Sashenka (13 page)

“Comrade Snowfox, I’ve got something for you, several things in fact. You know what to do with them?”

“I do.”

“Sit. Do you want a drink of cognac or vodka? Comrade Verezin and I are having a bit of a feast aren’t we, Igor?”

“I’ve joined the Party,” said Verezin.

“Congratulations, Comrade Verezin,” said Sashenka. Only Party members deserved the respectful moniker “comrade.” But Mendel had told her not to socialize, not to chatter.

The intellectuals were much more paranoid than the real workers, she thought.

Vanya Palitsyn, who wore a fringed peasant blouse, boots and breeches, handed her the bulldog and a small package. The oiled metal of the pistol gleamed liquidly.

“Deliver this to the printer in the cellar bar on Gogol Street—he’s a Georgian, a handsome devil. Don’t lose your head!” Vanya looked her in the eye and smiled. “The bulldog is for you.”

She walked past the Taurida Palace just after 3:00 a.m, and caught a streetcar down Liteiny. She felt the weight in her coat. The bulldog—a Mauser pistol—was in her pocket, fully loaded and with a spare cardboard box of ammunition. She ran her fingers over the weapon; the steel was freezing. For the first time, the Party had armed her. She had never fired a gun in earnest. Perhaps it was just one of Mendel’s little tests? But what was revolution without dynamite? Did the Party need her to liquidate an agent provocateur? That set her thinking about Sagan. She knew he would find her again.

She hailed a onehorse sleigh to the Caravanserai bar on Gogol, a subterranean cavern with Turkish alcoves, used by poorer students, soldiers, some workers. The entrance was unremarkable but once inside she found that a passageway led under the street. She could smell cigarettes, sausages, stale wine, and felt a table of ragged students go quiet as she passed.

In a dark alcove on his own sat a man in a dashing Caucasian hood, white but lined with fur, and an army greatcoat. He raised a glass of red wine.

“I was waiting for you, Comrade Snowfox. I’m Hercules Satinov,” said the Georgian comrade, who had Russianized his real name of Satinadze. “Follow me, comrade.”

He led her deeper into the bar, opening the door into a beer cellar. The air there was moist and fetid. Crouching, he lifted a manhole cover. Curling metal steps led down to the printing press. She could hear the deep rhythm of it turning over, like a mechanical bumblebee.

Men in peasant smocks were bringing out piles of rough newspapers, which they bound up with red rope. The space reeked of oil and burnt paper.

Satinov pulled back his dashing white hood. “I’m just back in Piter. From Baku.” His stiff, thick hair shone blueblack, growing low on his forehead. He was tall, wiry and muscular, and he radiated clean virile power. “You have the newsprint for me?”

She handed over the package.

“Pleased to meet you, Comrade Snowfox,” he said without a hint of mockery, taking her hand and kissing it.

“Quite the Georgian knight!” she said a little defensively. “Do you dance the
lezginka
too?

Can you sing ‘Suliko’?”

“No one dances better than me. Perhaps we can sing some songs and drink some wine tonight?”

“No, comrade,” replied Sashenka. “I’ve no time for such frivolities. Nor should you.”

Satinov did not seem to take offense. Instead he laughed loudly, raising his hands in surrender. “Forgive me, comrade, but we Georgians aren’t as coldhearted as Russians! Good luck!” He led her to a different exit that emerged in a deserted courtyard behind Gogol Street.

At the end of the narrow alley, she checked her tail according to Mendel’s training. No one. She waited. No one on the street at all. Suddenly she experienced a sort of dizzy jubilation: she wanted to laugh and dance gaily at the bleak glamor of these conspirators—Palitsyn at the Horse Guards, Satinov at the printer’s, young men from different worlds but united in their determination. She knew in her heart that these characters were the future, her future. Her conviction made the dark roughness of this existence shine so bright. Small wonder that men like Mendel were addicted. Normality? Responsibility? Family, marriage, money? She thought of her father’s delight at receiving his latest contract to supply 200,000 rifles, and her deluded, unhappy mother. That was death, she told herself, dreary, drab, living death.

She walked through an archway into another courtyard. This was one of Mendel’s rules: try to avoid entering any building through the front door and always check there are two exits. In Russia, janitors and doormen lingered on the street and tended not to watch the courtyards.

