Sashenka (58 page)

“Here, girl, puff up my pillow behind me, and bring me a glass of wine. Ask Nugzar downstairs. Then we must talk. All night. You don’t sleep much when you’re as old as me.

Who wants to be alive at my age? It’s miserable. All my friends are dead and that’s no fun!

My husband’s been dead for forty years. But I think I’ve been waiting. I’ve been waiting for you, darling child. And now you’re here, sent by Marshal Satinov. He wants you to find my lost children, doesn’t he? Are you taking notes, dear?”

Feeling as though she had stepped into a dream, Katinka dug into her bag for her notebook and pen.

“I’m going to tell you about Sashenka, Snowy and Carlo.”

“Wait, I know Sashenka but who’s Snowy and…”

“Don’t you know anything, girl? Snowy and Carlo were Sashenka’s children. Their real names were Volya and Karlmarx. I’m going to tell you their story but first, open the window, will you?” Katinka was only too glad to let in the fragrant air. The dreamy garden seethed outside. The scent of violets, roses and that almondish, appleish
tkemali
blossom slowly penetrated the stuffy room in waves through the slats of the oldfashioned shutters.

From the rooms below, the kitchen cauldrons in which
chakapuli
was boiling released powerful aromas of ginger and nutmeg.

And so it was that, as she drank her wine and ate slices of
khachapuri
brought up by the Georgian warrior from the café, Katinka traveled back in time to an unimaginable epoch in a house on Greater Maritime Street in St. Petersburg, where a rich Jewish banker and his flighty wife brought up a daughter named Sashenka with the help of a young English nanny whose parents had run the Live and Let Live public house in a village named Pegsdon, not far from the market town of Hitchin, Hertfordshire. “Lala” Lewis, as Sashenka had once called her, “and you must call me that too, Katinka,” seemed to know everything about the Zeitlin family. She described the solemn gawky child, bullied and disdained by her mother, loved distantly by her father, nourished by the devotion of her nanny.

What a picture Lala Lewis painted of those times: of cars with split windshields, chrome lights, leather and teak upholstery, carriages and sledges with postilions in top hats and sheepskins; millionaires, counts and revolutionaries, uncles and chauffeurs, breakdowns and suicides.

“I fell in love with Baron Zeitlin right here in this Tbilisi house—it had belonged to him, long, long ago,” Lala told Katinka, and that later he’d asked her to marry him in a
kabinet
at a smart restaurant, the Donan in St. Petersburg.

“Samuil lost everything in 1917, but he rebuilt his career in the Soviet service then lost it all again in 1929, and we returned here. We thought it would be safer. We felt that we didn’t have long so we didn’t waste a moment,” she said. “We so loved each other. Every day was a honeymoon, every kiss was a bonus, a gift. In Moscow, Sashenka and Vanya—as everyone called her husband—were bosses. They knew everyone, even Stalin—Sashenka was a magazine editor and Vanya a secret policeman, probably a terrible butcher, although he seemed a jovial fellow. We longed to see them—I loved Sashenka as much as Samuil did. It was our love of Sashenka that first brought us together, you know. When the NKVD took Samuil away, I knew he was doomed, and I waited for them to take me too. I kept working here in the café; I taught English; I looked after children; I became the best English teacher in the town. I taught the bosses’ children and I still do a little teaching today! But I’m getting ahead of myself. When they took Samuil, I grieved for him. The mail and money I sent him was returned: that meant he was dead. Then they took Sashenka and Vanya too. I despaired then. So imagine my amazement when Samuil came back. Oh, the randomness of death in those times!”

“How did Samuil take Sashenka’s disappearance?”

“When Samuil was sinking in and out of coma on his deathbed, he said, ‘Sashenka darling, my
lisichka
, my little fox, will you kiss me, Sashenka, before I die?’ He was sure Sashenka would come back. So I promised that I’d wait for her instead.”

“Are you tired, Lala?” asked Katinka, anxious about Lala’s strength yet greedy for her stories. “Do you want to sleep for a bit?” She noticed tears seeping down the old lady’s cheeks.

“I’m tired but I’ve waited so long to tell this. You see, when Samuil was in the camps, Comrade Satinov called me to the Viceroy’s Palace with a proposal that I could not refuse.

Listen to me, Katinka. I only have the strength to tell this once.”

“I’m listening, I promise!”

