Simon Montefiore - Sashenka

Katinka sat down on the sofa near him and he opened his wizened hands as if to say Go on then, girl, give it to me.

“I found Snowy.” He nodded appreciatively. “Lala Lewis told me everything. You were a hero. You saved the children. Snowy wants to meet you to say thank you.”

He shook his head and waved his hand. “Too late,” he rasped. “Have you found her brother too?”

“Not yet. I’m still trying to work out what happened to Sashenka.”

“Leave them. Concentrate on Carlo! The children, the future…”

“Sashenka and Vanya were your best friends, weren’t they?”

“Sashenka was…there was no one like her—and the children…” His blue eyes softened and for a moment Katinka thought she saw tears. She made herself go on.

“That was why Stalin summoned you to the Little Corner when he read the transcript of Benya and Sashenka. He was aware you’d known them since Petersburg and that you were Roza’s godfather. He’d seen you all together at the May Day party. Did he want to find out what you knew about them?”

Satinov blinked and said nothing.

“Beria left and you arrived at ten thirty p.m.—I’ve seen Stalin’s appointment book. But then what happened? Sashenka had had an affair. Vanya was jealous and bugged their hotel room. How did that grow into Captain Sagan’s conspiracy and the destruction of an entire family?”

“I don’t know,” whispered Satinov.

“Why did Stalin request all the files on the case?” She glared at him. Cold bloodshot eyes looked back. “You’re not going to answer that either? How can you pretend you don’t know what happened?”

“Just find Carlo,” Satinov wheezed. “You must be so close.”

“And what did Stalin mean when he wrote Bicho to curate ?”

There was a long pause during which Satinov breathed painfully. “Read my memoirs carefully,” he said at last.

“Believe it or not, I’ve read every word of your interminable speeches on peaceful coexistence and your heroic role in forging the socialist Motherland and there’s not a word of humanity in it.” His eyes were fixed on her but she didn’t stop. “You’ve lied to me again and again. The KGB has concealed its crimes but today I got hold of the transcript of Sashenka’s trial. You were at the trial of your best friend!”

His breathing creaked.

“Take a look,” she said, pulling out the first page of the trial.

“I haven’t got my glasses.”

“Well, let me help you then. Here, look at this. It’s you, Marshal Satinov! You didn’t just attend the trial,” she was almost yelling at him, “you were a judge.”

“Read my judgment,” he gasped.

“You sat there in judgment on your best friend, the mother of your godchild. Sashenka found you at the trial. What did she think when she saw you? What went through her mind? I thought you were a hero. You saved Snowy and Carlo yet you presided over Sashenka’s destruction! Was she sentenced to death? Or did she die in the Gulags? Tell me, tell me! You owe it to her children!”

Satinov’s face tightened as his breathing constricted and his mouth gaped open.

To her shame, Katinka fought back her own tears. “How could you have done such a thing? How could you?”

“What’s going on in here?” Mariko appeared in the doorway, holding a tea tray. “What is it, Papa?”

As Katinka left the room, she looked back at the old man. The oxygen mask was on his face, his lips were blue, a wiry arm was raised—and a gnarled finger pointed toward the door.

Judge Ulrikh: Sashenka Zeitlin-Palitsyn, you have confessed to a remarkable conspiracy to kill our heroic leaders, Comrade Stalin and the Politburo, at your own house. We have read your confession. Do you have anything more to say?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: I plotted to kill the great Stalin at my house. I rubbed arsenic and cyanide powder onto the curtains of the room where Comrade Stalin would stand.

Judge Ulrikh: And the gramophone?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: Yes, on the gramophone too. I had heard from various comrades, including my husband Vanya, that Comrade Stalin liked to listen to music after dinner so I dusted the gramophone with cyanide dust.

Judge Satinov: Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn, we need more details…

Satinov was speaking for the first time at the trial. Katinka could almost hear the voices of these flint-hearted men in the pine-paneled office in the Sukhanovka Prison, lit up in a bright electric glare in the middle of the night. NKVD guards in blue stood armed at the doors. Ulrikh, with his bullet-like bald head, sat behind the desk with Satinov and the other judge, all in their Stalinka tunics and gleaming boots.

As soon as she had left that disastrous meeting with Satinov, Katinka had called Maxy, repeating what had been said word for word, trying to disguise her tears. But Maxy was encouraging. Satinov had told her to read his judgment, so she must read it right away. Satinov had told her to read his memoirs—and that must mean something too. Maxy proposed that they meet at midday the next day at the closed Archive for Special Secret Political-Administrative Documents, through the archway off Mayakovsky Square.

Now it was the middle of the night and Katinka was reading the trial in her seedy room at the Moskva Hotel. She poured herself a shot of vodka—for courage and to overcome her exhaustion. Through her little window, the red stars of the Kremlin glowed.

Judge Satinov: How did you procure this cyanide? Tell the Tribunal!

Katinka imagined Sashenka standing at the end of the T-shaped table, pale, thin, battered but still beautiful. But what must she have thought as she was tried for her life and found Hercules Satinov on the Tribunal right there in front of her? She must have struggled to show no emotion, not even a flicker of recognition—everyone would be watching for her reaction and his. But imagine her surprise, her shock—and her overriding concern: are the children safe? Or does Satinov’s presence mean that the children…

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: I will, Comrade Judge. Vanya procured it from the the NKVD Laboratory.

Judge Satinov: How did you know which records to poison?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: I knew Comrade Stalin enjoys Georgian folk music, the songs from the movies Volga, Volga and Jolly Fellows, and the arias of Glinka and Tchaikovsky. So I poisoned those.

Judge Satinov: You were serving the Japanese Emperor, the Polish landowners and the British lords in conspiracy with Trotsky?

Katinka’s skin crawled as she pictured what was going through Sashenka’s mind: Snowy and Carlo—where are you?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: Yes, Trotsky ordered the assassination in diabolical compact with the Japanese Emperor and the British lords.

Judge Satinov: And the network of the White Guard, Captain Sagan, who controlled you on Trotsky’s behalf, forcing you to use the methods he had taught you as a young girl?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: You mean the sexual depravity? Yes, and I used that to recruit further agents such as the writer Benya Golden.

Judge Satinov: Did the writer Golden become an agent?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: I tried to recruit him using the wiles taught me by Captain Sagan but—as I must tell the truth before the Party—Golden was a dilettante non-Party philistine who lacked vigilance but he never joined the conspiracy. He regarded it as “play-acting.”

Judge Ulrikh: You’re amending your confession?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: I have to tell the truth before Comrade Stalin and the Party. I am myself guilty; my husband and Captain Sagan are guilty but Golden was a child incapable of conspiracy.