‘Oh God, it’s started.’ Sashenka’s legs almost gave way, and she leaned against the wall.
A senior officer, a narrow-faced commissar with two tabs, who was too thin for his overlarge uniform, stood in front of her. ‘Orders to search this apartment, orders signed by L. P. Beria, Narkom, NKVD.’
Razum elbowed this stick insect aside, so keen was he to be part of the operation. ‘We’ve arrested Palitsyn right at the Saratovsky Station at first light. He punched one of them, did Vanya Palitsyn.’
‘That’s enough, comrade,’ said the stick insect in charge.
‘Where is he?’ asked Sashenka eagerly. So Vanya’s train had been on time. Razum (probably excluded from the secret in case he warned his boss) had been at the station to meet him, and Vanya had been arrested there and then. Razum’s grotesque pantomiming was his desperate attempt to prove his loyalty and save his skin. Sashenka knew enough to realize Vanya would have been taken straight to the Internal Prison at what they called ‘the Centre’: Lubianka.
‘Not another word, Comrade Razum,’ said the stick insect. ‘This is our affair.’
‘I always had my suspicions about these barins.’ Razum was still chattering. ‘There wasn’t much I didn’t see. Now we’re going to search the place, find out what papers that snake’s been hiding. This way, boys!’
The stick insect and his Chekists were already in the study. Carolina watched from her bedroom door. Had they come to arrest her? Sashenka wondered. Frantic longings and selfish thoughts filled her again: perhaps she was safe? Perhaps they only wanted Vanya? Let Vanya be arrested. Let her stay with the children.
Sashenka and Carolina looked at each other silently. Were they too late? Would the children be tortured in that orphanage? How would they know what to do? Vanya had sent no signal. Should Carolina leave right now with the children? Tonight! Or would that bring further torment?
‘What’s happening, Mama?’ asked Snowy, arms curling round her mother’s waist. Carlo sensed the turmoil in the boots and the loud voices, the casual way the Chekists were opening drawers and slamming cupboards in the study, tossing papers and photographs into a heap on the floor. His pliant face collapsed in three stages: a slight downturn of the eyes and the lips; welling tears and crumpling features; the spread of a deep red blush as he started to howl.
‘Stay in your bedroom,’ cried Sashenka, hiding them behind her body. ‘Go to Carolina.’
Carolina opened her arms but the children froze around Sashenka, their hands clutching on to her hips and thighs, sheltering under her like travellers during a storm.
Vanya’s mother burst out of her room in a purple nightdress, followed by her husband.
‘What’s going on?’ she shouted. ‘What’s happening?’ She ran into the study and started pushing the Chekists away from Vanya’s desk. ‘Vanya’s a hero! There’s been some mistake! What’s he been arrested for?’
‘Article 58, I believe!’ answered the stick insect. ‘Now, out of the way. They’re removing the safe.’
Sashenka saw the secret policemen fixing a seal on to the door of the study. Four of the boys were straining to get Vanya’s safe to the lift. Finally the janitor brought up a metal trolley and they wheeled it out.
‘Goodnight, Comrade Zeitlin-Palitsyn,’ said the uniformed stick insect to Sashenka. ‘Don’t tinker with the seal on the study. We’ll return for more material tomorrow.’
‘Wait! Does Vanya need some clothes?’
‘The spy had a suitcase, thank you very much,’ sneered Razum, hands on hips, striking a pose. ‘I’ll be right with you, lads!’ he shouted over his shoulder to the stick insect and the others who were loading piles of papers into the lift.
‘Why do you hate us?’ Sashenka asked him quietly.
‘He’ll sing! He’ll confess, the hyena!’ Razum said to her. ‘You bosses live like nobility! Think you’re better than the likes of us? You’ve got fat and soft. Now you’re getting your comeuppance.’
‘Silence, Comrade Razum, or you’ll be in the treacle yourself!’ piped the stick insect, holding the lift door open. Old Razum turned abruptly but as he did so, something fell out of his pocket. Shouting drunken insults, he trotted after his fellows. The lift door closed.
Sashenka shut the door, leaned back against it and sank to the floor, Carlo and Snowy collapsing with her, tangled in her legs. She was thinking coldly, trying to plan with the icy dedication of a mother in crisis – though her hands were shaking, the red sparks rising in her eyes were blinding her, and her belly was squirming.
