‘It wasn’t a warning, it was a question,’ she finished.
He’s real. Anna, he’s real. Real flesh. Real blood. Not just existing solely in our minds. He’s solid, so solid I could have touched him had I chosen to and my fingers would not have slipped straight through his body the way they do in my dreams.
He’d come to her, coalescing out of the darkness just as he’d done a thousand times before when she’d summoned him, but never before had he been made of flesh and bone. Never before did he have a voice. A tongue. Skin that had seen the sun. A long hard throat. Hair that smelled of early morning mists and stable straw. His jaw was more angular than in her imaginings and his grey eyes more guarded, but it was him. Vasily.
Mikhail Pashin.
Here in the gypsy’s house she had breathed the same air he breathed. Her heart was pounding and she could still hear his voice: I’m not a pilot of anything.
‘But you’re wrong, Mikhail Pashin,’ she whispered and brushed her hand through the air where he had stood, as if she could hold on to his shadow. ‘You brought me here. You guided my footsteps to this village of Tivil.’
And what had she done with the precious moment? Wasted it. Her foolish tongue had frightened him off with a question that sounded to his ears too much like a threat. Damn it, damn it. Where were the soft words she’d planned for him?
‘Next time,’ she murmured, angry with herself, ‘next time I swear I’ll touch you. I’ll place my fingers on the muscles of your arm and feel the hard bone underneath your skin.’ Abruptly she slumped down at the table and stared blindly into the shimmering flame. ‘He’s Anna’s,’ she whispered to the night.
Elizaveta Lishnikova felt sorry for the man in the chamber. She was the one who had started calling the dark and dingy underground room a chamber to give it a degree of dignity, rather than ‘the hole’, which was how it had been referred to before. It was only three metres squared, its earthen walls lined with planking. A single candle on a shelf threw out strange-angled shadows that Elizaveta had often noticed made the occupant even more jumpy. Only one hard-backed chair stood against a wall smelling of mildew, and there was a bundle of blankets folded on top of some sacking on the floor. A bible lay on the shelf next to the candle. Elizaveta had placed it there but tonight it was obvious it had not been touched.
The man’s hand was shaking, but otherwise he was putting up a good show of confidence. His fair hair was combed into a neat parting, his shirt collar was clean and he was managing to keep his shoulders straight. She didn’t like it when they arrived out of the darkness in crumpled rags, their bodies hunched and boneless with fear. But that was just a quirk of hers. She liked to see a bit of backbone on display. Though God only knew how desperately each package had good reason to be fearful.
‘Now, Comrade Gorkin - that’s your new name, by the way: Andrei Gorkin. Start getting used to it.’
He blinked, as if to seal the name into his mind. ‘I won’t forget,’ he said.
Elizaveta registered the refinement of his speech. Another intellectual, maybe a university lecturer who’d said one word too many in praise of the wrong kind of book or the wrong kind of music. She pulled her grey woollen shawl round her bony shoulders to keep out the chill of such thoughts.
‘Here,’ she offered a small bundle wrapped in muslin, ‘something to eat now. And something more for the journey. It’s only black bread and a cone of sunflower seeds but it’ll start you on your way.’
‘Spasibo.’ His voice was shaky and he wiped a hand across his eyes.
‘None of that,’ she said gently, in the tone she would use to one of the little girls in her class. ‘This is a time when you must be . . .’ She was going to say strong, but one look into his nervous eyes and she changed her mind. ‘You must be prepared for a little hardship. Keep your wits about you, do exactly as you’re told and you’ll get through it safely.’
‘I can’t thank you enough for—’
‘Hush. Eat up. You’ll be moving on any moment now.’
She rested a hand on the ancient iron latch of the door, ready to open it the second she heard the coded knock, and watched him force himself to eat. Clearly he had no stomach for food tonight. She didn’t blame him. Nights like this set her own innards churning and she sighed at the thought of a whole generation of intellectuals being wiped out, anyone with a thought of their own. Who was going to teach the next generation to think?
