Читать книгу The Greatest Works of E. M. Delafield (Illustrated Edition) - E. M. Delafield - Страница 14

Table of Contents

As my Russian visit draws to an end, I feel that the time has come for me to speak my mind about the Soviet Republic.

But to whom? My fellow-travelers all have opinions of their own which they regard, rightly or wrongly, as being of more value than mine. Most of them are pessimistic and declare that they don't ever want to come back again, and that the Crimea was lovely but the plugs in the hotels wouldn't pull, and Moscow was interesting but very depressing.

Some, on the other hand—like Mrs. Pansy Baker, the American communist—are wholly enthusiastic. (There is no juste milieu where the Soviet is concerned.) How splendid it all is, they cry, and how fine to see everybody busy, happy, and cared for. As for the institutions—the crèches, the schools, the public parks, and the prisons—all, without any qualification whatsoever, are perfect. Russia has nothing left to learn.

It would be idle to argue with them. For the matter of that, it is almost always idle to argue with anybody.

In Russia it is not only idle but practically impossible. One had thought of Russia, in one's out-of-date bourgeois way, as a country of tremendous discussions—of long evenings spent in splendid talk round the samovar—of abstract questions thrashed out between earnest thinkers. All that must have gone out with the Grand Dukes, the beautiful women, the borzois, the sables, and the diamonds.

The Comrades do not discuss; they assert. They contradict. They admit of no criticism whatever.

Nothing could be more difficult or, probably, more unprofitable, than to speak one's mind in Russia concerning one's impressions of Russia. But all the same, I shall try. After all, it's my turn. For weeks and weeks I have followed meekly in the wake of pert and rather aggressive young women, who have told me how vastly superior everything in the U.S.S.R. is to everything in my own Capitalistic country (where they have never set foot).

And although several of the guides have been neither pert nor aggressive, but very obliging and friendly, even they have smiled rather pityingly at any comment other than one of unqualified approval.

In fact, the U.S.S.R., like the Pope, is infallible, and whereas the Pope's claim has at least the dignity of some two thousand years of experience behind it, that of the U.S.S.R. has not.

I shall speak my mind before I leave the country. I am resolved upon it. And I shall have to do it fairly soon too. Odessa is my last stopping-place. A Russian boat is to take me to Constantinople in a week's time.

There is a very intelligent Russian in the hotel. He is a doctor and has lived for several years in the United States. I shall speak my mind to the Russian doctor.

We often sit at the same table for breakfast. Surely he would welcome an impartial discussion of the state of his country from an intelligent visitor?

"I shall be leaving next week, I am going to Turkey and then back to England. Everything I have seen in Russia has been most interesting."

This is not perhaps literally true—but then, so very few statements ever are. After the first fifty, for instance, none of the pictures of Lenin and Stalin was in the least interesting. But it will do, I think, to start the impartial discussion.

"You find Soviet Russia interesting? Yes, that is what everybody says,"

Well, it wasn't a very original opening. I see that now, and wish that I had thought of something new and brilliant instead.

"But," says the Russian doctor, "it is quite impossible for you to form any correct opinion of the country unless you knew it before the Revolution."

Then I've been wasting the whole of my time?

"No one can judge of the New Russia who did not know intimately, over a period of many years and from the inside, the Old Russia."

The only reply I can think of to this is Good God! and I do not make it aloud. But really, if I left home and children and country and spent months of discomfort in places I haven't liked, only to learn at the end of it all that none of my collected impressions are of any value whatever, it does seem rather discouraging. The Russian doctor is either unaware of or indifferent to the blow that he has dealt.

"Many people make that mistake," he remarks somberly. "They think that because they have visited with an interpreter a few museums, schools, hospitals they know something about this country. They do not. They know nothing."

In that case I ought to get a refund from Intourist. They sent me out here on entirely false pretenses.

