The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars

by Maurice DeKobra

  “You mean Varichkine? The women call him Leonid. He is a gentleman who has made his way in Communism just the way other people go to the top in the steel business or the fur trade.”

  “Do you insinuate that this party leader is not convinced of his own platform?”

  Semevski waved his hands with a gesture of despair, put his cigarette in the celery dish, and said:

  “My dear friend, there are two things in this world about which no one can be sure: whether or not one is being deceived by a woman and whether or not a Communist is sincere. Suppose that you were a celebrated writer and the young would-be’s who worshiped your style called you ‘dear maestro,’ bowing at the same time. Would you be sure of their sincerity? In our poor Russia, as it is today, rest assured that the opportunists, or, in other words, the people who are hungry, are ready to grovel in the mud before the personality of Mr. Lenin, who was embalmed like a Pharaoh of Egypt.”

  “Do you know Varichkine personally? Can you give me any details about his intimate life?”

  “Leonid Vladimirovitch Varichkine was a student at St. Petersburg when I was teaching music. The son of a servant of the Minister of Finland, like all the other young prodigies of the epoch, he immediately and yet cautiously interested himself in the Russian Revolution of 1905. He was nineteen when that happened. I lost sight of him for something like twelve years. One day in 1917 I happened to glance at the Revolutionary paper called Pravda. And I found, sandwiched in between an article by Lenin and one by Lounatcharsky, a short paragraph signed by Varichkine. I said to myself, ‘Well well! my little friend Leonid is eating asparagus! Can it be possible that he has been disillusioned and that he has not been able to realize his ambitions?’ I was surprised beyond measure to find Varichkine in the regiment of Red Coocoos, although I fully appreciated that he must be receiving consideration, honor, and money. You know, old fellow, that in order to get a good Communist you have to find a broken-down, worn-out individual whose hopes have gone astray. I ran into Varichkine just after they swept out the Smolny Institute. He declared triumphantly, ‘That is proof enough for you. We are in power. We are going to make a real Revolution and we are going to show any of our compatriots who don’t stand by us what spring weather is like in the cells of our prisons! Let me give you a bit of good advice. I don’t particularly care about seeing you killed. Get away tonight with your toothbrush and your music roll. Go by way of Helsingfors before they make you swallow the bristles.’ I don’t need to tell you that I went to Stockholm like a shot out of a gun, and that I was not sorry to see the Baltic between me and the New Kings made out of a scarlet Christ and Egotism! Since that day I have never seen Varichkine but I’ve heard a good deal about him. Don’t get the idea that he was suddenly touched by the grace of Socialism. That young Democratic Socialist of yesterday was simply looking with uncontrollable envy at the grapes of Capitalism. Destiny had never before allowed him to taste the luscious fruit nor to receive favors from the hand of a Princess of whom he was distantly amorous. So he conceived a sort of rancor against the established order, and with the help of his mistress, Madam Mouravieff, he entered the camp of the dynamiters of contemporary society.”

  “Are you talking about the famous Madam Mouravieff who distinguished herself in 1918 by her cruelty?—the one who personally inspected the execution of twenty-six reactionary intellectuals in the fortress of Peter and Paul?”

  He nodded. “For eight years that same charming Madam Mouravieff has been Varichkine’s official mistress. She inspires him. She directs him. She terrorizes him. Ah, my dear boy, that Irina Mouravieff is an extraordinary woman. She is one of those enlightened individuals who can conceive of human happiness by the way of machine-gun bullets and who sends the people who contradict her to do a little bit of uninterrupted meditation in the ice-fields of Solovki. Your occidental romanticists embroider whole pages with doubtful truths about the seductive charms of Russian women. They can have all they want of Irina Mouravieff, brought up by a monster, whose right breast fed her the precepts of Marxism, and whose left breast filled her with the delights of morphine.… Irina Mouravieff, the Marquise de Sade of Red Russia.…”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  RED FRENCH HEELS

  WE WERE SEATED FACE TO FACE. WE WERE ONLY separated by an unpretentious work-table. On the wall there hung a portrait of Karl Marx and some proclamations written in Russian. A small rock imprisoned the accumulation of papers spread at random on an innovation trunk. Through the two French windows, which gave on the Wilhelmstrasse, I could see the palace which was once occupied by Prince Joachim Franz. This ancient palace was protected by a great many trees and it reminded me of a piece of cold meat surrounded by a quantity of water cress.

