I enjoyed their bantering, happy in the consciousness that such types still existed within the Soviet Union. For they betrayed positively no interest in world affairs, being solely concerned with their own personal experiences and those of their intimates. Indeed, they were strangely reminiscent of the eighteenth century, so remote did they seem from the violent and fanatical passions of the Russian Revolution. Yet it was exhausting to talk to them. I kept feeling a desire to seize them and carry them out of Russia. For it was painfully obvious that they were unhappy, bored, overwrought by the drabness and intensity of existence, by the lack of refinement, of gaiety, of relaxation. The strange beings of the courtyard below terrified them. They were merely tolerated, almost in hiding.
That was the impression they gave me, while they laughed and joked about their lives, even claiming that life in Leningrad was exciting. It was merely the gaiety of hysteria.
Their brother was even more pathetic. As he was too nervous to stay in a room with a crowd of people, I was brought to see him in his own room at the back of the kitchen. He was a student. Pale, haggard, extremely intellectual, he was so shy that he could barely talk in my presence. He could not keep still. His eyes moved continually in all directions, but they could never meet mine. At first I thought he suffered merely from the effects of terror. Afterwards, I learned with horror that he suffered from hunger. When his shyness wore off a little and he spoke to me, he astonished me by his wide knowledge of philosophy, of history, by his acquaintance with world politics, by his love of literature and by the acute intelligence which he brought to bear on everything he discussed. Yet his intelligence and erudition only increased the discomfort I felt in his company. He was like a colt that has been ruined by too much racing in his second year. He was hectic, with the unhealthy precocity of the consumptive or the cripple. His sombre eyes and his starved face were accusing. I felt that I myself was in some way responsible for his hunger and for the terror from which he had suffered.
There was no trace of fanaticism in his nature. He was neither for nor against communism. He seemed too exhausted to have any active convictions about social life. Alas! Such refined types are destroyed by the violence of Revolution.
Later we had a meal. I examined the rest of the company as we were seated at table. There was a wild and magnificent film actress, who had just recovered from a nervous breakdown and seemed on the point of having another one. There was an engineer, who, alone of all the company, looked well-fed and happy and indifferent to such grave issues as the world revolution and the liquidation of human frailties. He was a type of the new Russian aristocracy, a member of the skilled profession of engineering. He was a self-satisfied man, interested in his toilet, his food and his dancing girls. He was uninteresting. There was a director of a film company, a seaman from the ship and others of vague character and profession.
Although the quality of the food was not excellent, owing to the ‘crisis of alimentation,’ the company left nothing to be desired from the point of view of my peculiar needs at the moment. Practically everybody spoke a little of either French or English, so that I could follow the trend of the conversation without difficulty. It was as exciting as a boxing match, the same sort of nervous tension and the fear that the entertainment might too suddenly come to an end; or that something dreadful might happen; for example, a fear that everybody, including myself, might have a nervous breakdown.
Indeed, I could not help thinking that each person, excepting the engineer, simulated gaiety, as the only safeguard against the nervous breakdown which would assuredly result from a calm realisation of his or her position in life. It was for that reason that they got together in a mass, afraid of being alone. That was why they laughed and talked incessantly, to avoid the danger of thought.
‘These people,’ I thought, ‘cannot hold out much longer. Unless they attack Europe shortly and plunder its store of food and gaiety they will all assuredly collapse.’
‘It’s terrible now’ one woman said to me. ‘I was for four hours in the shops to-day trying to buy a few potatoes. I was utterly exhausted. Finally I had to return without any potatoes. It has become really bad during the last few months. You should have come last year or the year before. Then there was plenty to eat. When is the Revolution going to come in Europe?’
‘The Revolution will come in Europe,’ I said politely, ‘when people eat better in Leningrad than in any village of France.’
‘I see,’ she said dubiously.
