“Well done, Pyotr.” It was his class teacher, Elizaveta Lishnikova, who had come to stand beside him. “Molodiets! Congratulations.”
He looked up quickly. She was smiling, the wrinkles in her face rearranging themselves. Not often did he make her smile, so he dared to hope that he’d earn one of her red stars today. She was extremely tall and stiffly erect like one of the new telephone poles that were beginning to march across the landscape, with thick gray hair and a long thin nose that could sniff out a lie at a hundred paces.
“You ran well, Pyotr,” she said.
“Spasibo. Thank you.”
Instantly a flying body hurtled onto his back, choking the life out of him and sending him sprawling into the dirt in a tumble of arms and legs.
“Yuri, get off me, durachok.”
“You were brilliant, Pyotr. Fantastic. But I knew I could beat you, I knew it.” Yuri thumped Pyotr on the chest, making his ribs ache, and raised his own arm in victory.
“Shut up, Yuri.” But he couldn’t help grinning.
There was something about Yuri Gamerov that made you want to please him. He was tall and strong with thick ginger hair and an easy way of always being the boss, which Pyotr envied. Pyotr was small and shy, but around Yuri he felt more . . . well, more colorful. And for some odd reason he couldn’t quite understand, they were good friends. The grind of school term had finished for the summer and they were now into Young Pioneer Summer Camp, which Pyotr loved. But it was still held in the schoolyard each day and still organized by the headmistress, Elizaveta Lishnikova, with her assistant, so standards of behavior were not allowed to slip, despite the fact it wasn’t actually school.
“Boys, take yourselves off the running track immediately. I am about to start the next race.”
They scuttled off, their naked backs above their shorts tinged by the sun, and threw themselves down on the grass. It prickled their bare legs. Anastasia came trotting over at once.
Yuri groaned, “Here comes the mouse.”
“She’s not a mouse,” Pyotr defended the girl.
Yuri was right, of course, Anastasia Tushkova did look like a mouse. Little pointed nose and chin, and a dull mouse color all over. Mousy hair that hung down her back in a skinny plait like a mouse-tail, and shorts that were much too big for her and made her legs look like pink pins. But Pyotr didn’t mind her really, though he wouldn’t admit that to Yuri. She plopped herself down on the grass in front of them and held out a hand. It was very grubby and on it lay a cookie.
“It’s your prize for winning,” she said to Yuri. “Teacher sent me over with it.” She turned to Pyotr and gave him a sweet smile. She was eleven, the same age as Pyotr, but she looked younger, especially when she smiled like that. “You should have one too, Pyotr. You almost won.”
“Almost is never good enough.” Yuri grinned and took the pechenka from her. Very precisely he broke it into three equal parts and handed one to each of them.
“No,” Pyotr said, pushing it away. “You won it, you eat it.”
“I insist,” Yuri said. “Equal shares for everyone. It’s what we believe in.”
That was the trouble with Yuri. He believed in applying Communism to every corner of his life—and everyone else’s life too. Even cookies. Anastasia had no such problem.
“Mmm,” she mewed, “miod. Honey.”
Before Pyotr could blink, her share of the cookie had vanished into her mouth. Something about the speed of it embarrassed him, and he collapsed back on the dusty grass, feeling it dig shallow grooves in the delicate skin of his back. He loved the sky, the high blue arch of it over Tivil, with the sun a ball of gold, hovering and waiting to be caught. He lifted his arm straight up to see if he could touch it, but all he caught was a passing insect. He squashed it between his fingers and wiped it on his shorts. Yuri was sitting up watching the next race, but Anastasia was licking her fingers with the thoroughness of a cat licking its fur.
Through narrowed eyelashes Pyotr looked out at the dense jumble of greens that made up the forest as it marched up the steep ridges of the valley and over the mountains beyond. She was up there, somewhere, the woman with the moonlight hair. Living in the forest.
“Pyotr.” It was Anastasia.
“Yes?”
“Look.”
Her little bony hand was pointing beyond the broad cedar tree that marked the start of the village to a spot in the distance where a ball of dust was rolling its way along the unpaved road toward them, slicing through the flat fields of cabbage on either side. Traffic on the road was always slight, usually no more than a few carts a day and, on rare occasions, a car or truck. Pyotr forgot the woman in the forest when he saw who was driving the cart that was trundling up the valley.
It was Chairman Aleksei Fomenko.
THE cart stopped outside the schoolyard. The piebald horse in the shafts tipped its back foot on edge to rest it and snorted loudly. Yuri leaped to his feet, dragging Anastasia with him.
“It’s Comrade Fomenko. Come on, let’s wave to him.”
“No.”
Pyotr stood up beside her. “Why not? What’s wrong?”
“He took Masha last week.” Anastasia’s face had gone blank, but the mouse freckles on her skin stood out like warning spots. “He just drove that cart of his right up to our backyard and took her.”
“No, Anastasia.”
Pyotr didn’t know what to say. Masha was the Tushkov family’s last sow. All they had left. Without her . . .
