Death at the Dacha

by Paul M. Levitt

  The body was placed on a bier and taken through the town, where onlookers crossed themselves and mumbled prayers. When the party reached St. Nina’s Church in Kukia, the excavated grave, a yawning aperture, so upset Stalin that his friends insisted on removing his Mauser pistol lest he take his own life. The Orthodox burial rite was brief, with the priest concluding: “Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel shall be proclaimed in the whole world, that which this woman has done also will be spoken of, for a memorial of her.”

  As the first shovel of dirt hit the casket, Stalin cried out “No,” and leaped into the grave. Sprawled across her coffin, he pitifully sobbed, declaring he would enter the earth with his beloved Kato. Several men climbed into the pit to haul him out. Stalin resisted. At that moment, three of the tsar’s secret police were seen making their way through the cemetery toward the funeral party. Apprised of their presence, Stalin scrambled out of the grave, raced to the rear of the churchyard, dove over the fence, and disappeared. As he ran, he could not escape the irony that just as he had abandoned his wife in life, he was now fleeing from her in death.

  Well aware of the anger he had engendered in Kato’s family for taking her to Baku and often leaving her alone with the baby, he went directly to Gori, where his mother caught up with him a day later. Once word spread in town, old school friends came to the house to condole with him, but in his grief he could barely bring himself to speak. Several days passed, and one of his closest former companions came to call. They talked as before, honestly and intimately, though Josif cried the whole time. Putting his hand on his breast, he said, “Kato softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity.”

  His friend and others had advised him not to take Kato to Baku. The stifling heat and the polluted air could only exacerbate her frailty. As a way of avenging her death, he swore to return to Baku and make a revolution there, even if it cost him his life. Weeping unashamedly, he confessed:

  “My personal life is shattered. I’m desolate inside. Nothing attaches me to the world except socialism. I’m going to dedicate my existence to that.”

  ******

  When he felt strong enough, emotionally and mentally, to return to Baku, he asked Kato’s parents, who had been caring for the baby, to continue looking after him. He promised to collect Yakov as soon as he was settled. He came ten years later, and then only for a short visit. Not until 1921, when the boy was fourteen, was he reunited with his father, unhappily.

  ******

  Stalin concluded his reminiscence of Kato, even though he felt that something was missing. A minute later, it dawned on him. He had omitted an explanation for why her death had hardened him, making him insensitive to suffering. She had changed him, at first for the better, and then for the worse. From her he had experienced compassion and kindness, unlike the brutality of his own childhood. She seemed to have no other wish than to please him. Not for her the satin and sashes of society women. A simple river walk or picnic would gladden her, and jealousy found no residence in her life. When he took her in his arms, she made him feel the warmth she felt. Her sex excited him, and never did she comment on his anatomy. He felt manly in her presence, not short and disfigured. She would even run a finger along his pockmarked face and gently touch the ugly craters, as if she found them unusual and worth her explorations. A better friend he never had, and now she was forever gone. But death was more than just an absence. He knew that a life comes only from remembrance, and that time and memory are joined each to each. How could he incorporate in his movie the idea that although time is spoken of as past, present, and future, to live in future time is impossible, though often planned for, and the present is but a passing moment? At this instant, he experienced an epiphany: It is memory that constitutes a life, forming personality and moral purpose, and imposing shape on the present and the future.

  Kato’s death, instead of softening him with memory’s riches, had embittered him, transmuting beauty into bane. Would Kato be proud of him now, the Vozhd, a cosmic force, who had forged a nation out of tribalism? That question, never far from his mind, always led to the same vexing answer: Power may transcend weakness, but never charity.

  CHAPTER 6

  Well aware that the Politburo scene could not end until he faded from view, his imagination brought their voices and their faces back into focus. The four dwarfs sat at the table in his office, but Molotov had disappeared, no doubt still trying to arrange the release of his wife from a labor camp. Their grubby fingers were thumbing through the slim files that bore on his domestic life. He had been selective about what he kept and what he destroyed. Not having been privy to his first marriage, they spent little time speaking of Kato and her family, though they did remark that Stalin had ordered the death of her brother and two of her sisters.