‘Cushion!’ Snowy reached out to pick up the little pink cushion with a bow. ‘Silly Razum dropped my lovely cushion’ – and she showed the wrinkled pink object to Sashenka.
Sashenka grabbed it from Snowy, examining it, turning it over, smelling it.
‘No, Snowy. Wait,’ she snapped as her daughter tried to retrieve it.
‘I want my little cushion!’ cried Snowy pitifully.
‘Carolina!’ The nanny was there already.
Vanya’s parents emerged from their room again, and stood staring at the scene.
‘Where’s Vanya?’ asked Vanya’s mother. She pointed savagely at Sashenka. ‘I always told him you were a class enemy, born and bred. This is your doing, isn’t it?’
‘Be quiet for once!’ Sashenka retorted. ‘I’ll explain everything later. Tomorrow you two should go to the dacha or to the village – but for now please go to your rooms. I need to think!’
The old peasants muttered at her rudeness but retreated again.
‘That bastard Razum,’ spat Carolina.
‘From now on, everyone’s a bastard. We’ve just crossed from one species to another,’ said Sashenka, holding the little pink cushion. ‘Carolina, this was at the dacha?’
‘Yes.’
‘We didn’t bring it back, did we?’
‘No, we didn’t. It lives in the playroom there.’
Sashenka turned to her daughter. ‘Where did this come from, darling?’
‘Razum dropped it. That silly old man! He smells!’
‘But who took it from the dacha? Did you see someone take it?’
‘Yes, silly. Papa took it. I gave it to him to look after and he put it in his pocket.’
‘So your papochka remembered us,’ murmured Sashenka. ‘Dear Vanya.’ Snowy’s cushion: what signal could be more appropriate? ‘Good old Razum,’ she added.
‘Can I have it, Mamochka?’
‘Yes, darling heart, you can have it.’
Sashenka looked up at Carolina and the nanny looked back at her: it was an exchange of absolute maternal love, a look of gravity that tolled so poignantly that both women were stunned by it.
In that instant, Sashenka tried to touch, taste, see and feel all the treasured impressions and precious moments of her children’s lives. But she could not hold them and they slipped through her fingers, carried away on the wind.
31
The next morning, Sashenka went to the office. Some would have stayed in bed, claiming illness, but that in itself might arouse suspicions. The arrest of a husband did not always lead to the arrest of the wife. No, she would edit her magazine as she always did and take what came.
As she departed, she kissed the children, inhaled their skin, their hair. She looked into each of their faces in turn. She kissed Carlo’s brown eyes, and pressed her lips on to Snowy’s silky forehead.
‘I love you. I will always love you. Never forget it. Ever,’ she said to each of them, firmly. No tears. Discipline.
‘Mama, Mama, can I tell you something?’ said Carlo. ‘You are a silly old pooh!’ and he roared with laughter at his wicked joke.
Snowy laughed too but took her mama’s side. ‘No, she’s not. Mama’s a darling cushion.’ High praise indeed.
Carolina stood behind them. Vanya’s parents pulled their coats on. Sashenka hesitated then nodded at them. They nodded too. There was nothing else to say now.
Sashenka shook herself. She craved to kiss Car
lo and Snowy again, so craved it that she could wear away their very skin with kisses – but she shuddered and pulled on her coat and opened the door.
‘Mama, I love you in my heart,’ cried out Carlo. He blew a raspberry at her and then grabbed Snowy’s cushion and trotted off with it.
‘Give me that back, you pooh!’ Snowy pursued him, away from the adults.
Sashenka seized the moment and was gone, taking a little canvas bag and her handbag. Just like that. The children did not even notice. One moment she was a mother with her children; the next she was gone. It was like jumping out of an aeroplane: a second that changed everything in life.
As she walked down the elegant wooden staircase, Sashenka could not see for the salty tears swimming across her vision.
But her senses sharpened as she came into the lobby. The guards went quiet as she approached them, and the janitor swept the car park with astonishing enthusiasm. When she passed Comrade Andreyev, Party Secretary, and his wife, Deputy People’s Commissar Dora Khazan, coming down to their ZiS, they met her eyes but looked right through her. They were probably going to see Comrade Stalin and Comrade Molotov and Comrade Voroshilov that very day in the corridors of the Kremlin, in the land of the living. They might never cross paths again.
