4. MORE – STALIN’S DAGGER

I like magic! Early next morning I was dreaming. That is I believed I was dreaming. As on the previous days, some early morning birds were chirping so I am not sure. When I turned around in bed, the small box was there once again. Nothing rattled inside. I opened the box. There were some sheets of paper. I started reading chapter 4.

4. MORE – STALIN’S DAGGER

Jill and John were listening.

-          - We want to hear more, John uttered. – Tell more.

-          - I have the dagger here, the time traveller said. - But take care. If you touch it, the dagger is yours.

-         -  Is it that dangerous, Jill asked.

-          - You bet. Why do you think Stalin behaved as he did? I know because I deposited the dagger in a flowerbed in the town of Gori in Georgia. Joseb, or Soso as those close to him used to say, was very interested in flowers as a child. His parents were Besarion and Ekaterina Jughashvili. Joseb found the dagger in the garden at young age, but did not tell of its existence to anyone. In fact, nobody knew about the dagger. His mother, Keke, knew nothing.

-         -  How did you manage to get rid of the dagger, Jill wondered.

-         -  I took care not to touch it. I wrapped it in a silk handkerchief. That is what you have to do, and that is what Stalin did not do.

-          - He was not aware that the dagger was cursed?

-         -  Joseb was only a child, you know. Anyway, how could he have an idea of it? Still someone knew. Lenin knew the first time he saw the dagger. That was the reason that he did not want Stalin to be in charge of the Sovjet Union. Everyone knows what happened later in that country.

-         -  Did Stalin keep the dagger until he died, Jill asked.

-          - Yes, he did. Even at the Potsdam conference in July 1945 he brought it in a scabbard hidden under his tunic. That was when he met Harry Truman, the American president, for the first and only time. The two of them had a walk in the park when Stalin showed Truman the artefact. He even let the president touch it.

-        -   How do you know?

-         -  I was there, the time traveller said. – The Second World War was close to its end but for the stubborn resistance of the Japanese. A nice weapon, I remember Truman said. A short time after the Americans dropped two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

-          - What happened to the dagger after Stalin died in 1953, John wondered.

-          - That is another story.

Then the time traveller disappeared.

-          - I hope he will come back, said Jill. – I really want to see that dagger.

End of chapter 4. To be continued in chapter 5.