The Red Scarf

by Kate Furnivall

  “Confess,” one of the warders roared in his ear.

  He was disintegrating. He could feel the parts inside him coming loose.

  “Devil curse you, you bastards,” he spat through blood.

  An explosion of pain registered in his brain, but he could no longer tell where it came from in his body. At long last, he let go. He stopped holding the parts together and tasted a sticky tar clogging the channels of his mouth and nose. He couldn’t breathe.

  SOFIA hitched a lift back to Tivil. Pyotr swung himself up on the back of the cart beside her, relieved to catch his breath. She’d set a punishing pace on the road that he couldn’t match; the visit to the prison had knocked all the air out of him. Old Vlasov had come clattering up behind them with his horse and two-wheeled cart, empty now that he’d delivered his load of logs to the bakery in town. They jumped on, and Pyotr threw himself on his back in the sawdust where he wrapped an arm tight across his eyes, hiding from the world outside. Hiding from himself and from his betrayal. It gnawed at his heart.

  He didn’t look at Sofia, but he could feel her seated next to him, upright and alert, hugging her knees. The road was rough, the sky gray-bellied. When Pyotr eventually rolled onto his side he saw a flight of swallows dipping over the river, but today he had no interest in them and he studied Sofia instead. Deep in thought, she had the knack of being very still, so still she became almost invisible, like an animal in the forest. He wondered what made her like that.

  “Sofia.”

  She turned to him, her gaze coming from somewhere far away.

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  “I know you didn’t.” Her voice was gentle.

  “He is my father.”

  “Of course he is. He loves you, Pyotr, and you love him.”

  “You won’t . . .” He hesitated.

  “No, I won’t tell him.”

  Pyotr grunted a kind of thanks. “He’s been . . . better.”

  “Better than your real father, you mean?”

  “Yes. He never beats me and more than anything he wants me to have schooling. He says it’s the way forward for Russia. And he doesn’t get drunk.” He laughed. “Not all the time, anyway.”

  He hadn’t meant to say it to her. Any of it.

  She studied him, solemnly. “Your father is a loyal citizen of Russia.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Don’t doubt him.”

  “He’s read all Lenin’s and Stalin’s writings, like The State and Revolution , and I’m always pushing the latest pamphlets under his bedroom door for him to read at night when he gets home.”

  She smiled. “I bet he appreciates that.”

  “He does.”

  “Who are you trying to convince, Pyotr? Me? Yourself? Or the men in the interrogation room?”

  “Papa will be released if he is innocent,” he insisted.

  “And is he innocent? Or did he take the grain off the truck? What do you believe?”

  The question knocked a hole in Pyotr’s chest, letting in the confusion once more. He threw himself back on the floor of the cart and this time wrapped both arms across his face.

  “I don’t know,” he muttered.

  Instantly she was on him. Snatched his arms away, so that he was looking up into her fierce blue eyes as she leaned over him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she snapped, “whether he’s innocent or guilty. Can’t you see that? What matters is that he’s your father. He loves you. You owe him, this man who took you in as his own son when you were tainted by the kulak label of your miller father.” She dug her fingers into his arms. “You owe him everything. That’s what matters— love and loyalty.”

  Abruptly she released him. Pyotr felt as if he’d been run over.

  “Not,” she added softly, “a power-frenzied devil with a mustache and a withered arm who gets his thrills by signing death warrants in the Kremlin.”

  Pyotr sobbed. The thoughts in his head were crashing into each other, and then suddenly she was close again, her breath brushing his cheek.

  "Help me, Pyotr. Help me get Mikhail out of that stinking prison.”

  THE village was coming into sight when she spoke again.

  "Pyotr, tell me about Lilya Dimentieva.”

  "What about her?”

  “She and your father are . . . friends.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good friends?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is she like?”

  “She’s all right.”

  “And the child, Misha?”

  “What about him?”

  “Is he . . . your father’s?”