She waved gaily at the guards. One waved back but the other told him off.
She set out for work. The light, the flowers of the Alexander Gardens, the carts and horses, the dust and rumble of all those new building projects, the crocodile of red-scarfed Young Pioneers singing gaily, none of this registered with her.
The pavement did not seem hard. She floated on the air because her shoes, feet, bones were no longer solid. Adrenalin rushed through her, along with the fine coffee she had made during the night.
She suddenly felt the urge to run back and kiss the children again. It was so strong that her muscles actually bunched and started to move but she held them back. Stick to the plan! For them. Any folly, any stupid sentimentality, could ruin it.
Her heart drummed, her vision sharpened. She revelled in her heightened senses. On the street, she noticed the janitors watching her as they cleaned their courtyards. The militiamen at the Granovsky corner whispered to each other.
She stopped at the corner and glanced back. Yes: her parents-in-law had come out into the street. On time. Vanya’s mother swung her usual canvas handbag but this time none of the other gossiping peasants in the courtyard greeted her. Vanya’s father looked towards Sashenka but gave no sign of recognition.
Helped by her husband, Vanya’s mother hobbled on her swollen legs down the street in the opposite direction, smoking a cigarette.
Sashenka turned the corner and headed past the Kremlin on her right, the National Hotel on her left, and then up Gorky Street. Just about now, she knew that Carolina would be coming downstairs with the children, taking them for a walk.
She would lead them in the same direction as the grandmother and grandfather, left out of the door.
The guards in the Granovsky guardpost would watch them impassively: who cared? The NKVD was interested in the parents. Besides, they had no orders. Yet.
Sashenka lingered outside the National. She hoped Carolina and the children had caught up with their Palitsyn babushka and dedushka, who would hand over a tiny canvas suitcase. It belonged to Snowy. The plan was to get the children’s suitcases out of the house without the guards noticing.
The children remained with the grandparents. Carolina took the next right and came into Gorky Street just as Sashenka was about to cross. They greeted each other.
‘Time for a coffee, Comrade?’
‘Of course.’ They entered the National Hotel and ordered a coffee in the café. Sashenka tried to remain caught up in the cloak-and-dagger moment – but she felt so sick, so desperate, that her gorge rose, and her belly lurched as it had the day that Lala first left her at boarding school and she wanted to chase after her. Frantic, she had broken away from her teacher and sprinted down the Smolny corridors, pushing aside other girls and running outside to the gates, where Lala saw her and cuddled her again. Now that frenzy returned. But Carolina, bony and expressionless, sipped the coffee, kissed Sashenka briskly, and then hurried off with barely a glance, carrying Carlo’s little case, which contained winter clothes, underwear, soap, toothbrush and three bunny rabbits. Sashenka ran through the items: had they remembered everything? What about Carlo’s biscuits?
At the door of the café, Carolina turned back one more time. She and Sashenka exchanged a last beseeching gaze of the most terrible emotions – love, gratitude, sorrow. Then Carolina set her jaw and was gone. The plan was in motion. Vanya had sent the signal with Razum that Sashenka had to act now. Just as Satinov had suggested, so Sashenka and Carolina had arranged.
Sashenka watched the nanny’s thin back with a desperate wild envy. As an amputee feels his absent leg walking, so she felt her own ghostly body running after them, while she still sat in the café. Then her body bunched and twitched and she was on her feet. She started to run after Carolina. She found herself tossing coins for the coffee on to the table. She was running, sweating, her heart thrashing in her chest as if she was having a heart attack, flying almost, tears splashing in her wake like rain on a car windscreen. She was on the street. She looked left and right. Carolina was already gone. God, she had to see them again! The sob in her throat became a wild groan, a sound that she had never heard in her life. She sprinted frantically down the side street.
And then she saw them. A tram had stopped in the distance, casting sparks in its wake. Snowy was on the first step, waving her pink cushion and laughing, so that Sashenka could distinctly see her wide white forehead and fair curls. Carolina, holding both bags in her left hand, handed up Carlo, who was playing the fool, pretending to march, singing a song.
