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Stalin's Candy [MultiFormat]
eBook by William Shunn
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eBook Category: Dark Fantasy
eBook Description: Faina Kankrin is one of the few women in Stalinist Georgia with a steady job. Every day she visits classrooms throughout the land, helping schoolchildren understand the true benevolence of their Great Leader. But Faina knew Stalin when they were both younger, and there's only so long she can keep telling the same old lies.
eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Realms of Fantasy, 1999
Fictionwise Release Date: April 2006
6 Reader Ratings:
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [28 KB]
, ePub (EPUB) [34 KB]
, Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [14 KB]
, Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [176 KB]
, Palm Doc (PDB) [15 KB]
, Microsoft Reader (LIT) [76 KB]
, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [87 KB]
, hiebook (KML) [89 KB]
, Sony Reader (LRF) [39 KB]
, iSilo (PDB) [13 KB]
, Mobipocket (PRC) [16 KB]
, Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [44 KB]
, OEBFF Format (IMP) [24 KB]
Words: 4415
Reading time: 12-17 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
With the wicker basket full of candy gnawing into her massive hip, Faina stared out the window of the desecrated cathedral. It was late in the winter of 1928, nearing spring. The town, the river, the stark trees of the orchards, the frozen fields beyond, all seemed poised on the brink of some sinister transformation, like solids that had nearly reached the melting point.
Faina shifted her heavy basket to a more comfortable position, the scents of dust and wax thick around her, trying to ignore the grating sound of Comrade Mzhavanadze's voice as it drifted from the classroom across the hall. But trying to ignore the voice only led her thoughts back to Joseph Stalin, whom she had attempted to push as far from her mind as possible. She saw Stalin as he was portrayed by the Party, the grandfatherly dictator with the good-humored smile, and she saw him as he had been when she knew him thirty-one years before, the young would-be poet with the burning tiger's eyes and the head full of revolutionary schemes--and there was no way for her to reconcile the two pictures. Stalin the charming, the benevolent, the magnanimous, the heroic. Stalin the schemer, the liar, the coward, the murderer. Stalin, in whose service she had prostituted her soul...
No, no, no. Such thoughts were better not to think, because once they had been thought they became that much easier to speak. And once spoken, the speakers had a strange way of disappearing ... like her poor husband Sergo...
"No," Faina said softly, swallowing her grief and bitterness, "no more of such thoughts."
"Did you say something, Faina?" asked Glikeriya, who had squeezed herself into one of the room's two wooden chairs.
Faina turned her head. Glikeriya's basket of candy sat on what had once been the local prelate's desk, when this beautiful stone cathedral had still belonged to the Georgian Orthodox Church. Glikeriya had just popped two gumdrops into her mouth, a strictly forbidden bit of pilfering, and she sucked at them noisily. Her cheeks were flushed bright red, her breathing was loud and ragged, sweat dripped from her forehead though the room was cool, and still she smiled like a pig wallowing in slop. Faina's nostrils flared in disgust. She hated Glikeriya Raprava, who was silly and fat and had unquestioning faith in the Party. Faina hated fat people in general, despite her own girth, but she especially hated people who sincerely believed that Great Stalin could do no wrong. "Just thinking out loud," Faina said, and turned back to the window.
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