Sashenka

A guard opened a cell door and manhandled her inside. She turned to reach for the chief guard, 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 behind 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 favorite 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 bemedaled 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, savoring 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.