I Went to Russia

by Liam O'Flaherty

  It is a terrible thing to be old, for the old are unable to submerge their intellects in the delusions of youth.

  Suddenly the gong for lunch sounded and we all dived for our food. The doctor and myself entered the mess room together. Still feeling alien, even hostile, I looked with suspicion and embarassment at the ten officers who were already seated at the table. They took no notice of me. They were busy with their food, attacking it without ceremony, in a manner I had forgotten, but which I once knew among the lumberjacks of Canada. Each helped himself from a great dish that lay in the centre of the table. Nobody passed food. Each leaned over his neighbour. They all talked and laughed as they ate. Among them were engineers, mates, electricians, wireless operators, all bronzed, powerfully built, healthy. No two faces belonged to a single type. Some were Jews. Others were Slavs. There was a Cossack and a Lithuanian and a Tatar from Tiflis. But they all had a common vitality, a common exuberance, a common lack of the morbid introspection which comes from a development of individual character. They were a mass, even though there were only ten of them and it was obvious that they loved being a mass, being together, being brothers. Even at table, they gave me the impression of a great avalanche prowling down, irresistibly, upon Europe, sweeping before them all the decadent rubble into which our civilisation and power has subsided. Woe to us!

  ‘My God!’ I thought. ‘Just think what we can oppose to these men; an army of butlers, parsons, refined bank clerks and a generation that is only interested in jazz, tennis, chocolate and senseless fornication. Undoubtedly we are doomed.’

  The doctor said something to them in answer to their questions. It seemed that he said I was not a bad fellow, for they all began to smile at me and they accepted me into their brotherhood. I felt at one with them. Then I thought:

  ‘My boy! You have been a slave without a country all your life, because you have been born with the spirit of a free man and you have been forced to live with slaves. Admit it. You have felt all your life that the earth you trod did not belong to you, neither in Ireland nor in England nor anywhere else. What are you even as an artist? A despised and tolerated outcast, forced to beg for food from dullards that are not fit to lick your feet. Here is your chance to ally yourself with people who are your equals. They want to make the whole of humanity feel that the earth belongs to them; at least those with free spirits like yourself. You are rough and hearty like these fellows. Why cling to Christ-ridden Europe, whose blood has been sapped. To hell with Europe. To hell with the British Empire. To hell with Ireland. To hell with the Pope. Become a Bolshevik.

  Then the captain entered the room. At last I saw a sign and portent of the power inherent in the Bolshevik idea.

  Chapter III

  The Bolshevik Skipper

  ‘That is the captain,’ whispered the first mate, who sat beside me.

  I saw an extremely tall man take off a shabby overcoat and hang it on one of the pegs behind the door. Then, with a hollow cough, he slowly turned about and scanned the table. Rarely in my life have I seen such an impressive countenance, head and body. His hair was shorn to the bone of his skull, so that it was impossible to determine its colour. But he had not shaved for a week or more, so that his jaws and upper lip were covered with a grey stubble. His face was like that of a monk, sombre, brooding, as of one who looks out from a holy place on a wicked world. He had a powerful jaw and an equally strong mouth, as is generally the case with fanatics of more than ten years’ standing. The continual tension caused by the presence in their minds of a fixed idea forces the muscles of their jaws and lips to develop. His eyes were also those of a fanatic. For it was obvious that they were by nature gentle and almost feminine, whereas concentration on ideas of desperate violence had succeeded in giving them an outward appearance of ferocity. They looked fiercely. Then they blinked and became gentle, ruminating. Then again they quivered and became fierce. He had a beautiful forehead, high, broad, capable of holding great knowledge behind its wall. His nose was ugly, short and stubby.

  From this head, his body dropped away to a great length, almost supine but with the suggestion of loose strength given by a sleeping panther. It would be dangerous to rouse him. His hands were so big and his arms were so long.

