Crucible

by Charles Emmerson

  Dmitri brings his son to see Uncle Vladimir. Inessa Armand’s children are also allowed to visit Gorki. Vladimir’s sister Maria does not approve; but Nadya, his wife, does. There is a row, bringing on one of Lenin’s headaches again. A dog is acquired, to whom Vladimir develops a strong attachment. The impatient revolutionary is given various tasks to improve his motor skills. He tries basket weaving, but finds it irritating and gives up after one basket. He scrawls a letter to Stalin–his writing is so bad that Maria has to countersign–asking him please to rid him of the two German doctors who have been assigned to him: ‘extreme concern and caution can drive a person out of his mind’. At one point, Vladimir comes up with the idea that the Gorki estate tennis court should be used instead to breed rabbits.

  There are pauses, obstacles, reverses–but as the weeks go by, the dictator’s health continues to improve. He is sleeping better. His dreams are less troubled. ‘You can congratulate me on my recovery’, Vladimir writes in his own hand to his secretary in July: ‘The proof is my handwriting, which is beginning to look human again.’ He asks her to start preparing books for him, firstly of science, then fiction and lastly politics (he is not allowed that kind of book just yet). A few days later he is able to celebrate the next breakthrough. ‘I have been permitted to read the papers!’ he tells Stalin. ‘Old papers from today, and new ones from Sunday.’

  After an angry outburst against the ban on political visitors–it is the lack of politics which makes him ill, he tries to explain–the doctors allow Lenin to meet with fellow members of the Politburo. Leon Trotsky is invited, but does not come. Stalin travels down to Gorki. A bottle of wine is prepared to slake the Georgian’s thirst.

  One day, Lenin sends a note to Stalin enquiring about progress with the expulsion of intellectuals he proposed before he fell ill. Vladimir picks on the staff of some magazines he has decided he does not like. ‘All of them must be chucked out of Russia’, he writes. ‘No explanation of motives–leave, gentlemen!’ Lenin’s note is immediately passed on to the GPU. At last Vladimir will be able to rid Russia of those annoying people who disapprove of him, the baying crowds he dreamed of earlier in the year, hoping for Lenin the mountain climber to fall from the snowy peaks to his death in the ravines below. But he won’t. Oh no.

  SEEFELD, AUSTRIA: A momentous decision. Members of the inner circle of psychoanalysis–the Committee–decide to address each other using first names and the informal German Du. Sigmund Freud will continue to refer to the Committee using surnames and the formal Sie.

  On holiday in Berchtesgaden he has sad news from Vienna to report to his family–the suicide of his niece Mausi, Anna’s prospective tennis partner, by poisoning.

  EASTERN TURKESTAN: Enver Pasha, the last of the Ottoman Empire’s three wartime leaders to remain alive, is run to ground in Turkestan. His intrigues have caught up with him. His plans for a Muslim rebellion against the British, against the Russians, against the world, have come to this: a small band of followers, tracked down to a hillside lair. He dies with a Koran in his hand.

  LAKE GARDA: What a transformation! The humble villa which Gabriele D’Annunzio got his hands on in 1918 is now being turned into a dream of Italian glory in plaster, paint and gold. Gabriele acquires colonnades, tombs and statues to fill out the garden. He creates a throne for himself and surrounds it with seventeen columns to signify the greatest Italian victories of the Great War (and a broken half-column to represent Caporetto). He calls his new palace the Vittoriale degli Italiani–the Shrine of Italian Victories.

  The poet has zigged and zagged a bit since his Adriatic adventure. He has written some successful books, and then spent the proceeds as quickly as he can. His talent for extravagance is undimmed. He refuses the opportunity to stand for election–parliament would not suit him–but, somewhat quixotically, accepts a role as leader of the Federation of the Worker of the Sea, a union often in competition with Fascist syndicates in Italy’s main ports. Some whisper that drugs have got the better of him (cocaine, it is said). He is well known as something of a sex fiend, a condition he links to his creative passion. For most, however, Gabriele D’Annunzio is still the hero of Fiume. He declines to visit the town, despite the best efforts of his old legionnaires, who tell him he could take it over again whenever he wants.

