‘Yes, I want my shoes.’ Her tongue was dry in her mouth.
‘I’ll fetch them for you.’
He stood and moved away from the chair. He was shorter than she’d realised, not even as tall as herself, and older than his eyes and his hair indicated. Probably fifty, with the kind of skin that was swarthy and lined from years of living outdoors in the eye of the wind, like the traders who travelled up from Kazakhstan with their mountain horses. There was little flesh on his spare frame but his arms looked muscular.
‘Please hurry,’ she urged.
He smiled, the gentle mouth curving more, and he walked over to the oak chest by the wall.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I have no weapon hidden here.’
He lifted the lid and extracted a pair of shoes. Slowly, so as not to startle her, he came forward and placed them on the table, then he backed off and stood next to the stove. He was tempting her back in, like you tempt a horse into a stall with an apple. She made her choice and walked back into the izba.
In some subtle way that she couldn’t quite explain, the feel of the room had changed. The smell of herbs was no longer suffocating but refreshing, and the place seemed to possess a kind of enticing peace. Sofia gave her head a sharp shake to clear it and cursed her confusion. Was it the result of the bang on the head or the residue of all that brown liquid still swilling through her veins? She looked at the shoes.
‘Those aren’t mine,’ she said.
‘Yours are worn through. Holes in both soles and tied together with string. I thought you might prefer these.’
He spoke about them as if they were a pack of cheap makhorka tobacco instead of possessions that some would kill for. Well-softened pigskin stitched on to double thickness rubber soles. New shoes. Who on earth could find new shoes these days? And then give them away? But she wasn’t going to argue with him. Instead she strode over to the centre of the room, snatched up the shoes and slipped them on her feet. They fitted perfectly.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
He gave her a warm smile. ‘Enjoy them.’
‘I will.’
‘May they keep you safe.’
‘What?’
‘It seems to me you need help, that’s all.’ His voice was mild.
Sofia blinked, wary of this gentle-mannered little man and nervous of the uncertainty that had settled in 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 axe, 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. 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 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 towards the open door. 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.’ This time his voice rumbled round the room and echoed inside her skull.
You’ll be safe.
Out of nowhere came the sudden realisation that she was desperately tired of being frightened, of having her innards permanently twisted into knots whether she was 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 round 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 realised that I’m . . . that it could make serious trouble for you and your daughter. So why take such a risk?’
The man’s small wiry frame hardened and the gentle mouth lost its curve. He placed both hands flat on the table and leaned forward.
‘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 labour camps, as prisoners or prison guards. It makes no difference which. 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 kominterns. Let the Devil take the lot of them.’
Sofia sat down on one of the chairs. She looked up into those intense eyes 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 instead.
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.
12
‘Have you seen her?’
Elizaveta Lishnikova narrowed her gaze against the sun as she glanced up through the village towards the gypsy’s izba.
‘Nyet. No,’ Pokrovsky replied as he hammered the last nail into a 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 forthright manner. He always enjoyed 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 wearing a long black dress nipped in tight at her tiny waist, and everything 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 further. Pokrovsky sneaked a glance at her elegant fingernails as she tucked a tortoiseshell hairpin back into her grey 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 ha
nds 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 further 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 axe,’ he told her. ‘Zenia returned it to me.’
Her brown eyes widened. ‘Why would this stranger do a thing like that, I wonder.’
‘She wanted to chop wood?’ He raised one burly eyebrow.
‘Very funny,’ Elizaveta said dismissively. ‘The question is whether Stirkhov has sent her here to watch us.’
‘Rafik would never take in one of that bastard Stirkhov’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 round the tools and forge. She gave a little satisfied nod of her head. 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 jolt of alarm at the sight of a female figure heading towards 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 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.’ Sofia stretched out a hand to the small boy.
His mother disentangled him from her skirts with a quick, ‘Misha, wait here,’ 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, but he still kept 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 semi-dark. ‘It’s full of . . . black.’ He blurted out the last word and then, as if he’d said something wicked, he clapped a hand over his 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.
‘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, leaning against the wooden doorpost. She felt the solidity of it all the way down her spine, and was surprised to find 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 too seemed to be listening, Sofia began to tell Misha the tale of the Reynard who made friends with the Crow. Before she was even halfway though 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.
13
Davinsky Camp July 1933
‘Anna, wait for me,’ Nina called out as she bent to stuff fresh moss into her shoes in an attempt to keep the water out.
Anna lifted her head. Her heart raced.
Anna, wait for me. Those were the last words she heard when Sofia escaped. 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 every kind of hideous fate for her friend. A slow and painful starvation in the steppes or pitch-forked 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 slavery in a coal mine or, worst of all, recaptured with a bullet in the head. Recaptured. Recaptured. Recaptured. The word 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, their 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. 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 so hard it set their chests 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 cl
uster of voices. ‘What news?’
‘She’s had the baby.’
‘Boy or girl?’
‘A boy.’ A pause. ‘Born dead.’
Two women crossed themselves discretely, so guards wouldn’t notice.
‘Lucky fucking bastard,’ Tasha snapped. ‘Dead is better than—’
‘Shut up,’ Nina scolded, taking 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 rumour going round,’ 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 the two women 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 travelled to the dense wall of copper-coloured tree trunks on either side of the road, a raw scar 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.
‘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, much like the snaking trail of women beneath it. The pine trees stood like stiff green sentinels along the track as if in league with the guards.
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