Mrs. Kameneff went to her work as usual at 10 a.m. At breakfast half an
hour later Leo Borisvitch, as he is called, promised not to do any work
or keep any engagement until he had taken me to my new headquarters in
a
[Illustration: BIG BELL, KREMLIN.]
[Illustration: COLONNADES OF THE ALEXANDER MEMORIAL.
_p. 67._]
guest-house. We were delayed in starting by John Reed, the American
Communist, who came to see him on some business. He is a well-built
good-looking young man, who has given up everything at home to throw his
heart and life into work here. I understand the _Russian_ spirit, but
what strange force impels an apparently normal young man from the United
States? There also arrived to waylay us a painter called Rosenfeld, who
wore canvas shoes like a peasant, and kissed Kameneff on his arrival. He
offered to show me museums and things, but our only medium was German,
and his was a good deal worse than mine, which was a great drawback. At
midday, however, we broke free, and started off with my luggage. I bade
farewell to the Kremlin, and we drove across the river to a guest-house
on the opposite bank facing the Tsar’s Palace. The guest house is the
requisitioned house of a sugar king. It is inhabited by various Foreign
Office officials, also by Mr. Rothstein and an American financier, Mr.
W. B. Vanderlip. A beautiful bedroom and dressing-room are mine, with
walls of green damask. It looks more like a drawing-room than a bedroom.
The house is more or less exactly as the sugar king left it, full of a
mixture of good and bad things. It is partly modern Gothic and partly
German Louis XVI. The ceiling of one of the big rooms is painted by
Flameng, but the best pictures (there were some Corots) have been taken
to a museum. One is extremely grateful for its comfort and hospitality,
even if its taste in decoration is not of the best.
Moreover, one can enjoy it lightheartedly, for the exiled sugar king, it
is rumoured, had other palaces abroad, and never came to Moscow except
for a few weeks in the year. He also has money invested abroad and is
not in want, and can well spare his Moscow palace for so good a purpose.
His old manservant waits upon us, and takes the tenderest care of the
house in the belief that the old régime will return, bringing the owners
of the house with it. He says openly that he is not a Bolshevik, and
takes much pride in changing our plates a great many times, and making
the most of our humble fare. He insists that so far as it depends upon
him we shall behave like perfect ladies and gentlemen and be treated as
such.
I stayed at home all day unpacking at last, and settling down into my
temporary home. Kameneff promised to come back in the course of the day,
but he didn’t. He telephoned however, and arranged that I should be
taken to the Ballet with the party from this house. We sat in the
Foreign Office box. The ballet was “Coppelia,” beautifully produced, and
the orchestra one of the finest that I ever heard. The theatre is the
size of Covent Garden, and is decorated with crimson and gold. There are
boxes all round the first tier, and the house was packed throughout.
The audience consisted of working people, who had admission free through
the distribution of tickets to certain unions. They were a motley crowd,
chiefly _en blouse_. In the Royal box, reserved for Commissars and their
wives, there was a man with a cloth cap. The women were eating apples.
In the box next to ours there was an old woman with a shawl over her
head.
It was intensely moving to see the absorbed attention of the audience.
People leaned their elbows on the ledges of the boxes and watched the
ballet with an almost devouring interest. There was not a cough nor a
whisper. Only when Coppelia came to life as the mechanical doll, there
were delicious low ripples of controlled laughter from the children. At
the ends of the acts people left the stalls to rush, not for the exits
to the foyer, but to the front of the gangways nearest the stage to see
the dancers close to, and to applaud them. The people were tired people,
who had worked all day and had earned a good evening and were enjoying
it to the full.
My only contretemps was with a little stenographer from the Foreign
Office who was in our box. She observed that I had on the red enamelled
star of Communism, and that I wore white gloves. One, she said,
contradicted the other; the white gloves were bourgeois. I argued that
it only mattered what was in my heart, and not what was on my hands. But
she would not be pacified, so I removed the gloves. Considering that my
costume was a red tweed skirt with a red, wool jersey and a
tight-fitting cap, I had thought that gloves would not make me
over-dressed.
If my evening’s pleasure was neutralised by the concentrated aroma which
arose from the great unwashed, it is only fair to observe that there is
no soap in the country, and most people have, for two years or so, only
had the one suit of clothes in which they stand up. No wonder----! In
the car coming home I met Mr. Rothstein, who is living in the same
house. I wished I could recall the abusive article which I read about
him in an English newspaper, but all I remember is that he is not to be
readmitted to England. He seems to be an energetic and forceful little
man. I expect he is pretty clever. We had supper together after the
theatre, and conversation
[Illustration: SERGE TROTSKY AND ALEXANDRE KAMENEFF.
_p. 67._]
drifted on to that eternal comedy, the Nationalisation of women. I
happened to say that this had done more to harm the Bolshevik cause than
almost anything, and, moreover, that quite serious people still believed
it. Mr. Rothstein interposed rather sharply, “Well, a little select
circle which reads the _Morning Post_ perhaps believes it.”
Is it possible, I wonder that he is right, and that the “little select
circle” do not count as much as I have all my life taken for granted
that they did?