The Red Scarf

by Kate Furnivall

  For a moment she was rooted there, wondering what her father would have made of it, then she took a deep breath. That’s the way it is now. Accept it. Don’t waste time grieving for what can never be brought back. You’re here for Anna, only Anna. Now search this barren place, just as she told you to.

  Quickly she sought out the bust of Josef Stalin’s head. It was easy to find, displayed prominently in a niche on the side wall, as Priest Logvinov had said. She stared with dislike at its lifeless eyes and arrogant chin, and wanted to climb up there to give it the same treatment the Komsomol thugs had given St. Peter.

  No risks. Not now. Get on with the search.

  First she examined the bricks beneath the niche. Her fingers traced the outline of each one, seeking a loose corner or some disturbed mortar that would indicate a hiding place. But no, the bricks were smooth. She traced them all the way to the floor with no success and then knelt on the boards and set to work, running a hand along each one, tapping it, picking at its edges, testing whether it would lift or rock unevenly. Nothing. Nothing at all. Except the cold lead of disappointment in her stomach. Frustrated, she crouched on the floor, elbows on her knees, and stared at the white wall. Where? Where was the hiding place? Anna’s governess, Maria, had whispered that a secret box was concealed here, but where, damn it, where? Where would someone hide something they didn’t want found?

  The oak door rattled. She leaped to her feet. Someone was trying to enter.

  “Comrade Morozova, are you in there?” It was the Party man, the weasel man, the informer, Comrade Zakarov.

  In a final rush she scanned the wall beneath the head of Stalin once more. A box buried at St. Peter’s feet. That was what she’d been told, but it was so little. Abruptly she dropped to her knees.

  “St. Peter,” she whispered, “grant me inspiration. Please, I’m begging. Isn’t that what you want, you and your God? Humility and supplication.”

  Nothing came. No shaft of sunlight to point the way. Sofia nodded, as though she’d expected no less, and just then the door shook again, louder this time. “Comrade Morozova, I know you’re in there.”

  What now? With a sudden droop of her shoulders she buried her face in her hands and felt a wave of loneliness chill her bones. She had to leave. She stood, made her way up the central aisle, and inserted the key in the lock, and as she did so a longing for Mikhail came with such force it took her breath from her.

  “Mikhail,” she whispered, just to feel his name on her tongue.

  He could help her. But would he? If she told him all she knew about Anna and his past and about what was hidden in the church, would he turn her away like a thief? He’d said he would help the right person, but was she that right person? Was Anna? He was in a position of authority now and worked for the Soviet State system; he had a son whom he loved. Would he risk it all if she asked? Would he?

  He’d be insane to do so.

  She straightened her shoulders and turned the key. If she asked for his help, she risked failure, and failure meant death. Not just her own.

  THIRTY

  Davinsky Camp

  July 1933

  THE cat crept into the camp out of nowhere. Its arrival occurred at the end of one of the fierce summer storms; the small creature picked its way daintily around the puddles in the yard as if walking on eggshells. It was young and painfully thin, its bedraggled fur a sort of noncolor, neither gray nor brown but somewhere in between. But there was a jauntiness to its movements that attracted attention in a world where limbs were heavy and movements slow.

  The women couldn’t help smiling, and a group of them tried to herd it into a corner, but it looked at them with scornful green eyes and slipped effortlessly through their legs. It scampered straight into one of the huts, gazed with interest at the array of bunks, and leaped up onto Anna’s. It nudged its bony little head against her arm and plunged its needle claws into her blanket, kneading with a steady rhythm that tore holes in the threadbare material. Anna touched its head, a light tentative brush of her fingertips over the damp fur, and immediately the young cat started to purr.

  The loud rackety sound did something to Anna. Happiness sprang into her chest like something solid. She could feel it warm and contented in there, soothing the inflamed pathways in her lungs. Like the cat, it seemed to have come from nowhere. She scratched a finger under the furry chin until it stretched out its neck with pleasure and watched her through half-closed eyes that desired nothing more.

  Other prisoners were gathering around the bunk board.

  “It’s so pretty,” one crooned.

  “It needs meat.”

  “Don’t we all!”

