Sashenka

Sashenka wanted to scratch her mother’s face and throw her to the ground where she belonged, but she stepped out of the shadows to find Pantameilion crouched on the snow, pulling at a writhing sequined form on the pavement. It was her mother struggling to get back on her feet.

Sashenka ran up to them. Ariadna was on all fours, her stockings torn and naked knees bleeding. She fell forward again, one gloved hand clawing at the snow, the other trying to fight off Pantameilion’s proffered arm.

“Thanks, Pantameilion,” said Sashenka. “Just check to see that the doors are open. And send the watchman back to bed.”

“But miss, the baroness…”

“Please, Pantameilion, I’ll look after her.”

Pantameilion’s face bore the double anguish of servants faced with the collapse of their employers—they hated the topsy-turviness of a humiliated mistress just as they feared the insecurity of a fallen master. He bowed, shuffled into the house and emerged a moment later, climbing back into the growling Delaunay and jerking it into gear.

Mother and daughter were alone in the street under the mansion’s lantern.

Sashenka knelt beside her mother, who was weeping. Her tears ran in black streams from black eyes on dirty white skin, like muddy footprints on old snow.

Sashenka pulled her to her feet, threw her arm over her shoulder and dragged her up the two steps into the lobby of the house. Inside, the great hall was almost dark, just an electric light burning on the first-floor landing. The giant white squares shone bright, while the black ones were like holes dropping to the middle of the earth. Somehow, she got her mother up to her room. The electric light would be too bright so she lit the oil lamps instead.

By now, Ariadna was sobbing quietly to herself. Sashenka raised her mother’s hands to her lips and kissed them, her anger of a few moments earlier forgotten.

“Mama, Mama, you’re home now. It’s me, Sashenka! I’m going to undress you and put you to bed.” Ariadna calmed down a little, though she continued to speak slivers of nonsense as Sashenka undressed her.

“Sing it again…loneliness…your lips are like stars, houses…the wine is only mediocre, a bad year…hold me again…feel so sick…pay it, I’ll pay, I can afford it…Love is God…am I home…you sound like my daughter…my vicious daughter…another glass please…kiss me properly.”

Sashenka pulled off her mother’s boots, threw off the sable and the hat with ostrich feathers, unhooked the satin dress embroidered with sequins and misty with faded tuberose, untied the bodice, unrolled the shredded stockings, unclipped the brooches, the three ropes of pearls and the diamond earrings. As she pulled off the underdress and the lingerie that was inside out, she was enveloped in the animal smells and sweated alcohol of a woman of the town, aromas that repelled her. She vowed she would never let herself descend into such a state. Finally she heated water and washed her mother’s face.

Amazed at herself, she realized that she had become the mother, and the mother the child. She folded and hung her mother’s clothes, laid her jewels in the velvet box, threw her lingerie into the laundry basket. Then she helped her mother onto the bed, under the covers and kissed her cheek. She stroked her forehead and sat with her.

“You and me…,” said Ariadna, as she fell asleep, rolling and tossing in her sad dreams.

“Sleep, Mama. There, there. It’s over.”

“Darling Sashenka, you and me…”

When Ariadna finally slept, Sashenka wept. I don’t want children, she told herself. Never!

19

Sashenka was still asleep in the chair in Ariadna’s boudoir when she heard her mother calling her: “Sashenka! I’ll take you shopping today, just as your father wanted. Chernyshev’s for your day dresses! You might even be lucky enough to have a gown from Madame Brissac like the little Grand Duchesses!”

“But I’ve got to study,” said Sashenka, stretching, and going into her mother’s bedroom.

“Don’t be foolish, my dear,” said her mother cheerfully, as if nothing shocking had happened. “Look at how you dress. Like a schoolteacher!”

Ariadna was having breakfast off a tray on her bed, and the room smelled of coffee, toast, caviar and poached eggs. “We’ve become firm friends, haven’t we, sladkaya—my sweetie?”

As Leonid finished serving and left the room, Ariadna winked at Sashenka, who asked herself how her mother could possibly have recovered so absolutely, so shamelessly, from the night’s indulgences. The dissipated require constitutions of steel, she thought.

“I’m not sure I can come.”

“We leave at eleven. Lala’s drawing you a bath.” Sashenka decided to acquiesce. Her days were interminably boring anyway. She lived for the dark hours.

An hour later, the two-tone coffee-hued Benz, the third family car, piloted by Pantameilion sporting what Sashenka privately called his “bandmaster’s garb,” delivered them before the famous windows of mannequins in hats, toques and ball dresses: the Chernyshev couture atelier on the corner of Greater Maritime and Nevsky.