Sashenka

She read his biography. Vanya was a top Chekist who had guarded Lenin himself in the early years in Petrograd and Moscow, 1917–19. Rising over the bodies of his bosses during the Terror, he must have been responsible for his share of crimes until…She found an arrest order, shortly before that of his wife. That must be why he looked more weary and angry than afraid: yes, he understood what was to come but he was bored by the procedures that he knew so well. What happened to him? She read and reread the file, noting the dates, trying to understand the sequence. Everything was there but nothing was what it said it was: it was in Soviet gibberish, the code of Bolshevism. She leafed ahead: Palitsyn had started to confess on June 7 and continued into July, August, and September. He too had been sent for trial.

“Time’s up,” said the Marmoset.

“Please—one second!” She skipped some pages and jumped to the end of the file. She had to find out what had happened to Palitsyn. She found a signed confession.

Accused Palitsyn: I plead guilty to spying for the Japanese and British intelligence services, to serving Trotsky, and planning a terrorist plot against the leadership of the Soviet Union. But there was no end to his story—and no mention of Satinov, no link to a common past.

She noted down the dates in her notebook and sighed, wanting to cry. Why? For these two people whom she had never known?

“There’s no record of a sentence,” she said aloud. “Could they have survived? Could they be alive?”

“Does it say in the file that they died?” asked the colonel.

She shook her head.

“Well then…” He stood up and stretched.

“But there’s a lot missing from these files, Colonel. No details of sentencing. Perhaps the Palitsyns were sent to the Gulags and pardoned after Stalin’s death. I wish to apply for more files. I want to find out what happened to these people.”

“Is this a game, girl? Fa-la-la! Maybe you’ll be lucky. Maybe not. I’ll refer your request to my superior, General Fursenko. I’m just a cog in the machine.”

Katinka felt downcast suddenly. She had still not found out why Sashenka and her husband had been arrested. Captain Sagan’s confession was dated after their arrest. She did not believe Benya Golden’s story of his affair with Sashenka, let alone the conspiracy to assassinate the Party leaders, so perhaps this too was invented? And she still didn’t know if all this was in any way connected to Satinov.

As she slid the Sashenka file across the desk to the colonel, she accidentally bent back the blank list of those who had examined the file. On the other side were some scrawled names from 1956: her heart leaped. There it was: Hercules Satinov.

The Marmoset started to check if each document was present, wetting his fingertips with his tongue as he turned the pages.

Katinka saw she had another minute or two. She quickly reopened Ivan Palitsyn’s file—and something caught her eye.

There it was, on the State Security letterhead, a handwritten order dated May 4, 1939:

Top Secret.

Captain Zubenko, Special Technical Group, State Security Set up immediate surveillance in Moscow city limits only on Comrade Sashenka Zeitlin-Palitsyn, editor, Soviet Wife and Proletarian Housekeeping, 23 Petrovka, and set up listening equipment in room 403, Metropole Hotel, with immediate effect. Reports only to me, no copies.

Katinka stared at the signature. Vanya Palitsyn, Commissar-General of State Security, third degree.

Sashenka’s husband.

Afterward, Katinka walked through the Moscow streets, down the hill past the Bolshoi toward the Kremlin. She gripped her notebook and glanced at the stalls of the street vendors offering pirated CDs, sensationalist history pamphlets, American pornography, Italian showbiz magazines, even Peter the Great’s Book of Manners. But she was not really looking at them. Once she bumped into a man, who shouted at her, and another time she walked right into a Lada parked on the pavement. She was trying to make sense of what she had found in the file. Finally, she walked up the cobbled hill from the river, past the Kremlin’s ramparts and then round and round Red Square.