"Another thing," continues the doctor, evidently warming to his work, "not only is it impossible to know anything about Soviet Russia without a profound knowledge of Russia under the Tzars; it is also absolutely impossible to judge of it in any way correctly at the present date. For that you would have to come again, say in twenty years' time."

How unreasonable he is. If I come to Russia again in twenty years—which God forbid—it will be in a bath-chair.

"So it would really take a whole lifetime," I dejectedly suggest, "to understand exactly what is happening in the Soviet?"

"More than a lifetime. Two or three generations."

I give up, altogether, the idea of speaking my mind about the U.S.S.R. to the Russian doctor. I must find somebody else.

II

I am inspired to choose one of the Odessa Intourist guides. She has a more pliable outlook than most of them and is married to an Austrian husband. She has been abroad, to France and Austria and America.

"Did you like America?"

"Yeah, America was fine."

"Perhaps some day you will go back there. Would you like to go back?"

"Perhaps. But it is not a free country,"

"Not a free country?"

"The workers there are slaves. The women are slaves," says the guide firmly.

"I really don't think they are. American women always seem to me to have a great deal of liberty."

"No. They have no liberty. They cannot do the work that the men do."

"But I don't think they want to."

"In the Socialist state a woman is the equal of a man in every way. She can become a mechanic, an engineer, a bricklayer, a mason. If she is expecting a child she does no work for two months before and one month after it is born, and she gets her money just the same while she is nursing the child—"

I know all this. I have heard it, and more than once, from every guide in every town that I have visited. The treatment of the expectant mother is the cheval-de-bataille of the whole Soviet system—and a very respectable cheval, too—but it cannot, surely, be the answer to every question, the triumphant last word in every discussion?

"I think the care that the Government takes of mothers and children in Russia is most excellent—but on the other hand, there is not very much individual freedom for women in the upbringing of their children. It is all really in the hands of the State."

"The children are very happy. You have seen the crèches, the little beds for them to sleep on in the daytime, yes? Each child has its own toothbrush."

"I know. But the mothers don't see very much of them, do they, if they only have them home at night?"

"In the daytime they are at work. They have the right to work."

"Supposing they didn't want to work, and would look after their children at home?"

"Some of the women become Stakhanovite workers. Then they have privileges given to them—an extra room or a wireless or perhaps a car. We have many like that."

Yes, I know that too. In every factory there is a board bearing photographs of the Stakhanovite workers—who are usually distinguished for their capability rather than for their looks.

I cannot help feeling that the guide is not keeping to the point of the discussion—or even trying to do so.

"The experiment that is being tried over here is most interesting, but it seems to me to allow very little scope for individuality. Isn't that one of the drawbacks to the Communist system?"

"There are no drawbacks to the Communist system."

One looks at her in mingled admiration and despair. Admiration because she has been drilled into such blind and stubborn loyalty to her employers, and despair because it is so obviously impossible to conduct any discussion on such a basis.

I make one more effort.

"But surely there must be a few drawbacks to every system, to begin with, until it has been perfected. For instance, the complete lack of privacy must be trying, such a number of people all living in one or two rooms. Even in the hospitals. I suppose there's no such thing as a private ward."

"Here in Odessa, on the way to the sea, the houses that used to belong to rich people have all been converted into sanatoria for the workers. Those who need it are sent out here for a month, two months, as they require, by their trades unions."

"I know. I've seen them."

"There are beautiful gardens to those houses. They can sit there. And they can go and bathe in the sea."

"That's splendid. Do the workers who need a holiday choose where they go or is it settled for them?"

"They are told by the Government where to go for their holidays."

"That's what I meant. There isn't a great deal of freedom. Don't some of them feel they'd rather decide those things for themselves?"

"Sometimes the doctor orders special treatment. We have near here very celebrated mud-baths that cure all kinds of rheumatism."

It is like a conversation from an old-fashioned travel book:

"'Where is the band-box containing hats of which I asked you to take care, you good-for-nothing fellow?'