  “No, of course not, don’t be stupid. Misha’s father was killed in an accident when he was clearing trees off the high field last summer.”

  “Oh.”

  “Papa helps Lilya out when she needs it, like when Misha broke her window. And she cooks us meals sometimes.”

  “I see.”

  “She’s easy to like.”

  He watched the color rise into her cheeks, slowly at first and then faster, darker. She looked away, and Pyotr was sorry. He hadn’t meant to hurt her.

  FORTY

  SOFIA left Pyotr outside the kolkhoz office. She hurried past the pond, where two boys were making a lot of noise trying to capture a duck, and up to Rafik’s izba. She burst into the cottage calling his name.

  “Rafik?”

  No answer; the place was empty. Where was he? She had questions to ask, and time was trickling through her fingers too fast.

  “Comrade Morozova.”

  Sofia spun around. Outside on the step stood Elizaveta Lishnikova, the schoolteacher, and in her hand she carried a book. Her gray hair was pinned up tidily in a pleat at the back of her head and her gray narrow-waisted dress was as immaculate as ever, but something about her made Sofia’s heart miss a beat. It was in the crispness of her manner, in the shine of her eyes, a bright expectation. She knew something that Sofia did not.

  “Comrade Lishnikova, I intended to come and speak to you today.”

  “Well, I’ve saved you the trouble.” The woman held out the book. “Here, I’ve brought you a gift.”

  Sofia accepted it, surprised. It was a good-quality copy of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot.

  “Thank you, comrade.”

  “I expect you’ve read it.”

  “Yes, I have, but I will enjoy reading it again.” She thumbed through the soft pages thoughtfully. “Spasibo. But why should you bring me a gift?”

  The long face with its fine bones seemed to shift slightly. “I thought you might need it. Something to calm you before tonight.”

  “Tonight? What’s happening tonight?”

  “Ah,” Elizaveta hesitated, then smiled politely. “I see, you don’t know yet. Excuse my mistake.” She turned to leave.

  “Comrade,” Sofia said sharply. “I was coming to thank you for the offer of a job at the school.”

  The teacher raised her elegant eyebrows expectantly.

  “I would like to accept,” Sofia continued.

  “Indeed? That would be a help to me, but Rafik tells me you will soon be gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “From Tivil.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Ah, comrade, you must ask Rafik himself. But let me tell you this, that man knows more than you or I put together.” She laughed, a clear low-pitched sound that belonged to a younger woman. She started to move away.

  “Tell me,” Sofia called out after her, “what happened to your previous assistant teacher?”

  Elizaveta Lishnikova froze for no more than a second, but Sofia spotted it.

  “He left,” the older woman said.

  “Suddenly?”

  “Yes.” Sofia thought she was going to finish it there, but she continued stiffly, “He spoke out of turn one day and a pupil reported him.” She shrugged. “It happens.”

  “Was it Yuri? The pupil who reported him.” Mikhail had told her on the train about Pyotr�
��s friend.

  Elizaveta said nothing, but she sighed, and a layer of her brightness faded. Without another word, she walked away.

  SOFIA tried to make sense of it. The schoolteacher’s message had unnerved her. Tonight? What did she mean? Why did her mind need to be calmed? What was going to happen tonight?

  Suddenly she was frightened. She felt the fear cold and hard in a tight ball just under her heart and she rubbed a hand there to release it.

  Anna, oh Anna. I’m not strong enough. I can’t do this.

  She sat down in Rafik’s maroon chair, dropped her head in her hands, and let the moment crash down on her; all the misery and suffering of the last four months when she’d battled halfway across Russia, footstep by footstep, crushed her so that she could barely breathe. She remained like that for a long time, till her fingers grew stiff in her hair, and the whole time she thought hard. About Mikhail. About Anna. About what she was about to lose. And at last when the level of pain became manageable once more, she rose and walked over to Rafik’s carved wooden chest against the wall, the one he had drawn her shoes from, the one she’d never opened. The lid was carved with serpents. She lifted it. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t what stared up at her.

