Sashenka

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  There was a sudden movement behind them.

  ‘Shalom aleichem!’ boomed a broad-shouldered, bearded man in a sable greatcoat, astrakhan hat and high boots like a hussar. ‘Don’t ask me about last night! I lost every kopek in my pocket – but who’s counting?’

  The door to the baron’s sanctuary had been shoved open and Gideon Zeitlin’s aura of cologne, vodka and animal sweat swept into the study. The baron winced, knowing that his brother tended to call on the house only when he needed his funds replenished.

  ‘Last night’s girl cost me a pretty fortune,’ said Gideon. ‘First the cards. Then dinner at the Donan. Cognac at the Europa. Gypsies at the Bear. But it was worth it. That’s paradise on earth, eh? Apologies to you, Mrs Lewis!’ He made a theatrical bow, big black eyes glinting beneath bushy black brows. ‘But what else is there in life except fresh lips and skin? Tomorrow be damned! I feel marvellous!’

  Gideon Zeitlin touched Mrs Lewis’s neck, making her jump, as he sniffed her carefully pinned hair. ‘Lovely!’ he murmured as he strode round the desk to kiss his elder brother wetly, twice on the cheeks and once on the lips.

  He tossed his wet fur coat into the corner, where it settled like a living animal, and arranged himself on the divan.

  ‘Gideon, Sashenka’s in trouble …’ Zeitlin started wearily.

  ‘I heard, Samoilo. Those ideeeots!’ bellowed Gideon, who blamed all the mistakes of mankind on a conspiracy of imbeciles that included everyone except himself. ‘I was at the newspaper and I got a call from a source. I haven’t slept from last night yet. But I’m glad Mama’s not alive to see this one. Are you feeling OK, Samoilo? Your ticker? How’s your indigestion? Lungs? Show me your tongue?’

  ‘I’m bearing up,’ replied Zeitlin. ‘Let me see yours.’

  Although the brothers were opposites in appearance and character, the younger impecunious journalist and the older fastidious nabob shared the very Jewish conviction that they were on the verge of death at all times from angina pectoris, weak lungs (with a tendency towards consumption), unstable digestion and stomach ulcers, exacerbated by neuralgia, constipation and haemorrhoids. St Petersburg’s finest doctors competed with the specialists of Berlin, London and the resorts of Biarritz, Bad Ems and Carlsbad for the right to treat these invalids, whose bodies were living mines of gold for the medical profession.

  ‘I’ll die at any moment, probably making love to the general’s girl again – but what the devil! Gehenna – Hell – the Book of Life and all that Jewish claptrap be damned! Everything in life is here and now. There’s nothing after! The commander-in-chief and the general staff’ – Gideon’s long-suffering wife Vera and their two daughters – ‘are cursing me. Me? Of all people! Well, I just can’t resist it. I won’t ask again for a long time, for years even! My gambling debts are …’ He whispered into his brother’s ear. ‘Now hand over my bar mitzvah present, Samoilo: gimme the mazuma and I’m off on my quest!’

  ‘Where to?’ Zeitlin unlocked a wooden box on his desk, using a key that hung on his gold watch chain. He handed over two hundred roubles, quite a sum.

  Zeitlin spoke Russian like a court chamberlain, without a Jewish accent, and he thought that Gideon scattered his speech with Yiddish and Hebrew phrases just to tease him about his rise, to remind him of whence they came. In his view, his younger brother still carried the smell of their father’s courtyard in the Pale of Settlement, where the Jews of the Tsarist Empire had to live.

  He watched as Gideon seized the cash and spread it into a fan. ‘That’s for me. Now I need the same again to grease the palms of some ideeeots.’

  Zeitlin, who rarely refused Gideon’s requests because he felt guilty about his brother’s fecklessness, opened his little box again.

  ‘I’ll pick up some London fruitcake from the English Shop; find where Sashenka is; toss some of your vile mazuma to policemen and inkshitters and get her out if I can. Call the newspaper if you want me. Mrs Lewis!’ Another insolent bow – and Gideon was gone, slamming the door behind him.

  A second later, it opened again. ‘You know Mendel’s skulking around? He’s out of the clink! If I see that schmendrik, I’ll punch him so hard his fortified boot will land in Lenin’s lap. Those Bolsheviks are ideeeots!’ The door slammed a second time.

