Simon Montefiore: Sashenka

“Ah, here they come!” Lala tossed her book aside.

At the top of the steps, Madame Buxhoeven, severe in her black cape, serge dress and high white collar, appeared in the tent of light—as if on wheels like a sentry on a Swiss clock, thought Lala. Grand-maman’s mottled bosom, as broad as an escarpment, was visible even at this distance—and her ringing soprano could crack ice at a hundred paces. Even though it was freezing, Lala pulled down her window and peered out, excitement rising. She thought of Sashenka’s favorite tea awaiting her in the little salon, and the cookies she had bought specially from the English Shop on the Embankment. The tin of Huntley & Palmers was perched beside her on the burgundy leather seat.

The coachmen clambered up onto their creaking conveyances and settled themselves, whips in hand. Pantameilion pulled on a beribboned cap and jacket trimmed in scarlet and gold and, stroking a well-waxed mustache, winked at Lala. Why do men expect us to fall in love with them just because they can start a motorcar? Lala wondered, as the engine chugged, spluttered and burst into life.

Pantameilion smiled, revealing a mouthful of rotten fangs. His voice came breathily through the speaking tube. “So where’s our little fox then! Soon I’ll have two beauties in the car.”

Lala shook her head. “Hurry now, Pantameilion. A trunk and a valise, both marked Aspreys of London. Bistro! Quick!”

It was the last class: sewing for the Tsar and Motherland. Sashenka pretended to stitch the khaki breeches but she could not concentrate and kept pricking her thumb. The bell was about to ring, releasing her and the other girls from their eighteenth-century prison with its draughty dormitories, echoing refectories and alabaster ballrooms.

Sashenka decided that she would be the first to curtsy to the teacher—and therefore first out of the classroom. She always wanted to be different: either the first or the last but never in the middle. So she sat at the very front, nearest the door.

She felt she had grown out of the Smolny. Sashenka had more serious matters on her mind than the follies and frivolities of the other schoolgirls in what she called the Institute for Noble Imbeciles. They talked of nothing but the steps of obscure dances, the cotillion, the pas d’espagne , the pas de patineur , the trignonne and the chiconne, their latest love letters from Misha or Nikolasha in the Guards, the modern style for ball dresses and, most particularly, how to present their décolletage. They discussed this endlessly with Sashenka after lights-out because she had the fullest breasts in her class. They said they envied her so much! Their shallowness not only appalled but embarrassed her because, unlike the others, she had no wish to flaunt her breasts.

Sashenka was sixteen and, she reminded herself, no longer a girl. She loathed her school uniform: her plain white dress made of cotton and muslin with its precious pinafore and a starched shoulder cape, which made her look young and innocent. Now she was a woman, and a woman with a mission. Yet despite her secrets, she could not help but crave her darling Lala waiting outside in her father’s landaulet with the English cookies on the backseat.

The staccato clap of “Maman” Sokolov (all the teachers had to be addressed as Maman) broke into Sashenka’s daydreams. Short and lumpy with fuzzy hair, Maman boomed in her resounding bass: “Ladies, time to collect up your sewing! I hope you have worked well for our brave soldiers, who are sacrificing their lives for our Motherland and his Imperial Majesty the Emperor!”

That day, sewing for Tsar and Motherland had meant attaching a newfangled luxury—zippers—to breeches for Russia’s long-suffering peasant conscripts, who were being slaughtered in their thousands under Nicholas II’s command. This task inspired much breathless giggling among the schoolgirls.

“Take special care,” Maman Sokolov had warned, “with this sensitive work. A badly sewn zipper could in itself be an added peril for the Russian warrior already beset by danger.”

“Is it where he keeps his rifle?” Sashenka had whispered to the girl next to her. The other girls had heard her and laughed. None of them was sewing very carefully.

The day seemed interminable: leaden hours had passed since breakfast in the main hall—and the obligatory curtsy to the huge canvas of the Emperor’s mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna with her gimlet eyes and shrewish mouth.

Once the ill-zippered trousers were collected, Maman Sokolov again clapped her hands. “A minute until the bell. Before you go, mes enfants , I want the best curtsy of the term! And a good curtsy is a…”

“LOW curtsy!” cried the girls, laughing.

“Oh yes, my noble ladies. For the curtsy, mes enfants , LOW is for NOBLE GIRLS. You’ll notice that the higher a lady stands on the Table of Ranks granted to us by the first emperor, Peter the Great, the LOWER she curtsies when she is presented to Their Imperial Majesties. Hit the floor!” When she said “low,” Maman Sokolov’s voice plunged to ever more profound depths. “Shopgirls make a little curtsy comme ça —” and she did a little dip, at which Sashenka caught the eyes of the others and tried to conceal a smile—“but LADIES GO LOWWWWWW! Touch the ground with your knees, girls, comme ça —” and Maman Sokolov curtsied with surprising energy, so low that her crossed knees almost touched the wooden floor. “Who’s first?”

“Me!” Sashenka was already up, holding her engraved calf-leather case and her canvas bag of books. She was so keen to leave that she gave the lowest and most aristocratic curtsy she had ever managed, lower even than the one she had given to the Dowager Empress on St. Catherine’s Day. “ Merci, Maman! ” she said. Behind her she heard the girls whisper in surprise, for she was usually the rebel of the class. But she did not care anymore. Not since the summer. The secrets of those hazy summer nights had shattered and recast everything.

The bell was ringing and Sashenka was already in the corridor. She looked around at its high molded ceilings, shining parquet and the electric glare of the chandeliers. She was quite alone.

Her satchel—engraved in gold with her full name, Baroness Alexandra Zeitlin—was over her shoulder but her most treasured possession was in her hands: an ugly canvas book bag that she hugged to her breast. In it were precious volumes of Zola’s realist novels, Nekrasov’s bleak poetry and the passionate defiance of Mayakovsky.

She started to run down the corridor toward Grand-maman, who was silhouetted against the lamps of limousines and the press of governesses and coachmen, all waiting to collect the Noble Young Ladies of the Smolny. But it was too late. The doors along the corridor burst open and suddenly it was flooded with laughing girls in white dresses with white lacy pinafores, white stockings and soft white shoes. Like an avalanche of powdery snow, they flowed down the corridor toward the cloakrooms. Coming the other way, the herd of heavy-hoofed coachmen, their long beards white with hoarfrost and bearing the freezing northern night in their cloaks, trudged forward to collect the girls’ trunks. Resplendent in his flashy uniform with its peaked cap, Pantameilion stood among them, staring at Sashenka as if in a trance.

“Pantameilion!”

“Oh, Mademoiselle Zeitlin!” He shook himself and reddened.

What could have embarrassed the ladykiller of the servants’ quarters? she wondered, smiling at him. “Yes, it’s me. My trunk and valise are in dormitory twelve, by the window. Wait a minute—is that a new uniform?”

“Yes, mademoiselle.”