‘Give me your word of honour. A state secret you know. Do you know what happened at the United Services Club last night?’
The little wretch leaned close to rne and said in a secret tone:
‘I am surprised that you never heard of Panistrati. His book made a sensation in France and England. They forbade it in Russia. It angered them very much, for this Panistrati was received by them as a great writer, treated with great honour for a whole year in the Soviet Union, where he went about agitating and behaving as an enthusiastic Communist. Then suddenly he left and wrote a book, denouncing Bolshevism. So it is said, for I have not read the book. But the case of my father was prominent in the book. I am sorry you have not read it.’
Then he added in a melancholy fashion:
‘My father was manager of the Europa Hotel at Leningrad. He had also an apartment which was coveted by Communist officials. In order to get the apartment, because apartments are difficult to get, they rigged up false accusations against him. They succeeded. All our family were punished with my father. I had to walk the streets for six months. Then the captain got me this job. It is better than hunger. The captain is a good man. He also protects me against those who grumble against the presence of Josef, that is my name, the son of the intriguer. And Panistrati gave a whole chapter to my father’s case. Oh! I am sorry you have not read it.’
It was obvious that he preferred the publicity his father got by being incorporated in the ‘book of Panistrati’ and the consequent ‘fame’ of the whole family, to the apartment and the position as manager of the Europa.
‘I was a wireless operator. Now I am an oiler. In the same way they try to tell us that Trotsky is writing for the counter-revolutionary papers. But I have been abroad and I know this is untrue. Trotsky is still a revolutionary. So am I. In spite of injustice I remain true to my class. I have fought in the Red Navy. I would again fight in the Red Navy. But my friend, it is difficult to put up with the envy and intrigue that is everywhere. On this ship, there are low scoundrels, envious wretches, greedy ruffians, wolves in the clothing of sheep.’
Suddenly he told a bawdy story, jumped up, said he desired love, did an obscene dance and darted off to his fo‘c’sle.
I burst out laughing.
‘Ah!’ I said to myself. ‘I am delighted to find they are after all human and not yet cogs in a machine, without soul, or sin, or vice. There is hope for humanity, as long as the new rulers of the earth, the conquerors of Europe, remain fickle and treacherous to one another, greedy of possessions, subject to the changing emotions which are the germs of beauty. Out of passion, whether good or evil, comes all joy of life. Man, even under Communism, when all the liquidation societies have exhausted themselves, will still remain a man, a crude brute, full of evil, but likeable.’
Yes, much more likeable than these damned monks in their shabby Tolstoyan blouses. For who wants virtue or temperance or godliness for a bed mate?
After dinner I again talked to the captain. He now told me about his life. He, like little Josef, the Parisian Jew, had also suffered. But whereas the sufferings of Josef, the Jew, were a trifle unreal and a trifle pleasing to merry Josef, the sufferings of the captain were terrible and they had left black scars on the soul of the captain, who was eaten with an implacable hatred of his enemies the bourgeoisie. I have never met anything so cold and so terrible as the hatred of the captain for the bourgeoisie. He whom everybody on board praised and loved for his gentle kindness, was a wild beast when he thought or spoke of the bourgeoisie, that intangible monster with a million heads. So does the Christian monk hate that other intangible monster, the devil. So did the early Christians hate those monsters, the Pagans.
Born of parents who were serfs, he became a revolutionary before he could read or write. He took part in the revolution of 1905, was imprisoned, escaped from Riga and went abroad, to travel around the world as a sailor and general labourer at all manner of work. ‘I was then a member of the Social Revolutionary Party,’ he said, ‘and afterwards a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. Now, of course, I understand that it is only within the ranks of the Communist Party the world revolution can be organised.’ He apologised for himself when he spoke of his past political affiliations. It was just as if an early Christian admitted having once been a Pharisee. He told me of revolutionary activities in America and Australia, how he had been put in jail and tortured in those countries, how he was also jailed and tortured in England; and then how he returned to Russia in order to continue the great work of liberating the toiling masses of the world.
