Archangel (25 page)

(And Mama, yes, it is a m
odest house! Two storeys only Yo
ur good Bolshevik heart would rejoice at its simplicity!)

I am taken around the side of the house to the back. A servants' wing, connected to the main quarters by a long passageway Here in the kitchen a woman is waiting. She is grey
haired almost old And kindl
y
. She calls me 'child'.
Her name is Valechka Istomina. A simple meal has bee
n prepared- cold meat and bread,
pickled herring, kvas. She watches me. (Everyone here watches everyone else: it is strange to look up and
find
a pair of
eyes regarding you.) From time to time, guards come by to take a look at me. They don't talk much but when they do they sound
like Georgians. One asks, 'Well
now, Valechka, and what
was the Boss’s
humour this morning?' but Valechka hushes him and nods to me.
I am not such a young fo
ol as to ask any questions. Not yet. Valechka says: 'Tomorrow we shall talk. Now rest.'

I have a room to mysel
f
.
The girl who had it before has gone away Two plain black blouses and skirts have been left behind for me.

I have a view of a corner of the lawn, a tiny summer house, the w
oods. The birds sing in the early
summer evening It seems so peaceful. Yet every couple of minutes a guard goes past the window.
I lie on my little bed in the heat and try to sleep. I think
of in
the winter: the coloured lanterns strung out across the frozen rivet skating on the Dvina,
the sound of ice cracking at night, hunting fo
r mushrooms in the
For
est. I wish
I was at home. But these are fo
olish thoughts.
I must sleep.
Why did that man watch me on the train for all that time?

LATER: In the darkness, the sound of cars. He is home.

12.6
.51 This is a day! I can hardly
set it down. My hand shakes so. (It did not at the time but now it does!) At seven I
go to the kitchen. Valechka is already up, sorting through a great mess of broken crockery glass, spilled food, which lies in a heap in the centre of a big tablecloth. She explains how the table is cleared
every nig
ht: two guards each take two corners of the cloth and carry everything out! So our first task every morning is to rescue all that isn't broken, and wash it. As we work, Valechka explains the routine of the house. He rises quite late and sometimes likes to work in the garden. Then he goes to the Kremlin and his quarters a
re cleaned He never returns befo
re nine or ten in the even
ing, and then there is a dinner
At two or three He goes to
bed This happens seven days a week. The rules: when one approaches Him, do
so openly.
He hates it when people creep up
on Him. If a door has to be knocked on, knock upon it loudly
don’t
stand around
don’t
spea
k unless you are spoken to. And i
f you do have to speak, always look Him in the eyes.

She prepares a simple breakfast of
coffe
e, bread and meat, and takes it out. Later she asks me to collect the tray Before I
go, she makes me tie up my hair and turn around while she examines me. I will do, she says. She says He is working at a table at the edge of
the lawn on the south side of
the h
ouse. Or was. He moves restless,
from place to place. It is His way The guards will know where to look.

What can I
write
of
this moment?
I
am calm. Yo
u would have been proud of me. I remember what to do. I walk around the edge of the lawn and
approach Him in plain view. He’s
sitting on a bench, alone, bent over some papers. The tray is on a table beside Him. He glances up at my approach,
and then
returns to His work. But as I walk away across the grass - then, I swear I
fe
el His eyes upon my back,
all the way until I’m out of sig
ht. Valechka laughs at my white face.

I don't see Him again after that.

Just now (it is after ten): the sound of cars.

14
.
6
.51 Last night. Late. I’m
in the kitchen with Valechka when Lozgachev (a guard) comes rushing in, all steamed up, to say the Boss is out of Ararat. Valechka fitches a bottle, but instead of giving it to Lozgachev, she gives it to me: Let Ann
a take it in.' She wants to hel
p me - dear Valechka! So Lozgachev takes me down the passage to the main part of the house. I can hear male voices. Laughter He knocks hard on the door and stands aside.
I go in. The room is hot, stuffy, seven or eig
ht men around a table -
familiar faces, all of them. One - Comrade Khrushchev,
I think - is on his fret, proposing a toast. His face is flushe
d s
weating He stops. There i
s food all over the place, as if
they have been throwing it. All look at me. Comrade Stalin is at the head of the table. I set the brandy next to him. His voice is sof
t and kindl
y He says, And what is your name
, young comrade?' Anna Safanova
Comrade Stalin.' I remember to look into his eyes. They are very deep
. The man next to him says, She’s
from , Boss.' And Comrade Khrushchev says, 'T
rust Lavrenty to know where she’s
from!
'More
laughter 'Ignore these rough fe
llows,' says Comrade Stalin. 'Thank you, Anna Safanova. 'As I close the doo
r
, their talk
resumes. Valechka is waiting fo
r me at the end of the passage. She puts her arm around me and we go back in to the kitchen. I am shaking, it must be with joy
.

16
.
6
.
51 Comrade Stalin has said that from now on I am to bring him breakfast.

