o 3b3e7475144cf77c

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