  He wore a shabby grey Tolstoyan blouse and an equally shabby pair of trousers. Contrasting his shabby clothing with the pride in his countenance, I could not help feeling that he dressed shabbily through vanity; that same monkish trait which makes ‘the fanatics of poverty’ go abroad in sackcloth and ashes, in tattered rags, or in simple white gowns; as if to say to the whole of wicked humanity:

  ‘Behold us. We are so holy, so pure and so godly that we need no fine raiment to make our beauty manifest.’

  I expected him to speak to me, since I was his passenger and a guest in his mess room; but he sat down unobtrusively on my left in the seat vacated by the chief engineer. Without knowing it, I had occupied the captain’s seat at the head of the table. He neither spoke nor looked at me. Nobody else took any notice of him. Neither did he notice anybody else. He helped himself from the dish in the centre of the table. The conversation went on. Now those that were left in the room were bantering a new arrival.

  At first I thought the new arrival was a good looking boy, rather effeminate, even more effeminate than the painted apprentice I had seen the previous evening. Then the chief mate leaned over and whispered:

  ‘You see who come now. The third mate. She is a woman.’

  Now I examined the new arrival in astonishment. It was obviously a woman and except for the fact that she wore trousers and pilot jacket buttoned to the throat, she did not look very different from the manly women one sees about London. But her face was different from the faces of our lonely ones. Although her features were delicate and pretty, her face showed great force of character, together with that harshness always acquired by a woman in a position of authority over men. Her manners were like those of the men; at least she attempted to be like them. But as I watched her, I noticed that she toyed with her food a little pettishly and seemed a trifle irritated by the lack of refinement. She had not the free and natural gusto of the males. But she was doing her best to be manly. The first mate obviously disapproved of her, for he kept winking at me and raising his eyebrows sarcastically. The others made fun of her without mercy. I was astonished to see the ease with which they treated her. There was no question of sexual desire at the root of their bantering. It was as if she were a young sister who had insisted on joining an excursion which was really for men only. Even the sombre captain joined in the bantering.

  Presently he said to me:

  ‘You have never seen a woman serving as mate before?’

  He spoke slowly, but in perfect English. His voice was almost as refined as that of a woman. Indeed, it seems that all Russian voices have a feminine quality. They have none of that masculine gruffness which the voices of our men possess. Is it because the Russians lack our northern virility? ‘Of course,’ quoth our slender-waisted young exquisites, in voices of the highest soprano.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have never seen women officers before on ships. We have none.’

  ‘I know,’ he said with a smile. ‘It is the result of our revolution. There are already two in our merchant service. I don‘t know whether it will be a success, having women as officers. I don‘t know why any woman would want to take on this bloody job. Still, if they want to do it, they are perfectly free. She is a good officer, but a bit strict. A little too strict, perhaps.’

  ‘She would be,’ ‘I said, in order to prove that she is not feminine. That is the worst of women working in charge of men.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But our position is very difficult. We have to try and organise a vast country, millions and millions of people, to give them machines and ships and education and all the products of modern civilisation. And we have hardly anybody to do it with. We want engineers, we want doctors, we want teachers, we want officers for ships, we want practically every d
amn thing you can think of. So everybody has to work twice as hard as he or she should do. So this woman is a mate.’

  ‘But,’ I said, ‘the great thing is that you are working.’

  ‘I am glad you see even that,’ said he. ‘You are a writer. As a general rule, writers who come to Russia, unless they are members of our Party, see only the desolation left by the Revolution and the Civil War. They see none of the feverish work we do. The great Wells saw only a Caucasian dance to please him. For the rest, he could see only squalor and oriental dreamers in the Soviet Union.’

  He pushed away his plate, began to roll a cigarette and grinned at me.

  ‘It’s very funny,’ he said. ‘Comrade Lenin brought Wells down to the Caucasus to see the Conference of Eastern Peoples in 1920. Wells saw only a dance that was given as entertainment for the delegates. He did not see the Conference. He said it was a dream of the dreamers in the Kremlin. Now that dream is beginning to bear fruit, in India, in China, in Afghanistan. Wells did not foresee that. Lenin did. Tell me. What do you think of Revolution in England?’