Of the world? I began to doubt if he were still an international communist as he continued to talk. His hatred of foreign capitalists (for it was foreign capitalism especially that had persecuted him) had thrown him back on the broad bosom of mother Russia.
‘Look,’ he cried, cat the English workers. They all want to dress like their masters. They all want to wear the same trousers as the Prince of Wales and to wear the same tie as the Duke of York. They are slaves. We Russians are different. All our great men have always tried to dress as simple peasants. This is the blouse that Leo Tolstoy wore. The great Lenin never bothered about his clothes. In the old days our students were all rebels and they dressed like workmen. The spirit of freedom is born in the Russian. And when people tell me that life under Tsarism was a tyranny I tell them that the life of the worker and peasant under Tsarism was not so bad as the life of the European proletariat under capitalism. If a worker starved in our cities he went to the villages and got fed. The great Russian country lay ready to receive him. They boast of their inventions and of their science and of their civilisation and their culture and their art. But we can show them all these things in equal or even in greater proportion. No longer must Russia allow herself to be called the barbarian at the gates of Europe.’
As he spoke he almost lashed himself into a state of frenzy, so that I could hear the ghoulish characters of Dostoievsky thrusting themselves forward from between his teeth, the Karamosovs, the Idiots, the Devils and the strange creatures from the House of the Dead, wild and wonderful geniuses, ashamed of their barbaric ancestors, clawing greedily at all the beautiful philosophies of Europe, to use as tools for paring off their savage humps and warts.
Lo! The very newest and most potent philosophy was this dictatorship of the proletariat, for the use of which the insurrected Russian people had slain their Little Father and the whole horde of their nobility.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The Romanovs were dirty Germans, come to plunder Russia. They were not Russians. Peter the Great. There was a Russian. If he were alive now, I am certain he would be a sympathiser with our Party. I am certain he would understand we are continuing his work. We preserve all his work-tools in a little chapel at Leningrad.’
Then, with glittering eyes, he told me about Morosov, a Russian intellectual who had been imprisoned by the Tsar and had stayed fifty years in prison, being released by the outbreak of the revolution. When this man had crawled, astounded and unbelieving, into the light of day, a free man, it was discovered that he had planned an enormous book in jail. In spite of the shortage of paper this book was being published, volume after volume. And the book went to prove that neither Rome nor Egypt, nor Babylon ever existed. Nothing ever existed but Byzantium. And Byzatium is the mother of Holy Russia.
The captain believed in the lurid insanity of this prisoner, whose intellect had burst clear of the earth’s moorings during fifty years’ confinement. Not only did he believe, but he scattered these volumes among his crew and he told me proudly that they also believed. They were stirred into enthusiasm by the assurance that; nothing ever existed but Byzantium, the mother of Holy Russia. Therefore Russia is the source of civilisation and no Russian ever again need feel an inferiority complex when confronted with the civilisation and culture of Europe.
Mad, mad! But it is only the mad who conquer worlds. This was the madness of Christ and of Mahomed, the madness of Alexander who deified himself, the
madness of Napoleon who believed in the guiding star of his destiny. Conquest is to the mad and defeat is for us, who linger by the stagnant pools of reason.
Suddenly he rose up before me, unwinding his long body until he reached his full height. Smiling on me, as gently as the Christly Prince in The Idiot might smile, he said in a pathetic voice:
‘I have two parrots in my home at Leningrad. The comrades ask me why I develop bourgeois habits, by buying such toys as parrots. I tell them that parrots live for hundreds of years. My parrots are now young. Perhaps they will see Communism. I will never see Communism. But as long as I live I will make war on the bloody bourgeois. My children are growing up. They too will carry on the war against the bloody bourgeois. Now I go to the meeting of our Soviet.’
At that moment, the doctor entered the room to say the captain was wanted at the meeting of the Soviet.
‘You come also,’ he said to me.
I followed them. The night was dark on deck. The sea loomed up, hurriedly rushing past the sides of the floundering ship, in a mysterious fashion.