  Mr. Leonid Vladimirovitch Varichkine was smoking a special cigarette. An oriental pearl adorned his cravat, which was plain but in perfect taste. I had asked myself, a little naïvely, if I would find this Soviet leader clad in a pair of overalls. And what a surprise I had! He was dressed like a perfect gentleman—even a super-perfect gentleman. Thanks to my letters of introduction, our initial interview had been cordial enough and devoid of any unnecessary formality. I had been informed in advance that titled persons from foreign countries were well received by the Communists. And I must say that Mr. Varichkine was more than kind to me. Nothing in his aspect suggested a proclivity for sanguinary reaction. His smooth black hair, meticulously slicked back, his well controlled black beard, his olive complexion, and his rather high cheekbones betrayed a Tartarish atavism which did not prevent Mr. Varichkine from conducting himself with the perfect courtesy of an occidental diplomat.

  He had inspected my papers thoroughly. He had brought out some official documents and compared the dates. Finally he had declared:

  “It is absolutely authentic, my dear Prince. Lord Wynham’s claims to ownership were registered formerly when foreigners were capable of controlling our territories. I say formerly to impress upon you that we have now socialized everything. By the decree of the twenty-sixth of October, nineteen hundred and seventeen, the right to ownership has been annulled forever, and the land is now merely loaned to the workmen who choose to develop it. But in nineteen-twenty my friends in Moscow came to the conclusion that it would not be practical to repulse any offers of foreign capital and, accordingly, they decided that, in certain cases they would make exceptions to the general rule. You tell me that Lady Wynham wishes, along with some English capitalists, to exploit the petrolic riches of the territory to which she is the legal heir. I am going to look into the matter. It is naturally of considerable importance since it represents something like fifty to sixty millions of dollars.”

  “Mr. Varichkine, Lady Wynham would be more than grateful to you if you could set the official machinery in motion.”

  And we conversed along those lines. At the end of half an hour the Soviet delegate had a half-dozen cigarette butts in his ash-tray and our conversation had taken a more familiar turn. It was obvious that Varichkine was less interested in the business itself than in Lady Diana’s personality and that I was not upsetting his nervous equilibrium.

  “I have heard a great deal about Lord Wynham’s widow. You must not forget that between two economic studies I still find time to thumb over the English illustrateds. They tell me that your friend is the most beautiful woman in London.”

  “Well, she is certainly one of the most beautiful women.”

  “She is something of a character, isn’t she?”

  “I think of her as an exceptional woman.”

  “Then I will tell you frankly that I never object to meeting an exceptional woman. Look here, my dear Prince, I would like to have you give me some real details about her, but as I am exceedingly busy this afternoon, would you do me the favor of dining with me this evening? You know—a little bachelor dinner in a chambre séparée, as they say in Berlin?”

  “With pleasure.”

  “Fine! I will pick you up at the Adlon at eight o’clock.”

&nbs
p; I had arisen when the office door opened brusquely and a little brunette, in a very simple gray suit, came in with a step as deliberate as though she had access to the delegate’s private room at any hour. Although I was still in ignorance as to her identity I was struck by the straightforward look of the woman. She merely favored me with one authoritative glance. She was pretty enough in her way, but her thin lips expressed no great amount of kind-heartedness, and her pale blue eyes were not what one would call angelic. She had a long official telegram in her hand. She threw it disdainfully on Varichkine’s desk and announced in an unaffected contralto voice, accompanied by a shrug of her slight shoulders:

  “Take a look at Stefanovitch’s last bit of stupidity. He has refused to give a visa to the experts from Hanover who are supposed to be taking care of the construction of the Kazan turbines. It’s outrageous!”

