The Red Scarf

by Kate Furnivall

  “You have a higher opinion of them than I do.”

  He placed his elbows on the desk, watching her closely. “They are kind to each other now because since the Revolution there is greater justice, so they have no reason not to be.”

  She thought of Mikhail in his cell and shivered visibly. The movement alerted Fomenko, and his face formed into lines she couldn’t read, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration but his mouth unexpectedly gentle. He leaned to one side and flicked the red cloth off the tray on the end of the desk with a quick gesture that enforced his efficiency in her mind.

  “Are you feeling weak? Is that it? Have you not eaten today?”

  Laid out on the pinewood tray was a square of black bread, a slab of creamy cheese, a glass tumbler, and a bone-handled knife. Beside them stood a stubby blue pitcher.

  “Here, have some food.”

  He tore off a chunk of the bread, smeared the moist cheese on it, and offered it to her, but she would rather choke than touch his food.

  “I won’t rob you of your meal,” she said firmly.

  He hesitated, his jaw flexing so that she could see the muscle twitch beneath the skin. With no comment he replaced the bread on the tray.

  “Kvass?” he offered.

  Kvass was a traditional brew, fermented from bread, yeast, and sugar, that Sofia had no taste for, but she nodded politely. He poured the brown liquid into the glass and handed it to her across the desk.

  “Spasibo,” she said. She sat holding it in her hand but didn’t raise it to her lips.

  As though he suddenly felt the need to put some distance between them, he rose from his chair and walked over to the window. He stood there with his broad back to her, saying nothing, just gazing at the fields outside, at the kolkhoz he was so committed to driving toward greater productivity. She could see the strength of his determination in the line of his shoulders and the stiffness of his neck. She placed the glass silently on the desk and at the same time whisked his box of matches into her pocket.

  “Is that all?” she asked.

  He coughed, an odd kind of sound that was more of a growl than a cough, and when he turned, his face was in shadow, his expression hidden from her.

  “May I have the key to the hall to finish the sweeping?” she asked.

  His whole body grew unnaturally still. “Why the hall? What is this preoccupation of yours with our hall?”

  She stood. “I am offering to help because Pyotr is upset by the arrest of his father, that’s all. No preoccupation with anything.”

  “Let me give you some advice, comrade. Stay clear of the boy. He will have to denounce Mikhail Pashin at our next kolkhoz meeting.”

  “No, Chairman, that is asking too—”

  “Asking only what is right. Our Young Pioneers know their duty. In the meantime stay away from him or you could be in trouble yourself.”

  “It’s not an infectious disease he has. His father is being interrogated. ”

  “Comrade Morozova”—the chairman’s voice was insistent—“we in the Red Arrow kolkhoz will not tolerate a saboteur in whom the motives of greed and self-seeking are rampant. The Revolution has shown us a better way.”

  “He’s just a boy of eleven years old, that’s all. What kind of threat to the state, or to me for that matter, can he possibly be when—”

  “I wasn’t referring to Pyotr Pashin when I mentioned saboteurs.”

  “Then who?”

  “You.”

  A silence descended that seemed to last forever. Sweat prickled on Sofia’s back and she inhaled deeply.

  “Comrade Chairman, you are a powerful man here in Tivil.” She saw his surprise at the abrupt change of subject. “And maybe in Dagorsk too.”

  He was studying her carefully.

  “Mikhail Pashin has been arrested—”

  “I am aware of that,” he interrupted.

  “—arrested wrongfully,” she continued. “He had nothing to do with the sacks of grain that went missing.”

  “That is for the interrogators to establish.”

  “But if a person in authority, a powerful man like yourself, reported to these interrogators that their prisoner was a loyal Communist who at the time of the theft was drinking inside his home with an OGPU officer and was clearly innocent of any . . . sabotage, then they would release him. They would believe your word.”

  His face changed. It lost the tautness that usually held it together and curved into a wide genuine smile. “Comrade,” he said with a soft laugh, “I am concerned. I think hunger has addled your brain.”

