Sashenka

Vera and Vika: what a pair of sourpusses! I’m a coward, an incorrigible shameful hedonist—but I’m so happy! Dizzy with anticipation! What’s wrong with happiness? We make our own lives! What are humans? We’re just animals. I’ll die young. I won’t make old bones so I’m just doing what my species does. Besides, I had to go! I have an article to deliver to the newspaper.

He smelled the icy air. Strange sounds echoed in the distance. Gunshots crackled, factory whistles sang, engines revved and screeched, voices chanted—but here all seemed oddly quiet. But as he strode toward the Astoria Hotel, his mind racing with the anticipation of Missy’s bare shoulders, her soft belly, her smells of female sweat and perfume, he stepped out into the wider streets. It started as a murmur, became a throbbing and grew into a roar. The broad boulevards were filling with masses of people, their covered heads and heavy coats making padded bundles of them as if they were automata all marching in the same direction.

Gideon weaved in and out, sometimes letting the current carry him, sometimes standing aside and watching it rush past. He was excited. As a writer, he was witnessing something. But where was the army, the Cossacks?

He stepped into the hotel, home again among its gleaming parquet floors, the shiny gold and black elevators, the dark oak bar.

“The usual, Monsieur Zeitlin?” asked Roustam the barman. Inside the Astoria, the polished formality had given way to a wild and carefree holiday. Tossing his coat and hat at the hat-check girl and forgetting to remove his boots, Gideon padded toward the private room where Baroness Rozen was holding a soiree. A girl in a backless orange dress, a feather boa and yellow shoes—what Vera called a woman of easy virtue, but what Gideon affectionately called a bubeleh—hailed him like an old friend, and he beamed at her. She was holding a drink and offering him a sip. The receptionists laughed at her: were they drunk too? A couple, an officer and what appeared to be a respectable lady wearing a double rope of pearls, sat kissing on the sofa in the foyer as if they were in a kabinet, not a public place. A doorman opened the double doors to the party and Gideon noticed that the red-faced servant did not bow, just smirked as if he knew what was inside Gideon’s head.

Gideon almost fell into the room, pushing through uniforms and shoulder boards, frock coats and gowns, hearing them discussing the situation in the streets—until he saw a helmet of blond hair, some pale shoulders and a long gloved arm with a gold-tipped cigarette and the smoke curling round above it like a snake from a basket.

“So you came,” Missy Loris said in her American accent.

“Was I meant to?”

Her smile raised those comely laughter dimples in her cheeks. “Gideon, what’s happening out there?”

He put his lips to her little high-set ear. “We could all die tonight, bubeleh! What shall we do in our last moments?” It was one of his favorite lines from the Gideon Manifesto, and any moment now it was going to work.

32

There were no cabs at the Finland Station when Sashenka arrived back in the city. There was hardly anyone on the train except for two old ladies, probably retired teachers, who were earnestly discussing whether the Thirty Abominations, a lesbian novel from before the war, by Lidia Zinovieva-Annibal, was a classic exposition of female sensuality or a disgusting unchristian potboiler.

The argument started politely enough but as the train pulled into the Finland Station the two ladies were shouting at each other, even cursing. “You philistine, Olesya Mikhailovna, it’s pornography plain and simple!”

“You hidebound reptile, Marfa Constantinovna, you’ve never lived, never loved, felt nothing.”

“At least I feared God!”

“You’ve so upset me, I’m having a turn. I need my pills.”

“I won’t give them to you until you admit you’re being utterly unreasonable…”

Sashenka could only smile as she heard the ricochet of gunshots over the city.