"'Sir, if you and your lady will rest awhile at the Inn, there is a fine view of Mont Blanc to be obtained from the parlor window.'"

Nothing is to be gained by going on talking with the guide. I shall have to speak my mind elsewhere.

But how difficult it is! Russians do not want one to speak one's mind. It is true that they like to talk, but they do not in the least like to listen. Least of all, do they like to listen to criticism of any kind. Well, perhaps they have their reasons for that. Only once do I go so far as to ask the lady who shows us round a Palace of the Pioneers in Rostov whether she would not like to visit some similar institutions in England or in America.

"Have you such things in England and America?"

"Yes, certainly. They are not called Palaces of the Pioneers, but we have technical schools and kindergartens and clubs for children and young people."

(The Palace of the Pioneers partakes of the nature of all these institutions, and has a really excellent marionette-show in a special little theater, into the bargain.)

"If you visited some of these places in other countries you could compare them with your own. It would be very interesting."

"No," says the Comrade, employing the simple form of flat contradiction favored by so many of the Comrades. "No, it would not be interesting. We do not wish to see how things are done in capitalist countries. When the foundation is wrong the building cannot be right. We know that our way is better."

I should like to tell her the story of the two Army chaplains, of whom the Church of England padre said to his Roman Catholic colleague:

"After all, you and I are both serving the same God," and met with the reply:

"Yes, indeed. You in your way, and I in His."

But if I did tell her she wouldn't think it funny, nor would she see its application to the official attitude of the U.S.S.R.

One can only congratulate the Government on the thoroughness with which it has seen to it that everyone coming into contact with foreign visitors upholds the theory that Soviet Russia has attained to earthly perfection within the past twenty years and has no longer anything to learn.

I wish one could talk to the old people or the people living in remote villages or the few remaining White Russians who still stay on and contrive somehow to live.

Stories filter through, from time to time...of people who try to get away and can't, of people who live hunted lives, in cellars, of people who are serving long terms of forced labor, as prisoners...Nobody really knows the truth.

It is evident that enormous progress is being made all over the country in civilization, and that the coming generation is to have a fair chance of acquiring health, and education and a limited amount of culture. (Limited, because everything is forbidden that is not directly in sympathy with Communist ideals, and because no society from which individualism is excluded can ever hope to produce creative artists.)

Perhaps it is inevitable that a country which has fought its way from centuries of tyranny and ignorance through bloody civil war, into the throes of a colossal rebirth should meet criticism with this blind, aggressive self-assertion. All the same, it is very far from prejudicing one in favor of the Soviet system to find so many of its exponents without humor, without manners, and without imagination.

III

I am leaving Russia. I sail from Odessa for Istanbul to-night. I have still not spoken my mind.

In defiance of repeated instructions from Intourist—and also from many of my fellow-travelers—to the effect that "tips are neither expected nor required in the Soviet Union," I have tipped several of the hotel servants, and they have accepted my offerings without the slightest demur.

I have said good-by to Intourist, and they to me, without very much abandon on either side.

I have packed. I have spent hours and hours debating within myself the best means of taking out of Russia a thirty-thousand-word manuscript containing my impressions of my travels. Sometimes I think that the general atmosphere of intrigue and mystery, so characteristic of the country, has quite gone to my head, and that there is in reality no reason at all why I shouldn't pack the manuscript in the ordinary way, among spongebags and pajamas. At other times—mostly in the middle of the night, when judgments always tend to become melodramatic—I see the Customs officials seizing the manuscript, and the police seizing me, and each of us being taken away in different directions. And I wonder how I shall be able to explain the position to my publishers.

I have asked advice twice—which is a grave mistake because each adviser says something quite different. Both, however, are agreed that the Customs officials are a great deal more interested in books, papers, manuscripts, and films than in any other form of contraband. This interest is manifested not only when one enters the country but, even more actively, when one leaves it.

