The smoked-glass doors flew open.
‘Well, Illich, here’s your new office. Your assistants are all waiting for you, ready to get to work.’ Mendel stepped into the room with Comrade Zinoviev, a scruffy Jewish man in a tweed jacket with a frizzy shock of black hair, and Stalin, a small, wiry, moustachioed Georgian wearing a naval jacket and baggy trousers tucked into soft boots.
They stopped at her desk: Zinoviev’s nervous eyes scanned Sashenka’s bosom and skirts while Comrade Stalin, smiling slightly, looked searchingly into her face with eyes the colour of speckled honey. Georgians had a charming way of looking at women, she thought.
The men seemed to be borne on a wave of energy and enthusiasm. Zinoviev smelt of cognac; Stalin reeked of tobacco. He was carrying an unlit pipe in his left hand, a burning cigarette in the corner of his mouth. They turned as a short, squat man with a bald bulging forehead, neat reddish beard and a very bourgeois three-piece suit with tie and watch chain burst into the room. In one hand he held a bowler hat and in the other a wad of newspapers and he was talking relentlessly and hoarsely in a well-educated voice.
‘Good work, Comrade Mendel,’ said Lenin, looking at Sashenka and the others with his twinkling, slanted eyes. ‘This all looks fine. Where’s my office? Ah yes, through there.’ The desk was ready, paper, inkwell and a telephone. ‘Mendel, which is your niece, the one who studied at the Smolny?’
‘That’s me, comrade!’ said Sashenka, standing up and almost curtsying. ‘Comrade Zeitlin.’
‘A Bolshevik from the Smolny, eh? Did you really have to bow to the Empress every morning? Well, well, we represent the workers of the world – but we’re not prejudiced against a decent education, are we, comrades?’
Lenin laughed merrily as he headed towards the glass double doors of his office, then turned briskly, smiling no more. ‘Right, ladies, henceforth you’re working for me. We’re not waiting for power to fall into our laps. We’re going to take power ourselves and smash our enemies into the dust. You’re to be available for work at all times. Often you’ll need to sleep in the office. Make arrangements accordingly. No smoking in this office!’
He pointed at Sashenka. ‘All right, come on in, Comrade Zeitlin, I shall start with you. I’ve got an article to dictate. Let’s go!’
Part Two
Moscow, 1939
1
Dust rose around the limousine as Sashenka watched her husband jump out like a showman from a puff of smoke. The sunlight caught the flash of polished boots, the gleam of an ivory-handled pistol and the scarlet tabs that trimmed the well-pressed blue tunic.
‘I’m home,’ Vanya Palitsyn called up to her on the verandah, waving at the driver to open the boot. ‘Sashenka, bring out the children. Tell them their daddy’s here! I’ve got something for them. And you, darling!’
Sashenka had been lying on a divan on the wooden deck of their country house, trying to read the proofs of her magazine. The one-storey villa with white pillars had been built near Moscow by a Baku oil nabob at the turn of the century. A wave of feathery blossom sailed over her head on the hot wind. The apple and peach trees in the orchard were thick with creamy petals and the verandah smelled of jasmine, hyacinth and honeysuckle. A crackly phonogram of Kozlovsky the tenor sang Lensky’s aria from Eugene Onegin over the fence from the neighbouring dacha – and a male voice joined in heartily.
She had been out there for a while and found herself humming the aria too. Her son, Carlo, aged three and a half, was on her lap and he did not allow her to read anything because he was so demanding and playful. He was actually named Karlmarx but as he was a toddler during the Spanish Civil War, when Sashenka wore a Spanish beret every day, his name was given a Latin turn. ‘Carlo, I’ve got to read this. Go and find Snowy and play with her or ask Carolina to cook you something!’
‘No,’ answered Carlo in his high voice. He was a sturdy, brown-haired boy with a broad dimpled face, already handsome, and was kissing her cheeks. He was built like a bearcub but insisted he was a rabbit. ‘I want to be with my mama. Look, Mamochka, I’m stroking you!’ Sashenka looked down at her son, at his beautiful brown eyes, and kissed him back.
‘You’re going to break hearts, Carlo my little bear!’ she said.
‘I’m not a bearcub, Mama, I’m a bunny rabbit!’