We sat down to table at five. We arose at ten. These five hours had passed without leaving any definite impression on my appetite or on my mind. Such is Russia. It is a land where everything has been scientifically organised except time; possibly for the reason that its philosophy of life has been harnessed to the wheels of modern science and Einstein has recently discovered that time does not exist. Our old proverb that ‘time is precious’ makes one unreasonably irritated by the scientific Russian attitude. And they had promised to take me to the cinema.
We finally set forth at half-past ten. There were six of us when we started. The conversation continued in the street with great violence. Some of our party left us. We were joined by others. An argument began as to which cinema was the best to visit. The doctor’s wife suddenly became furious about something and stood stock still on the pavement for twenty minutes. At half-past eleven, a young man with more wit than the rest suggested that we should enter a public house, have some beer and decide definitely on some cinema.
By this time I had reached such a state of coma that I was speechless, half paralysed, frozen with cold, weak with hunger, stupefied by the barrage of talk, severely bruised, being dragged hither and thither by my companions and buffetted by the crowds in the street. I had grazed my shin against a perambulator which had been driven against me, at full speed, by a fierce woman. I had been rammed in the small of the back by six men who were trying to bring a ladder across the pavement. A troop of young Communist Pioneers, either going to, or returning from an expedition of social importance, had carried me fifty yards or so within their ranks. A young woman of our party had seized me violently by the arm, halted me and whispered with great intensity into my left ear: ‘Do you believe in physical or in spiritual unions? I tell you spiritual unions are purely counter-revolutionary. Every man and woman should have spiritual union only with society. Whereas physical unions are the manifestations. . .
My lower lip hung as if it had been stretched with violence, sewn to my chin for an hour and then let loose. And therefore it was only natural that I pricked up my ears and offered up a prayer of thanksgiving when I heard the young man mention beer. There was a pub nearby. We entered. But alas! When I found myself within the place and sat down in half darkness at a little table and looked around at a large room, where a ghostly company sat in silence, I realised that even the tavern did not offer any escape from the gloom of Leningrad. It was like a tomb. Not a shout, not a laugh. All the drinkers were thin, hungry, wretched, sober. My lip hung still lower and I offered no resistance to the wretch who kept whispering in my left ear: ‘Under our new proletarian society, sexual union shall take the form of spontaneous action generated by a combination of things, such as an accumulation in the male . . .’
The inevitable happened. When the waiter arrived to take our order, a thin and melancholy woman of our party got to her feet and made a statement.
‘Comrades,’ she cried, striking the table. ‘The situation is such. We are in the midst of a revolutionary crisis. It is therefore counter-revolutionary to waste time consuming alcohol in a den of the Tsarist regime. We must leave here at once. I am a member of the society for the liquidation of drunkenness.’
I was too weak to protest by throwing a chair at the woman’s head. So I laughed hysterically. And my laughter produced the odd effect of making me feel at home with the company. I reached the same level of idiocy as they and I went forth babbling about the liquidation of alcohol in every way except by drinking it.
‘Comrades,�
� I said, when we got into the street. ‘The best protest against alcohol is the consumption of food. The French have stabilised their capitalist system since the war by eating more than they drink. Let us help to stabilise the Proletarian Revolution by eating more than we talk. To my hotel then. Let us celebrate my arrival in the Soviet Union by eating. It is a bourgeois habit, I admit, but the human race has been addicted to food for so long that I conceive it dangerous to give up the habit at once, at least before the successful conclusion of the Five Year Plan.’
I spoke at some length, using all the reserves of my strength to convince them that it was necessary to eat. I even went so far as to say that, if they all got nervous breakdowns at once, they would be acting in a counter-revolutionary manner, by taxing the resources of the hospitals and causing a crisis in the treatment of the most prevalent disease within the territories of the Soviet Union. They agreed with me and we went to my hotel.
It was now midnight and the streets were crowded with people who were just emerging for a stroll after their evening meal of conversation. Although there was very little traffic on the Nevsky, the noise of conversation made a din as great as the German barrage that preceded the great offensive of 1918. So great was this noise that a loud speaker, installed by the government for the propagation of the Soviet Gospel outside a public building, was inaudible. But the doctor assured me that this loud speaker did good work during the day, when it had merely to contend with the noise of motor traffic.
