At the coachmen’s café outside the Finland Station, she was eating a lukewarm pirozhki and listening to “Yankee Doodle” on the barrel organ for the third time when a young man slipped into the seat opposite her. He was older, but they shared the grey fatigue of the night dweller and the radiant conviction of the revolutionary.
“C-c-collect the b-b-bulldog from the comrade at the Horse Guards,” stuttered the student, who had little hazel eyes, thick steel-rimmed spectacles and a leather worker’s cap on a peculiarly square head. This was Comrade Molotov, Sashenka realized, and he was twenty-six years old. He, Comrade Mendel and Comrade Shlyapnikov were the last Bolshevik leaders at liberty in the whole Empire. When he took off his leather coat, he wore a short jacket and stiff collar like a clerk. Without his cap, his forehead bulged unnaturally. “Ask for C-c-comrade Palitsyn. Anything to report?”
She shook her head.
“G-g-good luck, comrade.” Comrade Molotov was gone. Sashenka felt a thrill run down her spine.
At the Horse Guards, the concierge Verezin let her in again.
“What happened to the sable? And the Arctic fox?” he asked.
“Attracted too much attention,” she said. “Is someone here for me?”
Comrade Ivan Palitsyn sat waiting beside some bottles at the round table by the stove. He stood up when she entered.
“I’m Comrade Vanya,” he said. “I know you. I saw you talk to the workers’ circle at the Putilov Works.” He offered a big red hand.
“I remember you,” she said. “You were the only one who asked a question. I was very nervous.”
“No wonder,” said Vanya, “a girl and an intellectual among us lot. You spoke passionately and we appreciated a girl like you coming to help us.”
Sashenka knew what he meant by “a girl like you” and it touched a nerve. He must have noticed because he added gently, “We come from such different worlds, but you tell me what you know, and I’ll share what I know.”
She was grateful. Shaggy haired and six feet tall with the cheekbones and slanting eyes of his Tatar forefathers, Vanya Palitsyn personified the pure Russian brawn of peasant stock and the plainspoken, practical fervor of the worker. She knew that, unlike Mendel or Molotov, he was the real thing, one who had toiled in the Putilov Works since he was eight, and he talked in the argot of a proletarian. This, thought Sashenka, is the hero for whom Marx had created his vision and for whom she had joined the movement.
“Comrade Snowfox, I’ve got something for you, several things in fact. You know what to do with them?”
“I do.”
“Sit. Do you want a drink of cognac or vodka? Comrade Verezin and I are having a bit of a feast aren’t we, Igor?”
“I’ve joined the Party,” said Verezin.
“Congratulations, Comrade Verezin,” said Sashenka. Only Party members deserved the respectful moniker “comrade.” But Mendel had told her not to socialize, not to chatter. The intellectuals were much more paranoid than the real workers, she thought.
Vanya Palitsyn, who wore a fringed peasant blouse, boots and breeches, handed her the bulldog and a small package. The oiled metal of the pistol gleamed liquidly.
“Deliver this to the printer in the cellar bar on Gogol Street—he’s a Georgian, a handsome devil. Don’t lose your head!” Vanya looked her in the eye and smiled. “The bulldog is for you.”
She walked past the Taurida Palace just after 3:00 a.m, and caught a streetcar down Liteiny. She felt the weight in her coat. The bulldog—a Mauser pistol—was in her pocket, fully loaded and with a spare cardboard box of ammunition. She ran her fingers over the weapon; the steel was freezing. For the first time, the Party had armed her. She had never fired a gun in earnest. Perhaps it was just one of Mendel’s little tests? But what was revolution without dynamite? Did the Party need her to liquidate an agent provocateur? That set her thinking about Sagan. She knew he would find her again.
She hailed a one-horse sleigh to the Caravanserai bar on Gogol, a subterranean cavern with Turkish alcoves, used by poorer students, soldiers, some workers. The entrance was unremarkable but once inside she found that a passageway led under the street. She could smell cigarettes, sausages, stale wine, and felt a table of ragged students go quiet as she passed.
In a dark alcove on his own sat a man in a dashing Caucasian hood, white but lined with fur, and an army greatcoat. He raised a glass of red wine.
“I was waiting for you, Comrade Snowfox. I’m Hercules Satinov,” said the Georgian comrade, who had Russianized his real name of Satinadze. “Follow me, comrade.”
He led her deeper into the bar, opening the door into a beer cellar. The air there was moist and fetid. Crouching, he lifted a manhole cover. Curling metal steps led down to the printing press. She could hear the deep rhythm of it turning over, like a mechanical bumblebee. Men in peasant smocks were bringing out piles of rough newspapers, which they bound up with red rope. The space reeked of oil and burnt paper.
Satinov pulled back his dashing white hood. “I’m just back in Piter. From Baku.” His stiff, thick hair shone blue-black, growing low on his forehead. He was tall, wiry and muscular, and he radiated clean virile power. “You have the newsprint for me?”
She handed over the package.
“Pleased to meet you, Comrade Snowfox,” he said without a hint of mockery, taking her hand and kissing it.
“Quite the Georgian knight!” she said a little defensively. “Do you dance the lezginka too? Can you sing ‘Suliko’?”
“No one dances better than me. Perhaps we can sing some songs and drink some wine tonight?”
“No, comrade,” replied Sashenka. “I’ve no time for such frivolities. Nor should you.”
Satinov did not seem to take offense. Instead he laughed loudly, raising his hands in surrender. “Forgive me, comrade, but we Georgians aren’t as cold-hearted as Russians! Good luck!” He led her to a different exit that emerged in a deserted courtyard behind Gogol Street.
At the end of the narrow alley, she checked her tail according to Mendel’s training. No one. She waited. No one on the street at all. Suddenly she experienced a sort of dizzy jubilation: she wanted to laugh and dance gaily at the bleak glamor of these conspirators—Palitsyn at the Horse Guards, Satinov at the printer’s, young men from different worlds but united in their determination. She knew in her heart that these characters were the future, her future. Her conviction made the dark roughness of this existence shine so bright. Small wonder that men like Mendel were addicted. Normality? Responsibility? Family, marriage, money? She thought of her father’s delight at receiving his latest contract to supply 200,000 rifles, and her deluded, unhappy mother. That was death, she told herself, dreary, drab, living death.
She walked through an archway into another courtyard. This was one of Mendel’s rules: try to avoid entering any building through the front door and always check there are two exits. In Russia, janitors and doormen lingered on the street and tended not to watch the courtyards.
Inside, she hurried to the rear door, opened it and sprang up the cold dark steps, using the half light of the streetlamps to guide her to the top floor. She had been here earlier but her comrade had missed the rendezvous. Perhaps he would be here by now.
She unlocked the door, closing it behind her. The apartment was in darkness but it was somber even in daytime, a cavern of Asiatic rugs, old kerosene lamps, comforters and mattresses. She inhaled the friendly aroma of mothballs, salted fish and yellowing books: an intellectual lived here. She went into the kitchen and tested the samovar as Mendel had taught her: it was cold. In the bedroom, the walls were covered in bookcases, Apollo and other intellectual journals in piles on the floor.