Sashenka

  Missy had never paid him the slightest attention. She was worldly enough – she had to be open-minded to be friends with Ariadna. But she had never really flirted with anyone and certainly not with him. Gideon reflected that the war, the loss of respect, the ever-changing ministers and the disturbances on the streets must be shaking free some ripe fruit that would never otherwise have fallen to the ground. He thought about Missy Loris’s body – that bobbed blonde was skinny and had no bosom – yet he suddenly hungered for the sheer unadulterated joy of tasting new skin, lips, the satin of her inner thighs. He smiled to himself: this ursine giant was capable of Herculean erotic feats that no one – except the women themselves – would have believed possible. He proposed the most deliciously outré acts of lovemaking in delicate French phrases that liberated the restraint of chorus girls and countesses alike. Yet he had never become complacent about this erotic success. Why did these lovely bubelehs, these babes, choose me? he thought. Me? Of all people! I’m an ugly brute – like a Jewish innkeeper! But what the hell, I’m not complaining!

  He just could not help himself: he had to find Missy right away that night. But if he handed over the two hundred roubles to Vera now, he would have nothing to buy the ladies drinks and snacks. What to do? He groaned. He’d do what he always did.

  Moments later, as Vera washed up morosely, Gideon fled, leaving fifty roubles on the hall table and keeping the rest for himself. Mouche helped him pull on his felt boots and handed him ‘our Menshevik article!’ while Vika shook her head, pursing her lips.

  ‘You’re leaving already, Papa? I knew it. I knew it. I knew it!’

  ‘We’ll change the locks, you deadbeat!’ shouted Vera, but he was gone.

  * * *

  Outside in the streets, Gideon could not find a sleigh. As for Vera, the whiner would manage, he thought. Vera and Vika: what a pair of sourpusses! I’m a coward, an incorrigible shameful hedonist – but I’m so happy! Dizzy with anticipation! What’s wrong with happiness? We make our own lives! What are humans? We’re just animals. I’ll die young. I won’t make old bones so I’m just doing what my species does. Besides, I had to go! I have an article to deliver to the newspaper.

  He smelt the icy air. Strange sounds echoed in the distance. Gunshots crackled, factory whistles sang, engines revved and screeched, voices chanted – but here all seemed oddly quiet. But as he strode towards the Astoria Hotel, his mind racing with the anticipation of Missy’s bare shoulders, her soft belly, her smells of female sweat and scent, he stepped out into the wider streets. It started as a murmur, became a throbbing and grew into a roar. The broad boulevards were filling with masses of people, their covered heads and heavy coats making padded bundles of them as if they were automata all marching in the same direction.

  Gideon weaved in and out, sometimes letting the current carry him, sometimes standing aside and watching it rush past. He was excited. As a writer, he was witnessing something. But where was the army, the Cossacks?

  He stepped into the hotel, home again among its gleaming parquet floors, the shiny gold and black lifts, the dark oak bar.

  ‘The usual, Monsieur Zeitlin?’ asked Roustam the barman. Inside the Astoria, the polished formality had given way to a wild and carefree holiday. Tossing his coat and hat at the hat-check girl and forgetting to remove his boots, Gideon padded towards the private room where Baroness Rozen was holding a soirée. A girl in a backless orange dress, a feather boa and yellow shoes – what Vera called a woman of easy virtue, but what Gideon affectionately called a bubeleh – hailed him like an old friend, and he beamed at her. She was holding a drink and offering him a sip. The receptionists laughed at her: were they drunk too? A couple, an officer and what appeared to be a respectable lady wearing a double rope of pearls, sat kissing on the sofa in the foyer as if they were in a kabinet, not a public place. A doorman opened the double doors to the party and Gideon noticed that the red-faced servant did not bow, just smirked as if he knew what was inside Gideon’s head.

  Gideon almost fell into the room, pushing through uniforms and shoulderboards, frock coats and gowns, hearing them discussing the situation in the streets – until he saw a helmet of blonde hair, some pale shoulders and a long gloved arm with a gold-tipped cigarette and the smoke curling round above it like a snake from a basket.

  ‘So you came,’ Missy Loris said in her American accent.

  ‘Was I meant to?’

