Sashenka

“That’s our first choice. We have the gun and we have tonight. But suppose they don’t have anything on you? They’ll beat you and humiliate you. But if you don’t confess, they’ll ask: ‘Did she sign anything? No? Well, perhaps she wasn’t a bastard after all.’ They’ll free you in the end. For us, for life, for the children.”

The children! They’d almost forgotten the children. Death, the violence and finality of vanishing from the earth and ceasing to exist, was so horrifying, so immediate, that it bred the purest form of egotism. How could she have been so selfish?

Sashenka turned and ran into the house, Vanya behind her, and they burst into Snowy’s room. Holding hands, they stared in anguish at Snowy, her white skin and fair hair spread out on her pillow, breathing so softly, her long arms curled beside her, her silly pink cushion resting against her cheek. And there was Carlo lying naked on his front, hair tousled, arms and legs still creased like a baby, head burrowed into his favorite velveteen rabbit.

Sashenka was barely able to breathe, her throat parched, in the warm, dark room that smelled of the peculiar freshness of young children in summertime, of hay and vanilla. It was as if they were the first and last parents in the world. But they were the only ones to know what they were up against. Sashenka’s stomach churned. They were on the verge of losing their treasures forever.

“Snowy, Carlo, oh darlings!” She fell to her knees between the two beds, Vanya beside her, and suddenly they were sobbing silently in each other’s arms.

“Don’t wake them,” said Vanya.

“We mustn’t,” agreed Sashenka, brokenly. But she could not help herself. With trembling hands, she reached into Carlo’s bed and lifted him out, folded him against her, raining kisses on his satiny forehead until he stirred. Vanya was holding Snowy, his face buried in her hair, which cleaved like gold thread to his wet cheeks. Both children were drowsily sensual as they clung to their parents, gloriously unaware of the rising storm, roused from the deep slumber of that sweltering night. The four of them crouched together in the comforting darkness, the parents gasping with tears, the children stretching and sighing, settling back into their loving arms, only half awake.

Finally Vanya pulled Sashenka by the hand. “Put them back to bed!” he said. They tucked the children in again then crept outside to sit on the edge of the sofa by the open French windows. A car door slammed loudly in the night air.

“Vanya! Is this it? Is it them?” She threw herself into his arms.

He calmed her with his clumsy hands, their coarseness now so welcome, familiar.

“No, it’s not them. Not yet,” he whispered. “But we’ve got to think calmly. Stop crying, girl! Gather yourself. For the children…”

Then he too started to shudder—and she let out an involuntary moan until he put his hand over her mouth. Finally she left the room and washed her face with cold water. A dread soberness descended on both of them.

“Vanya, we can’t kill ourselves because—”

“Stalin calls suicide ‘spitting in the eye of the Party.’ We save ourselves pain, but not the children. The Party will take it out on the children.”

“I’ve got it. We kill ourselves and the children. Tonight, Vanya, now. We die together and we’ll be together. Forever!” How strange—yet she did believe in a sort of afterlife. In eternity. That was what her rabbinical grandparents believed, and she the Communist had always eschewed it. Now those old words from Turbin came back to her—Zohar, the Book of Splendor and heart of the Kabala, Heaven and Gehenna, the golems and dybbuks that haunted those cursed with the Evil Eye, the spiritual world so foreign to scientific Marxism and dialectical materialism. And yet now she imagined her soul, and its love, living on beyond the shell of her body. There she would see her mother and father, all young again. They would all be together! She pulled out the Nagant from under Vanya’s NKVD cap. She still knew how to use it.

“Do you believe that?” he asked. “I do. We’d all be together in Heaven. Maybe you’re right. If they come for us, we kill them and then ourselves.”

“So that’s decided.” But as Sashenka turned toward the bedroom, he caught her, taking the pistol from her and slipping it into his holster.

He hugged her tightly, whispering, “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Could you?”

She shook her head. It was now past midnight and Sashenka’s mind was working more systematically.

“We don’t have time for more crying, do we, darling Vanya?”

“They’ve something on us. I don’t know what.”

“Gideon mentioned ‘the Greeks and the Romans’ and then Mendel was arrested. Benya Golden knows nothing about us.”

“But is he a provocateur? A spy? Is he filth?”