Sashenka (21 page)

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 carryingson. 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 goodbye 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 wellfed phallus, a brilliant interpreter of female intentions, stirred. He had to get to that party right away.

Missy had never paid him the slightest attention. She was worldly enough—she had to be openminded to be friends with Ariadna. But she had never really flirted with anyone and certainly not with him. Gideon reflected that the war, the loss of respect, the everchanging ministers and the disturbances on the streets must be shaking free some ripe fruit that would never otherwise have fallen to the ground. He thought about Missy Loris’s body—

that bobbed blonde was skinny and had no bosom—yet he suddenly hungered for the sheer unadulterated joy of tasting new skin, lips, the satin of her inner thighs. He smiled to himself: this ursine giant was capable of Herculean erotic feats that no one—except the women themselves—would have believed possible. He proposed the most deliciously outré acts of lovemaking in delicate French phrases that liberated the restraint of chorus girls and countesses alike. Yet he had never become complacent about this erotic success.

Why did these lovely
bubelehs
, these babes, choose me? he thought. Me? Of all people! I’m an ugly brute—like a Jewish innkeeper! But what the hell, I’m not complaining!

He just could not help himself: he had to find Missy right away that night. But if he handed over the two hundred rubles to Vera now, he would have nothing to buy the ladies drinks and snacks. What to do? He groaned. He’d do what he always did.

Moments later, as Vera washed up morosely, Gideon fled, leaving a hundred rubles on the hall table and keeping the rest for himself. Mouche helped him pull on his felt boots and handed him “our Menshevik article!” while Vika shook her head, pursing her lips.

“You’re leaving already, Papa? I knew it. I knew it. I knew it!”

“We’ll change the locks, you deadbeat!” shouted Vera, but he was gone.

Outside in the streets, Gideon could not find a sleigh. As for Vera, the whiner would manage, he thought. Vera and Vika: what a pair of sourpusses! I’m a coward, an incorrigible shameful hedonist—but I’m so happy! Dizzy with anticipation! What’s wrong with happiness? We make our own lives! What are humans? We’re just animals. I’ll die young. I won’t make old bones so I’m just doing what my species does. Besides, I had to go! I have an article to deliver to the newspaper.

He smelled the icy air. Strange sounds echoed in the distance. Gunshots crackled, factory whistles sang, engines revved and screeched, voices chanted—but here all seemed oddly quiet. But as he strode toward the Astoria Hotel, his mind racing with the anticipation of Missy’s bare shoulders, her soft belly, her smells of female sweat and perfume, he stepped out into the wider streets. It started as a murmur, became a throbbing and grew into a roar. The broad boulevards were filling with masses of people, their covered heads and heavy coats making padded bundles of them as if they were automata all marching in the same direction.

Gideon weaved in and out, sometimes letting the current carry him, sometimes standing aside and watching it rush past. He was excited. As a writer, he was witnessing something. But where was the army, the Cossacks?

He stepped into the hotel, home again among its gleaming parquet floors, the shiny gold and black elevators, the dark oak bar.

“The usual, Monsieur Zeitlin?” asked Roustam the barman. Inside the Astoria, the polished formality had given way to a wild and carefree holiday. Tossing his coat and hat at the hatcheck girl and forgetting to remove his boots, Gideon padded toward the private room where Baroness Rozen was holding a soirée. A girl in a backless orange dress, a feather boa and yellow shoes—what Vera called a woman of easy virtue, but what Gideon affectionately called a
bubeleh
—hailed him like an old friend, and he beamed at her. She was holding a drink and offering him a sip. The receptionists laughed at her: were they drunk too? A couple, an officer and what appeared to be a respectable lady wearing a double rope of pearls, sat kissing on the sofa in the foyer as if they were in a
kabinet
, not a public place. A doorman opened the double doors to the party and Gideon noticed that the redfaced servant did not bow, just smirked as if he knew what was inside Gideon’s head.

Gideon almost fell into the room, pushing through uniforms and shoulder boards, frock coats and gowns, hearing them discussing the situation in the streets—until he saw a helmet of blond hair, some pale shoulders and a long gloved arm with a goldtipped cigarette and the smoke curling round above it like a snake from a basket.

“So you came,” Missy Loris said in her American accent.

“Was I meant to?”

Her smile raised those comely laughter dimples in her cheeks. “Gideon, what’s happening out there?”

He put his lips to her little highset ear. “We could all die tonight,
bubeleh
! What shall we do in our last moments?” It was one of his favorite lines from the Gideon Manifesto, and any moment now it was going to work.

32

There were no cabs at the Finland Station when Sashenka arrived back in the city. There was hardly anyone on the train except for two old ladies, probably retired teachers, who were earnestly discussing whether the
Thirty Abominations
, a lesbian novel from before the war, by Lidia ZinovievaAnnibal, was a classic exposition of female sensuality or a disgusting unchristian potboiler.

The argument started politely enough but as the train pulled into the Finland Station the two ladies were shouting at each other, even cursing. “You philistine, Olesya Mikhailovna, it’s pornography plain and simple!”

“You hidebound reptile, Marfa Constantinovna, you’ve never lived, never loved, felt nothing.”

“At least I feared God!”

“You’ve so upset me, I’m having a turn. I need my pills.”

“I won’t give them to you until you admit you’re being utterly unreasonable…”

Sashenka could only smile as she heard the ricochet of gunshots over the city.