We moved aft. Presently a light gleamed from an open doorway and I heard heated voices arguing. It was the meeting of the Soviet. I felt a thrill. At once it occurred to me that this perfectly legitimate meeting of the Soviet reminded the captain of the old days, when he held exciting and illegal meetings in cellars and in caves, with scouts and all the awe-inspiring paraphernalia of conspiracy. Then as now he was plotting war against the bourgeoisie. Then he was powerless to act, except in a crude and violent fashion. Now he was master of a powerful unit of warfare, a whole ship’s crew and a ship, sailing the open seas, with his flag strung proudly at his mast. How delighted he must be with himself, I thought.
I entered the room with them and sat on a form near the door. Then indeed I too felt awed. I do not know why, but even now, months later, I can recall the terrific spiritual and emotional reaction to that sight, all those seamen gathered together under the portrait of Lenin, arguing about the governance of their ship. The doctor tried to interpret what they were saying, but I paid no attention to him. One after the other they got up and shouted and perorated and shook their fists at one another, with the same force and enthusiasm one finds among the characters of an Elizabethan drama; the same violence of gesture, the same crazy sincerity, the same extravagance of emotion. The meeting summed up and contained all that I had seen on board the ship, all that I felt of mystery and of power in Bolshevism. I tried to ridicule it, to tell myself that they were playing at being a Soviet, at running the ship in common. But the atmosphere swept aside reason and ridicule. It was over-powering, like the sudden awe that overcomes a man in a lonely cave at night and forces him to run flying before spooks.
Only with the difference, that I wanted to jump up and cry out I was a Bolshevik. I trembled on my form and did not rise.
Presently I crept out into the night and leaned over the ship’s side, listening to the rolling sea. I could still hear their voices raised in argument, the words Soviet, Socialist, Industry, Bourgeois, Proletariat rushing out at me. But above all the savage energy in the voices, the triumphant outburst of force; while the ship sailed and the gloom of night about the meeting place made sinister their strange conference.
Somewhere on the ship a man was playing a Balalaika, a wailing tune that rose and fell like the steppe. That is where they come from.
Chapter IV
Jews And Vikings
On the following afternoon we sighted the coast of Norway. I was leaning over the side with the doctor.
‘What sort of cargo do we take in Norway?’ I asked him.
‘Zinc,’ he said. ‘Metal for Five Year Plan.’
‘Where do we get it? Where are we going?’
‘Odda. Small town in Fiord. I been twice already in Norway. I like country. My ancestors were Scandinavian. Some Scandinavian, some Jewish, some Tatar. Great deal Tatar, great deal Scandinavian, a little Jewish. Born in North Russia. I am biologically an internationalist.’
‘That is very interesting,’ I said, looking at him closely.
‘It is interesting scientifically,’ he said with excitement. ‘And for this reason specially. Great mixtures of blood, such as in my life machine, cause great social disturbance. Then progress comes. In Soviet Union we have more than one hundred different races. I myself do not know the names of them all. We shall mix them together as compounds are mixed in a scientific laboratory. Then we shall build great civilisation with this mixture. We shall teach this mixture a common proletarian culture, what you call world culture. Then human race, at one jump, go forward five cultural miles. If from dawn of history, so called, until now equal one cultural mile, then from outbreak proletarian revolution until realisation of socialism equal five cultural miles.’
I looked at him still more closely. His forehead was furrowed with thought. His eyes blazed. It was something more than his belief in Communism that excited him.
‘How long do you think that will take?’ I said quietly. ‘To realise socialism.’
‘I know not,’ he said. ‘Perhaps one hundred years. Perhaps two hundred years. That is not important. It is the struggle, the new moulding of a world type that is interesting, destroying old prejudices and building new, great, wonderful world culture.’
‘So to speak,’ I said, ‘you hope to evolve Nietzsche’s Superman through the medium of the proletarian revolution.’
