Sashenka

“Avert your eyes, Prisoner seven hundred seventy-eight,” barked her guard, the first words he had spoken. He pushed Sashenka toward a corner where what appeared to be a metal coffin stood upright. He opened its door and pushed her inside, locking it. The coffin door pressed on her back. Was this a torture? She fought for breath in the airless space. The other guards and prisoner were passing. When they were gone, the coffin was unlocked and they continued until they reached a line of cells where a guard held a door open. There, 778 was scrawled on an oily card.

The cell was small and cool with two bunk beds, no window whatsoever, a bucket of slops in the corner, brick walls and a damp floor. The door shut; the locks scraped; she stood there alone; the peephole opened; eyes stared at her. Then the Judas port shut. She closed her eyes and listened to the life around her. Prisoners sang, spat, coughed and spluttered, and tapped to one another using prisoners’ code that had not changed since the days of the Tsar. The giant building throbbed like a secret city. Pipes gurgled and shook. A metal pail was dragged along and then a wet mop swished outside. A cart clanked. There was the murmur of voices, the echo of metal cups and spoons. The eyehole opened and closed. The door rasped open again.

“Supper!” Two prisoners, one bearded, old and frail, the other grey but probably her own age, were serving soup out of a swinging pan in the cart. The old one gave her a tin cup while the other poured from a ladle, filling up the cup with steaming water from a kettle. Two guards, hands on their pistols, watched closely. There must be no contact between prisoners.

“Thank you!” she said.

“No talking!” said the guard. “Never look at other prisoners!”

The younger prisoner gave her a sugar lump and a small square of black bread and looked at her for a moment, with a spark of feeling on a sensitive, rather mischievous face. Before Benya she would not have recognized it but now she spoke that particular language. My God, she thought, it was lust! Sashenka was pleased: the people in here still feel desire! Perhaps lust lasts beyond many other things. When the door slammed, she drank her watery buckwheat porridge. She used the slop bucket and lay down.

Vanya, wherever you are, she thought, I know what to do. All was not yet lost: the children had gone but there might be no case against her. Vanya knew that. She could still return. She would return. What could they have on her, the loyalest Communist? Then aloud she said one word: “Cushion!”

The lights remained on. Sashenka tried to sleep. She talked aloud to the children but already they belonged to another world. Could she still smell their smells? The texture of their skin, the sound of their voices, everything was still utterly fresh and vivid for her. She started to cry, gently and with resignation.

The peephole slipped open.

“Silence, prisoner! Show your face and hands at all times!”

She slept and she was a child again, on the Zeitlin estate at Zemblishino: her father, in a white suit and yachting shoes, was holding a pony by the bridle—and Lala, darling Lala, was helping her climb up into the saddle…

35

Sashenka was woken by the grating of carts, swishing of mops, screeching of locks. The peephole opened and shut, the door rasped open.

“Slopping out! Bring your slop bucket!” A guard marched her to the washroom, where the chlorine stung her eyes. She poured out her slops and washed her face with water. Then it was back to her cell.

“Breakfast!” The same prisoner whose glance had been so slyly sensuous now wore a plywood tray like an usherette selling cigarettes. The other prisoner, a bearded old man covered in tattoos—a real criminal, Sashenka guessed—poured out the tea and handed over a small piece of bread, a lump of sugar, and eight cigarettes with a strip of phosphorus from a matchbox. Once again the long thin face of the server revealed nothing, but again his eyes roved over her body and neck and glinted with the rudest lust before the door slammed again. Already, the tea and bread tasted divine. She knew from Vanya that prisoners sometimes waited weeks even to be interrogated so it might be ages before she was able to make her stand, to defend herself as a Communist—and find out what had brought her here.

Then she lay again on the bed. Where are the children now? she wondered. And she said aloud the word that was becoming her talisman, her code to transmit her love across the vast steppes and powerful rivers of Russia to her distant children. “Cushion!”

“Prisoner seven hundred seventy-eight?” The door had opened.

“Yes.”