Sashenka

Fifteen minutes later, at 7:00 p.m., in that eyrie at the top of the Metropole, Sashenka, in her new dress and hairdo, her new brassiere, her new perfume and silk stockings, was kissing Benya Golden, who, while his white suit got dirtier and shabbier, was also primped, barbered and bathed.

They made love, they talked, they laughed—and then she brought a package out of her bag and tossed it on the bed.

He jumped up and opened it, weighing it in his hands.

“A little present.”

“Paper!” He sighed. The Literary Fund Shop had refused him any more paper so she had ordered it for him. “Paper’s the way to a writer’s heart.”

They had met at the Metropole every day for ten days, and their relationship had moved beyond mere sexual infatuation. Sashenka had told him the story of her family; he had told her of his upbringing in Lemberg, of his adventures in the civil war, and the many outrageous erotic shenanigans in which he had become embroiled. After twenty years in the grip of Bolshevik officialdom, Sashenka was bowled over by the exuberance of Golden’s life: every disaster became a ridiculous comedy in which he starred as chief clown. His clashes with officialdom—dreary and heartbreaking in anyone else—became hilarious sketches peopled by grotesques. His views on the Socialist Realists, writers and filmmakers, were riotously scabrous, yet he spoke of poetry with tears in his eyes. He lent her books and took her to movies in the middle of the day; they relished Moscow in bloom—the lilacs and the magnolias—and he even bought her garlands of mimosa and bunches of violets, which came, the shopkeeper assured them, all the way from the Crimea.

“You’ve brought me back to life,” Benya told her.

“What am I doing with you?” she answered. “I feel as if I’m in delicious freefall. When a woman lives a disciplined life for twenty years and then the discipline snaps, she may lose her mind.”

“So you do like me a bit?” he persisted.

“You’re always fishing for more praise, my darling.” She smiled at him, taking in his blue eyes with the yellow speckles that bored into her so intensely, the dimpled chin, the mouth that was always on the verge of laughter. Sashenka realized that though she laughed so much with the children, she had not laughed enough in her life since those early days with Lala. There was precious little laughter with Mendel and Vanya, and now she discovered how many joyless people there were in the world (and especially in the Bolshevik Party). When she was not making love with Benya, they were laughing, their mouths wide open, their eyes shining.

“You need more and more praise, don’t you? I can tell your mother loved you as a boy.”

“She did. Is it that obvious? I was so spoiled.”

“Well, I’m not going to tell you what I think of you, you silly Galitzianer. Your head’s quite swollen enough. Anyway, isn’t the proof of the pudding in the eating?”

“This pudding always wants to be nibbled,” he said.

She sighed. “I want you all the time.”

She was at the window, letting the breeze cool her sweat, wearing just her stockings. He was lying naked and spread-eagled on the bed, smoking a Belomor and wearing nothing but his white peaked cap. She went to him and lay on his limbs, resting her head on her hand, taking his cigarette for a puff and then blowing blue circles into his mouth. But for once, he did not start making love to her.

“I’ve written your article,” he said, not looking at her.

“The Felix Dzerzhinsky Communal Orphanage…”

“…for the Re-education of Children of Traitors to the Motherland.”

“Well, it must be quite an uplifting institution,” she mused. “The front line in the creation of the new Soviet child.”

“I can’t write it like that, Sashenka. Even if I turned myself into the most cold-hearted, cowardly, murderous scum, I couldn’t write it…”

“What do you mean? It’s a story of redemption.” She was shocked by his sudden vehemence.

“Redemption? More like perdition, Dante’s inner circle of hell!” He was shouting suddenly, and she ran a finger over her lips, surprised by his anger. “I don’t know where to start. At a distance it looked very sweet—an old noble house in the woods, probably somewhat like the Zemblishino of your upbringing. Children parading at morning assembly in their white uniforms to discuss the new History of the Bolshevik Party—Short Course. But when I wanted to come inside and observe, the director, a brutish Ukrainian named Khanchuk, made a fuss, although he surrendered when he learned the name of the editor’s husband. Inside, away from public scrutiny, the children are starving, dirty and ill educated. One six-year-old died yesterday—there were cuts and burns all over his little body. The doctors said he had also been beaten every day by Khanchuk. The teachers are savage degenerates who sexually abuse the children and treat them as slaves. The little ones are terrorized by gangs of damaged older children. It is one of the most horrifying places I’ve ever seen.”