‘Yes, I’m ready.’
Her blood was pounding in her ears. Ready for what? She didn’t know, but without anything being said, she understood that this was the bargain she had struck with Rafik. His help with the safety of Mikhail in exchange for her help with the safety of the village. But it was all so strange. She had a feeling that the cost of this bargain to both could be high.
‘I’m ready,’ she said again.
Suddenly he smiled a gentle smile and softly kissed her cheek. ‘Don’t fear,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘You are strong and you have the power of generations within you.’
More bats came. In ones and twos at first, then a steady trickle of beating wings pursued them. Until finally a swirling black cloud of the creatures swooped down from the mountain ridge, rising out of the depths of the forest and hurtling in a screaming, screeching, scratching wall of eyes and teeth and sharp scything claws, towards the point where Sofia was pacing the circle. Rafik walked an arm’s length ahead of her.
She lashed out at them but there were too many. The dense black shadow fell on her like a net and instantly they were in her hair, nipping and tearing. Tiny leathery wings squeezed under the cloak, furry bodies burned hot against her skin, their razor-sharp teeth cutting strips from her throat and her shoulder blades, slicing into her cheeks, hooking their dagger-claws into her eyelids.
She fought them in the seething dark. She swept them from her body, scraped them from her face, dragged them out of the air and ripped off their wings. She stamped on their evil little distorted faces, attacking them with her hands, her elbows, her feet and even her teeth. Fending them off her eyes . . .
As suddenly as they came, they were gone. A great susurration of wings and then nothing. There was total silence, not even the wind in the trees. That was the moment she realised that the plague of bats had left Rafik untouched. They had descended on her, but not him. Why? And why had Rafik offered no help? She was shaking violently and raised a hand to her face. No blood, no scratches, no pain. Had it all been in her mind?
Rafik nodded, raising his eyes to where the moon was hidden behind the ancient boughs of the cedar tree at the entrance to Tivil. ‘I told you,’ he said.
‘Told me what?’
‘That you are strong.’
‘I poured you a drink.’
It was far into the night when Sofia slid gratefully into the big armchair that was Mikhail’s. She wondered how long the drink had been waiting for her on the table.
‘Thank you, Pyotr. I certainly need it.’ She tried to smile. ‘I’m sorry I’m so late.’
The boy, clothed in a pair of cut-down pyjamas, picked up the glass of vodka and handed it to her. His brown eyes were so pleased to see her that she risked a light reassuring brush of her hand against his. His skin felt wonderfully warm and alive, like skin should feel. Not like her own. Her own was drained of moisture, dry as paper to the touch, as though everything of worth had been sucked out of it tonight, sucked out of her. A pulse throbbed behind her eye.
‘I couldn’t find you anywhere tonight, Sofia. I thought you’d decided to—’
The cuckoo in the kitchen clock called twice. Two o’clock in the morning.
‘Pyotr, I’ll never run away secretly. If I leave, I’ll tell you first. Believe me?’
He smiled tentatively. ‘Da. Yes. But where were you? In the forest?’
Sofia threw the slug of vodka down her throat and felt it kick life into her exhausted body. ‘Not the forest, but somewhere just as dark.’
Without comment he refilled her glass, wiped a drip from the neck of the bottle with a grubby finger and licked it off with his tongue. Sofia experienced such a sense of relief at the normality of the boy’s action that she almost told him what had happened to her tonight. The words wanted to spill from her mouth so that she could hear Pyotr say, No, Sofia, don’t be silly. You fell asleep in a field and had a bad dream. And then they’d laugh together and everything would be back to normal.
She drank the vodka.
‘I was with Rafik. We were . . . trying to find out more about what’s happening to Mikhail.’
‘I’ve been helping, too. Look, I made the key.’ He extracted from his pyjama pocket a large iron key that was a rich purple-black metal, shiny and new. He held it out to her. ‘And I took the old one back to the office, like you said.’
Sofia dragged herself out of the comfort of the chair and hugged the boy close.
