I Went to Russia

by Liam O'Flaherty

  Curiously enough a waiter did come. After I had tried every language I knew without success, I seized my shoes, sat down to table and made the movements, with my shoes, of a man using a knife and fork with skill and expedition. He watched me in terror for a while without understanding that I wanted bacon and eggs, or eggs without bacon, or even bacon without eggs. Then I pretended to drink tea out of my right shoe without any more success. I took a match, dipped it into an ash-tray and pretended to spoon sugar into the interior of my right shoe. Then I stirred cheerfully. He began to laugh. In despair, I seized a book, put a corner of it in my mouth and pretended to chew a few pages. The fellow could see no relation between a man chewing the corner of a book and a man wanting to eat bread. Instead he opened his mouth wide and roared with laughter. Then I rushed at him with a chair and drove him off. He fled along the corridor.

  I dropped the chair and decided to follow him and bring him back, because I realised that I must eat or starve. I thought of taking him to his kitchen where I could point out to him that I wanted food, by touching the food, or even by devouring it in his presence. But when I rushed out he was just disappearing around a corner, going at a great pace. I followed at the same rate, only to find myself wandering through a maze of narrow passages. And at last I was brought to a halt when suddenly confronted by a policeman with drawn revolver who stood guard outside a door (evidently occupied by a person of Soviet rank). I retreated at once, pretending to have lost my way and saluting in an obsequious manner. After a while I managed to get back to my own room, almost famished with cold and hunger.

  I thought a hot bath would pull me around. I again set forth looking for a bathroom. I met a woman and halted her. I tried the words ‘bath’ and ‘bain’ but she did not understand. Then I began to scrub my body, blowing on to my palms and uttering those exclamations of satisfaction used by a weary and dirty man, enjoying a hot bath. But she merely giggled and called her mate to watch the funny foreigner. I retired in disgust to my room.

  Again I put on my overcoat and gloves. I went downstairs hoping to get something to eat in the dining room. There I waited for twenty minutes until a waiter came. As I was the only person in the room, I did not trouble to shout at him on his appearance, feeling certain that he was going to come and take my order. But he walked straight past me without looking at me, just like a Dostoievskian character about to commit suicide. When he had gone ten yards or so, I called out:

  ‘Hey! Where the devil are you going?’

  He halted, turned around slowly, looked at me in a mournful fashion, shrugged his shoulders and continued his journey. I went out to look for the manager. In the hall, an individual who spoke French told me that the manager was too busy to see anybody.

  ‘Well!’ I said, ‘Who are you? Have you any authority in the hotel?’

  ‘I also,’ he said, ‘am connected with the hotel in an official capacity. You wish to say something.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You have an organisation in London to entice tourists into the Soviet Union. I am one of those tourists. It’s not fair to bring them here and then treat them in a scandalous fashion. I am one of the ordinary ones, of no account whatsoever. But as this is an equalitarian country, the tourists of no account should be treated as well as if they were capitalists coming to invest money, or engineers, or members of bourgeois parliaments whom you want to impress, or delegates from foreign Communist Parties, with whose importance you want to impress your own people. I am here just as a miserable human being and I beg of you to give me some food in the name of suffering humanity. If you want to exterminate us wretched Europeans, do it in a manly way at the point of the gun or even with poison gas. I am quite willing to be poisoned provided you give me the poison in an otherwise eatable omelette or mutton chop.’

  ‘Why?’ he said. ‘There is plenty of food here if you pay for it.’

  I have been sitting in that dining room for half an hour. . . .’

  ‘No meals are served in the dining room before eleven o’clock,’ he said curtly. ‘Go to your room and ring for the waiter.’

  ‘But I did ring and he could not understand me. I also shouted but he. . . .’

  ‘You must not shout,’ said the man. It is contrary to the rules governing Russian hotels.’

  ‘Go to the devil,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you’ he said calmly. ‘The devil does not exist, so I do not fear him.’

  ‘The devil he doesn’t,’ I replied. ‘Your damned hotel is run by him.’

  He shrugged his shoulders and walked away. I went out into the street. I wandered about for half an hour desolately.

  Then I suddenly came across an eating house and entered. There was plenty of food there, but just as I was preparing to gorge myself, I remembered that the doctor was sending his sister-in-law to the hotel at eleven o’clock, to show me places of interest. I devoured some sturgeon and black bread hurriedly and ran back. It was then half-past eleven.

  She was very melancholy. I forced myself into a cheerful mood, lest her melancholy might drive me to suicide. But it was impossible to console her.

  It is very difficult,’ she said, ‘to be happy. Life is sad.’

  ‘One seems to have read that,’ I said, ‘in the works of Tolstoy, Tchehov, Dostoievsky, Turgenev, Leskov, Gorki, Gogol and a host of others. But I was given to understand that melancholy as a philosophy of life had been destroyed by the Proletarian Revolution. I have been told repeatedly that one of the great achievements of the Revolution was the introduction into Russia of the American philosophy of Pep.’

  ‘What is Pep?’ she said mournfully.

  ‘Canned optimism.’

  ‘What is canned?’

  It is an American word which means artificial to a European.’

