Sashenka

walled 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 cul- de-sac 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 fifty-eight? 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” Zeitlin-Palitsyn, without the knowledge of Narkom NKVD or Politburo.

Signed: L. P. Beria, Commissar-General, 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.”

“But then he read the transcripts?”

To: Comrade Ivan Palitsyn, Commissar-General, State Security, third degree

As requested, surveillance and transcript on Alexandra “Sashenka” Zeitlin-Palitsyn, room 403, Metropole Hotel, 6 May 1939 Midday: Zeitlin-Palitsyn left office on Petrovka and walked to Metropole, took elevator to room 403. Writer Benya Golden entered the room fifteen minutes past midday, leaving separately at 3:30 p.m. Snacks and wine were delivered to the room.

Katinka turned the pages and found a place marked with a red crayon:

Golden: God, I love you. You’re so lovely to me, Sashenka.

Zeitlin-Palitsyn: I can’t believe I’m here.

Golden: What, darling? Didn’t I please you enough last time? Until you called my name?

Zeitlin-Palitsyn: How could I forget it? I think I imagined the whole thing. I think you’ve made me delusional.

Golden: Come here. Unbutton me. That’s paradise. Get on your hands and knees on the bed and let me unwrap the present. Oh my God, what a delicious sight. What a sweet [word deleted]. How [word deleted] you are. If only your tight-assed Communist wives’ committee could see you now…

Katinka was peeping into an intimate pocket of time, a vanished wrinkle of private passion, in a cruel world, long ago. Her eyes were drawn to the words underlined by three harsh thick crayon marks.

Zeitlin-Palitsyn: Oh my God, Benya, I love your [word indecipherable], I can’t believe you got me to do that, I thought I might die of pleasure…

“That red crayon there, the underlining, is Stalin himself,” said Maxy, pulling a fat oilskinned notebook out of his stack of files. “This is Poskrebyshev’s list of visitors to Stalin’s office here on Trinity Square in the Kremlin— known to the cognoscenti as the Little Corner.” He opened it. Poskrebyshev’s tiny, immaculate handwriting listed names, dates, times. “Look up May seventh, evening.”

Katinka read the page:

10:00 p.m. L. P. Beria.

Leaves 10:30 p.m.

10:30 p.m. H. A. Satinov.

Leaves 10:45 p.m.

10:40 p.m. L. P. Beria.

Leaves 10:52 p.m.

“So Satinov was there soon after Beria showed Stalin the transcripts. Why?”

“Beria comes to see the Master and gives him the transcripts. Stalin reads this hot stuff, red crayon in hand. He orders Poskrebyshev to summon Satinov, who’s at Old Square, Party headquarters, up the hill. The vertushka telephone rings on Satinov’s desk. Poskrebyshev says, ‘Comrade Satinov, Comrade Stalin awaits you now. A Buick will collect you.’ Stalin’s already appalled by what Sashenka and Benya have done.” Maxy read Stalin’s note to Beria:

I misjudged this morally corrupt woman. I thought she was a decent Soviet woman. She teaches Soviet women how to be housewives. She’s the wife of a top Chekist. Who knows what secrets she chatters about? She behaves like a streetwalker. Comrade Beria, perhaps we should check her out. J. St.

“You know what ‘checking out’ means?” asked Maxy. “It means arrest them. You see how, in a few accidental steps, this reached Stalin?”

Katinka shook her head, her heart pounding in sympathy. If it hadn’t been for Stalin’s visit, if it hadn’t been for Sashenka’s affair, if it hadn’t been for Vanya’s jealousy…

“Isn’t there anything else in the file?” she asked.

Maxy sighed. “No, not in this archive. But the Russian State Archive of Special Secret Political-Administrative Documents off Mayakovsky Square is filled with Stalin’s papers and somewhere in there, one day, future generations may find out what happened, if they care. But it’s closed. These are all the records we can read. Oh, except for one small thing.” He picked up Stalin’s note again and pointed to the top right-hand corner, where, in small letters, his red crayon had written these words: Bicho to curate.

“What does that mean?” Katinka asked.

“I thought I knew everything about the Stalin era,” said Maxy, “but for once I can’t work it out.”

Katinka swayed with exhaustion and sadness. “I don’t think I’ll ever find Sashenka or little Carlo,” she whispered. “Poor Roza, how am I going to tell her?”

18

Outside the archive, the streets were already dark. Still shocked by what they’d found, Maxy and Katinka parted awkwardly like two teenagers after an unsatisfactory date. As Maxy rode away, Katinka walked slowly up the dark hill toward the glitzy neon lights of Tverskaya just beyond Prince Dolgoruky’s statue. Slowing to adjust the way her bag was hanging over her shoulder, she became aware that someone was walking much too close to her.

She quickened her step but so did the shadow. She slowed to let him overtake but he slowed too. She was suddenly frightened: was it the KGB? Or a Chechen mugger? Then the figure gathered up a wad of phlegm in his mouth and launched it in a phosphorescent, light-catching arc toward the gutter.

“Kuzma!” she gasped. “What are you—”

Without a word he pulled her aside, behind the statue, where there was no one around. He was holding a big canvas bag, which he opened to reveal the marmalade jazz cat and its kitten. “Cozy!” he blurted out in his queer,