  But Varichkine appeared less interested in the Kazan turbines than in my mission. He presented me: “My dear—the Prince Séliman, from London—” And he added, looking at the tiny brunette, “Madam Irina Alexandrovna Mouravieff.”

  I kissed the hand of the celebrated Madam Mouravieff, and, doing my best to conceal my surprise, I observed her carefully. Having heard Semevski’s impression I had expected to meet an Amazon who, boasting an amputated breast, would throw me out bodily. I decided, once again, that what one terms “Imagination” is but the type of woman who sleeps with ghosts and tries to blow reality out of sight with a whistle. Who could have thought that that little lady, dressed in gray, had played such a frightful role in the bloody demonstrations of 1918 and that death sentences had issued from her tender mouth?

  Mr. Varichkine went on, “Darling, Prince Séliman is here to make a claim for certain oil concessions in Georgia on the part of Lord Wynham’s heirs. He has invited me to dine with him this evening. We want to talk business together.”

  The delegate’s explanation gave me food for thought. He spoke of Lord Wynham’s heirs and not of Lady Diana. He attributed the dinner invitation to me although I was to be his guest. I wondered why.

  Madam Mouravieff looked me over a second time. “Do you represent the heirs, Prince?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Are there many of them?”

  I could feel Varichkine’s eyes piercing my very self. I had enough intuition to know that he would be grateful if I failed to tell the truth. I replied, “There are two minors, madam represented by a trustee.”

  I glanced sideways at Varichkine and saw that he was greatly relieved.

  But Madam Mouravieff renewed her attack: “I read only yesterday, in a London paper, a long article about Lady Wynham. It seems that she did a nude dance in a theater—thereby creating a great public scandal. Has she anything to do with Lord Wynham?”

  “She is his widow. But she has an income from her own father and no right to any of the bequests of the defunct lord.”

  I exchanged a few other bits of repartee with this redoubtable woman and took my leave. In the corridor, Mr. Varichkine wrung my hand with terrific force and murmured, “Thank you. Until tonight. You can rely upon me.”

  I left the Soviet house a trifle perplexed, and until the dinner hour I could not drive the picture of that frail nervous Madam Mouravieff—breaker of hearts and torturer of bodies—from my memory.

  “Is this a picture of Lady Wynham?” Varichkine asked, as he nonchalantly picked up a gold frame which was decorating my dressing-table in my hotel bedroom.

  “Right you are. Don’t you find her charming?”

  “I think she is wonderful—” He stared a little harder at the photograph. His black eyes began to shine. His mouth looked as though it was convinced. He repeated, “She is wonderful! All the dignity of an entire race in one stylish body.”

  Then in a rather harsh tone: “My dear chap, you’re a born diplomat. You made a good move when you denied Lady Wynham’s connection with this deal.”

  “I thought you would like it better that way. If I am not mistaken, Madam Mouravieff has a great deal to do with your political situation.”

  “A great deal to do with it! I’m laughing out loud!” Varichkine laughed so loud that he nearly broke the window. “I suppose you are telling me that she has simply been managing me for eight whole years. That’s all she has done to me!”

  “Well, it seems that all good fairies are something of a drain on the system,” I said.

  “Madam Mouravieff would entirely wipe out my personality if I didn’t combat her. But I am getting a little bit personal in my conversation, you know.”

  “You need not worry. Anything you tell me will go no further.”

  “It’s a spontaneous friendship, isn’t it? Have a cigarette? No? It’s disgusting the way I smoke. I am constantly burning holes in the blankets.”

  “I am all ready, Varichkine. Where shall we go for dinner?”

  “To the Walhalla, Bellevuestrasse. I’m known there. We are going to have some fresh caviar, especially smuggled in by our diplomatic courier. I arrange about that whenever I dine there. That won’t go so badly with five or six bottles of 1911 Heidsick Monopol. The damned fools didn’t want to serve me the last time because of the situation in the Ruhr. But I told them, ‘If you occupy the Champagne country, do you think you are going to keep the French from drinking beer?’ They are a lot of old rustics—pretentious rustics with epaulettes. They have had only one ingenious idea in their entire history.”

