Sashenka Read Free

stole around her neck and the white Orenburg shawl around her head and was already heading for the door when the other girls poured in, homebound, their faces flushed and smiling. They threw down shoes, slipped on little boots and galoshes, unclipped leather satchels and bundled themselves into fur coats, all the time chattering, chattering.
    “Captain de Pahlen’s back from the front. He’s paying a visit to Mama and Papa but I know he’s coming to see me,” said little Countess Elena to her wideeyed companions.
    “He’s written me a letter.”
    Sashenka was almost out of the room when she heard several girls calling to her. Where was she going, why was she in such a hurry, couldn’t she wait for them, what was she doing later? If you’re reading, can we read poetry with you? Please, Sashenka!
    The endofterm crowd was already pushing, shoving through the door. A schoolgirl cursed a sweating old coachman who, carrying a trunk, had trodden on her foot. Freezing outside, it was feverishly hot in the hall. Yet even here Sashenka felt herself quite separate, surrounded by an invisible barrier that no one could cross, as she heaved her canvas bag, coarse against the lushness of her furs, over her shoulder. She thought she could feel the different books inside—the anthologies of Blok and Balmont, the novels of Anatole France and Victor Hugo.
    “Mademoiselle Zeitlin! Enjoy your holidays!” Grandmaman, half blocking the doorway, declared fruitily. Sashenka managed a merci and a curtsy (not low enough to impress Maman Sokolov). Finally, she was outside.
    The stinging air refreshed and cleansed her, burning her lungs deliciously as the oblique snow nipped her cheeks. The lamps of the cars and carriages created a theater of light twenty feet high but no more. Above her, the savage, boundless sky was Petrograd black, tempered with specks of white.
    “The landaulet is over there!” Pantameilion, bearing an Asprey traveling trunk over his shoulder and a crocodileskin valise in his hand, gestured across the drive. Sashenka pushed through the crowd toward the car. She knew that, whatever happened—war, revolution or apocalypse—her Lala would be waiting with her Huntley & Palmers cookies, and maybe even an English ginger cake. And soon she would see her papa too.
    When a valet dropped his bags, she leaped over them. When the way was blocked by a hulking Rolls with a grandducal crest on its glossy flank, Sashenka simply opened the door, jumped in and climbed out the other side.
    Engines chortled and groaned, horns hooted, horses whinnied and stamped their hooves, servants tottered under pyramids of trunks and cases, and cursing coachmen and chauffeurs tried to find a route through the traffic, pedestrians and grimy ice. It was as though an army were breaking camp, but it was an army commanded by generals in white pinafores, chinchilla stoles and mink coats.
    “Sashenka! Over here!” Lala was standing on the car’s runningboard, waving frantically.
    “Lala! I’m coming home! I’m free!” For a moment, Sashenka forgot that she was a serious woman with a mission in life and no time for fripperies or sentimentality. She threw herself into Lala’s arms and then into the car, inhaling its reassuring aroma of treated leather and the Englishwoman’s floral perfume. “Where are the cookies?”
    “On the seat, darling! You’ve survived the term!” said Lala, hugging her tightly. “You’ve grown so much! I can’t wait to get you home. Everything’s ready in the little salon: scones, ginger cake and tea. Now you can have the Huntley & Palmers.”
    But just as she opened her arms to release Sashenka, a shadow fell across her face.
    “Alexandra Samuilovna Zeitlin?” A gendarme stood on either side of the car door.
    “Yes,” said Sashenka. She felt a little dizzy suddenly.
    “Come with us,” said one of the gendarmes. He was standing so close that she could see the pores of his pockmarked skin and the hairs of his