  “I never understood why he wished to liquidate them,” said Bulganin. “Her brother may have been more learned than Stalin, but that’s hardly a reason to order his death. What am I missing?”

  “Memory,” said Malenkov. “The family knew too much.”

  “Such as?” asked Khrushchev.

  Beria interrupted. “If you must know, the brother was a German spy.”

  “So you told Stalin,” Bulganin sharply replied.

  Beria, not to be thwarted, retorted, “He could have saved his life if he had admitted to spying for Germany. But his pride stood in the way.”

  “You mean the truth,” Bulganin added.

  Khrushchev looked as if someone had just pulled back a theater curtain to reveal all the wires and apparatus of a staged killing. “A pleasant fellow,” he said, as if speaking to himself. “Our comrade Anastas viewed him like a brother.”

  “The esteemed Mikoyan!” mocked Beria. “Our former Minister of Foreign Trade was famous for his flawed judgment.”

  “War crimes,” remarked Khrushchev.

  “Not that again,” sputtered Beria. “You seem obsessed.”

  “Someday we could be tried for war crimes.”

  Stalin’s gallows humor had led him back to the subject of war crimes because he could cinematically picture his comrades’ confusion.

  Khrushchev’s colleagues would not understand why Nikita had returned to the subject and would wonder whether he had something up his sleeve. The clownish Nikita often hid his intentions under antic remarks. They fell silent, waiting for a witticism or unpleasantness. “The great man,” continued Khrushchev, “liked to say that the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic. Alyosha’s death may be tragic, and the death of millions in labor camps may be a statistic, but the judges at Nuremberg, just seven years ago, condemned eleven men to death for crimes against humanity. Is there anyone here who thinks he cannot escape judgment?”

  Those words, thought Stalin, would put the cat among the pigeons. He could guess their thoughts.

  They had never heard Nikita speak so well or so menacingly. Was he staking his claim to the leadership of the party by suggesting that only he could keep retribution away? But to effect that end, he would have to revisit the past and the capital sentences they had all lent themselves to. Khrushchev was playing with fire.

  “You must be mad!” exclaimed Beria. “Just imagine the danger of disinterring the dead. Comrade Stalin’s great work in unifying the party and the nation would be called into question. Is that what you want?”

  “What I don’t want is to stand before a tribunal and try to defend the acres of bones we have planted.”

  “They were traitors, wreckers, enemies of the people, Trotskyites, kulaks, spies, fascists,” Malenkov said defensively, mentally tallying the number of deaths he was complicit in. “Nikita, I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to dust off the records and review the work of the courts. Remember, you were called the 'Ukrainian Butcher.’”

  “All the more reason to confess to our crimes. Denial is always worse than admission. Let’s acknowledge our mistakes and move on. Whatever the cost, it will be less than what our
adversaries would charge.”

  “You must be mad!”

  “Insane!”

  “Rash!”

  ******

  Stalin smiled to himself, knowing that he had, as always, turned one Politburo member against another. His eyes panned the room, stopping to study the green felt table cover. “Green,” he thought, “the novel, The Green Hat. That goddamned book killed Nadya.” He could hear a voice; a man entered the room and introduced himself as the novel’s unnamed narrator, the same one who tells the story of Iris Storm, the heroine of The Green Hat. “Who let that bastard into the room?”

  “At your service, Comrade Stalin.”

  “Nadya died twenty-one years ago. That horrid book was at her bedside.”

  “She recommended the book to all her female friends.”

  “I should have banned its publication in the USSR.”

  “On what basis? Let me remind you that except for a passing reference to the First World War, there are no politics in the novel. For the sake of your viewers, permit me to introduce them to the story, since you remain convinced it played a leading role in Nadya’s death.”

