Sashenka (60 page)

3:22 a.m. The judges return.

Ulrikh: In the name of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Military Tribunal of the
Supreme Court has examined the case and established that Ivan Palitsyn was a member of an anti

Soviet Trotskyite group, connected to Okhrana double agents and White Guardists, and controlled
by the Japanese and French secret services, linked to his wife Alexandra “Sashenka” ZeitlinPalitsyn (known in Party circles as Comrade Snowfox), Mendel Barmakid (known in Party circles as
Comrade Furnace) and the writer Beniamin Golden. Having found Accused Palitsyn guilty of all
said offenses under Article 58, the Tribunal sentences him to the Highest Measure of Punishment,
to be shot. The verdict is final and to be effected without delay…

Katinka was sitting at the Tshaped desk in the Marmoset’s office at the Lubianka, reading the transcript of Vanya’s trial and the originals of his confessions. The Marmoset buffed his nails and read his Manchester United fanzine—but Katinka, her flesh creeping, could hear only the brutal verdict of the judge. Vanya Palitsyn was no longer a historical character to her. He was Roza’s father—and somehow she was going to have to tell her that he’d died so terribly. She was just searching through the papers for a certificate of execution when the door opened and the archives rat, Kuzma, hobbled into the room, pushing his cart with its cats frolicking together on the lower tray.

“Collecting files, Colonel,” murmured Kuzma in his white coat, placing some
papki
on his cart and sorting them into piles.

Katinka returned to Palitsyn’s interrogations: he confessed to the crimes specified by Captain Sagan, whose confessions were also stowed in his file. But here was something odd: the confessions, signed by “Vanya Palitsyn” on the top righthand corner of each page, were filthy, as if they had been splashed in a muddy winter puddle. Had the interrogator spilled his coffee? Only while she was turning the pages did she realize that this muddy spray was surely the spatter of blood. She raised the paper to her face, sniffed it and thought that she could divine the telltale copperiness…Katinka felt disgust for the Marmoset, and for this evil place.

“Excuse me, Colonel,” said Katinka, her head full of Roza’s family and their sufferings.

“There’s no death certificate in Palitsyn’s file. What happened to it?”

“That’s all there is,” said the colonel.

“Was Vanya Palitsyn executed?”

“If it’s in the file, yes; if it’s not, no.”

“I saw Mouche Zeitlin yesterday. She said that the KGB sentenced Sashenka to ‘ten years without rights of correspondence.’ What did that mean?”

“It means she couldn’t receive or send letters or packages.”

“So she could be alive?”

“Sure.”

“But these files are empty. There’s so much missing!”

The Marmoset shrugged and his nonchalance infuriated her.

“I thought we had a deal.” Katinka was aware she was almost shouting. They both glanced at Kuzma, who was edging slowly toward the door in his stiff, cadaverous gait.

“I’m not an alchemist,” said the Marmoset testily.

Now she understood what Maxy had told her: archives start out as sheets of crushed tree pulp but they come to life, they assume the grit of existence, they sing of life and death.

Sometimes they are all that is left of families, and then they metamorphose. The stamps, signatures and instructions on scuffed, stained scraps of curling yellow paper can convey something approaching life, even sometimes love.

The Marmoset came round the table and pulled a chit from the back of the file:
Send files of
Palitsyn case to Central Committee
.

“What does that mean?” she asked him.

“It means it’s not in this file. It’s in another one, and it’s not here. And that is not my problem.”

Just then Kuzma unleashed a jet of gob into his KGB spittoon.

“Comrade Kuzma, how good to see you,” she said, jumping up. The fat marmalade cat sat on the cart licking the scrawny kitten. “How are Utesov and Tseferman, our jazz cats?”

This time, Kuzma opened a toothless mouth and emitted a highpitched yelp of pleasure.

“Ha!”

“I brought them something. I hope they like it,” Katinka said, taking a bottle of milk and a tin of cat food out of her handbag.

Kuzma seized both these objects as if he were in a hurry, snorting loudly and muttering to himself. He produced a brown saucer from his cart and poured out milk for the cats, who immediately started to lap it up with pink tongues. When he spat enthusiastically in a high green arc, Katinka realized that the gobbing was the weathervane of his mood.

The Marmoset sneered at her and shook his head, but Katinka ignored him, smiled at Kuzma instead, and then returned to the next file as the cats purred in the background.

