Sashenka (28 page)

“You’re right. Shall I say goodbye to Sashenka?”

“Do you want a kick in the balls? I’ll get the car and you go and get my girl and tell the frisky little minx we’re leaving.”

As they left, two black Buick town cars purred into the drive.

“Was that the Georgians?” hissed Benya from the back of Gideon’s car. Masha sat silently in the front, lighting a cigarette.

“Don’t look back,” bellowed Gideon, “or we’ll turn into pillars of salt!” He put his foot down and sped away with a screech of tires.

5

The party was over. The half moon poured a milky light into the well of warm darkness outside. Mendel, chainsmoking and coughing up phlegm in guttural thunderclaps, and Satinov, who both worked at Old Square, were talking about rebuilding cadres at the Machine Tractor Stations. Sashenka and Vanya started to tidy up.

Apart from the uneasiness with Benya Golden, it had been a successful evening, Sashenka reflected. In the half darkness a figurine of alabaster nakedness appeared. “Mamochka, I can’t sleep,” said Snowy, waving her cushion so winningly that Satinov cheered.

Sashenka felt a surge of love. She could not help but indulge her daughter, perhaps remembering her own mother’s coldness, but the truth was that she was always happy to see her. “Come and have a quick cuddle! Then back to bed. Don’t overexcite her—especially you, Hercules!”

Snowy vaulted into Sashenka’s arms.

“Doesn’t that cherub ever go to bed?” growled Vanya.

“Mama, I’ve got to tell you something.”

“What, my darling?”

“Cushion woke me up to give Hercules a message!”

“Whisper it to me quickly and then back to bed—or Papochka will get cross.”

“Very cross!” said Vanya, who caught them both in a hug and kissed Sashenka’s face while Sashenka nuzzled Snowy’s silky cheek.

“Mamochka, what are those ghosts doing in the garden?” Snowy asked, pointing over her mother’s shoulder.

Sashenka turned and peered through the window.

The “ghosts,” four crophaired young men in white suits, were stepping up onto the veranda.

“Communist greetings, Comrade Palitsyn,” said one, as the phone rang in Vanya’s office

—the one connected to the Kremlin, its tone highpitched and distinctive.

A few minutes later Vanya returned, his rumpled forehead a little puzzled. He called over to Satinov. “Hercules, that was your friend Comrade Egnatashvili.” Sashenka knew that Egnatashvili was a senior secret policeman in charge of Politburo dachas and food. “He says he’s coming with some people. We might need some Georgian food…”

Satinov looked up from the sofa. “Well, he said he might come. Who’s he bringing?”

“He just said Georgian friends.”

“Some Georgian food?” asked Sashenka, thinking fast. “It’s only midnight. Razum!” The driver appeared, swaying a little, his uniform crooked. “Can you drive?”

Razum had entered that stage of embalmed drunkenness known only to the Russian species of alcoholic: he was so soused he was almost sober again.

“Absolutely, Comrade Sashenka”—and he burped loudly.

“I’ll call the Aragvi Restaurant,” said Satinov, heading for the phone in the study. The restaurant was in town off Gorky Street.

“Comrade Razum, speed into Moscow to the Aragvi and bring back some Georgian food.

Scram!”

Razum leaped off the veranda, lost his footing, nearly fell over, righted himself and made it to the car.

“Wait!” Satinov shouted. “Egnatashvili will bring something. He’s got all the best food in Moscow.” There was a pause as he and Vanya looked again at the young men in white suits guarding the gates, the suits glowing as if the moon had painted them silver.

“Who’s coming, Mamochka?” asked Snowy in the silence.

“Silence, Volya! Bed now!” said Snowy’s father, his eyes flashing. He did not use her real name unless he was deadly earnest. “Sashenka, we’ve got to give that child some discipline…”

“Who’s coming, do you think?” Sashenka asked Vanya, with a twinge of concern.

“Maybe Lavrenti Pavlovich…”

“I think I’ll be going. It’s been a nice evening,” said Mendel, whose wife and daughter had left hours ago. Sashenka noticed he was one of the few leaders who still sported an illfitting bourgeois suit and tie, never having embraced the Stalin Party tunic. Mendel pulled out his pillbox and placed a nitroglycerin tablet under his tongue. “Let me call my driver,”

he muttered to himself. “Can’t take those flashy Georgians and all those toasts! Ugh. Too late!”

A convoy of cars drew up at the gate, their powerful beams illuminating the greens and reds of the lush garden. A pall of dust darkened the starry sky, reaching for the moon. The ghosts in the white suits opened the gates to reveal several black Lincolns and a new ZiS.

