inhabited by a rich merchant. During the
early days of the war this house was occupied
by the French military mission : since the
revolution it has been used as a Soviet guest
house. Many newspaper men have been
lodged here. It is a finely built house and
very nicely planned with all modern conveniences,
but hideously decorated. The
furniture is what it usually is in rich merchants’ houses everywhere ; but, as I am not
an artist, I found my room very comfortable
indeed. There were other newspaper men
living here : we were all waited on by an old
retainer of the family (the family was in exile).
He did everything possible to make our food
agreeable. It was rather pathetic to find this
old servant worrying himself because he could
not feed us as he had been accustomed to feed
his master's guests in days long ago.
I may as well state here what our meals consisted of. At 9.30 we had breakfast—three slices of black bread, a little butter or substitute, a little cheese, and two glasses of tea with no milk ; at 5.80 or earlier, our chief meal—soup, generally two platefuls each (this was usually made with vegetables, though sometimes it was made from water that fish had been boiled in, and occasionally some meat would appear to have had a look in), cusha (I think this is the correct word : it is a kind of rice or birdseed, boiled with fish