  “And when was that?”

  “Lenin’s lead-colored wagon in 1917.”

  Half an hour later we were seated alone in a private dining-room of the Walhalla Weinrestaurant. I can remember that it was done in pearl gray, black and dark purple—little quadrilaterals of the purest and most funereal chintz. A dish full of small gray balls—like so many ants’ eggs in mourning—graced the middle of the table, carefully guarded by four lemons at the cardinal points.

  Varichkine plunged the wooden spoon into this tasty offering, helped me, and joked: “You know, we Communists can pass out two things: theories and caviar!”

  Varichkine’s cordiality incited me to speak freely. As the lemon wept acid tears on the delicacy, I confessed, “You know, old chap, it’s a new sensation for me to be sitting opposite a representative of the really élite Communists. I hope you don’t mind my using the word élite in my connection with a Communist republic!”

  “Why, not in the least, old fellow! Only the thick-headed logicians are astonished to find that there is an élite society in a country where everything is equal. But I must say that there are very few in the party to which I have the honor to belong. You can count them on the fingers of one hand: First, there is, or rather was, our well-beloved Lenin—God bless his soul—and after him Kamenev, Lounatcharsky, and myself. Trotsky is an intelligent koustar! But little more than an ordinary journalist, after all. As for our comrades Zinoviev, Kalinine, Dsierjinsky, and any quantity more, they are actually illiterate. That’s the way it should be. As long as everybody attends to his own job, the sturgeon’s eggs will be guarded.”

  “I gather from what you say that, in a word, you are professional demagogues?”

  “Professionals, yes. We specialize in demagogy just the same way that there are expert art connoisseurs. In Europe you have a band of little apprentice Communists, who make a lot of palaver at public meetings and play the tin soldier with new principles.”

  Varichkine sneered as he bit into his caviar and continued, “All that’s a child’s game, old fellow. We people have experimented on a large scale with a hundred million specimens of flesh and blood. That is much more amusing. In order to get the reaction of sulphuric acid on zinc to make hydrogen, you have only to perform one of the simplest chemical operations known to science. But if you can make human beings react under the revolver in order to acquire the golden age, then you can say that you have done something.”

  “But you don’t impress me as being so cruel as all that, Varichkine.”

  “What? Cruel? Why, I wouldn’t
hurt a butterfly. I happen to have a little fox terrier whose back legs were crushed in an automobile accident during one of the raids in Moscow. Instead of shooting or chloroforming the poor half-paralyzed beast, I had a little wagon made for him to drive around in. Krassine said to me one day with a laugh, ‘Your dog is symbolical of all Russia, which gets along pretty well on the wheels we have placed underneath it!’ ”

  “That’s a good comparison. But tell me, old fellow, what does one have to do to become a good Communist?”

  “That’s the easiest thing in the world—all one has to do is to change every idea one ever had and know which way the wind is going to blow tomorrow. One venerated master, Illitch, known as Lenin, changed a great many of his ideas during his life. He became a revolutionary the way another man might have become a veterinary (because, in Russia, it happened to be a trade as good as any other). He figured out, with extraordinary cleverness, the precepts of Marx and Engels and Georges Sorel’s ‘Reflections on Violence.’ You must admit that he did a good job of it.”

  “At the price of how many gallons of human blood?”

  “Old boy, people don’t get happiness in this life when their leaders send them bouquets of flowers or when the man at the top pulls the petals off a daisy, asking as he does so, ‘She loves me? She loves me not?’ Don’t forget that the proletariat wants to be led. It ought to be satisfied to know that half a dozen dictators are thinking for it and working in its name. But, the corollary of the dictatorship being a Draconian régime, it is quite natural that a few dishes should get broken now and then. After the last attempted murder of Lenin we deliberately shot five hundred hostages—officers and men alike—to avenge our master. That is the only way to make people feel the strength of a government.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that the untold cruelty displayed during your régime will harm you in the eyes of posterity? Doesn’t it matter to you that history may pass a severe judgment on you?”