He’d slept on the couch in the small dining room all day, then gotten up that evening and turned on the light. He was confused—he normally didn’t sleep this long. He wasn’t even sure what day it was.
He felt somewhat dizzy, but he’d been feeling that now and then for weeks. His blood pressure had been high, and yet there were always good reasons for high blood pressure. He had to do everything himself.
Had he hada steambath yesterday? He thought so, a long one. He remembered the way it had melted his thoughts, leaving tired, empty spaces behind. Perhaps the worst of his memories had vanished. They’d warned him it was bad for his heart, but who knew if that was true. He trusted his doctors least of all.
Still he moved forward, but so slowly, as if time itself were on its last legs. His own legs had become so weak, so shaky, he did not recognize them. They appeared to belong to someone else. He could barely struggle across the rug of the small dining room. It was Persian. Was this the one given to him by the Shah? It troubled him that he did not immediately know the answer. In Siberia men older than he was now had been riding horses and starting bar fights, bedding women half as young. The troubles of leadership had sapped his vitality. Once he’d been a cowboy, a bank robber, a Robin Hood robbing the rich and giving to his leader Lenin. He’d been like some highway bandit, his saddlebags full of money.
It had been up to Stalin to keep the revolution financed, and every time he had stepped up to the job. He’d not only been a man of steel, he’d also been a man of action. He’d exerted his considerable personal power over people, and he’d gotten things done.
He still had the power, of course. More now than ever. But it was all at considerable remove. He’d become like Gorky—he wrote the story that made his characters dance. He did nothing himself, and yet he made the orders that did everything. He outlined the plot, and then everywhere mayhem occurred. There was a certain satisfaction in that—it allowed him to be clever.
He remembered that army officer, not that long ago. The fellow had the temerity to visit Stalin himself at his office in the Kremlin. Stalin had been flabbergasted—had the man no friends to warn him against such a plan? He said there had been complaints about him, some dereliction or other, and he wanted Stalin, their great father, to know that these complaints were not true. Stalin had almost laughed in his face—he was too bold—then had him arrested two days later. It amused Stalin to play this way, to create some tragic story out of someone’s life, some dark comedy. He actually couldn’t remember the officer’s name or what the supposed complaints had been about—he’d never even seen them. The man might be perfectly happy today if he hadn’t bothered Stalin with his troubles.
Before Stalin had had the great hero D.F. Serdich arrested he had toasted him at a reception. He had pretended to be so impressed by the man. If he hadn’t been burdened by the demands of leadership perhaps Stalin could have been a great actor!
And in 1938, he believed, the winter I. A. Akulov, secretary of the central executive committee, had fallen while skating, almost dying from the resulting concussion. Stalin had taken great pains and expense to bring in great surgeons from abroad to save the secretary’s life. After a long recovery Akulov returned to work, whereupon Stalin had him arrested and shot.
Stalin had done these things, and he was Stalin, as he was so many other names. People did not understand why he did such things. It was simple. He was at his most powerful when no one felt safe.
He broke them. He broke every one of them. But now perhaps his run had ended. He had had these moments of pain and confusion before during these past few years. But this was different. Never for so long, and this feeling as if he were locked inside himself. A cramped, stinking cell with poor windows.
What had happened? What had happened last night? They’d watched their usual movie—Beria, Khrushchev, Malenkov, Bulganin, the usual bunch—but which movie had it been? Had he already been so drunk he hadn’t paid attention? He had been thinking about horses, cowboys, so perhaps it had been one of his John Ford movies, Stagecoach perhaps. He hated the ideology of those cowboys, but could not stop watching these films. Even though his sympathies lay with the Indians, who had to struggle against the expansionist policies of the imperialist white settlers. Why hadn’t the KGB yet carried out his orders to assassinate John Wayne? Incompetence and betrayal were everywhere. Wayne might be justan actor, but his ideas were a threat to the cause.
But very soon he would drop the bomb on the Americans. That would take care of his John Wayne problem, and all the rest.
Was Comrade Bolshakov still alive, or had he already had him shot? He should know this, and it somewhat frightened him that he did not. And yet it was also a somewhat amusing game. If the man was dead, who was choosing the films? Who was alive and who was dead? It only mattered when he lost track. Who might he order killed today? He would make them all think it could be any one of them, and of course this was true. All they had to do was step the wrong way. This was how a leader leads—no one should know what his next move might be. A great leader was a Lord of Mayhem. Gospodin Bespredela. Perhaps that would be his next name.
Whoever was in charge at the Great Kremlin Palace cinema, he would have him put on Volga Volga tonight. Stalin needed to sing. Stalin needed to dance, or die trying. He would make sure that Nikita was there. He’d make him perform a Ukranian folk dance for them all, squatting on his fat haunches and kicking out his heels. That fat fool, he reminded him so much of that bureaucratic clown Uncle Byvalov in the movie. Hilarious.
The vague aroma of cooking meat was in the air. He hated the smells of cooking. What were his guards up to? If necessary he would get rid of them all. Death solves all problems-no man, no problem. Svetlana said he had no heart, no gratitude. His own daughter! Her mother had called him a murderer before she’d shot herself. They simply did not understand how a leader must be, what he must do. Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs. It made you weak.
Everything was his business, to the kind and number of cars his associates had to the number of urinals on the streets of Moscow.
It had been his own weakness to marry, to have children. So he had to minimize the damage his family could cause him. A true Bolshevik had no business having a family. He’d said this many times. A family distracted, softened you. He should have taken his own advice. His Svetlana, his sparrow. When she was a child in her letters she pretended she was dictator of Russia and Stalin would pretend to obey her orders. And yet however precious she had been to him, she would betray him as they all had. She had visited him when? Yesterday or the day before. He’d been clipping pictures of the happy Russian children from the magazine Ogonyok. He’d given her one. “See, they love me,” he’d said, and pointed the scissors at her the way he sometimes pointed his finger, as if he might snip snip her out of the air, out of the world.
A smallish figure had entered the room. He tried to raise his head to look, but could only manage a glimpse. A child. But not Svetlana. Svetlana was no longer a child. A boy or a girl? He could not quite make out the face.
“Who is that? Whose child is this?” he said, but he heard no words coming out of his mouth. He had plenty of words—they filled his head, but none could quite make it to his tongue.
Now he could not even lift his head; it had fallen like a boulder against his chest. He felt as if he’d been separated from it. Somehow his mind had travelled to a safer place.
He was staring at his feet. The second and third toes of the left foot were joined, so it was, indeed, his foot he was staring at.