“I will.”
“May they keep you safe.”
“What?”
“It seems to me you need help, that’s all.” His tone was mild.
Sofia blinked, nervous of this gentle-mannered little man and nervous of the uncertainty that had settled on her mind. She couldn’t afford uncertainty.
“How long have I been here?”
“Two days.”
“Two days? It feels more like two weeks.”
“No. It’s only two days.”
“I was attacked.”
“Yes, that’s right. My daughter found you stealing our vegetables.” It wasn’t an accusation, just a comment on how things were. “And you’d stolen an ax too.”
“You kept me prisoner.”
There was a silence. The smile had gone, and a kind of stiffness altered the way he held his shoulders, so that Sofia knew she had offended him.
“I tried to heal you,” he pointed out quietly.
“Thank you. I’m grateful.” She recalled once more the voice murmuring the strange words and the touch of cool hands on her burning forehead. “Is it your bedroom I’ve been sleeping in?”
“Yes.”
“It has no windows.”
“I don’t need windows to see.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of that. “Thank you again for the use of it, but now I must leave.”
She turned toward the open door, but behind her she heard his soft voice, so low she could easily have missed it.
“You don’t have to leave.”
She chose to ignore his words and kept heading straight for freedom.
“You can stay here. You’ll be safe,” he said, and this time his voice rumbled around the room and echoed inside her skull.
You’ll be safe.
Sofia was desperately tired of being frightened, of having her innards permanently twisted into knots, awake or asleep. If she was going to reach Anna in time, she needed to be on the inside of Tivil, not struggling on the outside in the dead of night. Her thoughts became blurred, frayed around the edges.
“Sit down.”
For the first time he came closer and stood with one hand on the table edge. She didn’t move.
“Why? Why would you take me in? Without even asking why or how I came here. You must have realized that I’m . . . that it could make serious trouble for you and your daughter. So why take such a risk?”
His small wiry frame hardened, and the gentle mouth lost its curve. He placed both hands flat on the table and leaned forward, his eyes deep black tunnels. And that was when she recognized him. He was the man on the track, the one she’d seen talking to Fomenko on the dark road.
“If the people of this country do not help each other,” he said fiercely, “soon there will be no Russia. No people. They will all be in labor camps. A whole nation condemned to a slow death. The only ones left will be the sleek Politburo in Moscow, because power makes pride grow in the human heart like fat in a pig. I curse their rotten godforsaken souls. May they starve as we have starved. May they lose their wives and their children as we lose ours. May they choke on their own committees and cominterns. Let the devil take the lot of them.”
Sofia sat down on one of the chairs. She looked up into the intense eyes that missed nothing, and the world became a smaller place, as though just the two of them in this room existed. There was something extraordinary about this man.
She had survived this far because she’d learned that trust was as fragile as a moth’s wings and you didn’t give it lightly. But she gave him a smile anyway.
He laughed, a warm fluid sound, and held out his hand. “My name is Rafik Ilyan. But they call me the gypsy. You and I, we can help each other.”
“My name is Sofia,” she said.
TWELVE
HAVE you seen her?”
Elizaveta Lishnikova narrowed her gaze against the sun as she glanced up through the village toward the gypsy’s izba.
“Nyet. No,” Pokrovsky replied as he hammered the last nail into the well-oiled hoof and snipped off its metal tip with pincers.
The liver-coated filly kept turning her head, pulling at the halter to inspect what he was doing back there, but otherwise she’d surprised him for once and behaved herself. Her wide nostrils released a long chesty sigh as though thankful the ordeal was over.
“No,” Pokrovsky said again. “The gypsy claims she’s his niece by marriage.”
“Do you believe him?”
“No.”
The blacksmith had been busy in the yard at the side of the smithy when the schoolteacher strode in with her usual bluntness. He always enjoyed one of her visits, even though she did demand answers from him as if he were one of her scrawny pupils. The day was hot and humid and he’d been content at his work, but now he was suddenly aware of the sweat on his shaven head and the stink of horses on his leather apron. She always had that effect on him, making him feel big and clumsy instead of broad and powerful.