‘Thank you, Pyotr. You are as clever as you are brave. We can’t search the hall now in the dark, as any candle would show at the windows and attract attention. So we’ll start on it tomorrow. ’ She grimaced. ‘Today, I mean. It’s not far off morning already.’
Pyotr nodded, but she spotted the flicker of unease in his eyes.
‘Pyotr, what is it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Chairman Fomenko came here.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He was looking for you.’
Sofia froze. Not now. Don’t let him take me now. ‘What did you tell him?’
‘That I didn’t know where you were. It was the truth.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t have to lie to him. Don’t worry, I’ll speak to him tomorrow. Now go and get some sleep or you’ll be dead on your feet in the morning.’
He continued to stand there for a moment, his face in shadow, half boy, half man. ‘You too,’ he said at last and left.
Sofia collapsed back into Mikhail’s chair and rested her head on the place where his head had rested. But she didn’t sleep.
46
Davinsky Camp July 1933
The next day Anna wasn’t any better, but with the help of Nina and Tasha and even young Lara, she got herself out to the Work Zone again and back to shovelling grit. Her work rate was pathetically slow but at least it would earn her a bare scrap of a paiok to eat without robbing others of theirs.
Her own lack of strength made her mind wander to the image of Sofia’s weakness during that bad shuddering time when Sofia almost died. Slowly the injury to her hand had healed, but even now, all this time later, the memory of what it cost made Anna spit blood on the ground. The shame still gathered in her mouth and she had to rid herself of it or suffocate.
In August of that bad year the old babushka died, the one who slept next to Anna on the bed board, and the first thing Anna did was steal her coat. Now that Crazy Sara had taken hers, it was essential to keep warm. When the early snows came she had no intention of dying. In October typhus raged through the camp, sweeping up lives as indiscriminately as a fox chokes chickens in a hen house, but both Anna and Sofia had escaped its teeth. In fact it made life a fraction easier for them. Because the hut became less overcrowded, Anna was able to move up to a middle bunk near a window. She also stole a second, thicker coat from a dead body.
Work on the road was brutal as the temperatures dropped in November. Ice broke hammers and froze fingers to rocks. The snow drifted down out of a misleadingly soft pink sky, settling on the road and the bent backs of the labourers, transforming the scene into one of stark beauty. Except nobody could acknowledge beauty any more. They’d forgotten what it looked like. The nearest thing to beauty they ever saw was an extra bowl of kasha when the cook pocketed a bribe.
When the long line of prisoners finally trudged back into the Zone after a two-hour march through the snow in the dark, even the searchlights looked welcoming, great moons of yellow warmth. But as Anna shuffled numbly towards the hut, head lowered against the wind, a hand pulled her out of the line and a pair of eager lips stinking of cheap beer sought hers. It was the guard, the one with the surplus of pork fat and pelmeni. Mishenko was his name. Ilya Mishenko. She tugged away from him.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ His hand strayed to her head, brushed snow from her headscarf, touched her cheek. ‘You aren’t very friendly any more, are you? Not long ago you couldn’t get enough of me and all that good food I gave you, but for
weeks now you’ve been as cold as this fucking weather. How about an extra blanket? Or a bowl of good meat stew to keep out the—’
‘Fuck off.’ She jerked herself free. ‘I don’t want anything. I’ve told you to leave me alone.’ She gave him a bitter stare and hurried across the trodden snow towards the hut door.
‘I won’t leave you alone, you hot little cunt!’ he shouted after her. ‘Not till you say yes again. And you will, I know you will. One day when you’re sick or hurt, you’ll say yes again!’ He rammed his fur shapka tighter on his head and laughed. ‘It’s just a matter of time.’
Anna’s hands blocked her ears, disgust sharp as copper on her tongue. He was dirty. She was dirty. So what was the difference between them, both exploiting what they had? But as she joined the crush to squeeze through the door into the hut she suddenly saw Sofia standing off to one side, oblivious of the snow. Watching Ilya Mishenko.
Sofia avoided Anna after that, as if she too were disgusted and couldn’t bear to be anywhere close to her. For two days she hardly came near her and it was like a knife wound, gut-ripping and unexpected. Even when Anna offered a story about Vasily as a lure, all she got was a shake of the head and, ‘I’m too tired.’
