Sashenka

thought you were a hero. You saved Snowy and Carlo yet you presided over Sashenka’s destruction! Was she sentenced to death? Or did she die in the Gulags? Tell me, tell me! You owe it to her children!”

Satinov’s face tightened as his breathing constricted and his mouth gaped open.

To her shame, Katinka fought back her own tears. “How could you have done such a thing? How could you?”

“What’s going on in here?” Mariko appeared in the doorway, holding a tea tray. “What is it, Papa?”

As Katinka left the room, she looked back at the old man. The oxygen mask was on his face, his lips were blue, a wiry arm was raised—and a gnarled finger pointed toward the door.

19

Judge Ulrikh: Sashenka Zeitlin-Palitsyn, you have confessed to a remarkable conspiracy to kill our heroic leaders, Comrade Stalin and the Politburo, at your own house. We have read your confession. Do you have anything more to say?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: I plotted to kill the great Stalin at my house. I rubbed arsenic and cyanide powder onto the curtains of the room where Comrade Stalin would stand.

Judge Ulrikh: And the gramophone?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: Yes, on the gramophone too. I had heard from various comrades, including my husband Vanya, that Comrade Stalin liked to listen to music after dinner so I dusted the gramophone with cyanide dust.

Judge Satinov: Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn, we need more details…

Satinov was speaking for the first time at the trial. Katinka could almost hear the voices of these flint- hearted men in the pine-paneled office in the Sukhanovka Prison, lit up in a bright electric glare in the middle of the night. NKVD guards in blue stood armed at the doors. Ulrikh, with his bullet-like bald head, sat behind the desk with Satinov and the other judge, all in their Stalinka tunics and gleaming boots.

As soon as she had left that disastrous meeting with Satinov, Katinka had called Maxy, repeating what had been said word for word, trying to disguise her tears. But Maxy was encouraging. Satinov had told her to read his judgment, so she must read it right away. Satinov had told her to read his memoirs—and that must mean something too. Maxy proposed that they meet at midday the next day at the closed Archive for Special Secret Political-Administrative Documents, through the archway off Mayakovsky Square.

Now it was the middle of the night and Katinka was reading the trial in her seedy room at the Moskva Hotel. She poured herself a shot of vodka—for courage and to overcome her exhaustion. Through her little window, the red stars of the Kremlin glowed.

Judge Satinov: How did you procure this cyanide? Tell the Tribunal!

Katinka imagined Sashenka standing at the end of the T-shaped table, pale, thin, battered but still beautiful. But what must she have thought as she was tried for her life and found Hercules Satinov on the Tribunal right there in front of her? She must have struggled to show no emotion, not even a flicker of recognition—everyone would be watching for her reaction and his. But imagine her surprise, her shock—and her overriding concern: are the children safe? Or does Satinov’s presence mean that the children…

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: I will, Comrade Judge. Vanya procured it from the the NKVD Laboratory.

Judge Satinov: How did you know which records to poison?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: I knew Comrade Stalin enjoys Georgian folk music, the songs from the movies Volga, Volga and Jolly Fellows, and the arias of Glinka and Tchaikovsky. So I poisoned those.

Judge Satinov: You were serving the Japanese Emperor, the Polish landowners and the British lords in conspiracy with Trotsky?

Katinka’s skin crawled as she pictured what was going through Sashenka’s mind: Snowy and Carlo—where are you?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: Yes, Trotsky ordered the assassination in diabolical compact with the Japanese Emperor and the British lords.

Judge Satinov: And the network of the White Guard, Captain Sagan, who controlled you on Trotsky’s behalf, forcing you to use the methods he had taught you as a young girl?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: You mean the sexual depravity? Yes, and I used that to recruit further agents such as the writer Benya Golden.

Judge Satinov: Did the writer Golden become an agent?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: I tried to recruit him using the wiles taught me by Captain Sagan but —as I must tell the truth before the Party—Golden was a dilettante non-Party philistine who lacked vigilance but he never joined the conspiracy. He regarded it as “play-acting.”

Judge Ulrikh: You’re amending your confession?

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: I have to tell the truth before Comrade Stalin and the Party. I am myself guilty; my husband and Captain Sagan are guilty but Golden was a child incapable of conspiracy.

Katinka could not help but smile at this. Now she knew that Sashenka had truly loved Benya Golden too. Wasn’t this insult to Golden more romantic than any love song?

Judge Satinov: Comrade Judges, I’m almost overcome with disgust at the evil and depravity of this serpent woman, this black widow spider. Are we ready to consider the case?

Katinka fought back tears as she read this tragic-comic exchange. Did Satinov mean this? Did Sashenka believe he meant it? Sashenka must have looked at her friend, sending him message after message: are the children settled? Are they safe? Or have you betrayed us? A mother’s questions. Katinka lit a cigarette and read on.

Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn: I must declare before the court that my greatest regret and shame are the crimes I’ve committed before the Party and that the future…posterity…will remember me as a scoundrel.

Posterity? Was this a message to Satinov?

Judge Ulrikh (presiding): All right, are we Comrade Judges ready? Any comment?

Judge Lansky (second judge): What wickedness. No other comment.

Judge Ulrikh: Comrade Satinov?

Judge Satinov (third judge): Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn confesses to shocking crimes in a lifetime of deception and mask wearing. I must ask the court to forgive me for saying that, due to the vigilance of the NKVD investigation, we the Soviet people are grateful that our brilliant Leader of the Peoples, Comrade Stalin, is safe, that his loyal comrades Molotov, Voroshilov, Mikoyan, Andreyev and other Politburo members are now safe finally from spies, traitors and Trotskyites, safe in their offices and homes from this poisoning viper in their midst. They are now safe, quite safe. There is only one possible punishment, the way we treat mad, rabid dogs, the justice of the people…Thank you, Comrade Ulrikh.

Katinka could scarcely breathe. She read it again, and then again, and it was unmistakable: the sign. Satinov said ‘safe,’ and then repeated it four times in all. Two ‘safe’s for Snowy, two ‘safe’s for Carlo. So Satinov had not betrayed Sashenka. Instead he was really saying, “Dear friend, die easy if you can, the children are safe! I repeat, the children are safe!”

What relief for Sashenka. Yet the judgment was missing: did she survive after all? There it was, just the same note—Papers sent to Central Committee.

Dawn was coming up over Moscow, as Katinka’s head fell forward onto the transcripts that still rested on her knee.

Judge Ulrikh: Thank you, Comrade Satinov, let us retire to make our judgment.

Judges retire.