Elizaveta was tall in her long black dress nipped in tight at her tiny waist, but everything else about her was dainty and ladylike, the little white lace collar at her neck and the way her delicate handkerchief just peeped out from her sleeve, too shy to venture farther. He sneaked a glance at her elegant fingernails as she tucked a tortoiseshell hairpin back into her gray hair, then compared them with his own, which were hard and black and caked in grease.
“Neither do I believe him,” she said.
“So why is she here?” He picked up a long file.
“Why do you think?”
His eyes met hers. She always made him do the thinking for himself, as if she didn’t already know the answers. He ran the file back and forth over the filly’s rear hoof, tidying the edges, and said the words he was sure were already in her mind.
“She’s an informer, here to spy on us.”
“But why would Rafik, who loves our village so strongly, take in someone like that?”
“Because . . .” He paused, ran one of his big hands along the fine muscles of the horse’s leg, and released his hold on her hoof. She bounced up on her toes and nearly kicked over his stool. Pokrovsky stood up straight and rubbed his hands on a dirty rag at his waist. “Elizaveta, I’m only a simple blacksmith; you’re the one with the brains.”
She laughed at that, a girlish laugh, and poked her furled parasol into his ribs. “Simple you are not!”
With a deep chuckle he led her farther into the smithy, where he poured her a glass of vodka without asking and another for himself. He knocked back his drink in one, but she sipped hers as if it were tea.
“She stole my ax,” he told her. “Zenia returned it to me.”
Her brown eyes widened. “Why would this stranger do a thing like that, I wonder?”
“To chop wood?” He raised one burly eyebrow.
“Very funny,” she said dismissively. “The question is whether Deputy Stirkhov has sent her here to watch us.”
“Rafik would never take in one of that bastard’s spies.”
“He would if he wanted to keep an eye on her.”
“You think that’s it?”
“It could be.” She finished her drink with a dainty flourish and let her eyes roam around the tools and forge. She gave a little nod of her head as though the orderliness satisfied her. Without turning to look at him, she said, “There’s another package due in tonight, my friend.”
Pokrovsky poured himself another glass. “I’ll be there. You can rely on that.” He drank it down.
SOMEONE is coming. A woman.”
Sofia said the words calmly, but she felt a hint of alarm at the sight of a female figure heading toward the gypsy’s house through the last traces of dusk. The habit of fear was hard to break. She was seated on the bleached wooden doorstep, her cheek resting on her hand, her gaze fixed firmly on the village. She was watching the cows being led in from the fields, weary and heavy footed, and the group of men heading for the meeting in the old church.
; The evening had not been easy in the gypsy izba. Conversation was impossible. How could you talk in these bewildering circumstances without asking questions? But if you asked questions, someone was forced to give answers, and that meant lies. And who wanted lies?
“Who is it?” Rafik asked.
Zenia left her seat at the table where she was shredding a pile of dusky leaves, came over to where Sofia was sitting, and squinted into the gloom that had settled like dust on the street.
“It’s Lilya Dimentieva.”
“Does she have the child with her?” Rafik asked.
“Yes.”
Sofia tensed as the woman and child came close, but she needn’t have worried because Lilya Dimentieva showed no more interest in her than she did in the carving of the birds on the door lintel above her head. She was a woman in her twenties, small and slender with an impatient face and long brown hair bound up carelessly in a scarf. Her navy dress was neat and tidy, unlike Sofia’s ragged skirt and blouse, but the little boy whose hand clutched tightly to hers was a different matter. He was barefoot and in need of a wash.
“Zenia, I want . . .”
“Hush, Lilya,” the gypsy girl said sharply. “Come inside.” She gestured to the stranger sitting silent on the step. “This is my cousin and she’ll look after Misha. Won’t you, Sofia?”
