Sashenka (40 page)

“These are the papers for two orphans from the Dzerzhinsky Orphanage. Carolina must travel on her own papers but the children’s tickets will be in false names. There are constant inspections on the stations and trains these days. Sashenka, destroy the children’s passports—don’t leave them in the dacha!”

“Where should Carolina go?” asked Sashenka. “Could she take them home with her to her village?”

“They might find her even there,” said Satinov. “There’ve been a lot of arrests of Volga Germans out of Rostov. Carolina, you should take the MoscowBakuTiflis train from Saratovsky Station. When you leave the train at Rostov there’ll be a message for you at the stationmaster’s office under your own name—it’s Gunther, isn’t it? Carolina Gunther? Either a person or a message. Afterward you must return to your village. All clear?”

Sashenka noticed that Satinov did not look his old friends in the eye as he departed, but he kissed her hand just as he had when they first met more than twenty years before and he hugged Vanya.

Pulling on his Georgian hood, he left through the garden just as he had come, and the gate creaked as it closed. Sashenka had known him since the winter of 1916, when they were all young. He had seen her at Ariadna’s deathbed, had been their best friend in the world.

Now their relationship was ending—or perhaps it was metamorphosing. From being a friend, he might become the only family her children had on earth. Among this Russian nation of toadies and cowards, timeservers and snitches, he alone had shown the courage to remain a human being.

“Come on. We’ve got work to do,” said Carolina briskly, placing her hands on Sashenka’s upper arms and pressing. “But first we must eat. A clear mind needs a full stomach.” She brought out a tray of goat’s cheese, tomatoes and black Borodinsky bread with Narzan mineral water.

They did not turn on the veranda light but they fell on the food as if they had never eaten before. Time ground on slowly. Sashenka felt better now: she had a mission. She had to trust Hercules Satinov. He said her children would be settled with “kind people” but oh, how her heart was breaking! She remembered Snowy and Carlo’s births at the Kremlevka, the Kremlin Hospital, on Granovsky. Snowy, the first, had been easy: she had emerged with a head of blond hair and slept her first night on Sashenka’s chest…Now she talked endlessly about cushions and butterflies (she knew the names of Brazilian Blues and Red Admirals) and she hated eggs. Carlo needed his eleven strokes before he would sleep, and he woke up in the night and needed a cuddle. He hated yogurt and he had a collection of rabbits, and when his blood sugar ran low between meals he needed his favorite Pechene cookies, the ones with the Kremlin on the tin; and he always wanted to visit the new Metro stations with their marble halls and glass cupolas and ride on the trains…

Should she write these things down for these “kind people”? Could she tell someone?

Who would know all this—except a mother? How could her children be happy without their mother? Sashenka began to shake again.

“Discipline yourself! We must be practical!” Vanya’s voice cut into her terror.

Sashenka contracted into herself as if she had been touched by a block of ice.

She could not write anything down and the children could take little with them—above all, nothing that linked them to their parents. There was no time now for sentiment, tears, guilt. Sashenka was a mother now, nothing more, just a mother protecting her cubs. She had to save them from the orphanages that Benya had described. When everything had been prepared, if there was time, then she could savor the presence of those living treasures, and talk to them a little. Then she could sob all she liked.

Sashenka found her food tasted of nothing. The garden might have been made of cardboard; the jasmine and the lilac and the honeysuckle smelled of decay; the pony, the rabbits, the squirrels, the rest of existence could rot for all she cared, if only she could be spared to bring up her children, if only they could be free to return to her…

Here I am abandoned, an orphan, with no one to look after me
…Never had that old song been so pertinent and so unbearable.

“Vanya, we must talk carefully. This may be our last night together. But what do we tell them?” she asked, choking over her words.

“The less, the better,” said Vanya. “They must forget we ever existed. Snowy will remember more but Carlo’s only three. He won’t even…” He could not speak anymore. Sashenka took Carolina’s hand.

“Carolina, let’s pack their cases. We must find them warm things to wear so they are never cold.”

They went back into Snowy’s room and Sashenka started to hand the child’s clothes to Carolina. Each time, when she raised a little skirt or sweater to her nose, she inhaled the scent of hay and vanilla.

