Sashenka

Mendel lingered for a moment.

“Who’s in charge?” asked Sashenka. “Where’s Comrade Lenin? Who’s in charge?”

“We are!” Mendel smiled suddenly. “Lenin’s in Geneva. We are the Party leadership.”

“I met Sagan,” she whispered. “Verezin the Horse Guards concierge is the traitor. But I don’t suppose it matters anymore…”

“C-c-comrade!” called Molotov from the lobby, stammer reverberating up the stairs.

“I’ve got to go,” said Mendel. “Check the other apartments for comrades. There’s a meeting at the Taurida Palace. Tell them to report there later.”

Mendel limped down the stairs, leaving Sashenka alone.

She returned to Nevsky, heading home. She ate some solianka soup and a chunk of black Borodinsky bread at the carriage-drivers’ cafe, which was full of workers and coachmen, each telling stories of mayhem, orgies, slaughter, hunger and treason in loud, tipsy voices without listening to anyone else. Coal and oat prices had quadrupled. Even a bowl of soup in the cafe had gone up seven times. There were German agents, Jewish traitors and crooks everywhere.

As Sashenka put some coins into the barrel organ, which incongruously played “God Save the Tsar,” raising guffaws from the coachmen, the streets grew darker. There were distant sounds like lions coughing in the night, the groan grew into a deafening roar and the hut shook. At first she could not understand why—then she realized that as she had been eating, the coachmen’s cafe had been surrounded, overrun by a sea of people in dark coats. They were blocking the streets. There was shooting in the distance and smoke rising, pink against the pale darkness: the Kresty Prison was on fire.

As she walked down Greater Maritime, Sashenka saw a soldier and a girl kissing against a wall. She could not see their faces but the man groped up the girl’s skirt past her stocking tops while the girl tore open his fly buttons. A leg rose up his side like one of the Neva’s bridges opening. The girl mewed and writhed. Sashenka thought of Sagan and the sleigh ride in the snowfields and hurried on.

Outside the Astoria, some soldiers were stealing a Rolls-Royce, punching a uniformed chauffeur. The doorman, an officer and a gendarme ran outside, shouting. The soldiers calmly shot the officer and the gendarme, and the car drove off with its horn blowing.

Presently, a bearded man staggered heartily past her singing, “Nightingale, nightingale,” with a blond woman in a fur coat and Sashenka recognized Gideon and Countess Loris. She was relieved to find friends and was about to hail them when Gideon cupped Missy’s buttocks and pulled her out of the crowd and into a doorway where they started kissing frenziedly.

A volley of shots distracted Sashenka. Figures were climbing up the facade of the Mariinsky Palace and tearing down the double-headed eagle of the Romanovs.

The gendarme’s body lay in the street, splayed so that his white belly bulged out of his trousers, like a dead fish. Exhausted beyond belief, Sashenka stepped over it and hurried down Nevsky—toward the Taurida Palace.

33

“What are you all standing around for?” Ariadna called from the top of the stairs, her hair up, elegant in a flounced dress of shantung silk. The faces of Leonid the butler, the two chauffeurs and the parlormaids were raised toward her as she started to descend.

“Haven’t you heard, Baroness?” It was Pantameilion, always the cheekiest, his neat mustache, oiled hair and sharp chin thrusting impertinently.

“Heard what? Speak up!”

“They’ve formed a Workers’ Soviet at the Taurida Palace,” he said excitedly, “and we’ve heard that—”

“That’s yesterday’s news,” snapped Ariadna. “Please get on with your work.”

“And the crowds say…the Tsar’s abdicated!” said Pantameilion.

“Rubbish! Stop spreading rumors, Pantameilion. Go and decarbonize the car,” replied Ariadna. “The baron would know if anyone did—he’s at the Taurida!”

At that moment, the front door opened and Zeitlin swept in, a commanding figure in his floor-length black coat with a beaver collar and shapka. Ariadna and the servants stared open-mouthed as if he alone could settle the great question of the epoch.

Zeitlin cheerfully tossed his hat at the stand. He appeared years younger, radiating confidence. So there! thought Ariadna, the Tsar is back in control. What nonsense the servants talk! Fools! Peasants!

Zeitlin leaned on his cane and looked up at Ariadna like a tenor about to sing an Italian aria.

“I have news,” he said in a voice quivering with excitement.

There! The Cossacks are guarding the streets, the Germans are retreating, everything will settle down again as it always does, decided Ariadna. Long live the Emperor!

On cue, Lala came down the stairs, Shifra emerged from the Black Way and Delphine the cook from the kitchen, her customary drip dangling from the end of her nose.

“The Emperor has abdicated,” announced Zeitlin. “First in favor of the Tsarevich then in favor of his brother Grand Duke Michael. Prince Lvov has formed a government. All political parties are now legal. That’s it! We’re entering a new era!”

“The Tsar gone!” Leonid crossed himself then started to sob. “Our little father—abdicated!”

Pantameilion grinned insolently, twisting his mustache and whistling through his teeth. The two parlormaids paled.

“Woe is me!” Shifra whispered. “Thrones tumble like in the Book of Revelation!”

“What next? George the Fifth?” said Lala. “What’ll become of me here?”

Delphine started to weep and her perpetual drip separated itself from the cozy berth of her nostrils and fell to the floor. The household had waited twenty years for this historic event but now that it had happened, no one noticed.

“Come on, Leonid,” said Zeitlin, offering the butler his silk handkerchief, a gesture that, Ariadna noted, he would never have made a week earlier. “Pull yourselves together. Nothing changes in my house. Take my coat. What time is lunch, Cook? I’m ravenous.”

Ariadna gripped the marble banisters, watching the servants pull off Zeitlin’s boots. The Emperor was gone. She had grown up with Nicholas II and suddenly felt quite rootless.

Zeitlin leaped up the stairs, taking two at a time, like a young man. Following her into her bedroom, he kissed her on the lips so energetically that it made her head spin and then talked about the new Russia. The crowds were still out of control. The police headquarters was burning; policemen and informers were being killed; soldiers and bandits were driving automobiles and armoured cars around the streets, shooting their rifles in the air. The former Emperor wanted to return to Tsarskoe Selo but was now under arrest, soon to be reunited with his wife and children—they would not be harmed. Grand Duke Michael would turn down the throne.

Zeitlin was elated, he told his wife, because many of his friends from the Kadets and Octobrists were serving in Prince Lvov’s government. The war would go on; he had already been commissioned by the new War Minister to deliver more rifles and howitzers; and it turned out that Sashenka was still a Bolshevik. He had seen her at the Taurida Palace with her comrades—a motley bunch of fanatics—but youth will be youth.

“There, you see, Ariadna? We’re a republic. Russia’s a sort of democracy!”

“What will happen to the Tsar?” asked Ariadna, feeling dazed. “What will happen to us?”

“What do you mean?” replied Zeitlin affably. “There’ll be changes of course. The Poles and Finns want independence, but we’ll be fine. There are opportunities in all this. In fact, when I was in the Taurida, I had a word with…”

Ariadna barely noticed when Zeitlin, still babbling about new ministers and juicy contracts, checked his gold fob watch and went downstairs to his office to make telephone calls. Almost in a trance, she followed him out of her room and watched him descend. She heard the Trotting Chair rumble into action.

Leonid rushed to the front door. Sashenka came into the hall, pale and elated, dressed in that plain blouse and grey skirt, her hair in an ugly bun, and no rouge at all. Ariadna was disappointed in her daughter: why did she dress like a provincial schoolteacher? What a sight the child was! She stank too, of smoke, soup kitchens and the