‘You must regard me as wretched,’ he said, smoothing his pale hair in an attempt to appear anything but wretched.
‘No.’
‘I had a good job in Moscow in the—’
‘Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.’
He sat down on the chair as suddenly as if she’d slapped him. Dear God, sometimes these packages expected too much from her.
‘It’s safer,’ she explained. ‘The less I know, the better for both of us.’
‘Yes, I understand.’
The candle hissed as a draught took the flame and she heard the rap of knuckles on old wood.
‘Your guide is here,’ she whispered.
She unlocked the door and the large figure of Pokrovsky slipped into the gloomy chamber. Not for the first time she thought how light on his feet the blacksmith was for a big man. He seemed to take up half the available space and she couldn’t resist a smile at the black bear-fur hat on his head. It was to hide any telltale gleam of moonlight his shaven scalp might catch in the darkness of the forest, he’d told her before. But it always amused her nonetheless.
‘Ready?’ Pokrovsky demanded of the man.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have your new identity papers?’
‘Yes, here in my pocket.’ He patted his jacket.
‘Then let’s go.’
Elizaveta opened the door quietly and the man stepped out into the fresh night air. She saw him hesitate. Everything was black under a thin cloud layer and she could almost hear his heart rate pick up.
‘I wish there was a moon tonight,’ he muttered.
‘Then you’re a fool,’ Pokrovsky growled.
A wind rustled through the nearby stand of poplars. It could just as easily have been boots creeping over dead leaves on the ground. Elizaveta laid a hand on Pokrovsky’s massive arm.
‘My friend,’ she said softly, ‘take care.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll deliver your package safely.’
His expression was hidden from her in the darkness but he grunted, blew out through his nostrils like a horse at water and swung away from her, so that her arm fell to her side. He set off at speed and the package had to scurry to keep up.
‘You’re not in bed.’
‘No, Zenia. I’ve made you tea,’ Sofia said. She tried a smile but it got her nowhere.
The gypsy girl had just emerged from the tiny closet that was her bedroom and yawned loudly, her body still soft with sleep. She stretched, arching her supple spine, hitched her nightdress up to her knees and stepped on to one of the chairs at the table.
‘I like juniper in my tea,’ Zenia said ungraciously.
She pulled down a hank of dried berries from one of the hooks on the rafters and crouched on the chair, knees up under her chin. One by one she dropped half a dozen of the shrivelled berries into the cup of tea Sofia had pushed in front of her.
‘Smells good,’ Sofia said. She was treading carefully. The girl clearly did not want her here.
‘Yes,’ Zenia muttered, shutting her eyes and inhaling the steam.
Sofia sat opposite, silently studying the girl’s neatly trimmed nails, and waited for her to open her eyes. Minutes passed.
Finally the black lashes lifted. ‘What’s the matter?’ the girl asked. ‘Couldn’t you sleep? It’s barely light yet.’
‘Here, have some kasha.’
‘Where’s Rafik?’
‘He left a couple of hours ago. To see to a horse that’s foaling.’
‘Oh yes, he mentioned one of the mares was close to term.’
/>
‘Is that what he does?’ Sofia asked. ‘Care for the horses here?’
Zenia took a mouthful of the semolina porridge Sofia had made for her. ‘Yes, my father is half horse himself. This whole kolkhoz would be on its knees if they didn’t have him, though I don’t think even Comrade Fomenko, our revered Chairman of the Red Arrow, realises it.’ She flicked her tongue along her lips, scooping up a stray speck of kasha.
‘Tell me, Zenia, what is your boss at the factory like? Mikhail Pashin, I mean.’ Just saying his name aloud made Sofia’s chest tighten.
‘Why?’
‘I want him to give me a job.’
‘Without identity papers? You’re crazy. You can’t do anything without them, you must know that.’ The black eyes grew worried. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Sofia, let me eat in peace, will you?’ She sank her spoon into the bowl once more.
‘Of course. I’m sorry.’
Sofia stood up. She didn’t want to crowd the girl, so she opened the front door and leaned against the doorpost, breathing in the apple-scented tang of woodsmoke.
‘You can get chucked into one of the Gulag labour camps for stealing, you know.’ Zenia’s voice behind her was casual.
Sofia slowly turned. Was it intended as a threat?
‘It’s anti-Soviet behaviour,’ Zenia added, but she didn’t meet Sofia’s gaze.
‘I know.’
‘So why take the risk?’
‘In a Soviet State surely everything belongs to the proletariat. Well, I’m one of the proletariat.’
Zenia laughed, a startlingly lovely sound, and wagged a finger in Sofia’s direction. ‘I must tell that one to Boris Zakarov,’ she said. ‘He’s the Party spy round these parts.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘I bet you would.’
Zenia put her cup down on the table rather harder than was necessary, swept her hair into a black coil on top of her head and walked out of the room. Sofia’s head was pounding. A risk? Of course it was. Everything was a damn risk. She took a small step on to the colourless road outside. She could see movement in the village, figures silhouetted against the thin band of gold on the eastern horizon, lights flickering on in houses. A goat bleated plaintively somewhere close, a cockerel crowed as if he owned the world.
Today. Today would be the beginning.
15
Rafik stood in the privacy of his own room and held the stone in the palm of his hand. No larger than a duck egg and white as a swan’s throat. He’d brought out the white pebble from its bed of scarlet because he could sense danger gathering, sabres rattling, like troops lining up for battle.
It grieved him deep in his heart to know his beloved Tivil was under threat once more tonight, and each time he closed his eyes he could see the blonde-haired one, Sofia, tall and slender. She appeared to him like a blade, glinting and well honed. He could see the fine edge of her slicing through the dark dense mass that was the danger. Behind his eyes a pinpoint of pain began to throb. With a sudden urgent need, he rested his thumb on the smooth white pebble and felt its coolness against his skin. It brought to mind the ancient strength of his ancestors and cleared his mind. Now the Sight came to him more readily.
The stone had been passed down through his gypsy line for generations, father to son, and was said to have come originally from the stone that was rolled aside from the tomb of Jesus Christ in the Holy Land. Each time it lay in the centre of his palm he was acutely aware that each person who owned it imparted a sliver of their strength to its tightly packed crystals. He could sense the vibration of white life inside them.
A flame burned on the shelf. It rose out of a bowl of fragrant oil, a slender cord of smoke twisting up from the tip of the flame to the ceiling, where it settled and gathered around the large black eye painted there. Solidified like a shield. His thumb lingered over the pebble. Caressed its smooth carapace, traced a circle around it, a circle of protection. Once more round the stone.
Rafik stared at it intently.
A third time round the circle, his thumb anointing the pebble with oil this time and he could almost hear it breathing. He circled again. Again. Again.
Then he uttered a long, intricate curse in a language so strange and brittle that it rattled against the shield of smoke above his head. From the table he lifted a knife, its ivory handle carved in the shape of a serpent, and laid the tip of the blade on the inside skin of his own forearm. He drew a fine line until a trickle of red ran down to his wrist where it formed a shallow pool. He let it gather. Then tipped it.
Three drips on the stone.
‘Zenia.’
His daughter came into the room at once. Her body was sheathed in a flowing red dress tied with a wide gypsy waistband, and fresh tendrils of forest greenery wove a plait around her neck. He thought how beautiful she looked, how like her dear dead mother. She gazed at the stone in his hand with alert eyes, bright and black and curious. Yet for her it possessed no resonance. Whenever she handled it and turned it over and over on her palm, it was nothing but a white pebble with a faint web of silvery veins threaded through it, an ordinary stone. He knew it frustrated her that she could not sense her ancestors within it, and though he would never breathe a word of it aloud to her, his own disappointment was even greater than hers.
‘Go with her tonight, my Zenia. But don’t let her know you are my sight.’
‘Yes, Rafik.’ She paused. ‘Is she in danger so soon?’
‘It comes from two directions. Make sure you guard her well.’
‘And you?’
Rafik closed his fist over the stone and swept it briefly through the candle flame. ‘Darkness is coming to Tivil tonight. Fire and darkness. The fire will burn the one she loves and the darkness will quench the furnace in her.’
‘You are prepared?’ Zenia asked, her voice unsteady.
He lifted the stone and laid it against his temple, held it there, listening to something inside his head. His brow furrowed and a pulse beat strongly in his neck.
‘I am prepared.’
‘But will you fall ill?’
He smiled, a deep and tender smile. ‘Don’t be frightened, daughter. She is here.’
16
Pyotr liked the meetings. He loved to sit right at the front of the assembly hall, under the nose of the speaker. Every week he arrived early with his Young Pioneer shirt freshly ironed by himself, knees and hands scrubbed clean, hair slicked down into temporary submission. His eyes, like his cheeks, were shining.
‘Dobriy vecher. Good evening, Pyotr.’
A large figure with a smooth shaven head and a spade-shaped black beard took the place next to him. The boy felt the bench sag beneath the man’s weight and heard its groan of protest.
‘Dobriy vecher, Comrade Pokrovsky.’
The blacksmith, too, invariably selected the front bench at these weekly meetings but for quite different reasons from Pyotr’s. Pokrovsky liked to question the speaker.
‘Your father not here again, Pyotr?’
‘Nyet. He’s working late. At the factory.’
‘Hah! Tell me an evening that he’s not working late when there’s a meeting going on here.’
Pyotr felt his cheeks flush red. ‘No, honestly, he’s busy. Producing army uniforms, an important order. Directly from Moscow. He’s been told to keep the factory working twenty-four hours a day if necessary because what he does is so important. Clothing our brave soldiers.’
‘Proudly spoken, boy.’
Pokrovsky grinned at him. The black bush covering his mouth parted to reveal large white teeth, and it seemed to Pyotr that the blacksmith looked impressed. That made him feel less sick about his father’s absence.
‘It’s important work,’ the boy said again and then feared he was insisting too much, so shut up.
But his mood was spoiled. He slumped back on the bench and wished his friend Yuri would arrive. He stared moodily around at the plain
walls that had once been covered in colourful murals of Christ and the disciples; at the remains of the ornate icons on the pillars, though most of the carving and decoration had been hacked off, leaving behind jagged edges. All the religious images had been white-washed into a clean and bland uniformity. This pleased Pyotr. As did the metal table set up on a low platform in front of him where the gilt altar had once stood, and the two sturdy chairs that waited for the speakers under the poster of the Great Leader himself. Beside it hung another, a bright red poster declaring, Smert Vragam Sovietskogo Naroda. Death to the Enemies of Soviet People.
This was as it should be. Plain. Real. For the people. Just like Father Stalin had promised. Pyotr and Yuri had read all the pamphlets, learned the Party slogans by heart and Yuri kept telling him that this new world was for them. Pyotr so wanted to believe him, he really did, but sometimes a little worm of doubt wriggled through the slogans, making holes in his certainty. Today, though, the warmth of comradeship swept through his young blood - he could feel it in the hall among the constant murmur of voices.
He looked behind him to where the benches were filling up. Most of the villagers were still in their work clothes of coarse blue cotton, though some of the younger women had discarded their dusty headscarves and changed into colourful blouses that stood out in the drab crowd. The gypsy girl was one. Her scarlet blouse with little puff sleeves looked dramatic against her long black curls, but she kept her eyes lowered and her hands quietly resting in her lap, as if she were still in a church. Pyotr always had the feeling she didn’t quite belong in the village, though he wasn’t sure why.
‘Privet, Pyotr. Hello.’
It was Yuri. He arrived in a scramble of long limbs and squeezed himself in next to Pyotr at the end of the bench, immaculate in his white Young Pioneer shirt and red neckerchief. Only then did Pyotr notice that his own ironing efforts weren’t nearly as effective as Yuri’s mother’s.
‘Have you heard?’ Yuri bent his ginger head to Pyotr’s. He was always one to know the latest news.
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