  Stalin paused and considered how to proceed. “Given her romantic and impressionable state of mind, she was ripe for a histrionic ending. The book was a ticking bomb.”

  “In your current condition, Comrade Stalin, I submit that your judgment is imperfect. Let your audience decide.”

  “I do admit that after twenty years, I’ve forgotten the plot.”

  “It is the story of Iris Storm, her passions, her frustrations, and her attempt to escape from herself. She is a woman out of all time, one who meets men on their own ground, rather than behind the etiquette of femininity. With her brother Gerald, she is the last of an old family that has gone the way of many other old families. Her story also recounts the interference of parents in the affairs of their children. In her case, abetted by her own willfulness, she is driven to lead a devious life. Her story, subtly and dexterously told, etches a brave portrait of a passionate, intelligent, suffering woman, who is realized with a consummate and probing pity.”

  Stalin interrupted. “Dispense with the praise and get on with the story. Like the book, you are wordy.”

  “Is it my characterizations or my descriptions that offend you? If you look closely, you will see that my use of color is that of an artist—like one of the Impressionists.”

  Stalin shouted, “Damn it, finish the exposition.”

  “The Green Hat follows a small group of English people in 1923 and 1924. With the calamitous First World War having ended shortly before, the characters take every opportunity to deplore the old values that led the country to this debacle. In short, the story emphasizes character, not plot, and in particular the travails of the heroine, Iris Storm, who has a reputation for looseness. After two failed marriages and a shocking affair with a childhood friend, she reveals, in a final scene, the secret behind her questionable morals.”

  “Rubbish! Unmitigated trash. Get out!”

  “Comrade Stalin, you are unkind. I beg you, give me one minute more.”

  “But not a second longer.”

  “I talk about not only a fascinating, clever, lovely creature, but also a woman with all the complex emotions of her sex. If you would reread the book, surely you'd admit that Iris Storm lives not only in a world of civilized emotions, but also in a world of bitter, restrained unhappiness. Sound familiar? I tried to imbue the story with a keen levity that plays upon the paradoxes and illusions of life, namely, the futility of human desires. Were you not so convinced that my story contributed to your wife’s suicide, I’m sure you would agree that it has been told with grace and charm, deft phrasing, and searching and profound observations.”

  “Such vanity! Your minute is up. Leave.”

  “That and more is the tale of The Green Hat. The stage is now yours.”

  Stalin was at a loss where to start. The audacity and boastfulness of the unnamed narrator left him momentarily speechless. He wondered how his thoughts had migrated to this subject, one that he had no wish to revisit. But somehow his mind screen had conjured this self-important hack who seemed to think that he inhabited the same realm as Chekhov and Tolstoy. Finding his voice, he said plaintively, “She killed herself.”

  “Iris Storm, yes.”

  “No, Nadya.”

  “The reasons are similar.”

  “I don’t want to speak to you, whatever your name is. I want to talk to Iris Storm. She’s the one who led Nadya down a perilous path to suicide.”

  “Iris? More likely you.”

  “I know what an impression the book made on her, though why it did, I never understood. Anna Karenina also takes her life. Both Nadya and Anna acted melodramatically. But at least in Anna’s case, I see why. She had become a pariah, unwelcome in polite society. But Nadya was never an outcast. She moved easily in the highest circles of government and social life.”

  “You seem to miss the point.”

  “Then perhaps Iris Storm can explain it. If you’re such a wonderful narrator, materialize her for me.”

  “Well, first came the long, low, yellow car that shone like a chariot. The Hispano-Suiza. Imagine it: open as a yacht, adorned with a great shining helmet, and flying over the hood, as though in proud flight, a radiator cap in the shape of a silver stork. Then I heard a knocking at my door.”

  Rap, rap. Stalin could hear a light tapping on the door leading into the room where he lay. His surprise, or was it fear, removed any remaining color from his face and left him ashen.

