The Red Scarf

by Kate Furnivall

  The man’s hand was shaking, but otherwise he was putting up a good show of confidence. His fair hair was combed into a neat parting, his shirt collar was clean, and he was managing to keep his shoulders straight. She didn’t like it when they arrived out of the darkness in crumpled rags, their bodies hunched and boneless with fear. But that was just a quirk of hers. She liked to see a bit of backbone on display. Though God only knew how desperately each package had good reason to be fearful.

  “Now, Comrade Gorkin—that’s your new name by the way, Andrei Gorkin. Start getting used to it.”

  He blinked, as if to seal the name into his mind. “I won’t forget,” he said.

  Elizaveta registered the refinement of his speech. Another intellectual, maybe a university lecturer who’d said one word too many in praise of the wrong kind of book or the wrong kind of music. She pulled her gray woolen shawl around her bony shoulders to keep out the chill of such thoughts.

  “Here.” She offered a small bundle wrapped in muslin. “Something to eat now. And something more for the journey. It’s only black bread and a cone of sunflower seeds, but it’ll start you on your way.”

  “Spasibo.” His voice was shaky, and he wiped a hand across his eyes.

  “None of that,” she said gently, in the tone she would use to one of the little girls in her class. “This is a time when you must be . . .” She was going to say strong, but one look into his nervous eyes and she changed it. “You must be prepared for a little hardship. Keep your wits about you and do exactly as you’re told and you’ll get through it safely.”

  “I can’t thank you enough for—”

  “Hush. Eat up. You’ll be moving on any moment now.”

  She rested a hand on the ancient iron latch of the door, ready to open it the second she heard the coded knock, and watched him force himself to eat to please her. Clearly he had no stomach for food tonight. She didn’t blame him. Nights like this set her own innards churning and she sighed at the thought of a whole generation of intellectuals being wiped out, anyone with a thought of his own. Who was going to teach the next generation to think?

  “You must regard me as wretched,” he said, and he smoothed his pale hair in an attempt to appear anything but wretched.

  “No.”

  “I had a good job in Moscow in the—”

  “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  He sat down on the chair as suddenly as if she’d slapped him. Dear God, sometimes these packages expected too much from her.

  “It’s safer,” she explained. “The less I know, the better for both of us.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  The candle hissed as a draft took the flame, and she heard the rap of knuckles on old wood.

  “Your guide is here,” she whispered.

  She unlocked the door, and the large figure of Pokrovsky slipped into the gloomy chamber. Not for the first time, she thought how light on his feet the blacksmith was for a big man. He seemed to take up half of the available space and she couldn’t resist a smile at the black bear-fur hat on his head. He’d told her before that it was to hide any telltale gleam of moonlight off his shaven scalp in the darkness of the forest, but it always amused her nonetheless.

  “Ready?” Pokrovsky demanded of the man.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have your new identity papers?”

  “Yes, here in my pocket.” He patted his jacket.

  “Then let’s go.”

  Elizaveta opened the door quietly, and the man stepped out into the fresh night air. She saw him hesitate. Everything was black under a thin cloud layer, and she could almost hear his heart rate pick up.

  “I wish there were a moon tonight,” he muttered.

  “Then you’re a fool,” Pokrovsky growled.

  A wind rustled through the nearby stand of poplars, and it could as easily have been boots creeping over dead leaves on the ground. Elizaveta swallowed the acid that rose in her throat and laid a hand on Pokrovsky’s massive arm.

  “My friend,” she said softly, “take care.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll deliver your package safely.”

  His expression was hidden from her in the darkness, but he grunted, blew out through his nostrils like a horse does at water, and swung away from her, so that her arm fell to her side. He set off at speed, and the package had to scurry to keep up.

  YOU’RE not in bed.”

  "No, Zenia. I’ve made you tea,” Sofia said. She tried a smile, but it got her nowhere.

  The gypsy girl had just emerged from the tiny closet that was her bedroom and yawned loudly, her body still soft with sleep. She stretched, arching her supple spine, hitched her nightdress up to her knees, and stepped onto one of the chairs at the table.

