Sashenka (39 page)

“We could kill ourselves tonight, Vanya. I could kill myself and you’d be free of me. You’d be clean. I’ll do it if you just ask…”

“That’s our first choice. We have the gun and we have tonight. But suppose they don’t have anything on you? They’ll beat you and humiliate you. But if you don’t confess, they’ll ask: ‘Did she sign anything? No? Well, perhaps she wasn’t a bastard after all.’

They’ll free you in the end. For us, for life, for the children.”

The children!
They’d almost forgotten the children. Death, the violence and finality of vanishing from the earth and ceasing to exist, was so horrifying, so immediate, that it bred the purest form of egotism. How could she have been so selfish?

Sashenka turned and ran into the house, Vanya behind her, and they burst into Snowy’s room. Holding hands, they stared in anguish at Snowy, her white skin and fair hair spread out on her pillow, breathing so softly, her long arms curled beside her, her silly pink cushion resting against her cheek. And there was Carlo lying naked on his front, hair tousled, arms and legs still creased like a baby, head burrowed into his favorite velveteen rabbit.

Sashenka was barely able to breathe, her throat parched, in the warm, dark room that smelled of the peculiar freshness of young children in summertime, of hay and vanilla. It was as if they were the first and last parents in the world. But they were the only ones to know what they were up against. Sashenka’s stomach churned. They were on the verge of losing their treasures forever.

“Snowy, Carlo, oh darlings!” She fell to her knees between the two beds, Vanya beside her, and suddenly they were sobbing silently in each other’s arms.

“Don’t wake them,” said Vanya.

“We mustn’t,” agreed Sashenka, brokenly. But she could not help herself. With trembling hands, she reached into Carlo’s bed and lifted him out, folded him against her, raining kisses on his satiny forehead until he stirred. Vanya was holding Snowy, his face buried in her hair, which cleaved like gold thread to his wet cheeks. Both children were drowsily sensual as they clung to their parents, gloriously unaware of the rising storm, roused from the deep slumber of that sweltering night. The four of them crouched together in the comforting darkness, the parents gasping with tears, the children stretching and sighing, settling back into their loving arms, only half awake.

Finally Vanya pulled Sashenka by the hand. “Put them back to bed!” he said. They tucked the children in again then crept outside to sit on the edge of the sofa by the open French windows. A car door slammed loudly in the night air.

“Vanya! Is this it? Is it them?” She threw herself into his arms.

He calmed her with his clumsy hands, their coarseness now so welcome, familiar.

“No, it’s not them. Not yet,” he whispered. “But we’ve got to think calmly. Stop crying, girl! Gather yourself. For the children…”

Then he too started to shudder—and she let out an involuntary moan until he put his hand over her mouth. Finally she left the room and washed her face with cold water. A dread soberness descended on both of them.

“Vanya, we can’t kill ourselves because—”

“Stalin calls suicide ‘spitting in the eye of the Party.’ We save ourselves pain, but not the children. The Party will take it out on the children.”

“I’ve got it. We kill ourselves
and
the children. Tonight, Vanya, now. We die together and we’ll be together. Forever!” How strange—yet she did believe in a sort of afterlife. In eternity. That was what her rabbinical grandparents believed, and she the Communist had always eschewed it. Now those old words from Turbin came back to her—Zohar, the Book of Splendor and heart of the Kabala, Heaven and Gehenna, the golems and dybbuks that haunted those cursed with the Evil Eye, the spiritual world so foreign to scientific Marxism and dialectical materialism. And yet now she imagined her soul, and its love, living on beyond the shell of her body. There she would see her mother and father, all young again.

They would all be together! She pulled out the Nagant from under Vanya’s NKVD cap.

She still knew how to use it.

“Do you believe that?” he asked. “I do. We’d all be together in Heaven. Maybe you’re right. If they come for us, we kill them and then ourselves.”

“So that’s decided.” But as Sashenka turned toward the bedroom, he caught her, taking the pistol from her and slipping it into his holster.

He hugged her tightly, whispering, “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Could you?”

She shook her head. It was now past midnight and Sashenka’s mind was working more systematically.

“We don’t have time for more crying, do we, darling Vanya?”

“They’ve something on us. I don’t know what.”

“Gideon mentioned ‘the Greeks and the Romans’ and then Mendel was arrested. Benya Golden knows nothing about us.”