“Hercules Satinov was a hero. He had a young wife and new baby and all the privileges of his rank. He could have been shot for helping Sashenka’s children but he fixed everything.

When everyone else was a lackey, a coward and a killer, he alone dared to be decent. If you write this story, write that!”

“I will,” said Katinka, remembering the sly old marshal and his expression of pain when she asked him about Sashenka and her children.

“At the Viceroy’s Palace—it was then the Communist headquarters—Satinov told me that something terrible had happened to Sashenka and Vanya, and I needed to care for their children. He told me to go to Rostov Station, where I found the children and their nanny, Carolina, in the canteen. They were exhausted, hungry and filthy, but I loved them instantly. It was as if I’d raised them myself because Sashenka had cared for them just like I’d cared for her. Snowy so reminded me of Sashenka that I kissed her the moment I saw her and she melted into my arms! Carlo was adorable, bold and playful—like his father but with Samuil’s eyes and smile, even his dimple. They immediately trusted me, who knows why—perhaps they sensed a connection to their mama. Oh, it was heartbreaking!

First they were parted from father, then mother, then Carolina: she was like a mother to them herself. I left the hotel in Rostov when she was still asleep—I still feel guilty about that—but I hope she understood because she too had risked her life for those children.”

“What happened to her?” asked Katinka but the old lady did not stop, as if afraid to waste an ounce of energy on anything not strictly necessary. Katinka understood suddenly that Lala Lewis was telling her the story that perhaps Satinov could not bear to tell her himself.

Lala sipped her red wine, spilling some on her nightie. A shaky hand tried to wipe it but she missed the stain and soon gave up.

“I begged him to let
me
keep the children but he told me I would be arrested myself and then what? I knew then that I would only have them for the briefest of times, and I needed to make the most of it. Our five days and nights together were too short for me. I’d lost Samuil but gained them. Satinov had given me enough money to feed the children well and we had papers so we could move about openly. I was with
family
. ‘Where’s Mama?

When’s Mama coming back?’ the children asked, but Satinov had told me that I had to tell them their parents had died in an accident. That was a terrible moment. More than ever, they clung to me and to that cushion, that absurd cushion, that became mother and father to darling Snowy, and to that pink rabbit that Carlo kissed at night. I wanted to kiss and hug those children, spoil them, soothe them, heal them. I wanted to cover them in love.

But I couldn’t let them get too close because I knew that I would soon have to disappear too. They slept in my bed, yes, this very bed, and I relished those nights with them, every second. As I lay there between them, with their soft limbs and sweet breath on me, I sobbed for them and Sashenka, but I couldn’t move or make a sound so the tears flowed silently. Like an underground stream. In the morning the pillow was soaked.

“One morning, Snowy kissed me. ‘Can we go home, Lala? Where is Mummy now?’ she asked.

‘I think she’s watching you.’

‘Like the stars in the sky?’

‘Just like that. She’ll always watch you, darling!’

‘Why did she go away and leave us?’

‘She didn’t want to, darling. I know she loved you and Carlo more than anything in the world. At night, wherever you are, I think she’ll kiss your forehead just like this and you won’t awaken. But in the morning, you’ll just feel a light breeze over you and you’ll know she’s been there.’

‘What about Daddy?’

‘Daddy will kiss you too, on the other side of your forehead.’

‘Will you be like our mummy for us?’

“Oh, Katinka, dear child, can you imagine such a conversation? I had to take them to the Lavrenti Beria Orphanage outside town. A hellish place. Even visiting was a bad experience. But there they got the stamps on their papers assigning them to the families who would adopt them. Satinov had arranged it meticulously so they weren’t registered as children of Enemies of the People, just ordinary orphans. How he did it all I don’t know. I dreaded parting with them. I loved them both, Snowy and Carlo. Dear child, I can still smell their skin now, still look into their eyes, still hear their voices—I had to leave them and, worst of all, I had to part brother and sister. They would never see each other again. It was one blow after another!”

Tears ran down her lined cheeks. Katinka was so moved that she too burst into tears and, without a word, she sat on the bed and they held each other. Finally Lala drank a little wine, ate some
khachapuri
, and cleared her throat.

“Are you strong enough to go on?” Katinka asked.

“I am. Are you?” said the old lady, wiping her eyes. “I’m not bad for my age, am I?”

“Who were the families who took them? Can you remember?”

