Simon Montefiore - Sashenka

“I don’t like going away from you,” said Vanya, putting Carlo down gently. “I’ll be back soon but when I’m away, if you ever wonder where I am, look up at the stars in the sky like I’ve shown you. Wherever the Big Bear is, that’s where I’ll be.”

Sashenka came with him to the door. He took her in his arms, lifted her up and squeezed her so tight that her slippers fell off.

“Marrying you…,” he could barely articulate the words, “…best decision…ever. Don’t worry, this’ll blow over, but if not we have our plan.” He turned to Carolina and bowed low.

Carolina looked down and pushed her strong jaw forward, then she offered her hand and he shook it, standing straight as if he were on parade. “Thank you, Carolina!” Then he grabbed her too and hugged her spare, scrawny body.

Razum had turned the car round. Vanya climbed in and they drove away. Sashenka watched it go and ran back inside and threw herself onto her bed. How could all this be coming to an end? She still could not quite believe it.

She tried to imagine where Benya Golden was, and Mendel, but she could not do so. A ruthlessness had entered her spirit: there was no one but her and Vanya and the children now. No one. She should feel pity for Benya who loved her, and Mendel too—but she didn’t. Let them perish so that she and her children could be together.

She felt weight on the bed.

“What’s wrong? Mamochka’s crying. Are you sad Papochka’s gone away?” asked Snowy.

“Mama, Mama, can I tell you something? I’m going to kiss you and stroke you, Mama,” said Carlo. His brown eyes turned cloudy, like a seducer in a movie, and he kissed her hard right on the lips.

“Darlings?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“You might be going on a journey, a great adventure.”

“With you and Daddy?”

“No, I don’t think so, Snowy. But you love Carolina, don’t you? You might be going with her and you know never to talk about your family or anything you’ve heard at home.”

“We know that already,” said Snowy very seriously. “Papa always says: ‘No chatter!’”

“What about you and Daddy?” Carlo asked, his eyes anxious.

“Well, Carlo, we might come along later. If or when we can…But we’ll always be around you, always…”

“Of course you will, silly!” said Snowy. “We’re going to be together for ever and ever.”

Sashenka drove them back into the city on Sunday afternoon. And then it started.

The guards at Granovsky were as friendly as ever—but there was a new guy. What expression was that in his eyes? Did he know that Vanya was in Stalinabad? Did he know why? Was there a why? Marfa and Nikolai, Vanya’s parents, and the other geriatrics sat in their chairs downstairs: why didn’t Vanya’s father stop reading his newspaper and speak to her? What was that sly look from Andreyev’s old father—had his son, a top Politburo member, mentioned something? Had he told him to be careful of those Palitsyns, not to let the children play with them for a while? The janitor waved but why didn’t he say hello and help with the cases? He always helped. Did he know something?

A young man in the street in a gabardine coat and a fedora watched them drive in. A Chekist? The guards in the guardhouse made a note: they were watching her. They knew something. Outside the apartment, Marshal Budyonny’s maid lingered, dusting the stairs. An informer. It was agony. It was absurd. The circle of confidence and despair turned rhythmically inside her like a creaking old carousel at a circus.

It was Sunday night, and she lay in bed. A hole gaped in her belly. Wormwood coated her tongue. The fear hit her again, the terror of losing the children, and of death. Yet she was not afraid of the final cut: young people who became revolutionaries were always a step away from the gallows. When she traveled on the Agitprop trains during the civil war, she had been ready at any time to face death if she was captured by the Whites. That was what it meant to be a Bolshevik. But since she had had Snowy and Carlo, she had sensed death creeping up on her, a thief in the night, the highwayman who would steal her children. She felt her breasts for cancerous lumps; she feared the influenza and TB—what was that cough? Please, please, she begged Fate, give me the time to love them and cherish them. Grant me those years to see them happy and married with children of their own.

When the Terror came, she saw other parents disappear and their children vanish after them, no longer playing in the courtyard at the house on the Embankment or here on Granovsky. But those parents had deviated from the Party line and acted rashly, insincerely, impurely. They had seemed honest Communists yet in reality they wore masks. The Party came first and they had erred. She had always promised she would never do that. Yet somehow, she had done exactly that.

It grew dark and Sashenka tried to sleep, only to be divebombed by phantasms of horror, of tortures, arrests, sobbing childish faces. She shook and her pulse raced: was she going to have a heart attack? Vanya had not called. She dropped into sleep fitfully, just touching it, never sinking into it, before skimming off it like a pebble on a pond. She saw her mother dead, her mother alive, her mother young, her father being shot in the back of the head in front of her children.

“Who is that man?” asked Snowy.

“Don’t you know your own dedushka, your grandfather?”

“What will happen to him when he’s dead?” Carlo was asking. “Will he become a ghost?”

Sashenka woke up sweating and trembling, went into the children’s room and lay down with Carlo, barely able to believe that this adorable boy could exist in such a world. She put her face on his shoulder. His skin was soft and rich. She stroked his bare back and fell asleep again.

When she awoke, Carlo was stroking her, his sweet breath on her face. What joy!

“Mamochka, can I tell you something? Someone’s knocking on the door.”

She sat up. It all came back to her. Nausea and vertigo assailed her. The knocking was so loud, so angry.

She kissed both children and then approached the door.

“Open up!”

“Who is it?” cried Snowy.

“It’s Razum!” said the driver. “Telegram.”

Sashenka hesitated. Took a deep breath. Opened the door.

“Good morning, comrade,” smiled Razum. “A beautiful day! And a message from the boss.”

IN STALINABAD.

FEELING WELL.

GREETINGS TO CHILDREN.

HOME WEDNESDAY. VP

Sashenka felt jubilant, certain suddenly that nothing bad would happen. She had imagined it all. Why shouldn’t an assistant deputy commissar like Vanya be sent on some temporary assignment to Stalinabad? It happened all the time; not everyone sent on missions into the regions was arrested. Satinov too had been dispatched to Georgia for a few weeks and no one suggested he was in any trouble.

She got ready for work at the magazine. She thought coldly of enemies and traitors, as she had so often before, when the Organs had “checked” those friends who never returned. Was she dangerously linked to Benya Golden via the magazine? Klavdia had called Andrei Zhdanov’s cultural apparat at Old Square and Fadeyev at the Writers’ Union. They had both passed him so her back was covered. She and he had met to discuss the commission. There was no personal connection between them. She was suddenly overtaken by self-disgust. She loved only her children, husband, herself—and no one else.

Perhaps Satinov had been wrong? Perhaps the only link between Mendel and Benya was that both were prominent, and it was this that put them in danger. Before he left, Vanya had told her that other writers and artists had recently been arrested: Babel for one, Koltsov the journalist, Meyerhold the theatrical director. Perhaps they were connected? Vanya had whispered that they were planning a fourth show trial, starring the fallen “Iron Commissar” Yezhov, and were considering tossing some diplomats and intellectuals into the cauldron. Perhaps that was what this nightmare was about?