  Her smile raised those comely laughter dimples in her cheeks. ‘Gideon, what’s happening out there?’

  He put his lips to her little high-set ear. ‘We could all die tonight, bubeleh! What shall we do in our last moments?’ It was one of his favourite lines from the Gideon Manifesto, and any moment now it was going to work.

  32

  There were no cabs at the Finland Station when Sashenka arrived back in the city. There was hardly anyone on the train except for two old ladies, probably retired teachers, who were earnestly discussing whether the Thirty Abominations, a lesbian novel from before the war, by Lidia Zinovieva-Annibal, was a classic exposition of female sensuality or a disgusting unchristian potboiler.

  The argument started politely enough but as the train pulled into the Finland Station the two ladies were shouting at each other, even cursing. ‘You philistine, Olesya Mikhailovna, it’s pornography plain and simple!’

  ‘You hidebound reptile, Marfa Constantinovna, you’ve never lived, never loved, felt nothing.’

  ‘At least I feared God!’

  ‘You’ve so upset me, I’m having a turn. I need my pills.’

  ‘I won’t give them to you until you admit you’re being utterly unreasonable …’

  Sashenka could only smile as she heard the ricochet of gunshots over the city.

  The station was eerily empty of its tramps and urchins. Outside, it was dusk but the streets were filled with running people, some with guns. It was snowing again, big dry flakes like barley seeds; the half-moon cast a lurid yellow light. Sashenka thought the people looked oddly swollen but realized that many were wearing two coats or padding to fend off the knouts of the Cossacks. A worker from one of the vast metal factories told her there was a stand-off at the Alexander Bridge, but before she could ask any more there was shooting and everyone began to run, unsure what they were running from. A female worker from the Putilov Works told her there had been battles on Alexander Bridge and Znamenskaya Square; that some of the Cossacks, the Volynsky Guards, had changed sides and charged the police. An old drunk claimed he was a socialist but then tried to put his hand into Sashenka’s coat. He squeezed her breast and she slapped him and then ran. On the Alexander Bridge, she thought she saw the bodies of policemen. There were no trams.

  She walked slowly towards home down the famous avenues, now seething with dark figures. Bonfires were lit in the streets. Urchins danced around the flames like demonic gnomes. An arsenal had been stormed: workers now carried rifles. She tramped onwards, exhausted yet vibrating with fear and excitement. Whatever Uncle Mendel claimed about the Revolution, the people had not melted away at the first sign of resistance. There was the crackle of more shooting. Two boys, young workers, kissed her on both cheeks and ran on.

  She came upon a crowd of soldiers on Nevsky. ‘Brothers, sisters, daughters, mothers, I propose that we don’t fire on our brethren,’ shouted some NCO to cries of ‘Hurrah! Down with the autocracy!’ She tried to find her comrades but they were at none of the coachmen’s cafés or the safehouses on Nevsky.

  Hurrying on, Sashenka felt wildly joyful. Was this it? A revolution without leaders? Where were the machine-gun nests and Cossacks and pharaohs? She heard a roaring engine. The people in the streets froze and watched, raising white faces like moons: what could it be? Like a dinosaur, a grey Austin armoured car mounted with a howitzer drove haphazardly, gears screaming, in random accelerations and jerking turns, down Nevsky. The crowd scattered as it mounted the pavement and drove straight over a bonfire outside Yeliseyev’s grocery store, and then stopped beside a g
roup of soldiers.

  ‘Can anyone drive this thing?’ shouted the driver.

  ‘I can!’ A young man with shaggy black hair and bright brown eyes jumped up. ‘I learned in the army.’ It was her comrade Vanya Palitsyn, the Bolshevik metal worker. Sashenka hurried towards him to ask for instructions but he was already inside the armoured car, which revved, shook then accelerated off down the Prospect.

  ‘Are you for the Revolution?’ asked a stranger, a boy with a Ukrainian accent, a blue nose and a military jacket. It was the first time anyone had used that word.

  ‘I’m a Bolshevik!’ Sashenka said proudly. They hugged spontaneously. Soon she was asking the question herself. Strangers embraced around her: a grizzled sergeant-major, a Polish student, a fat woman wearing an apron under her sheepskin, a leather-clad metal worker in a tool belt, even a fashionable woman in a seal coat. Closer to home, cars filled with soldiers waving banners and rifles skidded down Nevsky and Greater Maritime.

