Simon Montefiore - Sashenka

“Not so fast,” she said coolly, allowing him to kiss her on the cheek. His stubble burned her skin.

Flicking his cigarette into the air so that it landed on the embankment by the Moskva, he pulled on his helmet, kick-started the bike and sped away toward the Stone Bridge.

Katinka watched him go then touched her cheek where he had kissed her and repeated his line mockingly to herself: You’re too cute for a historian . What a ridiculous gambit, she thought. You may be my teacher, but you’re a bit of a poser. I decide who kisses me and who doesn’t.

Then slowly, thoughtfully, with the eight red stars of the Kremlin sparkling above her, she walked over to the public telephone and dialed a number.

“I’m listening,” answered an old man with a Georgian accent.

“I won’t be dancing this time,” said Hercules Satinov with a wintry smile. He was sitting in his chair at Granovsky, surrounded as usual by the photographs of his family, beneath the portrait of himself as the bemedaled marshal. “I’m getting sicker.”

“No smoking, Father! He was showing off to a pretty girl,” said Mariko, bringing in the tea. “He had to go to bed afterward, you know.” She sounded angry, as if this were Katinka’s fault. “You shouldn’t have come now. It’s much too late. You should go.” Mariko banged the tray on the table and left the room, tossing a sour glare at the visitor.

“It’s all right, Mariko…” Mariko shut the door, though a creaking suggested she was never far away. “Well,” said Satinov, “I am rather ancient.” When Katinka sat in the same chair as last time and crossed her legs, the old man glanced at her approvingly. “You look as if you’ve been out dancing in nightclubs. Well, why not? Why should a flower as young and fresh as you waste her youth on dusty archives and ancient miseries?” He pulled out his cigarettes again, lighting up and closing his eyes.

“It’s what I do best, Marshal.”

“You might not have as long as you think for your research,” he said, “or are you getting fond of me?” He looked right at her. “Well, girl, what did you find?”

Katinka took a deep breath. “In 1956 you visited the Lubianka and examined the files of Sashenka and Vanya Palitsyn. They were old friends of yours from before the Revolution. They were the link with the past you wanted me to find.”

“You seem keener on the subject than you were before,” he observed.

“I am. These people—they seem so real somehow.”

“Ah. So the historian of Catherine the Great is getting involved in our own times. You smell the happy flowers and the bitter ashes? That shows you’re a real historian.”

“Thank you, Marshal.”

“Tell me again,” he said, leaning forward suddenly. “Your name’s Vinsky. Why did you get this job?”

“I was recommended by Academician Beliakov. I was his top student.”

“Of course,” Satinov said, sucking on his cigarette, eyelids sliding down. “I can see you’re a clever girl, a special person. Academician Beliakov was right to choose you out of all his hundreds of students over his many decades of teaching…Think of that.”

“I think he wanted to help me.” Katinka felt annoyed. She could see that he was toying with her, as he had with so many other inferior beings in his lifetime. This was another Satinov, sly and reptilian. The chilliness shocked her, poisoning her liking for him.

“Marshal, please could you answer my question. Sashenka and Vanya Palitsyn are the people I was meant to find, aren’t they? What became of them?”

Satinov shook his head, and Katinka noticed a muscle twitching in his cheek.

“There’s no record of their trial or sentencing. Could they have survived?”

“Unlikely but possible. Last year a woman found her husband, who had been arrested in 1938—he was living in Norilsk.” He gave her a brief, bitter smile. “You’re on a quest for the philosopher’s stone, which so many have sought and none has found.”

Katinka gritted her teeth and started again. “I really need your help. I need to see their files—the ones the KGB are still holding.”

He inhaled, taking his time, as always. “All right,” he said, “I’ll call some old friends in the Organs—they’re all geriatrics like me, waiting to die at their dachas, fishing, playing chess, cursing the new rich. But I’ll do my best.”

“Thank you.” She sat forward in her chair. “The files mentioned that the Palitsyns had two children, Volya and Karlmarx. What happened to them?”

“I have no idea. Like so many children of those times, they too perhaps just disappeared.”

“But how?”

“That’s your job to find out,” he said coldly, shifting in his chair. “Where did you say you came from? The northern Caucasus, wasn’t it?”

Katinka took a quick breath of excitement. He’d changed the subject, a petty diversion. She scented her prey. “May I just ask—you knew the Palitsyns. What were they like?”

He sighed. “They were dedicated Bolsheviks.”

“I saw her photograph in the file. She was so beautiful and unusual…”

“Once you saw her, you never forgot her,” he said quietly.

“But such sad eyes,” said Katinka.

Satinov’s face hardened, the angles of his Persian nose and cheekbones sharpened, became more triangular. His eyes slid closed. “She was hardly alone. There are millions of such photographs. Millions of repressed people just like her.”

Katinka could feel Satinov closing down, so she pressed him again.

“Marshal, I know you’re tired, and I’m going now…but was Roza Getman one of their children?”

“That’s enough, girl!” Mariko, draped in a black shawl like a Spanish mantilla, had come into the room. She placed herself between Katinka and Satinov. “You shouldn’t have come here in the first place. What kind of questions are you asking? My father’s tired now. You must go.”

Satinov sat back in the chair, wheezing a little.

“We’ll talk again,” he said heavily. “God willing.”

“Sorry, I’ve asked too much. I stayed too long…”

He did not smile at her again but he offered his hand, looking away.

“I’m tired now.” There was a piece of paper in his hand. “Someone you must meet. Don’t wait. You may already be too late. Say hello from me.”

Two days later, Katinka was awakened by the green plastic phone in her tiny, fusty room deep inside the square colossus of the Moskva Hotel. Her bed, bedside table, light and desk were all one piece of wooden furniture. The bedspread, carpet and the curtains the color of brimstone. She was dreaming about Sashenka: the woman in the photograph was talking to her.

“Don’t give up! Persevere with Satinov…” But why was Satinov so obstructive? Would he refuse to meet her again? She was still half asleep when she grabbed the phone.

“Hello,” she said. She expected it to be her parents—or maybe Roza Getman, who was phoning regularly for updates on her progress. “Hello, Katinka, any jewels in the dust?” was how Roza always started her calls.

“This is Colonel Lentin.” Katinka was amazed: it was the Marmoset of the KGB archives. “You wish to see more documents?”

“Yes,” she said, heart surging. “That would be wonderful.”

“Wonderful? Wonderful indeed. You’re such an enthusiast. Meet us at the Café-Bar Piano at the Patriarchy Ponds at two.”

Katinka pulled on her boots and the denim miniskirt with the spangles. She was earning money for the first time in her life but still it did not feel like her own. She was using it to pay for her room, food and transportation but nothing else. She was only doing this for Roza, she told herself, so that she, like Katinka, would have a family.