Investigation File June 1939

Case 161375

Mendel Barmakid (Comrade Furnace)

Sashenka’s uncle; Roza’s greatuncle; comrade of Lenin and Stalin, the socalled Conscience of the Party—but the file contained just one piece of paper.

To Narkom L. P. Beria, CommissarGeneral, State Security, first degree
From: Deputy Narkom B. Kobylov, CommissarGeneral, State Security, second degree
12 October 1939

Accused Mendel Barmakid died today 3:00 a.m. NKVD Dr. Medvedev examined prisoner and certified death by cardiac arrest. Medical report attached.

So Mendel died of natural causes. At least she had discovered the fate of one of the family.

“Put the papers down,” ordered the Marmoset.

“But I haven’t gotten to Sashenka’s file!”

“Two more minutes.”

“We paid for these files,” she whispered vehemently at him.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he replied. “Two minutes.”

“You’ve wasted my time. You broke your word!”

“One minute fifty seconds.”

Katinka could barely stand this filthy place where those dear to her employer had suffered grievous sorrow. She wanted to weep, but not under the eyes of the Marmoset. She turned to Sashenka’s file, which contained a single sheet of paper that “read
Please find enclosed the
confession of Accused ZeitlinPalitsyn
. But it was not in there. Just a note:
Send files of Zeitlin

Palitsyn case to Central Committee
.

She cursed herself for her rudeness to the Marmoset. “Sashenka’s confession is missing: please may I have it?”

“You insult me and through me the Soviet Union and the Competent Organs!” He pointed at the white bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky. “You insult Iron Felix!”

“Please! I apologize!”

“I’ll report all this to my superior, General Fursenko, but it is unlikely to be permitted.”

“In that case,” said Katinka, emboldened by the courage of those who had been in far greater peril than she, “I doubt very much Mr. Getman will be interested in helping you sell your spy secrets to the newspapers abroad.”

The Marmoset stared at her, sucked in his cheeks, then crossly got up and opened the door. “Fuck off, you little bitch! Your sort have had their day! You blame everything on us, but America’s done more damage to Russia in a few years than Stalin did in decades! And your oligarch can go fuck his mother. You’re finished in here—get out!”

Katinka stood up, gathered her notebook and handbag and, trying to maintain some dignity, walked out slowly right past Kuzma, who stood outside collating some files on his cart. She was crying: she had spoiled everything with her own foolish temper.

Now she would never discover what happened to Sashenka, never find Carlo. She felt faint. It was hopeless.

17

“You again?” said Mariko sourly. “What did I tell you? Don’t call.”

“But Mariko, please! Just listen one second,” beseeched Katinka, the desperation audible in her voice. “I’m calling from the public phone outside the Lubianka! I’ve been to see Lala in Tbilisi. Just listen one second. I want to thank Marshal Satinov. I’ve learned how your father saved those children, Snowy and Carlo, how he risked his life. They want to thank him.”

A silence. She could hear Mariko breathing.

“My father’s very sick. I’ll tell him. Don’t call again!”

“But please…”

The line was dead. Groaning in frustration, she called Maxy at the Redemption office.

“There you are!” he greeted her affably. “Our sort of research isn’t easy—this happens to me all the time. Don’t lose heart. I’ve got an idea. Meet me at the feet of the poet—Pushkin Square.”

Katinka waved down a Lada car, handing the driver two dollars. She reached the Pushkin statue first. It was a dazzling spring day, the sky metallic blue, the breeze biting, the sunlight raw. In the gasoline fumes and lilac scent, girls were waiting for their lovers beneath the poet, bespectacled students read their notes on the benches, guides in polyester suits lectured American tourists, limousines for German bankers and Russian wheelerdealers drew up at the Pushkin Restaurant.
My verses will be sung throughout all Russia’s vastness
, Katinka read on the monument.
My ashes will outlive and know no pale decay
. Pushkin consoled her, calmed her.

A motorbike scooted up onto the pavement. Maxy pulled off his Viking helmet, holding it by the horns, and kissed her in his overfamiliar way.

“You look flustered,” he said, taking her hand. “Let’s sit in the sun and you can tell me everything.”