  “It’ll be riddled with fucking fleas,” Tasha warned.

  Anna laughed. “We’ve already got bedbugs, mosquitoes, and marsh flies; what difference will a few fleas make?”

  The young animal suddenly hiccupped, and everyone chuckled. Tasha put out a hand to stroke its soft fur, but at that moment one of the guard dogs outside barked and the cat hissed and flattened its ears, its sharp claws raking Tasha’s skin.

  “Fuck the little bastard!”

  The cat shot off the bed, its hollow belly low to the floor, and disappeared out of the door in a flash of noncolor. Several of the women chased after it.

  “I hope they eat the miserable piece of gristle,” Tasha said, sucking at her hand.

  Anna stared at the spot where the cat had torn a hole in her blanket and felt an even bigger hole torn in her chest. “Oh Tasha, that’s what this place does to us. I’m sure they will, eat it, I mean. I just hope the poor little creature has enough sense to head straight for the barbed wire.”

  “Wouldn’t we all like to do that?”

  “Give me your hand. Here, this will help.” She took Tasha’s hand between hers and pressed hard to stem the blood. The tiny needles had done no more than scrape the surface, and the trickle soon stopped.

  “Thanks,” Tasha said, and she went over to the grimy window to watch the chase.

  But Anna didn’t hear because she was staring blindly at the wall opposite. The brief sensation of a hand pressed hard against her own had whisked her without warning back to that day at the Dyuzheyev villa when the dancing had been stopped forever by a light knock on the door.

  “No.” Maria had hissed the word. “No, Anna.”

  The twelve-year-old Anna had come hurtling out of the house, but her governess seized her with a grip that hurt and yanked her back onto the front steps, tight against her skirt. Maria placed one hand on Anna’s shoulder and the other gripped her hand, and she was not going to let go.

  “Say nothing,” she breathed, not taking her gaze from the group spread out on the drive in front of her.

  Gray uniforms were everywhere, red flashes on their shoulders, snow trampled and dirty under their boots. A circle of rifles, glinting in the sun, was aimed at the three figures in the center of it: Vasily, Svetlana, and Grigori. Grigori was splayed awkwardly on the snow in a sleep that Anna knew wasn’t sleep and in a pool of red juice that she knew wasn’t juice. She choked and gasped in the cold air. Svetlana was kneeling beside her husband, a terrible, low, bone-scraping moan escaping from her lips, her head bowed to touch Grigori’s chest. There was more of the cranberry juice on the front of her beautiful gray dress and on her sleeve. On the fur and on her chin.

  Vasily looked strange. He was standing stiff, his limbs rigid as he spoke to the soldier with the peaked cap, the one with a revolver still pointed at Grigori’s motionless body, and the words that rushed out of Vasily were hot and angry.

  “You’ll get the same, whelp, if you don’t stop yapping.” The soldier’s eyes were hard and full of hate. “You and your family are filthy class enemies of the people. Your father, Grigori Dyuzheyev, was a parasite, he exploited the workers of our Fatherland, he had no right to any of this—”

  “No.” Vasily was struggling for control. “My father . . . treated his servants and tenants well, ask any of them what kind of—
”

  The soldier spat on the snow, a jet of yellow hate. “No one should own a house like this.” His mustache twitched with anger. “You should all be exterminated like rats.”

  Anna mewed.

  The soldier swung his gun so that it was pointing directly at her. "You. Come here.”

  Anna took one step forward, but that was as far as she could go because Maria still held her tight.

  “Leave her alone,” Vasily said quickly. “She is only a servant’s brat.”

  “In that dress? What kind of fool do you think I am? No, she’s one of your kind. One of the rats.”

  “Leave her,” Vasily said again. “She’s too young to make choices.”

  “Rats breed,” the soldier snarled, and without shifting the aim of the gun he turned his head to address a boy of about sixteen standing alertly at his shoulder, his cap low over his forehead. He was wearing ragged boots and his chest was heaving, and Anna noticed that despite the chill winter air his young skin was damp with sweat. His uniform was someone else’s castoff, with sleeves and trousers flapping loose and a telltale hole just over his heart.

