I Was Stalin's Nurse!

fantasy about the poor soul who had the worst job in the world during the early fifties.

By Andrei Segeiovich Solovyov (a pseudonym for Konstatin Ivanovich Velikovsky)

Editor’s Note: The following manuscript, scrawled in what appears to be iodine on the backs of daily logs from a Soviet hospital, was found in a glass thermos bottle in an antique store near Volgagrad, Russia where it may have lain for more than sixty years.  

 

“Where are my cigars? Bring them immediately!” roared the great man with a rumble that sounded as if he had stones rattling around in the bottoms of his lungs. I winced and briefly panicked, for I wasn’t certain we had any of his cigars left. Even though the doctors strictly forbade him to smoke, he always had one burning at his bedside, and went through a box every three days. If we failed to produce one of his fat Havanas, I knew the man with the big mustache would take it out of me, for I was responsible for every aspect of his care here at the Glorious People’s Red Star Hospital Number One. I was Stalin’s nurse.

 

Fortunately, the other nurses were Jews, and Stalin didn’t trust them. He also disliked Poles and Ukrainians. Nobody liked Stalin, but everyone feared him, so almost everyone on the staff did his best to avoid eye contact with the failing megalomaniac. Ever since his stroke, only one eye seemed to respond to his will, but that eye would focus on you like a rheumy spotlight, and you knew once he had you in his gaze, he was already plotting what to do with you.

 

I came close enough to the grizzled sociopath to smell his breath.

 

“Sir, we’re doing our best to find another cigar for you,” I assured him.

 

“My cigars. Not just any cigar. Not Georgian cigars, not that s**t from Tashkent. Havanas.”

 

“Yes sir, we’re looking.”

 

“What’s your name?”

 

“Solovyov, sir.  Remember, I’m your personal nurse.”

 

“Why didn’t they give me a woman? Are you a homosexual? A Jew?”

 

“No sir, I’m neither of those things. None of the female nurses were judged competent enough to handle your needs.”

 

“Fools! Imbeciles! F*****s! Jews! Gypsies! I am surrounded by the dregs of humanity. This is the thanks I get for a life of service to the Russian people.  And all I ask for is a cigar. Who knows how much longer I have. Everyone is waiting for me to die so they can be done with me. Well I have news for them. I intend to drag this out for as long as I can. Endurance! This, I have always had plenty of. Malenkov is waiting in the wings, scheming with Molotov. Hah! Scheme away, boys! I’m not going anywhere."

I searched through the storeroom next to his room, finding at the bottom of a wastebasket, but well-chewed butt of one his cigars. Using a pair of surgical snips, I trimmed the ash from the lit end and some of the stray leaves from the chewed-upon part. This is brought to the irritable demagogue, in a display of false good cheer.

"Here, your excellency, another of Cuba's best"

"It's so short." 

"Another model. For the man who's in a hurry."

"But I'm not in a hurry. I'm trying to slow everything down."

"Would you like a light, sir?"

"Yes, if you would." 

He stuffed the stub into his mouth and I pretended to light the end.

Sucking at it for a few moments, he suddenly relaxed.

"Smooth," he sighed.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Delmar Cooper]

Elegant and plausable, this in every respect required very little suspension of disbelief. Presented as the obverse of a Hitler coin we see it is still the same coin.
Cooper