“Here,” he said, thrusting his share of the cookie into her hand.
She crammed it into her mouth.
“The pig was beautiful,” Pyotr said, and he saw a spark of pleasure brighten her pale eyes, but her pointed chin gave a brief quiver. She put both her hands on top of her head and turned away, her elbows hiding her face.
Pyotr’s chest hurt, though not from the running. He grasped Anastasia’s wrist because he didn’t know what else to do and squeezed it. He was shocked to find it no thicker than a spichka, a matchstick in his hand, just pale see-though skin stretched tight over a bundle of mouse bones.
“It’s Comrade Fomenko’s job,” Pyotr whispered.
“To take our only pig?”
“Yes, of course it is,” Yuri said with determination. “We’re a kolkhoz, a collective farm. It’s his duty to do his job properly.”
“Then his job is wrong.”
Yuri shook his head fiercely at her. “You mustn’t say things like that, Anastasia. You could be put in prison for that.”
“Maybe it was a mistake,” Pyotr suggested.
“Do you think it might be?”
Anastasia’s eyes gleamed with hope, and Pyotr was furious with himself for putting it there, but he couldn’t bear to let her down now. He straightened his shoulders and ran a damp palm over his rumpled hair. He swallowed hard.
"I’ll go and ask him.”
ALEKSEI Fomenko was the chairman of Tivil’s kolkhoz, the valley’s collective farm, which was called Krasnaya Strela, the Red Arrow. He controlled it all. Though still in his early thirties, he was the one who decided the work rosters, allotted the rate of labor-days, made certain the workforce was in place each day, and ensured that the fulfilled quotas were sent off to the raion center on time. He had arrived from the oblast Central Office four years ago and brought order to a haphazard farm system that was so behind on taxes and quotas that the whole village was in danger of being labeled saboteurs and put in prison. Fomenko had set them straight. Pyotr worshipped him.
He was busy talking with the teacher, Elizaveta Lishnikova, in front of the schoolhouse, a neat whitewashed building with a newly tiled roof. Pyotr walked along the side of the cart, but it was too high for him to see inside, so he slunk around to the back where a young liver-colored filly was tethered to the hinge of the rear flap. She was long-backed and skittish, eager to barge her way to freedom. Pyotr tried to soothe her, but she would have none of it and attempted to nip him with her big yellow teeth but the hal
ter was too tight.
“Comrade Chairman.”
This was the first time Pyotr had ever spoken to Aleksei Fomenko, though he’d seen and heard him often enough at the political meetings in the assembly hall. He felt his cheeks flood scarlet, and his gaze found refuge on Fomenko’s boots. They were good boots. Strong. Proper factory-made ones. Not like the ones Papa wore, hand-stitched by a half-blind old cobbler in Dagorsk.
“Not now, Pyotr,” his teacher said firmly.
“No, Elizaveta, let’s hear our young comrade. He has the look of someone with something to say.”
Elizaveta Lishnikova touched the elaborate knot of gray hair at the back of her head, a gesture of annoyance, but she said no more. Pyotr looked up at Aleksei Fomenko, grateful for the warmth of his words. Deep-set gray eyes were watching him with interest. The face was strong, like his boots. Straight thick eyebrows. And despite wearing a loose work shirt he looked lean and authoritative, exactly the way Pyotr longed to be.
“Well, what is it, young comrade? Speak up.”
“Comrade Chairman, I . . . er . . .” His palms were hot. He brushed them on his shorts. “I have two things I wish to say.”
“Which are?”
“Comrade Chairman, last week you took a pig from the Tushkov family.”
The eyes narrowed. “Go on.”
“It’s just that . . . you see, I thought that perhaps it was a mistake . . . and if I explained to you that . . .”
“It was no mistake.”
“But they can’t survive without Masha. Really they can’t.” The words came out in a rush. “The Tushkovs have eight children, Comrade Chairman. They need the pig. To sell her litters. How else will they eat? And Anastasia is so . . .” He saw Chairman Fomenko’s eyes change, somehow sink deeper in his head, but he didn’t know what it meant. “. . . So thin,” he finished weakly.
“Listen to me closely.” The chairman placed a hand on Pyotr’s bare shoulder, and Pyotr could feel the strength in it as his gaze fixed on Pyotr’s. “Who do you think feeds the workers in our factories? In the towns and cities, all the people making our clothes and our machines and our medical supplies, all the men and women in the shipyards and down the mines? Who feeds them?”
“We do, Comrade Chairman.”
“That’s right. Each kolkhoz, each collective farm must fulfill its quota. It supplies the raion, the district, and each district supplies the oblast, the province. That’s how the great proletariat of this vast country is fed and clothed. So which is more important, young comrade? The individual? Or the Soviet State?”
“The Soviet State.” Pyotr said it passionately.
Fomenko smiled approval. “Well spoken. So which one matters more, the Tushkov family or the state?”
