The Dark Chronicles Read Online Free PDF

wrong. But I couldn’t catch her out: her answers were always lucid and thought-provoking. She was very good at sticking to abstract concepts. Whenever I brought up problems, such as the Moscow show trials and executions, she would fix me with her calmest gaze, concede that humans had misunderstood and abused the ideology, then solemnly insist that the world would only be bettered when class and states had been completely abolished and the dictatorship of the proletariat had taken their place. She used the language of Communist ideology with such a straightforward faith in Peace and Brotherhood that most of the time I acquiesced, simply not to appear a cynical beast and thereby lose her friendship. But when I felt particularly bloody-minded and pursued her on such points, her apparent innocence and naivety vanished and she would counter-attack, questioning British policy in India, for example, or picking out some other apposite situation to prove her point. I realized with growing surprise and admiration that her view of theworld had rather more consistency and logic to it than my own, and over time had to concede that, in many areas, I was far more naive and ill-informed than she.
    But politics was only one subject of our many conversations that autumn. Anna taught me about Russia, but also about herself. She was a born storyteller, giving vivid and moving accounts of her upbringing and her experiences in the war: she had been with the Red Cross all the way through it, which was why she was now working in the British Zone, rather than the Soviet one. Our friendship soon developed into one of those intimate affairs where you stay up all night talking; we ranged over every subject imaginable, skipping from one to the other like pebbles skimming across a lake. She would often visit me for an hour or so between her shifts on the wards, and it was on one of these occasions that I first kissed her.
    Love is a fast worker, especially first love, and so it was that, barely three months after being admitted into the sanatorium, I found myself in bed contemplating proposing marriage to my nurse. I could scarcely imagine how Father would react at the news! The instructions in his letter had been clear: I should not visit the farmhouse again unless it was an emergency, but I was past caring – and well enough to leave the hospital. I had been well enough for a couple of weeks, in fact, but had been loath to leave for fear of letting go of Anna. Now I knew she loved me, I made up my mind to propose to her and, if she agreed, journey out to see Father and tell him the news before taking her back to England.
    All my dreams evaporated later that evening, however, when she came to visit me after her usual rounds. I was sitting up smoking a cigarette and I sensed the change in her the moment she entered the room.
    ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘Paul,’ she said, looking up at me with a strange panic flooding her eyes. ‘I am so sorry.’
    I gestured for her to take a seat next to me. ‘Why? What’s happened?’ She was usually so controlled.
    She walked into the room and closed the door, but didn’t move any nearer to the bed. ‘I have lied to you,’ she said simply.
    ‘What have you lied about?’ A cold feeling had begun creeping through me.
    She looked down at her hands. ‘My name is not Anna Maleva,’ she said quietly. ‘My real name is Anna-Sonia Kuplin, and I am an agent of the
Narodny Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del
. Two months ago, I was instructed by my superior, a man in the DP camp at Burgdorf, to seduce you and recruit you to our cause.’
    She seemed to be talking at me through a fog or a dream. I looked at my hands and was surprised to see they were shaking. I couldn’t seem to stop them. ‘Why?’ I asked, eventually. ‘Why… were you asked to recruit me?’
    She walked over to the bed and stood by the edge of it. ‘My superior wants to know about all my patients, but he was particularly interested in you,’ she said.