Sashenka

“I might just surprise you this time!” Gideon was feeling virtuous. He had enough cash to pay off the debts, satisfy Vera, buy the girls new books and dresses, and some fine meals. He looked forward to handing over the mazuma: Vera would smile at him; Mouche would dance; even Vika would love him again.

When Vera served the kasha, a buckwheat porridge, sprinkled with goat’s cheese, she again asked about the money, not mentioning there was a revolution afoot. Outside, the factory sirens started to blare and whine; a shot, more shots and then a barrage rang out; stolen cars raced down the streets, skidding, grinding their gears as peasants enjoyed their first driving lessons.

“Is Sashenka really a Bolshevik, Papa? How’s Aunt Ariadna? Is it true the doctor prescribed her opium?” Mouche asked questions and hummed to herself as he tried to answer them. Vika glared at her father each time her mother pressed her lips together, sighed or sniffed sanctimoniously.

No one could ruin a meal for Gideon. Whether it was kasha in his dreary apartment or a sturgeon steak at the Contant, he was a vigorous trencherman, recounting the family news, smacking his lips, sniffing the nosh like a happy dog and soiling his beard without the slightest embarrassment.

“You don’t eat as you taught us to eat,” said Vika. “Your manners are terrible, aren’t they, Mama?”

“Don’t do as I do,” replied Gideon. “Do as I say!”

“How can you tell the children that?” asked his wife.

“It’s hypocrisy,” said Vika.

“You two are a regular trade union of sulking women! Cheer up,” said Gideon, putting his feet up on a filthy chair, already marked by his boots on other occasions.

“No more jokes, Gideon,” said Vera, sending Vika and Mouche to do their homework.

The moment he was alone with Vera, everything changed. Her drawn sallow face, made for martyrdom, irritated him. She was always wiping her nose with a green-stained rag. Her prissiness maddened him. He adored his daughters—or rather he adored Mouche—but what had happened to Vera? A child of the provincial bourgeois, the daughter of a Mariupol schoolteacher, she had been educated, an intellectual who worked on the literary journal Apollo, full of vim and enthusiasm, with a high bosom, blue eyes and golden hair. Now the bosom hung around her waist like udders, the eyes were watered down to a tepid pallor, and the hair was greying. How he had been so foolish as to get her pregnant again, he could barely believe! But on Mouche’s birthday he had been overcome with a sort of erotic nostalgia for how she had been, forgetting how she was now. The fact that he himself had done this to her and that he felt guilty about it made him resent her all the more.

Only Mouche delighted him, and he decided that when she was a little older he would invite her to live with him. As for now, he could hardly stand it here another moment. Great events were taking shape on the streets; parties were throbbing in the hotels; a writer must see history being made; and he was stuck here with this straitlaced harridan.

Vera droned on with her complaints: the morning sickness was gone but her back ached and she could not sleep. The doorman made comments about Gideon’s carryings-on. Vika had told her friends that her father was a revolutionary and a drunkard; Mouche was insubordinate and rude, the teachers complained about her and she was growing out of all her boots and dresses. But there was no money; it was hard to get meat in the shops and impossible to find bread; the neighbors had heard from someone else in the building that Gideon had been seen drunk in the early hours in the Europa Hotel; and how did he think that made her feel?

A full belly never made Gideon sleepy; it went straight to his loins. It fortified his libido. For some reason, he cast his mind back to the lunch last week at his brother’s house. The Lorises were famous for their happy marriage but the boring count was not at the lunch so Gideon had given Missy what he called the Gideon Manifesto: let us pleasure ourselves now for life is short and tomorrow we die. (Obvious as it was, the manifesto was surprisingly successful!) Now Gideon recalled how, as he was saying good-bye to Missy, she had looked into his face with her crinkly, twinkling eyes—her laughter making creases around them—and squeezed his hand unmistakably, saying, “It would be wonderful to talk more about Meyerhold and the new theater. I suppose you won’t be at Baroness Rozen’s at the Astoria on…,” and she named a date. It happened that it was tonight. Gideon had neglected to follow up—but now his refreshed and well-fed phallus, a brilliant interpreter of female intentions, stirred. He had to get to that party right away.