  ‘From within or from without?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ he said.

  He looked at me closely, as he placed the stem of his cigarette holder between his ascetic yet strangely sensual lips. I had a curious feeling that he was like a satyr, or a Jesuit, or some astute animal. An Oriental? Playing with me? No, no. It was just insane pride. He was the embodiment of some insane idea. That was why he was so strong. Otherwise I was stronger.

  ‘I cannot imagine a social revolution from within taking place in England,’ I replied. ‘The English know perfectly well they would lose their Empire and become an over-populated island, a third-rate nation, condemned to a vassal decadence like the Egyptians under Rome. But a revolution from without. . . . That is possible. Communism by conquest is possible, even in England. Already, as you say, the Lion and Unicorn of England is confronted with the Bolshevik Sickle and Hammer in India and elsewhere in the East.’

  He looked at me still more closely and his eyes almost closed.

  ‘So you think that the Russian Revolution is a movement of Russian nationalist expansion.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  He went on looking at me closely and I began to feel uncomfortable. Again I had the feeling that I was an alien on this ship, being watched by the ship’s captain, who was probing me in order to find out whether I was a spy, an agent of the enemy, Europe, or just a harmless traveller come to see the wonders of the Soviet lands. I again felt that no matter how much I wanted to become a Bolshevik, no matter how much I admired their ideas, their youth, their virility, I must remain outside; or even if brought in, baptised in their faith, grafted on their society, I must still remain suspect and in reality an alien, because a different religion and culture had become part of my being.

  Now I saw the captain as a great Inquisitor, guarding the ship and I clearly understood that he and his ship and his crew were all members of a band of scouts, sent out into Europe to examine the strong posts of the enemy.

  He moved away without salutation. I was left alone in the room with the first mate. It was a relief to be left alone with a shallow and harmless fellow like the first mate. The mate began to speak at once.

  ‘How do you like third mate?’ he said, with a grin.

  ‘She’s not very pretty,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nobody likes her much, except Chief Wireless. I no like women on ships. Once they give fat Jewish girl as apprentice. She member of Party. They say I must take her. I say no. Give me my wife. They say no wife, take fat Jewish girl. She learn Marine Law. So, so. She member of Party. Pull strings. Perhaps love important bureaucrat. All right. She come aboard. All the time she wants love with everybody. I no like. She come in my cabin. I was captain. She says does captain want tea. I say no. She says captain let her sit and talk. I say no. She cries and say she sad and throw herself on my bed, I say go away. Yes. All right. Very good. I want maybe but I know perhaps later I pay. She have poor dress. She want maybe to make love and then I have to buy dress. If not she go to big bureaucrat and say I love her and give nothing. So. Very bad. Now I go sleep. This ship sad., Very lonely.’

  I went out on deck, in a state of high nervous tension. I felt that this ship was driving me mad, or else that I was unable to endure close contact with this mighty force, this Bolshevism. I could not feel at ease. Either I was watched by the captain, or by one of his crew. It was a delusion perhaps, a waking nightmare; but I felt it. And I felt a criminal for being hostile to this beautiful and healthy force.

  As I expected, as soon as I got on deck, the doctor approached me and took charge.

  ‘Come and see my hospital,’ he said.

  I submitted. I had not enough energy to resist. He showed me his hospital, which was perfectly equipped, with an operating room and a room for accouchement. He ranted about the Soviet hygienic laws. He talked about his work in liquidating medical ignorance among the crew. And all the time I could only see the captain’s sombre eyes and the mate’s lascivious grin and the ship prowling about among European cities, collecting information for the red hordes that were massing and singing their battle songs on the steppes. Woe to Europe! He brought me to the quarters of the crew and showed me how they ate and slept and played musical instruments and read books and fired shots from the rifles that hung in their mess room and meditated before the image of the great Lenin, like any pious Buddhists or Moslems or early Christians.

