Sashenka

Ariadna did not care about this politicking but she could see that Sashenka needed to sleep. Her eyes were red, her hands shook from coffee and exhilaration. Yet as she watched her daughter’s animated face, she saw Sashenka anew. It was as if she had grown strong and beautiful, like a grub eating her mother’s flesh from the inside. Now she was shining with life while Ariadna was lifeless and empty.

Stifling a longing to weep, Ariadna retreated to her bedroom.

Feeling not so much calm as becalmed, Ariadna measured out Dr. Gemp’s opium tonic and swallowed it. But this time it did not work. Her limbs were heavy, as if moving through molasses. The earth seemed to slow down, almost stopping on its axis. Time became excruciating.

She lay down on her divan. She could not rejoice in the news that made her husband feel younger and her daughter seem beautiful; it merely aged her. The ground was splintering beneath her feet. No Tsar; Rasputin dead; Zeitlin had talked divorce; and somehow what most upset her was Sashenka’s joyous luminosity. She was playing grown-up politics, laughing at her parents. She had a mission in life—but what did Ariadna have? Why was Sashenka happy? Why so smug? The clock ticked more and more slowly. She waited for each tick but it took ages to come and when it did, it was like the tolling of a distant bell.

When Ariadna was growing up in Turbin, she knew the Tsars were no friend of the Jews, but the Jews were convinced that without the Tsars it would be much worse. The Tsar was far away and he did much harm to the Jews and to the Russians too, even if his intentions were not too bad. But the Tsar had protected the Jews against the Cossacks, landowners, anti-Semites and pogromists. Now he was gone, who would protect them? Who would look after her? Suddenly she craved her mother’s embrace, her mother whom she had ignored. Miriam was in the same house, so was her father—but they might have been in another universe. To reach them would take an eternity.

The sounds of the household were muffled. She had nothing to do and the nothingness took forever to pass. The world was soaked in blood, just as Rasputin had warned her it would be; the streets of Piter were in anarchy. Outside, she heard tramping feet, hooting cars, cheering and gunfire. The sounds meant nothing; everything had lost its taste; her perfume had turned to dust. Everything, even her scarlet dresses, her sapphires, looked grey.

She rose with a sigh and wandered toward Sashenka’s room. She realized that she had not visited it for years.

34

Baron Zeitlin was in his study, clanking energetically on his Trotting Chair, a cigar between his teeth. He was sure he could adapt to the new world, indeed he almost sympathized with the socialists. He was vibrating with new plans. Then he heard Sashenka’s voice in the foyer and remembered how he had failed to understand her. Now he must try harder—otherwise he would lose her.

“Darling Sashenka!” She burst in breathlessly but did not sit down. “I can’t believe the last few days. But life must go on. When are you starting your studies?”

“Studies? We’re much too busy for studies. I lied to you about my politics, Papa, because I had to. We Bolsheviks live by special rules. I was doing what was right.” Her face was firm, almost aggressive.

“It’s all right, Sashenka, I understand,” said Zeitlin, but he did not. He blamed himself for making his daughter into this godless avenger. She had lied to him and rejected the family. But he had taught her to disrespect faith and this was the result. And now was not the time for another quarrel. “Your mother thought you had a boyfriend.”

“How absurd! She hardly knows me. I have a job now at the Pravda newspaper as liaison with the Petrograd Committee and the Soviet.”

“But you must go back to school. The Revolution’s almost over, Sashenka. The government…”

“Papa, the Revolution’s just started. There are exploiters and exploited. No middle ground. This government’s just a temporary bourgeois stage in the march to Socialism. The peasants must have their land, the workers their equality. The soldiers now take their orders from the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.” She was almost shouting at him now, flushed with defiance, her hands gripping his arms. “There’ll be one last stage of capitalist corruption and then all this rottenness, all the bloodsuckers—yes, even you, Papa—will be swept away. There’ll be blood on the streets. I love you, Papa, but we Bolsheviks don’t have families and my love counts for nothing in the face of history.”

Zeitlin had stopped trotting on his contraption. He looked at his daughter, at her exquisite freckles and dappled eyes, and was stunned.

Silence. From somewhere else in the house, there was a small pop.

“Did you hear that?” said Zeitlin, taking his cigar out of his mouth. “What was it?”

“It might have come from upstairs.”