Sashenka

He looked up at her witheringly. “Mademoiselle, your life as you knew it is over. You will probably be sentenced by the Commission to the maximum five years of exile in Yeniseisk, close to the Arctic Circle. Yes, five years. You may never come back. The harsh sentence reflects your treason during wartime and, as you are a Jew, next time it will be harsher still.”

“Five years!” Her breaths grew quick and shallow. “It’s your war, Captain Sagan, a slaughter of working men on the orders of emperors and kings, not our war.”

“OK, here’s the game. These are the surveillance reports of my agents. Let me read what my files say about a certain person I will call Madame X. You have to guess her real name.” He took a breath, his eyes twinkling, then lowered his voice theatrically. “After following the erotic religion of Arzabyshev’s novel Sanin and taking part in sexual debauchery, she embraced the ‘Eastern’ teachings of the so-called healer Madame Aspasia del Balzo, who revealed through a process called spiritual retrogression that in a former life Mrs. X had been the handmaiden of Mary Magdalene and then the bodice-designer of Joan of Arc.”

“That’s too easy! Madame X is my mother,” said Sashenka. Her nostrils flared and Sagan noticed her lips never quite seemed to close. He turned back to his file.

“In a table-turning session, Madame Aspasia introduced Baroness Zeitlin to Julius Caesar, who told her not to allow her daughter Sashenka to mock their psychic sessions.”

“You’re making it up, Captain,” said Sashenka drily.

“In the lunatic asylum of Piter, we don’t need to make anything up. You appear quite often in this file, mademoiselle, or should I say Comrade Zeitlin. Here we are again. Baroness Zeitlin continues to pursue any road to happiness offered to her. Our investigations reveal that Madame del Balzo was formerly Beryl Crump, illegitimate daughter of Fineas O’Hara Crump, an Irish undertaker from Baltimore, whereabouts unknown. After embracing the teachings of the French hierophant doctor Monsieur Philippe and then the Tibetan healer Dr. Badmaev, Baroness Zeitlin is now a follower of the peasant known to his adepts as ‘Elder,’ whom she asked to exorcize the evil spirits of her daughter Sashenka who she says despises her and has destroyed her spiritual well- being.”

“You’ve made me laugh under interrogation,” Sashenka said, looking solemn. “But don’t think that you’ve got me that easily.”

Sagan spun the file onto his desk, sat back and held up his hands. “Apologies. I wouldn’t for a second underestimate you. I admired your article in the illegal Rabochnii Put— Workers’ Path—newspaper.” He drew out a grubby tabloid journal headed with a red star. “Title: ‘The Science of Dialectical Materialism, the Cannibalistic Imperialist Civil War, and Menshevik Betrayal of the Proletarian Vanguard.’”

“I never wrote that,” she protested.

“Of course not. But it’s very thorough and I understand from one of our agents in Zurich that your Lenin was quite impressed. I don’t imagine any other girls at the Smolny Institute could write such an essay, quoting from Plekhanov, Engels, Bebel, Jack London and Lenin—and that’s just the first page. I don’t mean to patronize.”

“I said I didn’t write it.”

“It’s signed ‘Tovarish Pesets.’ Comrade Snowfox. Your shadows tell me you always wear an Arctic fox fur, a gift from an indulgent father perhaps?”

“A frivolous nom de revolution. Not mine.”

“Come on, Sashenka—if I may call you that. No man would choose that name: we’ve got Comrade Stone, Kamenev, and Comrade Steel, Stalin, both of whom I have personally dispatched to Siberia. And Comrade Molotov, the Hammer. Do you know their real names?”

“No, I—”

“Our Special Section knows everything about your Party. It’s riddled with our informers. So back to ‘Comrade Snowfox.’ Not many women in the Party could carry it off. Alexandra Kollontai perhaps, but we know her revolutionary code name. Anyway she’s in exile and you’re here. By the way, have you read her Love of the Worker Bees?”