21.6.
51 He is in the garden as usual this morning How I wish the people could see him here! He likes to listen to the birdsong, to prune the flowers. But his hands shake. As lam setting down the tray I he
ar him curse. He has cut himself
I pick up the napkin and take it over to him. At first, he looks at me
suspiciously
Then he holds out his hand I wrap it in the white linen. Bright spots of blood soak through. 'You are not afraid of Comrade Stalin, Anna Safanova?' 'Why should I be afraid of you, Comrade Stalin?' 'The doctors are afraid of Comrade Stalin. When they come to change a dressing on Comrade Stalin, their hands shake so much, he has to d
o it himself Ah, but i
f their hands didn't shake - well then, what would t
hat mean? Thank you, Anna Safan
ova.'

Oh
, mama and papa, he is so lonely! Your hearts would go out
to him. He is only flesh and blood after all
like us. And close
up he is old Much older than he appears in his pictures. His moustache is grey, the underside stained yellow by his pipe smoke. His teeth are almost all gone. His chest rattles when he breathes. I
fe
ar
fo
r him. For all of us.

30.6 51 Three a.m. A knock at my door
Valechka is outside, in her nig
htdress, with a pocket torch. He has been i
n the garden, pruning by moonlight, and he has cut himself again! He is calling for me! I dress quickly and fo
llo
w her along the passage. The night is warm. We
pass through the dining room and in to his private quarters. He has three rooms an
d he moves between them, one nig
ht in this one, one night in another Nobody is ever sure where. He sleeps beneath a blanket on a couch. Valechka leaves us. He is sitting on the couch, his hand outstretched It is
a graze. It takes me hal
f a minute to bind
it with my handkerchief 'The fea
rless Anna Safanova...'

I sense he wants me to stay He asks me about my home and parents, my Party work, my
plans
fo
r the future. I tell him of my interest in the law. He snorts: he doesn't think much of lawyers! He wants to know of
life
in in
the winter Have I seen the lights of the Northern Aurora? (Of course!) When do the first snows come? At the end of
S
eptember
I tel
l him, and by the end of October
the city i
s snowbound and only
the trains
can get through. He is hungry fo
r details. How the Dvina freezes and wooden tracks are
laid across it and there is lig
ht
for only fo
ur hours a day How the temperature drops to 35 below and people go into the
fo
rests
f
o
r ice-fishing...

He listens most intently 'Comrade Stalin believes the soul of
Russia lies in the ice and solitude of the far north. When
Comrade Stalin was in exile - this was bef
o
re the Revolution, in
Kureika, within the Arctic Circle - it was his happiest time. It
was here Comrade Stalin learned how to hunt and fish. That swine Trotsky maintai
ned that Comrade Stalin used only traps. A filthy
lie! Comrade Stalin set traps, yes, but he also set lines in the ice holes, and such was his success in the detection of
fish that the local
people credited him with supernatural powers. In one day Comrade Stalin travelled
For
ty-five versts on skis and killed twelve brace of
partridge with twenty-fo
ur shots. Could Trotsky claim as much?'

I wish I could remember all he said Perhaps this should be my destiny: to record his words for History?

By the time I leave h
im to return to my bed it is lig
ht.

8.7.51 The same perfo
rmance
as last time. Valechka at my
door at 3 a.m.: he has cut himsel
f he wants me. But when I
get there, I can see no wound. He laughs at my face - his joke! - and tells me to bind his hand in any case. He strokes my chee
k, then pinches it. 'You see, fe
arless Anna Safanova, how you make a prisoner of me?!'

He is in a diffe
rent
room from the last time. On the walls are pictures of children, torn from magazines. Children playing in a cherry orchard A bo
y on skis. A girl drinking goat’s
milk from a horn. Many pictures. He notices me staring at them and
this prompts him to talk frankl
y of his own children. One son dead One a drunkard His daughter married twice, the first time to a Jew: he never even allowed him in to the house! What has Comrade Stalin done to deserve this? Other men produce normal children. Was it bad blood or bad upbringing? Was there something wrong with the mothers? (He thinks so, to judge from their families, who have been a constant plague to him.) Or was it impossible
for
the children of Comrad
e Stalin ever to develop normaly
given his high position in the State and Party? Here is the age-old conflict, older even than the struggle between the classes.

He asks i
f I have
heard of Comrade Trofim Lysenko’s
1948 speech to the Lenin
All- Union Academy of Agricultu
ral Sciences? I say that I have. My answer pleases him.

'But Comrade Stalin wrote this speech! It was Comrade
Stalin’s
insight, after a life
time of study and struggle, that acquired characteristics are inheritable. Though naturally these discoveries must be put into the mouths of others, just as it isfi~r others to turn the principle into a practical science.

'Remember Comrade Stal
in’s historic words to Gorky: 'I
t is the task of the proletarian state to produce engineers of human souls.

Are you a good Bolshevik, Anna Safanova?'

I swear to him that I
am.

Will
you prove it? Will you dance fo
r Comrade Stalin?'

There is a gramophone in the corner of the room. He goes to it. I-

AND THAT’S
HOW it ends?' said O'Brian. His voice was heavy with disappointment. 'Just like that?'

'See fo
r yourself
' Kelso turned the book round and showed it to the other two. 'The next twenty pages have been removed. And here - look - you can see the way it's been done. The torn edges attached to the spine are all different lengths.'