Finally, I am decided by the frightful story of an American journalist in the Odessa Hotel who tells me that he once wrote half a novel while he was in Russia and put it in his suitcase to take to America, only to have to part with it at the Customs.

"They said they'd have to look through it," he disconsolately remarks. "That was eighteen months ago, and I guess they're still looking."

"Was it about Russia?"

"No. It was about night life in New York."

"Did you tell them that?"

"Sure I did. But they couldn't any of them read English, so they took it away to find someone who could."

I think of my own manuscript, entirely written in pencil, and feel that it may well take a very long while indeed before any persons are found who can read it. And when they do, they almost certainly won't like it.

"If you've written anything at all that you want to take home with you," says the American journalist significantly, "just carry it under your coat or somewhere. You'll find it saves a very great deal of time."

I think he is right.

He is less right when he adds: "It's only for a few minutes after all."

In my experience of Russia nothing is ever done there in the space of a few minutes.

With an agreeable feeling that I am being like someone in a novel all about international gangs, I lock the door of my bedroom and proceed to wedge the manuscript against my spine, under my elastic belt.

It is agony. I shall never endure it for five minutes, let alone five hours. I remove the hard cover of the manuscript, find quite another part of my spine, and try again. Bad, but endurable.

If I put on my loose coat now I shall be much too hot, but I defy anybody to notice anything abnormal in my back view.

Besides, I shall face them all the time, and look them straight in the eyes with that directness of gaze which is well known to be the outward sign of utter rectitude of spirit.

The least agreeable of the guides has been given the task of seeing off the departing tourists. There are only six of us: two Swedish astronomers, who came to see the eclipse of the sun, an elderly English couple, a young American college boy, and myself.

We drive down to the docks. I see the last of the beautiful crescent of houses above the sea-front, the last of the two-hundred steps down to the Black Sea, the last of Karl Marx preening himself on the pedestal originally occupied by the (probably better-looking) statue of the Empress Catherine, the last of the town that I have liked best of all those I have visited in the U.S.S.R.

I have no regrets. If I had any I shouldn't be in a position to indulge in them, partly because I am preoccupied by the displeasing thought that if I get much hotter most of my manuscript will probably become blurred and undecipherable, and partly because I feel ill.

Either the black bread, the salad-grown in a drain?—or the drinking-water has chosen this inconvenient moment for taking its toll of me.

If I faint—and I feel as though, between the heat, my coat, and my indisposition, I certainly shall—someone will have the brilliant idea of loosening my clothes, and the manuscript will fall out, and I shall come to under a strong police guard...

I do not faint. Instead, I get out of the car with everybody else, and we all go into a shed on the docks and the inevitable wait begins, and goes on, and goes on, and goes on.

A great number of rather dégommés-looking Comrades are scattered about the long shed, all engaged in their usual occupation of waiting. Their luggage includes bedding, little hand-carts, bundles of wraps (one of which startles me by suddenly turning out to be an old woman), bags, boxes, and the customary mysterious portfolios.

Some of the Comrades eat dried fish. Some of them sleep. Almost all of them cough and spit.

"I wonder what we're waiting for," says the elderly Englishwoman.

She can't have been very long in Russia.

But the guide—as usual—has her answer.

"They are not yet ready," she says.

"The Customs officers?"

"They are busy."

As there are none of them in sight, the guide can't possibly know if they're busy or not. She just says it automatically. I admire the spirit of the elderly Englishwoman who replies at once that they ought to be busy over our luggage, not over anything else.

The guide, for once, has nothing to say, and we all continue to await the pleasure of the Customs officials.

(By this time most of my penciled records must have come off on my back.)

A little baby, swaddled to the eyebrows in shawls, screams and howls from behind its mullings—as well it may. Nobody unwraps it or takes much notice.

Nobody seems to be taking much notice of anything. We are all sunk in fatalistic apathy. It is an atmosphere that seems very characteristic of a Russian gathering. Even when the officials at last crawl in, one at a time, from an inner office, nobody is in the least excited.

