Bombshell Max Collins (best ereader for textbooks .txt) 📖

Now that would be amusing!

Smiling, Nikita rolled onto his left side, then sighed. Just about the only bright spot in the otherwise bleak day had been his encounter with the lovely actress, this Marilyn Monroe. She was even more beautiful in person than in the glamorous photos he’d seen of her on display at the American National Exhibition in Moscow. That’s where he got the idea of meeting her during his trip to the United States.

In the privacy of his mind, he allowed himself to wonder if the heavy, garish make-up the woman had worn had added to, or detracted from, her beauty. Had his own conception of beauty been corrupted by Hollywood customs? He wished he could see her stripped of that paint, those pretty features free of Western decadence, that wonderful smile shining bright without the crimson frame…

He frowned. But why hadn’t she been at the show at Fox Studios? She just disappeared after the meal—which had been yet another American insult. Red potatoes and corn! He well understood the disparaging symbolism of that menu—that he was an unsophisticated “red” (and Mikhail had explained the slang term “corny” to him). Did they think the premier of Russia would be so unworldly as think it appropriate that a “French cafe” would serve such a farmhand’s meal?

Shifting to his right side, Nikita sighed again, chest deep. The goddess Marilyn Monroe, he thought, had probably been too repulsed by him, by his many chins and warts and his corpulence, to sit at his side during the filming of that bawdy picture, what was it called? Can-Can! More pseudo-Parisian tripe.

Ha! What stupid, silly trash! Russia, East Germany, even Romania, all made much better musicals than this gaudy Hollywood nonsense. What could Twentieth Century Fox come up with to compete with the likes of The Bright Path, or My Wife Wants to Sing, or Volga Volga?

The latter film, admittedly, had worn its welcome out with Nikita—an epic agricultural operetta, Volga Volga had been shown so many times by Stalin at his private dinners that Khrushchev had for a time hoped to never hear another song or, for that matter, see another tractor.

Even so, the musicals the Soviets made had real meaning, designed to stir the masses and give them hope and inspire them to become better communists. The Eastern Bloc films weren’t about a bunch of trollops twirling around and flashing their undergarments and showing off their legs and exhibiting their backsides— although, he had to admit, in the secrecy of his insomnia, that those were shapely backsides, and in fact were preferable to the face of Mayor Poulson. Still, what idiocy, those girls prancing in front of a camera that clearly didn’t have any film in it.

That might have been what had wounded Nikita the most, the worst of all the insults: the Americans considered him nothing more than a country bumpkin they could fool and trick. Did they suppose he’d never been in a movie studio before?

Well, they could go to this hell they claimed to believe in.

Back on his back, he stared up at the blackness, his chin crinkling, lips trembling. Could a country bumpkin have outwitted Stalin, the most evil, treacherous man in the world? A world that had included Adolph Hitler—who had been a piker in the genocide business, compared to old Joe. And could a country bumpkin have been the only man in Stalin’s inner circle to survive his perfidious purges?

And yet some uneducated fool from the American press could have the gall to ask Nikita where he was when Stalin was murdering innocent people…

The Ukraine—that was where Nikita Khrushchev was! … Saving thousands of people from starvation … unaware of Stalin’s atrocities!

Afterward, his translator Troyanovsky had asked him, respectfully, why Nikita had not responded with the truth of it.

“Because,” Nikita had snapped, “there is no good answer to a stupid question!”

Of course Nikita had supported Stalin, even worked for him—as the saying went, “If you ride in another man’s cart, you must join in his song!” To oppose Stalin would have meant certain death. And the dead cannot help the living.

How else, but by such compromise, could Nikita have survived the dangerous years to reach the pinnacle of power, where he was finally in a position to change bad conditions for the better? Hadn’t he then thrown out all of Stalin’s men after the dictator’s death?

Hadn’t he then denounced Stalin and everything that butcher stood for?

Hadn’t he released tens of millions of innocent people from the prisons, given them back their homes and jobs and reputations?

Hadn’t he relaxed the Lenin doctrine by allowing for a few western ideas, even at the expense of angering hard-line party members, including the Republic of China?

Hadn’t he improved agriculture, education, technology, and the human spirit of the Russian people?

Could a country bumpkin do all that?

Worked up, sweating despite the air conditioning in the suite, Nikita rolled over on his left side, mind racing.

And that mayor, that stupid mayor, digging up Nikita’s statement about “burying” capitalism … it was a proven fact, throughout history, that first comes feudalism, then capitalism, then communism. So why didn’t these Americans (if they were so smart) learn from history and just skip a step and adopt communism, and save themselves and everybody else a whole world of trouble?

After all, communism was the only true and fair government—the only system that put the people first. It was just an unfortunate accident of history that a murderous snake called Joe Stalin had been in charge of that system for twenty-five years…

Another thought would no doubt have formed—Nikita was hours away from sleep—but a sound interrupted, something small but insistent, coming from across the room. Nikita’s eyes tightened, his ears perked—he turned his head and listened close.

Nothing.

Had he imagined it? With a sigh, he flopped onto his back, the bedsprings protesting, and then, after a moment of silence, the noise started up again: a tapping.

A tiny tap, tap,