Sashenka

  ‘There, you see, Ariadna? We’re a republic. Russia’s a sort of democracy!’

  ‘What will happen to the Tsar?’ asked Ariadna, feeling dazed. ‘What will happen to us?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ replied Zeitlin affably. ‘There’ll be changes of course. The Poles and Finns want independence, but we’ll be fine. There are opportunities in all this. In fact, when I was in the Taurida, I had a word with …’

  Ariadna barely noticed when Zeitlin, still babbling about new ministers and juicy contracts, checked his gold fob watch and went downstairs to his office to make telephone calls. Almost in a trance, she followed him out of her room and watched him descend. She heard the Trotting Chair rumble into action.

  Leonid rushed to the front door. Sashenka came into the hall, pale and elated, dressed in that plain blouse and grey skirt, her hair in an ugly bun, and no rouge at all. Ariadna was disappointed in her daughter: why did she dress like a provincial schoolteacher? What a sight the child was! She stank too, of smoke, soup kitchens and the people, the rushing gadding people. Even a Bolshevik needed to use powder and lipstick, and why did she refuse to wear her new dresses from Chernyshev’s? A decent dress would improve her no end.

  But somehow Sashenka was utterly triumphant, glowing even. ‘Hello, Mama!’ she called up but then, throwing off her fur shuba and boots, she swept on to answer the questions of Lala and the servants. Excitedly, Sashenka told them that the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers was sitting; that Uncle Mendel was on the Executive Committee. And that Uncle Gideon was there too – he was writing about it – and his friends, the Mensheviks, dominated the Soviet.

  Ariadna did not care about this politicking but she could see that Sashenka needed to sleep. Her eyes were red, her hands shook from coffee and exhilaration. Yet as she watched her daughter’s animated face, she saw Sashenka anew. It was as if she had grown strong and beautiful, like a grub eating her mother’s flesh from the inside. Now she was shining with life while Ariadna was lifeless and empty.

  Stifling a longing to weep, Ariadna retreated to her bedroom.

  Feeling not so much calm as becalmed, Ariadna measured out Dr Gemp’s opium tonic and swallowed it. But this time it did not work. Her limbs were heavy, as if moving through treacle. The earth seemed to slow down, almost stopping on its axis. Time became excruciating.

  She lay down on her divan. She could not rejoice in the news that made her husband feel younger and her daughter seem beautiful, it merely aged her. The ground was splintering beneath her feet. No Tsar; Rasputin dead; Zeitlin had talked divorce; and somehow what most upset her was Sashenka’s joyous luminosity. She was playing grown-up politics, laughing at her parents. She had a mission in life – but what did Ariadna have? Why was Sashenka happy? Why so smug? The clock ticked more and more slowly. She waited for each tick but it took ages to come and when it did, it was like the tolling of a distant bell.

  When Ariadna was growing up in Turbin, she knew the Tsars were no friend of the Jews, but the Jews were convinced that without the Tsars it would be much worse. The Tsar was far away and he did much harm to the Jews and to the Russians too, even if his intentions were not too bad. But the Tsar had protected the Jews against the Cossacks, landowners, anti-Semites and pogromists. Now he was gone, who would protect them? Who would look after her? Suddenly she craved her mother’s embrace, her mother whom she had ignored. Miriam was in the same house, so was her father – but they might have been in another universe. To reach them would take an eternity.

  The sounds of the household were muffled. She had nothing to do and the nothingness took for ever to pass. The world was soaked in blood, just as Rasputin had warned her it would be; the streets of Piter were in anarchy. Outside, she heard tramping feet, hooting cars, cheering and gunfire. The sounds meant nothing; everything had lost its taste. Everything, even her scarlet dresses, her sapphires, looked grey.

  She rose with a sigh and wandered towards Sashenka’s room. She realized that she had not visited it for years.

  34

  Baron Zeitlin was in his study, clanking energetically on his Trotting Chair, a cigar between his teeth. He was sure he could adapt to the new world, indeed he almost sympathized with the socialists. He was vibrating with new plans. Then he heard Sashenka’s voice in the lobby and remembered how he had failed to understand her. Now he must try harder – otherwise he would lose her.

