Sashenka

Her diffidence, those teenage doubts, her awkward stance, the prim way she dressed in grey serge, dreary wool stockings and buttoned blouses with her thick hair in a virginal Bolshevik bun, the absence of any makeup or even perfume—all this had wearied him initially. But in recent weeks she had began to grow on him and now he looked forward to the smell of her fresh skin and her sumptuous hair when she was near him, the way her columbine eyes bored into him so intensely, her fingers touching her short upper lip when she talked about her mother, the way her slim body was shaping into a woman’s curves that she was determined to conceal and scorn. And nothing was so adorable as the way she suppressed her humor and joie de vivre, knitting her brows to play the dour revolutionary. He laughed at the tricks of the Almighty, for, however matronly she wanted to be, God had given her features—those lips that never closed, those scathing grey eyes, that lush bosom—that undermined her wishes at every turn and made her even more delicious.

And when he had tasted her lips, his hands had actually started to shake. Her reluctance to return his kiss made her obvious enjoyment of it even more poignant and delightful. Or did I imagine that? he asked himself. Any man of almost forty would lose judgment when faced with that skin, those lips, and the husky bumble-bee voice he had come to know so well. He raised his hands and thought he could divine the scent of her skin, her neck…

Yet she was his agent. The cause, Tsar and Motherland, always came first. It was a desperate struggle for survival between good and evil and she was on the wrong side. If he had to…Well, he hoped it would never come to that. The Okhrana was special. The battle to defend the Empire was a war that had to be fought with merciless conspiracy—as his colleague General Batiushin had told him: “All honor to him who dishonors his name and ends the case with silence as his only reward.” He wet his finger and dipped it into Dr. Gemp’s powder and applied cocaine to nose and gums. He chuckled to himself.

The door opened. A livid snout and ginger whiskers appeared, followed by a uniformed paunch and the rest of the stationmaster.

“Did you say something, Your Excellency?” he said. “Anything I can do? A note to my superiors would be a help. I’d be so grateful…”

“Why not?”

“We hope you’re destroying our enemies, German agents and zhyd nihilists!” The stationmaster rubbed his hands.

“Absolutely! When’s the next train to the Finland Station? I have a report to file.”

“Five minutes, Your Excellency. God Save the Tsar!”

30

The Grand Duke’s crested Benz was already parked among the carriages outside the Radziwill Palace on Fontanka when Pantameilion’s Delaunay swung into the forecourt, the chains wrapped around the wheels just gripping the ice. Samuil and Ariadna Zeitlin waited their turn while the French Embassy Renault dropped Ambassador Paleologue and his wife.

The Izmailovsky Guards in green tunics, the gendarmes with their sultan-spikes and the Cossacks in leather trousers and high furs, flicking their thick whips, bivouacked around bonfires in the squares and guarded the street corners. The air steamed with horse sweat and manure and sweet woodsmoke; the cobbles clattered with the clipclop of a thousand hooves, the rumble of howitzer carriages, the metallic rattle of rifles, horse tackle and scabbards.

The melody of waltzes and laughter wafted down the marble stairs of the palace. The Zeitlins greeted the French ambassador and his wife at the top of the steps. The foursome were just agreeing how quiet the city was when a gunshot echoed over the rooftops. Dogs howled, sirens wailed and somewhere out toward the Vyborg Side the city herself seemed to growl.

“How are you, dear Baron? Are you better, Baroness?” The French ambassador bowed, speaking fluent Russian.

“Much better, thank you. Did you hear that?” asked Ariadna, her eyes iridescent as whirlpools. “A firework!”

“That was gunfire, Baroness, I fear,” replied the ambassador, immaculate in black coat, top hat and white tie. “There it is again. The metal factory workers are marching in their hundreds of thousands from Petrograd, Vyborg and Narva.”

“I’m freezing,” shivered Ariadna.

“Let’s go in,” said the Frenchwoman, taking her hand.

The ambassador’s wife and Ariadna, both in floor-length furs, one in ermine, the other in seal, walked inside, handing their coats to the staff. Ariadna, like an angel stepping out of a fountain, emerged glistening and pale in a mauve brocade gown embroidered in diamonds with a high bosom and low-cut back. She embraced the richest couple in Lithuanian Poland, Prince and Princess Radziwill.

“You’re so good to come, Ariadna, and you, Madame Paleologue, on such a night. We wondered whether to cancel but dearest Grand Duke Basil absolutely banned it. He said it was our duty, yes, our duty. We’ve spoken to General Kabalov and he’s most reassuring…”