Simon Montefiore: Sashenka

Sashenka took her poetry books out of her book bag. Pretending to read, she flicked through the pages. When she came across a piece of cigarette paper with tiny writing on it, she glanced around, smiled broadly at any policeman who happened to be looking at her, and then popped it in her mouth. Uncle Mendel had taught her what to do. The papers did not taste too bad and they were not too hard to swallow. By the time it was her turn to be booked at the counter, she had consumed all of the incriminating evidence. She asked for a glass of water.

“You’ve got to be joking,” replied the policeman, who had taken her name, age and nationality but refused to tell her anything about the charges she faced. “This isn’t the Europa Hotel, girl.”

She raised her grey eyes to him. “Please,” she said.

He banged a chipped mug of water onto the counter, with a croaking laugh.

As she drank, a gendarme called her name. Another with a bunch of keys opened a reinforced steel door and she entered the next layer of the Kresty. Sashenka was ordered into a small room and made to strip, then she was searched by an elephantine female matron in a dirty white apron. No one except dear Lala had ever seen her naked (her governess still drew her a bath every evening) but she told herself it did not matter. Nothing mattered except her cause, her holy grail, and that she was here at last, where every decent person should be.

The woman returned her clothes but took her coat, stole and book bag. Sashenka signed for them and received a chit in return.

Then they photographed her. She waited in a line of women, who scratched themselves constantly. The stench was of sweat, urine, menstrual blood. The photographer, an old man in a brown suit and string tie, with no teeth and eyes like holes in a hollow pumpkin, manhandled her in front of a tripod bearing an enormous camera that looked like a concertina. He disappeared under a cloth, his muffled voice calling out:

“OK, full face. Stand up. Look left, look right. A Smolny girl, eh, with a rich daddy? You won’t be in here long. I was one of the first photographers in Piter. I do family portraits too if you want to mention me to your papa…There we are!”

Sashenka realized her arrest was now recorded forever—and she gave a wide smile that encouraged the photographer’s sales patter.

“A smile! What a surprise! Most of the animals that come through here don’t care what they look like—but you’re going to look wonderful. That, I promise.”

Then a yellow-skinned guard not much older than Sashenka led her toward a holding cell. Just as she was about to enter, an official in a belted grey uniform emerged from nowhere. “That’ll do, boy. I’ll take over.”

This popinjay with some stripes on his shoulder boards appeared to be in charge. Sashenka was disappointed: she wanted to be treated like the real thing, like a peasant or worker. Yet the Smolny girl in her was relieved as he took her arm gently. Around her, the cold stone echoed with shouts, grunts, the clink of keys, slamming of doors and turning of locks.

Someone was shouting, “Fuck you, fuck the Tsar, you’re all German spies!”

But the chief guard, in his tunic and boots, paid no attention. His hand was still on Sashenka’s arm and he was chatting very fast. “We’ve had a few students and schoolboys in—but you’re the first from Smolny. Well, I love ‘politicals.’ Not criminals, they’re scum. But ‘politicals,’ people of education, they make my job a pleasure. I might surprise you: I’m not your typical guard here. I read and I’ve even read a bit of your Marx and your Plekhanov. Truly. Two other things: I have a fondness for Swiss chocolates and Brocard’s eau de cologne. My sense of smell is highly sophisticated: see my nose?” Sashenka looked dutifully as he flared narrow nostrils. “I have the sensory buds of an aesthete yet here I am, stuck in this dive. You’re something to do with Baron Zeitlin? Here we are! Make sure he knows my name is Volkov, Sergeant S.P. Volkov.”

“I will, Sergeant Volkov,” Sashenka replied, trying not to gag on the suffocating aroma of lavender cologne.

“I’m not your typical guard, am I? Do I surprise you?”

“Oh yes, Sergeant, you do.”

“That’s what everyone says. Now, Mademoiselle Zeitlin, here is your berth. Don’t forget, Sergeant Volkov is your special friend. Not your typical guard!”

“Not at all typical.”

“You’ll miss my cologne in a minute,” he warned.

A guard opened a cell door and manhandled her inside. She turned to reach for the chief guard, even raising a hand, but he was gone. The smell of women crowded into a confined space blasted her nostrils. This is the real Russia! she told herself, feeling the rottenness creeping into her clothes.

The cell door slammed behind her. The locks turned. Sashenka stood, shoulders hunched, aware of the dark cramped space behind her seething with shadowy, vigilant life. Farting, grunting, sneezing, singing and coughing vied with whispers and the flick of cards being dealt.

Sashenka slowly turned, feeling the rancid breath of twenty or thirty women, hot then cool, hot then cool, on her face. A single kerosene lamp lightened the gloom. The prisoners lined the walls and lay on mattresses on the cold dirty floor, sleeping, playing cards, some even cuddling. Two half-naked crones were picking lice out of each other’s pubic hair like monkeys. A low partition marked off the latrine, from whence came groans and liquid explosions.

“Hurry up!” shouted the next in line.

A plump woman with slanting oriental eyes lay reading Tolstoy’s Confessions , while a cadaverous woman in a man’s army greatcoat over a peasant smock declaimed from a pornographic pamphlet about the Empress, Rasputin and their mutual friend, Madame Vyrubova. “‘Three is better than one,’ said the monk. ‘Anya Vyrubova, your tits are juicy as a Siberian seal—but nothing beats a wanton imperial cunt like yours, my Empress!’” There was laughter. The reader stopped.

“Who’s this? Countess Vyrubova slumming it from court?” The creature in the greatcoat was on her feet. Stepping on a sleeping figure who howled in complaint, she rushed at Sashenka and seized her hair. “You rich little bitch, don’t look at me like that!”

Sashenka was afraid for the first time since her arrest, properly afraid, with fear that lurched in her guts and burned in her throat. Before she had time to think, she was punched in the mouth and fell, only to be crushed as the creature threw herself on top of her. She struggled to breathe. Fearing she was going to die, she thought of Lala, Grand-maman at school, her pony in the country…But suddenly the attacker was lifted right off her and tossed sideways.

“Careful, bitch. Don’t touch her! I think this one’s ours.” The plump woman holding an open copy of Tolstoy stood over her. “Sashenka? The cell elders welcome you. You’ll meet the committee in the morning. Let’s get some sleep. You can share my mattress. I’m Comrade Natasha. You don’t know me, but I know exactly who you are.”

Captain Sagan of the Gendarmerie dropped into his favorite chair at the Imperial Yacht Club on Greater Maritime Street and was just rubbing a toke of cocaine into his gums when his adjutant appeared in the doorway.

“Your Excellency, may I report?”

Sagan saw the blotchy-skinned adjutant glance quickly around the enormous, empty room with its leather chairs and newspapers in English, French and Russian. Beyond the billiard table hung portraits of bemedaled club chairmen, and at the far end of the room, above a blazing fire of apple-scented wood, the watery blue eyes of the Emperor Nicholas II. “Go ahead, Ivanov.”