The Red Scarf

by Kate Furnivall

  Or not to tell him.

  TWENTY-NINE

  SOFIA hurried to the stables. She wanted to reach them before Fomenko spotted her running loose instead of heading to one of his blasted brigades. The track was rough under her feet, rutted and patterned with hoof-prints. She had come in search of Priest Logvinov, and she was nervous. He was the kind of person around whom someone always got hurt, and she couldn’t afford to get hurt. Not now, not when she was so close.

  The experience with Rafik in the office had made her doubt the reality of her own thoughts, and it had taken an effort of mind to drag them away from Mikhail. But her body was less controllable. It kept reliving flashes of memory, the feel of Mikhail’s mouth on hers, so hard it hurt at first and then so soft and enticing that her lips craved more. She walked harder, faster, driving her body to concentrate on other things.

  She reached the dingy wooden buildings that rose haphazardly around three sides of a dusty courtyard. They were set far back enough from the village to take advantage of the gentle slope that climbed up toward the ridge, and on this higher ground Sofia caught the breeze full in her face. It carried with it the scent of dense vegetation where creatures scuttled at will, and the temptation to vanish back into their world was strong.

  “Is Priest Logvinov around?” she asked a dark-skinned youth sweeping the yard with slow lazy strokes. He had scabs on his head and his bare arms.

  “In with Glinka,” he muttered, tipping his head toward one of the open stable doors without breaking the rhythm of the hazel broom or his soft tuneless humming.

  “Spasibo,” Sofia said.

  The gloom inside the stable came as a relief after the harsh glare in the courtyard, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She inhaled the smell of horse and hay, and at first could see no one, just a row of empty stalls, fresh straw on the floor and buckets filled with clean water. The horses were out working in the fields or hauling timber out of the woods, but the stamp of a hoof and a soft murmur drew her to the far end.

  The priest did not turn at her approach, though Sofia was sure he knew she was there. His tall scarecrow figure in a sleeveless deerskin jerkin was draped over the low door that fenced in one of the stalls, and his knuckles were rhythmically kneading the forehead of a small bay mare whose eyes were half-closed with pleasure. Close to her side stood a black colt on spindly legs much too long for him. He must be the one born the other night. He stamped the ground in a show of bravado as she approached and rolled his long-lashed eyes at her.

  “That’s a fine colt,” she said.

  “He has the devil in him.”

  The colt thudded a hoof against the back board as if to prove the point.

  “Priest, were you here in Tivil before the church was closed down?”

  He twisted his head around to look at her. His long thin neck pulsed with a web of blue veins and his red hair hung lank and dull, but his green eyes still burned.

  “Yes, I was the shepherd of a God-fearing flock. In those days we were free to worship our Lord and chant the golden tones of evensong as our consciences dictated.”

  The sadness in his voice touched her. He was a strange man.

  “So you were familiar with the church building inside? Before it was stripped of decoration and painted white, I mean.”

  "Yes. I knew every inch of that house of God, the way I know the words of the Holy Bible. I knew its moods and its shadows, just as I knew the moods and shadows of my flock as they clung to their faith. Lucifer himself stalks the marble corridors of the Kremlin, and he drags his cloven foot over the hearts and minds of God’s children.” His gaunt face crumbled. “An eternity of hellfire awaits those who forsake God’s laws because they are stricken with fear.” His voice grew hoarse with sorrow. “Fear is like a terrible black stain spreading over this country of ours.”

  “It is unwise to say such things aloud,” she warned. “Take care.”

  The tall man spread his scarecrow arms wide, making the colt snort with alarm. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.”

  “Priest,” she said softly, “you don’t yet know what evil mankind is capable of, but if you carry on like this, believe me, you soon will. It eats into your humanity until you don’t even know who you are any more . . .” She stopped.

  His green eyes were staring at her with fierce sorrow. She lowered her gaze, turned away from him, and asked the question she’d come to ask.

