Under a Blood Red Sky

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘We’ve been expecting you,’ the gypsy responded.

  Mikhail gently disentangled himself from his son and held out a hand to Rafik. The gypsy grasped it with a fervour that took Pyotr by surprise.

  ‘Thank you, Mikhail,’ Rafik murmured. Not even the chill moan of the wind could conceal the joy in his voice.

  Then for the first time Pyotr noticed the person behind his father.

  ‘Sofia!’ he gasped.

  ‘Hello, Pyotr.’ She smiled at him. Her face was painfully thin. ‘You look well,’ she said.

  In her voice he could hear no trace of anger at what he’d done, just a warmth that defied the cold around them.

  ‘Did you miss us?’ she asked.

  ‘I missed your jokes.’

  She laughed. His father ruffled his hair under the fur hat, but his look was serious. ‘Pyotr, we’ve brought Sofia’s friend back with us.’

  He gestured at a dark shape lying on the horse. It was strapped on the animal’s back, skin as grey as the horse’s coat, but the figure moved and struggled to sit up. At once Pyotr saw it was a young woman.

  ‘We have to get her out of the cold,’ Papa said quickly.

  Sofia moved close to the horse’s side. ‘Hold on, Anna, just a few minutes more. We’re here now, here in Tivil, and soon you’ll be . . .’

  The young woman’s eyes were glazed and Pyotr wasn’t sure she was even hearing Sofia’s words. She attempted to nod but failed, and slumped forward once more on the horse’s neck. Sofia draped an arm round her thin shoulders.

  ‘Quickly, bistro.’

  Rafik and Zenia led the way, heads ducked against the swirling snowflakes that stung their eyes. Pyotr and Mikhail started to follow as fast as they could, with Mikhail leading the little grey mare. Sofia walked at its side, holding the sick young woman on its back. Pyotr could hear his father’s laboured breathing, so he seized the reins from his hand and tucked himself under Papa’s arm, bearing some of his weight. The horse dragged at every forward pace and Pyotr was suddenly frightened for it. Please, don’t let it collapse right here in the snow.

  The sky was darkening. Pyotr could sense the village huddle deep in its valley, shutting out the world beyond. Something stirred inside him, something strong and possessive, and he tightened his grip on his father. The snow underfoot was loose and slippery but, instead of stopping at his own house, the little procession continued right past it.

  ‘Where are we going, Papa?’

  His father didn’t speak, not until they stood outside the izba that belonged to the Chairman. It hunched under its coat of snow, shutters closed and smoke billowing from its chimney.

  ‘Aleksei Fomenko!’ Mikhail bellowed against the wind. He didn’t bother knocking on the black door. ‘Aleksei Fomenko! Get out here!’

  The door slammed open and the tall figure of the Chairman strode out into the snow, dressed in no more than his shirtsleeves, the wolfhound a shadow behind him.

  ‘Comrade Pashin, so you’ve decided to return. I didn’t expect to see . . .’

  His eyes skimmed over Mikhail and Pyotr, past the gypsies, and came to an abrupt halt on Sofia. His jaw seemed to jerk as if he’d been hit. Then his gaze shifted to the wretched horse. No one spoke. Fomenko was the first to move. He ran over to the horse and, working fast but with great care, he untied the straps.

  ‘Anna?’ he whispered.

  She raised her head. For a moment her eyes were blank and glazed, but snowflakes settled on her lashes, forcing her to blink.

  ‘Anna,’ he said again.

  Gradually life trickled back into her eyes. She pushed herself to sit up and stared at the man by her side, as though uncertain whether her mind was confusing her.

  ‘Vasily, are you real? Or another ghost of the storm?’

  He took her mittened hand in his and pressed it to his cold cheek. ‘I’m real enough, as real as the sleigh I built for you and as real as the songs you sang for me. I still hear them when the wind blows through the valley.’

  ‘Vasily,’ she sobbed.

  She struggled to climb off the horse but Fomenko lifted her from the saddle as gently as if he were handling a kitten, cradling her in his arms away from the driving snow. Her head lay on his chest and he kissed her dull, lifeless hair. He turned to face Sofia and Mikhail.

