Simon Montefiore - Red Sky at Noon

The Kalmyk scouts, Altan and Gushi, saw Malamore’s squadron awaiting them and looked at each other. They had only joined the Italians a month earlier. As the German panzers had raced across the steppes towards their villages in Kalmykia, the elders had gathered in the open teahouse in the middle of the village to discuss what to do. The elders warned against acting too quickly, but all agreed that if the Germans reached Kalmykia, they would at last be liberated from the evil Bolsheviks who had destroyed their farms, forced collectivization upon them and banned their Buddhist rites that had endured since Mongol times. But Altan, who was a superb rider and the father of two children, had decided not to wait but to ride across the lines to join the Fascists. Gushi, who was just sixteen and as slim as a reed, joined him as did his cousin Ubashi. Instead of working on the collective farm, drying the grain in the dryer, they could go back to riding their horses, the proper pursuit of a Kalmyk man since the days of Genghis and before. But Ubashi had been wounded in the fight against the Shtrafbat and captured by Communists, and they knew he was dead.

‘Not just Italians,’ said Altan, the older one, spotting the different uniforms in Malamore’s posse.

‘Germans, Cossacks and Schuma,’ Gushi said, clicking his tongue.

They didn’t have the information Malamore wanted. ‘He won’t be happy,’ Altan said, spurring on his pony.

‘Well?’ asked Malamore as they pulled to a halt in front of him.

‘We don’t think they’ve come this way,’ said Altan.

Malamore shook his head and ground his teeth in frustration.

‘We rode almost as far as the front. Close to the Don.’

‘Is it possible they got through?’

‘Possible,’ said Altan. ‘But not likely. They’re not experienced riders.’

‘So where are they?’

The scouts conferred in their own language then Gushi suggested, ‘If they were clever, they wouldn’t have come this way at all but ridden around the village, waited out in some barn during the daylight hours, then they will come this way from the other direction.’

Malamore wiped the dust from his eyes and opened his map. The Kalmyks leaned forward and pointed to the route, nodding and chatting in their impenetrable tongue.

‘We split up into two squadrons and we’ll trap them,’ barked Malamore, coughing hoarsely. ‘The scouts are right. Even if they looped back, they must come this way in the end – and we’ll be waiting.’

Fabiana leaned against Benya and took his face in her hands and kissed him on the lips, once, twice, to check his eyes, but they were closed, eyelashes black against his skin. She could taste honey and the brandy they’d just been drinking, savour the strong smell of his skin, pure and unscented by soap or cologne. Then there was the hay, the horses, the leather of the saddles, and to her this blend smelled of the happiest moments in her life, the freest.

He never lifted the saddle. Instead she unbuttoned his shirt and ran her hands over his shoulders, the hair on his slight chest, then his trousers. He undressed her too and she could feel him hesitate when he found the Browning pistol in the belt of her britches. He seemed to come to a decision. She’d been armed all the time yet hadn’t tried to shoot him, hadn’t tried to return to her people. He dropped the Browning on the discarded britches and they fell on to the blankets. She felt him kissing the sweat on her neck, her forehead, then, as her legs came up, behind her knees. They were so close that the laws of sound were reversed: hers resounded out of his throat; his came out of her mouth.

She had never wanted anyone like this, nor known such wanting, nor even considered doing such a brazen thing, or having such things being done to her so boldly. She was shy for a moment, but in the Secret Kingdom of Sunflowers these things seemed natural. He talked to her, told her what he was doing, how delicious she was, and did things that made her skin fizz where he touched her. She felt herself melting with pleasure where she had been untouched, and treasured the words and the nameless feelings that now had names. This was the poetry she hoped to be able to recite in her old age, and she felt her body was the book in which these poems were written.

When the red wave came, she found herself thrilling, exulting, and it came out as ringing laughter, her head right back, her hair wild as snakes and her mouth open, teeth gleaming. Imagine myself: Fabiana Pellegrini, doing these things, feeling like this, making someone else feel this. There had only been Ippolito before Benya. But her husband, who had never looked at her in this way, who had become frustrated and angry that she didn’t excite him enough, had blamed her for his own shortcomings, slapping her hard in the face till her nose bled and she’d tasted blood. If he saw me now, what would he think? she asked herself, smiling – and then didn’t care any more as another wave overtook her.

They lay still, the sweat running down them like rivulets. The unbearable tenderness passed and soon she found herself weltering once more. This time she did not feel as shy as she had before. She was utterly at ease and she thought she would do anything he asked and still she would not feel guilty or dirty. It was something quite different she felt now. She wiped her face, using the back of her sunburnt arm, with a ravenous triumph.

Afterwards they lay naked under the tree in the moonlight, guarded by the horses and by the sunflowers, their faces closed and downcast now in the darkness. In the distance, the clatter of gunfire was closer though it now sounded as familiar as the bees that droned home to their hives, as the hooting of the owls.

‘Do you really want me to go?’ she asked quietly.

‘You must. I want you to live even more now. Go back.’

‘What if I don’t want to go back?’

‘Then you’re mad.’

‘What if I am mad?’

‘Are you?’

She considered this gravely. ‘Yes, yes, I think you’ve made me so.’

‘It will pass. And then you must return. You must do whatever you need to survive.’

She sighed. ‘I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to be Malamore’s trophy. I don’t want him to think he owns me, and I don’t want my old life.’

‘Wouldn’t that be a small price for being alive?’ Benya paused and took a breath. ‘Has it occurred to you that Malamore killed your husband?’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘To get you, of course.’

A long silence.

‘It would explain a lot,’ Fabiana said slowly. ‘Though oddly that never occurred to me.’

‘He was right there when it happened, wasn’t he?’

‘Just after,’ she said quietly. It made sense, and what she was going to do now also made sense. She was suddenly clearer about this than she had ever been. ‘I’m no longer Fabiana Bacigalupe or Fabiana Pellegrini. I’ve always wanted to be this woman, the way we are now. Isn’t this what all those poems are about, the ones I have read ever since I was a young girl? And I can’t go back to a creature like Malamore. I just want to tell you something, Benya Golden: I will not return to the Italian lines. If you ride I must ride with you.’

He nodded, seemingly relieved.

‘Can we just be bandits in love? That’s what I call us,’ she said. ‘Bandits in love. Nothing more than that. Just for once, for one last time, in our own world.’

They ate together. ‘When did you know this might happen?’ she asked him.

‘I never knew. I am always amazed. Are you studying history now?’

‘Every woman knows love is about history,’ she said. ‘Our history. So, did I choose you or you choose me?’