Sashenka

At the front of the line, Katinka held Roza’s hand as they stepped up onto the slightly raised plinth and looked down into the coffin. She couldn’t help but look at Satinov’s face with fondness, despite the games he had played with her. Death—and the attentions of a meticulous embalmer and hairdresser—had restored to him the graceful virility and serene grandeur of a Soviet hero of the older generation. Four rows of medals glinted on his chest; the starred and gilded shoulder boards of a marshal of the Soviet Union glistened; the grey hair reared up stiffly in razor-cut spikes.

“I remember playing with him long ago,” said Roza, looking at him. “And he was the man in the car who watched me going to school in Odessa from his limousine.” She leaned into the coffin and kissed Satinov’s forehead, but stepping off the plinth she tottered and Katinka caught her. “I’m fine,” Roza said. “It’s all so much to absorb.”

Katinka helped her to a chair, from where Roza watched the children running up the long corridor and sliding on their knees along the gleaming parquet floor. Katinka went to the kitchen to get Roza a glass of water. Mariko and a couple of relatives, obviously Georgians, perhaps her brothers, were drinking tea and nibbling on Georgian snacks.

“Oh, Katinka,” said Mariko, “I’m pleased you came. Would you like some chai or a glass of wine?” Mariko looked weary in her black suit but Katinka was sure she had grown younger and prettier in the last few days. “Tomorrow he’s going to lie in state in the Red Army Hall,” she said proudly.

“Thanks to your father, I found Sashenka’s children,” explained Katinka, “and—you’ll never guess—thanks to him, I learned that Sashenka was my grandmother. Imagine that!”

Mariko brought Roza into the kitchen. Mariko’s relatives left them alone and she poured chai and offered them food.

“Do you know,” said Roza as she sipped her tea, “I remember sliding on the floor of this apartment.”

“Your apartment was in this building too, wasn’t it?” asked Katinka.

“Not just in this building,” said Roza sharply. “This was our home, this very apartment, and I remember when the men in shiny boots came here: a pile of photographs, papers in a heap on the floor over there, and us being hugged by a pretty woman in tears.”

Katinka glanced at Mariko, who said nothing for a moment: she and Roza were close in age but they had led very different, almost mirrored lives.

“I was born in 1939,” said Mariko, taking a sip of red wine. “I think we were granted this apartment at that time too. It was impossible to refuse a gift from the Party—it was a test of loyalty…”—she swallowed hard and looked away—“but I never dreamed it came to us like that. I don’t know what to say.”

Roza reached out and put her hand on Mariko’s. “It is so wonderful to meet you. If things hadn’t happened the way they did, we might have grown up together.”

“I wish we had. It must be so hard for you to come here…It’s hard to learn some things, and it was hard for my father.”

“He helped me,” Katinka told her, “but there were some things he didn’t want me to discover.”

“He so wanted you to find Sashenka’s children again,” said Mariko, “but he’d devoted his life to the Soviet Union and the Party. He needed to help you without undermining his beliefs. And he never wanted anyone to know the terrible thing he had done. My father saw much tragedy in his life but, you know, I think Sashenka was always in the back of his mind, in his dreams. She and all her family. He must have seen them every day in this apartment.”

“But we still don’t know what happened to her,” said Katinka with a touch of bitterness. “The file was missing. Only your father knew, and he’s taken the secret to his grave.”

There was nothing else to say. Mariko stood up, collecting the plates and the cups, piling them in the sink.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Roza.

Mariko dried her hands on a towel. “And I’m s—” but she stopped herself sharply. “Thank you for coming,” she said at last.

A few minutes later, Katinka and Roza walked down the stone steps to the street where Pasha’s Bentley waited. A chauffeur opened the door. History is so messy, so unsatisfactory, Katinka thought, remembering her father’s sorrowful words earlier that morning. She too hated the way history toyed with people.

“Katinka!” She looked up. “Katinka!” Mariko was calling to her from the first-floor landing.

The front door was still open and Katinka turned and ran back up the steps.

“Take this.” Mariko thrust a yellow envelope into Katinka’s hands. “My father made me promise to destroy it. But I want you to have it. Go on, Katinka, it’s your story as well as ours. Yours and Roza’s.”

27

“I need your help, Maxy, one last time,” Katinka told him on the telephone once she and Roza were back at the Getman mansion.

“It’s lovely to hear your voice,” answered Maxy. “I missed you. And I’ve got something to show you, out in the countryside. What better place to talk and think. Can I pick you up?”