  ‘Darling Sashenka!’ She burst in breathlessly but did not sit down. ‘I can’t believe the last few days. But life must go on. When are you starting your studies?’

  ‘Studies? We’re much too busy for studies. I lied to you about my politics, Papa, because I had to. We Bolsheviks live by special rules. I was doing what was right.’ Her face was firm, almost aggressive.

  ‘It’s all right, Sashenka, I understand,’ said Zeitlin, but he did not. He blamed himself for making his daughter into this godless avenger. She had lied to him and rejected the family. But he had taught her to disrespect faith and this was the result. And now was not the time for another row. ‘Your mother thought you had a boyfriend.’

  ‘How absurd! She hardly knows me. I have a job now at the Pravda newspaper as liaison with the Petrograd Committee and the Soviet.’

  ‘But you must go back to school. The Revolution’s almost over, Sashenka. The government …’

  ‘Papa, the Revolution’s just started. There are exploiters and exploited. No middle ground. This government’s just a temporary bourgeois stage in the march to Socialism. The peasants must have their land, the workers their equality. The soldiers now take their orders from the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.’ She was almost shouting at him now, flushed with defiance, her hands gripping his arms. ‘There’ll be one last stage of capitalist corruption and then all this rottenness, all the bloodsuckers – yes, even you, Papa – will be swept away. There’ll be blood on the streets. I love you, Papa, but we Bolsheviks don’t have families and my love counts for nothing in the face of history.’

  Zeitlin had stopped trotting on his contraption. He looked at his daughter, at her exquisite freckles and dappled eyes, and was stunned.

  Silence. From somewhere else in the house, there was a small pop.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ said Zeitlin, taking his cigar out of his mouth. ‘What was it?’

  ‘It might have come from upstairs.’

  Father and daughter went out into the hall and then, for some reason, they were running. Leonid was at the top of the stairs, Lala on the landing. All were looking at the door of Ariadna’s room. A cold hand clutched his heart, and Zeitlin rushed up the stairs.

  ‘Ariadna!’ he shouted, knocking on the door. The staff peered past him, goggle-eyed.

  Ariadna was snowily naked on the divan. The smoking Mauser, dark and chunky, rested on her stomach. On her white skin, blood dripped crimson down her breast and pooled on the floor.

  35

  Sashenka stood at the window of the Gogol Street safe-house, not far from the War Ministry, smoking a cigarette and peering out over the frozen Neva at the Peter and Paul Fortress. It was dark, yet the sky glowed an unnatural purple like a theatrical screen with a light behind it. The lantern atop the spire of the fortress’s church swung a little in the wind.

  The workers controlled the fortress. Mendel and Trotsky had once been prisoners in the Trubetskoy Bastion but yesterday the prisoners had all been freed. It was early evening and the streets were still teeming as excited but good-natured crowds tore down any remaining Romanov eagles. The Okhrana headquarters was on fire.

  Sashenka’s dreams were coming true but now she was numb. She walked the streets without seeing or hearing the remarkable sights. Her mother had pulled off the impossible: she had upstaged the Russian Revolution. People bumped into Sashenka. Someone embraced her. Vanya Palitsyn called her name from a careering car filled with Red Guards, a Romanov crest on its doors.

  The apartment was too hot; she was sweating because she had not taken off her coat or hat. W
hy on earth had she walked straight here again? A place she had promised never to revisit. She had tried to block Sagan out of her mind; his time was past and probably he was already in Stockholm or the south. Yet here she was, in the familiar apartment, waiting for the person she was accustomed to confiding in about her mother.

  She heard a sound and turned slowly. Captain Sagan, still in full gendarme uniform but haggard and bleary, stood there pointing a Walther pistol at her. Suddenly he looked his age, older even.

  They said nothing for a moment. Then he put the pistol back in its holster and without a word came to her. They hugged. She was grateful he was there.

