27
“I can only stay for a few minutes,” said the visitor, removing the Caucasian hood that he had always worn in that Petrograd winter, in the early days.
“Oh Hercules, thank God you came!” Sashenka kissed him repeatedly, holding on to him. “We’re going to be all right, aren’t we? You’ve come to tell us how to fix it. Who do we need to talk to? Please tell us!”
They turned off the lights on the veranda, and Hercules Satinov sat at the table with Vanya and Sashenka. She poured the three of them shots of Armenian brandy.
“It’s going to be fine, isn’t it?” she said again. “We’re imagining this, aren’t we? Oh Hercules, what are we going to do?”
“Hush, Sashenka,” said Vanya. “Just let him speak.”
Satinov nodded, his eyes slits of quicksilver in the darkness.
“Listen carefully,” he began. “I don’t know everything but I know that something has changed. They’re working on Mendel and they’ve found something on you.”
“On me?” cried Sashenka. “Vanya, divorce me! I’ll shoot myself.”
“Just listen to him, Sashenka,” said Vanya.
“It’s beyond that now,” said Satinov tersely. “I thought…about the children.”
Sashenka’s blood started to pound.
“Can’t I go and see Beria? I’d do anything. Anything! I could persuade Lavrenti Pavlovich…”
Satinov shook his head and Sashenka sensed the tension running through him. He did not even have time to discuss them. Just the children.
“I could write to Comrade Stalin. He knows me, he’s known me since March 1917 when I typed for Lenin…He knows me.”
Satinov’s eyes flashed, and Sashenka understood that somehow this came from the Instance, the top, the Instantzia.
“You must think only of the children now,” he said simply.
“Oh my God,” Sashenka whispered, red spots whirring before her eyes. “They’ll be sent to one of those orphanages. They’ll be tortured, murdered, abused. Trotsky’s children are dead. All Kamenev’s. All Zinoviev’s. I know what happens in those places…”
“Quiet, Sashenka. What can we do, Hercules?” Vanya asked.
“Can they stay with any of your family?” asked Satinov but Sashenka knew Gideon and Mouche were on the edge of the precipice; his other daughter, Viktoria, was a Party fanatic who would never help tainted children; Mendel was already in the coils of the Lubianka; and Vanya’s parents would probably be arrested soon after them.
“Then Snowy and Carlo must be sent away,” said Satinov. “Immediately. Maybe even tomorrow. To the south. I have friends there who owe me favors. Remember, I was on the ZaKavCom for a long time. Outside the towns, there are ordinary people, unpolitical people. I was tough at times when I worked down there, I broke the backs of our enemies—but when I could, I helped people.”
“Who are these people? What will happen to Snowy and Carlo?” Sashenka was drowning in hysteria: she fought for breath, her mouth gasping, yet she could not take in enough oxygen.
“Sashenka, you have to trust me. I’m Snowy’s godfather. Do you trust me?”
She nodded. No choice: Satinov was all they had.
“Right, they must travel south in secret. I have to go to the Caucasus myself tonight but I can’t travel with them. Someone absolutely trustworthy must take them ‘on holiday’—nothing suspicious about that. Somewhere, that person will hand them over to another person I have in mind.”
“What about Vanya’s parents?”
“Yes, my mother loves the children…,” said Vanya eagerly.
“No,” interrupted Satinov. “They’re at the Granovsky. They’re being watched at all times. They would not be a wise choice; forgive me, Vanya, but their Party-mindedness is both fervent and simpleminded, a dangerous combination.”
“Do you know… someone who would look after the children in the south, someone really kind, kind enough for such beloved…such angels?” Sashenka asked.
Satinov took Sashenka’s hands in his and squeezed them. “Don’t torture yourself. Yes, oh yes, I promise you, Sashenka, I have in mind someone of whom you would approve. But even that person cannot know where they are finally settled.”
“Will they be settled together? Please say they will. They love each other, need each other—and without us…”
Hercules shook his head. “No. If they were in an NKVD orphanage for children of traitors, they’d be split up, their names changed. Besides, there might be an all-Union search for a brother and sister together and they’d find them. They’ll be safer separated. There are thousands of lost children now, millions even, the stations are full of them.”
“But that would mean they’d lose a brother and a sister as well as their parents. They’d cease to be part of the same family. Vanya, I can’t bear it. I can’t go through with it.”
“Yes,” Vanya replied, “you will.”
“They’ll be settled in separate families,” continued Satinov. “I have the families in mind. They’re couples without children, not involved in politics in any way—but decent, kind people. If you come back, if all this is nothing, if you’re just exiled, you won’t be able to live in Moscow for a long time but the children’ll be ready for you, I promise. And they’ll come and join you wherever you are. But if not, and things look bad…”
“Tell me who they are, please, these families.
“No one except me can know where they settle. Helping children of Enemies of the People would cost all of us our heads. But I can do it, Sashenka. The paperwork’ll be lost, and they’ll disappear safely. You’re not alone. Many sent their children to the countryside in thirty-seven. So this is my offer. If you accept this, I swear that I’ll watch over your children as long as I have breath in my body. It will be my life’s mission. But you have to decide right now.”
Vanya looked at Sashenka and she looked at him. Finally she turned to Satinov.
“Oh Hercules,” she croaked—but she nodded.
She tried to hug Satinov but he shrank from her and she understood how he felt because she’d felt it herself. When doomed friends were put on ice in ’37, waiting for arrest, she avoided them as if they were infectious, as if they carried the plague, because in those times such connections could be fatal. Now
“Thank you,” she said softly. “You’re a decent man, an honest Communist.”
“Believe me, I’m not so great,” Satinov said.
“All right,” he said then. “First, I have telegrams to send. Get the children ready tonight. You can send them anytime from tomorrow. Or you can wait until one of you is taken and you know more. You depart tomorrow for Stalinabad, don’t you, Vanya? But if they take you, will you be able to get a message out? I’m leaving tonight on a special Central Committee train so I’ll be in Tiflis tomorrow. I’m heading a new mission and I’ll be in the south for a month. It’s a blessing because it means I can help you. I’ll give you my telegram details. And this is important: if you’re arrested, I need time to settle the children before the Organs come looking. Vanya, you know what I’m saying. Don’t even think about harming yourselves. Give me the cover, whatever it costs you. I’ll use it well, understand? Now, stage one. Would Carolina take them on the first part of the journey?”
Sashenka thought of the stick-thin Volga German woman. For a moment she hesitated. In her flux of fear, Sashenka wondered if the nanny would betray them. Truly they could trust no one. Then, “Yes,” she said, “I believe she’d go to the ends of the earth for those children.”
“Get her,” said Vanya but Sashenka was already knocking on Carolina’s door. When she saw Carolina’s anxious face, she realized that the nanny knew something was wrong—she hardly needed to explain. A few words sufficed.
