Then, stepping from the fuzzy darkness into the light of the house, she saw Carlo asleep in the big chair by the piano. He looked adorable, his upturned nose and closed eyes so innocent. Snowy was sitting on Uncle Gideon’s knee, trying to poke the corners of her pink cushion into his mouth while he talked to Utesov about Eisenstein’s new movie, Alexander Nevsky. Gideon’s actress girlfriend, almost a child herself, sat next to them on the sofa, wide-eyed as she listened to Gideon’s loud reflections on famous writers, beautiful women and faraway cities.
“Uncle Gideon?” said Sashenka.
“Am I in trouble?” he replied with mock fear.
“I don’t much like your friend Golden. I want him to leave.” Sashenka scooped up Carlo, kissing him, careful not to wake him.
“Come on, Snowy. Bedtime.” Carolina appeared magically at the door and was beckoning to her.
“I don’t want to go to bed! I won’t go to bed,” shouted Snowy. “I’m playing with Uncle Gideon.”
Gideon slapped his thigh. “Even I had to go to bed when I was little!”
Sashenka felt suddenly weary of her party and her guests.
“Don’t act spoiled, Snowy,” she said. “You’ve had a lovely present today. We’ve let you stay up and now you’re tired.”
“I’m NOT tired, you silly—and I want a cuddle with Uncle Hercules!” Snowy stamped her foot and pretended to be very angry indeed—which made Sashenka want to laugh.
The sitting room was at right angles to Vanya’s study. As she headed toward the door, Sashenka could make out her husband’s curly greying head and barrel chest. He was still in his blue trousers although now sporting his favorite embroidered shirt.
Vanya sat at a desk on which were placed three Bakelite phones, one of them his new orange vertushka, the hotline to the Kremlin. He was arguing with Uncle Mendel, one of the few Old Bolsheviks elected to the Central Committee at the 1934 Congress of Victors and re-elected at the Eighteenth Congress. The others had overwhelmingly vanished into the meat grinder and Sashenka knew that most of them had been shot. But Mendel had survived. They were discussing jazz: Soviet versus American. Mendel liked Utesov and Tseferman’s Soviet version while Vanya preferred Glenn Miller.
“Vanya,” boomed Mendel’s trumpet of a voice out of his tiny twisted body, “Soviet jazz reflects the struggle of the Russian worker.”
“And American jazz,” replied Vanya, “is the music of the Negro struggle against the white capitalists of—”
“I won’t go to bed,” cried Snowy, throwing herself onto the ground.
Vanya leaped up, effortlessly gathered Snowy into his arms and kissed her. “Bed before I box your ears!” Vanya put Snowy down and gave her a little push. “Now!”
“Yes, Comrade Papa,” said Snowy, chastened. “Night, Papochka, night, Uncle Mendel.” She skipped out.
“Thank you, Vanya,” said Sashenka as she followed with Carlo in her arms.
A car door slammed outside, a light step sounded on the veranda, and the family favorite, Hercules Satinov, smart in a white summer Stalinka tunic, soft cream boots and a white peaked cap, peeped round the corner.
“Where’s my Snowy?” he called. “Don’t tell Cushion I’m here!”
“Uncle Hercules!” cried Snowy, scampering back into the room, opening her arms to him and kissing him.
Sashenka kissed their friend thrice, bumping into her daughter in the process. “Hercules, welcome. Snowy was longing to see you! But now you’ve seen him, Snowy, you’re going to bed! Say good night to Comrade Satinov!”
“But Mama, Cushion and I want to play with Hercules,” Snowy wailed.
“Bed! Now!” Vanya shouted and Snowy darted back down the corridor toward her room.
If anything, Sashenka reflected, Hercules Satinov had become better looking with time. His black hair still gleamed with barely a strand of grey. She remembered how he and Vanya had come to collect her when her mother died, how kind they’d been to her. Now she watched as Satinov embraced his best friend, before noticing Mendel and shaking his hand formally.
“Happy May Day, comrades!” he said in his strong Georgian accent. “Sorry I’m late, I had papers to get through at Old Square.” Satinov, who had helped run the Caucasus, now worked in the Party Secretariat at the grey granite headquarters on Old Square, up the hill from the Kremlin.
“What a party, Sashenka! The jazz men singing together? Even at receptions for the leaders in St. George’s Hall, I’ve never seen that before. I hope you don’t mind, Vanya, some Georgian friends have invited themselves, and they’ll be here shortly.”
4
“Aren’t you leaving?” Uncle Gideon loomed up over Benya Golden, smoking a cigarette on the veranda. “You ideeeot!”
“Gideon, shush. Did you hear what Satinov said? Some Georgians are coming! Which ones? Someone big?” Benya whispered.
“How would I know, you schmendrik! They’re probably some Georgian singers or cooks or dancers!”
Gideon gripped Benya’s hand and pulled him outside into the dark orchard. Benya peered around nervously.
“No one can hear us here,” said Gideon, checking that Razum and the drivers were still singing dirty songs at the gates.
“If they’re just cooks or singers, why have you dragged me down here and why are you speaking, Gideon, in that bellow of a whisper?”
The sky glowed rosily and warmly, an owl hooted, and the sweet scent of flowers seeped out of the orchard. Gideon liked Benya Golden enormously and admired him as a writer. They both loved women, though as Gideon liked to put it, “I’m an animal while Benya’s a romantic.” He put his arm around his friend.
“If these Georgians are big bosses,” he said, “the less people like them know about people like us, the better.” He remembered his brother Samuil, Sashenka’s father, who he assumed was long dead now, and suddenly his chest hurt and he wanted to cry. “Ugh, time to go! Cure your curiosity, Benya! But I’m whispering, you big schmendrik, because you’ve offended my niece. Well?”
“I put my foot in it with the comrade editor. She’s no Dushenka,” Benya said, “no featherbrain. I had no idea she was so extraordinary. Is she happily married?”
“You ideeeot! Firstly she’s Vanya Palitsyn’s wife, my dear Benya, and secondly she’s never even looked at another man! First love and they’ve been together ever since. What did you do, pinch her ass, or suggest that Marshal Voroshilov is a blockhead?”
Benya was silent for a minute. “Both,” he admitted.
“You Galitzianer schlemiel, you tinker!”
“Gideon, what’s the difference between a schlemiel and a schlimazel?”
“The schlemiel always spills his drink onto the schlimazel.”
“So which am I?”
“Both!” Gideon told him and they roared with laughter.
“But the trouble is—I’m short of work,” Benya said. “I haven’t written for ages. They’ve noticed of course. I really do need a commission from her magazine.”
“What? About how to organize a masked jazz ball for workers celebrating production targets? Have you no shame?” asked Gideon.
“Why did I tease her?” groaned Golden. “Why can I never resist saying things? Now you’ve got me worried, Gideon. She won’t denounce me, will she?”
“I have no idea, Benya. The Organs and the Party are all around us here. You have to behave differently in such houses. Here the softness is only skin-deep.”