  ‘I’ll care for her,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy the best medicines and make her well again.’

  ‘Why?’ Sofia asked. ‘Why now and not before?’

  Fomenko looked down at the pale woman in his arms and his whole face softened. He spoke so quietly that the wind almost snatched his words away.

  ‘Because she’s here.’

  Pyotr saw that Sofia’s cheeks were wet. He didn’t know if it was snow or tears.

  Fomenko turned away from the watching group. At a steady pace so as not to jar her fragile bones, the dog walking ahead of him over the snow, he carried Anna into his house in Tivil.

  The air was warm. That was the first thing Anna absorbed. Her bones had lost the agonising ache that had pulled at them for so long and seemed to be melting from inside, they felt so soft and heavy. She opened her eyes.

  She’d forgotten what it was like to feel like this, so comfortable, so cosseted, a downy pillow under her head, a clean-smelling sheet pulled up to her neck. No brittle ice like jagged glass in her lungs. She tried breathing, a swift swallow of the warm air.

  Bearable.

  Her gaze explored the room, sliding with slow consideration over the curtains, the chair, the carpet, the shirts hanging on hooks, all full of colour. Colour. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed it. In the camp everything had been grey. A small sigh of pleasure escaped her, a faint sound, but it was enough. Instantly a whining started up outside the bedroom door and brought her back to reality.

  Whose house was she in? Mikhail’s? Or . . . No. She shook her head. No, it wasn’t Mikhail’s. Only dimly did she recall being carried in a pair of strong arms, but she knew exactly whose bed she was lying in and whose dog was whining at the door.

  The latch lifted quietly. Anna’s heart stopped as her eyes sought out the figure standing in the shadows. He was tall, holding himself stiffly, and in a flash of anxiety she wondered whether the stiffness was in his mind or his body. His shirt fitted close across his wide chest, and his hair was cropped hard to his head.

  Vasily. It was Vasily, with the Dyuzheyev forehead, the long aristocratic nose - and the eyes, she remembered those grey swirling eyes. But the once generous mouth was now held tight in a firm line. At his heel stood a large rough-coated wolfhound; Anna recalled Sofia telling her its name.

  ‘Hope,’ she breathed. It was easier than saying Vasily.

  The dog loped towards her, its claws clipping the wooden floor, and nuzzled her hand. The simple display of affection seemed to persuade Vasily at last to walk into the room, but there was something deliberately formal in his step and he came no nearer than the end of the bed.

  He spoke first. ‘How are you feeling?’

  His voice was controlled, and deeper than it used to be, but she could still hear the young Vasily in it. A shiver of pleasure shot through her.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Are you cold? Do you need another quilt?’

  ‘No. I’m warm, thank you.’

  Another awkward silence.

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  She smiled. ‘Ravenous.’

  He nodded and, though he didn’t move away, his eyes did. They looked at the dog’s shaggy head now resting on the quilt, at the round wooden knobs at each corner of the bed, at the white-painted wall, at the window and a gust of snowflakes sweeping across the yard outside. Anywhere but at her.

  ‘You look well, Vasily,’ she said softly.

  He studied his own strong hands, but didn’t comment.

  This time she let the silence hang. She didn’t know what was happening and her mind felt too weak to struggle with it. Was he angry at her for coming here? For risking his position
as Chairman of the kolkhoz? Who could blame him? She didn’t want him to be angry, of course she didn’t, but at the same time, in some strange way, it didn’t matter if he was. This was what mattered. Being here. Seeing the way his grey eyes had sparked as he stepped into the room.

  She studied the long lean lines of his body, the familiar set of his head on the broad shoulders. The only thing she missed was his hair, the way it used to fall in a soft brown tumble across his high forehead and make him look . . . what? She smiled. Look lovable. These shorn hard spikes of hair belonged to a different Vasily.

  He saw the smile. Even though he wasn’t looking at her, still he was aware of the smile and she saw him move closer. She felt choked by the wave of love that engulfed her. So much was unsaid. And she felt no need to say it. Just looking at him was enough.

