Sashenka

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  ‘This is what the Empire has come to,’ he told Ivanov. ‘Yid spies and influence-peddlers. A scandal every day!’

  ‘Yaaaa!’ the driver yelled, cracking his whip a little too close to Sagan’s nose. The phaeton lurched forward.

  Sagan leaned back and let the lights of Peter the Great’s city flow past him. The brandy was a bullet of molten gold scouring his belly. Here was his life, in the capital of the world’s greatest empire, ruled by its stupidest people in the midst of the most terrible war the world had ever known. Sagan told himself that the Emperor was lucky that he and his colleagues still believed in him and his right to rule; lucky they were so vigilant; lucky that they would stop at nothing to save this fool Tsar and his hysterical wife, whoever her friends were …

  ‘Y’wanna know what I think, barin?’ said the driver, sitting sideways to his passengers, his warthog nose illuminated by the phaeton’s swinging lantern. ‘Oats is going up again! One more price hike and we won’t be able to feed our horses. There was a time, I remember it well, when oats was only …’

  Oats, oats, oats, that was all Sagan heard from the damn drivers of carriages and sleighs. He breathed deeply as the cocaine-charged blood gushed through his temples like a mountain stream.

  7

  ‘Where are you going tonight?’ Zeitlin asked his wife.

  ‘I don’t know,’ sighed Ariadna Zeitlin dreamily. She was reclining on the divan in her flesh-coloured boudoir, dressed only in stockings and a slip. She closed her eyes as her lady’s maid primped her hair with curling tongs. Her voice was low and husky, the words running together as if she was already a little high. ‘Want to come along for the ride?’

  ‘It’s important, my dear.’ He took a chair close to the divan.

  ‘Well, maybe Baroness Rozen’s for cocktails, then a dinner at the Donan, some dancing at the Aquarium – I love that place, have you seen the beautiful fish all around the walls? – and then, well, I’m not sure … Ah Nyuna, let’s see, I fancy something with brocade for tonight.’

  Two maids came out of her dressing room, Nyuna holding a jewellery box, the other girl with a heap of dresses over her arm.

  ‘Come on, Ariadna. I need to know where you’re going,’ snapped Zeitlin.

  Ariadna sat up sharply. ‘What is it? You look quite upset. Has the Bourse crashed or …’ and here she gave him a tender smile, flashing her white teeth, ‘or are you learning how to be jealous? It’s never too late, you know. A girl likes to be cherished.’

  Zeitlin inhaled his cigar. Their marriage had diminished to these brief exchanges before each plunged, separately, into the St Petersburg night, though they still attended balls and formal dinners together. He glanced at the unmade bed, where his wife spent so much time sleeping during the day. He looked at the dresses in batiste, chiffon and silk, at the bottles of potions and scents, at the half-smoked cigarettes, at the healing crystals, and all those other fads and luxuries; but he looked longest at Ariadna with her snow-white skin, her wide shoulders and her violet eyes. She was still beautiful, even if her eyes were bloodshot and the veins stood out in her temples.

  She opened her hands and reached out to him, her tuberose scent mixing deliciously with that of her skin, but he was too anxious to play their usual games.

  ‘Sashenka’s been arrested by the gendarmes,’ he told her. ‘Right at the school gates. She’s in the Kresty for the night. Can you imagine the cells there?’

  Ariadna blinked. A tiny frown appeared on her pale face. ‘It must be a misunderstanding. She’s so bookish, it’s hard to imagine she’d do anything silly.’ She looked at him. ‘Surely you can get her out tonight, Samuil? Call the Interior Minister. Doesn’t he owe you money?’

  ‘I’ve just called Protopopov and he says it’s serious.’

  ‘Nyuna?’ Ariadna beckoned to her lady’s maid. ‘I think I’ll wear the mauve brocade with the gold leaf and flounces from Madame Chanceau, and I’ll have the pearl choker and the sapphire brooch …’

  Zeitlin was losing his patience. ‘That’s enough, Ariadna.’ He switched to Yiddish so the servants could not understand. ‘Stop lolling there like a chorus girl, dammit! We’re talking about Sashenka.’ He switched back to Russian, casting a black glance around the disorderly room: ‘Girls! Leave us alone!’ Zeitlin knew that his tempers were as rare as they were fearsome and the three maids abandoned the dresses and jewels and curling tongs and scurried out.