  Zeitlin raised his hands to his face for a few seconds, forgetting Lala was still there. Then, sighing deeply, he reached for the recently installed telephone, a leather box with a listening device hooked on to the side. He tapped it three times on the top and spoke into the mouthpiece: ‘Hello, exchange? Put me through to the Interior Minister, Protopopov! Petrograd 234. Yes, now please!’

  Zeitlin relit his cigar as he waited for the exchange to connect him to the latest Interior Minister.

  ‘The baroness is in the house?’ he asked. Lala nodded. ‘And the old people, the travelling circus?’ This was his nickname for his parents-in-law, who lived over the garage. Lala nodded again. ‘Leave the baroness to me. Thanks, Mrs Lewis.’

  As Lala shut the door, he asked no one in particular: ‘What on earth has Sashenka done?’ and then his voice changed:

  ‘Ah, hello, Minister, it’s Zeitlin. Recovered from your poker losses, eh? I’m calling about a sensitive family matter. Remember my daughter? Yes, her. Well …’

  5

  At the Gendarmerie’s Temporary House of Detention within the red walls of the Kresty Prison, Sashenka was waiting, still in her sable coat and Arctic snowfox stole. Her Smolny dress and pinafore were already smeared with greasy fingermarks and black dust. She had been left in a holding area with concrete floors and chipped wooden walls.

  A pathway had been worn smooth from the door to benches and thence to the counter, which had slight hollows where the prisoners had leaned their elbows as they were booked. Everything had been marked by the thousands who had passed through. Hookers, safebreakers, murderers, revolutionaries waited with Sashenka. She was fascinated by the women: the nearest, a bloated walrus of a woman with rough bronze-pink skin and an army coat covering what appeared to be a ballerina’s tutu, stank of spirits.

  ‘What do you want, you motherfucker?’ she snarled. ‘What are you staring at?’ Sashenka, mortified, was suddenly afraid this monster would strike her. Instead the woman leaned over, horribly close. ‘I’m an educated woman, not some streetwalker like I seem. It was that bastard that did this to me, he beat me and …’ Her name was called but she kept talking until the gendarme opened the counter and dragged her away. As the metal door slammed behind her, she was still shouting, ‘You motherfuckers, I’m an educated woman, it was that bastard who broke me …’

  Sashenka was relieved when the woman was gone, and then ashamed until she reminded herself that the old hooker was not a proletarian, merely a degenerate bourgeoise.

  The corridors of the House of Detention were busy: men and women were being delivered to their cells, taken to interrogations, despatched on the long road to Siberian exile. Some sobbed, some slept; all of life was there. The gendarme behind the counter kept looking at her as if she was a peacock in a pigsty.

  Sashenka took her poetry books out of her book bag. Pretending to read, she flicked through the pages. When she came across a piece of cigarette paper with tiny writing on it, she glanced around, smiled broadly at any policeman who happened to be looking at her, and then popped it in her mouth. Uncle Mendel had taught her what to do. The papers did not taste too bad and they were not too hard to swallow. By the time it was her turn to be booked at the counter, she had consumed all of the incriminating evidence. She asked for a glass of water.

  ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ replied the policeman, who had taken her name, age and nationality but refused to tell her anything about the charges she faced. ‘This isn’t the Europa Hotel, girl.’

  She raised her grey eyes to him. ‘Please,’ she said.

  He banged a chipped mug of water on to the counter, with a croaking laugh.

  As she drank, a gendarme called her name. Another with a b
unch of keys opened a reinforced steel door and she entered the next layer of the Kresty. Sashenka was ordered into a small room and made to strip, then she was searched by an elephantine female warder in a dirty white apron. No one except dear Lala had ever seen her naked (her governess still drew her a bath every evening) but she told herself it did not matter. Nothing mattered except her cause, her holy grail, and that she was here at last, where every decent person should be.

  The woman returned her clothes but took her coat, stole and book bag. Sashenka signed for them and received a chit in return.

  Then they photographed her. She waited in a line of women, who scratched themselves constantly. The stench was of sweat, urine, menstrual blood. The photographer, an old man in a brown suit and string tie, with no teeth and eyes like holes in a hollow pumpkin, manhandled her in front of a tripod bearing an enormous camera that looked like a concertina. He disappeared under a cloth, his muffled voice calling out:

  ‘OK, full face. Stand up. Look left, look right. A Smolny girl, eh, with a rich daddy? You won’t be in here long. I was one of the first photographers in Piter. I do family portraits too if you want to mention me to your papa … There we are!’