Inside, she hurried to the rear door, opened it and sprang up the cold dark steps, using the half light of the streetlamps to guide her to the top floor. She had been here earlier but her comrade had missed the rendezvous. Perhaps he would be here by now.

She unlocked the door, closing it behind her. The apartment was in darkness but it was somber even in daytime, a cavern of Asiatic rugs, old kerosene lamps, comforters and mattresses. She inhaled the friendly aroma of mothballs, salted fish and yellowing books: an intellectual lived here. She went into the kitchen and tested the samovar as Mendel had taught her: it was cold. In the bedroom, the walls were covered in bookcases,
Apollo
and other intellectual journals in piles on the floor.

Yet something was not right. Her breath caught in her throat. Bristling with Bolshevik vigilance, she moved silently, nerves like forked lightning that jazzed down her spinal column. She turned into the sitting room. There was the rasp of a rough strike and a kerosene lamp sprang to life.

“Greetings! I thought you’d never come.” A familiar voice—so why did it give her such a shock?

“Don’t mess with me,” she said, swallowing hard. She had the Mauser. “Lift up the light.”

He illuminated his face. “Did you buy some sweet dresses, Zemfira?”

Captain Sagan sat in the chair, wearing an illfitting black suit with a string tie. A fur coat lay on the floor.

“What are you doing here?” She was conscious that her voice sounded high and a little squeaky.

“Your comrade’s not coming. We picked him up. Tomorrow, the Special Commission’ll sentence him to two years of Siberian exile. Nothing too serious. So rather than leave you to waste your evening, I came instead.”

She shrugged, struggling to remain calm. “So? This safe house will no longer be safe. If you’re not arresting me, I’ll go home and get some sleep. Good night.” As she turned, she remembered Mendel’s order. She needed to get to know Sagan better. Besides, she was curious as to why he was here. “Or perhaps it’s too late for sleep?”

“I think so,” he said, pushing back his hair and looking younger suddenly. “Are you a night owl?”

“I feel lazy in the mornings but I come to life at night. All this conspiracy suits me. What about you, Captain? If I’m a night owl, you’re a bat.”

“I live on a knifeedge. Like you and your uncle Mendel. I sleep so little that when I go home to bed, I find I can hardly settle. I get up and read poems. This is what happens to us. We enjoy it so much that it changes us and we can’t do anything else. We conspirators, Sashenka, are like the undead. The vampires. We feed on the blood of the workers, and you feed on the blood of the bloodsuckers themselves who suck the blood of the workers.

Quite Darwinian.”

She laughed aloud and sat on the edge of a metal bed, where the mattress was dyed sepia yellow by the hissing lamp.

“We conspirators? There’s no parallel between us, you police pharaoh. We have a scientific program; you’re simply reacting to us. We’ll win in the end. You’ll be finished. You’re digging the grave of the exploiters for us.”

Captain Sagan chuckled. “Yet I see no sign of this. At the moment, your vaunted Party is just a few freaks: the intellectual Mendel Barmakid, a worker named Shlyapnikov, a middleclass boy named Scriabin (Party alias Molotov), a few workers’ circles, some troublemakers at the front. Lenin’s abroad, and the rest are in Siberia. That leaves you, Sashenka.

There can’t be more than a thousand experienced Bolsheviks in the whole of Russia. But you’re having a lot of fun, aren’t you? Playing the revolutionary.”

“You’re deluding yourself, Sagan,” she said hotly. “The lines are growing longer, the people getting angrier, hungrier. They want peace and you’re asking them to die for Nicholas the Last, Nicholas the Bloody, the German traitor Alexandra and the pervert Rasputin…”

“Whom you know all about from your mother. Let me try some thoughts on you. Your parents are the very definition of the corruption of the Russian system.”

“Agreed.”

“The aspirations and rights of the workers and peasants are totally ignored by the present system.”

“True.”

“And we know that the peasants need food but they also need rights and representation, and protection from the capitalists. They must have land, and they are desperate for peace.

Your father’s dream of a progressive group taking power is too little, too late. We need a real change.”

“Since we agree on everything, why aren’t you a Bolshevik?”

“Because I believe a revolution could come soon.”

“So do I,” said Sashenka.

“No, you don’t. As a Marxist, you know a socialist revolution isn’t yet possible. The Russian proletariat isn’t yet developed. That’s where we differ. According to you, there’ll be no Bolshevik revolution.”

