Sashenka

Sashenka, now on both knees, tried to get hold of her mother but this time Ariadna slipped through her fingers, with a manic laugh. A fat woman on all fours began to bellow. Sashenka had a sudden urge to get up and run away, yet this was her own mother and she now realized, if she had never grasped it before, that Ariadna was not just a bad mother, she was sick, almost demented. A tall, black-haired ox of a young peasant, with black hair on her upper lip and eyebrows that grew together, seized Sashenka, shouting curses. Sashenka fought back but her attacker, whose mouth was edged with a white paste, sank her teeth into her arm. Sashenka shouted in pain, tossing aside this peasant woman, who Sagan later told her was Rasputin’s daughter, and reached for her mother in earnest. She took her arm and then her leg and dragged her out of the fray. The other women tried to stop her but Sagan and an ordinary policeman pushed them back.

The creature who had been her mother lay at her feet, shivering and sobbing, under the cool eyes of Sagan and the policemen, who were discussing the postmortem on Rasputin’s body and who might have murdered him. There was a pain in her forearm: Sashenka could see the individual toothmarks of her assailant. She noticed that Ariadna wore a simple floral dress quite unlike anything she had seen her wear before, and understood that she had intended to come before the Elder Grigory as a poor supplicant.

Sashenka fell to her knees, her hands clasped. She wanted to cry too. Sagan’s hand came to rest on her shoulder.

“Pull yourself together, Mademoiselle Zeitlin. You’ve got to get her out of here now,” said Sagan, donning his derby hat. “I’ll help you.”

Sashenka and Sagan took Ariadna by the arms and dragged her to the door.

On the landing, Ariadna started screaming again. “Grigory, Grigory, where are you? We need you to soothe our souls and forgive our sins! Grigory! I’ve got to wait for him! He’ll come back for me…” She struggled out of their hands, scratching and kicking, and tried to bolt back into the apartment but, moving fast, Sagan caught her.

“Gentlemen, we could do with a hand!” he called to the two city policemen guarding the door. One of them took Sashenka’s place on Ariadna’s left arm; Sagan took the right. The other policeman pulled down his hat, and in a fluid motion swept up Ariadna’s two feet in his arms. The three of them carried Ariadna down the stairs, her dress riding up to reveal the shreds of her stockings and her bare legs.

Sashenka averted her gaze and walked ahead of them, horrified and helpless yet grateful for their assistance. She crossed the courtyard, feeling the eyes of the policemen on her, hoping they would not know that this mess was her mother. Pity and shame engulfed her.

A car with a gendarme sergeant at the wheel was backing through the archway into the courtyard.

“Get her inside,” said Sagan breathlessly. Another gendarme opened the back door and helped guide Ariadna into the compartment. “Take her home, Sashenka.” Sagan slammed the door. “Good luck.” He leaned in toward the driver. “Thank you, Sergeant. Greater Maritime Street and fast!” Sagan banged the roof of the car.

Sashenka was alone in the compartment with her mother—and it took her back in time to the years after the revolution of 1905. She could just remember the Cossack horsemen and the furious shabby crowds and how Zeitlin had sent them out of Russia, to the west. They had traveled through Europe in a private railway carriage. Ariadna, always soused even then, wore scarlet brocade and held court at the Grand Hotel Pupp in Carlsbad, the Carlton in Nice, Claridge’s in London, always accompanied by some new “uncle.” There was the pink-cheeked Englishman, a Guards officer with a gold breastplate and a bearskin hat; a nimble Spanish diplomat in a frock coat; and Baron Mandro (known to Sashenka as “the Lizard”), an aging Galician Jew with an eye patch, rouged cheeks and hairy hands like cockroaches, who had once patted her bottom. When she bit him—she could still taste his coppery blood on her tongue—Ariadna had slapped her. “Get her out of here, vicious child!” and Sashenka was carried out of the room, struggling and screaming. And now, a decade later, Ariadna was being carried out, kicking and howling.

Sashenka peered out of the window. She longed to be in the streets, factories and safe houses with her comrades, away from this domestic farrago. The restaurants and nightclubs were filled with people. Whores trooped past St. Isaac’s toward the Astoria dressed in so much scarlet, gold and shining leather that through the snow and darkness Sashenka thought they resembled a regiment of Chevalier Guards. St. Petersburg was in a fever. Never had the stakes in the poker games been so high, never had there been so many revelers, so many limousines outside the Astoria…Was it the last mazurka?