  “I like juniper in my tea,” Zenia said ungraciously.

  She pulled down a hank of dried berries from one of the hooks on the rafters and crouched on the chair, knees up under her chin. One by one she dropped half a dozen of the shriveled berries into the cup of tea Sofia had pushed in front of her.

  “Smells good,” Sofia said. She was treading carefully. The girl clearly did not want her here.

  “Yes,” Zenia muttered, shutting her eyes and inhaling the steam.

  Sofia sat opposite, silently studying the girl’s neatly trimmed nails, and waited for her to open her eyes. Minutes passed.

  Finally the black lashes lifted. “What’s the matter, couldn’t you sleep? It’s barely light yet.”

  “Here, have some kasha.”

  “Where’s Rafik?”

  “He left a couple of hours ago. To see to a horse that’s foaling.”

  “Oh yes, he mentioned one of the mares was close to term.”

  “Is that what he does? Care for the horses here?”

  Zenia took a mouthful of the semolina porridge Sofia had made for her. “Yes, my father is half horse himself. This whole kolkhoz would be on its knees if they didn’t have him, though I don’t think even Comrade Fomenko, our revered chairman of the kolkhoz, realizes it.” She flicked her tongue along her lips, scooping up a stray speck of kasha.

  “Tell me, Zenia, what is your boss at the factory like? Mikhail Pashin, I mean.” Just saying his name aloud made Sofia’s chest tighten with pleasure.

  “Why?”

  “I want him to give me a job.”

  “Without identity papers? You’re crazy. You can’t do anything without them, you must know that.” The black eyes grew worried. “You do know that, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Sofia, let me eat in peace, will you?” She sank her spoon into the bowl once more.

  “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  Sofia stood up. She didn’t want to crowd the girl, so she opened the front door and leaned against the doorpost, breathing in the apple-scented tang of wood smoke. The smell of it set memories skittering through her mind.

  “You can get chucked into one of the Gulag labor camps for stealing, you know.” Zenia’s voice behind her was casual.

  Sofia slowly turned. Was it intended as a threat?

  “It’s anti-Soviet behavior,” Zenia added, but she didn’t meet Sofia’s gaze.

  “I know.”

  “So why take the risk of stealing our vegetables?”

  “In a Soviet state, surely everything belongs to the proletariat. Well, I’m one of the proletariat.”

  Zenia laughed, a startlingly lovely sound, and wagged a finger in Sofia’s direction. “I must tell that one to Boris Zakarov,” she said. “He’s the Party spy around these parts.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “I bet you would.”

  Zenia put her cup down on the table rather harder than was necessary, swept her hair into a black coil on top of her head, and walked out of the room. Sofia’s head was pounding. A risk? Of course it was. Everything was a damn risk. She took a small step onto the colorless road outside. She could see movement in the village, figures silhouetted against the thin b
and of gold on the eastern horizon, lights flickering on in the houses. A goat bleated plaintively somewhere close; a cockerel crowed as if he owned the world.

  Today. Today would be the beginning.

  FIFTEEN

  RAFIK held the stone in the palm of his hand. No larger than a duck egg, and white as a swan’s throat. He stood in the strict privacy of his own room, and he’d brought out the white pebble from its bed of scarlet because he could sense danger gathering, sabers rattling, like troops lining up for battle.

  It grieved him deep in his heart to know that his beloved Tivil was under threat once more tonight, and each time he closed his eyes he could see the blond-haired one, Sofia, tall and slender. She appeared to him like a blade, shining and well honed. He could see the fine edge of her slicing through the dark dense mass that was the danger. Behind his eyes a pinpoint of pain began to throb. With a sudden urgent need, he rested his thumb on the smooth white pebble and felt its coolness against his skin. It brought to mind the ancient strength of his ancestors, and it soothed the throbbing, cleared his mind. Now the Sight came to him more readily.

  The stone had been passed down through his gypsy line for generations, father to son, and was said to have come originally from the stone that was rolled aside from the tomb of Jesus Christ in the Holy Land. Each time it lay in the center of his palm he was acutely aware that each one who owned it had imparted a sliver of his strength to its tightly packed crystals. He could sense the vibration of white life inside them.

