Page 273 - Sweet Embraceable You: Coffee-House Stories

Duchess Berlin 1928 261

Wilson: Either way you can be a rich woman.

CLOSE ANNA
Anna: I am a dead woman.
Wilson: Dead?
Anna: I am followed everywhere by the Soviet Secret Police.

MEDIUM ANNA AND WILSON
Wilson: The NKVD?
Anna: At first I thought my imagination tricked me. The Soviets
are everywhere. They want no Anastasia rising from the grave.
They want no Duchess around whom the Russian royalists
can rally. The Soviets especially fear an imposter Anastasia.
She would be a Romanov puppet! Impossible to control.
Wilson: So your game turns dangerous.
Anna: Not my game. I am in danger no matter what I do be-
cause of what others wish to believe about me. Belief is always
stronger than fact.
Wilson: What are the facts?
Anna: People, certain people, make me very nervous, Mr. Wil-
son.
Wilson: You have been ill.
Anna: ...and I have been reading. A novel from America...
Wilson: In America we read Russian novels.
Anna: ...a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter. A
story of a marked woman. She suffers because others make
her into something she’s not.
Wilson: It’s about the sin of adultery.
CLOSE ANNA

Anna: No. It’s about a sin called the violation of the human
heart.

MEDIUM ANNA AND WILSON
Wilson: The violation of the human heart?
Anna: Use, Mr. Wilson. Using another person to get what you

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