The Man Who Loved Dogs Read Online Free Page A

cloak, from which he removed the yellow envelope. For a second it seemed that he had the intention of opening it, but he chose to place the packet on the table. Trying to hide his anxiety, Lev Davidovich looked at Natalia, then at the stampless envelope where his name was imprinted, and threw the cold tea in the corner. He handed the mug to Dreitser, who was forced to take it and return to the samovar to refill it. Although he had always had a flair for the theatrical, he understood that he was wasting his histrionics before that reduced audience, and without waiting for the tea he opened the envelope. It contained one sheet, typewritten, with the GPU seal and was undated. After replacing his glasses, he spent less than one minute reading it but remained silent, this time without any dramatic gestures: surprise at the incredible had left him speechless. Citizen Lev Davidovich Trotsky should leave the country within a period of twenty-four hours. His expulsion, without a specific destination, had been decided by virtue of the recently created Article 58/10, useful for everything, although in his case, according to the letter, he was accused of “carrying out counterrevolutionary campaigns in order to organize a clandestine party hostile to the Soviets . . .” Still silent, he passed the note to his wife.
    Natalia Sedova, her hands atop the rough wooden table, looked at him, petrified by the severity of the decision that, rather than condemning them to freeze to death in some corner of the country, forced them to take the road to an exile that appeared like a dark cloud. Twenty-three years of a life together, sharing pains and successes, failures and glories, allowed Lev Davidovich to read the woman’s thoughts through her blue eyes. Exiled, the leader who had moved the country’s consciousness in 1905, who had made the uprising of October 1917 a triumph and had created an army in the midst of chaos and saved the revolution in those years of imperialist invasions and civil war? Banished for disagreements over political and economic strategy? she had thought. If it were not so pathetic, that order would have been risible.
    As he stood up, he sarcastically asked Dreitser if he had any idea when and where the first congress of his “clandestine party” would take place,but the messenger limited himself to demanding that he confirm the receipt of the communication. In the margin of the order, Lev Davidovich wrote, “The GPU’s decree, criminal in substance and illegal in form, has been communicated to me on the date of January 20, 1929.” He signed it quickly and pegged the page with a dirty knife. Then he looked at his wife, who was still in shock, and asked her to wake Liova. They would barely have time to gather their papers and books. He walked to the bedroom, followed by Maya, as if impelled by haste, although in reality, Lev Davidovich had fled for fear that the police and his wife would see him cry over the impotence caused by humiliation and lies.
    They ate their breakfast in silence and, as always, Lev Davidovich gave Maya some pieces of the soft part of the bread smeared with the rancid butter they were given. Later, Natalia Sedova would confess to him that at that moment, she had seen in his eyes, for the first time since they met, the dark flash of resignation, a frame of mind so removed from his attitude of a year before when, upon trying to deport him from Moscow, it had taken four men to drag him to the train station as he continued to scream and curse the faces of the Grave Diggers of the Revolution.
    Followed by his dog, Lev Davidovich returned to the bedroom, where he had already begun to prepare the boxes in which he would place those papers that were all that remained of his belongings, but that were worth as much as or more to him than his life: essays, proclamations, military reports, and peace treaties that changed the fate of the world, but above all, hundreds, thousands of letters signed by Lenin,