  As always, his attitude towards Mussolini is unclear. Should Benito consider him a risk? No doubt if Gabriele put his mind to it, he could be. But does he want the responsibility? His haranguing days appear to be over, at least in public. He prefers to communicate with his adoring fans in writing. Then, in Milan of all places, D’Annunzio is flattered into saying a few words in public–hardly a speech, and no one can quite understand what he is saying anyway. But the content hardly matters, for Gabriele is surrounded by a group of blackshirts while he talks. Though he does not even use the word, Il Popolo d’Italia proclaims this as D’Annunzio’s formal coming out as a Fascist. This is NOT what he intended, he complains.

  A few days later the poet falls out of the window of his house and bangs his head. Was he pushed or did he jump?

  GORKI: By the time the summer heat reaches its peak in August, ten million Russians are being fed every day by the American Relief Administration. There are almost no reports of deaths from starvation now. The situation is improving.

  In Gorki, Vladimir has the worst seizure he has had for a long time. All he can say is ‘yes, yes’, then ‘no, no’, and finally ‘oh hell’. The right side of his body twitches. Doctors observe a reflex identified by Babinski–André Breton’s teacher at La Salpêtrière all those years ago–and generally associated with a disease of the spinal cord or brain. It takes nearly two hours for him to recover.

  Another morning, at breakfast, he feels so good that he could eat for a hundred people. Stalin comes to visit again, wearing an impressive white jacket. Maria experiments with taking photographs of her brother with the Georgian bank-robber in his weekend finest.

  BERLIN–MUNICH: The public order measures introduced by emergency decree after the assassination of Walther Rathenau are now passed permanently into law.

  In Munich, Adolf Hitler, newly released from his one-month prison sentence, vehemently criticises the legislation. He claims its purpose is not to stabilise Germany but simply to shut down healthy criticism, free debate and alternative points of view to that of the so-called moderate centre. It is a flat-out lie, he declares, to say that the republic is somehow under threat.

  Meanwhile, in the shadows, Adolf works on an idea for a putsch to take control of the Bavarian government, with the expectation that success in Munich would spark nationalist uprisings elsewhere in Germany. He tries to make peace with the most important nationally minded organisation in Bavaria, whose leader claims to be able to mobilise forces across the whole of Germany through allies from Stuttgart to Stettin.

  The excitement comes to nothing. There is no coup. Hitler feels let down by his supposed allies. He swears he will not let it happen again.

  NEW YORK: Based on all its legal and financial travails of the last few months, William Du Bois publishes an in-depth exposé of the Black Star Line, every bit as detailed as the New York World’s dissection of the Ku Klux Klan last year, and every bit as damning.

  There are excerpts from sworn testimony showing the cack-handed management of the shipping line. There are stories of bills unpaid and monies stolen. There are tales of cargoes wasted and losses hidden. There is no need for much commentary. The testimonies and the figures speak for themselves. The exposé covers five searing pages in The Crisis–in between an account of the difficulty Shuffle Along is having in finding a new permanent home (white entertainment monopolies are blamed), a report on the latest push for the anti-lynching law, and a review of a French novel by a black author from the Gabon who has just won the Prix Goncourt.

  Up the road, Garvey presides over the latest convention of the UNIA. A full-blown cult of personality has grown up around its leader by now. Recordings of his speeches are av
ailable for purchase; large portraits of him grace the walls.

  BÉAL NA BLÁTH, CO. CORK, IRELAND: Late August. A tour around an Irish constituency by its elected representative. The day plays out hazily: drinks in various country pubs, a visit to a former schoolteacher, an encounter with an old friend of his mother’s, a meeting with his brother.

  Michael Collins’s advisers are against such a journey at a time like this. But he insists: ‘Ah, whatever happens, my own fellow countrymen won’t kill me’. Éamon de Valera is said to be in that part of the island too, holed up in a hut somewhere. Perhaps the two will meet. It is evening before Collins’s convoy starts back to Cork, down a quiet valley, the light falling softly through a fine drizzle.

  A cart blocks the road. Collins’s car slows down. A small IRA ambush party, on the point of dispersing after a long day’s wait, open fire. Another gunfight to add to hundreds before it these past few years. An hour of shooting. A bullet enters Michael Collins’s skull. Ebbing life, his body is carried around the Cork countryside in desperate search of a priest. Collins’s men get lost in the dark. They find blown-up bridges and rain-sodden fields barring their way.