  ‘I’ve got some brandy,’ he said, ‘and the samovar’s just boiled.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘I came last night. I didn’t know where else to come. Some workers went to my home and my wife has gone. The trains aren’t running. I didn’t know where to go so I just came here. Sashenka, I want to tell you something that will surprise you. My world – everything I cherished – has vanished in a night.’

  ‘That’s not what you told me would happen.’

  ‘I’m in your hands. You can turn me in. I was a believer in the Empire. And yet I told you the truth about myself.’

  He took a bottle of Armenian brandy, cheap cha-cha, and poured out two shots, handing one to Sashenka. He downed his. She took off her coat and hat.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he asked. ‘I’d have thought you’d be celebrating.’

  ‘I was. And then something terrible happened. I was going to the Taurida Palace but when I passed the guardhouse at the barracks I knocked on the door. It was open. The doorman – remember the doorman, Verezin? – was lying dead on the floor, shot in the head. And then I went into the Soviet and met my comrades.’

  ‘You’d told them he was a traitor?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And you were surprised that he was dead?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t surprised. A bit shocked, I suppose. But that’s revolution for you. When you chop wood, chips fly.’

  ‘But you said something terrible had happened?’

  ‘My mother shot herself.’

  Sagan was aghast. ‘I’m so sorry, Sashenka. Is she dead?’

  ‘No, she is just about alive. She shot herself in the chest. Apparently, beautiful women tend to avoid their faces. She found my Mauser, the Party’s Mauser, under my mattress. How did she know it was there? How could she have found it? The doctors are there now.’ Sashenka paused, struggling to control her breathing. ‘I should have gone to the newspaper but instead I found myself here. Because it was here … with you … that we talked so much about her. I hated her. I never told her how much …’

  She started to cry and Sagan put his arms around her. His hair smelt of smoke, his neck almost tasted of cognac, yet she found that just telling Sagan about her mother had calmed her. His hug restored her and, ironically, gave her the strength to pull away.

  ‘Sashenka,’ he said, his hands squeezing her shoulders, ‘I have something to tell you. I was doing my job but I never told you how much I came to … be fond of you. I have no one else. I …’

  She went cold suddenly.

  ‘You’re so much younger than me but I think I love you.’

  Sashenka stepped backwards. She knew she had needed him, but not as the man who had kissed her in the snow-fields, more as a confidant. Now his need for her, his stench of desperation, repelled her, and this spectre of the fallen regime was frightening her. She wanted to be away from him.

  ‘You can’t just leave me like that,’ he cried, ‘after what I just told you.’

  ‘I never asked for this, never.’

  ‘You can’t leave …’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said and, sensing a change in him, rushed for the door. He was right behind her.

  He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back to the divan, where she had sat so many nights talking of poetry and parents.

  She punched his jaw. ‘Let me go,’ she screamed. ‘What are you doing?’

  But he seized her hands and pushed her down, his long thin face terrifyingly close, and pouring sweat and dribbling saliva as he struggled with her. He thrust his other hand up her skirt, tearing her stockings, driving up between her thighs. Then he turned to her chest, ripping the buttons off her blouse, rending her undergarments and clawing at her breasts.

  She twisted sharply, freed her hands and smacked him in the nose. His blood burst all over her face but his weight held her down. Then she pulled the Walther out of his holster and slammed it sideways into his face. She felt the steel connect with teeth, bone and flesh, and more blood oozed over her fingers.

  He rolled off her, and she was on her feet and racing for the door. As she wrenched it open, she glimpsed him curled like a child on the divan, sobbing.

  Sashenka did not stop until she was downstairs and out of the building. She hurtled into a cellar bar full of drunken soldiers but they were shocked by the sight of her and, seizing their bayoneted rifles, offered their help in killing anyone who had laid a finger on her. In the bathroom she washed the blood off her face, the metallic taste of Sagan’s blood was in her mouth, nose, everywhere, and she tried to wash it away but the smell made her gag, and she vomited. When she came out, she took a vodka from one of the soldiers and drank it down. It cleansed her a little, and gradually she felt calmer.