  I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Please explain to me, because I wish to be happy and to learn this new philosophy.’

  ‘Impossible,’ I said. I also know that life is sad. But I thought Communism had destroyed sadness in the soul, in the Russian soul.’

  ‘That is untrue,’ she said sadly. ‘They pretend they are different. But they are the same. And you also are sad? How can that be when you live in wonderful places like London and Paris where everything is beautiful and people eat what they wish and wear beautiful clothes and life is gay.’

  ‘You think so?’ I said. ‘Well! That is the root of happiness, to think that it is only one’s environment that is sad. In the distance life is always gay. At this moment I am convinced that people are enjoying themselves in almost every place in the world except in this. Let us pretend we are not ourselves and that we are not here.’

  ‘How?’ she said seriously.

  ‘Oh!’ I said. ‘There are many ways. We could get drunk or fall in love or get put into jail for shouting “long live the Tsar” or by scores of other methods. The sadness of life is caused by monotony, which is, in itself, caused by an absence of excitement. Let’s get excited.’

  ‘You are very funny,’ she said. It is obvious that you are happy and that you are happy because you are a foreigner. In Russia it is impossible to be happy.’

  ‘One of your writers wrote a long poem in celebration of that statement,’ I said. I quite agree with him in so far as this wretched town is concerned.’

  ‘Well!’ she said with a sigh, ‘Life must continue. Sascha said we must either observe the Winter Palace or Tsarskoe Selo to-day. Which do you prefer?’

  ‘Which is the nearest?’

  ‘The Winter Palace.’

  ‘Do we have to take a tramcar to get there?’

  ‘No. It is near.’

  ‘Cheers. Let’s go there.’

  We set forth. On the way I asked her the principal cause of her sadness.

  I am lonely’ she said. ‘Last winter I had a lover. Now he has left me.’

  ‘That’s too bad.’

  ‘Yes/ she said dolefully. It is bad. For a fully developed female it is bad to be without a lover.’

  ‘Damn i
t,’ I said. ‘Could I help you in any way?’

  She blushed and remained silent. We reached the end of the Nevsky and debouched on to the large square in front of the Winter Palace. The square was empty except for the wooden platform which had been erected for the May Day celebrations. She began to explain to me that this square had been used in Tsarist times for military parades and that the great buildings surrounding it were used formerly for housing government departments. I took no interest in what she said, because her voice was depressing and I pitied her lack of a lover. In some military school nearby, machine-guns were being fired continually. That was the only sound to disturb the gloomy peace of the dead city. I wondered why the platform had not been removed since it was now the eighth of May. Were they leaving it there for the October celebrations?

  ‘That’s the Winter Palace’ she moaned.

  ‘That shabby red building opposite?’

  ‘Yes,’ she sighed. It was not shabby but it needs repairs. We had better observe it from the inside. The exterior, as you remark, looks desolate.’

  It does look desolate,’ I groaned.

  ‘Yes,’ she moaned. ‘All life is desolate.’

  It is,’ I whined. I wish there were a coffee stall near here, or a chemist that sold strychnine.’

  We entered that portion of the Palace which was being inspected on that day by the proletariat of Leningrad. There were several groups of proletarians with their guides. I paid full price. My friend, being a student, paid half price. The proletarians went in at wholesale prices. An old woman conducted us from a very dirty waiting room, through a maze of corridors, into the living quarters of Nicholas II. It resembled a disreputable Madame Tussaud’s. The old woman told the tale in a melancholy voice, very rapidly. I understood nothing of what the old woman said, neither did I understand what my melancholy interpreter translated. And I wanted to know nothing. It was incredibly dull and gloomy, entirely in keeping with Leningrad. And it seemed so vulgar, these people inspecting the bed where Nicholas II died, where his officers-in-waiting lived, where his wife slept.

  The proletarians were pleasant people. They looked shy and respectful and they obviously would prefer to spend their holiday looking at a football match.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said to my friend.

  ‘Yes,’ she said dolefully. ‘You will be more interested by the Museum of Revolution.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t we think of that at first?’

  We went through corridors and up and down winding stairways into rooms that were filled with stuffed horrors, portraying the suffering of revolutionaries under the Tsarist regime. Room after room was laid out elaborately to show the life of Siberian prison camps, of Russian jails and of the road from the jails to the Siberian prison camps. It was awe-inspiring, but it left an impression of despair on the mind, instead of producing a feeling that misery had passed, giving place to liberty and happiness.

  As I walked gloomily from room to room, I could not help coming to the conclusion that people who have spent their lives in prison or conspiring and flying from the law, become infatuated with the idea of self-torture. So, even when they have won their war and are in the enjoyment of the fruits of victory, they still wish to think and talk of the bad old times; and they offer their miseries to others as a gift. I have often heard revolutionaries tell with delight the tortures they have suffered. They are like old women who boast of their diseases.

  But is it not dangerous to treat the proletarians of Leningrad to this macabre entertainment? They should get music, dancing and feasting to cheer them on through the monstrous labours they have to perform, as the result of their revolutionary victories.

