The southern hills of this Sea of Marmora had been the scene of events about which Lanny had heard his father talking with Zaharoff. The munitions king had financed the invasion of Turkey by his fellow-Greeks, spending half his fortune on it, so he had said— though of course you didn’t have to assume that everything he said was true. Anyhow, the Greeks had been routed and hosts of them driven into the sea, after which the victorious Turkish army had appeared before the British fortifications and the guns of the fleet. This critical situation had brought about the fall of the Lloyd George government and thus played hob with the plans of Robbie Budd for getting oil concessions. Robbie was one of those men who use governments, his own and others', threatening wars and sometimes waging them; while Lanny was an amiable playboy who traveled about on a hundred-dollar-an-hour yacht, making beautiful music, reading books of history and psychic research, and being troubled in his conscience about the way the world was going. He asked his friends very earnestly what ought to be done. Some thought they knew; but the trouble was, their opinions differed so greatly;
VII
The company went ashore in the crowded city, which had once been the capital of the Moslem world, and now was known as Istanbul. They got cars, as usual, and were driven about to see the sights. They visited the great cathedral of St. Sophia, and in the seraglio of the late sultan they inspected the harem, in which now and then a faithless wife had been strangled with a cord, tied in a sack, and set afloat in the Bosporus. They strolled through the bazaars, where traders of various races labored diligently to sell them souvenirs, from Bergama rugs to "feelthy postcards." Through the crowded street came a fire-engine with a great clangor; a modern one, painted a brilliant red—but Lanny saw in imagination the young Zaharoff riding the machine, busy with schemes to collect for his services. Were they still called tulumbadschi? And did they still charge to put out your fire—or to let it burn, as you preferred?
The unresting Bessie Budd stole northward along the coast of the immensely deep Black Sea, called by the ancient Greeks "friendly to strangers." The Soviet Union was in the middle of the Five-Year Plan, and miracles were confidently expected. The travelers' goal was Odessa, a city with a great outdoor stairway which they had seen in a motion picture. Their passports had been visaed and everything arranged in advance; they had only to make themselves known to Intourist, and they would have automobiles and guides and hotels to the limit of their supply of valuta.
"I have seen the future and it works." So Lincoln Steffens had said to Lanny Budd. Stef had had the eyes of faith, and so had Hansi and Bess and Rahel. When they looked at buildings much in need of repair and people wearing sneakers and patched sweaters, they said: "Wait till the new factories get going." They told the girl guides that they were "comrades," and they were taken off to in spect the latest styles in day nurseries and communal kitchens. They were motored into the country to visit a co-operative farm; when Hansi was asked about his occupation at home, he admitted that he was a violinist, and the people rushed to provide an instrument. All work on the place stopped while he stood on the front porch and played Old Folks at Home and Kathleen Mavourneen and Achron’s Hebrew Melody. It was heart-warming; but would it help get tractors and reapers into condition for the harvest soon to be due?
VIII
Irma went on some of these expeditions, and listened politely to the enthusiasms of her friends; but to Mama Robin she confessed that she found "the future" most depressing. Mama shrugged her shoulders and said: "What would you expect? It’s Russia." She had learned about it as a child, and didn’t believe it could ever be changed. In the days of the Tsar people had been so unhappy they had got drunk and crawled away into some hole to sleep. The Bolsheviks had tried to stop the making of liquor, but the peasants had made it and smuggled it into the towns—"just like in America," said Mama. She would have preferred not to have these painful old memories revived.
Odessa had changed hands several times during the revolution and civil war. It had been bombarded by the French fleet, and many of its houses destroyed. One of the sights of the city was the Square of the Victims, where thousands of slain revolutionists had been buried in a common grave, under a great pyramid of stones. The young people went to it as to a shrine, while their elders sought entertainment without success. The young ones insisted upon visiting some of the many sanatoriums, which are built near bodies of water formed by silted-up river mouths. These too were shrines, because they were occupied by invalided workers. That was the way it was going to be in the future; those who produced the wealth would enjoy it! "They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat." Thus the ancient Hebrew prophet, and it sounded so Red that in Canada a clergyman had been indicted by the grand jury for quoting it. Hansi and Rahel had the blood of these ancient prophets in their veins, and Bess had been taught that their utterances were the word of God, so this new religion came easily to them. It promised to save the workers, and Lanny hoped it would have better success than Mohammed had had in his efforts to help the watch-dogs of the tents.
Lanny was in his usual position, between the two sets of extremists. During this Russian visit he served as a sort of liaison officer to the Robin family. Johannes didn’t dare to discuss Communism with any of his young people, for he had found that by doing so he injured his standing; he talked with Lanny, hoping that something could be done to tone them down. In the opinion of the man of money, this Bolshevik experiment was surviving on what little fat it had accumulated during the old regime. People could go on living in houses so long as they stood up, and they could wear old clothes for decades if they had no sense of shame—look about you! But the making of new things was something else again. Of course, they could hire foreign experts and have factories built, and call it a Five-Year Plan—but who was going to do any real work if he could put it off on somebody else? And how could any business enterprise be run by politicians? "You don’t know them," said Johannes, grimly. "In Germany I have had to."
"It’s an experiment," Lanny admitted. "Too bad it had to be tried in such a backward country."
"All I can say," replied the man of affairs, "is I’m hoping it doesn’t have to be tried in any country where I live!"
IX
This was a situation which had been developing in the Robin family for many years, ever since Barbara Pugliese and Jesse Black-less had explained the ideals of proletarian revolution to the young Robins in Lanny’s home: an intellectual vaccination which had taken with unexpected virulence. Lanny had watched with both curiosity and concern the later unfoldment of events. He knew how Papa and Mama Robin adored their two boys, centering all their hopes upon them. Papa made money in order that Hansi and Freddi might be free from the humiliations and cares of poverty. Papa and Mama watched their darlings with solicitude, consulting each other as to their every mood and wish. Hansi wanted to play the fiddle; very well, he should be a great musician, with the best teachers, everything to make smooth his path. Freddi wished to be a scholar, a learned person; very well, Papa would pay for everything, and give up his natural desire to have the help of one of his sons in his own business.