Denouncer Read Online Free PDF Page B

recently been arguing, usually over our differing views of life. I bought her a jar of caviar, and now she has given me this cahier. Two years ago, when we first met, I thought her the most beautiful woman in all Russia. She is passionate and sentimental and has wild Cossack blood. Her family comes from the region of the Don. Our first disagreement occurred over my joining the secret police. In the quiet of our bedroom, she called Stalin a limping leech. I told her the walls have ears and to watch what she says. (I shouldn’t even be writing this down.) She accused me of joining the wrong side, the Bolsheviks, instead of the Left Opposition. We both come from political families that fought in the civil war, hers on the side of the Whites and mine on the Reds. And yet she has taken a middle ground: that of the Social Democrats. I fear trouble will ensue.
    20 May
    We continue to disagree but now our differences have affected the bed. She tells me I am unworthy of her love. We met outside of Ryazan in August 1934, a stifling day. The sunbaked roads were hard as oak. A runaway horse, copiously dripping foam from its silken lips, came thundering down the lane. She grabbed the pommel, and swung into the saddle as effortlessly as if she were mounting a horse at rest. A rotund fellow with a sweaty red face, puffing from the exertion of chasing his mare, took the reins from her and opened his purse. She refused the reward. So taken was I by her courage and courtesy—yes, her handsome face also—I crossed the lane and boldly spoke to her. Although it is not my custom to speak to strangers, especially women, I could feel her magnetism from across the road. In these Soviet times, women have become fiercer than men. Give them boots, a uniform, a shoulder strap, and they behave like the Praetorian Guard. She smiled and we entered a shop for a cup of chai. I asked if I could see her again, and she said not likely. Only grudgingly did she tell me her name, Galina, and that she lived twelve versts from town on her parents’ farm. I told her mine were Kalmyk sheepherders. I had the impression that she disdained Mongols, but my family’s blood is so mixed with European that I could pass one way or the other. She repeatedly rebuffed my advances. But a chance meeting between her and my mother took place in a shop. Only then did she begin to treat my overtures seriously, I think because of my mother’s remarkable beauty.
    27 May
    They say a long courting period is best. We saw each other wherever we could, and whenever we made love she was always sensuous and tender. Finally in March, she agreed to live with me, and last June we married. Unlike some women, she never becomes hysterical over love. She is physically robust and shares in the pleasures of sex. But I am not without worry. She likes men and especially well-educated ones who excite her with ideas and shower her with praise. I suspect I have failed her in this regard. My own college education was rather conventional, though from time to time she does compliment my courage and compassion. She seems to be saying, “For now you will do.”
    20 June
    Less than a month ago, Galina was all loving and sweetness. I know she is moody, but of late also overtly flirtatious. How can this clever young woman, blessed with a college degree and wise to the guiles of young men, so naively accept their flattery? Does she sincerely believe it when they say that not beauty but wit makes her shine in their eyes? Does she pretend not to see their oily designs just to incite my jealousy? When it comes to love, her powers of self-delusion border on the irrational. I swear she suffers from “uterine frenzies,” which she always manages to dress up in some romantic locution, the better to abandon herself. She needs to have at her side a young man who is constantly singing her praises. And that man never changes. He is always morose, daring, and willing to ignore her outbursts of temper. She claims that