  Dizzy with the momentum of this chaotic night, Sashenka kept thinking of Sagan. She was keen to make her report to Mendel. She had got the name of the traitor, established Sagan as a Bolshevik source inside the Okhrana, and was now a fully fledged practitioner of the art of conspiracy. She could hand over the direction of their double agent to another comrade. The mission was over, and away from Sagan and the effect he had on her, she was relieved. The Party would be satisfied.

  She racked her brain for other Party safehouses. She tried 106 Nevsky. No answer. Then 134. The door was open. She flung herself upstairs, her senses bristling. The door was just opening and she could hear the Jericho trumpet of Mendel’s voice. ‘What are we doing?’ he was shouting.

  ‘I just don’t know,’ replied Shlyapnikov, wearing a padded greatcoat. ‘I’m not sure …’

  ‘Let’s go to G-g-gorky’s apartment,’ suggested Molotov, rubbing his bulging forehead. ‘He’ll know something …’

  Shlyapnikov nodded and headed for the door.

  ‘This is it,’ she said. Her voice squeaked, not her own. ‘The Revolution.’

  ‘Don’t lecture the committee, comrade,’ answered Shlyapnikov as he and Molotov clumped down the stairs. ‘You’re a puppy.’

  Mendel lingered for a moment.

  ‘Who’s in charge?’ asked Sashenka. ‘Where’s Comrade Lenin? Who’s in charge?’

  ‘We are!’ Mendel smiled suddenly. ‘Lenin’s in Geneva. We are the Party leadership.’

  ‘I met Sagan,’ she whispered. ‘Verezin the Horse Guards concierge is the traitor. But I don’t suppose it matters any more …’

  ‘C-c-comrade!’ called Molotov from the lobby, stammer reverberating up the stairs.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ said Mendel. ‘Check the other apartments for comrades. There’s a meeting at the Taurida Palace. Tell them to report there later.’

  Mendel limped down the stairs, leaving Sashenka alone.

  She returned to Nevsky, heading home. She ate some solianka soup and a chunk of black Borodinsky bread at the carriage-drivers’ café, which was full of workers and coachmen, each telling stories of mayhem, orgies, slaughter, hunger and treason in loud, tipsy voices without listening to anyone else. Coal and oat prices had quadrupled. Even a bowl of soup in the café had gone up seven times. There were German agents, Jewish traitors and crooks everywhere.

  As Sashenka put some coins into the barrel organ, which incongruously played ‘God Save the Tsar’, raising guffaws from the coachmen, the streets grew darker. There were distant sounds like lions coughing in the night, the groan grew into a deafening roar and the hut shook. At first she could not understand why – then she realized that as she had been eating, the coachmen’s café had been surrounded, overrun by a sea of people in dark coats. They were blocking the streets. There was shooting in the distance and smoke rising, pink against the pale darkness: the Kresty Prison was on fire.

  As she walked down Greater Maritime, Sashenka saw a soldier and a girl kissing against a wall. She could not see their faces but the man groped up the girl’s skirt past her stocking tops while the girl tore open his fly buttons. A leg rose up his side like one of the Neva’s bridges opening. The girl mewed and writhed. Sashenka thought of Sagan and the sleigh ride in the snowfields and hurried on.

  Outside the Astoria, some soldiers were stealing a Rolls-Royce, punching a uniformed chauffeur. The doorman, an officer and a gendarme ran outside, shouting. The soldiers calmly shot the officer and the gendarme, and the car drove off with its horn blowing.

  Presently, a bearded man staggered heartily past her singing ‘Nightingale, nightingale’ with a blonde woman in a fur coat and Sashenka recognized Gideon and Countess Loris. She was relieved to find friends and was about to hail them when Gideon cupped Missy’s buttocks and pulled her out of the crowd and into a doorway where they started kissing frenziedly.

  A volley of shots distracted Sashenka. Figures were climbing up the façade of the Mariinsky Palace and tearing down the double-headed eagle of the Romanovs.

