Rumyantsev did not tell me the man’s name. Clearly I was expected to know already.
“Vladimir Ilyich is unhappy with our premises,” said Rumyantsev.
Ah! Vladimir Ilyich! The man himself!
“The premises are excellent,” Lenin interrupted. “But not for our editorial office. What on earth gave you the idea of having our office on Nevsky Prospekt? And to have such a grand doorman on duty! No ordinary working man would have the courage to walk past a figure like him. And your diarists are no use at all. You must have diaries written by workers…”
“It’s anyone’s guess what they’d come up with,” Rumyantsev said crossly.
“It doesn’t matter. Of course it will be badly written and incoherent, but that isn’t important. We can take a piece, work on it, correct it and publish it. And then the workers will know it’s their paper.”
I thought of Yefim and his “Plehve and his Slaves”.
“And will the workers be writing the literary reviews and the theatre and opera reviews, too?” I asked.
“Nowadays we don’t need theatre. Nor do we need music. We don’t need any articles about art or culture of any sort. The only way we can connect with the masses is by publishing diaries written by workers. Your much-touted Lvov gives us nothing but ministerial gossip. He is quite surplus to requirements.”
Poor Rumyantsev. He had been so proud to have lured Klyachko-Lvov, the king of reporters, to his paper.
Klyachko was an extraordinary reporter. His exploits were legendary. Once, apparently, he had sat under the table in the office of the Home Secretary during a closed meeting. The next day, an account of this meeting appeared in Klyachko’s paper in the section called “Rumours”. It caused panic among those at the top. How could the reporter have found all this out? Who had let the information slip? Or had a bribe of several thousand changed hands? But then, that was a monstrous suggestion! For some time, people tried to identify the guilty party—and they, of course, got nowhere. The guilty party was the footman, who had received a hefty tip from Klyachko for hiding him under the green baize.
According to another story, Klyachko had once interviewed a certain dignitary who was preparing an important state project. The man refused to tell Klyachko anything at all definite. He restricted himself to very general comments, all the time stroking a manuscript that lay in front of him on the table. The dignitary was in a hurry to get to a meeting and Klyachko obligingly offered to take him there. As he was leaving, Klyachko suddenly realized he had left his briefcase behind in the office. The dignitary was already seated in the carriage, and Klyachko had his foot on the step when, with a sudden start, he said, “My briefcase! Goodness! I’ve left my briefcase behind!”
And off he dashed, back into the house.
In full view of the startled doorman, he burst into the study, and grabbed not only his briefcase but also the manuscript that was lying on the table.
An hour later, after he had had a quick look through the manuscript, he went back to the statesman’s house and said to the doorman, “Your master said I was to put these papers on his table myself.”
The next day the statesman was astonished to see a general outline of his project in the papers: “I gave very evasive answers to all that reporter’s questions. He must have the most extraordinary nose for a story.”
And Lenin was proposing to dismiss this king of reporters, Klyachko-Lvov, sought after by every paper. To replace him with what? With Yefim and his Plehves and Slaves.
“Might I ask?” I said to Lenin. “Is the entire literary section surplus to requirements, in your opinion?”
“Speaking quite frankly, yes. But wait a bit. Carry on as you are, and we’ll soon reorganize everything.”
The reorganization began at once. It began with the premises. Carpenters appeared, carrying lengths of wood, and began to divide each room into several compartments.
The result was a cross between a beehive and a menagerie: a maze of dark corners, cages and stables. Some cubicles were the size of stalls meant for a single horse, while others were still more cramped, like cages for smaller animals—foxes, for instance. And the partitions were so close that, had there been bars, visitors might have poked the animals with their umbrellas, or perhaps even plucked up the courage to stroke them. In some of these cubicles there was neither a desk nor a chair, only a bare light bulb on a wire.
A great number of new people appeared. All of them unknown to us and all of them alike. The ones who stood out were Martyn Mandelstam, who was interesting and intelligent, Alexander Bogdanov, who was a little dull but generally highly thought of, and Lev Kamenev who was fond of literature, or who, at any rate, acknowledged its right to exist. But these men hardly ever came into the editorial office; they were, I think, exclusively occupied with Party business. All the others would congregate in little groups in the stables with their heads facing one another, like sheep in a snowstorm. At the centre of every group there was always a piece of paper held in somebody’s hand. Everybody would be stabbing at it with their fingers and muttering under their breath. Either they were struggling to get to the bottom of something, or they were all keeping tabs on one another.
A strange office indeed.
The only room untouched was the large room used for editorial meetings.
The way these meetings were conducted was also somewhat absurd. People who had nothing to do with the newspaper would come along and stand between the chairs and the wall, shrugging their shoulders and making ironical long faces, even when the question under discussion was perfectly simple and there was nothing to be ironical about: should we, for instance, print the names of deceased people in small print, or in regular type?
At one of these meetings we were told that a certain Faresov (a Populist, apparently) had just appeared. He would like to work for the newspaper.
“Anyone have any objections to Faresov?” asked Lenin.
Nobody did.
“Well, I can’t say I like him myself,” I said. “But that, of course, is neither here nor there.”
“I see,” said Lenin. “Well, since Nadezhda Alexandrovna doesn’t like him for some reason, I suggest we forget about him. Tell him we’re busy now.”
My goodness, what a gentleman! Who would have thought it?
“See how important your opinion is to him!” K.P said to me in a whisper.
“I think this is just an excuse to get rid of Faresov,” I said.
Lenin, who was sitting next to me, squinted at me out of his narrow, crafty eyes and laughed.
Meanwhile, life in the city went on as usual.
Young journalists courted young female revolutionaries who had just returned from abroad.
There was one woman (I think she was called Gradusova, though I don’t remember for sure) who carried grenades around in her muff. The staff of the bourgeois Stock Exchange Gazette were captivated by her.
“She dresses elegantly, she goes to the hairdresser, and all the time she’s carrying bombs wrapped up in her muff. Well, say what you like, but she’s certainly an original! And always so calm and natural, with a smile on her face—she’s an absolute darling!”
There were collections to raise money for weapons.
Absolute and original darlings like this Gradusova made the rounds of newspaper offices and high-class theatres asking coquettishly for donations towards the purchase of weapons.
One rich actress reacted to an appeal of this sort in a very businesslike fashion. She donated twenty roubles, but asked for a receipt: “If revolutionaries come to rob my apartment, I can show them I did my bit for their cause. Then they’ll leave me in peace.”