“I never knew the names of the families. Satinov made sure of that. Only he knew. But I remember the day I met them both as if it were yesterday. Oh, it was agony! Carlo was playing with trains in one room at the orphanage. Snowy was creating a dinner party of pillows and cushions. And then the families came. I suppose they were good people but they weren’t like Sashenka or me—not cozy. The Jewish couple—they didn’t say but they were from Odessa or Nikolaev, somewhere on the Black Sea—were kind enough, I think, but quite unsuited to looking after children—he was already middleaged with wild fuzzy hair, some kind of intellectual, and she was a bluestocking. I wanted to tell them that Snowy’s mother was Jewish too so they were her sort in a way. I did explain about Snowy’s favorite toys and games, and in their stiff way they started to play along with her.

That comforted me later. I left Snowy with them, hoping they would get to know one another. But they didn’t. Snowy kept running back to me. ‘Where’s Lala?’ she’d scream.

‘Lala, you won’t leave us, will you, Lala? Where’s Carlo, I want to stay with Carlo! Carlo!’”

“When they took her away, Snowy howled. ‘Lala, you promised, Lala, help me, Lala!’ She wanted me, she wanted her brother. Finally, the nurses and guards had to force her into their car. She was kicking and crying, ‘Lala, you promised!’ At last, her new parents got into the car and drove off into the distance. And I sank onto the floor and howled too, like an animal, in front of everyone in that orphanage…”

Katinka felt exhausted, and yet, in spite of the tragedy, excited too. “That couple from Odessa must have been the Liberharts,” she said. “Roza
is
Snowy.” But Lala kept talking as if she hadn’t heard. “It was the same with Carlo and the peasants.”

“The peasants?” asked Katinka, taking notes.

“The couple who took Carlo. The moment Snowy was gone, he started crying: ‘Where’s Snowy? I want to cuddle Snowy! Lala, you won’t leave me, will you, Lala?’ I barely survived that day. He struggled too as they took him. I can still hear his voice right now…In some ways it was easier for him as he was only three. I prayed he wouldn’t even remember Sashenka and Vanya, and perhaps he didn’t. They were going to rename him. They say three is the borderline between what you remember and what you forget.”

Katinka took Lala’s hands in hers again. “Lala, I’ve got wonderful news for you.”

“What? Is it Sashenka?” She peered at the shadows by the door. “Is Sashenka here? I knew she’d come.”

“No, Lala. We don’t know where Sashenka is.”

“I dream of her so often, you know. I’m sure she’s alive because we all thought Samuil was dead and
he
came back from the dead. Find her, Katinka. Bring her to me.”

“I’m going to do my best, but I have something else to tell you. I think I’ve found your Snowy. The family who adopted her were called Liberhart and they renamed Snowy Roza. I’m going to phone her tonight and bring her to you. Then you can tell her these things yourself.”

Lala looked at Katinka and turned her face away, a hand over her eyes. “I knew I hadn’t waited in vain. That Satinov’s an angel, an angel,” she whispered. Then, sitting up straight, she faced Katinka. “I want to meet Snowy. But don’t leave it too long. I’m not immortal.”

When Katinka stood up, she was dizzy. It seemed as if she had experienced the tragic partings herself. “I must go back to my hotel and phone Roza.”

But the old lady reached up to her. “No, no…stay with me. I’ve waited so long, I’m afraid you won’t return and that this is just a vision. There’s a dream I’ve had so often. Samuil, holding a glass of Georgian wine, leads me into the library, full of old books and strange curiosities, in a ruined mansion wrapped in vines and lilacs. And Sashenka, on a sleigh with bells galloping through the streets of Petersburg, is laughing and saying, ‘Faster, Lala, faster…’ And then I wake up, here in this little room, alone.”

“Of course I’ll stay,” said Katinka, settling down again in the comfortable chair in the corner. She was glad not to have to go back to her unfriendly hotel on the outskirts of town.

During the warm night, she was woken by Lala, who was sitting up in bed. “She was arrested at the school gates, Baron. Yes, the gendarmes arrested her…What shall we do today, Sashenka? Shall we go skating, darling? No, if you’re a good girl, we’ll buy a tin of Huntley & Palmers biscuits at the English Shop on Nevsky. Pantameilion, bring round the sleigh…”

Katinka approached the bed. Lala’s eyes were open and she was holding a photograph to her breast: it was Sashenka in the white pinafore of the Smolny Institute, with the same amused eyes.