Simon Montefiore - Sashenka

“And you care too much,” he said, squeezing her hands.

As she stepped into the elevator, she reviewed the combination of the extract from Satinov’s memoirs and Stalin’s enigmatic note, Bicho to curate , on the papers Maxy had shown her in the Party archive.

Bicho —boy in Georgian—was Stalin’s nickname for Satinov. “Curate” was Stalin’s word for what he wanted Satinov to do: supervise the destruction of a family he loved.

“Oh God,” she gasped, finally understanding it all. “Satinov saw her die. What did they do to her?”

Rushing out of the archive and onto Mayakovsky Square, Katinka waved down a Lada. It sped her down the hill toward the Granovsky. Fizzing with urgency, she rang five bells simultaneously, the door buzzed and she raced upstairs to the Satinov apartment. The door was again open but when she entered, Mariko was standing in the hall beneath the crystal chandelier.

“Mariko, I know what you think but please—I’ve got to tell him what I’ve discovered. He’s helped me every step of the way without me realizing. I know he’ll want to talk to me now.”

Katinka stopped and caught her breath. Mariko did not throw her out. She didn’t say anything at all and Katinka, who had never really looked at her before, noticed that Mariko did not seem angry. Her dark, pointed face was desperately tired.

“Come in,” she said quietly. “You can see him.” She walked down the hallway, passing the sitting room. Katinka followed, peering eagerly ahead. “Go on in.”

Satinov lay in bed, propped up on pillows with his eyes closed. His face, his hair, his lips seemed the color of ashes. A nurse was by the bed, adjusting the oxygen tank and the plastic mask, but when she saw them she nodded briskly and left the room.

Katinka, who had so much to ask, was suddenly uncertain what to do. Satinov’s breathing was ragged; sometimes his chest rose jerkily, at other times he did not breathe for some seconds. He was sweating with effort and fear. Katinka knew she should feel pity for this dying man but instead she felt only fury and frustration. How could he escape her like this? How could he be so cruel as to leave Roza without ever telling anyone what happened to her mother?

Katinka glanced at Mariko, who gestured at the low chair by the bed. “You can talk to him,” Mariko said. “For a minute or two. He asked where you were. He was thinking about you and your research. That’s why I let you in.”

“Can he hear me?”

“I think so. He speaks sometimes, his lips move. He’s talked about my mother a bit but it’s hard to understand. The doctors say…We’re not sure.” Mariko leaned back against the doorpost, stretched her back and rubbed her face.

Katinka stood up, leaned over the bed, then looked back at Mariko.

“Go ahead,” she said.

Katinka took Satinov’s hand in hers. “It’s Katinka. Your researcher. I say ‘your’ researcher because you’ve held all the cards all along and you’ve sent me this way and that…If you can hear me, let me know somehow. You can squeeze my hand or even just blink.” She waited but he took another desperate breath, his entire body shivered, and he settled down again. “I know you loved Sashenka and Vanya, I know you did a terrible thing and I know how you saved their children. But what happened to Sashenka? What did you see? Please tell me how she died.”

There was no reaction. Katinka realized that this old man was a study in ambiguities. He had helped and encouraged her but also tricked and obstructed her, just as he had doomed Sashenka and saved her children. She grieved for him yet at the same time she’d never felt more enraged.

He was quiet for a few minutes but then his breathing became more of a struggle, his hands clawing the bedspread as his body twisted to get oxygen. The nurse returned and gave him oxygen and an injection, and he grew calmer again.

“I’ll get my brothers in a minute,” said Mariko. “They’re sleeping down the corridor. We’ve been up all night.”

Katinka stood up and walked to the door.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Thank you for letting me in. I wish now I’d brought Roza to see him…I had so much to ask him.” She looked back at the bed, hoping for him to call her back. “I’ll let myself out.”

Just then they heard his voice. Katinka spun round and the two of them returned to the bedside. Satinov’s lips were moving a little.

“What’s he saying?” asked Katinka.

Mariko took his hands and kissed his forehead. “Papa, it’s Mariko, right here with you, darling Papa.”

He moved his lips again, but they could hear nothing. After a while his lips stopped moving and, as his family filed into the room, Katinka slipped away.

Outside, Maxy waited, smoking as he leaned on his bike. Katinka walked out into his arms, smelling the leather of his jacket and the smoke of his cigarette. She was very glad he was there.

“He’s dying? A terrible thing to see. But you’ve done all you can…”

“It’s over,” she said, “and I’m exhausted. I’ll phone Roza, collate my notes and put her in contact with anyone she wants to meet.”

“What will you do now?”

“I’m going home. I want to see my friends, and there’s a boy who wants to take me on vacation. Perhaps it’s best that we never know how Sashenka died. My papa was right. I should never have taken this job. I’m going back to Catherine the Great.”

“But you’re so good at this,” said Maxy. “Katinka, please come and work with me at the foundation. We could achieve so much together.”

She shook her head and collected herself. “No thanks. There’s no fruit, no harvest in this sort of history; all these fields are sown with salt. It may be old history but the poison is fresh and the unhappiness lives on. No, the turning over of old graves isn’t for me. It’s too painful. Good-bye, Maxy, and thanks for everything.”

She wiped her eyes and started to walk away.

“Katinka!” Maxy called after her.

She half turned.

“Katinka, can I call you sometime?”

But Katinka had reckoned without the persuasive force of Pasha Getman.

“You can’t just give up and walk away from us,” he’d roared at her when she’d phoned to say she’d done all she could. Then he’d said in a quieter voice, “What about my mother? She’s so fond of you. We need you to do one final thing for us. Think of it as a personal favor to Roza.”

And so it was that three days later, taking Pasha’s private plane, Katinka and Roza had flown down to Tbilisi (which was, as Pasha reminded Katinka, almost on her way home). Some of Pasha’s bodyguards had driven them straight to the picturesque café in the old vine-entangled mansion.

“Lala,” said Katinka to the old lady in the small room upstairs. “I’ve brought someone to meet you.”

Lala Lewis, holding her usual glass of Georgian wine, sat up in bed and focused on the doorway.

“Is it her? Is it Sashenka?” she asked.

“No, Lala, but it is almost Sashenka. This is Roza Getman, Sashenka’s daughter, whom you knew as Snowy.”

“Ohh,” Lala sighed and held out her hands. “Come closer. I’m very old. Come sit on my bed. Let me look at you. Let me see into your eyes.”

“Hello, Lala,” said Roza, her voice trembling, “it’s been more than fifty years since you cared for us.”

Katinka watched as Roza, dressed neatly in a white blouse, blue cardigan and cream skirt, her grey hair still coiffed in the style of her youth, walked forward slowly, looking around her at the trinkets of a vanished life. She seemed to hesitate for a moment at the sight of the old nanny’s outstretched hands and then, smiling, as if Lala were somehow familiar to her, she sat on the bed.