  ‘You will notice,’ he cried in triumph, ‘that their quarters are as good as the quarters of the officers. They eat exactly the same food. They are armed in accordance with the law for the militarisation of the proletariat, to protect this ship, which is the property of the proletariat, against counter revolution among the officers and against the spies of the bourgeoisie. They are reading books on Marxism and the Materialistic Conception of History, to prepare them for the great struggles of industrialisation of the Soviet Union, the liquidation of illiteracy and the overthrow of world capitalism. They are the real vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat.’

  He showed me the great room in the men’s quarters where the meetings of the ship’s Soviet were held.

  ‘Here,’, he cried proudly, ‘I shall bring you to show you how all come here and make plans to better ship rule, save oil, save work, organise closer co-operation, all for one thing. Victory of world proletariat.’

  And after two hours he left me exhausted on the after-hatch, while he went to dress an ulcer on Dunya’s hand. With folded arms and head fallen forward, I tried to rouse myself and master the situation. I tried to tell myself that I had set out on this journey, not only for the trifling purpose of writing a book and earning some money, but also, with the more important idea of finding a new purpose in life, something to which I could attach myself, a community as vital and as worthy of great poetry as Elizabethan England. Why did I remain hostile?

  Before I could reason with myself I was again approached, this time by a tiny individual, who had the face of a Jew and wore the jersey of a seaman in the French navy, an affair with narrow blue and white stripes horizontally, on the cotton fabric. He bowed and smiled. I looked at him sombrely, thinking:

  ‘I have had enough of these blighters for one day. What’s this chap going to show me? By the look of him he is one of the engine room staff. He‘ll take me down below and show me the superiority of Soviet engine rooms.’

  ‘Salut!’ he said. I am told you speak French. I am French.’

  ‘Indeed!’ I said.

  He sat down beside me, lit a cigarette and began to talk without further invitation. Now I was subjected to a different type of Bolshevik, an assimilation from abroad. This fellow was undoubtedly European, a Parisian Jew, with all the pertness of the gamin, intelligent, quick, alert, subtle, amusing, cunning in conversation, a rascal. Talking rapidly, he asked me to forgive him for being so badly dressed, but as one-third of everybody’s wages was abducted for the Five Year P
lan and people were paid in roubles which they were not allowed to export or change into foreign currency, and as there were no clothes to be bought in Russia, it was impossible for people to be properly dressed. In the Soviet Union I would find a great deal that was good and a great deal that was bad. It was true that the condition of the working class, particularly on this ship, was good as regards working hours, labour laws and food, but it was bad in other respects. There was so much envy, so much jealousy, so much spying and intrigue and tittle-tattle, that life was sordid. Then this hatred of joy, of music, of love, of the dance, of drinking. What do people want? To turn the world into a Scotch Sunday? For himself, he had been the object of misfortune, being now an oiler, although he was by right a wireless operator.

  ‘Have you read the book of Panistrati?’

  ‘No. I never heard of him.’

  Almost numb with exhaustion, I listened to the insinuating conversation of the little Jew, and enjoyed it as one always enjoys the speech of these clever little tricksters, conversation that was half serious, half humorous, interspersed with bawdy jokes and anecdotes from Parisian life, the life of the street, of the brothel, of the cabaret. He spoke like a counter-revolutionary, yet I knew he was not one. Neither was he an agent sent to sound me, but just one of these born gossips, who love to curry favour with the multitude by giving voice to whatever is likely to please, or to be interesting. Such people invent conspiracies, plots and events of the most startling import, for the sole purpose of attaching importance to themselves. They love to be the victims of injustice in order to inspire pity, for as a general rule, they are tiny of stature and have not the sense of dignity which attaches itself by nature to men of normal size. The type is common in Dublin, so it was not strange to me. How often have I been buttonholed in the street by dismissed civil servants, bankrupt business men and decayed people of all description, hauled into a tavern and then told in an awed whisper: