The Red Scarf

by Kate Furnivall

  “Hell, yes. Nina tried to amuse me today with a tale about her experience of birthing a breech calf. I tell you, it fucking made me vomit.” Her prim little mouth pulled tight. “Get some sleep now, you idle layabout, and you’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  “Spasibo.”

  Anna closed her eyes, grateful for the blackness because her eyes were becoming increasingly sensitive to light, which caused little pinpricks of pain in her eyeballs. She recalled Sofia having the same problem that time she was ill with her hand and was eating nothing.

  “I can’t see,” Sofia had said one evening in the hut, and Anna had heard the suppressed panic in her voice despite her determination to hide it.

  Anna had waved a hand in front of her friend’s eyes. “It’s pellagra.”

  “I know.”

  Pellagra, like scurvy, was caused by vitamin deficiency and was the curse of the prisoners, and one of its effects was an inability to see in the dark. Anna took Sofia’s undamaged hand and quietly steered her through the rows of bunks to her bedboard. She was shocked by the fire raging in her friend’s veins, and that was the moment she decided to go to find Crazy Sara.

  SARA.”

  "Get away, you whore.”

  Anna tried again. “Sara, I’ve brought you some bread.”

  The wild green eyes rolled in their sockets. “Putrid bread from a whore.”

  But the wizened claw shot out, snatched the gray knob of clay-bread from Anna’s hand, and rammed it into her toothless mouth before the gift was retracted. Anna waited patiently for the woman to cease snuffling a stream of obscenities and scratching herself.

  “Sara, I’m told you have knowledge. Of what lies out there in the forest that can heal ailments.”

  The woman cackled and pointed a crooked finger at Anna. “More than you’ll ever know.”

  They were standing beside the vast rubbish dump at the far end of the camp. It was raining, a gloomy chill downpour that had gone on all day, making the rocks slippery to handle on the road, but in the distance the sun hovered on the horizon where it would sit until morning, reluctant at this time of year to leave. The stench of the dump was foul, as of dead bodies buried in the filth, but Anna gave no sign of repulsion.

  Sara was one of the brodyagas, the garbage eaters, the band of pathetic wretches who lived off what they could scavenge from the dump. They scurried over it like crabs, seeking out things to thrust past their white gums, and welcomed the advances of any guard desperate enough to handle their diseased bodies. Most were insane, their minds rotting as fast as their limbs, but this one, this Sara, was Anna’s only hope. She clung to it.

  “They say you are a witch.” Anna spoke slowly and clearly to ensure that the woman heard above the rain, but she didn’t risk coming too close. “That you can—”

  Sara shrieked, and it took Anna a moment to recognize the noise as laughter. The woman’s lungs were wheezing with delight. She had lost all her hair long ago, including her beetle-black eyebrows, and her pink scabby scalp glistened in the rain.

  “What will you pay?” Her hands were grasping like claws.

  “What do you ask?”

  “Butter, bread, and beetroot. And”—she swung her head from side to side, searching in her bewilderment for some other demand— “and your coat. Yes,” she screeched the word, “da, your coat. I want it now . . . now . . . now . . . now. I want . . .”

  Anna recoiled. Demanding a coat? It was summer now, but come the winter . . .

  “I need a cure for an infected hand. If it heals, you shall have my coat. But not before.”

  The woman’s hand slithered forward between the raindrops like a snake’s head and fastened on the wet collar of Anna’s coat, fingering the padded material. Her sunken mouth started to drool.

  “Bring me butter,” she crooned. “Then I will see.”

  Anna nodded and, holding her breath against the stink of decay, hurried away from the dump and the scuttling crabs. The woman’s cackle was not drowned out by the rain.

  IT didn’t take her long to get it. She brought butter and bread for Sara, and in exchange received herbs in a poultice for the splitting flesh of Sofia’s hand. Some of the women in the hut stopped speaking to Anna when they saw her draw a brown greaseproof packet of meat and fat and even a sweet biscuit from her pocket each day.

  Everyone knew, but Anna didn’t give a damn about them as she watched Sofia heal. She could feel their scathing disgust like sandpaper on her skin. People whispered behind their hands, and even out in the Work Zone fingers pointed when guards sidled up to smile at her. Whatever filth the women thought of her, it wasn’t even close to what she thought of herself. But that didn’t stop her, and each evening she walked out from behind the tool-hut with food in her pocket and fire in her belly.

  One night as she was gently feeding tiny strips of yellow pork fat into Sofia’s cracked lips, she saw the feverish eyes fix on her face as though trying to work out what was reality and what was a trick of her confused mind.

  “Anna.” A raw whisper.

  “I’m here.”

  “Tell me . . . something . . . happy.”

  Anna was engulfed by a huge wave of tenderness. She was standing right next to Sofia’s top bunk, and she leaned her head against the sick girl’s arm. How could something look so dead and yet burn so hot?

  “Tell me, Anna.” So soft it was no more than a shimmer of air. “Tell me more about Vasily.”

  Anna pushed a dried currant into Sofia’s mouth. She never touched a scrap of the food herself. Just the thought of where it came from made her retch. “Chew,” she ordered and started to talk.

  Pirate Island, we called it. It sat, small and stubby, in the middle of the lake on the Dyuzheyevs’ grand estate. No one ever went there except the swans. There were two of them—Napoleon and Josephine we named them because they were so horrible, always hissing and flapping their great white wings like angry angels that had fallen to earth. One lazy summer day Vasily decided we would attack the island, so we set off in the row boat pretending to be Tsar Nicholas’s best troops driving the hated Finnish pirates off Russian soil, and Vasily had made us wooden swords.

  “Come on, Captain Konstantin, row harder,” Vasily bellowed as if we were in the middle of a vast sea with a howling gale.

  The sun glittered on the water and the air was humming with the beats of insects’ wings. A brilliant blue butterfly landed on Vasily’s cap, and I clapped with such delight that I nearly lost my oar. To be honest, I was quite nervous of invading that tiny island.

  “Vasily,” I warned, “I don’t think that the swans—I mean the pirates— will be very friendly.”

  “Of course the bastards won’t, Captain, they’re filthy pirates, aren’t they? They guard their treasure well, but together we’ll defeat them and lop off their heads.”

  “But you’re the general. I’m only a captain, so you’ll lead the charge, won’t you?”

  I didn’t want to land. I thought it would be just perfect to float in the boat with Vasily forever, but we bumped up against the island. Vasily put his finger to his lips. In silence we crept up the rocky bank into the undergrowth, where Vasily suddenly gave a shout of pain, clutched his chest, sank to his knees in the mud, and collapsed on his side.

  “Vasily!” I screamed.

  “I’m shot, Captain Konstantin,” he gasped.

  “What?”

  “The pirates have done for me.” He writhed on the ground as though in agony. “It all rests on you now, my brave captain. You must attack their camp alone.”

  “Vasily,” I said crossly, plucking like a little bird at his soft brown hair. “Don’t be silly.”

  “Captain, are you a yellow-bellied coward?”

  “No!”

  “I knew I could trust you, soldier. Here, take my sword as well and don’t forget to make the charge with a bloodcurdling scream to frighten the cursed pirates off the island.”

  I gazed at him in horror. His eyes were firmly shut,
his strong young limbs crumpled and lifeless. Why couldn’t I lie down beside him and be shot by pirates too? In a panic I glanced quickly around, imagining black-tipped beaks with razor teeth lurking behind every bush, yellow eyes gleaming with menace. I picked up Vasily’s long sword, but my hand was shaking.

  “Vasily,” I whispered, “a swan is bigger than me.”

  He didn’t move.

  I took a tentative step toward the heart of the island. “I’m going after the pirates now.”

  No answer.

  I listened hard for any sound of the swans, but I could only hear my own heart beating in my ears. I was so terrified I forgot to breathe. I could see the leaves shivering in the wind, and I knew even they were frightened for me. I was going to die.