Pyotr was caught unawares by this sudden twist and felt the inside of his stomach burn. How had he come to this choice? He dropped his gaze, scuffed his feet on the brown grass, and stared again at the strong boots. Their owner was waiting for an answer.
“The state.” It came out as a whisper.
“That is why I took the sow.” The voice was gentle. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, Comrade Chairman.”
“You agree it was right to take the sow?”
“Yes, Comrade Chairman.”
“Good.” He released Pyotr’s shoulder. “And what was the second thing you wanted to talk to me about?”
Pyotr hated himself. He no longer cared about the second thing.
“Well?” Fomenko urged.
“It’s the filly,” Pyotr muttered. “The tether rope is too short and the halter too tight.”
“You have good eyes, young comrade. The filly has thrown a shoe.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a fifty-kopeck coin, and tossed it into the air. The sunshine snatched at it. “Here, catch. You’re obviously a bright lad and know something about horses; take her up to the blacksmith for me.”
Pyotr caught the coin and glanced at Elizaveta Lishnikova. She nodded.
“Take Anastasia with you,” she said, and there was a surprising softness in her voice that was usually reserved only for the younger children.
It made his shame worse, knowing she’d heard every word. His cheeks burned. He ran from the adults and unhitched the filly, and as he trudged up the street in the dust with Anastasia in tow, he threw her the fifty-kopeck coin. “You can have it.”
“Thanks, Pyotr. You’re the best friend in the world.”
ELEVEN
SOFIA’S eyes opened to darkness. Her brain stuttered and almost slid back into the soft safe blankets of sleep, but she caught it just in time.
Where were the candles? What had happened to the girl?
She sat up. Mistake. The room splintered and lights flashed inside her eyeballs. She waited until the pieces slotted back together. She was on a bed, fully clothed, her fingertips told her that much. So far, so clear. She took a deep breath.
What else?
She was frightened. A tight ball of barbed wire was rolling around in her chest, but that was nothing new.
What else?
Her head hurt.
What else?
The darkness. It was changing, breaking down, as her eyes grew accustomed to it, into different shades of black and gray. She swung her feet to the floor, aware for the first time that she was not wearing shoes, and stood up. Not good, but not as bad as she expected. She took another breath and headed for a patch of gray. It was a door, held shut by a wooden latch on a string, and around the edge of it crept a whisper of daylight. Sofia put her ear to it and listened. No sounds. Just more silence and her own heartbeat battering her eardrums.
She lifted the latch. It opened onto a low-beamed living room with rough split-timber walls, unpainted, a carved chest in one corner, and in the center a home-built table with two upright chairs. At one end stood the pechka, a large stove, and, more surprisingly, a big maroon armchair turned to face the stove. The rough floor was covered with woven rushes and the air smelt heavily of herbs, which was hardly surprising, as bunches of all kinds of dried leaves were pinned around the walls in a fragrant frieze.
More to the point, the room was empty. No girl and no brown spoon. Over to her left was a window that revealed a dusty patch of road outside, and beside the window was the door. She ran for it and breathed a sigh of relief as her fingers lifted the metal latch and she stepped over the threshold.
“You’ll need shoes.”
She stopped dead. The voice had come from behind her, a man’s voice. Dimly, like a muted echo from a dream, she recalled hearing the same voice before, murmuring to her with strange unfathomable words while she was unconscious. Slowly she turned. At first, after the scorching brightness of outside, she could make out nothing different in the room, but then a movement drew her attention to the faded maroon chair. There was a face, an upward curve of a gentle mouth, a shock of dense black hair swept straight back and an even blacker pair of eyes in a narrow face. He was watching her.
How had she not noticed him?
“Don’t you want shoes?”
He spoke quietly. He was leaning around the edge of the armchair, most of him still hidden from view by the upright back of it, though his legs in scuffed brown leather trousers stuck out clearly and his bright yellow sleeve lay along the armrest.
“Don’t you want shoes?” he asked again.
She had forgotten her feet were bare. She glanced over her shoulder at the sunlit slope, a tumble of honey-colored rocks that led up to the forest edge where secrecy and safety beckoned. Run, she told herself, just run. She’d come too far and worked too hard to risk losing her precious freedom now.
“Yes, I want my shoes.”
“I’ll fetch them for you.”
He stood and moved away from the chair. He was shorter than she’d realized, 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 traveled up from Kazakhstan with their mountain horses. There was little flesh on his spare frame, but his arms looked muscular. 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, and then he backed off and stood next to the stove. He was tempting her back in, as you tempt a horse into a stall with an apple. She shivered, 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, and it struck her as odd. The smell of herbs was no longer suffocating but refreshing, and the place seemed to possess a kind of peace that was enticing. 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. Next to them on the table a bunch of purple wildflowers sat in a small pewter pot.
“Those aren’t my shoes,” she said.
“Yours are worn through. Holes in both soles and held 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 onto 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 and instead strode over to the center of the room, snatched up the shoes, and slipped them on her feet. They fit perfectly.
“Thank you,” she said.
He gave her a warm smile. “Enjoy them.”
The Red Scarf Page 7