I gave the children life, Sashenka told herself, but I never owned them. Now they must live on without me, as if I never existed.

28

Old Razum the driver, last night’s booze oozing out of cratered pores, arrived at dawn to take Vanya to the Moscow station. He honked beyond the gate, and Sashenka came out in her mauve nightie. It was a cool, bright, bracing May morning. The dew on the grass sparkled like a shower of diamonds, and the roses were budding. The children were already up and Carlo was jumping on their bed.

“Mama, can I tell you something…”

Vanya had been drinking all night and was sweating vodka. Sashenka watched as he went into the playroom to kiss the children. She knew he had many things he wished to say to them: bits of advice, sayings, mistakes to be warned against, gems all fathers wish to impart to their children before going on a journey. But the children were overexcited and would not even sit on his knee.

“I don’t want to kiss Papochka, do you, Snowy?” Carlo pointed at his father, who stood there in his full NKVD uniform, boots, cap, three tabs on his red collar, leather strap and holster.

“We only want to kiss Mama and Carolina. Daddy’s a scary monster! Daddy will eat us up and spit us out!” shouted Snowy, skipping like a frisky lamb. They jumped around him, and Sashenka watched—tears in her eyes—as Vanya caught them each in turn and pressed his face, his lips, his nose against them, just for a moment.

“Ouch, Daddy, you’re all prickly!” cried Carlo. “You hurt me!”

“I don’t want to kiss your prickly face,” said Snowy. “Kiss my lovely cushion instead.

Take it with you!”

“You want me to take your favorite?” asked Vanya, almost overcome.

“Yes, so you remember me, but promise to send it back, Papochka!”

Vanya’s lips trembled as he took the little pink cushion and put it in his pocket, then he grabbed Snowy and held her for a moment. “Let me go, Papochka! You smell all funny!”

And she scampered off, jumping over the two neat little canvas cases that stood by the door.

Vanya marched out, tears streaming down his unshaven cheeks.

Carlo ran after him. “Papa! I love you here,” he said, “in my heart. Let me stroke you because you’re crying.” Vanya stopped and picked up his son, and Carlo mopped up the tears with his bunny rabbit.

“Why are you sad, Papa?” asked Snowy on the veranda.

“I don’t like going away from you,” said Vanya, putting Carlo down gently. “I’ll be back soon but when I’m away, if you ever wonder where I am, look up at the stars in the sky like I’ve shown you. Wherever the Big Bear is, that’s where I’ll be.”

Sashenka came with him to the door. He took her in his arms, lifted her up and squeezed her so tight that her slippers fell off.

“Marrying you…,” he could barely articulate the words, “…best decision…ever. Don’t worry, this’ll blow over, but if not we have our plan.” He turned to Carolina and bowed low.

Carolina looked down and pushed her strong jaw forward, then she offered her hand and he shook it, standing straight as if he were on parade. “Thank you, Carolina!” Then he grabbed her too and hugged her spare, scrawny body.

Razum had turned the car round. Vanya climbed in and they drove away. Sashenka watched it go and ran back inside and threw herself onto her bed. How could all
this
be coming to an end? She still could not quite believe it.

She tried to imagine where Benya Golden was, and Mendel, but she could not do so. A ruthlessness had entered her spirit: there was no one but her and Vanya and the children now. No one. She should feel pity for Benya who loved her, and Mendel too—but she didn’t. Let
them
perish so that she and her children could be together.

She felt weight on the bed.

“What’s wrong? Mamochka’s crying. Are you sad Papochka’s gone away?” asked Snowy.

“Mama, Mama, can I tell you something? I’m going to kiss you and stroke you, Mama,”

said Carlo. His brown eyes turned cloudy, like a seducer in a movie, and he kissed her hard right on the lips.

“Darlings?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“You might be going on a journey, a great adventure.”

“With you and Daddy?”

“No, I don’t think so, Snowy. But you love Carolina, don’t you? You might be going with her and you know never to talk about your family or anything you’ve heard at home.”

“We know that already,” said Snowy very seriously. “Papa always says: ‘No chatter!’”

“What about you and Daddy?” Carlo asked, his eyes anxious.