  A flame burned on the shelf. It rose out of a bowl of fragrant oil, and a slender cord of smoke twisted up from the tip of the flame to the ceiling, where it settled and gathered around the large black eye painted there. Solidified like a shield. His thumb lingered over the pebble. Caressed its smooth carapace, traced a circle around it, a circle of protection. Once more around the stone.

  Rafik stared intently.

  A third time around the circle, his thumb anointing the pebble, and he could almost hear it breathing. He circled again. Again. Again.

  Then he uttered a long intricate curse in a language so strange and brittle that it rattled against the shield of smoke above his head. From the table he lifted a knife with a handle carved in ivory in the shape of a serpent and laid the tip of the blade on the inside skin of his own forearm. He drew a fine line until a trickle of red ran down to his wrist, where it formed a shallow pool. He let it gather. Then tipped it.

  Three drips on the stone.

  ZENIA.”

  His daughter came into the room at once, her body sheathed in a flowing red dress with a wide gypsy waistband and a woven plait of fresh tendrils of forest greenery around her neck. He thought how beautiful she looked, how like her dear dead mother. She gazed at the stone in his hand with alert eyes, bright and black and curious. Yet for her it possessed no resonance. Whenever she handled it and turned it over and over on her palm, it was nothing but a white pebble with a faint web of silvery veins threaded through it, an ordinary stone. He knew it frustrated her that she could gain no sense of her ancestors within it, and though he would never breathe a word of it aloud to her, his own disappointment was even greater than hers.

  “Go with her tonight, my Zenia. But don’t let her know you are my sight.”

  “Yes, Rafik.” She paused. “Is she in danger so soon?”

  “It comes from two directions. Make sure you guard her well.”

  “And you?”

  Rafik closed his fist over the stone and swept it briefly through the candle flame. “Darkness is coming to Tivil tonight. Fire and darkness. The fire will burn the one she loves, and the darkness will quench the furnace in her.”

  “You are prepared?” Zenia asked, her voice unsteady.

  He lifted the stone and laid it against his temple, held it there, listening to something inside his head. His brow furrowed, and a pulse beat strongly in his neck.

  “I am prepared.”

  “But will you fall ill?”

  He smiled, a deep and tender smile. “Don’t be frightened, daughter. She is here.”

  SIXTEEN

  PYOTR liked the meetings. He loved to sit right at the front of the assembly hall, under the nose of the speaker. Every week he arrived early with his Young Pioneer shirt freshly ironed by himself, knees and hands scrubbed clean, hair slicked down into temporary submission. His eyes, like his cheeks, were shining.

  “Dobriy vecher. Good evening, Pyotr.”

  A large figure with a smooth shaven head and a spade-shaped black beard took the place next to him. The boy felt the bench sag beneath the man’s weight and heard its groan of protest.

  “Dobriy vecher, Comrade Pokrovsky.”

  The blacksmith also invariably selected the front bench at these weekly meetings, but for quite different reasons from Pyotr’s. Pokrovsky liked to question the speaker.

  “Your father not here again, Pyotr?”

  “Nyet. He’s working late. At the factory.”

  “Hah! Tell me an evening that he’s not working late when there’s a meeting going on here.”

  Pyotr felt his cheeks flush red. “No, honestly he’s busy. Producing army uniforms, an important order. Directly from Moscow. He’s been told to keep the factory working twenty-four hours a day if necessary because what he does is so important. Clothing our brave soldiers.”

  “Proudly spoken, boy.”

  Pokrovsky grinned at him. The black bush parted to reveal large white teeth, and it seemed to Pyotr that the blacksmith looked impressed. That made him feel less sick about his father’s absence.

  “It’s important work,” he said again, and then he feared he was insisting too much, so he shut up.

