Europe Central Read Online Free PDF

dress, with her hair tucked up in a bun. It was snowing, and the streets remained dangerous with ice. In those days it was the custom for every pass to be scrutinized in turn by dozens of menacing, half-literate faces, none of whom could grant the bearer absolution from fear, but any one of whom possessed full authority to shoot. Under the stipulations of the Red Terror, mistaken ruthlessness would be forgiven; mistaken mercy might not be. By virtue of her special association with Lenin, Krupskaya possessed the security of the elect, but even she must expect inconveniences, particularly when seeking out a convicted enemy of the people. And yet, strange to say, the sentry, whose cap was pulled low over his eyes, opened the squeaking gate without demur, and when she descended the stairs, she found in a labyrinth of brickwork corridors another guard already waiting for her, although of him she never saw anything but his back. Silently he led her down another staircase, darkness oozing from his boots. Through the walls came rhythmic screams, sometimes muffled by the earth of those deep-sunk grave-wells, sometimes amplified by the ventilation pipes, just as they say in classical times the cries of Sicilian victims echoed from the throat of a hollow brazen bull inside which the condemned were slowly roasted. As we know, Krupskaya was a sentimentalist (who secretly among all her books preferred Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women ), and these sounds horrified her. But from childhood it had been impossible to unsettle her heavy, melancholy steadiness, which disguised itself as optimism. She trudged on behind the guard, who finally stopped to unlock an ancient iron door with three keys. He stood aside, his face in the shadows, and as soon as she had entered closed the door upon her.
    8
    In regard to this cell, it should have been observable to Krupskaya that the walls were incised with Hebrew letters which seemed almost to flutter in the luminescence of the guttering lantern. Of course she was so long past her religious days as to be blind to the uncanny. And yet anyone can read in her memoirs that her heart had literally pounded with joy when she first read Das Kapital, because Marx had proven there, with scientific infallibility, that capitalism was doomed. Well, what might constitute uncanniness to a devout Bolshevik? The presence of a Social Revolutionary? But why seek the uncanny out? Motivations lie nested in motivations, like the numerological values of the letters of Hebrew parables. If, as the Kabbalah posits, the most secret meaning is also the most precious, then we must sink into hermeneutic darkness. Krupskaya needed to prove herself to be so excellent, so above vindictive personalism, that she could forgive even the one who would have killed her husband-god. And forgiveness need not exclude contempt. Within the coils of this rationale hid a second craving which she hardly dared read, a lust for reassurance about her Revolution. But even this did not explain the intensity of Krupskaya’s attraction to Fanya Kaplan.
    In her girlhood there had been an eighteen-year-old teacher named Timofeika who preached socialism to the peasants. Krupskaya adored her, and expressed that adoration through emulation. Her desire to give up her own self and become Timofeika hung between them like a glowing letter Tsae, which is Y-shaped like the female pudendum but which terminates in a fishhook, symbolizing attachment, penetration and parasitism. (Don’t mistake me; they never so much as touched one another. The key words of their tale are not lascivious, but have as usual to do with honor, worship, burnt offerings.) In any event, Timofeika soon got arrested; Krupskaya never saw her again. Very likely she became a Social Revolutionary like Fanya Kaplan. So Krupskaya would have had to break off with her in any event, to avoid compromising Volodya, who in Siberia had refused to allow her to color Easter eggs, because that would have been