  “No, Chairman, I think not. No more than listening to a radio in the forest has addled yours.”

  It was as though she’d slapped him. He rocked slightly on his heels. A dull flush rose to his cheeks while one fist clenched and unclenched at his side, so that for a brief second she thought he was about to seize hold of her, but he didn’t. Instead, with stiff courtesy, he walked over to the door and opened it.

  “Don’t let me keep you from sweeping the hall,” he said in a soft voice and held out the key.

  Sofia’s fingers closed over it, and as they did so she could feel the heat in his flesh. She walked out without a word.

  PYOTR,” Sofia called urgently.

  She crouched down by the broom that lay where she’d dropped it in the assembly hall and put her mouth close to the floorboards.

  “Pyotr,” she called again.

  She heard a scrabbling noise beneath her feet.

  “Sofia?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  But the boy’s voice was so thin it made her heart lurch. She yanked at the string and the short piece of flooring shot up so she could peer in, but at first she could make out nothing in the gloom.

  “It’s all right, Pyotr, I’ll get you out.” She lay down flat on her stomach, slid her head and shoulders through the hole and felt around blindly with her hands. “Whoever makes use of this place can’t bring a rope in with them every time. It would be too conspicuous. There must be—”

  “I can see it, I can see it. There beside you, there, on the right . . . no . . . farther over.” His young voice was rising. “That’s it, just there by—”

  “Got it.”

  Her fingertips had touched the bristled twists of a rope hanging down under the floorboards. She tugged at it and instantly it uncoiled, snaking one end into the black cavern beneath.

  “A ladder,” Pyotr cried out, “it’s a rope ladder.”

  Sofia shinned down the swaying rungs and jumped the last section onto an earthen floor. She was struck by the change in temperature. It was a cold underground room.

  “Pyotr.”

  His pale face was close, and she wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tight to her. “I’m sorry,” she breathed into his hair. “Fomenko came.”

  She could feel the boy’s bony body rigid at first, but slowly it grew soft in her embrace and that was when it started to tremble. Only faintly, but enough to tell her what he’d been through, shut away in the dark on his own. His shirt was damp with sweat despite the cool air. She held him until the trembling ceased, then stepped back and tapped his chin teasingly.

  “Look what the chairman kindly gave me for you.”

  From her pocket she drew out the box of matches she’d stolen from his desk, and in the dim light she placed them in Pyotr’s hand. His fingers were quick to strike a match, and holding it in front of him he crossed to a narrow shelf, picked up the stub of a candle that lay there next to a Bible, and lit it. The flame flickered and hissed, but by its light she saw Pyotr’s face clearly for the first time. One of his lips was bleeding where he’d been biting at it.

  “Come on, let’s get you out of here,” she said cheerfully, and she held out one end of the rope ladder to him. “You first.”

  “No.” He shook his tousled brown hair. “Look at this.”

  Holding the candle high, he led the way to the rear of the room. She swe
rved to avoid a wooden chair piled with half a dozen bulging sacks in the middle of the floor, all propped carefully on top of each other, and her heart tightened when she realized Pyotr must have heaped them like that, struggling in the darkness to reach the ceiling, but there weren’t enough of them. Did he shout? Did he scream and cry for help? Or wait quietly, believing in her?

  “Look,” he said again.

  Had he found the jewels? Her pulse leaped at the thought. The walls were lined with wooden planking coated in pitch that had been repaired in places, and on one side was an ancient door with heavy iron hinges.

  “It’s locked,” Pyotr said when he saw her glance at it.

  He stretched out the candle, and its uncertain light revealed that the rear wall was covered with a heavy brocade curtain instead of planking. It was hard to tell its color in the gloom, but Sofia had the impression of a deep purple glimmering among the darting shadows.

  “Is it . . . ?”

  “Wait,” Pyotr whispered. Then with all the panache of a magician he swept the curtain aside.

  The wall was full of eyes. Sofia felt her stomach sink as she realized it wasn’t the box of jewelry she was seeking.