  Abruptly, when she least expected it, he turned and disappeared from the room. She had no idea whether he was gone five minutes or five hours, but when she again opened her eyes he was sitting in a chair beside her bed, so close she could see the shadows that lined his eyes and a tiny web of lines etched at the tight corners of his mouth.

  ‘Here, time to eat.’

  In his hands lay a bowl of soup. Steam rose from it and brushed his chin, and she couldn’t take her eyes from that strong square line underpinning his face.

  ‘Eat,’ he said again.

  She tried to sit up and failed, so struggled instead to lift her head higher on the pillow. She was shocked to find herself so weak. Everything ached. Even that little movement of her head set off more coughing, and when she’d finished gasping for breath he wiped a damp cloth across her lips, studied the red smear on it with a frown and put the cloth aside. He looked at her intently.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Fine,’ she whispered.

  For a brief moment a faint ironic smile tilted one side of his mouth.

  ‘Fine,’ he repeated, ‘just fine.’

  He lifted a spoon from the bowl and raised it to her lips. Willingly she parted them and felt the thick aromatic liquid flow down into her starved stomach.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ she murmured.

  ‘Only a few mouthfuls now. More later.’

  ‘But I’m—’

  ‘No. Your body can’t take much yet, Anna.’

  Anna.

  It was the first time he’d spoken her name. She badly wanted him to say it again.

  ‘Thank you . . . Vasily.’

  ‘My name is no longer Vasily. I am called Aleksei Fomenko now. It’s important that you call me that. I’m putting it about in the village that you are . . .’

  But he stopped, unable to finish. His eyes were fixed on her face and she could see a thousand thoughts and questions racing through their grey depths, but none that she could decipher. She was all of a sudden acutely conscious of what she must look like to him, a skeletal jumble of bones in a nightdress, her skin as lifeless as ash and weeping sores on . . .

  Nightdress?

  Who took her out of her filthy rags? Who clothed her in this pure white nightgown? Instantly she was sure it was Vasily himself. He’d undressed her and bathed her and seen the sickening state of her, and the thought surfaced with a hot surge of shame. He seemed to read her thoughts and put down the bowl, reached out a hand and rested the tips of his fingers on her bare throat.

  ‘Anna,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I can feel your heart racing. You . . .’ His breath caught. For a long moment there was only the wind rattling the window pane and Vasily’s finger brushing her throat, ‘You are even more beautiful than I remembered.’

  ‘Vasily!’

  As his name burst out of her mouth she saw something break inside him. And suddenly his arms were around her and he was sitting on the bed holding her to his chest, rocking her, crushing her tight against his own body, as though he could press her deep in his bones.

  ‘Anna,’ he whispered over and over, ‘Anna, my Anna.’ He kissed her hot forehead and caressed her filthy lank hair. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For not coming.’

  She brushed the line of his jaw with her lips. ‘You’re here now.’

  ‘I made a promise,’ Vasily explained.

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘To Lenin.’ He shook his head. ‘To the bronze statue of him in Leningrad. After I came back from the Civil War,’ a tremor shook his voice, ‘and couldn’t find you - though I scoured the city endlessly for news of you - I swore I would become the perfect Soviet citizen, dedicating my life to Lenin’s ideals, if—’

  She lifted a finger to his lips. ‘Hush, Vasily, there’s no need to explain.’

  ‘Yes there is. I want you to understand. I dedicated my life to Communism. I even spilled some of my blood and wrote the promise in red to seal the bargain, in return for—’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘In return for Lenin’s spirit keeping you safe.’

  Anna gasped.

  ‘I kept my word,’ he murmured into her hair, ‘all these years. When I did help people escape from the authorities, it was because they were the intellectual building blocks who would be needed to strengthen Russia.’ He drew a deep breath and repeated fiercely, ‘I kept my word.’

  ‘Even when Sofia came and begged.’

  ‘Yes, even then.’

  ‘To make sure my heart kept beating?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, Vasily.’

  They clung to each other, motionless, his arms cradling her. Neither spoke for a long while.