Once seated, Katinka told him about her visit to Tbilisi, her night with Lala, her discovery that Roza Getman was Sashenka’s daughter—and her more recent encounter with the KGB.

“You’ve done so well,” Maxy told her. “I’m impressed! But let me interpret some of this for you. Mouche Zeitlin says the KGB told her Sashenka was sentenced to ‘ten years without rights of correspondence.’ Usually that was a euphemism for execution.”

Katinka caught her breath. “But what about the exprisoner who’d seen Sashenka in the camps in the fifties?”

“The KGB liked to trick people that way. The KGB files say Mendel died of ‘cardiac arrest.’

That was another euphemism. It means he died under interrogation: he was beaten to death.”

“So these files have their own language?” she said.

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “There was a terrible randomness in the Terror, but at the same time there were no coincidences in that world: everything was linked by invisible threads.

We just need to find them.
Send files of Palitsyn case to Central Committee
,” he repeated. “I know what that means. Come with me. Climb on.”

Katinka joined him on the back of his bike, pulling her denim skirt down over her thighs.

The engine revved raucously and Maxy weaved in and out of the unruly Moscow traffic, down Tverskaya until he took a sharp left at the statue of Prince Dolgoruky, founder of Moscow, and went down a steep hill. The wind blew in Katinka’s hair and she closed her eyes, allowing the rich spring air to refresh her.

They stopped alongside a Brezhnevite concrete box with a shabby glass front, a dark frieze of Marx, Engels and Lenin over the revolving door.

Maxy scissored off the bike in his leathers and tugged off his helmet, pushing back his hair. She thought him more seventies heavymetal singer than historian. He strode ahead into a marble hall and Katinka followed him, almost running. In the grey foyer, women behind tables sold Bon Jovi CDs, hats and gloves, like a flea market, but at the back, where the entrance to the elevators was guarded by two pimply teenage soldiers, stood a white Lenin bust. Maxy showed his card and they checked Katinka’s passport, kept it and gave her a chit.

Maxy led her up the steps, past a canteen with its moldy cabbagesoup fug and into an elevator, which chugged to the top of the building. Before she could take in her surroundings, he was leading her into the glasswalled reading room with its circular panorama of the roofs of Moscow.

“No time to admire the view,” he whispered as disapproving old Communists looked up crossly from their studies. Maxy’s leathers creaked loudly in the hushed room. “I’ve got a little place for us here.” They sat in a culdesac formed by towering bookshelves. “Wait here,” he said. She listened to the rasp of his biking gear with a smile. Moments later, he returned with a pile of brown
papki
files and sat very close to her. He radiated a blend of leathers, coffee, bike oil and lemon cologne.

“This place,” he whispered, “is the Party archive. You see these
papki
, numbered five hundred fiftyeight? Stalin’s own archive. It’s still officially closed and I don’t think it’ll ever open.” He flipped the first files toward him. “I was looking at these earlier and I noticed Satinov’s name. When it said your files were sent to the Central Committee, that meant to Stalin himself. This is Stalin’s miscellaneous correspondence. Go ahead, Katinka, look under
S
for Satinov.”

She opened the file and found a cover note, stamped by Poskrebyshev at 9:00 p.m. on May 6, 1939:

To J. V. Stalin

Top Secret. It has come to my notice that Ivan “Vanya” Palitsyn ordered surveillance of his wife,
Party member Alexandra “Sashenka” ZeitlinPalitsyn, without the knowledge of Narkom NKVD

or Politburo.

Signed: L. P. Beria, CommissarGeneral, State Security, first degree, Narkom NKVD

“You see,” explained Maxy, “Beria had discovered that Palitsyn was bugging his wife.”

“How did he find out?”

“Probably by a tiny bureaucratic mistake. Wiretaps were always copied to Beria, who decided which to send on to Stalin. Palitsyn, foolish with jealousy, had ordered that the transcripts of his wiretap be shown only to him. Remember how he wrote
no copies
? Probably his secretary forgot this, as secretaries do—and sent it by mistake to Beria, who, by the rules of the time, had to report this abuse of government resources to Stalin himself. Beria had no malice toward the Palitsyns and he knew that, after the May Day party, Stalin took a paternal interest in Sashenka. That’s why his note”—Maxy tapped the cover note—“is neutral. Stalin was often tolerant or even amused by steamy private gossip—unless he felt he had somehow been misled.”