Anna lay on her new bed board, the air in the hut heavy with kerosene fumes. She was fully dressed in her work clothes and padded coat because, like everyone else in the winter, clothes were taken off only for the banya, the monthly bath. The smell meant nothing, but warmth meant everything.
She placed her mittened hands over her face and buried her nose in them, smelled all the filth and rank rotten fibres of them, felt the grit and thorns embedded in them scrape across her skin. They were disgusting. No human being should ever have to wear such foul rags. Yet she loved them. They protected her, got dirty and ragged and repulsive instead of herself. Gently she kissed the palm of each mitten.
Couldn’t Sofia see that?
Evening headcount was quick for once. The numbers all tallied and the Commandant was sober, so the prisoners didn’t have to stand out in the freezing cold for more than forty minutes. It hadn’t snowed today, but the previous day’s fall lay several feet thick on the ground, so that two envied brigades had remained back in the camp to shovel paths and brush the roof of the Commandant’s house.
It was almost time for the prisoners to be locked into the huts for the night and Anna was on her bunk. The woman beside her was picking at the scabs on her legs and smiling as though it gave her pleasure, while others were shuffling round the hut or collapsed on bed boards. But out of the corner of Anna’s eye she saw a figure slide towards the door and, despite the scarf wound round her face, Anna knew it was Sofia.
She carried her right arm as always slung across her chest, resting the damaged hand on her collarbone. It had started to heal remarkably well in the beginning as the infection was drawn out of the flesh by the herbal potions, and the extra food had fed strength into her body, but now it had stopped. At this level of cold, nothing healed. Only the spring warmth would continue the process, so until then Sofia protected her hand with every scrap of cloth she could beg, borrow or steal. She opened the door only a fraction and slipped out.
Anna scrambled for her shoes and pulled them on, still wet, but she snapped one of the strings that tied them on her feet, so had to fiddle with their fixings. By the time she’d wrapped her scarf around her head and hurried outside into the freezing night, Sofia was nowhere in sight. The central compound was a large floodlit square but deserted now, except for a couple of guards deep in conversation as they patrolled the perimeter. They were smoking cigarettes and stamping their feet as they walked to keep warm.
What was Sofia up to?
Lock-up was any moment and if she were locked out of the hut she’d die of hypothermia overnight. The cookhouse? The dump? The banya? The laundry? Anna skimmed past them all, keeping to the shadows, but there was no sign of her. Her breath came in painfully short gasps and she told herself it was the cold, not fear, but she was frightened. Ever since that moment when the guard had tried to kiss her lips the evening before last, Sofia had changed.
As she ducked her head against the wind, a sound caught her ears. It was a man’s voice and he was growling. There was no other word for the animal noises he was making. Anna recognised the sound at once, a sound she knew far too well, a sound that made her feel sick. She ran. Nobody ever ran in Davinsky Camp, but she ran behind the tool hut and, in the dense shadows, she found them, Sofia and Mishenko. They were almost knee-deep in snow and jammed up against the hut wall, Sofia’s skirt up round her waist, his hands clutching her pale white buttocks as he thrust into her again and again. The animal growls sounded as though they were tearing her insides out, like wolves at a deer’s tender belly.
Anna loathed the man for what he’d done to herself and now for what he was doing to Sofia. She opened her mouth to scream at him but, at that exact moment, with head thrown back and his face in a rictus that looked like agony, he finished the job and instantly withdrew. The sudden silence came as a shock.
He turned away to adjust his clothing for only a split second, but that split second was all the Four Horsemen needed to gallop down on him with a vengeance. Quick as a rat Sofia drew a rock from her jacket and brought it down on the back of his skull with all her strength. He collapsed forward, face in the snow, with no more than a soft grunt. Sofia threw herself on his back and kept pounding till Anna caught her by the wrist.
‘Enough, Sofia, that’s enough. You must stop now.’
‘It’ll never be enough.’
‘He’s dead.’
