“Sleep, Mama. There, there. It’s over.”
“Darling Sashenka, you and me…”
When Ariadna finally slept, Sashenka wept. I don’t want children, she told herself. Never!
19
Sashenka was still asleep in the chair in Ariadna’s boudoir when she heard her mother calling her: “Sashenka! I’ll take you shopping today, just as your father wanted. Chernyshev’s for your day dresses! You might even be lucky enough to have a gown from Madame Brissac like the little Grand Duchesses!”
“But I’ve got to study,” said Sashenka, stretching, and going into her mother’s bedroom.
“Don’t be foolish, my dear,” said her mother cheerfully, as if nothing shocking had happened. “Look at how you dress. Like a schoolteacher!”
Ariadna was having breakfast off a tray on her bed, and the room smelled of coffee, toast, caviar and poached eggs. “We’ve become firm friends, haven’t we,
As Leonid finished serving and left the room, Ariadna winked at Sashenka, who asked herself how her mother could possibly have recovered so absolutely, so shamelessly, from the night’s indulgences. The dissipated require constitutions of steel, she thought.
“I’m not sure I can come.”
“We leave at eleven. Lala’s drawing you a bath.” Sashenka decided to acquiesce. Her days were interminably boring anyway. She lived for the dark hours.
An hour later, the two-tone coffee-hued Benz, the third family car, piloted by Pantameilion sporting what Sashenka privately called his “bandmaster’s garb,” delivered them before the famous windows of mannequins in hats, toques and ball dresses: the Chernyshev couture atelier on the corner of Greater Maritime and Nevsky.
The doors of the fashion emporium were opened by flunkeys in green frock coats. Inside, women wearing white gloves, hats like fruit bowls and tight-waisted dresses, pleated and whaleboned, tried on racks of dresses. The air was dense with perfume and the scent of warm bodies.
Ariadna commandeered the entire right side of the shop, much to Sashenka’s embarrassment. A smiling fever of submissive enthusiasm attended Ariadna’s every whim. At first Sashenka thought the staff were cringing like her at her mother’s brashness but then she realized that the atmosphere reflected the jubilation felt in all luxury shops at the arrival of a very rich client with little taste and less restraint.
A stick insect in a red gown speaking poor French presided over this jamboree, barking orders. The assistants were almost too assiduous: weren’t they smirking a little? Models (who, Sashenka thought, wore far too much foundation) walked up and down in dresses that did not interest her. Her mother pointed at this one or that one, in brocade or lace, with flounces or sequins, and even made her try on a couple. Lala, who accompanied mother and daughter, helped Sashenka into the dresses.
Sashenka had decided to enjoy the trip in order to avoid a quarrel with her mother. But the dressing and undressing, the pulling and pushing, the staring and poking by the skinny non-Frenchwoman, who whipped pins in and out of the fabric with invisible speed, began to rile her. She hated the way she looked in every dress and found herself becoming angry and upset.
“I’m so ugly, Lala, in this. I refuse to wear it! I’d burn it!” Her mother, in her velvet skirt and fur-collar bolero jacket, was a gorgeous swan while Sashenka felt lumpier and fatter than a warthog. She could not bear to look in the mirrors again.
“But Mademoiselle Zeitlin has such a perfect figure for the latest fashions,” said the couturier.
“I want to go home!”
“Poor Sashenka’s tired, aren’t you, darling?” Another wink. “You don’t have to have everything but there were some you liked, weren’t there, sweetie?”
Feeling somewhat sheepish at this, Sashenka nodded.
A wave of relief now passed over the staff. Glasses of Tokai were brought for Baroness Zeitlin, who threw her head back and laughed too loudly, paying in big green notes, and then the satisfied assistants helped the ladies rearrange their furs. Pantameilion followed them out of Chernyshev’s, carrying their purchases in bulging bags, which he quickly stowed in the trunk.
“There!” said Ariadna, settling herself in the car. “Now you have some grown-up dresses at last.”
“But Mama,” replied Sashenka, sickened by the expense and surprised such shops were still open in wartime, “I don’t lead that life. I just wanted something simple. I don’t need ball dresses and tea dresses and day dresses.”
“Oh yes you do,” answered Lala.
“I sometimes change six times in a day,” declared Ariadna. “I wear a day dress in the morning. Then a tea dress and then today I’m going to call on the Lorises in my new chiffon dress with brocade, and then tonight…”
Sashenka could hardly bear to think of her mother at night.
“We women have got to make an effort to find husbands,” explained Ariadna.
“Where to, Baroness?” asked Pantameilion through the speaking tube.
“To the English Shop, Sashenka’s favorite,” answered Ariadna.
Inside the shop, behind the windows that displayed Penhaligon’s bath oils and perfumes, Pears soaps and Fortnum’s Gentleman’s Relish and Cooper’s jams, the women bought a ginger cake and cookies while still lecturing Sashenka about the need for dresses.
“Hello, Sashenka! Is it you? Yes, it is!” Some young students in uniformed greatcoats and caps were lingering outside Chernyshev’s, smirking and pushing against one another. “Naughty Sashenka! We heard about your scrape with the gendarmes!” they called.
Sashenka noticed that the “aesthetes” wore berets, the “dandies” peaked caps. One of the aesthetes, who was heir to some magnate or other, had written her love poems. Sashenka smiled thinly and walked on ahead of her mother and Lala.
“Mademoiselle, what a pleasure to meet again!”
For a moment Sashenka froze, but then her senses returned as Captain Sagan walked briskly through the lurking students. He wore a tweed coat, a tartan tie and a derby hat, all probably bought at the English Shop. He bowed, with a slight smile, raised the derby and kissed her hand.
“I was buying some cufflinks,” he said. “Why is everyone so keen on English style? Why not Scottish or Welsh or even Indian? They’re our allies too.”
Sashenka shook her head and tried to remember what Mendel had ordered her to do. Her heart was thumping in the rhythm of a speeding train. This is it, Comrade Mendel! she told herself.
“I’m sure you never want to see me again, but there’s Mayakovsky to discuss, and remember we never got to Akhmatova? I must rush. I hope I haven’t…embarrassed you.”
“You’ve a hell of a nerve!” she exclaimed.
He raised his derby, and she could not help but notice that he wore his hair long, more like an actor than a policeman.
Sagan waved at a waiting sleigh that slid forward with its bells ringing and carried him off down Nevsky.
Ariadna and Lala caught up with her.
“Sashenka!” said her mother. “Who was that? You could have been a little more friendly.”
But Sashenka now felt invincible, however many silly dresses they had made her try on. She adored the secret nocturnal work of a Bolshevik activist. Now, she thought, I’ll be a real asset to the Party. The house was watched. Sagan must have guessed that they would visit the English Shop, where he would stand out less than at Chernyshev’s. He had spoken to her out of earshot of her mother and governess because he wanted her to know that he had his eye on her. She could not wait to tell Mendel.
On the way home, Ariadna squeezed her daughter’s cheek.
“Sashenka and I are going to be firm friends, firm friends, aren’t we, darling?” her mother kept saying.
Sitting on the tan leather between Ariadna and Lala, Sashenka remembered that in the past, whenever she
