Off at last--what a hectic day. Litvinoff telephoned to me in the
morning from the Commissariat to say that my big wooden cases (my
coffins I call them, they are the same shape) were going to be conveyed
from my studio to the station, and that I need not concern myself about
them. It was not until midday that I learnt for certain that Professor
Lomonosoff was going to start to-night. In Russia one makes no plans,
things happen when they happen! With a rashness that nearly proved
reckless, I distributed my few belongings among my friends. To a lady
doctor-friend of Andrev who had been nice to me, I left all my
stockings, a box of soap, a skirt, a jersey and my cloth overcoat. To
the maids in the house, my shoes and goloshes, workbag, jersey,
fur-lined dressing jacket, pair of gloves, and hat. To Rothstein, as a
parting gift, my hot-water bottle and medicine case. I started on my
journey in the clothes I stood up in. The maids, to my intense
embarrassment, kissed my hands and nearly wept. I nearly kissed them in
return. I started off with Litvinoff, and Rothstein came to the front
door to see the last of me. He overwhelmed me with compliments: “You
have been a brick, you have played up splendidly, you have never
complained.” I tried to explain that I hadn’t played up, and that I had
not been anything except very happy. I might have added that living
Communistically had proved to me that one must either love or hate the
people one sees every day for any length of time. Hate may be tempered
into dislike, and Love may be more appropriately termed friendship or
affection, but it was certainly affection that I had grown to feel for
Rothstein. He seemed somehow to belong to our environment, we should
have missed him if he hadn’t been there. Just occasionally he said
things about England that roused opposition in me. I feel about England
as most people do about their relations, that I may abuse my own, but no
one else may. I realised, when I got to know him better, that his
attitude was not so much one of hostility to England as of intense pride
in Russia, and so I forgave him. During my first days in Moscow,
Rothstein unfailingly cross-questioned me at supper as to how I had
spent my day, where I had lunched, whom I had seen, and what time I had
come home. At last I said to him: “Don’t ask me, try and find out,” and
I chaffed him so that he had to give up asking. I never knew whether
there was a motive in his curiosity or not. At all events, he never was
anything but a kindly and helpful friend to me. I drove away from No.
14, Sofiskaya Naberezhnaya in an open car in the bright light of a full
moon, glittering stars, and hard frost. Litvinoff, observing that I
looked back at it rather sentimentally, said: “That is your Moscow home,
the next time you come you will bring your children,” and I felt that I
did not look upon it for the last time. We drove first to the
Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, as he had some packages of papers to
pick up there which he had taken away in the morning to have sealed up
for me. I waited outside in the car for some time. When he rejoined me
he was agitated, my “coffins,” he had just learnt, were still at the
Kremlin. Organisation had miscarried, it was “somebody’s” fault. The
lorry had waited for them three hours, but the sentry at the building
had refused to deliver them up. What could have happened? Everyone was
at the big Opera House meeting, so all telephoning efforts to get hold
of responsible help had been in vain. We had three-quarters of an hour
before the train was due to start. I suggested driving to the Kremlin to
see what we could do. Happily I still had my pass on me, so we got in by
the sentry. The building, ever before so busy, was now utterly deserted
and resonant. I unlocked the door of my studio, and there were the two
coffins lying packed and sealed and unmoved. I lifted one end of one,
it was far beyond our combined strengths to carry, and the motor could
not have taken them. We gave it up in despair. Down in the courtyard our
car refused to move, the chauffeur was tinkering at it. It seemed to
have a real congested chill. Train time was drawing near. The station
was some way off. “Stay,” said Litvinoff. I had visions of staying,
perhaps indefinitely, having parted with all except what I stood up in.
I looked round at the beloved Kremlin, to which I had already said
good-bye not expecting to see it again. It seemed more beautiful than
ever, more still, more dignified, more impassive. The clock in the old
Spassky tower complainingly chimed three times, it was a quarter to
seven. At last the car breathed, pulsed, started, then stopped. Then
pulsed, grunted, and started again. We were off, and, as the road lay
down hill, it seemed possible that the car, which was misfiring badly,
might just get there. It seemed to be an evening of mishaps, and I felt
fated not to leave Moscow. However, we reached the station at exactly 7,
and I gathered up all I could in each hand, and ran towards a crowd that
stood by the only train in the station. Litvinoff shouted to me “you
needn’t run.” Indeed, I need not, as the only train in the station was
not the train of Professor Lomonosoff. His special came in at another
platform about half an hour later, and never went out till after 9. Had
we known, something could have been done in the time to get the cases to
the train, also I could have gone to the meeting and heard Lenin. No one
was more frantic than Lomonosoff, who prided himself on his train being
punctual. But it could not be helped, the train had just returned from
the Urals, and was in a state of disorder.
Litvinoff, when he said good-bye to me, promised to send on my cases by
courier to Reval in time to catch the Stockholm boat. He then aroused my
curiosity by telling me that he had been a better friend to me than I
should ever know. I begged him to explain, but he said that I must wait
ten years or so.