  “Enter,” he said, and as the unnamed narrator dissolved from the film a statuesque woman of questionable reputation glided into the room. She wore a green felt hat, the kind that fashionable women in western societies exhibited pour le sport, and a pleated green woolen skirt with matching vest. Her ruby lipstick, her heavy black mascara, and her pink rouge made her face glow with all the artificial allure that Stalin associated with social parasites.

  She walked around the room with a critical eye, running her hand over the green dining room table cover, touching the fabric of a chair, admiring the drapes, and disparaging some of his pictures.

  “Dachas,” she said archly, “are for retreat, a place to retire, temporarily, for a respite. You’ve lived here so long, you’ve insulated yourself from the people and their needs. This place has about it the feel of death. An odor of decay. Rot. A description that fits you.”

  She stood looking down at him, sprawled on the couch. As she slowly removed her kid gloves, finger by finger, he recalled two previous times in his life—had they really happened?—when someone stood over him: one involved his father and the other a priest. His father, in a drunken state, his face red with rage, was beating him with a belt for some infraction that he couldn’t remember, though he tried to excavate it from the buried hurts of his past. The priest, Father Anselm, had found him peeing in the Aspersorium, the bucket that held the holy water. Or did he dream it? Throwing Josif to the ground, he made him bare his member and struck it with the Aspergillum, the sprinkler. The injury he sustained, he told himself, explained his micro-phallic condition.

  The woman walked to the dining room table and nonchalantly leaned against it, all the while studying the ailing Stalin. He stared back at her. Had he known the role this woman would play in his increasingly unmanageable movie, he very likely would not have brought her before his mental camera.

  “My name is Iris Storm, born Iris March, and briefly Iris Fenwick. I was looking for my brother.”

  “His name?”

  “Gerald March.”

  “Occupation?”

  “Journalist for the Guardian, when sober”

  “Arrested for immoral behavior and sentenced to five years in a labor camp, but he died shortly after arriving in Magadan.”

  She contemptuously sniffed. “You and Queen Victoria.”

  “Meaning?”

  “She too couldn’t abide—or even imagine—homosexuality” />
  “It’s unmanly.”

  “And was it manly for you to abuse Nadya, and then, when she wanted to live apart, to order her and the children back?”

  “I had an image to maintain.”

  “An image that included abolishing divorce?”

  “The Soviet Union needed families—and children”

  She guffawed. “Cannon fodder. It’s the oldest trick in the book. Hitler tried it also.” She folded her gloves and put them in her purse. “Is that why you banned abortion in 1936, after it had been legal for sixteen years—and after Nadya underwent so many of them?”

  “Everything I did, I did for the good of the country.”

  Iris seated herself at the table and recited a couplet. “Sometimes we’re kittens, and sometimes we’re cats / Good women today, tomorrow green hats”

  “What the hell are you trying to say?”

  Leaning across the table, Iris berated him. “You’ve never taken responsibility for any of your crimes. It was always someone else’s fault. Poor Nadya!”

  “Nadya! Your story inspired her suicide; I didn’t”

  “Don’t be absurd. The only thing I did was behave like an independent woman, which socialism publicly champions but you personally hate.”

  “Slander!”

  “Then let us hold a trial, at this very table, to see what is true and what is not. I will call forth three women to sit in judgment of you. They will serve as jurors, and I the judge. They will be at liberty to ask you questions they have longed to voice. We will hear evidence, consider objections, and arrive at a verdict.”

  “If this court proceeds like a Soviet one, the assessors will agree with everything the judge decides.”

  “I haven’t even given you the names of the women and already you are objecting.”

  “Name them!”

  CHAPTER 7

  Iris stood, straightened the pleats in her skirt, and with a single word, “Ladies,” and a wave of her hand materialized three women. “Your first wife, Kato; your second wife, Nadya; and your Jewish mistress, Ana Rubinstein.”