Sashenka

“Of course not!” Pasha interrupted, banging down the telephone. “I started selling concert tickets in Odessa and things expanded from there, first metals, then cars, now oil and nickel, so no, I know nothing about the eighteenth century and nor does Mama.”

Katinka felt crushed.

“Pasha, don’t be so bombastic,” said Roza. “Katinka, we need the best historian, and the professor recommended you. You’ve done research, haven’t you? In the archives?”

“Yes, in the State Archive, on Catherine the Second’s Legislative Commission and recently for my doctorate on the impact on local government of Catherine the Second’s 1775 prikaz on…”

“That’s perfect,” said Roza, “because we want you to do genealogical research.”

“We want you to discover the history of our family,” added Pasha, hovering over them impatiently and lighting a monstrous cigar.

“In the eighteenth century? Your family origins?”

“No, dear,” said Roza, “only in the twentieth century.” A trickle of unease ran down Katinka’s spine. “You’ll be paid well. Does a thousand dollars a month plus expenses sound about right to you?”

Katinka sat up very straight. “No, no,” she said. “It’s not necessary.” The money worried her, it was much too much, and this meant something was wrong. What would her father say? As for Bedbug, he regarded these oligarchs as the Antichrist. “I don’t think I can do this job. I only know the eighteenth century.”

Pasha looked at his mother, exhaling a noxious cloud of smoke. “Are you saying you don’t want the job?”

“Pasha,” said Roza, “take it easy on her. She’s right to ask questions.” She turned to Katinka. “This is your first job, isn’t it?”

First job, first trip abroad, first oligarch, first palace, first everything, thought Katinka, nodding.

“Look,” said Pasha, “you’ve worked on one set of archives so why not another? What’s the difference? Catherine’s archives, Stalin’s archives.”

Katinka stiffened. The Stalin era! Another alarm bell! It was not done to look into that period. “Never ask people what their grandfathers did,” her father once told her. “Why? Because one grandfather was denouncing the other!” Yet now her esteemed patron, Academician Beliakov, had tossed her into this snakepit. She had come all this way and now she had to escape—but how? She took a deep breath.

“I can’t do it. I don’t know that period and I don’t want to be involved in matters that concern the Party and the Security Organs,” she said, her face hot. “I don’t know Moscow well enough, and I can’t accept this excessive salary. You’ve got the wrong person. I feel guilty because you’ve flown me all this way and I’ll never forget the hotel and I promise I’ll repay the cost of the—”

“That’s it!” Pasha slammed down his cup and saucer, spilling tea across the table, muttered something about “Soviet-minded girls from the provinces” and clamped the cigar between his teeth.

Katinka was shocked by his outburst and was about to stand up to say good-bye when two lines and the mobile started to ring simultaneously in a screeching cacophony.

“Pasha, take these calls in your study,” said Roza briskly, “or I’ll throw all those phones out of the window. And that repulsive cigar!”

When he was gone, she took Katinka’s hands in her own. “I’m so sorry. Now we can talk properly.” She paused and looked searchingly at Katinka. “Please understand, this isn’t about vanity or even curiosity. It’s not about Pasha’s money. It’s about me.”

“But Mr. Getman is right,” said Katinka. “I can’t do this. I don’t know anything about the twentieth century.”

“Listen to me a little and if you still don’t want to help us, then I understand. I want you anyway to have a lovely time seeing London before we fly you home. But if you could help us…” A shadow clouded her deep blue eyes for a moment. “Katinka, I grew up with a hole in my heart, an empty place right here, like a frozen chamber, and all my life I’ve never been able to talk about it and I’ve never even let myself think about it. But I do know that I’m not alone. All over Russia there are people like me, men and women of my age who’ve never known who their parents were. We look like everyone else, we married, we had children, we grew old, but I could never be carefree. All the time I’ve been carrying this sense of loss inside me, and I still carry it. Perhaps that is why I brought up Pasha to be so confident and extroverted, because I didn’t want him to go through life like me.” She frowned and laughed softly at herself; it was, thought Katinka, the gentlest of sounds. “I never talked about this with my late husband or even Pasha, but recently Pasha wanted to buy me a present. I told him that all I wanted was my family and he said, ‘Mama, the Communists have gone, the KGB’s gone and I’ll pay anything to help you.’ That’s why you’re here.”

“Are you…an orphan?” asked Katinka. She couldn’t imagine how this might feel.