He was tugging at her sleeve. ‘Carolina, Carolina, can I tell you something?’ Sashenka knew he was saying this but Carolina was up the steps now too. Two soldiers climbed on behind them, both smoking.
‘Stop! Carolina! Carlo! Snowy!’ Sashenka was actually screaming.
Carolina paid at the little window. Sashenka could see only the tops of their heads, Carlo’s tousled brown hair and Snowy’s butter-coloured tresses, catching a speck of sunlight like spun gold. She was ruining everything by running. The NKVD would see her and know she was spiriting them away; they’d arrest her as a spy; they’d throw the children into the Dzerzhinsky Orphanage, shoot them. But Sashenka was out of control, careering forward now, colliding with an old lady whose shopping bag was torn, potatoes rolling on the pavement; still Sashenka ran, tears cascading down her face. But the tram, in a shower of sparks, jolted. The doors shut. It gathered speed. Sashenka was catching up and she saw them again: Carolina was helping them into a seat by the window. Just a blurred impression of blue eyes and a milky forehead, and brown eyes and hair – and they were gone.
A man pushed Sashenka out of his path, and she fell into a doorway and sat on the step. She heard herself howling as her mother had howled when Rasputin was killed. People hurried by, slightly disgusted at her. Slowly she gathered herself.
The grandparents would return to the apartment and tell the guards they were going back to the dacha for the summer. The guards understood because Vanya Palitsyn had been arrested, and they would shrug: who cared?
Sashenka stood up and straightened her clothes. Everyone was safe. Hoping no NKVD informant had noticed her hysteria, she tidied her face, got to her feet and crossed Gorky Street, glancing down to the Kremlin and up at Uncle Gideon’s window. There was no point in calling him though she longed to do so. Her phones might be bugged and he would find out soon enough. She beamed him her love: would he ever know it? Now she thought about her father again: where was he? Would she join him in some forgotten grave? She could not, just could not, conceive of her own vanishing from the surface of the turning world.
She chose a different route to Petrovka, not via Pushkin Square but taking the Stoleshnikov Alley. She t
ried to absorb everything – the little bars there, the Aragvi Georgian restaurant, the shoeshine stall, the kiosk selling newspapers, Zviad the Mingrelian’s barber shop – but nothing stayed with her. Like the night. There was too much to take in.
Where would Snowy and Carlo be now? Don’t even glance at your watch, she told herself. Suppose you are being observed: they might ask why you are checking the time constantly. But the train to the south was leaving at 10 a.m. and now it was 9.43. Her children were on their way.
32
The doorman straightened as Sashenka arrived at work; her secretary, Galya, blushed at the sight of her; Klavdia did not even look up as she passed. Everyone knew that Sashenka was no longer a real person. She was a Former Person; worse, they all knew somehow that she was the wife of an Enemy and Vanya was in the cellars of the Internal Prison of the Lubianka – and so was Benya Golden, her new writer whom she had met at her dacha on May Day night, with whom she had left the office, with whom she had been seen walking …
Sashenka sat at her desk. No one came in. She spent the entire day there, except for a brief visit to the canteen where she ate some borscht alone. She tried to read the proofs of the magazine but could not concentrate. She had known many friends and comrades who had endured shadows and clouds over them but who had continued as if nothing had happened – and they had survived. Like Uncle Gideon. Hold your nerve and you might just keep your children, she promised herself.
She returned home in the evening.
The high ceilings, the shiny parquet floor, the ornate mouldings on the walls, the dappled glossy brown of the Karelian pine furniture, the green lamps with the muscular bronze figures, belonged to her life with the children. She hated the apartment now. It was echoingly quiet. She longed to look into the children’s rooms. Don’t do that to yourself. It will break you up, send you mad, she told herself. But just a glance?
Dropping her handbag and coat, she rushed down the corridor, throwing herself on to their beds and smelling their pillows, first Snowy’s then Carlo’s. There, at last, she could cry. She imitated their voices and she talked to their photographs. Then she burned their photographs, all of them, and their passports too. Snowy had left most of her cushions and Carlo had left most of his army of rabbits. Sashenka took them to bed with her, company for the sleepless night that lay ahead.