Sashenka

“He could be…” She was now so afraid that she was blaming her own lover. Was this what had happened? Had Benya destroyed her family? Then another meteor shower of possibilities bombarded her: “Could it be a Chekist intrigue at the Lubianka? There has to be some reason for this, Vanya, doesn’t there?”

He opened his hands wide.

“There has to be a cause,” he told her. “But there doesn’t need to be any reason.”

Just then they heard the back gate creak.

“It’s them, Vanya. I love you, Vanya, Snowy, Carlo. If either of us live, oh Vanya…Shall we end it all? Where’s the bulldog?”

They clung together. He had the gun in his hand and they pressed its cool steel between their palms as if it were their love token. There were no other sounds. The night turned with grinding slowness.

A whistle split the stillness, and a figure in a white hood stepped out of the shadows of the orchard.

Vanya raised the Nagant pistol.

“Who’s there? I’ll shoot. I’ll take you all with me, you bastards!”

27

“I can only stay for a few minutes,” said the visitor, removing the Caucasian hood that he had always worn in that Petrograd winter, in the early days.

“Oh Hercules, thank God you came!” Sashenka kissed him repeatedly, holding on to him. “We’re going to be all right, aren’t we? You’ve come to tell us how to fix it. Who do we need to talk to? Please tell us!”

They turned off the lights on the veranda, and Hercules Satinov sat at the table with Vanya and Sashenka. She poured the three of them shots of Armenian brandy.

“It’s going to be fine, isn’t it?” she said again. “We’re imagining this, aren’t we? Oh Hercules, what are we going to do?”

“Hush, Sashenka,” said Vanya. “Just let him speak.”

Satinov nodded, his eyes slits of quicksilver in the darkness.

“Listen carefully,” he began. “I don’t know everything but I know that something has changed. They’re working on Mendel and they’ve found something on you.”

“On me?” cried Sashenka. “Vanya, divorce me! I’ll shoot myself.”

“Just listen to him, Sashenka,” said Vanya.

“It’s beyond that now,” said Satinov tersely. “I thought…about the children.”

Sashenka’s blood started to pound.

“Can’t I go and see Beria? I’d do anything. Anything! I could persuade Lavrenti Pavlovich…”

Satinov shook his head and Sashenka sensed the tension running through him. He did not even have time to discuss them. Just the children.

“I could write to Comrade Stalin. He knows me, he’s known me since March 1917 when I typed for Lenin…He knows me.”

Satinov’s eyes flashed, and Sashenka understood that somehow this came from the Instance, the top, the Instantzia.

“You must think only of the children now,” he said simply.

“Oh my God,” Sashenka whispered, red spots whirring before her eyes. “They’ll be sent to one of those orphanages. They’ll be tortured, murdered, abused. Trotsky’s children are dead. All Kamenev’s. All Zinoviev’s. I know what happens in those places…”

“Quiet, Sashenka. What can we do, Hercules?” Vanya asked.

“Can they stay with any of your family?” asked Satinov but Sashenka knew Gideon and Mouche were on the edge of the precipice; his other daughter, Viktoria, was a Party fanatic who would never help tainted children; Mendel was already in the coils of the Lubianka; and Vanya’s parents would probably be arrested soon after them.

“Then Snowy and Carlo must be sent away,” said Satinov. “Immediately. Maybe even tomorrow. To the south. I have friends there who owe me favors. Remember, I was on the ZaKavCom for a long time. Outside the towns, there are ordinary people, unpolitical people. I was tough at times when I worked down there, I broke the backs of our enemies—but when I could, I helped people.”

“Who are these people? What will happen to Snowy and Carlo?” Sashenka was drowning in hysteria: she fought for breath, her mouth gasping, yet she could not take in enough oxygen.

“Sashenka, you have to trust me. I’m Snowy’s godfather. Do you trust me?”

She nodded. No choice: Satinov was all they had.

“Right, they must travel south in secret. I have to go to the Caucasus myself tonight but I can’t travel with them. Someone absolutely trustworthy must take them ‘on holiday’—nothing suspicious about that. Somewhere, that person will hand them over to another person I have in mind.”

“What about Vanya’s parents?”

“Yes, my mother loves the children…,” said Vanya eagerly.

“No,” interrupted Satinov. “They’re at the Granovsky. They’re being watched at all times. They would not be a wise choice; forgive me, Vanya, but their Party-mindedness is both fervent and simpleminded, a dangerous combination.”

“Do you know… someone who would look after the children in the south, someone really kind, kind enough for such beloved…such angels?” Sashenka asked.

Satinov took Sashenka’s hands in his and squeezed them. “Don’t torture yourself. Yes, oh yes, I promise you, Sashenka, I have in mind someone of whom you would approve. But even that person cannot know where they are finally settled.”