A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare

Author:Ismail Kadare
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781640096097
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2023-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

FIFTH VERSION

‘I was having lunch with Pasternak . . .’

Thus starts this version, by the poet’s old friend Nikolai Vilmont (On Pasternak: Memories and Reflections, Moscow, 1989).

‘I remember it was four in the afternoon when the phone rang.’

Vilmont provides other details. A man’s voice on the phone: ‘Comrade Pasternak, Comrade Stalin wants to speak with you.’ Pasternak’s reply: ‘That’s not possible. Don’t talk nonsense.’ The voice on the phone: ‘I repeat, Comrade Stalin wants to speak with you.’ The reply: ‘Don’t play jokes on me.’ The voice on the phone: ‘I’ll give you the phone number. You can call him yourself.’ Pasternak turns pale and dials the number.

Another voice on the phone. ‘This is Stalin speaking. You’re upset [khlopochete] about your friend Mandelstam?’ Reply: ‘We’ve never been real friends. More the opposite. We have different opinions. But I’ve always dreamed of talking to you.’ Stalin: ‘We old Bolsheviks never turned our backs on our friends. And I don’t intend to talk to you about nothing.’

‘There the conversation was interrupted. Of course, I only heard Pasternak’s side, and I couldn’t overhear what Stalin said. But these were his words as Boris Leonidovich himself told them to me. Then and there and in full. And immediately afterwards he grabbed the phone again to assure Stalin that Mandelstam really wasn’t his friend, and that he hadn’t denied a friendship that had never existed out of fear. This explanation seemed necessary to him, more important than anything else.

‘There was no reply from the number.’

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