Sashenka

For his foray into the St. Petersburg night, Zeitlin dressed in a new stiff collar and frock coat to which he attached his star of the Order of St. Vladimir, second class, an honor enjoyed by only a very few Jewish industrialists.

At the bottom of the stairs, pausing for a moment with a hand against the exquisite turquoise tiles of the Dutch stove in the hall, he decided he had better tell his parents-in-law about Sashenka. He knew his wife would not bother. He passed through the empty drawing room and dining room, walled in canary and damask silk, then opened the baize door that led to the so-called Black Way, the dark underbelly of the house. The smell was quite different here, where the air was thick with butter, fat, boiling cabbage and sweat. It gave, thought Zeitlin, a hint of the other, older Russia.

Downstairs lived the cook and the chauffeur, but that was not where he was headed. Instead, Zeitlin started to climb the Black Way. Halfway up he leaned on a doorpost, exhausted and dizzy. Was it his heart, his indigestion, a touch of neurasthenia? Am I about to drop dead? he asked himself. Gideon was right, he had better call Dr. Gemp again.

A hand touched his shoulder and he jumped. It was his old nanny, Shifra, a bone-white specter in an orange housecoat and fluffy slippers who had cared for Sashenka before Lala’s arrival.

“Would you approve the menu today?” she croaked. The household kept up the pretense that old Shifra was still in charge though Delphine now ran the kitchens. Shifra had been retired in tactful stages, without anyone telling her. “I’ve consulted the powers, dear boy,” she added softly. “I’ve glanced into the Book of Life. She’ll be all right. Would you like a hot cocoa, Samoilo? Like the old days?”

Zeitlin nodded at the menu that Delphine had already shown him but refused the cocoa. The old woman floated away like a cobweb on the wind, as silently as she had emerged.

Alone again, he found to his surprise that there were tears in his eyes: it was that sensuous pull of childhood starting in the belly. His house felt suddenly alien to him, too big, too full of strangers. Where was his darling Sashenka? In a blinding flash of panic, he knew that his child was all that mattered.

But then the thousand threads of worldliness and wealth weaved around him again. How could he, Zeitlin, fail to fix anything? No one would dare to treat the girl roughly: surely everyone knew his connection to Their Imperial Majesties? His lawyer Flek was on his way; the Interior Minister was calling the Director of Police, who was calling the Commander of the Separate Corps of Gendarmes, who in turn would be calling the chief of the Okhrana Security Section. He could not bear to think of Sashenka spending the night in a police station, let alone a prison cell. But what had she done? She seemed so demure, so correct, almost too serious for her age.

Parlormaids and footmen lived farther up the Black Way but he stopped on the second floor and opened the metal-lined door that led to the apartment over the garage. Here the smells became more foreign, and yet familiar to Samuil: chicken fat, gefilte fish, frying babke potatoes and the bite of vishniak. Noticing the mezuzah newly nailed to the doorpost, Zeitlin opened the door into what he called “the traveling circus.”

In a large room, filled with precarious piles of books, candelabra, canvas cases and half-opened boxes, a tall old man with a white beard and ringlets, wearing a black caftan and yarmulke, stood erect at a stand facing toward Jerusalem, reciting the Eighteen Benedictions. A silver pointer with an outstretched finger showed his place in the open Talmud. The book was draped with silk, for the holy word could not be left uncovered. This man, Rabbi Abram Barmakid, was not Zeitlin’s father but he was another link to the world of his childhood: this, Zeitlin thought wistfully, is where I came from.

Rabbi Barmakid, once the famous sage of Turbin with his own court and disciples, was now surrounded by sad vestiges of the silver paraphernalia that had previously beautified his prayerhouse and studyhouses. There stood the Ark with its scrolls in velvet covers and silver chains: golden lions with red-beaded eyes and blue-stoned manes kept watch. It was said the rabbi could work miracles. His lips moved quickly, his face seizing the joy and beauty of holy words in a time of disorder and downfall. He had just celebrated Yom Kippur and the Days of Awe camping in this godless house, and the only happy man in it was the one who had lost everything but kept his faith.