“Happily.”
His mother disentangled him from her skirts and disappeared inside the house with Zenia. Sofia and the boy studied each other solemnly. He was no more than three or four, dressed in what looked like a cast-off army shirt cut down into a tunic that was far too big for him.
“Would you like to share my seat?” she asked, patting the warm step beside her.
He hesitated, fingering a shaggy blond curl.
She edged over to make room. “Shall I tell you a story?”
“Is it about soldiers?”
“No, it’s about a fox and a crow. I think you’ll like it.”
He put out a tentative hand. She took it, soft and dusty, inside her own and drew him to share her doorstep, where he plopped down like a kitten, keeping a small safe gap of evening air between his own body and hers. Already he’d learned to be cautious.
“I don’t like this house,” he whispered, his pupils huge in the semidark. “It’s full of . . . black,” he blurted out. And then, as if he’d said something wicked, he clapped a hand over his own mouth.
Sofia gave a soft laugh, and the boy instantly pressed his other hand tight over her lips. She could taste onions on his fingers. Gently she removed his hand and held it between hers.
“No,” she reassured the boy, “Rafik is a kind man, and it’s just like any other house here in Tivil.” She didn’t mention the ceiling with the whirling planets and the staring eye. “No need to be frightened of it.”
His hand patted her knee. “Tell the story.”
She closed her eyes and leaned against the wooden doorpost, feeling the solidity of it all the way down her spine, and was surprised to find that Misha leaned with her, his shoulder nestling against her ribs. Behind them in the room she could hear the murmur of low voices. She opened her eyes and smiled at the boy.
“There was once a fox called Rasta and he lived in a dark green forest up in the mountains among the clouds.”
“A forest like ours?”
“Just like ours.” The high ridge above the valley had been swallowed by the evening darkness, but they could both still see it in their heads. Somewhere a fox barked.
“There,” she said, “there’s Rasta calling for his story.”
With the air around them so still it seemed to be listening, Sofia began to tell Misha the tale of the Reynard who made friends with the Crow, but before she was even halfway through it, the boy placed his head on her lap, his breathing heavy and slow. She picked a barley husk from his hair. As she stroked his cheek with her fingertips, aware of the child’s warm body on her knee and the glow of the kerosene lamp flickering behind her among the voices, she could almost fool herself she’d found a home.
THIRTEEN
Davinsky Camp
July 1933
ANNA, wait for me,” Nina called out as she bent to stuff fresh moss into her shoes to keep the water out.
Anna lifted her head. Her heart raced.
Anna, wait for me. Those were the last words she had heard from Sofia. Anna heard them again as clearly as if Sofia were standing next to her now. They hung in the air, insistent. Wait for me. All these months Anna had worried and fretted, and tortured herself with nightmares imagining hideous fates for her friend. A slow and painful starvation in the steppes or pitchforked to death by a farmer or raped by a soldier. Torn to shreds by a bear or savaged by a wolf. Recaptured and sent to slave in a coal mine or, worst of all, recaptured with a bullet in the head. Recaptured. Recaptured. Recaptured. They had whirled around her brain.
Wait for me.
Anna looked around her at the women lining up for the exhausting trek back to the camp. It was the end of a long workday, a two-hour march ahead of them, feet sore and blistered, backs aching, and stomachs clenched with hunger. But it was a brief moment of time that Anna always enjoyed. Heads came up instead of drooping between shoulders, scarves were retied, and leggings that protected against insect bites in the slimy ditches were stripped off. Work had to be performed in strict silence, but for these brief few minutes the women broke into conversation with each other, and to Anna it was as sweet as if they’d broken into song. It wasn’t important whether they discussed that day’s moans or laughed at stupid jokes that set her chest aching; what mattered was that they talked to each other.
“How’s your cranky knee today?”