  Two bright black eyes and fur whiter than snow, sparkling like ice. She touched it. It was the complete pelt of an Arctic fox, beautifully tanned to such perfect suppleness it was hard to believe the animal wasn’t still alive. She stroked the soft fur and gently lifted it out, but underneath lay a folded pile of white sheets, and beside all this whiteness a bundle in the corner sang out. It was a bright red piece of material.

  She snatched it up, almost expecting to find blood on her hands from the scarlet fibers, and could feel something weighty inside. Cautiously she unwrapped it. A single pebble tumbled onto her lap, and she felt oddly disappointed. She’d expected something . . . something more revealing, but she picked it up and examined it anyway. The pebble was bone white with silvery veins running through it but otherwise quite ordinary. What on earth did Rafik use it for? It was absurd but the more she stared at the stone, the less she wanted to relinquish it back to the chest. It felt oddly comforting in the palm of her hand, so that she lifted it to her cheek, running its milky surface along her skin.

  Her mind grew calm and she breathed more easily. Whatever was going on here, the fear and weakness of a few moments ago had drained away. It was strange. Maybe Rafik had handled this stone so often that he’d left a small piece of himself in its silvery veins. Was it Rafik’s strong spirit that was steadying her, or was it something rising to the surface from within herself? She was uncertain.

  With an impatient shake of her head, she bundled the pebble inside the red cloth again and returned it to its position in the chest. She needed to find Rafik, but as she stepped out of the house, she heard the sound of hooves and glanced up to see Chairman Fomenko astride a long-boned black horse heading down toward the kolkhoz office. He reined the animal to a halt in front of her.

  “Good day, Comrade Morozova.”

  Sofia gave him a cold hard stare. This man was the young boy soldier who killed Anna’s father in cold blood sixteen years ago and also shot Svetlana, Mikhail’s mother. She wondered for the thousandth time whether Mikhail was aware of the truth and whether she should tell him. Just because Fomenko had turned up at Maria’s apartment searching for Anna, it didn’t excuse anything.

  “You haven’t yet attended my office, as I requested.”

  “I was in Dagorsk today.”

  “Did you find out what has become of Comrade Pashin?” His broad shoulders seemed to block out the morose charcoal sky.

  “Nyet.”

  He studied her for a moment in silence, and the skin around his gray eyes creased with a concern that surprised her. “Tomorrow morning then. Eight o’clock at my office.”

  She nodded.

  “Comrade Morozova,” he said in a gentler tone, “may I suggest that you eat something.”

  “What do you have in mind?” she asked. “Grain?”

  Instead of cursing her as she expected, he laughed, and the sound of it made her want to claw his tongue out.

  SOME instinct for danger made her skirt around the back of the village. The stables seemed the most likely place for the gypsy to be, but instead of taking the direct track up between the cabbage fields, she kept to the forest edge and climbed the slope of the ridge, breathing in the sweet fresh scent of pine. It meant she came at the stables from the back and from above. She looked down at the long wooden buildings but could spot nothing that shouldn’t be there. The courtyard was empty except for a tangle of farm ironwork in a huddle in one corner and the trough in the center.

  So what the hell was making the hairs on her neck stand up?

  The solitary village street lay below, sleepy except for a hound belling somewhere and the urchins shrieking with delight in the murky pond. In the distance figures littered the fields like scarecrows with hoes in hand while others hunched on their knees, laboriously weeding the potato ridges. A flat sky lay like a lid on the valley. Nothing strange, nothing out of place.

  So why the taste of fear in her mouth?

  And then she heard it, faint but unmistakable, the rhythmic cadence of a religious chant. It drifted from the wall of the stable building like incense, charging the air. It was a rich golden sound that brought back her father and her childhood in a rush, but the priest and his secret flock were deluding themselves if they thought their God could combat the might of Communism. She looked around quickly. A sentry, surely the priest must have set a sentry. She couldn’t see one at first, but by moving off to her left so that she could see the approach through the cabbage fields, she spotted him. There at the head of the track stood the figure of the young boy with the scabs and the broom, but he wasn’t sweeping this time. He was arguing, arms flailing in all directions. Uniforms swarmed over him like wasps on a honey jar, poking him in the ribs, cuffing his ears.

