Sashenka

The Zeitlins, Lala discovered, were Jews. She had never met Jews before. There were no Jews in her village in Hertfordshire and Lord Stisted knew no Jews, although Lady Stisted talked disdainfully of the unscrupulous Jewish diamond millionaires from South Africa and the thousands of filthy Jewish cutthroats from Russia who had turned the East End into a “rookery of crime.” Audrey had been warned that Jews were not good people to work for—but she knew her own position would not stand too much scrutiny. The Zeitlins for their part were delighted to find a girl who had worked in a noble London household. They suited each other—especially as the Zeitlins seemed very civilized Israelites.

The moment Mrs. Lewis arrived, indeed before her cases had been taken to her room, Ariadna, who looked dazzling in a dress of turquoise crépe de chine, led her into a nursery to meet her charge.

“Here she is! Voilà ma fille,” said Ariadna in her pretentious Franco-English. “She almost killed me when she was born. Never again. I’ve told Samuil—from now on, I deserve some fun! She’s an unbiddable child, ungrateful and unruly. See if you can tame her a little, Mrs. Linton—”

“Lewis, Audrey Lewis, madame.”

“Yes, yes…from now on, she’s yours.”

It was at that meeting that Mrs. Lewis had become Lala, and had fallen in love with Sashenka. She herself was in her teens; this child not that much younger. Her doctor in London had told her after the abortion that she would never have a child of her own and suddenly, passionately, she wanted to nurture this young girl.

The child and her governess needed each other and so Lala became Sashenka’s mother, her real mother. What fun they had: skating and sleigh rides in winter, carriage rides, mushroom collecting and blackberry picking at Zemblishino in the summer, always laughing and always together.

The Zeitlins traveled constantly, to Odessa and Baku and Tiflis, by train but in a private compartment. Lala studied Russian on the long trips.

In Baku they stayed in a palace that Zeitlin’s father had had copied from a French château: they promenaded on the seafront surrounded by a phalanx of kochis, armed bodyguards sporting fezzes, wielding Berdana rifles. In Odessa they stayed at the Londonskaya Hotel right on Seaside Street, just above the famous Richelieu Steps; Lala spent her free time sitting in cafés, eating sturgeon kebabs on Deribaskaya. But her English heart remained in Tiflis.

Spring was a glory in Tiflis, magical Tiflis in Georgia, Tiflis the capital of the Caucasus, midway between the Zeitlin oil wells in Baku, on the Caspian Sea, and the Zeitlin oil tankers in Batum, on the Black Sea.

There the Zeitlins rented the mansion of a penniless Georgian prince, on a cobbled lane nestled into the steep slopes of Holy Mountain. Russian colonels and Armenian millionaires called at the house. Ariadna greeted them, laughing under her breath, from among the vines on the balcony, her hungry white teeth and violet eyes glistening. She never visited the nursery.

“Lewis and child are coming with the baggage” was her line. But even though he was so busy, Zeitlin would drop in on the nursery. He seemed to prefer it to Ariadna’s “at homes” full of officers and bureaucrats in frock coats and top hats, sashes and shoulder boards. In the highest circles, children were to be admired briefly and then removed from sight, but Zeitlin adored his Sashenka and kissed her forehead again and again.

“I must go back to work,” he’d say. “But you’re so sweet, darling Sashenka. Your skin is like rich satin! You’re good enough to eat!”

One day, during a rare evening off work, Lala dressed in her Sunday best and a parasol and promenaded down the main avenue, past the white Viceroy’s Palace (where, she’d heard, Ariadna had shocked the officers’ wives with her bare shoulders and her frenzied dancing). The Tiflis streets smelled of lilac and lily of the valley. She passed theaters, opera houses and mansions on her way to Yerevan Square.

She’d been warned to be careful of the square and she soon realized why. The noisy, filthy side streets seethed with Turks, Persians, Georgians and mountain tribesmen in the brightest and wildest costumes, wielding daggers and blunderbusses. Urchins or kintos scampered through the crowds. Water sellers and porters pushed wheelbarrows. Officers walked their ladies but there were no women on their own. Barely had Lala stepped into the square when she was surrounded by a mob of urchins and salesmen, shouting in their own languages, all offering their wares—carpets, watermelons, pumpkin seeds and lobio beans. A fight broke out between a Persian water seller and a Georgian urchin; a Chechen drew a dagger. It was early evening and still boiling hot. Jostled and harassed, with sweat pouring down her face, Lala was afraid. Then, just as she began to panic, the crowd parted and she found herself being pulled into a phaeton.