  The gendarme’s body lay in the street, splayed so that his white belly bulged out of his trousers, like a dead fish. Exhausted beyond belief, Sashenka stepped over it and hurried down Nevsky – towards the Taurida Palace.

  33

  ‘What are you all standing around for?’ Ariadna called from the top of the stairs, her hair up, elegant in a flounced dress of shantung silk. The faces of Leonid the butler, the two chauffeurs and the parlourmaids were raised towards her as she started to descend.

  ‘Haven’t you heard, Baroness?’ It was Pantameilion, always the cheekiest, his neat moustache, oiled hair and sharp chin thrusting impertinently.

  ‘Heard what? Speak up!’

  ‘They’ve formed a Workers’ Soviet at the Taurida Palace,’ he said excitedly, ‘and we’ve heard that—’

  ‘That’s yesterday’s news,’ snapped Ariadna. ‘Please get on with your work.’

  ‘And the crowds say … the Tsar’s abdicated!’ said Pantameilion.

  ‘Rubbish! Stop spreading rumours, Pantameilion. Go and decarbonize the car,’ replied Ariadna. ‘The baron would know if anyone did – he’s at the Taurida!’

  At that moment, the front door opened and Zeitlin swept in, a commanding figure in his floor-length black coat with a beaver collar and shapka. Ariadna and the servants stared open-mouthed as if he alone could settle the great question of the epoch.

  Zeitlin cheerfully tossed his hat at the stand. He appeared years younger, radiating confidence. So there! thought Ariadna, the Tsar is back in control. What nonsense the servants talk! Fools! Peasants!

  Zeitlin leaned on his cane and looked up at Ariadna like a tenor about to sing an Italian aria.

  ‘I have news,’ he said in a voice quivering with excitement.

  There! The Cossacks are guarding the streets, the Germans are retreating, everything will settle down again as it always does, decided Ariadna. Long live the Emperor!

  On cue, Lala came down the stairs, Shifra emerged from the Black Way and Delphine the cook from the kitchen, her customary drip dangling from the end of her nose.

  ‘The Emperor has abdicated,’ announced Zeitlin. ‘First in favour of the Tsarevich then in favour of his brother Grand Duke Michael. Prince Lvov has formed a government. All political parties are now legal. That’s it! We’re entering a new era!’

  ‘The Tsar gone!’ Leonid crossed himself then started to sob. ‘Our little father – abdicated!’

  Pantameilion grinned insolently, twisting his moustache and whistling through his teeth. The two parlourmaids paled.

  ‘Woe is me!’ Shifra whispered. ‘Thrones tumble like in the Book of Revelation!’

  ‘What next? George V?’ said Lala. ‘What’ll become of me here?’

  Delphine started to weep and her perpetual drip separated itself from the cosy berth of her nostrils and fell to the floor. The household had waited twenty years for this historic event but now that it had happened, no one noticed.

  ‘Come on, Leonid,’
said Zeitlin, offering the butler his silk handkerchief, a gesture which, Ariadna noted, he would never have made a week earlier. ‘Pull yourselves together. Nothing changes in my house. Take my coat. What time is lunch, Cook? I’m ravenous.’

  Ariadna gripped the marble banisters, watching the servants pull off Zeitlin’s boots. The Emperor was gone. She had grown up with Nicholas II and suddenly felt quite rootless.

  Zeitlin leaped up the stairs, taking two at a time, like a young man. Following her into her bedroom, he kissed her on the lips so energetically that it made her head spin, and then talked about the new Russia. The crowds were still out of control. The police headquarters were burning; policemen and informers were being killed; soldiers and bandits were driving automobiles and armoured cars around the streets, shooting their rifles in the air. The former Emperor wanted to return to Tsarskoe Selo but was now under arrest, soon to be reunited with his wife and children – they would not be harmed. Grand Duke Michael would turn down the throne.

  Zeitlin was elated, he told his wife, because many of his friends from the Kadets and Octobrists were serving in Prince Lvov’s government. The war would go on; he had already been commissioned by the new War Minister to deliver more rifles and howitzers; and it turned out that Sashenka was still a Bolshevik. He had seen her at the Taurida Palace with her comrades – a motley bunch of fanatics – but youth will be youth.