  But no. The old campaigners, like the disgruntled people who look upon themselves as heroes of the late Great War, hate to think that the younger generation should forget those who freed them. It is a form of sadism, this parade of suffering; a miserable and disgusting form of selfishness. Out upon it! I hate mummies, tombs, martyrs. Have we not had enough of Christ’s suffering and of those of his early followers, without beginning a new religion exactly on the same diet of suffering and martyrdom? Washed in the blood of the lamb merely gives way to a washing in the blood of the proletariat.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said to my companion. ‘This is desolate.’

  ‘Yes,’ she moaned. ‘All life is desolate.’

  ‘Oh! Damn that for a tune,’ I cried. ‘Life is NOT desolate. Let us find a field somewhere, so that we may lie on grass, or a river with running water, or a mare with foal at foot, or even a merry child playing in the gutter. I want to see something green, fresh, young, happy, something that is unconscious of its duty to society, something that lives for the sake of the joy that is inherent in the act of living, for the sole purpose of expressing its existence in the manner most suited to its nature.’

  I do not understand you,’ she moaned.

  ‘No?’ I said. ‘Well. . . . Come to my hotel.’

  Next morning she came again to be my guide, accompanied by another Jewish girl. The newcomer was older, more sophisticated and more revolutionary. She had information beyond the wildest ambitions of most European young women of her age and an acute intelligence which was almost humiliating. So that, after an hour she began to bore me by the fixity of her convictions and the narrow compass into which proletarian culture, so-called, had forced her mind.

  And she was not very pretty.

  We went to see the Church of Saint Isaac, since it was near my hotel and I had a horror of the scientific means of transport in Leningrad. The church gave me no great satisfaction. I cannot understand the mentality of people who find pleasure in seeing things for the first time; or just seeing a beautiful thing for half an hour and then going away, never to return. Nothing is more detestable than the mentality of people who go to see things for the sake of being able to say afterwards that they have seen them. A thing shows its real beauty when one becomes intimate with it, when one has paid it loving visits, courted its beauty assiduously, so to speak, for a long time. These sudden visits and departures and the aftermath of boasting gossip are like furtive and vulgar rapes.

  Churches, especially, can only be appreciated when one knows their history and when one is alone. Their effect depends upon the mystic silence which reigns within them. But this church was like a museum, exactly like the Winter Palace. Crowds were there, climbing to its roof, in order to look upon the city.

  We climbed to the roof and saw the city. Right beneath us was the Hotel D’Angleterre.

  ‘That is where Essenin committed suicide,’ said the elder Jewess.

  I quite understand his point of view,’ I answered.

  ‘Why?’ she said aggressively.

  ‘Well!’ I said. I hate the thought of death. But poets love the light and there is nothing here but gloom.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Leningrad is a tomb.’

  ‘Nonsense/ she said, when I had explained more of what I meant. ‘There is great life in Leningrad, a great industrial life and a great cultural life. But you refuse to see it. Your nerves are bad, so you can only receive unpleasant impressions. You miss the outward appearance of bourgeois life, so you are unhappy. You have to permit yourself to be born again before you can understand or appreciate Russia.’

  I thought of doing that last night, being born again. But this morning I preferred to get back home. Indeed, you fail to convince me that there is a great and full life in Russia, for the facial expressions here are rather similar to those produced by despair in Western Europe.’

  ‘But we are happy,’ she cried. I am happy.’

  ‘Are you happy?’ I said to the doctor’s sister-in-law.

  ‘No.’

  ‘There you are,’ I said to the elder Jewess.

  ‘Oh! But she would be unhappy anywhere,’ said the latter. ‘She is constitutionally incapable of social optimism. Her life centres around her own personality. In order to be happy in the new society, we must live
not for ourselves but for others, for the mass.’

  ‘That is the gospel of the Salvation Army.’

  ‘What is the Salvation Army?’

  ‘A bourgeois Christian Evangelical Society.’

  She spat and cried:

  ‘Work. Social work. That is the key to happiness. To build up human society on a new basis. There is immense work to be done. So there is no time to think of unhappiness. To educate the ignorant, to organise industry, to defend the proletarian revolution, to make scientific discoveries in every direction, there is immense work to be done and every citizen has unlimited means of working. What does personal comfort matter at such a time? You should be ashamed of yourself. You are fully grown. You are intelligent and yet you are a greater fool than an illiterate peasant. Look. See those workers mending the street? They are better than you.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Do you mean those chaps down there around a hole in the ground?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But they are not working. They are merely talking.’

  ‘They have been working. They are now resting/

  ‘When were they working? Before the outbreak of the Great War?’

  It is easy to mock/ she said. ‘Why don’t you go and fill in that hole yourself and give an example, if the comrades are tired or lazy?’

  ‘Why should I fill in that hole? I’m not a professional navvy.’

  ‘Every citizen works at that point of the front where he finds himself.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘You are a bourgeois.’

  ‘Oh! Let’s go and eat. We are run down. I can see myself fainting in a few minutes.’

  The word food deprived her, temporarily, of her reason.

  ‘Food, food, food,’ she screamed into my ear. ‘You bourgeois people can think of nothing but food. You should realise that millions of proletarians in Russia are hungry because of your blockade.’