  “Son, fetch the rat.”

  The boy looked directly at Anna. His pupils were so huge she feared they would swallow her up, black and bottomless. She glared back at the boy as he started toward her.

  “No, comrade.” It was Maria. Her voice was as cool and crisp as the snow. “The girl is mine. My daughter. I am a servant, a worker, and she’s a worker’s child, one of the Soviet proletariat.”

  “No worker wears a dress like that.”

  “They gave it to her.” Maria gestured to the body of Grigori and to Svetlana bent over him. “They like to dress her up in fine clothes.”

  The soldier rubbed an old scar on the side of his head, and Anna saw he had no ear there. He turned to Svetlana. “Is it true? Did you give the brat the dress?”

  Svetlana ignored the soldiers but smiled lovingly at Anna.

  “Yes,” she said quietly, “I gave dear Annochka the dress. But you are the rats and the scum. My husband spent his life at the Foreign Office helping his country. What have you ever done for Russia? You are the rats that will gnaw the heart out of Mother Russia until there is nothing left but blood and tears.”

  The shot, when it rang out in the stillness of the January day, made Anna jump, and her feet would have skidded off the step if Maria had not held her. She bit her tongue, tasted blood. She saw Svetlana hurled backward off her knees, her head flying so fast that her neck was stretched out, revealing blue veins and translucent white skin above the gray collar. A red hole flowered in the exact center of her forehead and leaked dark tendrils.

  Vasily roared and ran to her.

  Anna stared at the soldier boy in the too-big uniform and cap, rifle steady in his hand, and realized he was the one who had fired the bullet. The older soldier placed a proud hand on his shoulder and said, “Well done, my son.”

  The other soldiers murmured an echoing contented sound that was passed from one to the other, so that rifles relaxed and attention lapsed.

  Vasily came fast. It took no more than a second for the knife that suddenly materialized in his hand to sink into the soft throat of the older soldier in command, the one without the ear, and for Vasily to leap up the steps and vanish back into the house. Anna smelled the sweet familiar smell of him as he raced past her, and the old red scarf hanging from his pocket flapped against her cheek. A hideous sickening certainty hit her that the red scarf would be the last thing she would ever see of Vasily. The soldiers fired after him and a bullet grazed Maria’s temple, but they were too slow. Their shouts and stomping feet echoed in the marble hall and up the stairs as they searched, and there was the sound of shattering glass inside.

  Anna didn’t move her lips, but she turned her eyes to Maria and whispered, “Do you think he’s safe now? Vasily has escaped, hasn’t he?”

  Her governess’s face was gray as stone except for the small trickle of blood, and she was staring at the body of Svetlana. It was only then that Anna realized tears were pouring down her own cheeks. She dashed them away, scraping her cold fingers over her face, and that was when she saw Papa. He was running, except to Anna it looked like flying. His long dark cloak was billowing out around him like great black wings as he ran up the slope of the snow-covered lawn to the drive, his face twisted in anguish at the sight of his two dearest friends sprawled on the trampled snow.

  “Stop there,” one of the soldiers shouted.

  He was older than the rest, with heavyset shoulders and a troubled brown gaze that kept glancing back to the body of his superior on his back in the snow, with eyes staring up at the sky as though day-dreaming.

  “What happened?” Papa demanded. “Why have you shot these people?” Anna could see the tic in his cheek muscle. “I shall report you.”

  “Who are you?” The older soldier raised his voice.

  “I am Doktor Fedorin. I was tending to someone wounded by your men here on the estate.”

  He stepped back and dropped on one knee next to Grigori, but his eyes glanced over at Anna. Imperceptibly he shook his head. He touched first Grigori’s wrist, then Svetlana’s, his head bowed. Anna saw his lips move soundlessly, and a deep shudder gripped him. She felt it ripple in an echo through herself.

  “The boy killed my comrade here,” the soldier growled.

  Papa looked up. Slowly rose to his feet. “What boy?”

  “The Dyuzheyev son.”

  Papa stood very still. “Where is he?”

  “My men are searching for him now.”

  Papa looked at Anna but said nothing.