‘All right, Tovarish Zayka,’ she said. ‘You’re my favourite Comrade Bunny-Rabbit in the—’
‘—whole wide world!’ he finished for her. ‘And you’re my best friend!’
Then she’d heard the car bouncing up the drive.
‘Papa’s home!’ Sashenka said, sitting up.
‘Open the gates!’ yelled the driver.
‘All right, coming,’ she heard a man answer. She recognized his voice. It was one of the service staff, the old Cossack in charge of the horses.
The gates swung open. Through them, she could see the little guardhouse at the end of the communal drive with its figures in blue uniforms. They were not really guarding her house – Vanya was quite important now but some big names, Molotov and Zhdanov, both Politburo members, and Marshal Budyonny and Uncle Mendel, lived down the same lane.
The car, a green ZiS, based on the American Lincoln with a long bonnet and a sleek body, swung through the gates, its creaky suspension gasping. It threw up clouds of dust as it came, weaving between the chickens, ducks and barking dogs. The children’s pony, tied at the gate, watched impassively.
‘Look, Comrade Bunny-Rabbit, it’s Daddy!’
‘I only want to kiss Mummy!’ insisted Carlo, but he jumped down anyway and rushed to hug his father.
Sashenka followed him down the wooden steps. ‘Vanya, what a nice surprise! You must be boiling in those boots!’ But the wearing of boots at one’s desk, even in high summer – and the Moscow plain was hot that May – was more about the military machismo of the Bolsheviks than comfort or utility. Comrade Stalin wore boots at all times.
Carlo flung himself into Vanya’s arms. His father gathered him up and whirled him round and round. Carlo squeaked with glee.
‘How was the parade?’ asked Sashenka, watching son and father, who were so alike.
‘We missed you on the VIP stand,’ replied her husband. ‘The new planes were beautiful. I saw Mendel – and my new boss with his Georgians. Satinov said he would come by later …’
‘Next year I’ll try to organize things better,’ she promised. She had given Carolina the morning off to see the parade but the nanny was already back. At first, Sashenka had regretted missing the show in Red Square that demonstrated Soviet power, with its ranks of shockworkers, soldiers and athletes in gorgeous uniforms, and its display of planes and tanks. The might of the army filled her with pride at what they had achieved since 1917, and she enjoyed greeting the leaders beside her in the VIP seats. But this year she’d wanted to be home with her children at the dacha.
‘Is Uncle Hercules coming for the party?’ asked Carlo. ‘I want to play with him!’
‘Papochka says he’s coming but you’ll probably be asleep, Bunny.’
Vanya squeezed Sashenka’s narrow waist and took her face between his huge hands and kissed her.
‘You’re so lovely, darling,’ he said. ‘How are you?’
She slipped out of his grasp. ‘I’m exhausted, Vanya, after the women’s group and the plans for the school and orphanage. There was a problem at the printer’s, some idiotic typographical error—’
‘Nothing serious?’ Sashenka saw his eyes narrow and hastened to reassure him. The Terror was over but even a proofing mistake could be dangerous. Vanya and Sashenka had not forgotten the fate of the typesetter who had put ‘Solin’ (Man of Salt) instead of ‘Stalin’ (Man of Steel).
‘No, no, nothing like that, and then Carolina burned the pirozhki and Carlo sobbed … What’s all that?’ she asked, pointing at the boxes in the car.
‘Is it a present for me?’ asked Carlo.
‘Wait and see,’ answered Vanya, laughing. He unhooked the leather strap acr
oss his barrel chest that was linked to his belt and gun holster, tossing everything to his driver, Razum. Throwing off his blue tunic, he whirled it round his head to reveal a white shirt and braces holding up blue trousers with red stripes tucked into boots. Returning to the car, he helped Razum, who wore the same uniform, to pull out three large parcels wrapped up in blue paper.
Razum was an old boxer with a broken nose. He was a real veteran with a scar on his right cheek that he claimed to have received from General Skuro himself in the Civil War (though Vanya joked that he actually got it by falling drunkenly through a pane of glass).
Placing the two smaller parcels by the car, Vanya and Razum slowly carried the third towards the house.
‘Papochka!’ Their five-year-old daughter, Snowy, holding a pink cushion, ran out of the house, in nothing but shorts, to hug her father. Vanya lifted her up in his arms and kissed her forehead.
‘Look at me! Watch this, Daddy!’ she said, waving her favourite cushion ‘friend’ in the air.
