I awakened, feeling much better. The sunshine was too wonderful. Both
the Kameneffs went off to their respective work, she at 10, and he at
11. I went out into the Kremlin grounds with Alexandre, and while he
played football with Serge Trotsky I sat among the columns of the
Alexander Memorial and indulged in a kaleidoscope of thought. Serge is
the twelve year old son of Trotsky, and is a fine little boy with a
broad chest and a straight back. He looks like the heir to a throne in
the guise of a peasant.
At 1 o’clock a cousin of Leo Kameneff’s who can speak French and English
came to fetch me. Outside the Kremlin gate an old man, who looked like
a peasant, stopped me and asked in English if I were Sylvia Pankhurst.
Hearing I was not he asked: “But you are English and I hope a good
Communist?” I did not answer, I just pressed his hand.
We went to the Musée Alexandre III, the garden of which is strewn with
large bronze eagles thrown down from the pediment. They are very
emblematic of the mighty who are fallen.
The Museum contains replicas of classics of which the originals are in
many cases in the British Museum. But the arrangement and the
backgrounds are so good, that it gives one more pleasure to look at the
Greek and Assyrian replicas here than to see the originals in London.
A school of boys and girls, extremely well fed and well dressed, was
being shown round, and there was also a magnificent old peasant with
long hair and aquiline nose, who told us that he wanted before he died
to see what a museum was like. Both he and the schoolmaster asked us if
we could explain things to them as there were no guides. Even had I been
able to speak the language, I should have been at a loss to explain the
Parthenon Temple which we were facing at that moment. The children
probably, and the peasant surely, had never heard of the Parthenon, nor
of Greek mythology; where would one begin? One could only have said:
“Isn’t it beautiful, don’t you see how beautiful it is?” and hope that
they did see it. Since I heard a guide explaining Rodin at South
Kensington to Australian soldiers, I have felt sure that Art can be
felt, but not explained.
In the end we procured a guidebook and sent the old peasant off with the
children’s school, and left the master to do his best. When I got back
it was to find no one at home. I ate some food, as I was hungry, and
concluded that I was still to be a guest at the Kremlin. Late in the
afternoon I found my way alone through the maze of corridors and
staircases, out into the grounds alone. I wandered about, still
hypnotised by the beauty of the sun-reflecting domes, and by the dead
stillness which seemed to protest from the Royal stones. Over the Tsar’s
palace crows pecked at the flagstaff where once the Royal Standard had
flown. There is a clock in a tower at the Kremlin Gate and it has a
complaining and depressing chime. It complains once at the quarter, four
times at the hour. It seemed to say, “My people are gone! and I am sad,
and I am sad.” It doubtless complained when Napoleon took possession,
and again in Tsarist days, and probably will always lament; some people
are never satisfied.
I have a sort of feeling that I am staying at Versailles just after
Louis XVI. My emotions and impressions are too deep, too many, and too
bewildering to be measured in words.
In the evening Alexandre took me to a play at the Théâtre des Arts. A
big theatre and well filled. The piece was very well staged. The play,
which is adapted from an old Polish legend called “Corrodine,” was well
acted, so that without understanding a word I gathered some of the
sense. In front of us sat Madame Zinoviev with a Comrade and I was glad
when they talked to me in French. It was not until afterwards that I
learnt who she was, much to my amusement, remembering that I had told
her my errand, and that Zinoviev was among the heads promised to me. She
asked me if I would not have to go to Petrograd to do him, but I said
that I thought not, as he was in Moscow at the moment, and that if I
could only find a place to work in, he would sit to me at once. I
wondered why she laughed.