Sashenka

Katinka circled the table as Shcheglov bounced on his yellow plastic toes with pleasure.

She noted the Napoleonic Grande Armée on one side and the Russian Guards Regiments on the other. “It’s 1812 of course,” she said slowly. “That must be the Raevsky Redoubt, Barclay de Tolly’s forces here, Prince Bagration here facing French Marshals Murat and Ney. Napoleon himself with the Guard here. It’s the Battle of Borodino!” she said triumphantly.

“Hurrah!” he cried. “Now let me show you where we keep our documents.” He opened a further steel door into a subterranean hall stacked with metal cabinets holding thousands upon thousands of numbered files. “Many of these will still be closed long after we’re dead. This is my life’s work and I wouldn’t show you anything that I felt undermined the security of the Motherland. But your research is just a footnote, albeit a very interesting footnote. Please sit at my desk and I’ll show you your materials.”

“Why are you helping me?” she asked.

“Only as a favor to a respected comrade archivist—and uncle. Yes, Kuzma’s my uncle. We archivists are all related: my father works at the State Archive and my grandfather before him.”

“An imperial dynasty of archivists,” said Katinka.

“Between ourselves, that’s exactly how I see it!” Shcheglov beamed, gold teeth flashing in the electric light. “You’re not to copy anything even into a notebook. Remember, girl, none of this is ever to be published. Agreed?”

Katinka nodded and sat at his desk. He took a shallow pile of beige files off a shelf, opened a file, licked his finger and turned some pages.

“Scene one. A list of one hundred and twenty-three names—each with a number—signed by Stalin and a quorum of the Politburo on nine January 1940.”

Katinka’s heart raced. A deathlist. Shcheglov hummed as he ran his finger down the list.

82. Palitsyn, I. N.

83. Zeitlin-Palitsyn, A. S. (Comrade Snowfox)

84. Barmakid, Mendel

She noted the list was addressed to Stalin and the Politburo and signed in a tiny, neat green ink by L. P. Beria, Narkom NKVD.

Shcheglov’s finger traveled to the scrawls around the typed names:

Agreed. Molotov

Crush these traitors like snakes. I vote for the Vishka! Kaganovich

Shoot these whores and scoundrels like dogs. Voroshilov

And most decisively:

Shoot them all.

J. St.

“So they were sentenced,” she said, “but were they all…?”

“Scene two.” Shcheglov slid the document across the desk with a flourish, turned back to the shelf, hunted around for a few moments and then presented a scuffed memorandum, bearing in its careless scrawl and clumsy blotting the grinding boredom, stained desks, greasy fingers and the rough routine of prisons.

To Comrade Commandant of Special Object 110, Golechev

21 January 1940

Transfer to Major V. S. Blokhin, Head of Command Operations, the below-mentioned prisoners condemned to be shot…

The 123 names on the list were typed below. Sashenka and Vanya were near the top. A bunch of more than a hundred blotched, crumpled chits—pro-forma memoranda with the names and dates filled in—was held together by a thick red string pushed through a hole in the sheaf.

Her hands shaking, Katinka found Vanya Palitsyn’s chit.

On the orders of Comrade Kobylov, Deputy Narkom NKVD, the undersigned on 21 January 1940 at 4:41 a.m. carried out the sentence of shooting on…and here the semiliterate scribble of a half-drunk executioner added the name Palitsyn, Ivan. The man who carried out the sentence was V. S. Blokhin. Katinka had heard of him from Maxy: he usually wore a butcher’s leather apron and cap to shield his beloved NKVD uniform from the spatter of blood.

Katinka felt herself in the presence of evil and nothingness. She was not crying, she was too overwhelmed for that. Instead she felt dizzy and faint.

The other chits were the same. She could only think that every scrap, so sloppily filled in, was the end of a life and a family. She could barely bring herself to look at Sashenka’s—but then she started to turn the pages too fast, almost tearing them.

“I can’t find her,” she said, her voice shaking.

Shcheglov looked at his watch. “We haven’t got long before my colleague returns. Now we go back over six months to how the case began. Take a look at this. Scene three.”