  ‘Was that really necessary?’ asked Ariadna, her voice quivering, tears welling in her kohl-smeared eyes.

  But Zeitlin was all business. ‘Are you seeing Rasputin?’

  ‘Yes, I’m visiting the Elder Grigory tonight. After midnight. Don’t speak of him in that mocking tone, Samuil. When Dr Badaev’s Mongolian lama hypnotized me at the House of Spirits, he said I needed a special teacher. He was right. The Elder Grigory helps me, nourishes me spiritually. He says I’m a gentle lamb in a metal world, and that you crush me. You think I’m happy in this house?’

  ‘We’re here to talk about Sashenka,’ he protested, but Ariadna’s voice was rising.

  ‘Remember, Samuil, when we used to go to the ballet, every set of binoculars was aimed at me, not the stage? “What is Baroness Zeitlin wearing? Look at her eyes, her jewels, her lovely shoulders …” When the officers looked at me, they thought, there’s a fine racehorse, a thoroughbred – it might be worth having a guilty conscience for that one! Weren’t you proud of me then, Samuil? And now – just look at me!’

  Zeitlin stood up angrily. ‘This is not about you, Ariadna. Try to remember we’re talking about our child!’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m listening …’

  ‘Mendel’s back from exile.’ He saw her shrug. ‘Oh, so you knew that? Well, he’s probably played some part in our daughter’s incarceration.’

  He knelt down beside the divan and took her hands. ‘Look, Protopopov doesn’t control things. Even Premier Sturmer has no influence – he’s about to be replaced. Everything’s in the hands of the Empress and Rasputin. So this time I want you to go to Rasputin’s – I need you to go there! I’m delighted you have access, and I don’t care how long you spend being pawed by the sacred peasant. Tell him he’s in luck tonight. Only you can do this, Ariadna. Just get in there and petition all of them – Rasputin, the Empress’s friends, whoever, to get Sashenka out!’

  ‘You’re sending me on a mission?’ Ariadna shook herself like a cat flicking off rain.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Me on a political mission? I like the sound of that.’ She paused and Zeitlin could almost hear the wheels turning as she came to a decision. ‘I’ll show you what a good mama I am.’ She rose from the divan and pulled the braid cord by her side. ‘Girls – get back in here! I’ve got to look my best.’ The maids returned, looking gingerly at Zeitlin. ‘And what will you be doing, Samuil?’

  ‘I’m going to hold my nose and go to Prince Andronnikov’s. They’ll all be there.’

  Ariadna seized Zeitlin’s face between her hands. Her spicy breath made his eyes water.

  ‘You and me on a mission, Samuil!’

  Despite the coarseness of her skin – the mark of drink and opium – her face, he thought, was still magnificent; the bruised lips, the overbite and long upper lip utterly, selfishly greedy; her shoulders and legs still superb despite the protuberant belly. Whatever her flaws, Ariadna had the look of a woman to whom rough pleasure came almost too easily, as easily as bruises to a ripe peach. Now, with the kohl on her eyes smeared with tears, she looked like a drugged Cleopatra. ‘Samuil, can I take the Russo-Balt?’

  ‘Done,’ said Zeitlin, happy for her to use the limousine. He stood up and kissed her.

  Ariadna gave a little shiver of pleasure, opened the top of her diamond and gold clock, took an Egyptian cigarette out of the hidden compartment, and looked up at him with eyes that held the echo of empty rooms.

  Thinking how she had become like a lost child and blaming himself, he lit her cigarette and then the cold cigar he
was holding.

  ‘I’ll be off then,’ he said, watching her inhale and then open her lips to let the blue smoke dance its way out.

  ‘Good luck, Samuil,’ she called after him.

  He did not want to be late for Prince Andronnikov – Sashenka’s welfare depended on him – yet he stopped and glanced back before he closed the door.

  ‘How does this look? And this? Look, it moves as I walk. See, Galya?’ Ariadna was laughing as the maids bustled around her. ‘Don’t you agree, Nyuna, Worth’s dresses put the rest to shame! I can’t wait for them to see this at the Aquarium …’

  With a sinking heart, Zeitlin realized that the moment his wife left the house she would forget all about him and Sashenka.

  8

  Throughout the night, Sashenka clung to Natasha’s whale-like bulk.

