Sashenka

Sagan bowed, neat in his white-trimmed blue tunic, boot heels together, as if they were at a soirée, and then offered his hand. He liked to shake his prisoners’ hands. It was one way of “taking their temperature” and showing what the general called “Sagan’s steel under the charm.” He noticed this girl’s hands were shaking and that she carried the noxious smell of the cells. Was that blood on her Smolny pinafore? Some crazy hag had probably attacked her. Well, this was not the Yacht Club. Posh schoolgirls should think of such things before conspiring against their Emperor.

He pulled a chair over and helped her to sit. His first impression was that she was absurdly young. But Sagan liked to say he was “a professional secret policeman, not a nurse.” There were opportunities for him among those who were absurdly young and spoiled and out of their depth. Insignificant as she was, she must know something. She was Mendel’s niece after all.

She flopped into the chair. Sagan noted her exhaustion with satisfaction—and calibrated pity. She was really no more than a confused child. Still, it opened up interesting possibilities.

“You look hungry, mademoiselle. Fancy ordering some breakfast? Ivanov?” A gendarme NCO appeared in the doorway.

She nodded, avoiding his eyes.

“What can I get you, maga-mozelle?” Ivanov flourished an imaginary pen and paper, playing the French waiter.

“Let’s see!” Captain Sagan answered for her, remembering the reports in the surveillance files. “I’ll bet you have hot cocoa, white bread lightly toasted, saltless butter and caviar for breakfast?” Sashenka nodded mutely. “Well, we can’t do the caviar but we have cocoa, bread and I did find a little Cooper’s Fine Cut Marmalade from Yeliseyev’s on Nevsky Prospect. Any good to you?”

“Yes, please.”

“You’ve been bleeding.”

“Yes.”

“Someone attacked you?”

“Last night, it was nothing.”

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“I was read the charges. I’m innocent.”

He smiled at her but she still did not look at him. Her arms remained crossed and she was shivering.

“You’re guilty of course, the question is how guilty.”

She shook her head. Sagan decided this was going to be a very dull interrogation. Ivanov, wearing an apron stretched lumpily over his blue uniform, wheeled in the breakfast and offered bread, marmalade and some cocoa in a mug.

“Just as you ordered, maga-mozelle,” he said.

“Very good, Ivanov. Your French is exquisite.” Sagan turned to his prisoner. “Does Ivanov remind you of the waiters at the Donan, your papa’s favorite, or the Grand Hotel Pupp at Carlsbad?”

“I’ve never stayed there,” Sashenka whispered, running her fingertips over her wide lips, a gesture she made, he noticed, when she was thoughtful. “My mother stays there: she puts me and my governess in a dingy boardinghouse. But you knew that.” She was silent again.

They’re always the same. Unhappy at home, they get mixed up in bad company, he thought. She must be starving, but he would wait for her to ask him whether she could eat.

Instead she suddenly looked straight up at him as if the sight of the food had already restored her. Grey eyes, cool as slate, examined him. The speckled lightness of the irises—grains of gold amid the grey—under the hooded eyebrows, projecting a mocking curiosity, took him aback.

“Are you going to sit there and watch me eat?” she asked, taking a piece of bread.

First point to her, thought Sagan. The gentleman in him, the descendant of generations of Baltic barons and Russian generals, wanted to applaud her. Instead he just grinned.

She picked up a knife, spread the bread with butter and marmalade and ate every piece, quickly and neatly. He noticed there were delicate freckles on either side of her nose, and now her arms were no longer crossed he could see that she had a most abundant bosom. The more she tried to hide her breasts, the more conspicuous they became. We interrogators, concluded Sagan, must understand such things.

Ivanov removed the plates. Sagan held out a packet of cigarettes emblazoned with a crocodile.

“Egyptian gold-tipped Crocodiles?” she said.

“Aren’t they your only luxury?” he replied. “I know that Smolny girls don’t smoke, but in prison, who’s watching?” She took one and he lit it for her. Then he took one himself and threw it spinning into the air, catching it in his mouth.

“A performing monkey as well as a torturer,” she said in her soft voice with its bumble-bee huskiness, and blew out smoke in blue rings. “Thanks for breakfast. Am I going home now?”

Ah, decided Sagan, she does have some spirit after all. The light caught a rich tinge of auburn in her dark hair.

Sagan reached for a pile of handwritten reports.

“Are you reading someone’s diary?” she asked, cheekily.