Simon Montefiore - Sashenka

She grinned at the thought of Benya and his hands all over her, of him dancing and that way he laughed, with his mouth wide open. They discussed books and movies, paintings and plays but oh, how they laughed. And the laughter led back to her thighs and her breasts and her lips: all belonged to him.

They reached the golden banks of the mud-brown river, lined with cherry trees laden with pink blossom. Snowy picked her a spray. Other children were swimming, and she recognized some of the Party families. She waved and blew kisses, clapping for the children as they sprinted and dived. “Are you watching me, Mama?” called Carlo every time he jumped in and each time she answered, “When aren’t we watching you two?” She dried and dressed them when they began to feel chilled.

They returned by the woods. An army of bluebells lay under the trees awaiting them. Snowy and Carlo started to build a camp for the Wood Cushions, immersed in a world of mossy sofas and tree-trunk palaces.

She sat on the bench by the lane and watched them. She knew why she had brought them this way. Her eyes flickered between the camp and the nearby public telephone. Should she, shouldn’t she? No, she would not call.

“Darlings, we’ve got to go home now,” she said.

“No!” shouted Snowy. “We want to play.”

She knew she had to phone, that she was always going to use that phone. She closed her eyes. Benya had said he would be at his ramshackle dacha in Peredelkino, the writers’ village. She had the number and longed to suggest that they meet somehow. At some garden shed—clinging together among the spades and geraniums! But she must wait until the Mendel business was settled. Besides, he was with his family.

She would call him anyway. If Benya’s wife answered, she would introduce herself as his editor. She really was commissioning him to write a piece for the magazine: “How to celebrate at a real Soviet people’s masked ball! How to prepare your dresses, your masks and your feast!”

As her children danced along the sandy path, she dialed Benya’s number. The phone rang and rang. No answer. She found herself leaning on the aluminum shield of the telephone box, pressing herself against it, dreamily contemplating the electrical miracle that would carry his voice through the wires to her ear. She stopped herself, shaking her head at her own foolishness.

You’ll have to wait, Benya Golden. I’ll find a way to let you know, she said to herself. I was going to tell you I loved you.

At 4:00 p.m., Sashenka was back at the dacha. The white pillars of its façade, the wooden table, the swinging hammocks reminded her of summers at Zemblishino before the Revolution. The children were drowsy and Carolina took them to rest in their rooms.

Vanya sat in the garden in his scarlet-embroidered peasant shirt, boots and baggy trousers. Always the boots.

“Are you all right, Vanya?” she asked. “Any news of Mendel?”

He did not move. Then he stood up slowly, turned toward her and hit her right in the face, knocking her over. The punch was so powerful that she did not quite feel it, although as she lay stunned on the grass she could taste the blood on her tongue.

His impassive face twitching, Vanya stood over her, clenching and wringing, clenching and wringing those puffy hands of his. Sashenka got to her feet and dashed at her husband, her mouth open to scream at him, but he caught her by the wrist and flung her back onto the ground.

“Where have you just been, you disgusting slut?” He was bending right over her. Even in this fight, both were aware of the voices over the fence, the staff in the house, the guards: everyone was listening and reporting. After he had hit her, they were still whispering at each other, not shouting, beneath the buzz of a late spring day.

“We went to swim in the river.”

“To the telephone.”

“Well, I passed the telephone…”

“And you called, did you not?”

“Don’t speak to me like I’m one of your cases. What if I did? I’m not allowed to make a phone call?”

“Who did you call?”

He knew already, she could tell, and it terrified her.

“You called that Jewish writer, didn’t you? Didn’t you? Do you think I haven’t had my chances? Have I been faithful to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, let me tell you, I’ve never touched another woman once in all these years, Sashenka. I worshipped you. I did everything for you. Didn’t I provide for you?” Then he hissed at her: “You met him in our house, you whore! You took my children down the lane and you called that bastard writer!”

What did he know? Sashenka frantically shuffled the facts like a pack of cards: if he knew that she phoned him, what did that prove? If he knew she had commissioned an article, well, why not? If he knew about the hotel, then she was lost!

Vanya stood over her and she thought he would hit her again or kick her with his boots, right there in the garden of their dacha with their children sleeping in the house.

“Have you fucked him?”

“Vanya!”

“It doesn’t matter, Alexandra Samuilovna. Now it doesn’t matter. Now it’s beyond that. You can’t talk to him because he’s not there.”

She was still touching her bleeding lip as the meaning of what her husband said swept over her.

“What are you saying?”

His face was close to hers. He was sweating. “He’s not there, Sashenka! He’s gone now. That’s his prize!”

Sashenka was furious, white-lipped with a wild anger that took her by surprise. “So this is your revenge? This is how Chekists make their wives faithful, is it? You should be ashamed of yourself! I thought you served the Party. And what will you do to him? Beat him up in some cellar with a bludgeon? Is that what you do every day, Vanya?”

“You don’t understand.” Vanya sat down suddenly. He rubbed his face in his hands, rubbed his hair, eyes closed. Then he got up and walked slowly back into the house.

Sashenka stood up shakily. Benya had been arrested! It could not be true. What would happen to him? She could hardly bear to contemplate him suffering. Where was he?

“Mamochka!” Carlo was crying. He always woke up in a bad mood.

“Why are you and Papochka talking like that?” said Snowy, dancing into the garden. “Mama, why is your lip bleeding?”

“Oh,” said Sashenka, feeling ashamed for the first time. “I banged it on the door.”

“I want to cure you, Mama. Can I put a bandage on your cut?” said Carlo, touching her lip and kissing her hands, while Snowy, refreshed and exuberant, trotted round the garden like a fresh pony. Sashenka looked down the corridor toward Vanya’s study, the possibilities ricocheting around her brain. She was almost glad Vanya had hit her and that he had not taken it out on the children. She would rather he beat her black and blue if it meant Benya would not suffer. But what if Benya wasn’t who he seemed to be? Suppose he’d been arrested not out of a cuckold’s vengeance but because he was an “unclean element,” some sort of Trotskyite spy? Or suppose Vanya had invented the arrest just to torment her? Or suppose Mendel was in real trouble and had somehow embroiled her and her friends? As each plausible scheme ripened in her imagination, she felt another lurch of fear until one of the children called her.

“Mamochka, are you watching me?” First Snowy, then Carlo. Sashenka almost sleepwalked through the exasperatingly slow afternoon, a perfect example of the delights of spring in the silver woods of the Moscow plain.

What have I done, she thought, what have I done?

At last, it was 8:00 p.m. and bedtime.

“Will you stroke me to sleep?” Carlo mumbled, brown eyes on hers.