come to mean freedom for Bolshevist speech only and prison for any other. Some of the meetings, however, were interesting, especially when a prominent leader such as Trotzky, Zinoviev, or Lunacharsky spoke, for the unrivalled powers of speech of a few of the leading Bolsheviks, who possess in a marked degree “the fatal gift of eloquence,” had an almost irresistible attraction.
During these days also I cultivated the friendship of the ex-Journalist, whom, despite his timidity, I found to be a man of taste and culture. He had an extensive library in several languages, and spent his leisure hours writing (if I remember rightly) a treatise on philosophy, which, for some reason or other, he was convinced would be regarded as “counter-revolutionary” and kept locked up and hidden under a lot of books in a closet. I tried to persuade him of the contrary and urged him even to take his manuscript to the department of education, in the hope that someone of the less virulent type there might be impressed with the work and obtain for him concessions as regards leisure and rations.
When I visited him the day after Marsh’s flight I found him, still wrapped in his green coat, running feverishly from stove to stove poking and coaxing the newly lit fires. He was chuckling with glee at the return of forgotten warmth and, in truly Russian style, had lit every stove in his flat and was wasting fuel as fast as he possibly could.
“What the devil is the use of that?” I said in disgust. “Where the deuce do you think you will get your next lot of wood from? It doesn’t rain wood in these regions, does it?”
But my sarcasm was lost on Dmitri Konstantinovitch, in whose system of economy, economy had no place. To his intense indignation I opened all the grates and, dragging out the half-burnt logs and glowing cinders, concentrated them in one big blaze in the dining-room stove, which also heated his bedroom.
The Author, Disguised
“That’s just like an Englishman,” he said in unspeakable disgust as he shuffled round watching me at work. “You understand,” I said, resolutely, “this and the kitchen are the only stoves that are ever to be heated.”
Of course I found his larder empty and he had no prospect of food except the scanty and unappetizing dinner at four o’clock at the local communal eating-house two doors away. So, the weather being fine, I took him out to the little private dining-room where I had eaten on the day of my arrival. Here I gave him the biggest meal that miniature establishment could provide, and intoxicated by the unaccustomed fumes of gruel, carrots, and coffee he forgot—and forgave me—the stoves.
A day or two later the Journalist was sufficiently well to return to work, and taking the spare key of his flat I let myself in whenever I liked. I took him severely to task in his household affairs, and as the result of our concerted labours we saved his untidy home from degenerating completely into a pig-sty. Here I met some of the people mentioned by Marsh. The Journalist was very loth to invite them, but in a week or so I had so firm a hold over him that by the mere hint of not returning any more I could reduce him to complete submission. If I disappeared for as much as three days he was overcome with anxiety.