  Sashenka realized her arrest was now recorded for ever – and she gave a wide smile that encouraged the photographer’s sales patter.

  ‘A smile! What a turn-up! Most of the animals that come through here don’t care what they look like – but you’re going to look wonderful. That, I promise.’

  Then a yellow-skinned warder not much older than Sashenka led her towards a holding cell. Just as she was about to enter, an official in a belted grey uniform emerged from nowhere. ‘That’ll do, boy. I’ll take over.’

  This popinjay with some stripes on his shoulderboards appeared to be in charge. Sashenka was disappointed: she wanted to be treated like the real thing, like a peasant or worker. Yet the Smolny girl in her was relieved as he took her arm gently. Around her, the cold stone echoed with shouts, grunts, the clink of keys, slamming of doors and turning of locks.

  Someone was shouting, ‘Fuck you, fuck the Tsar, you’re all German spies!’

  But the chief warder, in his tunic and boots, paid no attention. His hand was still on Sashenka’s arm and he was chatting very fast. ‘We’ve had a few students and schoolboys in – but you’re the first from Smolny. Well, I love “politicals”. Not criminals, they’re scum. But “politicals”, people of education, they make my job a pleasure. I might surprise you: I’m not your typical warder here. I read and I’ve even read a bit of your Marx and your Plekhanov. Truly. Two other things: I have a fondness for Swiss chocolates and Brocard’s eau de cologne. My sense of smell is highly sophisticated: see my nose?’ Sashenka looked dutifully as he flared narrow nostrils. ‘I have the sensory buds of an aesthete yet here I am, stuck in this dive. You’re something to do with Baron Zeitlin? Here we are! Make sure he knows my name is Volkov, Sergeant S. P. Volkov.’

  ‘I will, Sergeant Volkov,’ Sashenka replied, trying not to gag on the suffocating aroma of lavender cologne.

  ‘I’m not your typical warder, am I? Do I surprise you?’

  ‘Oh yes, Sergeant, you do.’

  ‘That’s what everyone says. Now, Mademoiselle Zeitlin, here is your berth. Don’t forget, Sergeant Volkov is your special friend. Not your typical warder!’

  ‘Not at all typical.’

  ‘You’ll miss my cologne in a minute,’ he warned.

  A guard opened a cell door and manhandled her inside. She turned to reach for the chief warder, even raising a hand, but he was gone. The smell of women crowded into a confined space blasted her nostrils. This is the real Russia! she told herself, feeling the rottenness creeping into her clothes.

  The cell door slammed behind her. The locks turned. Sashenka stood, shoulders hunched, aware of the dark cramped space in front of her seething with shadowy, vigilant life. Farting, grunting, sneezing, singing and coughing vied with whispers and the flick of cards being dealt.

  Sashenka slowly turned, feeling the rancid breath of twenty or thirty women, hot then cool, hot then cool, on her face. A single kerosene lamp lightened the gloom. The prisoners lined the walls and lay on mattresses on the cold dirty floor, sleeping, playing cards, some even cuddling. Two half-naked crones were picking lice out of each other’s pubic hair like monkeys. A low partition marked off the latrine, from whence came groans and liquid explosions.

  ‘Hurry up!’ shouted the next in line.

  A plump woman with slanting oriental eyes lay reading Tolstoy’s Confessions, while a cadaverous woman in a man’s army greatcoat over a peasant smock declaimed from a pornographic pamphlet about the Empress, Rasputin and their mutual friend, Madame Vyrubova. ‘“Three is better than one,” said the monk. “Anya Vyrubova, your tits are juicy as a Siberian seal – but nothing beats a wanton imperial cunt like yours, my Empress!”’ There was laughter. The reader stopped.

  ‘Who’s this? Countess Vyrubova slumming it from court?’ The creature in the greatcoat was on her feet. Stepping on a sleeping figure who howled in complaint, she rushed at Sashenka and seized her hair. ‘You rich little bitch, don’t look at me like that!’

  Sashenka was afraid for the first time since her arrest, properly afraid, with fear that lurched in her guts and burned in her throat. Before she had time to think, she was punched in the mouth and fell, only to be crushed as the creature threw herself on top of her. She struggled to breathe. Fearing she was going to die, she thought of Lala, Grand-maman at school, her pony in the country … But suddenly the attacker was lifted right off her and tossed sideways.

