Sashenka

Sashenka lingered outside the National. She hoped Carolina and the children had caught up with their Palitsyn babushka and dedushka, who would hand over a tiny canvas suitcase. It belonged to Snowy. The plan was to get the children’s suitcases out of the house without the guards noticing.

The children remained with the grandparents. Carolina took the next right and came into Gorky Street just as Sashenka was about to cross. They greeted each other.

“Time for a coffee, Comrade?”

“Of course.” They entered the National Hotel and ordered a coffee in the café. Sashenka tried to remain caught up in the cloak-and-dagger moment—but she felt so sick, so desperate, that her gorge rose, and her belly lurched as it had the day that Lala first left her at boarding school and she wanted to chase after her. Frantic, she had broken away from her teacher and sprinted down the Smolny corridors, pushing aside other girls and running outside to the gates, where Lala saw her and cuddled her again. Now that frenzy returned. But Carolina, bony and expressionless, sipped the coffee, kissed Sashenka briskly, and then hurried off with barely a glance, carrying Carlo’s little case, which contained winter clothes, underwear, soap, toothbrush and three bunny rabbits. Sashenka ran through the items: had they remembered everything? What about Carlo’s cookies?

At the door of the café, Carolina turned back one more time. She and Sashenka exchanged a last beseeching gaze of the most terrible emotions—love, gratitude, sorrow. Then Carolina set her jaw and was gone. The plan was in motion. Vanya had sent the signal with Razum that Sashenka had to act now. Just as Satinov had suggested, so Sashenka and Carolina had arranged.

Sashenka watched the nanny’s thin back with a desperate wild envy. As an amputee feels his absent leg walking, so she felt her own ghostly body running after them, while she still sat in the café. Then her body bunched and twitched and she was on her feet. She started to run after Carolina. She found herself tossing coins for the coffee onto the table. She was running, sweating, her heart thrashing in her chest as if she were having a heart attack, flying almost, tears splashing in her wake like rain on a car windshield. She was on the street. She looked left and right. Carolina was already gone. God, she had to see them again! The sob in her throat became a wild groan, a sound that she had never heard in her life. She sprinted frantically down the side street.

And then she saw them. A streetcar had stopped in the distance, casting sparks in its wake. Snowy was on the first step, waving her pink cushion and laughing, so that Sashenka could distinctly see her wide white forehead and fair curls. Carolina, holding both bags in her left hand, handed up Carlo, who was playing the fool, pretending to march, singing a song.

He was tugging at her sleeve. “Carolina, Carolina, can I tell you something?” Sashenka knew he was saying this but Carolina was up the steps now too. Two soldiers climbed on behind them, both smoking.

“Stop! Carolina! Carlo! Snowy!” Sashenka was actually screaming.

Carolina paid at the little window. Sashenka could see only the tops of their heads, Carlo’s tousled brown hair and Snowy’s butter-colored tresses, catching a speck of sunlight like spun gold. She was ruining everything by running. The NKVD would see her and know she was spiriting them away; they’d arrest her as a spy; they’d throw the children into the Dzerzhinsky Orphanage, shoot them. But Sashenka was out of control, careering forward now, colliding with an old lady whose shopping bag was torn, potatoes rolling on the pavement; still Sashenka ran, tears cascading down her face. But the streetcar, in a shower of sparks, jolted. The doors shut. It gathered speed. Sashenka was catching up and she saw them again: Carolina was helping them into a seat by the window. Just a blurred impression of blue eyes and a milky forehead, and brown eyes and hair—and they were gone.

A man pushed Sashenka out of his path, and she fell into a doorway and sat on the step. She heard herself howling as her mother had howled when Rasputin was killed. People hurried by, slightly disgusted at her. Slowly she gathered herself.

The grandparents would return to the apartment and tell the guards they were going back to the dacha for the summer. The guards understood because Vanya Palitsyn had been arrested, and they would shrug: who cared?