Sashenka

He raised his derby, and she could not help but notice that he wore his hair long, more like an actor than a policeman.

Sagan waved at a waiting sleigh that slid forward with its bells ringing and carried him off down Nevsky.

Ariadna and Lala caught up with her.

“Sashenka!” said her mother. “Who was that? You could have been a little more friendly.”

But Sashenka now felt invincible, however many silly dresses they had made her try on. She adored the secret nocturnal work of a Bolshevik activist. Now, she thought, I’ll be a real asset to the Party. The house was watched. Sagan must have guessed that they would visit the English Shop, where he would stand out less than at Chernyshev’s. He had spoken to her out of earshot of her mother and governess because he wanted her to know that he had his eye on her. She could not wait to tell Mendel.

On the way home, Ariadna squeezed her daughter’s cheek.

“Sashenka and I are going to be firm friends, firm friends, aren’t we, darling?” her mother kept saying.

Sitting on the tan leather between Ariadna and Lala, Sashenka remembered that in the past, whenever she had run to her mother for a cuddle, Ariadna had withdrawn from her, saying, “Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Lewis, this is a new dress from Madame Brissac and the child’s got a dirty mouth…”

Last night she had finally got her hug but now she no longer wanted it.

When they reached home, Ariadna took Sashenka’s hand and coaxed her upstairs into her boudoir.

“Come out with me tonight in a new dress that shows off your figure!” she whispered huskily, sniffing the tuberose on her wrist. “After last night, when I saw you coming home late, I know about your secret lover! I won’t tell Papa but we can go out together. I thought you were such a prig, dear Sashenka, never smiling—no wonder you had no suitors—but I was wrong, wasn’t I? Creeping home in the early hours like a pussycat! Who was the tomcat? That tweed suit and derby we saw just now? We’ll wear our gorgeous new gowns and people will think we’re sisters. You and me, we’re just the same…”

But Sashenka had to deliver a Party rubber stamp and the receipt book for contributions. At the safe house, she would meet the comrades and boil the gelatin used to print the leaflets on the hectograph.

Before all those duties, she had to contact Mendel and tell him about her meeting with Sagan.

She longed for the mysteries of the night like the embrace of a lover.

20

Sashenka left the house at 1:00 a.m. Noting the two spooks on the street, she walked up to Nevsky Prospect and into the Europa Hotel. From the lobby she took the service elevator down to the basement, walked through the kitchens, where bloody-aproned porters with shaggy beards were delivering eggs, cabbages and the pink carcasses of pigs and lambs, and out into the street again, where she hailed a troika and left a coded note for Mendel at the Georgian pharmacy on Alexandrovsky Prospect.

At the coachmen’s café outside the Finland Station, she was eating a lukewarm pirozhki and listening to “Yankee Doodle” on the barrel organ for the third time when a young man slipped into the seat opposite her. He was older, but they shared the grey fatigue of the night dweller and the radiant conviction of the revolutionary.

“C-c-collect the b-b-bulldog from the comrade at the Horse Guards,” stuttered the student, who had little hazel eyes, thick steel-rimmed spectacles and a leather worker’s cap on a peculiarly square head. This was Comrade Molotov, Sashenka realized, and he was twenty-six years old. He, Comrade Mendel and Comrade Shlyapnikov were the last Bolshevik leaders at liberty in the whole Empire. When he took off his leather coat, he wore a short jacket and stiff collar like a clerk. Without his cap, his forehead bulged unnaturally. “Ask for C-c-comrade Palitsyn. Anything to report?”

She shook her head.

“G-g-good luck, comrade.” Comrade Molotov was gone. Sashenka felt a thrill run down her spine.

At the Horse Guards, the concierge Verezin let her in again.

“What happened to the sable? And the Arctic fox?” he asked.

“Attracted too much attention,” she said. “Is someone here for me?”

Comrade Ivan Palitsyn sat waiting beside some bottles at the round table by the stove. He stood up when she entered.

“I’m Comrade Vanya,” he said. “I know you. I saw you talk to the workers’ circle at the Putilov Works.” He offered a big red hand.

“I remember you,” she said. “You were the only one who asked a question. I was very nervous.”

“No wonder,” said Vanya, “a girl and an intellectual among us lot. You spoke passionately and we appreciated a girl like you coming to help us.”

Sashenka knew what he meant by “a girl like you” and it touched a nerve. He must have noticed because he added gently, “We come from such different worlds, but you tell me what you know, and I’ll share what I know.”