  ‘Careful, bitch. Don’t touch her! I think this one’s ours.’ The plump woman holding an open copy of Tolstoy stood over her. ‘Sashenka? The cell elders welcome you. You’ll meet the committee in the morning. Let’s get some sleep. You can share my mattress. I’m Comrade Natasha. You don’t know me, but I know exactly who you are.’

  6

  Captain Sagan of the Gendarmerie dropped into his favourite chair at the Imperial Yacht Club on Greater Maritime Street and was just rubbing a toke of cocaine into his gums when his adjutant appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Your Excellency, may I report?’

  Sagan saw the blotchy-skinned adjutant glance quickly around the enormous, empty room with its leather chairs and newspapers in English, French and Russian. Beyond the billiard table hung portraits of bemedalled club chairmen, and at the far end of the room, above a blazing fire of apple-scented wood, the watery blue eyes of the Emperor Nicholas II. ‘Go ahead, Ivanov.’

  ‘Your Excellency, we’ve arrested the terrorist revolutionaries. Found dynamite, chargers, Mauser pistols, leaflets. There’s a schoolgirl among them. The general says he wants you to start on her right away before her bigshot papa gets her out. I’ve a phaeton waiting outside.’

  Captain Sagan got to his feet and sighed. ‘Fancy a drink, Ivanov, or a pinch of this?’ He held out the silver box. ‘Dr Gemp’s new tonic for fatigue and headaches.’

  ‘The general said you should hurry.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ Sagan said, although his heart was racing. It was the third winter of the war, and he was overworked to the point of exhaustion. Not only was he a gendarme, he was also a senior officer in the Okhrana, the Tsar’s secret police. ‘German spies, Bolsheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, every sort of traitor. We can’t hang them fast enough. And then there’s Rasputin. At least sit for a moment.’

  ‘All right. Cognac,’ Ivanov said, a shade too reluctantly for Sagan’s liking.

  ‘Cognac? Your tastes are becoming rather expensive, Ivanov.’ Sagan tinkled a silver bell. A waiter, as long and thin as a flute, glided drunkenly through the door, as if on skis. ‘Two cognacs and make it quick,’ Sagan ordered, savouring the aroma of cigars, cologne and shoe polish, the essence of officers’ messes and gentlemen’s clubs across the Empire. When the glasses arrived, the two men stood up, toasted the Tsar, downed their brandies and hurried into the lobby.

 
They pulled on their uniform greatcoats and shapkas and stepped out into a numbing cold. Disorderly, shapeless snowflakes danced around them. It was already midnight but a full moon made the fresh snow glow an eerie blue. Cocaine, Sagan decided, was the secret policeman’s ideal tonic in that it intensified his scrutiny, sharpening his vision. There stood his phaeton, a taxi-carriage with one horse snorting geysers of breath, its driver a snoring bundle of clothing. Ivanov gave him a shove and the driver’s bald head appeared out of his sheepskin, pink, shiny and bleary-eyed, like a grotesque baby born blind drunk.

  Sagan, heart still palpitating, scanned the street. To the left, the golden dome of St Isaac’s Cathedral loomed ominously over the houses as if about to crush them. Down to the right, he could see the doorway of the Zeitlin residence. He checked his surveillance team. Yes, a moustachioed figure in a green coat and bowler hat lurked near the corner: that was Batko, ex-NCO Cossack, smoking a cigarette in the doorway of the apartments opposite. (Cossacks and ex-NCOs made the best ‘external agents’, those who worked on surveillance.) And there was a sleeping droshky driver a little further down the street: Sagan hoped he was not really asleep.

  A Rolls-Royce, with chains on its wheels and a Romanov crest on its doors, skidded past. Sagan knew that it belonged to Grand Duke Sergei, who would be going home with the ballerina mistress he shared with his cousin Grand Duke Andrei.

  From the Blue Bridge over the Moika came the echo of shouts, the thud of punches and the crunch of boots and bodies on compacted snow. Some sailors from the Kronstadt base were fighting soldiers – dark blue versus khaki.

  Then, just as Sagan had one foot on the phaeton’s step, a Benz limousine rumbled up. Its uniformed driver leaped out and opened the leather-lined door. Out of it stepped an overripe, ruddy-cheeked figure in a fur coat. Manuilov-Manesevich, spy, war profiteer, friend of Rasputin, born a Jew, converted to Orthodoxy, pushed past Sagan and hurried into the Imperial Yacht Club. Inside the limousine, Sagan glimpsed crushed scarlet satin and mink on a pale throat. A waft of sweat and cigar smoke disgusted him. He got into the carriage.