Sashenka

Yet she no longer felt as if she had won. A wave of sadness and guilt overwhelmed her, as if her curse had visited this horror upon him. The dead body of Verezin, and now this. Yet this was what she had craved and she must welcome it: the Revolution was a noble master. Many would die in the struggle, she thought—and yet the destruction of a man was a terrible thing.

She found herself leaning on a statue outside the Kazan as tears ran down her face. It was an end but not the one she had wanted. She wished she had never known Sagan and she wished too that he had walked on down that street to a safe exile, far away.

36

A husky drawl broke the sepulchral hush of the sickroom.

“What’s in the newspaper?” Ariadna asked.

The familiar voice shocked Sashenka. Her mother had not spoken for days. She had just slept, her breathing labored, the infection flourishing in her chest so that it seemed she would never wake again. Sashenka had been reading Pravda, the Party newspaper, when Ariadna stirred. She spoke so clearly that Sashenka dropped the paper, scattering its pages onto the carpet.

“Mama, you gave me a shock!”

“I’m not dead yet, darling…or am I? It stinks in here. I can hardly breathe. What does that newspaper say?”

Sashenka picked up the pages. “Uncle Mendel’s on the Party’s Central Committee. Lenin’s returning any day.” Sashenka looked up to find her mother’s velvety eyes resting on her with an astonishing warmth. It surprised and then embarrassed her.

“When I finally went to your room…,” Ariadna began, and Sashenka strained to understand.

“Mama, you look better.” It was a lie but who tells the truth to the dying? Sashenka wanted to soothe her mother. “You’re getting better. Mama, how do you feel?”

“I feel…” She squeezed her daughter’s hand. Sashenka squeezed back. The eyes dimmed again.

“I long to ask you one question, Mama. Why did you…? Mama?”

At that moment Dr. Gemp, a plump, worldly man with a shiny pink pate and the theatrical air often associated with society doctors, entered the room.

“Did your mother wake up then? What did she say?” he asked. “Ariadna, are you in pain?”

Sashenka watched him lean over her mother, bathing her forehead and neck with a cold compress. He unraveled the dressing on her chest and inspected, cleaned and dabbed the wound, which looked like a congealed fist of blood.

Her father appeared beside her, also leaning over the sickbed. He looked terrible, his collar filthy and the beginnings of a prickly grey beard on his cheeks. He reminded Sashenka of an old Jew from the Pale.

“Is she coming round? Ariadna? Speak to me! I love you, Ariadna!” said Zeitlin. Ariadna opened her eyes. “Ariadna! Why did you harm yourself? Why?”

Behind him stood Ariadna’s parents, Miriam, her small, dry face pointed like that of a field mouse, and the Rabbi of Turbin, with gabardine coat and skullcap, his face framed by his prophetic beard and whimsical ringlets.

“Darling Silberkind,” said Miriam in her strong Polish-Yiddish accent, taking Sashenka’s hands and kissing her shoulder tenderly. But Sashenka sensed how out of place the old couple felt in Ariadna’s room. They had been in there before, yet they peered, like paupers, at the pearls, gowns, tarot cards and potions. For them this was the Temple of the Golden Calf and the very ruin of their dreams as parents.

Dr. Gemp, who specialized in the secret tragedies—abortions, suicides and addictions—of Grand Dukes and counts, stared at the old Jews as if they were lepers, but managed to finish dressing Ariadna’s wound.

Ariadna pointed at her parents. “Are you from Turbin?” she asked them. “I was born in Turbin. Samuil, you must shave…”

Hours, nights, days passed. Sashenka lost track of time as she sat by the bed. Ariadna’s breathing was hoarse and labored, like an old pair of bellows. Her face was grey and sallow and sunken. She had become old, tiny and collapsed. Her jaw hung open, and her chest creaked up and down, catching on clots of phlegm in her lungs so that her breath rattled and crackled. There was no beauty or vivacity left, just this shivering, quivering animal that had once been a vibrant woman, a mother, Sashenka’s mother.

Sometimes Ariadna struggled to breathe and began to panic. Sweat poured off her, soaking the sheets, and she clawed the bed. Then Sashenka would stand up and take her hand. All of a sudden, there was so much she wanted to say to her mother: she wanted to love her, wanted to be loved by her. Was it too late?

“Mama, I’m here with you, it’s me, Sashenka! I love you, Mama!” Did she love her? She was not sure, but her voice was saying these things.

Dr. Gemp came again. He pulled Zeitlin and Sashenka aside.

“Don’t raise your hopes, Samuil,” said the doctor.

“But she wakes up sometimes! She talks…,” said Zeitlin.

“The wound’s infected and the infection has spread.”

“She could recover, she could…,” insisted Sashenka.

“Perhaps, mademoiselle,” replied Dr. Gemp smoothly, as a maid handed him his black cape and fedora. “Perhaps in the land of miracles.”

37