‘We’re always watching you,’ replied Sashenka. ‘Show Daddy your cushion dance.’
Snowy was tall for her age, slim and very pale, hence her nickname, with blue eyes and rosy lips. Sashenka could not quite believe that such a beautiful creature had come from her and Vanya, although she looked a little like Sashenka’s father, the ‘former person’ Samuil Zeitlin, ex-baron, ex-bloodsucker. Sashenka felt a sudden pang of sadness and could not help wondering where he was now. No one knew if he was among the living – and a Bolshevik did not ask.
Snowy kicked her legs high, waving the cushion and skipping like a colt. ‘Look, Papochka, do you like my new cushion dance?’ She performed her crazy jig that always ended with ‘Giddy-gush, giddy-gush, giddy, giddy-up, giddy-gush!’ Sashenka clapped. Vanya laughed. She could do no wrong in his eyes.
‘Look!’ Snowy pointed to a scarlet butterfly and pretended to fly after it, waving her hands as wings.
‘You’ll be in the Bolshoi yet!’ said Vanya. ‘An Artist of the People!’
Snowy ran back to her father, jumping up and down with much-treasured exuberance, and he picked her up again. He was so tall that her feet were far from the ground. ‘What have you been doing today, Snowy?’
‘I’m not Snowy. Show us the presents, Papochka!’
‘Volya then.’
Volya was her real name – it meant ‘Freedom’ but also ‘Will’, a tribute to the People’s Will, an early revolutionary group – another good revolutionary name, reflected Sashenka, watching them indulgently.
She knew she was fortunate that Vanya was such a gentle father in this steely time of struggle when tenderness was not fashionable among the leaders, though Satinov had whispered to her that even Comrade Stalin did homework every night with his daughter Svetlana. Sashenka and Vanya were a real Soviet team, sharing the load when possible because both worked very hard, and they were both unusually affectionate parents. But then, as Comrade Kaganovich, Stalin’s trusted ally, had told her delegation of the Committee of Wives of Commanders, ‘Bringing up Soviet children is as important as liquidating spies or fighting Fascists, and a Soviet wife should care for her husband and children!’
An angular, beaky woman in sensible shoes and with her grey hair in a bun bustled after the little girl.
‘You must put a hat on, Snowy,’ scolded Carolina, the nanny, a Volga German who also cooked for the family, ‘or you’ll get sunburnt like Carlo!’
Vanya put Snowy back on the ground. ‘Right, time to open the presents,’ he said. ‘But first, this big one is for your lovely mother.’ He and Razum heaved the bulky package on to the verandah. ‘There! Open it!’
‘Can I open it?’ said Snowy, jumping up and down.
‘Can I open it?’ cried Carlo, struggling out of his mother’s arms.
‘Ask Mama!’ said Vanya, smiling at Sashenka. ‘It’s her May Day present!’
‘Of course you can,’ said Sashenka.
‘Come on then, Comrades Cushion and Bunny-Rabbit!’ said their father. They tore at the paper until there in the blazing sun stood a voluptuous, cream-coloured refrigerator with stainless-steel trimmings and the words General Electric in chrome across its front. ‘Pleased, darling?’
Sashenka was delighted. An American fridge would make such a difference to their lives at the dacha, especially in this heat. She hugged Vanya, who tried to kiss her on the lips but she swerved slightly and he got her cheek instead. ‘Thank you, Vanya. But where on earth did you get it?’
‘Well, it’s from the Narkom – the People’s Commissar – for our good work but he said that Comrade Stalin himself had approved the list.’ Behind them the service staff – Razum the driver, Golavaty the Cossack groom with bow legs and a waxed moustache, Carolina the nanny and Artyom the old gardener – admired the American fridge.
But Snowy and Carlo were already tearing at the other parcels, to reveal a metal frame, wheels, handlebars …
‘A bicycle!’ cried Snowy.
‘Oh, Snowy, just what you were hoping for on May Day!’ said Sashenka, catching Vanya’s eye. ‘You really are a lovely daddy, thank you for all of this!’ She took Snowy’s hand. ‘Snowy, say thank you to your wonderful papochka!’
‘Not Snowy. My name is CUSHION! Thank you, Papochka!’ Snowy scampered up to her father and leaned into his arms.