Sashenka sighed. “Our beliefs are so close. It’s a shame we don’t agree on that.”

They were silent for a moment then Sagan changed the subject. “You’ve heard the new Mayakovsky?”

“Can you recite it?”

“Let me try:

To you who lived from orgy to orgy

To you who love only wine and food…

Sashenka took it up:

Why should I give my life for your convenience?

I’d be better off serving pineapple water

To the whore at the bar.

“Beautifully declaimed, Mademoiselle Zeitlin. I salute you!”

“In our country, poetry’s more powerful than howitzers.”

“You’re right. We should use poetry more and the gallows less.”

She watched him closely, keenly aware that both of them were risking their lives in what Mendel called the Superlative Game.

Her hand was on the frozen butt of the Mauser. A few weeks previously, Mendel had arranged for her to be taken out of the city to the birch forests and taught how to shoot: soon she could hit the target more than she missed it. When the Party ordered her to kill Sagan, she would do so.

“What are you carrying?”

The gun at her fingertips made her heart thump. She heard her voice and it did not sound like hers anymore. It was stranger, deeper, surprisingly calm. “Arrest me if you wish.

Then you can have some Medusa of a policewoman search me.”

“There’s only one big difference between us, Sashenka. I believe human life is sacred. You believe in terror. Why do your comrades have to kill? I wonder if there is something in their mentality that suits them to this creed? Are they criminals or madmen?”

She stood up again. “Do you have a home to go to, Captain? Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Children?”

“Not yet.”

“Happy?” Sashenka rubbed her eyes, now weary.

“Are any marriages happy?” he answered.

“I pity you,” she said. “I’ll never marry. Good night.”

“One thing, Zemfira: do you think there’s anywhere I’d rather be than here?”

Sashenka frowned. “That’s no compliment. I suspect most men don’t want to go home.

Particularly when they’re vampires like you and me.” We are both armed, she thought almost deliriously. We could both die tonight.

Outside again, Sashenka walked through the streets with a light sleet caressing her face and eyelashes. Sagan was certainly an odd sort of gendarme, she reflected. She was playing along with him, drawing him out. He was older than her, much older, and he had recruited many double agents but his smug confidence in the his gamesmanship was his Achilles heel. Somehow, she’d break him down and deliver him to the Party, like John the Baptist’s head on a platter.

Far away, a train rushed whistling through the night. The black smoke of the factories encircled a silver moon. It was almost dawn: the sky was tinged with pink; the snow a deep purple. The muffled trot of a sleigh approached, and she hailed it.

The bulldog was so cold in her pocket, it burned her fingers.

“The price of oats is up again,” said the coachman, pulling on his tangled beard as they trotted toward the Zeitlin house on Greater Maritime Street.

21

Zeitlin knocked on the door of Ariadna’s boudoir and entered without waiting for an answer. It was midday but she was still in bed, wearing a silk nightgown with blue bows that revealed the bruised white skin of her shoulders. The room smelled of coffee and tuberose. Leonid had brought her breakfast earlier, and the painted wooden tray with its dirty plates and empty glasses now stood on a stand beside the bed. Luda the maid was laying out the dresses for that day—one for a luncheon, one for calling on friends, one for drinks, then one for a dinner. Four outfits, Zeitlin noted. Were so many dresses really necessary?

“Will this do for tea, Baroness?” Luda appeared from the boudoir holding up a crêpedechine dress. “Oh Baron! Good morning.” She bowed.

“Leave us alone, Luda.”

“Yes, Baron.”

“Sit down, Samuil,” said Ariadna, stretching. She was enjoying letting him see her flesh, he could tell. “What is it? Has the Bourse crashed? That’s all you care about, isn’t it?”

“I’ll stand.” He was conscious that he was clenching his cigar between his teeth.

She stiffened. “What’s happened? You always sit down. Shall I send for coffee?” She reached for the bell but was distracted by the smoothness of her upper arm, which she nuzzled against her lips.

“No, thank you.”

“Please yourself. I had such fun last night. I saw the Elder again. He told me such fascinating things, Samuil. Everyone was talking about the new Premier. Samuil?”

“I want a divorce, Ariadna.” There—he’d said it.

There was a long silence, then Zeitlin saw the words register. She shook her head and raised a hand as if trying to speak.