  I ran. With a bloodcurdling screech and both swords whirling in crazy circles, I charged into the undergrowth, branches taking swipes at my head. Straight away Josephine heard me and came flying out with head high and wings wide, uttering a deafening war cry. I launched my attack, swords scything through the air. For one second the bird was so surprised she backed off, and I was fooled. This is easy. I’m a great warrior and I can . . .

  She ran at me, eyes spitting fire. I went down, head over heels in a flurry of arms and legs as she bowled me over and swung her long sinuous neck back ready to strike, huge yellow beak gaping wide. She was about to swallow me whole. I screamed and stuck out my sword. But before she or I could move, I was scooped off the ground and tucked under a strong arm, and with a battle cry fit to crack open the world my rescuer raced in a slither of stones and nettles back to the shoreline. Josephine chased us like a fiend from hell, but we tumbled into the boat and pushed out into the lake. My general had saved me, but I was so angry I refused to sit on the row bench with him. I wouldn’t even speak.

  “Oh, come on, Princess, don’t sulk. That was a great adventure.” He splashed me with an oar.

  “Why, Vasily? Why did you do it?”

  “Come here, Annochka.” He pulled me onto the bench beside him and kissed the top of my trembling head. “Don’t be cross. I did it to show you that you can do anything, anything in the world if you set your mind to it. You have the heart of a lion.”

  I snuggled close against him, his white linen shirt turning green wherever I touched him.

  “But I was frightened,” I moaned.

  “We’re all frightened sometimes, my angel. The trick is to roll up your fear into a ball, put it in your pocket, and just carry on. Like you did today.”

  “Next time,” I said loftily, “you can be the pirate and I will run you through with my sword.”

  He grinned, and then abruptly his dove-gray eyes grew dark as slate and he hugged me close. “Annochka, terrible times are coming soon to Russia. Only blood will quench the anger of our people and it will be hard on the likes of your family and mine. You will need every scrap of your courage. All this was to show you that you can do far more than you think you can. I want you to be ready.”

  “I’m ready,” I whispered.

  FORTY-FOUR

  SOFIA was trapped. Not in the dark like Pyotr or in some stinking hellhole like Mikhail, but trapped just the same. Chairman Fomenko ushered her into his office, and the moment he shut the door she felt the tension tighten like an iron band inside her head.

  “Please, sit down.”

  “I’ll stand.”

  Just the sight of this man sent loathing snaking through her veins She stood with folded arms, and to her annoyance he gave her a slight smile, amused by her stance. He sat down at his desk, arranging his limbs with neat precision.

  “Cigarette?” he offered.

  “No.”

  From a drawer he pulled out a slender tin of hand-rolled makhorka cigarettes, thin and misshapen, and lit one carefully with a match. Why did he smoke the cheapest foul-smelling tobacco? Surely he didn’t need to. He probably did so to prove his identification with the ordinary workers in the fields. And that just annoyed her further. Nor did she like the intelligent way he looked at her through the haze of smoke or the feel of his eyes summing up her clothes, her shoes, and the strong curves of the muscles in her legs.

  “I think we’ll have our meeting today, instead of tomorrow, now that you’re here, Comrade Morozova.”

  Sofia said nothing.

  “Do you like it here in Tivil?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And you enjoy living with the gypsies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do they strike you as strange at all?”

  “No.”

  “I hear tales about them, about their . . . antics.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He flexed his broad shoulders under his brown checked shirt, faded by the sun, and Sofia recognized it as a gesture of frustration, a warning that she should be civil.

  “You don’t look much like a gypsy yourself,” he pointed out.

  “I am by marriage, not by blood.”

  “Please explain.”

  “My aunt who brought me up was married to Rafik’s brother. She wasn’t a gypsy, but her husband was.”

  “What about your own parents?”

  “They died.”

  “I’m sorry. What happened?”

  “They were both railway workers. There was a train crash.” That was the story she was sticking to. It invited fewer questions.

  He nodded in silence. “These things happen.”

  “When someone is incompetent.”

  “Incompetence is often a disguise for sabotage.”

  Why did he say that? Was he testing her? To see if she would bleat agreement like one of his docile flock? Or perhaps to trap her into insisting that incompetence was the result of tiredness and hunger and fear of taking decisions that might expose you to accusations of wrecking. Was that it?

  She said nothing; instead she glanced around the office. So far she’d taken no notice of it, concentrating only on Fomenko himself and trying to decipher every lift of his eyebrow, but now she took her time staring at the red banners and portraits on the whitewashed timber walls. They were the usual clutch of beauties: Lenin and Kirov, and in pride of place, of course, Josef Stalin in military tunic and cap. She’d heard he was living a plain, almost austere life in his Kremlin stronghold, but what good is austerity when you have an insatiable thirst for the blood of your people?

  She looked away, unfolded her arms, and took a step nearer the desk. Its metal top was painted black, chipped from long use, and its surface was smothered in piles of papers, all in separate orderly stacks. At one end sat a wooden tray with something lumpy on it, but she couldn’t see exactly what because a red cloth was draped over it.

  “If you’ve asked all your questions, may I leave now? I would like to finish sweeping out the hall, but I need the key.” She held out her hand.

  Fomenko had come marching into the hall when she was peering down at Pyotr in the hole, and he’d demanded to know what she was doing there. With a flick of her wrist she had pushed the plank back into place before he noticed it and then explained that she was sweeping out the hall, instead of Pyotr. She held up the broom to prove the point. He had remained suspicious and she knew she hadn’t fooled him, but his manner was scrupulously polite as he removed the key from her and escorted her to his office.

  Aleksei Fomenko leaned back in his chair now and made no attempt to take the key from his pocket for her. His eyes narrowed speculatively and his lips parted a fraction to exhale tobacco smoke. Something about his stillness made her uneasy.

  “Sit down,” he said, pointedly adding, “Please, comrade.”

  She thought about it, then did so.

  “I wish to see your dokumenti.”

  She removed her residence permit from her skirt pocket and dropped it on the desk.

  “Your travel permit?”

  “Your secretary in the outer office inspected all my documentation when he issued this permit of residency.” She waved at the door. "Ask him.”

>   "I’m asking you.”

  She forced her mouth into the shape of a smile. “What more do you need to know?”

  The stiff lines of his face softened into an answering smile, and then he ran a patient hand over his short hair and took a form from one of the piles. It irritated her that his hands were so broad and capable, as if they were accustomed to achieving what they set themselves to do. They stubbed out the cigarette in a small metal dish that served as an ashtray and picked up a fountain pen. It was the first thing she’d seen in connection with the chairman that had even a hint of status about it. It was a beautiful black-cased pen with a fine gold nib. A silence hung in the room for a second, and into it the wind outside blew small shards of sound: the jingle of a horse harness, the rumble of a cartwheel, the throaty shriek of a goose.

  “Your father’s name and place of origin?”

  “Fyodor Morozov from Leningrad.”

  “Your aunt’s name and place of origin?”

  “Katerina Zhdanova from the Lesosibirsk region.”

  “How long did it take you to travel to Tivil?”

  “Four months.”

  “How did you travel?”

  “Walking mostly, sometimes a lift in a cart.”

  “No money for a train ticket?”

  “No.”

  He put down his pen. “A long journey like that could be dangerous, especially for a young woman alone.”

  She thought of the farmer with foul breath and greasy hands who had found her asleep in his barn. By the time she left him unconscious in the straw, his mouth had lost its gold tooth and she had the price of a week’s food.

  “I worked some of the time,” she said, “dug ditches or chopped wood, sorted rotten potatoes and turnips into sacks. People were kind. They gave me food.”

  Get out of here, you scrawny bitch. We don’t want strangers. Stones had rained into the mud at her feet as a warning. Stiff-legged dogs had snarled a threat.

  “Good, I’m glad,” Fomenko said, but the edges of his gray eyes had darkened and she wondered what was passing behind them. “Russian people,” he continued, “have kind hearts.”