  “I am taking over this house,” the soldier suddenly declared. “I requisition it in the name of the Soviet people and—” He stopped abruptly and pointed at the black Oakland car parked farther along the drive, its headlamps sparkling in the thin sunshine. “Whose is that vehicle?”

  “It’s mine,” Papa said. “I’m a doctor. I need a car to visit the sick.”

  “The rich sick,” the boy soldier spat. “The sick who possess big houses and big bank balances.” He pointed his rifle at the Oakland and fired. The windshield exploded, and glass flew like ice.

  The older soldier scowled. “Why ruin a perfectly good car? We could use it for—”

  “It is American. It stinks of injustice just like this doctor does.”

  “Tell me, Doktor,” the older man in command demanded sharply, “do you also live in a big house? Do you also keep servants? Do you own horses and carriages and more silver samovars and fur coats than you can ever use?” The man took a step closer. “Do you?”

  Anna saw Papa’s eyes go to the silent bodies of Svetlana and Grigori. Suddenly he yanked the handsome silver watch from his waistcoat pocket. “Here,” he shouted, “take this. And these.” He hurled his cigar case and his beaver hat onto the trampled snow at their feet. “And take my house too, why don’t you?” His heavy bunch of keys hit the boy’s toecap. Papa’s rage frightened Anna. “Take everything. Leave me nothing, not even my friends. Will I then be fit to doctor your glorious proletariat? And are you fit to decide who is fit to be cared for and who isn’t?”

  The boy’s eyes filled with loathing.

  Anna watched Papa take four long strides toward her. Odeen. Dva. Tre. Chetiri. One. Two. Three. Four. Her heart leaped at the sight of his familiar reassuring smile, at his eager blue eyes, his hair ruffled by the wind. The cloak that so many times had wrapped her close against his warm cigar-smelling body swirled in welcome, as though seeking her out. His hand reached for her, and she felt Maria’s fingers uncurl.

  There was a loud crack. Anna knew now that it was the sound a rifle makes when it’s fired. The boy, she thought, shooting at the car again. She expected Papa to be angry with him, but instead his mouth jerked open into a silent oh, and his eyes rolled up in his head, so that only their whites showed. His knees went soft. And then he was falling, face first as he used to do in the enticing waters of the Black Se
a to amuse her when they spent the summer at their dacha. Face first into the snow. The back of his head was blown open. The boy soldier was gripping his rifle proudly.

  Anna ripped herself free of her governess and started to scream.

  THIRTY-ONE

  ZENIA dealt the tarot cards, the gadalniye karti. Her hands were quick and skillful, each card laid neatly on the table, flicking a second and a third to overlap it. The images of noose and naked bodies and long curved sickle tumbled on top of each other. The room in the izba was gloomy, shutters closed, the air scented with a cloying ball of goose fat that hissed and spat in a dish of beaten copper. In the center of the table sat a basket of woven birch bark, a lid of coarse netting stretched over it, a knife positioned in a vertical line across its surface. The blade pointed due east. Inside the basket something moved.

  The shadows shifted and Rafik’s voice was deep with tension as he placed a hand on the knife and said, “Again, Zenia.”

  The gypsy girl gathered the cards. Shuffled and dealt again. The same. Noose and sickle and pink-skinned naked bodies entwined in long curling loops of silvery hair.

  “The lovers,” Zenia announced. “They bring death to Tivil.”

  An intake of breath while a shutter vibrated, though there was no wind. Rafik picked up a teacup that stood on the table, the one Sofia had drunk from earlier in the day with Pokrovsky. Inside it tea leaves were bunched at the bottom and spread into intricate shapes that Zenia had studied.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, though in his heart he didn’t doubt his daughter’s reading.

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “A journey for her. One that brings sorrow to Tivil.”

  “Yes.”

  They both gazed at the brown envelope that lay next to the basket. On it was written one word: Sofia. Rafik felt the weight of each of the bold black letters.

  "Tonight,” he said, “I will walk the circle.”

  THE field was emptying. Sofia stood, straightening her cramped muscles, and watched the women head back toward the village in twos and threes, their chatter adding to the tinkling bell of the cows as they ambled in for the night.