The Stalin Epigram Read Online Free PDF

Instruct your servers that the food he eats and the wine he drinks will be supplied by me. If he desires tea, I will pour it from a thermos flask.” Crossing out
names and writing in new ones, I rearranged the seating order so that my boss would be surrounded by writers and editors whom I knew to be members of the Party, and returned the page to Gorky,
along with one of the Cheka’s manila file cards with the names of three of his servants typed on it. “Get rid of them for the afternoon,” I instructed the great writer. “We
don’t want them coming anywhere near the khozyain .”
    Gorky squinted at the index card in disbelief and for a moment I thought he might have more spine than his detractors gave him credit for. “These people,” he blurted out, “have
been with me since I returned to Russia—”
    I glanced impatiently at my wristwatch. “They have Israelite names, Comrade Gorky,” I said, assuming that would be explanation enough.
    “Israelite names! Some of the comrades closest to Stalin are of Jewish extraction—Zinoviev, Kamenev, Kaganovich, even your Chekist Genrikh Yagoda. Lenin himself is said to have had
Jewish blood—”
    I cut him off. “The archtraitor Bronstein-Trotsky is an Israelite. We are concerned that he will attempt to assassinate the khozyain with the assistance of the international Zionist
conspiracy.”
    Gorky rolled his eyes in dismay. “Inviting the khozyain to meet with writers under my roof has turned out to be more complicated than I imagined when Stalin suggested the
idea.”
    The first of the writers and editors, arriving in private automobiles or taxicabs or on foot, began turning up as the chimes in the Kremlin tower across the river tolled high noon. I could see
the hunched figure of Yusis, standing immediately inside the front door, scrutinizing the guests with his unsmiling eyes as they removed their winter coats and piled them on the tables set out for
that purpose in the foyer. Gorky was arguing with two men at the door, throwing up his hands helplessly as he turned them away. My Ossetian chauffeur had taken up position in front of the swinging
doors leading from the reception hall to the kitchen. I kept an eye on things for a while, then made my way to the servants’ entrance off the laundry room next to the kitchen, which gave onto
an unpaved alleyway behind the villa. At half past the hour, a 1911 Rolls-Royce with teardrop fenders turned into the alley and pulled to a stop at the back of the villa. At both ends of the
alleyway I could make out soldiers armed with rifles fitted with bayonets blocking off access from the street. Two of Yagoda’s people in civilian clothing sprang from the car. One of them
came up to me and saluted while the other held open the rear door of the Rolls-Royce. The khozyain emerged from the automobile, clearly in no hurry to get where he was going; he loathed
public functions and held all writers, with the possible exception of Mikhail Sholokhov, the poet Pasternak and another poet with a distinctly Israelite name that escapes me now, in low esteem
inasmuch as he considered them to be careerists who served themselves first and the Revolution a distant second. My boss, with a worker’s cap on his head and a plain army greatcoat thrown
over his shoulders, spotted me at the door and raised a hand to acknowledge my presence. A cigarette bobbed on his lower lip. He treated himself to a last drag before flicking it into an open
garbage pail. (Comrade Stalin, who was vigilant about the image he presented to the world, made a point of never being seen in public or photographed smoking a cigarette.) Walking with that
distinctive pigeon-toed gate that actors who played him on stage imitated so artfully, he came through the doorway.
    “Everything in order, Vlasik?” he muttered.
    I nodded once. I’d been the khozyain ’s bodyguard since the Civil War. He knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t let him set foot in a building