THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. M. DELAFIELD (Illustrated Edition). E. M. Delafield
half a novel while he was in Russia and put it in his suitcase to take to America, only to have to part with it at the Customs.
"They said they'd have to look through it," he disconsolately remarks. "That was eighteen months ago, and I guess they're still looking."
"Was it about Russia?"
"No. It was about night life in New York."
"Did you tell them that?"
"Sure I did. But they couldn't any of them read English, so they took it away to find someone who could."
I think of my own manuscript, entirely written in pencil, and feel that it may well take a very long while indeed before any persons are found who can read it. And when they do, they almost certainly won't like it.
"If you've written anything at all that you want to take home with you," says the American journalist significantly, "just carry it under your coat or somewhere. You'll find it saves a very great deal of time."
I think he is right.
He is less right when he adds: "It's only for a few minutes after all."
In my experience of Russia nothing is ever done there in the space of a few minutes.
With an agreeable feeling that I am being like someone in a novel all about international gangs, I lock the door of my bedroom and proceed to wedge the manuscript against my spine, under my elastic belt.
It is agony. I shall never endure it for five minutes, let alone five hours. I remove the hard cover of the manuscript, find quite another part of my spine, and try again. Bad, but endurable.
If I put on my loose coat now I shall be much too hot, but I defy anybody to notice anything abnormal in my back view.
Besides, I shall face them all the time, and look them straight in the eyes with that directness of gaze which is well known to be the outward sign of utter rectitude of spirit.
The least agreeable of the guides has been given the task of seeing off the departing tourists. There are only six of us: two Swedish astronomers, who came to see the eclipse of the sun, an elderly English couple, a young American college boy, and myself.
We drive down to the docks. I see the last of the beautiful crescent of houses above the sea-front, the last of the two-hundred steps down to the Black Sea, the last of Karl Marx preening himself on the pedestal originally occupied by the (probably better-looking) statue of the Empress Catherine, the last of the town that I have liked best of all those I have visited in the U.S.S.R.
I have no regrets. If I had any I shouldn't be in a position to indulge in them, partly because I am preoccupied by the displeasing thought that if I get much hotter most of my manuscript will probably become blurred and undecipherable, and partly because I feel ill.
Either the black bread, the salad-grown in a drain?—or the drinking-water has chosen this inconvenient moment for taking its toll of me.
If I faint—and I feel as though, between the heat, my coat, and my indisposition, I certainly shall—someone will have the brilliant idea of loosening my clothes, and the manuscript will fall out, and I shall come to under a strong police guard...
I do not faint. Instead, I get out of the car with everybody else, and we all go into a shed on the docks and the inevitable wait begins, and goes on, and goes on, and goes on.
A great number of rather dégommés-looking Comrades are scattered about the long shed, all engaged in their usual occupation of waiting. Their luggage includes bedding, little hand-carts, bundles of wraps (one of which startles me by suddenly turning out to be an old woman), bags, boxes, and the customary mysterious portfolios.
Some of the Comrades eat dried fish. Some of them sleep. Almost all of them cough and spit.
"I wonder what we're waiting for," says the elderly Englishwoman.
She can't have been very long in Russia.
But the guide—as usual—has her answer.
"They are not yet ready," she says.
"The Customs officers?"
"They are busy."
As there are none of them in sight, the guide can't possibly know if they're busy or not. She just says it automatically. I admire the spirit of the elderly Englishwoman who replies at once that they ought to be busy over our luggage, not over anything else.
The guide, for once, has nothing to say, and we all continue to await the pleasure of the Customs officials.
(By this time most of my penciled records must have come off on my back.)
A little baby, swaddled to the eyebrows in shawls, screams and howls from behind its mullings—as well it may. Nobody unwraps it or takes much notice.
Nobody seems to be taking much notice of anything. We are all sunk in fatalistic apathy. It is an atmosphere that seems very characteristic of a Russian gathering. Even when the officials at last crawl in, one at a time, from an inner office, nobody is in the least excited.
One or two of the people nearest the counter heave their luggage on to it and then turn aside in a dejected way, as though knowing that nothing is really going to happen yet, and ashamed of their own misguided impetuosity.
Only the elderly English couple, stalwart and determined, march up with their solid, respectable-looking suitcases and take up their stand in front of the counter. The guards at Waterloo probably looked like that, only with better effect; for the French are more impressionable than the Soviet Comrades, by a very long way.
The college boy is consulting the guide about his films and his photographs. He has been consulting everybody about them throughout the last two days. His predicament is very far from being peculiar to himself.
He has been in Russia four weeks and has taken a great many snapshots. Belatedly, he has discovered that no undeveloped films will be allowed to leave the country. Very well—he will have them developed and printed in Moscow. He does and is asked to pay a sum in roubles that would handsomely buy up films, photographs, camera, and all, twice over. We have all heard of this outrage and we have all assured him, with varying degrees of sympathy, that the same thing has happened to other tourists in the U.S.S.R. before now.
He seems unable to believe it. I watch him walking agitatedly to and fro, until a new wave of nausea comes over me and I clutch the sides of my bench and pass into a brief, unpleasant coma.
When I emerge, wet through and with the manuscript surely in worse case than ever, the college boy and his films are being dealt with by the officials. Strip after strip of negatives is being unrolled, held up to the light, and scrutinized. The inspection requires the full attention of all the Customs officials—not one is left to attend to anybody else.
The Comrades, seeming neither surprised nor resentful, continue to cough, spit, sleep, or eat fish. The crying baby, still muffled, is being carried up and down by a young man with a beard, who holds a book in one hand and reads as he walks. (Culture)
The tourists mutter a little among themselves at the new delay, but are, I think, supported by the hope of some dramatic discovery, such as that the films include a snapshot of the interior of the Kremlin (where nobody, except officials is now allowed to set foot) or a complete set of naval and military plans of the utmost importance.
Nothing of the kind happens.
However, the last roll of all, which the American youth has not had the sense to slip into his pocket, has not been developed. It is, says the young man, nothing. Just some pictures of the scenery in the Crimea.
Officials of any other nation might be expected to take one of two courses: either to accept this statement and pass the films or to reject it and confiscate them.
In Russia, the situation apparently calls for the formation of a kind of minor parliament. The original officials send for more and higher officials, who come out of the main office one by one, mostly in shirtsleeves, and gather solemnly round the little red cylinder