  “So, Pyotr,” she murmured, “it looks like God hasn’t been driven out of Tivil after all.”

  The alcove behind the curtain was a meter deep by about three meters wide, and every scrap of birch-lined wall was covered in religious icons and statues and crucifixes. Sad-eyed saints carried the burdens of the world’s sins on their gilded shoulders, and hundreds of Virgin Marys gazed with adoration at the soft-faced Child Jesus. Lovingly arranged in groups on the floor were statues of them painted in vivid reds and blues and golds.

  Pyotr was staring open-mouthed.

  “So,” Sofia said, “this is where the village hid their beliefs.” She spoke quietly, as in a place of worship, and after a moment she reached up and pulled the curtain back across the alcove. Pyotr flinched, and the look in his eyes was far away.

  “So shocked?” Sofia asked.

  He rubbed his free hand across his face in a rough gesture and nodded. “They’re so . . .” His voice trailed away.

  “So powerful?” she finished for him.

  “Da. I didn’t realize.”

  “You’ve never been inside a proper Orthodox church with frescoesand carvings and gold crosses and air so laden with prayers and incense that you can barely breathe it in.”

  He shook his head. “But it’s just superstition.” It was meant as a statement, but somehow it came out more as a question. “Once they realize that, won’t they let it go?”

  “No, Pyotr, they won’t.” She stopped herself. Now was not the time for saying more. “Come on, let’s see what’s in those sacks you piled in a heap.”

  “Just grain and potatoes and rutabagas.” He kicked one of the sacks with his foot, spraying dust through the air. “Hoarders’ food.” He said it with disgust.

  “Let me put the candle back on the shelf.” She pushed him toward the rope ladder. “Time to leave.”

  He twisted his head to look her full in the face. “Sofia, I thought you’d cheated me. When you said there was something here to help my father, I thought you must mean that you’d shut me down here because all I had to do was pray to the Virgin Mary and Papa would be freed.”

  “Oh Pyotr.” Sofia leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “I’ll never cheat you. What I’m searching for is worth thousands of roubles, and in this country roubles will buy you anything if you have enough of them, even freedom. We’ll get him out, one way or another.” She stroked his damp hair. “I promise.”

  His brown eyes glistened, and the lonely feel of his hand as it slid into hers tore at her heart.

  A light rain was spitting in the wind. Sofia locked the church door and glanced cautiously up and down the street for any sign of Chairman Fomenko, but there was none. Two young girls came skipping up the muddy street and waved to Pyotr, but he ignored them.

  “Pyotr, one more thing I need from you.”

  “To help Papa?”

  “Yes. And to help me.”

  He looked at her expectantly. The wariness seemed to have disappeared from his eyes. “Yes?”

  “I want you to take the key to the smithy where I saw you working and—”

  “Make a copy.”

  He was quick. “Is that possible?” Or was she asking too much of Mikhail’s son?

  He puffed out his skinny chest. “Of course. And Pokrovsky the blacksmith will give me help if I need any.”

  “Will he keep it secret?”

  “For Papa he will.”

  She grinned at him. “Thank you, Pyotr. When it’s done, take the original back to the kolkhoz office. Understand me?”

  “Yes.” He tossed his head and strutted off in the direction of the smithy.

  “Mikhail,” she breathed, “you can be proud of your stiff-necked son.”

  Then she faced up toward the far end of the village. It was time to speak to Rafik.

  I’VE been waiting for you.”

  Rafik was seated at the rough table when Sofia entered, still wearing his yellow sunshine shirt. His black eyes were half-hooded, his olive skin seemed darker, and his black hair was hidden from sight under the pelt of the white fox. His shoulders were hunched over like an old man’s. This was not a Rafik she recognized, and her mouth grew dry. The room was dim despite the daylight outside, the air scented and heavy, and the moment Sofia breathed it in she could sense a strangeness in it.

  What had he done? Warily she sat down opposite him.

  “So the soldiers at the stable let you go,” she said.

  “Did you think they wouldn’t?”