The piano tinkled from inside, there was laughter from a nearby dacha, and Sashenka saw a blond athletic figure in the familiar blue and redstriped uniform jump out of the front car.

Satinov called out in Georgian: “
Gagimajos!
” And in Russian: “‘It’s Egnatashvili and he’s brought some food!” Sashenka could see that Egnatashvili was carrying a crate of wine.

Guards in blue uniforms materialized, as if from nowhere, at the gates.

“Come on in, comrades,” said Sashenka. “Satinov said you might join us.”

Comrade Egnatashvili’s eyes gleamed up at her in the dark, eyes narrowed in warning, as she moved forward to welcome the new guests, hand outstretched—and then froze.

6

Lavrenti Beria, round faced and olive skinned, in baggy white trousers and an embroidered Georgian blouse, was carrying a box full of plates. He was, as Sashenka knew well, the new People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, boss of the secret police, the NKVD.

“Lavrenti Pavlovich! Welcome!” Vanya stepped down from the veranda. “Let me help you with that…”

“I’ll take it in, don’t you worry,” Beria said, with a glance behind him.

Sashenka saw Vanya stiffen to attention—and then the night went quiet and next door the singing and the clink of glasses hushed.

A statue seemed to be standing right there in her garden.

Comrade Stalin, his feline, almost oriental face smiling and flushed and still singing a Georgian song, appeared at the foot of the steps in a white summer tunic, wide trousers and light brown boots embroidered in red thread. The moon seemed to throw him his own spotlight.

“We heard Comrade Satinov was going to a party given by Comrade Palitsyn,” said Stalin in a soft Georgian accent, chuckling like a mischievous satyr. “Then we heard he had invited Comrade Egnatashvili. Comrade Beria said he was invited too. This meant only Comrade Stalin was left out and Comrade Stalin wanted to chat to Comrade Satinov. So I appealed to my comrades, admitting I didn’t know Comrade Palitsyn well enough to crash his party. ‘Let’s put it to a vote,’ I said. The vote went my way, and my comrades decided they would invite me. But I come at my own risk. I won’t hold it against you, comrade hosts, if you send me home again. But we do bring some wine and Georgian delicacies. Comrades, where’s the table?”

Satinov stepped forward.

“Comrade Stalin, you already know Comrade Palitsyn a little,” said Satinov, “and this is his wife, Sashenka, whom you may remember…”

“Please come in, Comrade Stalin, what an honor,” said Sashenka, finally finding her voice.

She had a terrifying and unBolshevik urge to curtsy as she used to at the Smolny before the portrait of the Dowager Empress. She was not quite sure how she managed the steps down to the garden, yet somehow she approached Stalin—smaller, older, sallower and much wearier than she remembered, his left arm held in stiffly. He had, she noticed, a slight potbelly, and his tunic’s pockets were roughly darned. But then she supposed giants did not care about such things.

Stalin seemed amazed at the effect he had—and yet he reveled in it. He took her hand and kissed it in the old Georgian way, looking up at her with eyes of honey and gold.

“Comrade Snowfox, you’re beautifully dressed.”

He remembers my old Party alias from St. Petersburg! What a memory! How embarrassing! How flattering! she thought in confusion.

“It is lucky that you and your magazine are teaching Soviet women the art of dressing.

Your dress is very pretty,” he continued, climbing the steps.

“Thank you, Comrade Stalin.” She reminded herself not to mention that her dress had been made abroad.

“For once, comrades, the Party has appointed the right person to the right job…” Stalin laughed and the others laughed too, even Mendel. “Come and join us, Comrades Satinov and Palitsyn. And you, Comrade Mendel.” Sashenka noticed that Stalin did not show much enthusiasm for the austere Mendel.

Beria affably poked Palitsyn in the stomach as he passed. “Good to see you, Vanya.” He clicked his tongue. “All quiet? Everything running smoothly?”

“Absolutely. Welcome to my home, Lavrenti Pavlovich!”

“What did you think of the soccer? Spartak need to be taught a lesson, and if our strikers don’t play better next time I’ll bust their guts!” Beria clapped his hands cheerfully. “Will you come and play basketball on my team tomorrow? We’re playing Voroshilov’s guards.”

“I’ll be there, Lavrenti Pavlovlich.”

Sashenka knew that her husband admired Beria, who worked like a horse. He was young, his round face smooth and unlined.

“May I sit down here?” asked Stalin modestly, pointing at the table.

“Of course, Comrade Stalin, wherever you wish,” she said.