  The older woman snored and when she turned over she pushed Sashenka, who was almost too afraid to move, off the mattress. Sashenka lay there, her hips ground into the freezing stone floor, but grateful just to be next to Natasha, safe. Her mouth felt as if it was ballooning where she had been hit, and her hands were shaking. She was still afraid the monster would hit her again – or maybe she would come and stab her in a frenzy during the night? They would all have knives. Sashenka peered through the semi-darkness at the tangle of female bodies – one half-naked with bare shrivelled breasts and long nipples like bottle-stoppers – sensing the heat and rot rising around her. She prayed someone would come soon to rescue her.

  Lanterns flickered outside the cell, as a warder double-locked the doors. A cleaner mopped the corridors. The smell of naphtha and disinfectant temporarily defeated that of piss and shit, but not for long. Sashenka hoped every grunt and creak and slam signalled her deliverance, but no one came. The interminable night stretched out before her, cold, frightening, hostile.

  ‘We got a message on the cell telegraph that you were coming,’ Natasha had whispered to Sashenka. ‘We’re almost family, you and I. I’m your uncle Mendel’s wife. We met in exile. I bet you didn’t know he married a Yakut? Yes, a real Siberian. Oh, I see – you didn’t know he was married at all. Well, that’s Mendel for you, the born conspirator. I didn’t even know he had a niece until today. Anyway, he trusts you. Keep your wits about you: there are always opportunities …’

  Now Natasha grunted and heaved in her sleep, saying something in her native language. Sashenka remembered that Yakuts believed in shamans and spirits. A woman shouted, ‘I’ll cut your throat!’ Another whimpered, ‘Lost … lost … lost.’ There was a brawl in the men’s cell next door; someone was wounded, and warders dragged him away groaning and brought a mop to clean up. Doors opened and slammed. Sashenka listened to consumptive coughing and squelching bowels, the footsteps of the warders, and the bubbling of Natasha’s stomach. She could not quite believe this was happening to her. Even though Sashenka was proud to be there, the fear, the stink and the endless night were making her desperate. Yet hadn’t Uncle Mendel told her prison was a rite of passage? And what had Natasha the Yakut whispered before she fell asleep? Yes: ‘Mendel trusts you!’

  It was because of Mendel that she was here, because of their meeting the previous summer. The family’s summers were spent at Zemblishino, an estate south of the city near the Warsaw Highway. Jews were not allowed to live in the capital or own property unless they were merchant princes like Baron Zeitlin. Sashenka’s father owned not only the mansion in town but also the manor house with white pillars, the woodlands and the park. Sashenka knew that her father was not the only Jewish magnate in St Petersburg. Another Jewish baron, Poliakoff, the railway king, lived in Prince Menshikov’s old red-brick palace, the first house built in Peter the Great’s new city, on the new quay almost opposite the Winter Palace.

  Each summer Sashenka and Lala were left to their own devices in the country, though sometimes Zeitlin persuaded them to play tennis or go bicycling. Her mother, usually in the frenzy of a neuralgic crisis, mystical fad or broken heart, rarely left her room – and would soon rush back to the city. Lala spent her days collecting mushrooms and blueberries or riding Almaz the chestnut pony. Sashenka read on her own; she was always happy on her own.

  That summer, Uncle Mendel had been staying too. A tiny twisted man with thick pince-nez on a big bent nose and a club foot, he worked all night in the library, smoking self-rolled makhorka cigarettes and brewing Turkish coffee that filled the house with its scalded, nutty aroma. He slept above the stables, lying in all morning, rising only after lunch. He seemed incapable of adapting to the summer, always wearing the same filthy dark suit and a crumpled shirt with a grimy collar. His shoes always had holes in them. Alongside her dapper father and fashionable mother, he really was a stranger from another planet. If he caught Sashenka’s eye, he scowled and glanced away. He looked terribly ill, she thought, with his pale blotchy skin and asthmatic wheeze, the fruit of years in prison and exile in Siberia.

  The family despised Mendel. Even Sashenka’s mother, Mendel’s own sister, disliked him – but she let him stay. ‘He’s all on his own, poor sad creature,’ she would say disdainfully.