  She shook her head. “I was searching for you up there. I didn’t expect to see the troops. I was worried for you.”

  “It was priests they were seeking today, not gypsies. Next time I may not be so fortunate.”

  “Did the worshippers escape?”

  “Every last soul of them.”

  “And Priest?”

  “He is safe . . . but not safe.”

  "It’s a miracle that he hasn’t been arrested and put to death before now.”

  “I look after him.”

  She understood now exactly what he meant by that: he used this strange hypnotic power of his. “So why wouldn’t you look after Mikhail when he needed it and I begged you?”

  “Oh Sofia, don’t look so angry. You have to understand that there were too many troops swarming around him and it was impossible. The time was all wrong, but now . . . the time has changed. Tonight is the moment when your eyes will open.”

  She didn’t know what he meant, but there was a strange, unfamiliar formality in the way he spoke, his tongue clicking against his teeth. His gaze was distant, and she was not sure he was even seeing her at all.

  “Rafik,” she whispered. “Who are you?”

  He didn’t answer, but the whistle of his breath grew louder in the room, and a movement of his hands made her look down at the table where they’d been clenched together. Now they lay apart, placed on the worn wooden surface with fingers splayed like stars, and between them lay the white pebble. It seemed to draw all light from the room deep into itself, and Sofia felt her skin grow cold.

  The stone was the one she’d found earlier in the chest. Then it had seemed harmless, but now for some unknown reason it made her nervous, yet her eyes refused to turn away from it. Her breath quickened.

  “Sofia.” Rafik’s voice was deep. He reached out and rested a heavy hand on her head.

  Instantly her eyelids drifted shut, and for the first time in the darkness of her own skull she became aware of a powerful humming sound, a vibration that rattled her teeth. To her dislocated mind it seemed to be coming from the stone.

  FORTY-FIVE

  ARE you ready?”

  "Do I look ready?”

  Pokrovsky had just stepped out of his banya, the bath hut behind the forge, with nothing but a towel draped around his barrel waist
and a grin on his face. Elizaveta Lishnikova wasn’t sure whether she found the grin or the massive naked chest more disconcerting. The sun was about to dip down behind the ridge, but not before it had set fire to the clouds in the west, a flaming red that draped a glowing sheen over the blacksmith’s oiled skin.

  “You’re beautiful,” she murmured. “Like Odysseus.”

  “Like who?”

  “Odysseus. A Greek warrior from”—she was going to say Homer’s Odyssey but changed it to “from long ago.”

  Pokrovsky laughed unself-consciously and flexed both his arms to emphasize his huge biceps for her entertainment.

  “Like rocks,” he said.

  “Granite boulders, more like.”

  He laughed again and put his muscles away, leaving her wondering what they would be like to touch. Until she came to teach in Tivil sixteen years ago, her experience of men had been limited to waltzing with cavalry officers or walking through the gilded gardens of Peterhof on the arm of an elegant naval captain. Even then she had enjoyed the feel of their hard masculine flesh under their uniforms, but they were as remote from Pokrovsky as the bright orange lizards that darted under his banya were from the gray monster crocodiles of the Nile.

  Elizaveta was fifty-three now. Wasn’t it time she stopped this girlish rubbish? It wasn’t as though she’d never been asked, despite being tall. Three offers of marriage she’d turned down, much to her parents’ anguish. She had even allowed one of the suitors to kiss her on the terrace, a recollection of a bristling mustache and the taste of good brandy on his lips, but she hadn’t loved any of them and preferred her own company to that of fools.

  “Pokrovsky,” she said in her teacher’s voice, “how old are you?”

  “That’s personal.”

  “How old, man?”

  “Forty-four.”

  “Why aren’t you married?”

  “That’s none of your damn business.”

  “I expect you frighten the females with those great granite boulders of yours. You’d crush any girl to death with them.”

  “Hah!” But the blacksmith was grinning again. “The trouble with you, Elizaveta, is that you think you know everything. If you’re so damn clever, tell me, how old are you and why aren’t you married?”