Seeing that he was prepared to be amiable, I asked him if I could bother
him with measurements. “_Tout ce que vous voudrez_,” he said, and
pointed out to me how unsymmetrical his face is. He opened his mouth and
snapped his teeth to show me that his underjaw is crooked, and as he did
so he reminded me of a snarling wolf. When he talks his face lights up
and his eyes flash. Trotsky’s eyes are much talked of in Russia, and he
is called “the wolf.” His nose also is crooked and looks as though it
had been broken. If it were straight he would have a very fine line from
the forehead. Full-face he is Mephisto. His eyebrows go up at an angle,
and the lower part of his face tapers into a pointed and defiant beard.
As I measured him with calipers, he remarked: “_Vous me caressez avec
des instruments d’acier._” He talks very rapid, and very fluent French,
and could easily be mistaken for a Frenchman. I dragged my modelling
stand across the room to try for a better light on the other side. He
watched me with a weary look, and said: “Even in clay you make me
travel, and I am so tired of travelling.” He explained to me that he is
not as desperately busy as usual because there is Peace with Poland, and
good news from the South. I told him that I had nearly gone to the
Southern front with Kalinin, who wanted to take me, but that Kameneff
wouldn’t let me go because it was a troop train. Without hesitating a
moment he answered:
“Do you want to go to the front? You can come with me.”
He was thoughtful for awhile, and then asked me: “Are you under the care
here of our Foreign Office?”
I said I was not.
“But who are you here with? Who is responsible for you?”
“Kameneff,” I said.
“But Kameneff is at the front.”
“Yes.”
“Then you are alone? H’m, that is very dangerous in a revolutionary
country. Do you know Karahan, Tchicherin’s secretary?”
“Yes; he is living in our house, so is Litvinoff.”
“Ah, Litvinoff, I will ring him up.”
He did ring him up, but what he said I could not understand. Litvinoff
told me later that Trotsky had asked him if I was all right, and if it
would be indiscreet or not to show me the front. Litvinoff gave me a
good character.
At 4 o’clock he ordered tea, and had some with me. He talked to me about
himself, and of his wanderings in exile during the war, and how,
finally, at the outbreak of the Revolution, he sailed on a neutral ship
from the United States to return to Russia; how the British arrested him
and took him to a Canadian concentration camp. He was detained a few
months, until the Russian Government succeeded in obtaining his release.
He was particularly incensed at the British interfering with the
movements of a man who was not going to Britain, nor from a British
colony, nor by a British ship: “But I had a good time in that camp,” he
said. “There were a lot of German sailors there, and I did some
propaganda work. By the time I left they were all good revolutionaries,
and I still get letters from some of them.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account