“Where’s Vanya?” asked Vanya’s mother. She pointed savagely at Sashenka. “I always told him you were a class enemy, born and bred. This is your doing, isn’t it?”
“Be quiet for once!” Sashenka retorted. “I’ll explain everything later. Tomorrow you two should go to the dacha or to the village—but for now please go to your rooms. I need to think!”
The old peasants muttered at her rudeness but retreated again.
“That bastard Razum,” spat Carolina.
“From now on, everyone’s a bastard. We’ve just crossed from one species to another,” said Sashenka, holding the little pink cushion. “Carolina, this was at the dacha?”
“Yes.”
“We didn’t bring it back, did we?”
“No, we didn’t. It lives in the playroom there.”
Sashenka turned to her daughter. “Where did this come from, darling?”
“Razum dropped it. That silly old man! He smells!”
“But who took it from the dacha? Did you see someone take it?”
“Yes, silly. Papa took it. I gave it to him to look after and he put it in his pocket.”
“So your papochka remembered us,” murmured Sashenka. “Dear Vanya.” Snowy’s cushion: what signal could be more appropriate? “Good old Razum,” she added.
“Can I have it, Mamochka?”
“Yes, darling heart, you can have it.”
Sashenka looked up at Carolina and the nanny looked back at her: it was an exchange of absolute maternal love, a look of gravity that tolled so poignantly that both women were stunned by it.
In that instant, Sashenka tried to touch, taste, see and feel all the treasured impressions and precious moments of her children’s lives. But she could not hold them and they slipped through her fingers, carried away on the wind.
31
The next morning, Sashenka went to the office. Some would have stayed in bed, claiming illness, but that in itself might arouse suspicions. The arrest of a husband did not always lead to the arrest of the wife. No, she would edit her magazine as she always did and take what came.
As she departed, she kissed the children, inhaled their skin, their hair. She looked into each of their faces in turn. She kissed Carlo’s brown eyes and pressed her lips onto Snowy’s silky forehead.
“I love you. I will always love you. Never forget it. Ever,” she said to each of them, firmly. No tears. Discipline.
“Mama, Mama, can I tell you something?” said Carlo. “You are a silly old pooh!” and he roared with laughter at his wicked joke.
Snowy laughed too but took her mama’s side. “No, she’s not. Mama’s a darling cushion.” High praise indeed.
Carolina stood behind them. Vanya’s parents pulled their coats on. Sashenka hesitated then nodded at them. They nodded too. There was nothing else to say now.
Sashenka shook herself. She craved to kiss Carlo and Snowy again, so craved it that she could wear away their very skin with kisses—but she shuddered and pulled on her coat and opened the door.
“Mama, I love you in my heart,” cried out Carlo. He blew a raspberry at her and then grabbed Snowy’s cushion and trotted off with it.
“Give me that back, you pooh!” Snowy pursued him, away from the adults.
Sashenka seized the moment and was gone, taking a little canvas bag and her handbag. Just like that. The children did not even notice. One moment she was a mother with her children; the next she was gone. It was like jumping out of an airplane: a second that changed everything in life.
As she walked down the elegant wooden staircase, Sashenka could not see for the salty tears swimming across her vision.
But her senses sharpened as she came into the lobby. The guards went quiet as she approached them, and the janitor swept the parking lot with astonishing enthusiasm. When she passed Comrade Andreyev, Party Secretary, and his wife, Deputy People’s Commissar Dora Khazan, coming down to their ZiS, they met her eyes but looked right through her. They were probably going to see Comrade Stalin and Comrade Molotov and Comrade Voroshilov that very day in the corridors of the Kremlin, in the land of the living. They might never cross paths again.
She waved gaily at the guards. One waved back but the other told him off.
She set out for work. The light, the flowers of the Alexander Gardens, the carts and horses, the dust and rumble of all those new building projects, the crocodile of red-scarfed Young Pioneers singing gaily, none of this registered with her.
The pavement did not seem hard. She floated on the air because her shoes, feet, bones were no longer solid. Adrenaline rushed through her, along with the fine coffee she had made during the night.
She suddenly felt the urge to run back and kiss the children again. It was so strong that her muscles actually bunched and started to move but she held them back. Stick to the plan! For them. Any folly, any stupid sentimentality could ruin it.
Her heart drummed, her vision sharpened. She reveled in her heightened senses. On the street, she noticed the janitors watching her as they cleaned their courtyards. The militiamen at the Granovsky corner whispered to one another.
She stopped at the corner and glanced back. Yes: her parents-in-law had come out into the street. On time. Vanya’s mother swung her usual canvas handbag but this time none of the other gossiping peasants in the courtyard greeted her. Vanya’s father looked toward Sashenka but gave no sign of recognition.
Helped by her husband, Vanya’s mother hobbled on her swollen legs down the street in the opposite direction, smoking a cigarette.
Sashenka turned the corner and headed past the Kremlin on her right, the National Hotel on her left, and then up Gorky Street. Just about now, she knew that Carolina would be coming downstairs with the children, taking them for a walk.
She would lead them in the same direction as the grandmother and grandfather, left out of the door.
The guards in the Granovsky guardpost would watch them impassively: who cared? The NKVD was interested in the parents. Besides, they had no orders. Yet.
Sashenka lingered outside the National. She hoped Carolina and the children had caught up with their Palitsyn babushka and dedushka, who would hand over a tiny canvas suitcase. It belonged to Snowy. The plan was to get the children’s suitcases out of the house without the guards noticing.
The children remained with the grandparents. Carolina took the next right and came into Gorky Street just as Sashenka was about to cross. They greeted each other.
“Time for a coffee, Comrade?”
“Of course.” They entered the National Hotel and ordered a coffee in the cafe. Sashenka tried to remain caught up in the cloak-and-dagger moment—but she felt so sick, so desperate, that her gorge rose, and her belly lurched as it had the day that Lala first left her at boarding school and she wanted to chase after her. Frantic, she had broken away from her teacher and sprinted down the Smolny corridors, pushing aside other girls and running outside to the gates, where Lala saw her and cuddled her again. Now that frenzy returned. But Carolina, bony and expressionless, sipped the coffee, kissed Sashenka briskly, and then hurried off with barely a glance, carrying Carlo’s little case, which contained winter clothes, underwear, soap, toothbrush and three bunny rabbits. Sashenka ran through the items: had they remembered everything? What about Carlo’s cookies?
At the door of the cafe, Carolina turned back one more time. She and Sashenka exchanged a last beseeching gaze of the most terrible emotions—love, gratitude, sorrow. Then Carolina set her jaw and was gone. The plan was in motion. Vanya had sent the signal with Razum that Sashenka had to act now. Just as Satinov had suggested, so Sashenka and Carolina had arranged.