  Anna slept. She had no sense of time. Just moments that slotted one by one into her feverish mind. At intervals she woke and Vasily was there, always there, feeding her spoonfuls of soup and finely shredded red meat, or dosing her with foul-tasting medicines. He talked to her by the hour and she listened.

  ‘Wake up.’

  Anna had dozed off again into a world of nightmares, but opened her eyes swiftly the instant she heard Sofia’s voice.

  ‘Wake up,’ Sofia said again. ‘Every time I come to see you, you’re fast asleep.’

  She was perched on the side of the bed, wearing a wool dress the colour of dark lavender, and there was a wide smile on her beautiful face.

  ‘I can’t believe how much better you look already,’ Sofia announced. ‘And you’ve only been here a week. How’s the coughing?’

  Anna pulled a face. ‘Give me time. I know you planned for us to move somewhere safer but . . .’

  Sofia took her friend’s hand in hers and gently chafed it. ‘You have all the time in the world now.’

  ‘Thanks to you.’

  ‘And to Mikhail. I couldn’t have done it without him.’

  ‘Yes. And to your Mikhail. Thank you both.’

  Their eyes met, two different blues, and something passed between them; a knowledge of what Sofia had done but also an agreement never to talk of it again. Words were too small to voice what lay deep inside them both.

  Instead Anna asked, ‘Has Mikhail spoken to Vas—, I mean Aleksei, about the killings . . . that day at the Dyuzheyevs’ villa?’

  ‘Yes. They’ll never be friends. But now they’re prepared not to be enemies. It’s a first step.’

  ‘That’s wonderful.’

  Sofia nodded and smiled. ‘Give me a hug, you skinny lazy-bones. ’

  Anna struggled to sit up and immediately a spasm of coughing racked her chest. Sofia held her close until the shuddering subsided, and Anna could smell the clean soapy fragrance of her blonde hair and the freshness of her skin. When the spasm was finally over she insisted on sitting up.

  ‘Wash my hair, Sofia.’

  ‘It’ll exhaust you.’

  ‘Please, Sofia. For me.’

  ‘For him, you mean,’ Sofia said with a ripple of laughter that set her eyes alight.

  ‘Yes,’ Anna whispered as she entwined her arms round the young woman on her bed. ‘For Vasily.’

  62

  Sofia was in the icy back yard of Mikhail’s i
zba when Priest Logvinov arrived. It was just as she was collecting logs from the woodpile that he appeared round the corner of the cottage and called her name.

  ‘Sofia.’

  Then louder. ‘Sofia!’

  She’d always known this day would come. That this man would somehow be involved in the disaster that she could sense breathing, snarling, circling round the village of Tivil. The way a wolf nips and nudges at the heels of a moose before bringing it down, blood-streaked, in the snow.

  She dropped the logs to the ground and turned to face him.

  ‘What is it, Priest?’

  He was draped in a threadbare coat that reached down to his ankles and a black shapka with ear flaps, his green eyes flashing like summer lightning. He was breathless. He’d been running.

  ‘They’re coming!’ he gasped.

  ‘Who? Who are they?’

  ‘Ask Rafik.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  The priest waved a long scarecrow arm. ‘Out there.’

  ‘Show me.’

  She ran into the house and pulled on her coat. ‘Mikhail,’ she called urgently, ‘someone is coming. Rafik is waiting outside.’

  Mikhail lifted his head from the intricate work of rebuilding the model bridge, his calm gaze immediately steadying her. One look at her face and he rose to his feet, two strides and his arms were around her.

  ‘You don’t have to go, Sofia.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You have a choice.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. We could leave. You and I, with Pyotr. Right now. We could grab a few things and escape into the forest and head south like we planned and—’

  ‘Is that what you want, my love? Is that what you came back for?’

  Their eyes held, then she leaned against him, her whole body moulding itself easily into his, her forehead resting on his cheekbone, and she felt the fear drain away.

  ‘Hurry, Sofia.’ It was the priest’s voice outside.

  She tilted her head back to look up into Mikhail’s face. ‘Will you come?’ she asked.

  ‘You don’t have to ask.’

  He kissed her, hard and protective.

  ‘We’ll do this together,’ she whispered.