We entered the hotel. It was a fashionable place before the Revolution. It is now a mournful building. It gives the impression of being a Rowton House masquerading as the Berkeley, with uniformed police patrolling the building lest the pauper staff might rob (or rape) the visitors. Instead of receiving the guests with respect and hospitality, the members of the staff regard strangers with suspicion that is akin to hatred. These proletarians regard the hotel itself with grave dislike. I felt they would cheerfully set fire to it, from the way they roamed about, scowling, doing their chores as carelessly as possible, without hurry or industry.
The dining room was enormous, with a lofty roof, decorated in an extravagant and vulgar fashion. At the far end there was a platform, whereon an orchestra was preparing to begin its nightly adventures. The centre of the floor was bared for dancing. The guests were odd. Some were foreigners. There were even ladies in evening dress and three of the men wore dinner jackets. But the majority of the guests were Russian, incredibly shabby, some bearded and with Tolstoyan blouses, others clean shaven and in European dress. Some of the women wore a pattern dress, green jumpers, black skirts, red bonnets. Other women wore what they could find in the shops, without attempting the uniformity of costume encouraged by the government.
What gloom! The gloom of Leningrad was here also. I felt that everybody was afraid to be merry. Everybody realised that the corpse of Tsarism was present at this macabre feast. They realised that they were in a museum. The ghosts of the anciens were there in the room, those roysterers who had eaten and drunk and were then carried upstairs to sleep or love.
One also felt that there were police about.
It took our company thirty minutes to order some food. During that time the orchestra began to play. It was charming to hear pre-war tunes again, especially ‘Alexander’s Rag-time Band’ and ‘The Turkey Trot.’ People danced. How melancholy!
After an hour the waiter came to take our order. That is the normal time to wait for a Russian Soviet waiter. Whether through sheer cursedness, or through a desire to maintain his proletarian dignity, the Bolshevik waiter rarely comes under the hour.
While awaiting the waiter, I was entertained by a party of bloused Russians who were getting drunk at a table nearby. They were drinking Rhein Wein which cost a fabulous sum at that hotel. They consumed it like beer, tossing off their glasses at a draught without tasting the wine. Bottle after bottle was consumed. Rapidly they became indefinite in their gestures, raised their voices, laughed foolishly, looked about them lecherously. Suddenly one of them sprawled across the board, upsetting a bottle. The pale German wine flowed in a full stream from the bottle’s neck, as a gesture of contempt, on to the drunkard’s outstretched beard. The sot put out his tongue to lap the spilt wine. Then he closed his eyes, letting his tongue hang upon his dripping beard. He snored. His companions watched him, laughing and waving their arms in an idiotic way.
A group of waiters (who might, perhaps, have been serving the customers were it not for this entertainment) held a conference, which lasted ten minutes. Then the largest of them approached the sleeping sot and laid him back against his chair, high up, in the way that railway porters dispose heavy luggage on trucks. Then he tilted the chair slightly backwards and dragged it nonchalantly across the floor, to a door at the right of the orchestra. Another waiter held open this door in a bored fashion, until the first, looking equally bored, passed out with the sot.
Noticing that I watched this scene with interest, the doctor pointed out that, unhappily, such things still existed in the Soviet Union, but drunkenness was rarer there, taken on the whole, than in bourgeois countries.
‘My dear fellow,’ I said, ‘instead of deploring the scene, you should understand that I value very highly this experience. It excites my imagination which was merely irritated by things you find creditable. I have no idea of believing that your Revolution is a failure because one or more Russians get drunk in an hotel. In England I imagine one hundred thousand people get drunk every night and are carried to bed. In Ireland, since the population is one-tenth that of England, ten thousand people are carried to bed, or fall into ditches, since they are more rustic than the English. But in this case, I was interested in the variation of the method of getting drunk and in the splendid efficiency of the method of expulsion. The latter shows a high degree of civilisation, the former a state of barbarism which is disgusting. One almost feels that the sot was a teetotaller for the greater part of his life, and has begun to drink without having previously received the proper tuition. Comrade, you would do more for the Revolution and for the abolition of drunkenness, by teaching your people to drink like the French, than by your stupid liquidation societies. Wine is beautiful. So has alcohol its munificent uses. Drunkenness is. . . . Look! There goes another victim of the society for the liquidation of drunkenness.’
