Yesterday evening after we had started, Kameneff left us to go and talk
to Zinoviev who was on the Petrograd train, travelling also to Moscow.
Zinoviev is President of the Petrograd Soviet (and also of the Third
International). I did not see Kameneff again that evening, but at 2 a.m.
he knocked at my door and awakened me with many apologies to tell me
news he thought I should like to hear. Zinoviev had just told him that
the telegram announcing his arrival with me came in the middle of a
Soviet Conference. It caused a good deal of amusement, but Lenin said
that whatever one felt about it there was nothing to do but to give me
some sittings as I had come so far for the purpose. “So Lenin has
consented and I thought it was worth while to wake you up to tell you
that.” Kameneff was in great spirits; Zinoviev had evidently told him
things he was glad to hear, especially, I gathered, that no blame or
censure was going to be put upon him for having failed in his mission to
England.
We reached Moscow at 10.30 a.m. and I waited in the train so that
Kameneff and his wife could get their tender greetings over without my
presence. I watched them through the window: the greeting on one side,
however, was not apparent in its tenderness. I waited and they walked
up the platform talking with animation. Finally Mrs. Kameneff came into
the compartment and shook hands with me. Mrs. Philip Snowden in her book
has described her as “an amiable little lady.” She has small brown eyes
and thin lips. She looked at the remains of our breakfast on the saloon
table and said querulously, “We don’t live _chic_ like that in Moscow.”
Goodness, I thought, not even like that! There was more discussion in
Russian between the two, and my expressionless face watched them. I have
become reconciled to not being unable to understand.
As we left the train she said to me: “Leo Kameneff has quite forgotten
about Russia, the people here will say he is a bourgeois.” Leo Kameneff
spat upon the platform in the most plebeian way, I suppose to disprove
this. It was extremely unlike him.
We piled into a beautiful open Rolls-Royce car and were driven at full
speed with a great deal of hooting through streets that were shuttered
as after an air raid. Mrs. Kameneff said to me: “It is dirty, our
Moscow, isn’t it?” Well, yes, one could not very well say that it was
not.
We came to the Kremlin. It is high up and dominates Moscow and consists
of the main
[Illustration: MARINASHKY AND THE MINISTERIAL ROLLS-ROYCE.
_p. 64._]
palace, some other palaces, convents, monasteries, and churches
encircled by a wall and towers. The sun was shining when we arrived and
all the gold domes were glittering in the light. Everywhere one looked
there were domes and towers.
We drove up to a side entrance under an archway, and then made our way,
a solemn procession, carrying luggage up endless stone stairs and along
stone corridors to the Kameneff apartments. A little peasant maid with a
yellow handkerchief tied over her head ran out to greet us, and kissed
Kameneff on the mouth. Then ensued the awkward moment of being shown to
no room. After eleven days travelling one felt a longing for peace, and
to be able to unpack, instead of which the Russian discussion was
resumed, and I sat stupidly still with nothing to say.
For breakfast I was given coffee and an over-helping of dry tepid rice.
When for a moment I found myself alone with Kameneff I asked him what
was to become of me and begged him to send me to an hotel. But there are
no hotels; everything belongs to the Government. There are however,
guest-houses, but he was averse to my going to one, as he said that I
should be lonely and strange. He told me to leave the matter entirely to
him and he would decide in two hours.
Meanwhile I went for a walk in the Kremlin grounds with Alexandre and
took a lot of photographs. The beauty of it all was a wonderment, and I
was quite happy not to go outside the walls, which I could not do as I
had no pass. Then I came back and waited and waited for Kameneff to come
and tell me where I was to go. As the day passed by I felt more and more
lonely. For lack of another book I read de Maupassant’s “Yvette,” but
hated it, and thanked God that Bolshevism had at least wiped out that
vile world of idle men. At sunset I sat on the ledge of the open window,
and listened to the bells that were ringing from all the domes in
Moscow. Below me was an avenue of trees that reached up to me with
autumn colours. I thought of Dick and that to-day is his birthday. I
knew he must be asking, “Where is ‘Meema’; why doesn’t she come? How
long will she be?”
When it was dark I was still looking out, and Anna Anrevna, the little
maid, came in softly in her string soled shoes and put her arms round
me. She told me in broken German that I must not _traurig sein_.
Kameneff came in at half-past ten, he was very tired and precluded all
further discussion by saying that it was too late to go anywhere else,
and that I must stay for the night. Mrs.
[Illustration: THE KREMLIN, SHOWING ENTRANCE TO THE KAMENEFFS’
APARTMENTS.
_p. 65._]
Kameneff came in from her work a little later. She sank into a chair and
drew her hand across her brow in the most approved way to betoken
physical exhaustion. I was given Alexandre’s room, through which they
have to pass to get to their’s, and I have to pass through their’s to
get to the wash-room, as there is no washstand in my bedroom. I suppose
Alexandre slept on a sofa. Kameneff went back to his Soviet meeting at
eleven, and I heard him pass through my room when he came home at 4 a.m.