“Well, Carlo, we might come along later. If or when we can…But we’ll always be around you, always…”

“Of course you will, silly!” said Snowy. “We’re going to be together for ever and ever.”

29

Sashenka drove them back into the city on Sunday afternoon. And then it started.

The guards at Granovsky were as friendly as ever—but there was a new guy. What expression was that in his eyes? Did he know that Vanya was in Stalinabad? Did he know why? Was there a why? Marfa and Nikolai, Vanya’s parents, and the other geriatrics sat in their chairs downstairs: why didn’t Vanya’s father stop reading his newspaper and speak to her? What was that sly look from Andreyev’s old father—had his son, a top Politburo member, mentioned something? Had he told him to be careful of those Palitsyns, not to let the children play with them for a while? The janitor waved but why didn’t he say hello and help with the cases? He always helped. Did he know something?

A young man in the street in a gabardine coat and a fedora watched them drive in. A Chekist? The guards in the guardhouse made a note: they were watching her. They knew something. Outside the apartment, Marshal Budyonny’s maid lingered, dusting the stairs.

An informer. It was agony. It was absurd. The circle of confidence and despair turned rhythmically inside her like a creaking old carousel at a circus.

It was Sunday night, and she lay in bed. A hole gaped in her belly. Wormwood coated her tongue. The fear hit her again, the terror of losing the children, and of death. Yet she was not afraid of the final cut: young people who became revolutionaries were always a step away from the gallows. When she traveled on the Agitprop trains during the civil war, she had been ready at any time to face death if she was captured by the Whites. That was what it meant to be a Bolshevik. But since she had had Snowy and Carlo, she had sensed death creeping up on her, a thief in the night, the highwayman who would steal her children.

She felt her breasts for cancerous lumps; she feared the influenza and TB—what was that cough? Please, please, she begged Fate, give me the time to love them and cherish them.

Grant me those years to see them happy and married with children of their own.

When the Terror came, she saw other parents disappear and their children vanish after them, no longer playing in the courtyard at the house on the Embankment or here on Granovsky. But those parents had deviated from the Party line and acted rashly, insincerely, impurely. They had seemed honest Communists yet in reality they wore masks. The Party came first and they had erred. She had always promised she would never do that. Yet somehow, she
had
done exactly that.

It grew dark and Sashenka tried to sleep, only to be divebombed by phantasms of horror, of tortures, arrests, sobbing childish faces. She shook and her pulse raced: was she going to have a heart attack? Vanya had not called. She dropped into sleep fitfully, just touching it, never sinking into it, before skimming off it like a pebble on a pond. She saw her mother dead, her mother alive, her mother young, her father being shot in the back of the head in front of her children.

“Who is that man?” asked Snowy.

“Don’t you know your own dedushka, your grandfather?”

“What will happen to him when he’s dead?” Carlo was asking. “Will he become a ghost?”

Sashenka woke up sweating and trembling, went into the children’s room and lay down with Carlo, barely able to believe that this adorable boy could exist in such a world. She put her face on his shoulder. His skin was soft and rich. She stroked his bare back and fell asleep again.

When she awoke, Carlo was stroking her, his sweet breath on her face. What joy!

“Mamochka, can I tell you something? Someone’s knocking on the door.”

She sat up. It all came back to her. Nausea and vertigo assailed her. The knocking was so loud, so angry.

She kissed both children and then approached the door.

“Open up!”

“Who is it?” cried Snowy.

“It’s Razum!” said the driver. “Telegram.”

Sashenka hesitated. Took a deep breath. Opened the door.

“Good morning, comrade,” smiled Razum. “A beautiful day! And a message from the boss.”

IN STALINABAD.

FEELING WELL.

GREETINGS TO CHILDREN.

HOME WEDNESDAY. VP

Sashenka felt jubilant, certain suddenly that nothing bad would happen. She had imagined it all. Why shouldn’t an assistant deputy commissar like Vanya be sent on some temporary assignment to Stalinabad? It happened all the time; not everyone sent on missions into the regions was arrested. Satinov too had been dispatched to Georgia for a few weeks and no one suggested he was in any trouble.

She got ready for work at the magazine. She thought coldly of enemies and traitors, as she had so often before, when the Organs had “checked” those friends who never returned.