One or two of the people nearest the counter heave their luggage on to it and then turn aside in a dejected way, as though knowing that nothing is really going to happen yet, and ashamed of their own misguided impetuosity.

Only the elderly English couple, stalwart and determined, march up with their solid, respectable-looking suitcases and take up their stand in front of the counter. The guards at Waterloo probably looked like that, only with better effect; for the French are more impressionable than the Soviet Comrades, by a very long way.

The college boy is consulting the guide about his films and his photographs. He has been consulting everybody about them throughout the last two days. His predicament is very far from being peculiar to himself.

He has been in Russia four weeks and has taken a great many snapshots. Belatedly, he has discovered that no undeveloped films will be allowed to leave the country. Very well—he will have them developed and printed in Moscow. He does and is asked to pay a sum in roubles that would handsomely buy up films, photographs, camera, and all, twice over. We have all heard of this outrage and we have all assured him, with varying degrees of sympathy, that the same thing has happened to other tourists in the U.S.S.R. before now.

He seems unable to believe it. I watch him walking agitatedly to and fro, until a new wave of nausea comes over me and I clutch the sides of my bench and pass into a brief, unpleasant coma.

When I emerge, wet through and with the manuscript surely in worse case than ever, the college boy and his films are being dealt with by the officials. Strip after strip of negatives is being unrolled, held up to the light, and scrutinized. The inspection requires the full attention of all the Customs officials—not one is left to attend to anybody else.

The Comrades, seeming neither surprised nor resentful, continue to cough, spit, sleep, or eat fish. The crying baby, still muffled, is being carried up and down by a young man with a beard, who holds a book in one hand and reads as he walks. (Culture)

The tourists mutter a little among themselves at the new delay, but are, I think, supported by the hope of some dramatic discovery, such as that the films include a snapshot of the interior of the Kremlin (where nobody, except officials is now allowed to set foot) or a complete set of naval and military plans of the utmost importance.

Nothing of the kind happens.

However, the last roll of all, which the American youth has not had the sense to slip into his pocket, has not been developed. It is, says the young man, nothing. Just some pictures of the scenery in the Crimea.

Officials of any other nation might be expected to take one of two courses: either to accept this statement and pass the films or to reject it and confiscate them.

In Russia, the situation apparently calls for the formation of a kind of minor parliament. The original officials send for more and higher officials, who come out of the main office one by one, mostly in shirtsleeves, and gather solemnly round the little red cylinder lying on the counter.

The Intourist guide hovers about, talking a great deal and looking anxious.

"If you like, they will keep and have develop' and send after you."

"That'll be very expensive, won't it?"

The guide shrugs her shoulders. We all know that it will be very expensive—and very uncertain into the bargain.

"Better let them go," advises the Englishwoman.

Her husband supports her, though he adds sternly that the principle of the thing is all wrong from start to finish.

The college boy, muttering that it's disgraceful, decides to let the films go. Twelve views of the Crimea scenery are lost for ever to the United States of America.

Nobody else's luggage yields anything sensational.

IV

Mine is the last to be examined, owing to the qualms of sickness which keep on breaking over me and preventing me from moving.

Perhaps I am, after all, starting one of the illnesses against which I was solemnly inoculated before leaving England. I suppose inoculations wear off after a time?

If it's smallpox they won't let me leave the country.

Say nothing about it.

I would rather die at sea than in Russia.

"What is this?"

"A book."

"It is a book you got in Russia?"

Obviously, it is a book I got in Russia. It is a large album with Russian text, containing some beautiful reproductions of the pictures in the gallery of Western Art at Moscow.

As it is large and heavy I have packed it in the bottom of my suitcase, and from thence it is extracted—with a bad effect on all the layers of things above it.

The conscientious Customs official looks through every single page of it. I do not know what he expects to find hidden between them. Perhaps he just likes pictures.