  “Was there a statue of St. Peter in the church before it was closed down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did it stand?”

  “Why the interest?”

  “Does it matter to you? I need to know where it used to stand.”

  The noise of the colt suckling and the scratch of the hazel broom over the yard were the only sounds. At last Priest Logvinov scraped a hand across his fiery beard.

  “They came one Sunday morning, a group of Komsomoltsy,” he said bitterly. “They tore down everything, destroyed it with hammers. Burned it all in a bonfire in the middle of the street, tossed in all the ancient carvings and icons of the Virgin Mary and our beloved saints. And what wouldn’t burn they took away in their truck to melt down, including the great bronze bell and the altar with its gold cross. It was two centuries old.” She expected him to shout and rage, but instead his voice grew softer with each word.

  “The statue of St. Peter?”

  “Smashed.” His fleshless frame shuddered. “It used to stand in the niche beside the south window. Now there’s a bust of Stalin in its place.”

  “I’m sorry, Priest.”

  “So am I. And God knows, so is my flock.”

  “Stay alive. For them at least.”

  “I know thy works and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is.”

  Again she had a sense of the man teetering on the edge of willful self-destruction, and it filled her with a deep feeling of gloom and waste, so strong that she actually shivered. Quickly she thanked him and left the stables, but as she retraced her steps down the rutted track back to the street she was uncertain exactly what had upset her.

  What was wrong?

  Was it fear for Rafik? Or was it because of Mikhail? And the way Lilya had rubbed her shoulder against him as though she owned that piece of his flesh. Were her own carefully constructed defenses crumbling so easily? The wind seemed to ripple through her mind, stirring up her thoughts, and it carried to her again Priest Logvinov’s words. Fear is like a terrible black stain spreading over this country. And then she understood, because she’d heard almost the same words months ago in the mouth of Anna.

  Anna. Whose fragile heartbeats would run out if she didn’t reach them soon.

  THE church—or assembly hall, as it was now called—was the only brick-constructed building in Tivil. Gray slabs of corrugated metal tipped with soft yellow lichen covered the roof, and the walls were divided by rows of narrow pointed windows with plain glass, though one was boarded up. A reminder of the violence on the night of the meeting. A stubby open-sided tower sat above the door. Presumably where the bell had once hung. The tower was empty now, full of nothing but warm air and pigeons.

  Sofia tried the large iron handle, but the door didn’t budge. She cursed and pushed harder. Chyort! But she was beginning to realize that Chairman Fomenko was not the kind of person to leave anything to chance, certainly not the safety of his assembly hall. She took a good look up and down the street. At this hour there wasn’t much activity, just a child and a goat ambling out to the fields, but closer in the shade sat two old women. They wore headscarves and long black dresses despite the heat and seemed to be almost part of the landscape. As Sofia approached them she realized one was reading aloud from a book on her lap.

  “Dobroye utro, babushki,” Sofia said with a shy smile. “Good morning. ”

  The old woman with the book reacted with surprise. Her ears were not good enough to have heard Sofia’s soft footfalls. The book sl
id instantly under a handwoven scarf, but not before Sofia saw it was the Bible. It was not against the law to read the Bible, but it labeled you if you did. It marked you out as someone whose mind was not in line with Soviet doctrine, someone to be watched. Sofia pretended she hadn’t seen it.

  “Could you tell me who has a key to the assembly hall, please?”

  The one who had not been reading lifted her chin off her chest, and Sofia saw the milky veil of blindness over her eyes, but her hands were busy in an effortless clicking rhythm with knitting needles and a ball of green wool.

  “The chairman keeps it,” she said. She tilted her head. “Is that the tractor girl?”

  “Da, yes, it’s her,” responded the other. She puffed out her lined cheeks into a warm smile. “Welcome to Tivil.”

  “Spasibo. Where will I find Chairman Fomenko?”

  “Anywhere where work is being done,” said the blind babushka. “Poleena and I expect him to arrive here any moment now to count the number of stitches I’ve knitted so far this morning.”

