auburn coiffure of a Soviet grande dame of the Brezhnev era.
“You know I’m in charge of collecting all the memoirs of Party members so that they can be cataloged and filed in this special archive?” said Agrippina, sitting in a soft chair.
“Agrippina Constantinovna, thank you for receiving me,” said Katinka.
“My pleasure,” said Agrippina, coldly gracious, haughtily patient.
Katinka realized she had one second to explain herself—or ultimately face the Organs. When she started to speak, she hadn’t yet decided which lie to tell (indeed she had never told a lie, not a serious one, ever) and she knew that every lie would carry a high risk of exposure because all these top Communists knew one another, had been to school together, then to the Institute for Foreign Languages, after which they married each other and lived close to one another in their dachas and bred the next generation of Golden Youth. But already Katinka could hear her own voice sounding different, a lying voice.
“Comrade Agrippina Constantinova,” she started, “I bring you a gift from…Mariko Satinov. You know her, of course?”
Katinka clenched her teeth, trying to conceal her internal torment.
“Mariko?” queried Agrippina, head on one side.
“Yes.”
“I know Comrade Hercules Satinov,” said Agrippina reverently. “Not well of course, but I met him once at a concert at the Conservatoire and in the course of my work here, naturally.”
“Naturally,” agreed Katinka. “But you don’t know Mariko?”
Agrippina shook her head. “But she’s sent me a gift?”
“Yes, yes, by way of introducing me to you. She knows you, comrade, by name because of your dedicated and important work with her father, Comrade Marshal Satinov.”
Agrippina’s nostrils flared nobly as she puffed up her breast and seemed to swell with pride. “Comrade Satinov mentioned me?”
“Oh yes. I’m a friend of the family and he most certainly did mention you when he was telling me about how you helped him write his memoirs. He said he couldn’t have done the job without you.”
“Well, legendary Comrades Gromyko and Mikoyan, with whom I was fortunate enough to work on their books, said that their memoirs would not have been accomplished without my editorial skills.”
“That does not surprise me in the least,” said Katinka, finding that a lie, when it works, is an exhilarating thing, and soon leads to other lies. “Indeed, Comrade Satinov told me, ‘Young comrade, visit Agrippina Constantinovna, that master of editors, that keeper of the holy flame, and she’ll show you how we worked on the memoir, she’ll show you the drafts…’”
“You are a Communist, comrade…?”
“Katinka Vinsky. Yes, I was a Young Pioneer, then Komsomol and now I’m a historian writing a paper for Comrade Satinov about his role in the storming of Berlin.”
“Ah. There are so few young comrades left, how refreshing to meet one,” said Agrippina. She paused, and stopped smiling. “But why hasn’t Comrade Satinov called me? He knows he should make an appointment…”
“He is very ill,” said Katinka. “Lung cancer.”
“I heard. But I should ring his daughter, this Mariko, and check…” She moved toward the phones on the T- shaped desk.
“Wait, Agrippina Constantinova,” said Katinka, a little frantically, “Mariko’s nursing him today…at the Kremlevka Hospital. That’s why I just came without an appointment. Comrade Satinov, in a lucid moment, told Mariko to give you a certain gift—and you would know it was from him.” She patted her package.
“It’s for me?”
“Oh yes.”
“From Mariko Satinov and the marshal?” Her beetle eyes fixed on the gift.
Agrippina wiggled her bottom closer to the edge of her seat so that she was closer to the package. Katinka rested her hand on it protectively. “Do you have Marshal Satinov’s full memoirs here, the manuscript?” Katinka was following Maxy’s instructions.
“Yes, young girl, I do, in this pile.” A blue-ringed hand pointed at the heaps of yellowing manuscripts that covered every inch of the room. “You understand that our famous comrades dictated their memoirs to their assistants or to me personally and then it was my task to edit the book for the Party, according to the guidance of the Central Committee, leaving out any materials that might distract the public. Not all the episodes in Marshal Satinov’s memoirs, as with all the memoirs of our leaders, were included in the final version.”
“Marshal Satinov is most keen for me to glance at those sections…so I can appreciate your editorial work. Before he became too ill in the last day or so, he told Mariko to give you this present as another mark of his gratitude.” Katinka took the package in her hands. “Do you have the manuscript?”
“I really must ring the marshal’s house or speak to the Archive Director about this…”
“If you wish,” said Katinka, “but then I would have to give the gift to someone else.”
That decided the matter. Agrippina fell to her swollen, dimpled knees on the carpet and, bending over the heaps of paper, so that Katinka could again see the scaffolding of her garter belt, she began talking to herself softly, naming each manuscript. Finally, in triumph, she held up Satinov’s memoir. Breathing heavily and pink in the face, she sat back on the chair and focused her eyes on the package.
Katinka waited, expecting Agrippina to hand over the document now resting so comfortably on her lap, but nothing happened. Agrippina looked at her, plucked red eyebrows raised, and Katinka looked back. The atmosphere in the room changed as the air changes when it is about to rain.
“Oh yes, Agrippina Constantinovna, I almost forgot,” said Katinka at last. “A gift from the Satinovs,” and she handed over the weighty package.
Agrippina, beaming, grabbed the bag and drew out an enormous three-hundred-dollar bottle of Chanel No. 5.
“My favorite!” exclaimed Agrippina, hugging the bottle. “How did the marshal remember?”
“May I look at the manuscript?” asked Katinka.
“Only in this room,” answered Agrippina. “There are a few fragments that weren’t published. No one has ever read them except me.”
Katinka felt a sense of foreboding as she took the wad of pages.
“Put your feet up on the divan,” said Agrippina. “Enjoy the cold air of the fans, and the music of Glinka. You may take notes.”
Katinka glanced through the pages quickly. Much of it was familiar from Satinov’s turgid book—“How we conquered the Virgin Lands,” “Building homes for Soviet workers,” “Creating the Motor Tractor Stations,” “An interesting conversation with Comrade Gagarin on our conquest of space” and so on…Another waste of time, thought Katinka, but then, as Agrippina anointed her wrists and neck and even behind her ears with Madame Chanel’s priceless nectar, she found something that made her heart pound.
21
A conversation with J.V. Stalin, January 1940
By Hercules Satinov
One night about 2:00 a.m., I was at my desk in Old Square when the phone rang.
“It’s Poskrebyshev. Comrade Stalin wants to see you at the dacha. There’s a car waiting for you downstairs.”
Stalin favored me. We had made an alliance with Nazi Germany but we knew the war would come soon. The Party had ordered me to supervise the creation of new tanks and artillery for the Red Army. I had been invited to the dacha twice already to discuss my work. So I wasn’t afraid, though when you went to see Stalin you never quite knew where it would end.
The car had chains on its wheels to avoid skidding on the ice—it was minus twenty degrees, a truly freezing winter. We sped up the Mozhaisk Highway and turned off into a drive through a forest of oaks, pines, firs, maples and birches. The occasional guard could be seen against the snows.
