Sashenka

“They might find her even there,” said Satinov. “There’ve been a lot of arrests of Volga Germans out of Rostov. Carolina, you should take the Moscow-Baku-Tiflis train from Saratovsky Station. When you leave the train at Rostov there’ll be a message for you at the stationmaster’s office under your own name—it’s Gunther, isn’t it? Carolina Gunther? Either a person or a message. Afterward you must return to your village. All clear?”

Sashenka noticed that Satinov did not look his old friends in the eye as he departed, but he kissed her hand just as he had when they first met more than twenty years before and he hugged Vanya.

Pulling on his Georgian hood, he left through the garden just as he had come, and the gate creaked as it closed. Sashenka had known him since the winter of 1916, when they were all young. He had seen her at Ariadna’s deathbed, had been their best friend in the world. Now their relationship was ending—or perhaps it was metamorphosing. From being a friend, he might become the only family her children had on earth. Among this Russian nation of toadies and cowards, timeservers and snitches, he alone had shown the courage to remain a human being.

“Come on. We’ve got work to do,” said Carolina briskly, placing her hands on Sashenka’s upper arms and pressing. “But first we must eat. A clear mind needs a full stomach.” She brought out a tray of goat’s cheese, tomatoes and black Borodinsky bread with Narzan mineral water.

They did not turn on the veranda light but they fell on the food as if they had never eaten before. Time ground on slowly. Sashenka felt better now: she had a mission. She had to trust Hercules Satinov. He said her children would be settled with “kind people” but oh, how her heart was breaking! She remembered Snowy and Carlo’s births at the Kremlevka, the Kremlin Hospital, on Granovsky. Snowy, the first, had been easy: she had emerged with a head of blond hair and slept her first night on Sashenka’s chest…Now she talked endlessly about cushions and butterflies (she knew the names of Brazilian Blues and Red Admirals) and she hated eggs. Carlo needed his eleven strokes before he would sleep, and he woke up in the night and needed a cuddle. He hated yogurt and he had a collection of rabbits, and when his blood sugar ran low between meals he needed his favorite Pechene cookies, the ones with the Kremlin on the tin; and he always wanted to visit the new Metro stations with their marble halls and glass cupolas and ride on the trains…

Should she write these things down for these “kind people”? Could she tell someone? Who would know all this—except a mother? How could her children be happy without their mother? Sashenka began to shake again.

“Discipline yourself! We must be practical!” Vanya’s voice cut into her terror.

Sashenka contracted into herself as if she had been touched by a block of ice.

She could not write anything down and the children could take little with them—above all, nothing that linked them to their parents. There was no time now for sentiment, tears, guilt. Sashenka was a mother now, nothing more, just a mother protecting her cubs. She had to save them from the orphanages that Benya had described. When everything had been prepared, if there was time, then she could savor the presence of those living treasures, and talk to them a little. Then she could sob all she liked.

Sashenka found her food tasted of nothing. The garden might have been made of cardboard; the jasmine and the lilac and the honeysuckle smelled of decay; the pony, the rabbits, the squirrels, the rest of existence could rot for all she cared, if only she could be spared to bring up her children, if only they could be free to return to her…

Here I am abandoned, an orphan, with no one to look after me… Never had that old song been so pertinent and so unbearable.

“Vanya, we must talk carefully. This may be our last night together. But what do we tell them?” she asked, choking over her words.

“The less, the better,” said Vanya. “They must forget we ever existed. Snowy will remember more but Carlo’s only three. He won’t even…” He could not speak anymore. Sashenka took Carolina’s hand.

“Carolina, let’s pack their cases. We must find them warm things to wear so they are never cold.”

They went back into Snowy’s room and Sashenka started to hand the child’s clothes to Carolina. Each time, when she raised a little skirt or sweater to her nose, she inhaled the scent of hay and vanilla.

I gave the children life, Sashenka told herself, but I never owned them. Now they must live on without me, as if I never existed.

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