“Much the same, you know what it’s like. What about your leg ulcers?”
“A bloody pain.”
“Has anyone got a length of cotton? Look, I’ve torn my shirt.”
“Have you heard about Natalie?”
“No.” A cluster of voices. “What news?”
“She’s had the baby.”
“Boy or girl?”
“A boy.” A pause. “Born dead.”
Two women crossed themselves discreetly, so guards wouldn’t notice.
“Lucky fucking bastard,” Tasha snapped. “Dead is better than . . .”
“Shut up,” Nina scolded and took her place with a shrug of her broad shoulders beside Anna in the crocodile line. It used to be Sofia’s place. Whenever Anna stumbled or fell behind, Nina’s strong hand was there. “There’s a rumor going around,” Nina said under her breath.
“About what?” Anna asked.
“That we’re soon to be put to work constructing a stretch of railway. ” She picked off a fat scab on her arm and slipped it into her mouth for something to chew on.
“The northern railway?”
Nina nodded and they exchanged a look.
“They say,” Anna murmured as they started marching, “that the railtrack has killed forty thousand this year already.”
Yet always more came, an unending river of prisoners carted across the country in cattle wagons. Each new arrival in the hut raised Anna’s hopes, but each time she drew a blank.
“Have you spoken to anyone called Sofia Morozova? In a transit camp? On a train? In a prison cell?”
“Nyet.” Always the answer was “Nyet.”
Anna’s eyes traveled to the dense wall of copper-colored tree trunks on either side of the raw scar that was the road that raked its way through the forest to another godforsaken camp and then another and another. Was Sofia out there? Somewhere? She raised her face to the silvery summer sky. She tried to hear the words again, Anna, wait for me, but they had gone. She felt cold, and the pain in her lungs sharpened. She coughed, wiped away the blood with her sleeve.
"Sofia, I can’t wait,” she murmured.
ONE foot. Then the other. And the first one again, left, right, left, right, keep them moving. A brief summer storm had passed, leaving the evening sky pale and drained of energy, while the
pine trees stood like stiff green sentinels along the track as if in league with the guards.
One foot. Then the other. Don’t let them stop.
The ground was soft with pine needles, the path worn into deep ruts by the daily tramp of hundreds of feet as they marched to and from the Work Zone. It was during the hours that Anna spent walking—or shuffling, if she was honest—that her mind skidded out of control. It slid from her grasp as a dog slips its collar and runs wild. Without Sofia to laugh at her stories, she no longer had the strength to keep her thoughts together, and they raced around in places she didn’t always want to visit, colliding with each other.
At first, just separate moments started to skip into her mind, warm and vivid, like riding Papa’s high-stepping black horse whose coat shone like polished metal and crowing with delight as her childish hands wrapped tight in the coarse black mane. Or her governess, Maria, standing in her second-best silk dress, the one that was the color of red wine, and telling Papa that Anna couldn’t go out riding on his rounds with him today because of a sore throat. Papa’s face had fallen and he’d tickled her under her chin, telling her to get well quickly, and he’d called her his sweet angel. He’d kissed her good-bye, his whiskers all prickly and smelling of fat cigars. When she was very young Anna had once stolen one from the humidor in his study and shredded it to pieces in secret up in the attic to see if she could find whatever it was that made it smell so wonderful, but all she ended up with was a lap full of crinkly brown dust.
“You’re smiling,” Nina muttered beside her, pleased.
“Tell me, Nina, do you ever think about your past?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“So what do you think about?”
Nina’s heavy features spread into a grin. “I think about sex. And when I’m too exhausted for that, I think about winning at cards.”
“Last night I won that grimy piece of mirror off Tasha.”
“Why on earth do you want a mirror? We all look awful.”
Anna nodded a time or two and watched a bright orange lizard, a yasheritsa, dart out of the path of the marching feet and flash up a tree with an angry flick of its tail.
The Red Scarf Page 8