  But his mood was spoiled. He slumped back on the bench and wished his friend Yuri would arrive. He stared moodily around at the plain walls where all the religious images had been whitewashed into a clean and bland uniformity. This pleased Pyotr. As did the metal table set up on the low platform in front of him where the gilt altar had once stood and the two sturdy chairs waiting for the speakers under the poster of the Great Leader himself. Beside it hung a bright red poster declaring, “Smert Vragam Sovietskogo Naroda.” Death to the Enemies of Soviet People.

  He looked behind him, where the benches were filling up. Most of the villagers were still in their work clothes of coarse blue cotton, though some of the younger women had discarded their dusty headscarves and changed into bright pretty blouses that stood out in the drab crowd. The gypsy girl was one. Her scarlet blouse with little puff sleeves looked dramatic against her long black curls, but she kept her eyes lowered and her hands quiet in her lap, as if she were still in a church. Pyotr always felt she didn’t quite belong in the village, though he wasn’t sure why.

  “Privet, Pyotr. Hello.”

  It was Yuri. He arrived in a scramble of long limbs and squeezed himself in next to Pyotr at the end of the bench, immaculate in his white Young Pioneer shirt and red neckerchief. Only then did Pyotr notice that his own ironing efforts weren’t nearly as effective as Yuri’s mother’s. He shuffled up the seat a little toward Pokrovsky, so that their shirts wouldn’t touch.

  “Have you heard?” Yuri bent his ginger head to Pyotr’s. He was always one to know the latest news.

  “Heard what?”

  Yuri grinned, his freckles dancing. “That Stirkhov is coming to address us tonight.”

  Pyotr’s chest tightened just for a second. “Why? What have we done?”

  “Don’t be stupid. It’s an honor for us to have the deputy chairman of the whole district here.”

  “No, Yuri, Stirkhov only ever comes to Tivil to complain.”

  The bulky figure of Pokrovsky leaned close, so close Pyotr could see where the black bristly hairs of his neatly trimmed beard were beginning to turn white in places.

  “This time,” the blacksmith said, fixing them with his dark eyes and pushing out his heavy jaw at them, “the bastard is probably checking up on people who don’t attend these meetings.”

&n
bsp; Pyotr thought of his own father and felt that horrible tightness in his chest again.

  “You wait and see, Comrade Pokrovsky,” he blurted out. “Papa is soon to be awarded the decoration Hero of Labor First Class for his work for the Soviet State.”

  Pokrovsky slapped a hand down on Pyotr’s fragile shoulder and roared with laughter, so loud that others turned and stared.

  “May God forgive you, boy, for telling such lies in his church.”

  IT was the hands. That was what Pyotr decided. The way they moved through the air, strong and controlling. Wide slicing gestures to underline words, sharp jabs to force a point home. Even the flat palm to silence a rowdy voice from the floor. The hands held the power. Aleksei Fomenko, as Predsedatel Kolkhoza, chairman of the collective farm, had been speaking for an hour and a half, and yet Pyotr still couldn’t take his eyes off him. He was seated behind the table, broad-chested and so full of energy that his lightweight brown jacket didn’t look strong enough to contain him.

  So far he had been listing the recent quotas set by the Central Control Commission, naming the shirkers who had fallen behind on their labor-days and urging them all to greater achievements. Fomenko leaned forward as he spoke, fixing his audience with his sharp gaze and scanning each villager in the hall. No one escaped.

  “Beware of complacency,” he urged. “We are nearly at the end of Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan, which is building our country into the leading industrialized nation in the world. We have swept aside the superstitions of the past”—here his eyes turned to a tall bony man who possessed fierce eyes, with a lion’s mane of chestnut hair and a straggly red beard, but his open shirt revealed the tip of a large wooden cross hanging around his neck—“and the concept of servitude has been replaced by the doctrine of freedom.”

  He clenched both fists.

  “A new world is emerging. One that will sweep away the mistakes of past centuries, and we are the engine that drives it. Yes, you and I. And collectivism. Never forget that. The grip of the kulaks, those rich bourgeois farmers, class enemies who laughed at the tears of the poor and exploited you all, lashing your backs with their tyranny and their knout, their grip is broken thanks to the inspired vision of our Great Leader.”