Comrade Egnatashvili laid out the food on the table and Sashenka leaned across for the wine bottle.

“Let me open it,” said Stalin. He poured glasses of the earthy red wine for everyone. Then he put some lobio beans, with their rich Georgian broth, into a bowl, tossed in some bread and added a plate on top to let the bread soak. He helped himself to shashlik lamb and Georgian spicy chicken,
satsivi
, and carried this assortment back to his place. Egnatashvili, blond and handsome in his wellcut uniform, with bulging wrestler’s shoulders, stood towering over Stalin, helping himself to the same dishes. Both of them sat down and started to eat, Egnatashvili tasting his lobio a moment earlier than Stalin. He really was Stalin’s food taster, Sashenka thought.

“Comrade Satinov,” Stalin said quietly, gesturing for Satinov to sit beside him, with Beria on the other side. Egnatashvili, Vanya and Mendel were farther down the table.

“Lavrenti Pavlovich, who shall be
tamada
?” Stalin asked Beria.

“Comrade Satinov should be toastmaster!” suggested Beria.

Satinov rose, holding up a Georgian wineglass in the curved shape of an ox’s horn, and made his first toast. “To Comrade Stalin, who has led us through such difficult times to shining triumphs!”

“Surely you can think of something more interesting than that!” joked Stalin, but everyone in the house stood up and drank to him.

“To Comrade Stalin!”

“Not
him
again,” protested Stalin. His voice was surprisingly soft and high. “Let me make a toast: to Lenin!”

Other toasts followed: to the Red Army, to their hosts, to Sashenka and Soviet women.

Sashenka observed everything, topping up the glasses then rejoining the table. She wanted to remember every moment of this scene. Stalin bantered with Satinov in Georgian but Sashenka sensed the Leader was watching him, evaluating him. She knew that Stalin liked simple, decent young people who were ruthless and vigorous but easygoing and cheerful.

Satinov was hardworking and competent but he was always singing opera to himself.

Mendel started coughing.

“How’s your lungs, Mendel?” Stalin asked, listening patiently as Mendel answered with an excess of medical detail. “Mendel and I shared a cell at the Bailovka Prison in Baku in 1908,” Stalin informed the table.

“Right,” said Mendel, stroking his modest goatee.

“And Mendel had a food hamper from his indulgent family and he shared it with me.”

“Right, I shared with all the comrades in the cell,” said Mendel in his starchy, pettifogging way, making clear there was no favoritism in his comradeship. But only one cellmate mattered, thought Sashenka.

“That’s Mendel! Incorruptible author of that bestselling tome
Bolshevik Morality
! You haven’t changed in the slightest, Mendel,” said Stalin teasingly but with a straight face.

“You were old then and you’re old now!” He chuckled and the others joined in. “But we’ve all aged…”

“Not at all, Comrade Stalin,” insisted Egnatashvili, Vanya and Beria simultaneously. “You look great, Comrade Stalin.”

“That’s enough of that,” said Stalin. “Mendel once told me off for drinking too much at a meeting when we exiles shared that old stable in Siberia, and he’s still giving everyone a hard time!”

Sashenka remembered how Mendel had backed Stalin in the Control Commission ever since Lenin’s death, never wavering during the famine of ’32, nor hesitating to smash the

“bastards” to smithereens at the Plenums of ’37.

“In fact,” Stalin teased Mendel, “I often have to hold him back or he’ll froth at the mouth and have a seizure!” Everyone laughed at Mendel because his pedantic fanaticism was notorious. But it was also the reason that Mendel was still alive.

Stalin sipped his wine, his halfslit eyes flicking from person to person.

“Would you like some music, Comrade Stalin?” suggested Satinov.

Stalin smiled like a cat. When he started to sing “Suliko,” all the Georgians joined in. Then Satinov called out, “Black Swallow.” Stalin grinned and, without missing a beat, took the lead in a beautiful, high tenor, backed by Egnatashvili in a baritone, and Beria and Satinov in polyphonic harmonies. Sashenka listened entranced.

Fly away, black swallow,

Fly along the Alazani River,

Bring us back the news

Of the brothers gone to war…

They sang more songs: hymns, and the Odessan thieves’ songs “Murka” and “From Odessa Jail.” They crooned Stalin’s favorite gangster tunes: “
They’ve buried the gold, the
gold, the gold
…” Sashenka wondered if Stalin was choosing the songs to put everyone at their ease: the Orthodox hymns for the Russians, the harmonies for the Georgians, Odessan numbers for the Jews—yes, that was Mendel’s deep voice enriching “From Odessa Jail.”