  Both old women gave good-natured chuckles that mingled with the sun on their laps.

  “But his house isn’t far, just the other side of the chu—of the assembly hall. His is the izba with the black door. You could try there.”

  "Thank you. I will.”

  BUT the black door didn’t respond to her knocks. So she retraced her steps to the church and started to circle its walls, just as she’d done before, but then it had been furtive and in the dark with her ears alert for any stray sound. This time she inspected the building openly, seeking a way in.

  She edged along the narrow side path through weeds to the gloomy rear of the church and came to the small door, so old it looked like part of the stones. It was barely the height of her head, half hidden behind a prickly bush, and bore the raw marks of her knife blade around its lock.

  “Trying to find something, are you?”

  Sofia snatched back her fingers and swung around. Behind her stood a narrow-shouldered man in a rough smock. He was smoking the stub of a hand-rolled cigarette and had a face that made Sofia think of a rodent—small featured, sharp toothed.

  “I’m looking for a way in.”

  “You could always use a key, but that’s just an old unused storeroom in there.” He was watching her with an expression that made Sofia’s skin crawl.

  “I’m told that Chairman Fomenko has the key to the hall, but he’s not at home.”

  “Of course not. He’s out working in the fields.”

  Sofia tried to step around him, but he blocked her path and gave her a slow smile that she didn’t like.

  “Your name, I recall from the meeting the other night, is Sofia Morozova. Mine is Comrade Zakarov.”

  Instantly Sofia’s chest tightened. She recalled Zenia’s words: Boris Zakarov. He’s the Party spy around these parts. So he wasn’t creeping up behind her by chance.

  “Why so eager to get inside our hall, Comrade Morozova?”

  “I think that’s my business, don’t you?”

  “If you made it mine, I might be able to help you.”

  “Do you have a key?”

  He took a long pull on his cigarette. “I might.”

  She stared at him coldly. “I dropped a key of my own at the meeting. It got lost in the stampede and I need to look for it, that’s all.”

  “What value do you put on this key of yours?” he asked and smiled his toothy smile. “Worth a kiss?”

  His words echoed in a cold cave inside her mind. Here’s a crust of moldy bread. Worth a kiss? Here’s a scrap of felt for gloves. Worth a kiss? Here’s a pat of butter. Worth more than a kiss? How much more?

  She brushed past Boris Zakarov without a word and ran directly into Aleksei Fomenko himself. He was striding up from the low field by the river, a net of cabbages over his shoulder and a long-legged wolfhound at his side. He didn’t look pleased to see her idling on kolkhoz time.

  FIRST, know your enemy.

  She’d learned that lesson well. Know him. And seek out his weak spot. More than anybody in the village Aleksei Fomenko was the greatest threat to her, but his weak spot was well hidden. His back was turned toward her as he opened the door to his house, a proud muscular back that he had no fear of turning on anybody, and Sofia envied him that. From behind she studied the neatness of his ears, emphasized by the short cropping of his brown hair, and she was certain his mind was equally neat. A line of sweat ran down the spine of his workingman’s cotton shirt. Why on earth did this chairman of a large collective farm concentrate so hard on being a common peasant? What was driving him?

  “Have you registered?”

  His manner was curt, but the look he gave her was again one of sharp interest. It occurred to her that he was more curious about others than he was willing to admit. Zenia had told her he wasn’t married, so Sofia wondered what his home was like. It was clear that he expected her to wait outside, but she didn’t. After the dog entered, its claws clicking on the wooden flooring, she followed him in.

  “Yes, I have registered.”

  Her eyes darted quickly around the room she’d entered. Know your enemy. What did this lair tell her about the man? It was startlingly barren. Nothing on the walls, strictly no bourgeois frills or pretensions. A chair, a table, a stove, some shelves, and that was it. Chairman Fomenko obviously didn’t believe in pampering himself. Instead of a property of distinction worthy of a kolkhoz chairman, the house was indistinguishable from any of the other village izbas, and he kept the floor well swept and the roof beams free of cobwebs. It was the house of a tidy mind. Or a secretive one.