My other books get off lightly—so do my clothes. My letter-case is turned inside out, my very small diary severely scrutinized, upside down.

I am asked to open my hand-bag.

What shall I do if they suggest searching me?

They do not.

They repack my suitcase, quite obligingly, and shut it up again—the heavy Russian album is now on the top of my clothes instead of underneath them—and I have passed the Customs.

"Can I go through to the boat now?"

"You must wait a little," says the guide kindly. "You are tired, yes?"

I am, in my own opinion, at the point of death—but I do not say so.

"It's rather hot in here."

"There are many people."

The Comrades certainly do look numerous as they crowd round the long, dirty wooden counter on which their belongings are now being opened and examined.

The guide keeps on looking at me—no doubt I am pale green by now—and I feel I ought to distract her attention.

Would this be a good opportunity for speaking my mind, for the first and last time, in the Soviet Republic? It must be now or never.

Quite suddenly a crisis supervenes between the Customs officials and a middle-aged and rather battered-looking Comrade. He shouts, and they shout, he tries to get out at the far door that leads to where the boat is lying, and is prevented.

"What is the matter?"

"His passport is not in order. He cannot leave."

"Poor man!"

"He is upset because his family, they will have to go."

"Without him?"

"He cannot go. His passport is not in order."

"But they'll stay behind with him, won't they?"

"No, they will have to go. It is all arranged."

How very dreadful this is...The unfortunate Comrade with the defective passport is now in tears on our side of the counter and his family on the other—two women, a little boy, a baby, and the grandmother whom I mistook for a bundle.

They say good-by, in a very spectacular way, across the counter, though I think there is really no reason why they should not all be on the same side.

"When will he be able to join them?"

"I cannot say."

"I think it would be far better if they all waited together till his papers have been put in order."

"No," says the guide. "They cannot. They have given up their room. There is nowhere for them to be now except the ship."

And I realize that what she says is quite true.

The Swedish astronomers look disturbed, and say "Poor things!" and the college boy gives it as his considered opinion that Russia is not a free country, no, sir, it is not.

The unfortunate family are saying good-by again, and the baby is being handed to and fro across the counter repeatedly. It makes me, if possible, feel dizzier than before and I can watch them no longer.

The far door has been opened. I go out—manuscript and all—along the dock and up the gangway and onto the waiting boat.

I am off the soil of Soviet Russia.

In the very next berth to ours lies the Jan Rudzutak, in which I sailed from London Docks to Leningrad months and months ago.

Time and the hour, I think sententiously, ride through the roughest day. And on the whole, I have found it a fairly rough day.

But it ends on a note of unforeseen brightness.

The Comrade whom I left in such trouble among the officials is, at the eleventh hour, after all allowed to sail. He is hustled up the gangway and into the steerage and all his family receive him with cries and screams, and the baby is again bandied about from hand to hand.

"But how did he get through if his passport wasn't in order?"

"Definitely, by bribery," says the English traveler.

He brings forward no particular evidence to support this statement, and I shall never know whether it is really true or not. But I think that most probably it is.

So I go down to my dirty little cabin and retrieve my manuscript and find it less damaged than I expected, and ask a steward if I can have a little brandy to restore me (but none comes), and have every intention of going on deck to see the last of Soviet Russia, but find, after all, that I can't stir and must remain, ignominiously prone, until I feel better.

The ship has begun to move. The journey away from Russia has started.

In a few minutes I think I shall be asleep, although a Russian loud-speaker is blaring jazz somewhere on deck, and a group of Comrades, apparently exactly outside the porthole, is discussing the Government's new suggestion of making abortion illegal—just as it is in capitalist countries.

I wish I had spoken my mind, just once, in the U.S.S.R. Even though I know that nobody would have paid any attention to it, and even though it occurs to me to wonder whether I am absolutely certain of what my mind really is, concerning the new Russia.

THE END