Sashenka

“Well, do you want to find him?”

He nodded.

“Try the Kiev boardinghouse, room twelve.” This was the response she’d rehearsed with Mendel, who had warned her that she would have to trade some information of her own. Gurstein was apparently expendable.

Sagan did not seem impressed. “He’s a Menshevik, Sashenka. I want a Bolshevik.”

“Gurstein escaped with Senka Shashian from Baku.”

“The insane brigand who robbed banks for Stalin?”

“He’s in room thirteen. You owe me, Comrade Petro. If this was known, the Party’d kill me by morning. Now give me the name of the traitor who betrayed the printing press.”

There was just the crispness of blades slicing frozen snow, and Sashenka could almost feel Sagan weighing up the price of a man’s life versus the value of an agent.

“Verezin,” he said at last.

“The concierge of the Horse Guards barracks?”

“Surprised?”

“Nothing surprises me,” Sashenka said, exultantly.

The sky was furrowed with scarlet, as if ploughed with blood. Rabbits jumped out ahead of the horses and crisscrossed one another, making jubilant leaps. What joy! Sagan gave orders to the coachman, who whipped the horses.

Sashenka sat back and closed her eyes. She had the name. Her mission was successful. The Party would be pleased. She had got what Mendel wanted—not bad, she decided, for a Smolny girl! Somehow, together, she and Sagan had delivered. They had shared the adrenaline that all operatives feel after a successful mission. She had tricked him and, for whatever reason, he had given her his nugget of gold.

A cottage appeared in the distance, probably on the edge of some estate. The temperature was falling, and the ice was stiffening again. A clump of pines looked as if they were made of tarnished silver.

“See, there!” said Sagan, taking her gloved hand in his own. “Isn’t it beautiful? Far away from the struggle in the city. I wanted to show you an exquisite little place that I love.”

“There you are, barin,” said the coachman, raising his eyebrows and spitting. “Just as you ordered.”

“I could live here forever,” said Sagan passionately, pulling off his shapka, his flaxen locks flopping over his eyes. “I might escape out here. I could be happy here, don’t you think?”

A little curl of smoke puffed out of the distant tin chimney. Sagan took her hand and slipped her glove off. Their hands, dry and warm, cleaved together, breathing each other’s skin. Then he took her left hand and slipped it inside his own glove, where her fingers rested closely against his, buried in kid leather and the softest rabbit fur. It seemed impertinent, yes, and horribly intimate, but she found it delicious too. She gasped. The tender skin of her palm seemed to become unbearably sensitive, glowing and prickling against his rough skin. She felt a flush rising up her neck and withdrew her hand from his glove abruptly.

She could feel his eyes on her, but she looked away. That, she decided, had been a step too far.

“Faster! Bistro!” Sagan barked at the driver. The three horses jumped forward and suddenly the driver lost control. The sleigh bounced left and right, the driver shouting, but the snow was uneven, tipping them one way, then the other and finally flipping the sleigh in a powdery tornado of whirling snow until Sashenka found herself flying through the air.

She landed in a soft drift, facedown, and was still for a moment. Sagan was close to her but not moving. Was he alive? What if he was dead? She sat up. The horses were still galloping away, the driver chasing after them and the sleigh upside down. Sagan was still, his face covered in snow.

“Petro!” she called out, crawling over to him. She touched the dimple in his chin.

Sagan sat up laughing, wiping the snow off his long narrow face.

“You gave me a shock,” she said.

“I thought we were both dead,” he replied, and she laughed too.

“Look at us!” she said, “we’re soaked…”

“…and cold,” he said, looking for the sleigh. “And I fear quite alone!”

She saw that his dark pupils were dilated with the excitement of the crash. She put his hat back on his head and they could not stop laughing, like children. Sitting there in the midst of the snowfields, the cottage still far away, the sleigh invisible, he moved his head to rest on her shoulder just as she did the same and they bumped heads, then looked at each other.

Without missing a beat, he kissed her on the lips. No one had ever kissed her before. Thinking of the Party, relishing her success, and remembering that perhaps Mendel was right after all, perhaps Sagan did like her, she allowed him to press his lips on hers. His tongue opened her mouth and licked her lips, teeth, tongue. Her lips tingled and she became drowsy and dreamy. For a moment, just a moment, she closed her eyes and let her head rest against his, and her hand did what it had always wanted to do: stroke the pale hair that reminded her of cotton candy. They had shared personal confidences—the poetry, his marriage and headaches, her family—but nothing so all-embracing as the Superlative Game of conspiracy. The deadly exchange of information formed the climax of a slow, voluptuous polka on the thinnest ice. Sashenka was dizzy and shaky, yet sparks of nervous excitement and a flick of sensuous heat flashed through her.

“Here we are, barin!” cried the sleigh driver, whose entire beard was frosted like a fungus. He had righted his sledge and driven his troika of lathered horses in a big circle to pick them up again. “Apologies for the bump but, well, no broken bones, I see. A picture of health!” and he cackled coarsely. Sagan’s skin was warm, prickly, rough on her cheeks and chin. It burned her—and she broke away. “Whoa!” cried the driver. The sleigh came to a halt beside them with a slushy crunching that sprinkled a shower of frozen stars onto their faces.

Sagan helped her up and brushed the snow off her and then handed her back onto the sleigh. Her hands and knees were quivering. She wiped her lips with her sleeve. She was unsure of herself, unsettled.

Moments later, they arrived at the cottage. Spears of ice with fine points hung down from the eaves, and intricate blossoms of frost made opulent patterns on the windows. The nailed wooden door opened and a smiling pink-cheeked peasant girl in a sheepskin caftan came out, bearing a tray with two glasses of gogol- mogol. The glowering sky spread its soft blanket over the snow, turning it a deep purplish blue.

Afterward, Sagan and Sashenka parted at the station.

She had a rash on her chin. She touched it with her fingertips and, remembering his lips against hers, she shivered.

29

Captain Sagan watched Sashenka’s little train pull away and gather speed, its steam billowing like the sultan-spike of a gendarme’s helmet.

He showed his pass to the stationmaster, who was almost overcome with excitement as Sagan commandeered the fool’s cozy office. Warming himself by the Dutch stove and helping himself to a shot of cognac, he wrote a report to his boss, General Globachev.

Sagan’s temples were tightening, always the start of a reverberating headache. He quickly rubbed some of the medicinal powder onto his gums then sniffed two tokes. Things were not going well. He and the general were more worried about St. Petersburg than he had let onto Sashenka. But both men agreed that a crackdown and a dismissal of the Duma were necessary: it was time, he considered, for the Cossack to wield his nagaika whip. The coca tonic replaced his anxiety with a feeling of all-conquering satisfaction that drummed in his temples.

Ever since his days in the Corps de Pages, Sagan had been one of the top students, winner of the highest prize during the two years of courses at the School for Detectives. He had learned the anthropometric tables of the Bertillon system for describing the features of those under surveillance, won the bull’s-eye prize in Captain Glasfedt’s practical course on firearms and mastered the “Instructions on Organizational Conduct of Internal Agents,” which he had applied punctiliously to Sashenka. He had memorized the urbane orders of Colonel Zubatov,