  And then one night Sashenka could not sleep. It was 3 a.m. The summer was hot and the heat gathered in her room under the roof. She wanted some lemon juice so she came downstairs, past the portrait of Count Orlov-Chesmensky, a former owner of the manor, the fifteen crystal peacocks on the shelf, and the English grandfather clock, and into the deliciously cool hall with its black and white flagstone floor. She saw the library lights were still on and smelt the coffee and smoke blending in the warm, rosy night.

  Mendel opened the library door and Sashenka stepped aside into the cloakroom, from where she watched her uncle limp out with a gleam in his bloodshot eyes, a sheaf of valuable papers gripped in his claw-like hands.

  The trapped miasma of an entire night’s chainsmoking poured out like a ghostly tidal wave. Sashenka waited until he had gone and then darted into the library to look at the books that so gripped him that he was happy to go to prison for them. The table was empty.

  ‘Curious, Sashenka?’ It was Mendel at the door, his voice incongruously deep and rich, his clothes defiantly moth-eaten.

  She jumped. ‘I was just interested,’ she said.

  ‘In my books?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hide them when I’ve finished. I don’t like people knowing my business or even my thoughts.’ He hesitated. ‘But you’re a serious person. The only intellectual in this family.’

  ‘How do you know that, Uncle, since you’ve never bothered to speak to me?’ Sashenka was delighted and surprised.

  ‘The others are just capitalist decadents and our family rabbi belongs in the Middle Ages. I judge you by what you read. Mayakovsky. Nekrasov. Blok. Jack London.’

  ‘So you’ve been watching me?’

  Mendel’s pince-nez were so greasy the lenses were barely transparent. He limped over to the English collection, the full set of Dickens bound in kid with the gold Zeitlin crest, and pulling out one, he reached behind and handed her a well-thumbed old book: What Is to Be Done? by Chernyshevsky.

  ‘Read it now. When you finish, you’ll find the next book here behind David Copperfield. Understood? We’ll take it from there.’

  ‘Take what? From where?’

  But Mendel was gone and she was alone in the library.

  That was how it started. The next night, she could hardly wait until everyone was asleep before she crept down, savouring the smells of coffee and acrid makhorka tobacco as she drew closer to the set of Dickens.

  ‘Ready for the next? Your analysis of the book?’ Mendel had said without looking up.

  ‘Rakhmetov is the most compelling hero I have ever known,’ she told him, returning his book. ‘He is selfless, dedicated. Nothing stands in the way of his cause. The “special man” touched by history. I want to be like him.’

  ‘We all do,’ he replied. ‘I know many Rakhmetovs. It was the first book I read too. And not just me but Lenin as well.’


  ‘Tell me about Lenin. And what is a Bolshevik? Are you Bolshevik, Menshevik, Socialist Revolutionary, Anarchist?’

  Mendel observed her as if she was a zoological specimen, narrowing his eyes, inhaling the badly rolled makhorka that caught in his throat. He coughed productively.

  ‘What’s it to you? What do you think of Russia today, the workers, the peasants, the war?’

  ‘I don’t know. It seems as if …’ She stopped, aware of his scathing stare.

  ‘Go on. Speak up.’

  ‘It’s all wrong. It’s so unjust. The workers are like slaves. We’re losing the war. Everything’s rotten. Am I a revolutionary? A Bolshevik?’

  Mendel rolled a new cigarette, not hurriedly and with surprising delicacy, licked the paper and lit it. An orange flame flared up and died down.

  ‘You don’t know enough to be anything yet,’ he told her. ‘We must take our time. You are now the sole student on my summer course. Here’s the next book.’ He gave her Victor Hugo’s novel of the French Revolution, 1793.

  The next night she was even more excited.

  ‘Ready for more? Your analysis?’

  ‘Cimourdain had never been seen to weep,’ she quoted Hugo’s description of his hero. ‘He had an inaccessible and frigid virtue. A just but awful man. There are no half-measures for a revolutionary priest who must be infamous and sublime. Cimourdain was sublime, rugged, inhospitably repellent, gloomy but above all pure.’

  ‘Good. If Cimourdain was alive today, he’d be a Bolshevik. You have the sentiment; now you need the science. Marxism is a science. Now read this.’ He held up a novel called Lady Cynthia de Fortescue and the Love of the Cruel Colonel. On its cover stood a lady with vermilion lipstick and cheeks like a puff adder, while a devilishly handsome officer with waxed moustaches and narrowed eyes lurked behind.