“Of course I have,” Sashenka replied, sitting up straight. “Who hasn’t?”

“But I imagine all that free love is more your mother’s style?”

“What my mother does is her own business, and as to my private life, I don’t have one. I don’t want one. All that disgusts me. I despise such trivia.”

The ash-grey eyes looked through him again. There is no one as sanctimonious as a teenage idealist (especially one who is a rich banker’s precious daughter), reflected Sagan. He was impressed with her game, yet was not quite sure what to do: should he release her or keep working on her? She might just be the minnow to hook some bigger fish.

“You know your parents and uncle Gideon Zeitlin all tried to get you released last night.”

“Mama? I’m surprised she’d bother…”

“Sergeant Ivanov! Have you got last night’s report from Rasputin’s place?” Ivanov clomped into the room with the file. Sagan leafed quickly through handwritten papers. “Here we are. Report of Agent Petrovsky: Dark One—that’s our code name for Rasputin in case you hadn’t guessed— talked to Ariadna Zeitlin, Jewess, wife of the industrialist, and acknowledged she had a special subject to discuss. But after a private session with the Dark One on the subject of sin and an unruly scene on the arrival of Madame Lupkina, Zeitlin, accompanied by the American Countess Loris, left the Dark One’s apartment at 3:33 a.m. and was driven to the Aquarium nightclub and then the Astoria Hotel, Mariinsky Square, in the same Russo-Balt landaulet motorcar. Both appeared intoxicated. They visited the suite of Guards Captain Dvinsky, cardsharp and speculator, where…champagne ordered… blah, blah …they left at 5:30 a.m. The Jewess Zeitlin’s stockings were torn and her clothes were in a disordered state. She was driven back to the Zeitlin residence in Greater Maritime Street and the car then conveyed the American to her husband’s apartment on Millionaya, Millionaires’ Row…”

“But… she never mentioned me?”

Sagan shook his head. “No—although her American friend did. Your father was more effective. But,” he raised a finger as her face lit up in expectation, “you’re staying right here. Only as a favor to you, of course. It would ruin your credibility with your comrade revolutionaries if I released you too soon.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“If I do release you now, they may think you’ve become one of my double agents—and then they’d have to rub you out. Don’t think they’d be kinder because you’re a schoolgirl. They’re ice cold. Or they’d assume your rich parents scurried to Rasputin or Andronnikov and bought you out. They’d think—quite rightly in my view—that you’re just a frivolous dilettante. So I’ll be doing you a favor when I make sure you get those five years in the Arctic.”

He watched the flush creep up her neck, flood her cheeks and burn her temples. She’s frightened, he thought, pleased with himself.

“That would be an honor. I’m brave and fear neither knife nor fire,” she said, quoting Zemfira in Pushkin’s “Gypsies.” “Besides, I’ll escape. Everyone does.”

“Not from there you won’t…Zemfira. It’s more likely you’ll die up there. You’ll be buried by strangers in a shallow unmarked grave on the taiga. You’ll never lead any revolutions, never marry, never have children—your very presence on this earth a waste of the time, money and care your family have expended on it.”

He saw a shudder pass right through her from shoulder to shoulder. He allowed the silence to develop.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, her voice shrill with nerves.

“To talk. That’s all,” he said. “I’m interested in your views, Comrade Snowfox. In what someone like you thinks of this regime. What you read. How you see the future. The world’s changing. You and I—whatever our beliefs—are the future.”

“But you and I couldn’t be more different,” she exclaimed. “You believe in the Tsars and landowners and exploiters. You’re the secret fist of this disgusting empire, while I believe it’s doomed and soon it’ll come crashing down. Then the people will rule!”

“Actually we’d probably agree on many things, Sashenka. I too know things must change.”

“History will change the world as surely as the sun rises,” she said. “The classes will vanish. Justice will rule. The Tsars, the princes, my parents and their depraved world, and nobility like you…” She stopped abruptly as if she had said too much.