  No clues, except the dog. Sofia extended her hand. The animal touched her fingers with its damp black nose, and when it was satisfied, it allowed her to run a hand down its gray wire-brush coat. It was an elegant Russian wolfhound, a bitch with a narrow muzzle and soft brown eyes, and it gazed up at her with an expression of such gentleness that Sofia felt herself fall a little in love with the creature. But it was no more than a minute before the hound returned to its position next to Fomenko’s thigh and stayed there.

  “She’s beautiful,” Sofia said. “What’s her name?”

  “Nadyezhda.”

  “Hope. An unusual name for a dog.”

  He rested a hand on the hound’s head, his fingers instinctively fondling one of its ears, and he looked at Sofia as though about to explain the name, but after a second’s thought he made an abrupt turn and picked up a large iron key from a shelf of books at the rear of the room, too far away for Sofia to read any titles. He moved briskly now as though pressed for time, but when it came to handing over the key, he paused.

  “You lost something in the hall, you say?”

  “Yes. A key.”

  “I can’t spare time to help with a search myself, comrade, but if I give you the key to use, you must return it to the office as soon as you’ve finished with it.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then report to one of the potato brigades.”

  “I’ll work hard.”

  Still he weighed the key in his hand, and she had a feeling that despite being short of time, he still had something to say to her. That made her nervous. He subjected her to a careful scrutiny, his gray eyes so intent on her that she had a sudden sense of the loneliness inside this man and of the effort he put into hiding it.

  “A tractor driver will be of great use to our kolkhoz next month when we start harvesting,” he said thoughtfully.

  “I’m glad.” She had no intention of still being in Tivil next month.

  “But everyone knows that a tractor driver can also inflict great damage to the crops if he or—more to the point—she chooses.”

  “Comrade Chairman, I am offering myself as a helper, not a wrecker.”

  “But it is significant that the moment you appear in Tivil, a barn burns down and sacks of grain go missing.”

  Sofia’s pulse thudded in her throat. “It is a coincidence that someone else here is manipulati
ng.”

  “Who?”

  “How do I know?” she shrugged. “I’m new here.”

  “That is my point.” The key tapped the firm lines of his jaw. “Come to the office at noon tomorrow. I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “Chairman, I take exception to such a demand. I am here to give assistance to the kolkhoz of my uncle.”

  His gray eyes caught her out. “In which case you won’t mind answering my questions, will you?”

  “Questions about what?”

  “About where you’ve come from. Who your parents were. About your family.” He paused again and observed her minutely as he added, “About your uncle.”

  “Uncle Rafik is not well.”

  “It’s interesting how often the gypsy is sick after the procurement officers have come calling in Tivil.” He gave an ironic half-smile. “So often, in fact, that I’m beginning to wonder if there is a connection.”

  “I believe he grows sick at heart when he sees the village suffer.”

  Fomenko didn’t like that; his mouth tightened. “He should be sick at heart at the thought of the men and women and children going hungry throughout our towns and cities. It is my job to make sure they don’t, by making this kolkhoz productive. We must help fulfill our Great Leader’s Plan.”

  The pause he left demanded a patriotic response from her, but the words wouldn’t come to her tongue. Instead she held out her hand for the key.

  THE church was cool, hushed, as Sofia locked the door behind her. The sunlight slid through the windows in bright golden beams that captured the dust and emphasized the shadows. She breathed deeply, shocked to find she was shaking.

  How could Fomenko have that effect on her, just by breathing the same air? She stared down at her palm and almost expected to see the imprint of his fingers there. That was a foolish notion, so she pushed it aside and looked around her. Gone were the icons, gone the mosaic images and the gold latticework that once lined the central nave, no candles, no collects to honor the Mother of God. The soul of the building had been painted over with stark white.