“But is he a provocateur? A spy? Is he filth?”

“He could be…” She was now so afraid that she was blaming her own lover. Was this what had happened? Had Benya destroyed her family? Then another meteor shower of possibilities bombarded her: “Could it be a Chekist intrigue at the Lubianka? There has to be some reason for this, Vanya, doesn’t there?”

He opened his hands wide.

“There has to be a cause,” he told her. “But there doesn’t need to be any reason.”

Just then they heard the back gate creak.

“It’s
them,
Vanya. I love you, Vanya, Snowy, Carlo. If either of us live, oh Vanya…Shall we end it all? Where’s the bulldog?”

They clung together. He had the gun in his hand and they pressed its cool steel between their palms as if it were their love token. There were no other sounds. The night turned with grinding slowness.

A whistle split the stillness, and a figure in a white hood stepped out of the shadows of the orchard.

Vanya raised the Nagant pistol.

“Who’s there? I’ll shoot. I’ll take you all with me, you bastards!”

27

“I can only stay for a few minutes,” said the visitor, removing the Caucasian hood that he had always worn in that Petrograd winter, in the early days.

“Oh Hercules, thank God you came!” Sashenka kissed him repeatedly, holding on to him.

“We’re going to be all right, aren’t we? You’ve come to tell us how to fix it. Who do we need to talk to? Please tell us!”

They turned off the lights on the veranda, and Hercules Satinov sat at the table with Vanya and Sashenka. She poured the three of them shots of Armenian brandy.

“It’s going to be fine, isn’t it?” she said again. “We’re imagining this, aren’t we? Oh Hercules, what are we going to do?”

“Hush, Sashenka,” said Vanya. “Just let him speak.”

Satinov nodded, his eyes slits of quicksilver in the darkness.

“Listen carefully,” he began. “I don’t know everything but I know that something has changed. They’re working on Mendel and they’ve found something on you.”

“On me?” cried Sashenka. “Vanya, divorce me! I’ll shoot myself.”

“Just listen to him, Sashenka,” said Vanya.

“It’s beyond that now,” said Satinov tersely. “I thought…about the children.”

Sashenka’s blood started to pound.

“Can’t I go and see Beria? I’d do anything. Anything! I could persuade Lavrenti Pavlovich…”

Satinov shook his head and Sashenka sensed the tension running through him. He did not even have time to discuss them. Just the children.

“I could write to Comrade Stalin. He knows me, he’s known me since March 1917 when I typed for Lenin…He knows me.”

Satinov’s eyes flashed, and Sashenka understood that somehow this came from the Instance, the top, the Instantzia.

“You must think only of the children now,” he said simply.

“Oh my God,” Sashenka whispered, red spots whirring before her eyes. “They’ll be sent to one of those orphanages. They’ll be tortured, murdered, abused. Trotsky’s children are dead. All Kamenev’s. All Zinoviev’s. I know what happens in those places…”

“Quiet, Sashenka. What can we do, Hercules?” Vanya asked.

“Can they stay with any of your family?” asked Satinov but Sashenka knew Gideon and Mouche were on the edge of the precipice; his other daughter, Viktoria, was a Party fanatic who would never help tainted children; Mendel was already in the coils of the Lubianka; and Vanya’s parents would probably be arrested soon after them.

“Then Snowy and Carlo must be sent away,” said Satinov. “Immediately. Maybe even tomorrow. To the south. I have friends there who owe me favors. Remember, I was on the ZaKavCom for a long time. Outside the towns, there are ordinary people, unpolitical people. I was tough at times when I worked down there, I broke the backs of our enemies—

but when I could, I helped people.”

“Who are these people? What will happen to Snowy and Carlo?” Sashenka was drowning in hysteria: she fought for breath, her mouth gasping, yet she could not take in enough oxygen.

“Sashenka, you have to trust me. I’m Snowy’s godfather. Do you trust me?”

She nodded. No choice: Satinov was all they had.

“Right, they must travel south in secret. I have to go to the Caucasus myself tonight but I can’t travel with them. Someone absolutely trustworthy must take them ‘on holiday’—

nothing suspicious about that. Somewhere, that person will hand them over to another person I have in mind.”

“What about Vanya’s parents?”

“Yes, my mother loves the children…,” said Vanya eagerly.