‘No, no,’ he said angrily, just as I had expected. ‘Nietzsche was a savage, a sick savage. Great genius but. . . .’
‘He did not understand Marx/ I said gently.
‘No,’ said the doctor eagerly. ‘He did not.’
He excused himself and ran off to attend to one of the crew.
‘Ha!’ I thought. ‘He says he is a Tatar and a Norseman and a Jew, but I think he is all Jew, from Tartary and Scandinavia and North Russia. Truly an internationalist, for the Jew has no country. No matter where he suckled at the earth’s breast he remains a Jew. The earth seems to shun him and to deny him characteristics that; she grants to other types of men and animals. He cannot change his form or his habits no matter whether he wills to be born on the Himalayas or the pampas of the Argentine. Everywhere he is pursued by the curse of his heredity. And all the time he tries to fly from it, to deny his origin, to be assimilated by his environment. But all races cast him forth and eschew him. And in rage he invents religions that are based on human brotherhood, on the negation of race and of caste and tries to force their acceptance on all humanity, so that at last he may disappear from the face of the earth as a Jew and come to life as a brother of all men, a blood equal of Mongols and Slavs and Teutons and Franks and Latins. But shall he ever succeed? Shall this crusade for the abolition of classes result in the abolition of the Jew?’
While I thought, leaning over the side, the doctor returned and said:
‘See that yacht? Good sport, with yacht. I once go to Stockholm from Leningrad in yacht. I am a member of Workers’ Yachting Club in Leningrad. Formerly it was belonging to the Tsar. Yes?’
He walked on and I continued to think:
‘Certainly there is nothing artificial in his passion for yachting, as there is in the passion of Jews in capitalistic countries for adopting the sports and habits that are essentially Gentile. Seeing a Jew riding a horse in Rotten Row is a pathetic sight. One can read in his face that he is aware of the contempt and hostility of the watching Gentiles. Even when one of them is extremely rich and powerful, he knows that even the meanest and poorest Gentile still sneers at him as a “dirty Jew.” What an amazing phenomenon! Even I myself, who admire Jews for their intelligence, their generosity, their kindness, cannot help feeling that they are inferior. What is it?’
Suddenly I hoped that the Russian Revolution would at last liberate the Jews. And then, as if he had read my thoughts, the chief mate approached at that moment and said:
‘Tell me. You notice Jews on ship?’
‘Yes. I have noticed them.’
‘Only as stewards.’
‘Here lots of them. How many you count already?’
‘Three.’
‘I count seven,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I find more. Now in Russia I think everybody become Jew. I get afraid. I think, maybe, I wake up in morning and find myself Jew. Ach! What good Jew on ship? In storm what good Jew? No understand sea. Not man like you and me. All wrong. This ship all wrong. No profit. Too much crew. No work enough. All for propaganda. If this ship owned by private company then everything different. Private company has to make profit, so they find good crew and make everybody work.’
He sighed and added:
‘On this ship captain good sailor. Second mate good sailor. Bo’sun good. Chief engineer also good. The others no good. I go small sleep.’
He was stupid. He had not the quick intelligence of the doctor, nor the world consciousness, nor the will to achieve things beyond his immediate environment. He was a common fellow; decent, kind, efficient at his work, but common. Yet if I were asked to choose between saving him and the doctor from death I should choose to save him. His blood and his nature were more akin to mine than the doctor’s. Even though he was stupid, he might breed genius. The doctor, I felt, could never breed anything but inquisitive, analytic brats, without the earth’s rich, violent exuberance. I found that strange.
Yet how illogical! The mate disliked seeing Jews working as seamen; but only for the reason that they were good for buying and selling. Instead of being glad that they were giving up their nefarious habits, of trading for profit, and taking to difficult, badly paid, uncomfortable work like sea-faring, he would prefer that they stuck to their trading and left the dirty, unprofitable work to him and his kind. Of course, he implied that the Jews took to the sea for ulterior motives, to use the ship as a medium of propaganda, instead of using it for the purpose for which man had invented it.
I Went to Russia Page 4