The station was eerily empty of its tramps and urchins. Outside, it was dusk but the streets were filled with running people, some with guns. It was snowing again, big dry flakes like barley seeds; the half moon cast a lurid yellow light. Sashenka thought the people looked oddly swollen but realized that many were wearing two coats or padding to fend off the knouts of the Cossacks. A worker from one of the vast metal factories told her there was a standoff at the Alexander Bridge, but before she could ask any more there was shooting and everyone began to run, unsure what they were running from. A female worker from the Putilov Works told her there had been battles on Alexander Bridge and Znamenskaya Square; that some of the Cossacks, the Volynsky Guards, had changed sides and charged the police. An old drunk claimed he was a socialist but then tried to put his hand into Sashenka’s coat. He squeezed her breast and she slapped him and then ran. On the Alexander Bridge, she thought she saw the bodies of policemen. There were no streetcars.

She walked slowly toward home down the famous avenues, now seething with dark figures. Bonfires were lit in the streets. Urchins danced around the flames like demonic gnomes. An arsenal had been stormed: workers now carried rifles. She tramped onward, exhausted yet vibrating with fear and excitement. Whatever Uncle Mendel claimed about the Revolution, the people had not melted away at the first sign of resistance. There was the crackle of more shooting. Two boys, young workers, kissed her on both cheeks and ran on.

She came upon a crowd of soldiers on Nevsky. “Brothers, sisters, daughters, mothers, I propose that we don’t fire on our brethren,” shouted some NCO to cries of “Hurrah! Down with the autocracy!” She tried to find her comrades but they were at none of the coachmen’s cafes or the safe houses on Nevsky.

Hurrying on, Sashenka felt wildly joyful. Was this it? A revolution without leaders? Where were the machine-gun nests and Cossacks and pharaohs? She heard a roaring engine. The people in the streets froze and watched, raising white faces like moons: what could it be? Like a dinosaur, a grey Austin armored car mounted with a howitzer drove haphazardly, gears screaming, in random accelerations and jerking turns, down Nevsky. The crowd scattered as it mounted the pavement and drove straight over a bonfire outside Yeliseyev’s grocery store, and then stopped beside a group of soldiers.

“Can anyone drive this thing?” shouted the driver.

“I can!” A young man with shaggy black hair and bright brown eyes jumped up. “I learned in the army.” It was her comrade Vanya Palitsyn, the Bolshevik metalworker. Sashenka hurried toward him to ask for instructions but he was already inside the armored car, which revved, shook and then accelerated off down the prospect.

“Are you for the Revolution?” asked a stranger, a boy with a Ukrainian accent, a blue nose and a military jacket. It was the first time anyone had used that word.

“I’m a Bolshevik!” Sashenka said proudly. They hugged spontaneously. Soon she was asking the question herself. Strangers embraced around her: a grizzled sergeant-major, a Polish student, a fat woman wearing an apron under her sheepskin, a leather-clad metalworker in a tool belt, even a fashionable woman in a seal coat. Closer to home, cars filled with soldiers waving banners and rifles skidded down Nevsky and Greater Maritime.

Dizzy with the momentum of this chaotic night, Sashenka kept thinking of Sagan. She was keen to make her report to Mendel. She had got the name of the traitor, established Sagan as a Bolshevik source inside the Okhrana, and was now a fully fledged practitioner of the art of conspiracy. She could hand over the direction of their double agent to another comrade. The mission was over, and away from Sagan and the effect he had on her, she was relieved. The Party would be satisfied.

She racked her brain for other Party safe houses. She tried 106 Nevsky. No answer. Then 134. The door was open. She flung herself upstairs, her senses bristling. The door was just opening and she could hear the Jericho trumpet of Mendel’s voice. “What are we doing?” he was shouting.

“I just don’t know,” replied Shlyapnikov, wearing a padded greatcoat. “I’m not sure…”

“Let’s go to G-g-gorky’s apartment,” suggested Molotov, rubbing his bulging forehead. “He’ll know something…”

Shlyapnikov nodded and headed for the door.

“This is it,” she said. Her voice squeaked, not her own. “The Revolution.”

“Don’t lecture the committee, comrade,” answered Shlyapnikov as he and Molotov clumped down the stairs. “You’re a puppy.”