  Outside, the streets were still heaving. She heard a burst of shooting on Nevsky. They were lynching pickpockets, and there were drunken gangs of deserters and bandits on the loose. She sensed that Sagan would want to get away from the apartment, so she hid in a doorway and watched the exit from the block. Her head was throbbing, and the lingering taste of his blood made her retch again. Her body was shaking. This had all been for the Party, and now it was over. She told herself that she should feel a sense of triumph – for she had won the Superlative Game, Sagan and his masters were finished, and his attack on her reflected his humiliation. Yet all she could feel was a corrosive shame and a savage fury. She imagined returning with her Party pistol and shooting him as a police spy, but instead, fumbling, she lit up a Crocodile.

  About half an hour later, Sagan came out into the street and, in the queer purple light of night, she saw his swollen, bleeding face, his broken gait, how diminished he was. He was just a crooked, lanky figure hunched beneath a high astrakhan hat, his uniform covered by a khaki greatcoat. The streets were seething with huddled men, armed with Berdanas and Mausers, staggering in padded coats. The night was balanced on that thin spine between chanting jubilation and growing ugliness. Sagan headed down Gogol, through the small streets, and across Nevsky. She followed and saw the workers surround him outside the Kazan Cathedral. Perhaps they’d give him a good beating and punish him for hurting her, she thought, but they let him through. Then he tripped on a paving stone and they saw his uniform.

  ‘A gendarme! A pharaoh! Let’s arrest him! Scum! Bastard! We’ll take him to the Soviet! We’ll throw him in the bastion! Here, take this on the smiler, you weasel!’ They surrounded him, but he must have drawn his pistol. He got off a shot – there it was, that popping sound again. Then they were kicking at a bundle on the ground, jeering, shouting and raising their rifle butts and bayonets. Breathing raggedly, Sashenka watched it all happen too fast for her to really understand.

  Somewhere inside the cacophony of blows and cries, she heard his voice and then the squealing of an animal in pain. The moist thudding of the rifle butts told the rest. Through the workers’ boots and the skirts of their greatcoats, she could see blood glistening on the dark uniform. She did not see the metamorphosis of a man into a smeared heap on the street – and when it was over, there was a hush after the frenzy, as the crowd cleared their throats, straightened their clothes and then shuffled away. She did not wait any longer. She had seen the power of the people in action – the judgement of history.

  Yet she no longer felt as if she had won. A wave of sadness and guilt
overwhelmed her, as if her curse had visited this horror upon him. The dead body of Verezin, and now this. Yet this was what she had craved and she must welcome it: the Revolution was a noble master. Many would die in the struggle, she thought – and yet the destruction of a man was a terrible thing.

  She found herself leaning on a statue outside the Kazan as tears ran down her face. It was an end but not the one she had wanted. She wished she had never known Sagan and she wished too that he had walked on down that street to a safe exile, far away.

  36

  A husky drawl broke the sepulchral hush of the sickroom.

  ‘What’s in the newspaper?’ Ariadna asked.

  The familiar voice shocked Sashenka. Her mother had not spoken for days. She had just slept, her breathing laboured, the infection flourishing in her chest so that it seemed she would never wake again. Sashenka had been reading Pravda, the Party newspaper, when Ariadna stirred. She spoke so clearly that Sashenka dropped the paper, scattering its pages on to the carpet.

  ‘Mama, you gave me a shock!’

  ‘I’m not dead yet, darling … or am I? It stinks in here. I can hardly breathe. What does that newspaper say?’

  Sashenka picked up the pages. ‘Uncle Mendel’s on the Party’s Central Committee. Lenin’s returning any day.’ Sashenka looked up to find her mother’s velvety eyes were resting on her with an astonishing warmth. It surprised and then embarrassed her.

  ‘When I finally went to your room …’ Ariadna began, and Sashenka strained to understand.

  ‘Mama, you look better.’ It was a lie but who tells the truth to the dying? Sashenka wanted to soothe her mother. ‘You’re getting better. Mama, how do you feel?’