The station was eerily empty of its tramps and urchins. Outside, it was dusk but the streets were filled with running people, some with guns. It was snowing again, big dry flakes like barley seeds; the half moon cast a lurid yellow light. Sashenka thought the people looked oddly swollen but realized that many were wearing two coats or padding to fend off the knouts of the Cossacks. A worker from one of the vast metal factories told her there was a standoff at the Alexander Bridge, but before she could ask any more there was shooting and everyone began to run, unsure what they were running from. A female worker from the Putilov Works told her there had been battles on Alexander Bridge and Znamenskaya Square; that some of the Cossacks, the Volynsky Guards, had changed sides and charged the police. An old drunk claimed he was a socialist but then tried to put his hand into Sashenka’s coat. He squeezed her breast and she slapped him and then ran. On the Alexander Bridge, she thought she saw the bodies of policemen. There were no streetcars.

She walked slowly toward home down the famous avenues, now seething with dark figures. Bonfires were lit in the streets. Urchins danced around the flames like demonic gnomes. An arsenal had been stormed: workers now carried rifles. She tramped onward, exhausted yet vibrating with fear and excitement. Whatever Uncle Mendel claimed about the Revolution, the people had not melted away at the first sign of resistance. There was the crackle of more shooting. Two boys, young workers, kissed her on both cheeks and ran on.

She came upon a crowd of soldiers on Nevsky. “Brothers, sisters, daughters, mothers, I propose that we don’t fire on our brethren,” shouted some NCO to cries of “Hurrah!

Down with the autocracy!” She tried to find her comrades but they were at none of the coachmen’s cafés or the safe houses on Nevsky.

Hurrying on, Sashenka felt wildly joyful. Was this it? A revolution without leaders?

Where were the machinegun nests and Cossacks and pharaohs? She heard a roaring engine. The people in the streets froze and watched, raising white faces like moons: what could it be? Like a dinosaur, a grey Austin armored car mounted with a howitzer drove haphazardly, gears screaming, in random accelerations and jerking turns, down Nevsky.

The crowd scattered as it mounted the pavement and drove straight over a bonfire outside Yeliseyev’s grocery store, and then stopped beside a group of soldiers.

“Can anyone drive this thing?” shouted the driver.

“I can!” A young man with shaggy black hair and bright brown eyes jumped up. “I learned in the army.” It was her comrade Vanya Palitsyn, the Bolshevik metalworker.

Sashenka hurried toward him to ask for instructions but he was already inside the armored car, which revved, shook and then accelerated off down the prospect.

“Are you for the Revolution?” asked a stranger, a boy with a Ukrainian accent, a blue nose and a military jacket. It was the first time anyone had used that word.

“I’m a Bolshevik!” Sashenka said proudly. They hugged spontaneously. Soon she was asking the question herself. Strangers embraced around her: a grizzled sergeantmajor, a Polish student, a fat woman wearing an apron under her sheepskin, a leatherclad metalworker in a tool belt, even a fashionable woman in a seal coat. Closer to home, cars filled with soldiers waving banners and rifles skidded down Nevsky and Greater Maritime.

Dizzy with the momentum of this chaotic night, Sashenka kept thinking of Sagan. She was keen to make her report to Mendel. She had got the name of the traitor, established Sagan as a Bolshevik source inside the Okhrana, and was now a fully fledged practitioner of the art of conspiracy. She could hand over the direction of their double agent to another comrade. The mission was over, and away from Sagan and the effect he had on her, she was relieved. The Party would be satisfied.

She racked her brain for other Party safe houses. She tried 106 Nevsky. No answer. Then 134. The door was open. She flung herself upstairs, her senses bristling. The door was just opening and she could hear the Jericho trumpet of Mendel’s voice. “What are we doing?”

he was shouting.

“I just don’t know,” replied Shlyapnikov, wearing a padded greatcoat. “I’m not sure…”

“Let’s go to Gggorky’s apartment,” suggested Molotov, rubbing his bulging forehead.

“He’ll know something…”

Shlyapnikov nodded and headed for the door.

“This is it,” she said. Her voice squeaked, not her own. “The Revolution.”

“Don’t lecture the committee, comrade,” answered Shlyapnikov as he and Molotov clumped down the stairs. “You’re a puppy.”

Mendel lingered for a moment.

“Who’s in charge?” asked Sashenka. “Where’s Comrade Lenin? Who’s in charge?”

“We are!” Mendel smiled suddenly. “Lenin’s in Geneva. We are the Party leadership.”

“I met Sagan,” she whispered. “Verezin the Horse Guards concierge is the traitor. But I don’t suppose it matters anymore…”

“Cccomrade!” called Molotov from the lobby, stammer reverberating up the stairs.

“I’ve got to go,” said Mendel. “Check the other apartments for comrades. There’s a meeting at the Taurida Palace. Tell them to report there later.”

Mendel limped down the stairs, leaving Sashenka alone.

She returned to Nevsky, heading home. She ate some
solianka
soup and a chunk of black Borodinsky bread at the carriagedrivers’ café, which was full of workers and coachmen, each telling stories of mayhem, orgies, slaughter, hunger and treason in loud, tipsy voices without listening to anyone else. Coal and oat prices had quadrupled. Even a bowl of soup in the café had gone up seven times. There were German agents, Jewish traitors and crooks everywhere.

As Sashenka put some coins into the barrel organ, which incongruously played “God Save the Tsar,” raising guffaws from the coachmen, the streets grew darker. There were distant sounds like lions coughing in the night, the groan grew into a deafening roar and the hut shook. At first she could not understand why—then she realized that as she had been eating, the coachmen’s café had been surrounded, overrun by a sea of people in dark coats.

They were blocking the streets. There was shooting in the distance and smoke rising, pink against the pale darkness: the Kresty Prison was on fire.

As she walked down Greater Maritime, Sashenka saw a soldier and a girl kissing against a wall. She could not see their faces but the man groped up the girl’s skirt past her stocking tops while the girl tore open his fly buttons. A leg rose up his side like one of the Neva’s bridges opening. The girl mewed and writhed. Sashenka thought of Sagan and the sleigh ride in the snowfields and hurried on.