‘You’ve got to thank the Party too and Comrade Stalin!’ said Sashenka. But the children were already trying to balance on the bikes.
‘Thank you, Comrade St …’ Snowy lost interest and chased another butterfly while Carlo tried to bicycle and fell off, which led to tears, cuddles and consoling ice cream indoors.
By mid-afternoon it was too hot to be outside and an oriole was singing. The silver pine forest that surrounded them buzzed with spring, voices murmured nearby, glasses tinkled, horses neighed.
Sashenka swung in the hammock, watching as Vanya, still in his boots and breeches but now bare-chested, broad-shouldered and muscular, worked with his tools to add supporter-wheels to Carlo’s bike, cannibalizing parts from an old pram. Sashenka marvelled at his ingenuity – but of course he was a former lathe-turner, a real worker since his childhood, and she remembered meeting him that first time at the safehouse in Leningrad, when she was sixteen and he a little older. There had been no sentimental courtship or soppy proposal, Sashenka thought proudly, no bourgeois philistinism or rotten liberalism; they were too busy making a revolution. They had just agreed to get married, and had not even registered at the marriage office until the government had moved to Moscow. Then there’d been the Civil War. She’d worked for the Party and taken evening classes at the Industrial College. She and Vanya had set off together into the countryside to squeeze the grain out of the obstinate peasants and collectivize their smallholdings. They shared digs at the House of the Soviets with other couples, and owned nothing. I can’t believe, she thought now, that I’m almost forty already. The Smolny Institute for Noble Imbeciles seemed as distant as the Middle Ages.
Over the fence, the neighbour changed his gramophone record and started to sing along to one of Dunaevsky’s catchy songs from his jazz movie, The Jolly Fellows.
‘Dunaevsky might come by for some zakuski later, Vanya,’ she said. ‘Along with Utesov and some new writers too. Uncle Gideon’s bringing them. He might even persuade Benya Golden to come.’
‘Who?’ he said, his forehead crumpled as he tightened the bolts attaching a wheel to the bicycle.
‘The writer whose stories on the Spanish Civil War I read recently,’ she replied.
Vanya shrugged his bunched shoulders. Sashenka wished he was more interested in singers, writers and film stars. She was – and why shouldn’t she be? Vanya had once called them ‘a rackety bunch of unreliable elements – and your uncle Gideon is the worst’. She knew that Vanya preferred Party and military people but they could be so rigid and dry, and they were worse since the Terror. Besides, she was an editor, and her magazine was read by the wives of all the ‘responsible w
orkers’ – as the leaders were called. It was her job to know glamorous stars.
‘Well, Satinov’s coming and so is Uncle Mendel if you want to talk politics,’ she answered.
‘How many have you asked?’ he said, trying out the balance of the bike.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered dreamily. ‘It’s a big house …’
The dacha was a recent acquisition – and sometimes, in spite of herself, the sounds and smells reminded Sashenka of Zemblishino, the Zeitlin family estate where Mendel had converted her to Marxism.
Sashenka and Vanya had been assigned the dacha a year previously, in the summer of 1938, when they had also been granted the apartment on Granovsky and their driver. The cleansing of the Party had been a brutal and bloody process. Many had failed the test and fallen by the wayside, sentenced to death, the Highest Measure of Punishment in the official terminology. Some of Sashenka’s oldest friends and acquaintances had turned out to be traitors, spies and Trotskyites. She had never realized so many of them wore masks, pretending to be good Communists while actually being Fascists, saboteurs and traitors. With so many comrades vanishing into the ‘meat-grinder’, as it was known, Sashenka had, like all her friends, culled their photos from the family photograph albums, scratching out their faces. Even she and Vanya had been worried, although they were completely committed to the rapture of the Revolution. Their marriage was a Communist marriage too. Sashenka and Vanya shared faith in the Party; for them, the faith was everything. They shared so much even if, she suddenly thought, the differences in their interests had become more marked as they grew older.
But the Terror was over now; they could breathe easy again. The country was ready and united for the coming war against the Hitlerite Fascists.
Vanya stood up and called Snowy, who came scampering around the corner with little Carlo trying to keep up.
‘The bikes are ready.’ He lifted her on to the seat. ‘Now take it slowly, Comrade Cushion, easy now, not too fast, feet on the pedals, now start to pedal …’
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