A sigh rose up from somewhere deep in Sofia’s chest and she stood up, her whole body shaking and her eyes unrecognisable. They gleamed white in the shadows and she was breathing hard.
‘Yes,’ she said harshly. ‘He’s dead. He won’t be bothering you again.’
‘He won’t be bothering either of us.’
Anna took her trembling friend into her arms and held her close, rocking her gently. They stood like that for a long time despite the sub-zero temperature, listening to each other’s heartbeat.
‘Lock-up,’ Anna whispered. ‘We must be quick.’
It was the work of two minutes to scoop out a man-sized hole in the deep snowdrift against the rear of the hut and bundle the dead meat inside it. The snowdrift would not melt until spring and by then who would care? They kicked fresh snow over the mound, prayed for a blizzard overnight, then ran back to their hut before the door was locked. The knowledge that in their pockets they carried a pack of Belomor cigarettes, a steel lighter, a penknife, half a bar of chocolate and a wristwatch gave them a wild energy that made them laugh out loud. A haul like that would feed them most of the winter.
47
Tivil July 1933
Sofia waited in the dark, tense and breathing hard. She was standing by the cedar tree at the gateway to Tivil. He would come, she was certain he’d come. The night sky was overcast, dark and damp, with a spit of rain in the wind. When her limbs started to shiver she was glad, because it meant the scorching heat within her was leaking out. In the silence, in the cold, she heard Rafik’s words again: Reach deep into yourself, you are strong.
Strong?
She didn’t feel strong, she felt battered and exhausted. She wanted to weep with need. Questions crashed round her brain: what exactly was it that Rafik could see inside her? What happened inside that chamber? Who were those silver-haired people and why had the bats come for her? And would Mikhail come? Would he? She had to believe he would, whether as a result of Rafik’s weird ceremony or simply because Fomenko had responded to her veiled threat and decided to throw his weight around in the right places. Whichever it was she didn’t care, so long as he came. She took a deep slow breath to calm her quivering mind and felt the night breeze wash through her lungs, flushing out the panic.
Mikhail, my Mikhail. Come to me.
She murmured the words aloud and heard a flutter of wings for a second, but when she lo
oked up the sound was gone and she wondered if her tired mind had imagined it. On the edge of Tivil she could sense the air somehow growing thinner, the danger sharper. The scars on her fingers ached the way they only did when she was nervous.
Reach deep.
Her eyes scoured the blackness for a long time and saw nothing. And then a tingling sensation started in the soles of her feet, spreading to the palms of her hands, and suddenly her heart tightened in her chest. Her legs started to move and at first she was aware of the ruts under her feet, of stones and potholes, of stumbling awkwardly in the darkness and then she was flying down the road, racing towards him, arms outstretched, raindrops brushing her cheek.
Mikhail was in her arms, warm and safe and alive. For a second she was frightened her senses were betraying her. This wasn’t real, just another version of her desire unfolding inside her head. But his clothes stank, dried blood lay stiff on his collar, his unshaven jaw felt rough against her skin. His poor lips were swollen. But not too swollen to press hard on hers or to whisper into her mouth over and over, ‘Sofia, my love, Sofia.’
He washed in the yard at the back of the house. A dim pool of light spilled from the room’s oil lamp but most of the yard lay in shadows. She watched him from inside as he stripped off every filthy scrap of clothing, threw it in a pile on the ground and set light to it. The flames were small and smouldering in the damp air but they sent golden fingers of light shimmering up his long naked thigh and gleaming over the strong curve of his buttock. Sofia felt a surge of desire but, as the shadows shifted and draped themselves over him like a cloak, she moved away from the window to give him his privacy.
When he eventually entered the room he was wearing a clean black shirt and trousers. At the sight of her tucked into his big wing chair his face broke into a smile of relief, as though he feared she might have gone. His eyes were a dull and damaged grey that bruised her heart. One eye and his lips were swollen, a tooth chipped, and he was moving awkwardly, something hurting inside, but when she started to ask he dismissed it as nothing.
Under a Blood Red Sky Page 35