  Sofia ran. She hurtled back down the slope to the rear of the stables and hammered her fists on the dusty planks. Instantly the chanting ceased. She raced to a high narrow vent in the wooden wall and leaped up to it, scrabbling through the tiny gap, nimble as a squirrel. She dropped inside, blinked in the gloom and found herself in some kind of harness room, surrounded by leather and brass. She heard movement and rushed out into the long section where the stalls were situated, but there was no sign of anyone. Just a horse’s heavy nose turned in her direction, bristling with curiosity and soft sighs. The smell of incense was strong.

  “Priest,” she called softly.

  From her right came a sound she recognized, the faint tinkle of a brass censer. The priest was standing alone in front of what looked like a solid wall of old timbers, but his appearance bore no resemblance to the way she’d seen him last. He was clothed in full Russian Orthodox priest’s regalia, a long black cassock that enveloped him with a stillness that filled the small space. Around his neck lay an embroidered stole, and a tall black hat on his head transformed his shaggy red hair into a golden halo, but it was his eyes that had changed most. The wildness had vanished and in its place was a cool green sea of peace. They studied Sofia with calm authority.

  “God be with you, child.” He made the sign of the cross.

  “Quick,” she urged. “Bistro. The soldiers are here at the front.”

  He knew she could be laying a trap for him. His green eyes probed hers, but something in them must have satisfied him because he pushed against one of the planks of timber. Silently, on well-oiled hinges, it swung open all the way to the roof beams, leaving a tall slender gap. Sofia put her head around it. A room lay behind it, long and thin, crammed with people, scented with candles and incense and the spice of prayer. More than twenty faces were turned to her, old men with gray beards and tired eyes, old women wearing black headscarves and crosses at their necks. A large black Bible lay open on a lectern, gilt letters glittering promises in the candlelight.
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br />   “Bistro. Quickly, out,” Sofia whispered. “Soldiers.”

  A gasp of panic and then they poured out through the gap, squeezing their fleshless bodies through little more than a hand’s breadth.

  “Which way?”

  “They’ll kill us.”

  “God be merciful.”

  “Beloved Mother of Christ, blessed Virgin, hear our prayers.”

  “This way,” Priest Logvinov said.

  He led his flock into one of the stalls, his threadbare cassock trailing over the straw and picking up stalks while one woman sobbed quietly into her handkerchief. He bent down and flipped a wooden latch that instantly released the end plank, so that it sprang open. Outside lay the rocky slope up to the forest. Sofia had to admit he was better prepared than she expected.

  “Go, my children.”

  Each villager stopped to kiss the ring on the priest’s hand, “Thank you, Father,” but every second of delay caused Sofia agony.

  "Faster,” she urged. "Bistreye! ”

  A clatter of boots sounded in the courtyard at the front, and the boy lookout squealed as though struck. Sofia fought the overwhelming desire to flee up that inviting slope to the cool refuge of the trees.

  “Priest,” she said, “I’ll try to delay them. Get out of those clothes and if you ever want to say another prayer again, hide that Bible.” She snatched the ceremonial hat from his head and thrust it into his hand. “Be quick.”

  “God will protect us, my child,” Priest murmured.

  “My tongue will do a better job of it,” Sofia snapped back. She turned and raced through the stables to face the uniforms in the yard.

  WHY was she doing this? Why risk so much?

  The question sprang into her mind unbidden the moment she saw the soldiers strutting across the courtyard. Just the sight of the boots and the peaked caps turned her stomach, and memories of the labor camp guards stabbed like spikes in her brain.

  “Tovarishchi,” she called out. “Comrades.”

  They were young, or they would not have halted so readily for a female voice.