Five of them were wheeled out, one by one and deposited in some mysterious place outside the door.
We were served with an omelette at two o’clock, two hours after we entered the hotel. By that time I was so exhausted that I was unable to eat. Almost immediately afterwards the company broke up. I went to my room. It was very cold and there were hardly any bedclothes. After I had lain awake for an hour shivering, I got up, dressed, put on my overcoat and my gloves, wrapped the solitary blanket around me and lay down again.
It was impossible to sleep. But it was pleasant lying awake, owing to the activity of my mind. I was surprised to find two separate modes of thought working simultaneously, but in opposite directions. One mode was antagonistic to Russia and to Bolshevism. It wished to take me home at once. It was surly, selfish, cynical, that of a man old before his time. It made much of things that I had despised until then. It was cowardly, envious, hypocritical. The other mode of thought, to my amazement, suggested that I should quit Europe forever, wander into the eastern interior of Russia, become an adventurer in the Soviet Army, conquer large tracts of territory for them, espouse the religion of Bolshevism with enthusiasm and rejuvenate myself, by forgetting all of my life that had gone before. This mode of thought was thrilling. The very idea of obeying it made me feel ten years younger. It even transfused its energy to my body, so that I felt I was lying on the bed in a Soviet military greatcoat instead of my own civilian overcoat. But even at that moment, I was careful to remind myself that my new military adventurer’s overcoat was vastly different from the one worn by the soldier on the brink of the pier.
The second mode of thought easily conquered the first and assum
ed complete possession of my consciousness. I went to sleep, whispering to myself, like a second Napoleon:
‘To Moscow.’
Chapter IX
She Could Not Convert Me
But morning has no moon or ghostly shadows to fan the dreams of unreality. Even the wildest love is chastened when the body awakes, either made normal by refreshing sleep, or exhausted by nightmares. When I awoke, reality struck me with unpleasant force and I longed for home.
I had eighty roubles in my pocket. With that I had to pay my hotel bill and my fare to Moscow. For I must get to Moscow since I had left London in order to go to Moscow. If I returned without having gone to Moscow, the whole purpose of my journey would have been wasted. It would be just as if Napoleon had turned back from Borodino. Even though his having gone on to Moscow possibly lost him his empire, it is unquestionable that his career was rounded off from an artisitc point of view by his having reached Moscow. To Moscow, then, I must go.
I cursed myself. For I should be forced to besiege my Russian publishers for my royalties in order to maintain myself in that city and to get my fare home. Should I be successful in recovering from them what they owed me, I had no doubt but that my success would entail the performance of something unpleasant to my nature; I would have to allow myself to be led around by guides, examine buildings, factories, museums, children being cured scientifically of kleptomania, peasants being collectivised and a multitude of other social activities that do not interest me. Indeed, I may state here that these activities are counter to my nature, namely, those activities which are concerned with the eradication of human vice and social anarchy. For if I am a writer, forced to live by my work, I must realise that man’s viciousness has provided the material for all of the world’s great literature, from the Iliad to Macbeth and The Brothers Karamazov.
Then I suddenly remembered that my purpose in coming to Russia was to write Lies About Russia. At once I grew cheerful. For the more I suffered, the more courage I should have to write lies about it. So I jumped out of bed, took off my overcoat and gloves, slapped myself violently, danced a jig and shouted for a waiter in order to restore my circulation. There was a bell and I rang that, in the hope that somebody might come to give me some breakfast.
I Went to Russia Page 10