  The world’s newspapers report the death of a hero, a paragon of virtue, the humble Irish peacemaker. The ambush is magnified out of its true dimensions, and raised from a gunfight into a full-scale battle, with two hundred IRA fighters imagined as the slayers of this single man, his detachment outnumbered ten to one, his last generous words reported as ‘forgive them’.

  How can Ireland ever recover from such a blow? Republican prisoners in Irish jails sink to their knees to recite the Rosary for their fallen enemy’s soul. Churchill sends condolences. On the day of his funeral procession in Dublin, an Irish flag is draped over Collins’s coffin, loaded on a gun carriage led by six black horses, priests and soldiers marching behind. A single flower, a white lily, rests upon it, too: sent by Kitty, Collins’s fiancée. No innocence left in Ireland’s war.

  De Valera is still at large.

  DUMLUPINAR, TURKEY: To divert the Greeks from the threat of an imminent attack, a false story is circulated that a tea party is to be held at Mustafa Kemal’s house in Ankara on a particular day in late August 1922. The Turkish attack comes the following morning at dawn. The Greeks fall back in disarray. At last Kemal is able to issue the order for their wholesale expulsion: ‘Armies! The Mediterranean is your immediate objective. Forward!’

  Two hundred miles away, in Smyrna, word of the Turkish advance is met with surprise. But not yet with panic.

  GORKI: Almost back to normal. One day, Vladimir is able to ride a horse for a mile or so. Nadya and Vladimir are taken out to hunt for mushrooms in a nearby forest. Vladimir jokes about an article by an English journalist referring to Nadya as the ‘First Lady’ of the Soviet republic. She is the ‘First Ragdoll’, he declares, a jovial comment on the poorness of her clothing.

  Towards the end of the summer, Vladimir allows himself to entertain a truly delightful thought: a return to work in the autumn. He presses his case on his doctors. They see they have no choice. To prevent Vladimir Lenin from working would kill him just as surely as allowing him to work as hard as before.

  Vladimir has plans for a reshuffle of his government. Perhaps things can be smoothed out between him and Trotsky. Leon is offered a position as one of his formal deputies (one of several). The principled non-tipper turned war supremo categorically refuses Lenin’s offer as humiliating. He has his heart set on a grander job managing the planned economy. Anyway, he is about to go away on a month-long holiday.

  BLACK FOREST, GERMANY–NEW YORK: On the search for the best fishing this side of Horton Bay, Michigan, the Hemingways head to southern Germany, where their dollars go even further than in Paris. Indeed, with the rate of German inflation ticking as it is, a dollar seems to go a little further every day. For the first time in his life, Hemingway decides to grow a moustache. Back in America, a book entitled Tales of the Jazz Age is published.

  SMYRNA: Broken Greek troops and hungry refugees are pouring into Smyrna. The quayside heaves with soldiers. This is not a retreat, it is a rout. It is not a setback, it is a shocking defeat. The Greek commander himself has been taken prisoner. The harbour is crowded with boats trying to make good their escape. Smyrna is left without police, without protection.

  For a few days, the mood of Smyrna’s foreign and Christian communities hovers between despair and resignation. There is nothing to do now but wait. And what is there really to fear? Once the Ottomans ruled Smyrna, and it flourished. Now a different group of Turks will be in charge. Foreign ships lie at anchor, stern, iron-clad representatives of the Great Powers. Surely they will not allow the city to be punished. Kemal is not cut from the same cloth as Enver, Talaat and Djemal, and anyhow, Smyrna is not some remote and dusty Anatolian village. It is a key destination on Mediterranean shipping routes, famed for its Levantine cosmopolitanism, known to all the world. Besides the Europeans and Americans who live here, many local Armenians and Greeks hold foreign passports.

  On Saturday, with no police to stop it, the looting starts. Greek military warehouses are emptied out. Rival groups of Greek soldiers shoot at each other in the streets as the political tensions between them break into the open. Sensible civilians stay indoors. Turkish cavalry enter Smyrna that afternoon and, despite a few gunshots aimed at them, process along the quayside in perfect discipline. Here is admirable evidence that the optimists were right: rule by the Turkish nationalists will be no better or worse than life under the Ottomans. The Turks assure the public that they will maintain order in the city. They will not allow the mob, from whatever community, to take over. But by evening the disturbances have already returned. Broken glass, gunshots, the occasional explosion: the sound of ancient scores being settled and opportunities for personal enrichment taken.