“No,” interrupted Satinov. “They’re at the Granovsky. They’re being watched at all times.

They would not be a wise choice; forgive me, Vanya, but their Partymindedness is both fervent and simpleminded, a dangerous combination.”

“Do you know…someone who would look after the children in the south, someone really kind, kind enough for such beloved…such angels?” Sashenka asked.

Satinov took Sashenka’s hands in his and squeezed them. “Don’t torture yourself. Yes, oh yes, I promise you, Sashenka, I have in mind someone of whom you would approve. But even that person cannot know where they are finally settled.”

“Will they be settled together? Please say they will. They love each other, need each other

—and without us…”

Hercules shook his head. “No. If they were in an NKVD orphanage for children of traitors, they’d be split up, their names changed. Besides, there might be an allUnion search for a brother and sister together and they’d find them. They’ll be safer separated. There are thousands of lost children now, millions even, the stations are full of them.”

“But that would mean they’d lose a brother and a sister as well as their parents. They’d cease to be part of the same family. Vanya, I can’t bear it. I can’t go through with it.”

“Yes,” Vanya replied, “you will.”

“They’ll be settled in separate families,” continued Satinov. “I have the families in mind.

They’re couples without children, not involved in politics in any way—but decent, kind people. If you come back, if all this is nothing, if you’re just exiled, you won’t be able to live in Moscow for a long time but the children’ll be ready for you, I promise. And they’ll come and join you wherever you are. But if not, and things look bad…”

“Tell me who they are, please, these families.
Who are they?
” beseeched Sashenka, her voice cracking.

“No one except me can know where they settle. Helping children of Enemies of the People would cost all of us our heads. But I can do it, Sashenka. The paperwork’ll be lost, and they’ll disappear safely. You’re not alone. Many sent their children to the countryside in thirtyseven. So this is my offer. If you accept this, I swear that I’ll watch over your children as long as I have breath in my body. It will be my life’s mission. But you have to decide right now.”

Vanya looked at Sashenka and she looked at him. Finally she turned to Satinov.

“Oh Hercules,” she croaked—but she nodded.

She tried to hug Satinov but he shrank from her and she understood how he felt because she’d felt it herself. When doomed friends were put on ice in ’37, waiting for arrest, she avoided them as if they were infectious, as if they carried the plague, because in those times such connections could be fatal. Now
she
was the leper and this dear friend was helping her.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “You’re a decent man, an honest Communist.”

“Believe me, I’m not so great,” Satinov said.

“All right,” he said then. “First, I have telegrams to send. Get the children ready tonight.

You can send them anytime from tomorrow. Or you can wait until one of you is taken and you know more. You depart tomorrow for Stalinabad, don’t you, Vanya? But if they take you, will you be able to get a message out? I’m leaving tonight on a special Central Committee train so I’ll be in Tiflis tomorrow. I’m heading a new mission and I’ll be in the south for a month. It’s a blessing because it means I can help you. I’ll give you my telegram details. And this is important: if you’re arrested, I need time to settle the children before the Organs come looking. Vanya, you know what I’m saying. Don’t even think about harming yourselves. Give me the cover, whatever it costs you. I’ll use it well, understand? Now, stage one. Would Carolina take them on the first part of the journey?”

Sashenka thought of the stickthin Volga German woman. For a moment she hesitated. In her flux of fear, Sashenka wondered if the nanny would betray them. Truly they could trust no one. Then, “Yes,” she said, “I believe she’d go to the ends of the earth for those children.”

“Get her,” said Vanya but Sashenka was already knocking on Carolina’s door. When she saw Carolina’s anxious face, she realized that the nanny knew something was wrong—she hardly needed to explain. A few words sufficed.

Sashenka fought back tears and understood from the grim determination on Carolina’s face and her set jaw that she had observed their suffering of the past hours.

“Come and join us,” said Sashenka. The distinctions of mistress and servant vanished in a second, their power to save (or destroy) each other making them equals.

“Right,” said Satinov when Sashenka and the nanny returned. “You understand that whatever happens, I was never here. Vanya, Sashenka, the last time we ever met was at the Granovsky at dinner with my wife. We didn’t talk politics. I know nothing of your fate. You must book Carolina’s tickets and passes as soon as possible. Call the station, work out times, right now, tonight even.” He placed two identity cards on the table.