Sashenka

“Oh Papochka!” Father and daughter hugged, both with tears in their eyes. The family were always quick to cry and Katinka, the youngest of three children and a beloved afterthought, was its soft-hearted and much-indulged core. Her father was a thoughtful man. He did not laugh much; in fact, he did not say much at all and when he did he was tortuously inarticulate—yet he was worshipped virtually as a god in the neighborhood, where he had delivered the babies of babies he had delivered and even their babies. “I can’t imagine how I’ve brought up such a confident, loquacious child as you, Katinka,” he once told her. “But you’re the light of my life. Unlike me, you can do anything!” He was right—she knew she possessed all the assurance of a child utterly cherished in the happiest of families.

“Your food’ll be ready, don’t you worry, girl,” said Baba, her gums almost bare of teeth. “Go and wake up Bedbug or he’ll miss your departure!” “Klop,” or Bedbug, was Sergei Vinsky, Katinka’s grandfather.

Katinka trotted down the corridor toward the bathroom, passing her little bedroom with its single unit of bed, light and bedside table (standard Soviet issue) and its curling posters of Michael Jackson.

She heard the faucet running in the bathroom as she called out to her grandfather. The bathroom door opened and she met the rich, sweet distillation of Bedbug’s bowels and the familiar stale damp of old towels that was another ingredient of the provincial fug of home. Bedbug, a small weathered countryman in an undershirt and pouchy grey briefs, emerged from a bathroom that was so overshadowed by hanging laundry that it resembled a gypsy tent. Resting his hands on his hips and chewing his gums, he let rip an ungodly fart of orchestral proportions.

“Hear that? Good morning and good luck, dear girl!” and he cackled hoarsely. It was the same every morning at home. Katinka was used to it—but since her return from the university she had observed its customs with more detachment.

“Disgusting! Worse than a farmyard!” she said cheerfully. “At least in a farmyard the animals aren’t rude too. Come on, Bedbug, hurry up! Breakfast’s ready. I’m leaving soon!”

“So? Why should I hurry? I have my rituals!” He nodded at the Soviet lavatory with its unique basin-like design (guaranteed to preserve its fetid cargo as long as possible), and grinned.

“Yes, Bedbug, and no one enjoys their rituals like you. But you are coming to see me off?”

“Why bother? Good riddance!” More cackling. “Wait, Katinka! I’ve heard about a new murder on the radio! There’s a serial killer in Kiev who eats his victims, brains, livers and all, can you believe it?”

Katinka returned to the main room, shaking her head. Bedbug, an old collective farmer, lived in a world of his own. Now that the old order had gone and the Soviet Union had been abolished, he mourned the Communist Party and fulminated with his gambling cronies in the Vegaz-Kalifornia Klub against the New Russian rich—“crooked zhydy i chernyi i chinovniki”—Jews and Chechens and bureaucrats! There was nothing to equal the burning bitterness of old men in small villages, Katinka thought.

For Bedbug, though, the recent disintegration of the Workers’ Paradise had had one advantage. In these queer, unsettled times, Russia was enjoying a lurid harvest of serial killers, a banquet of cannibals. Apart from his bowels, Bedbug had found a new hobby for his old age—the lives of the murderers.

Katinka sighed and went back to the kitchen to eat her last breakfast before London.

2

When Katinka’s grandparents and parents emerged from the house to accompany her to the station, they were dressed up in their Revolution Day best.

It was a bracing day of sharp-edged brightness in this village of mixed Russian and Caucasian folk, a day that suited a new beginning. A ragged crust of grimy ice still covered the fields and pastures and the ditches on either side of the village’s one paved thoroughfare, Suvorov Street (known as Lenin Street until last year), with its dreary, squat cottages enlivened only by their blue or red shutters. There is no more thrilling time of year in Russia, for beneath this tainted whiteness Katinka could already hear the rushing of water. The ice was melting and, hidden from view, frothy streams seethed, merged and parted, unleashing the snowdrops that were already pushing through the black-edged snow. The trees oozed sap, and skylarks and finches trilled with joy, celebrating spring.