The Stalin Epigram Read Online Free PDF Page A

previously been the mistress of Britain’s consul general in Moscow at the time of the Revolution; Yagoda told me he suspected the Budberg woman of spying, but he couldn’t figure
out for whom. The khozyain , for reasons beyond me, had lured Gorky back to the homeland from his lavish Italian exile in the late twenties by offering him this villa in the Lenin Hills that
once belonged to the millionaire Ryabushinsky, as well as a couple of dachas , one near Stalin’s not far from Moscow, the other in the Crimea, each resplendent enough to set the mouths
of visitors to watering, so I’ve been informed. In case this wasn’t bait enough the boss, with a stroke of the pen, changed the name of Nizhni Novgorod, the writer’s birth city on
the Volga, to Gorky. (It was rumored that Yagoda, who also came from Nizhni Novgorod, was furious the city had not been named after him.) No wonder Gorky came back to Russia! As Christ is my
witness, I’d seriously consider taking up residence in America if the khozyain in Washington, that crass capitalist F. Roosevelt, agreed to change the name of Chicago to
Vlasikgrad.
    Yusis, the Lithuanian who had been working for the khozyain as long as I had, longer even, turned up behind me with my chauffeur, an Ossetian tribesman from the mountains of Georgia; talk
about red meat eaters, the Ossete had been a tsarist prison guard in his youth. I gestured for them to search the house and, fingering the small German pistols in the pockets of their leather
jackets, they set off in different directions to explore it from attic to cellar. “We’ll start with the guest list,” I told Gorky as we walked down several steps, our footfalls
echoing off tiled walls, into the long mirrored reception hall lined with Chinese vases where my boss would meet the writers.
    Gorky, agitated, thumbed his false teeth back into place. “But the list of guests has already been vetted by Comrade Stalin’s secretariat.”
    “I am the head of the khozyain’s security detail,” I informed the fair weather friend of Lenin’s who had jumped ship at the sight of spilled blood.
“It’s me who has the ultimate responsibility for his safety. The list, if you please. The list, even if you don’t please.”
    I am a big-bodied man who keeps fit by doing push-ups every morning and moves with the agility of someone half his weight; it has been said of me that I am able to walk across a room without
provoking the creaking of floorboards under my feet. Browbeating vegetarians is what I do to work up an appetite.
    Gorky produced a typescript from the breast pocket of a European suit jacket with ridiculously wide lapels. Settling onto one of the steel-and-celluloid chairs, I went over the page, which had
thirty-eight names on it selected by Gorky, typed in two neat columns. I uncapped my fountain pen and scratched lines through the names of three film writers and three novelists and two editors
whom I knew to be on Yagoda’s shit list. When I handed the page back to Gorky, he looked rattled. “These people have already been invited—they will turn up at my door in three
quarters of an hour.”
    “You are not only the host here—you are the head of the Writers’ Union. You will station yourself at the entranceway, Comrade Gorky. Tick off the names as the guests arrive.
The ones whose names have lines through them are to be turned away.”
    “What the devil will I tell them?”
    “You are an inventor of fictions—tell them whatever comes into your head. Only be sure they do not get in. Now let me see the seating plan.”
    I studied the page he handed me, which corresponded to the long table that ran the length of the reception room. The khozyain , according to Gorky’s plan, was to be seated at the
head of the table. “Comrade Stalin never presides at receptions,” I informed the writer. “You yourself will sit at the head of the table. He will sit immediately to your right
with his back to the wall.