The Man Who Loved Dogs Read Online Free

censored and even falsified information he had followed the miserable start of a process of ideological destabilization, of the confusion of political positions that had been undefined until recently, through which Stalin and his minions stripped him of his words and ideas, by the malevolent procedure of appropriating the same programs through which he had been harassed to the point of being thrown out of the party.
    At that moment of deep thought, he heard the door to the house open with a creak of frozen wood and saw the soldier Dreitser enter, dragging in a cloud of cold air. The new head of the GPU watch group tended to demonstrate his power by entering the house without deigning to knock at that door which had been stripped of locks. Covered by a hat with ear flaps and a leather cloak, the policeman had begun to shake off the snow without daring to look at him, because he knew that he was the bearer of an order that only one man in the entire territory of the Soviet Union was capable of devising and, furthermore, of carrying out.
    Three weeks earlier, Dreitser had arrived as a sort of black messenger from the Kremlin, bearing new restrictions and the ultimatum that if Trotsky didn’t halt his oppositionist campaign amid the colonies of deportees, he would be completely isolated from political life. What campaign, since it had been months since he could send or receive correspondence? And what new isolation was he being threatened with if not death? To make his control more evident, the agent had decreed a prohibition on Lev Davidovich and his son Lev Sedov going out to hunt, knowing that with those snowfalls it was impossible to hunt. Nevertheless, he confiscated shotguns and cartridges in order to demonstrate his will and his power.
    When he managed to free himself of the snow layered on his coat, Dreitser approached the samovar to serve himself tea. By the motion of the wind, Lev Davidovich had deduced that it must be less than thirty degrees below zero outside and that the empire of interminable snow, with the exception of some redeeming stones, was the only thing that existed on that damned steppe. Following his first sip of tea, Dreitser had at last spoken and, with his Siberian bear accent, told him that he had a letter that came from Moscow. It wasn’t difficult for him to imagine that a letter capable of passing postal control could only bring the worst news, and this was confirmed by the fact that for the first time Dreitser had addressed him without calling him “ Comrade Trotsky,” the last title he’d kept in his turbulent decline from the heights of power to the solitude of banishment.
    Ever since receiving the news of the death of his daughter Nina from tuberculosis in July, Lev Davidovich had lived with the fear that other family misfortunes would occur, a by-product of regular life or, as he feared more with each passing day, of hate. Zina, his other daughter from his first marriage, had had a nervous breakdown, and her husband Plato Volkov was, like other oppositionists, already in a work camp in the Arctic Circle. Fortunately, his son Liova was with them, and the young Seriozha, the Homo apoliticus of the family, remained a stranger to partisan struggles.
    Natalia Sedova’s voice, saying good morning while simultaneously cursing the cold, reached him at that moment. He waited for her to enter, met with joy by Maya, and felt his heart shrink: Would he be capable of transmitting fatal news to Natasha about the fate of her beloved Seriozha? With a mug in her hands she had sat down in the chair and he watched her. She’s still a beautiful woman , he thought, according to what he wouldwrite later. Then he told her that they had correspondence from Moscow and the woman also became tense.
    Dreitser had left his mug next to the stove to rummage in his pockets in search of his pack of unbearable Turkmeni cigarettes and, as if taking advantage of the act, stuck his hand in the interior compartment of his