“But who are you here with? Who is responsible for you?”
“Kameneff,” I said.
“But Kameneff is at the front.”
“Yes.”
“Then you are alone? H’m, that is very dangerous in a revolutionary
country. Do you know Karahan, Tchicherin’s secretary?”
“Yes; he is living in our house, so is Litvinoff.”
“Ah, Litvinoff, I will ring him up.”
He did ring him up, but what he said I could not understand. Litvinoff
told me later that Trotsky had asked him if I was all right, and if it
would be indiscreet or not to show me the front. Litvinoff gave me a
good character.
At 4 o’clock he ordered tea, and had some with me. He talked to me about
himself, and of his wanderings in exile during the war, and how,
finally, at the outbreak of the Revolution, he sailed on a neutral ship
from the United States to return to Russia; how the British arrested him
and took him to a Canadian concentration camp. He was detained a few
months, until the Russian Government succeeded in obtaining his release.
He was particularly incensed at the British interfering with the
movements of a man who was not going to Britain, nor from a British
colony, nor by a British ship: “But I had a good time in that camp,” he
said. “There were a lot of German sailors there, and I did some
propaganda work. By the time I left they were all good revolutionaries,
and I still get letters from some of them.”
At 5 I prepared to leave. He said that I looked tired. I said I was
tired from battling with my work in such a bad light. He suggested
trying by electric light, and we agreed on 7 o’clock the next evening.
He sent me home in his car.