  An atmosphere of suppressed panic takes over the Christian parts of the city. There is a rush for places of supposed safety. Armenians shelter behind the walls of their church compound. Europeans take cover in foreign hospitals. Native-born Americans head to the protection of the consulate, while naturalised Americans are gathered in the Smyrna Theatre. Anyone not formally entitled to be there is thrown out.

  AUTUMN

  MOSCOW: An illustrated supplement of Pravda appears: Comrade Lenin on Vacation. There are several photographs of the dictator. In one he has picked up a cat and is cradling it in his arms. In another he is walking down a lane in the garden at Gorki. There are pictures of Vladimir with his wife Nadya. And a picture of him with Stalin, with the hale and hearty Georgian smartly attired in his bright white jacket while the clearly frail Lenin wears rumpled green-grey. This is an image which matters: the loyal Georgian by the master’s side. (Trotsky has meanwhile just been reprimanded by the party for a breach of Communist discipline in refusing the job he was offered.)

  Comrade Stalin writes an article to accompany the photographs. ‘I have to do it, since the editors insist’, he claims modestly. He describes two visits to Gorki, the first in July, the second in August. On the first, Lenin looked like an ‘old fighter’, his face creased with fatigue, but inquisitive as always. On the second, Stalin writes, he was a changed man: ‘Calmness and confidence have fully come back to him.’ The Georgian describes the range of weighty topics that Lenin wished to discuss with him–currency matters, foreign affairs, the harvest, America’s position–which reflects well on both Lenin’s acuity and Stalin’s importance.

  They even discussed rumours of Lenin’s death. Lenin’s response, the Georgian writes, was spiteful towards those who wish him ill: ‘Let them lie and that way console themselves; there is no need to take away from the dying their last consolation.’

  SMYRNA: Outside the city, skirmishes continue between conquering Turkish troops and Greek stragglers trying to escape to the sea. The largely foreign-owned villas of Bournabat are ransacked. Churches are violated. The new Turkish governor–a general appointed by Mustafa Kemal, with a fearsome reputation for hi
s activities against the Christian population in the Black Sea region–calls the Greek bishop of Smyrna to his headquarters, denounces him as a traitor and then sets him free on the streets of the city, where he is immediately lynched.

  These are strange days in Smyrna. No one is sure who is in charge. No one is prepared to take responsibility for dealing with the nightly outbreaks of violence: not the foreign forces at anchor outside Smyrna, who are wary of being seen to intervene, nor the Turkish authorities who seem unable or unwilling to rein in their men. Accurate and impartial information is impossible to come by. Stories of resistance against the Turks circulate alongside rumours of imminent catastrophe for anyone seen as a threat to their grip on the city. A hysterical Armenian priest begs an American naval officer to save the lives of thousands of his co-religionists, said to be sheltering from Turkish sniper fire and bombings, fearful they will all soon be killed.

  Christian refugees from the hinterland fill the waterfront and the city’s parks. They will not be able to return home, insists the Turkish governor. Their houses and villages have been destroyed by Greek soldiers in their retreat. ‘Bring ships and take them out of the country,’ he tells a foreign delegation, ‘it is the only solution’. He breaks off the conversation to greet the arrival of another unit of Turkish cavalry. ‘Look at them,’ he says proudly: ‘five hundred kilometres in twelve days.’ Greek prisoners of war are paraded through town. The city’s bars are still open.

  Visiting Smyrna for the first time since its reconquest, Mustafa Kemal meets a young Turkish lady, Lâtife, from a good family, just returned from legal studies in France, and promptly falls in love. Lâtife seems purer and more suitable as a mate than Fikriye, a cousin by marriage. Kemal is delighted to discover she wears a locket around her neck containing his picture. One afternoon, as the ransacking in the Armenian quarter of the city continues and as the foreign powers scramble to organise the departure of their own citizens, Kemal turns up at the Grand Hotel Kraemer Palace and orders a glass of rakı. He asks idly whether King Constantine ever did the same. On discovering the answer is negative, Kemal replies suavely: ‘in that case, why did he bother to take İzmir?’