Archangel (Mass Market Paperback) by Robert Harris

Author:Robert Harris [Harris, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780099282419
Publisher: Arrow
Published: 2009-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

30.6 51 Three a.m. A knock at my door Valechka is outside, in her nightdress, with a pocket torch. He has been in the garden, pruning by moonlight, and he has cut himself again! He is calling for me! I dress quickly and follow her along the passage. The night is warm. We pass through the dining room and in to his private quarters. He has three rooms and he moves between them, one night 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 half a minute to bind it with my handkerchief 'The fearless Anna Safanova...'

I sense he wants me to stay He asks me about my home and parents, my Party work, my plans for 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 September I tell him, and by the end of October the city is snowbound and only the trains can get through. He is hungry for details. How the Dvina freezes and wooden tracks are laid across it and there is light for only four hours a day How the temperature drops to 35 below and people go into the forests for 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 before 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 maintained 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 Forty-five versts on skis and killed twelve brace of partridge with twenty-four 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 him to return to my bed it is light.

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