Kate Furnivall - Under a Blood Red Sky

‘Zenia, I want-’

‘Hush, Lilya,’ the gypsy girl said sharply. ‘Come inside.’ She gestured to the stranger sitting silent on the step. ‘This is my cousin and she’ll look after Misha. Won’t you, Sofia?’

‘Happily.’ Sofia stretched out a hand to the small boy.

His mother disentangled him from her skirts with a quick, ‘Misha, wait here,’ and disappeared inside the house with Zenia. Sofia and the boy studied each other solemnly. He was no more than three or four, dressed in what looked like a cast-off army shirt cut down into a tunic that was far too big for him.

‘Would you like to share my seat?’ she asked, patting the warm step beside her.

He hesitated, fingering a shaggy blond curl.

She edged over to make room. ‘Shall I tell you a story?’

‘Is it about soldiers?’

‘No, it’s about a fox and a crow. I think you’ll like it.’

He put out a tentative hand. She took it, soft and dusty, inside her own and drew him to share her doorstep where he plopped down like a kitten, but he still kept a small safe gap of evening air between his own body and hers. Already he’d learned to be cautious.

‘I don’t like this house,’ he whispered, his pupils huge in the semi-dark. ‘It’s full of… black.’ He blurted out the last word and then, as if he’d said something wicked, he clapped a hand over his mouth.

Sofia gave a soft laugh and the boy instantly pressed his other hand tight over her lips. She could taste onions on his fingers. Gently she removed his hand.

‘No,’ she reassured the boy, ‘Rafik is a kind man, and it’s just like any other house here in Tivil.’ She didn’t mention the ceiling with the whirling planets and the staring eye. ‘No need to be frightened of it.’

His hand patted her knee. ‘Tell the story.’

She closed her eyes, leaning against the wooden doorpost. She felt the solidity of it all the way down her spine, and was surprised to find Misha leaned with her, his shoulder nestling against her ribs. Behind them in the room she could hear the murmur of low voices. She opened her eyes and smiled at the boy.

‘There was once a fox called Rasta and he lived in a dark green forest up in the mountains among the clouds.’

‘A forest like ours?’

‘Just like ours.’ The high ridge above the valley had been swallowed by the evening darkness but they could both still see it in their heads. Somewhere a fox barked.

‘There,’ she said, ‘there’s Rasta calling for his story.’

With the air around them so still it too seemed to be listening, Sofia began to tell Misha the tale of the Reynard who made friends with the Crow. Before she was even halfway though it, the boy placed his head on her lap, his breathing heavy and slow. She picked a barley husk from his hair. As she stroked his cheek with her fingertips, aware of the child’s warm body on her knee and the glow of the kerosene lamp flickering behind her among the voices, she could almost fool herself she’d found a home.

Davinsky Camp July 1933

‘Anna, wait for me,’ Nina called out as she bent to stuff fresh moss into her shoes in an attempt to keep the water out.

Anna lifted her head. Her heart raced.

Anna, wait for me. Those were the last words she heard when Sofia escaped. Anna heard them again as clearly as if Sofia were standing next to her now. They hung in the air, insistent. Wait for me. All these months Anna had worried and fretted and tortured herself with nightmares, imagining every kind of hideous fate for her friend. A slow and painful starvation in the steppes or pitch-forked to death by a farmer or raped by a soldier. Torn to shreds by a bear or savaged by a wolf. Recaptured and sent to slavery in a coal mine or, worst of all, recaptured with a bullet in the head. Recaptured. Recaptured. Recaptured. The word had whirled around her brain.

Wait for me.

Anna looked around her at the women lining up for the exhausting trek back to the camp. It was the end of a long workday, a two-hour march ahead of them, their feet sore and blistered, backs aching and stomachs clenched with hunger. But it was a brief moment of time that Anna always enjoyed. Heads came up instead of drooping between shoulders, scarves were retied and leggings that protected against insect bites in the slimy ditches were stripped off. Work had to be performed in strict silence, but for these brief few minutes the women broke into conversation with each other. To Anna it was as sweet as if they’d broken into song. It wasn’t important whether they discussed that day’s moans or laughed at stupid jokes so hard it set their chests aching, what mattered was that they talked to each other.

‘How’s your cranky knee today?’

‘Much the same, you know what it’s like. What about your leg ulcers?’

‘A bloody pain.’

‘Has anyone got a length of cotton? Look, I’ve torn my shirt.’

‘Have you heard about Natalie?’

‘No.’ A cluster of voices. ‘What news?’

‘She’s had the baby.’

‘Boy or girl?’

‘A boy.’ A pause. ‘Born dead.’

Two women crossed themselves discretely, so guards wouldn’t notice.

‘Lucky fucking bastard,’ Tasha snapped. ‘Dead is better than-’

‘Shut up,’ Nina scolded, taking her place with a shrug of her broad shoulders beside Anna in the crocodile line. It used to be Sofia’s place. Whenever Anna stumbled or fell behind, Nina’s strong hand was there. ‘There’s a rumour going round,’ Nina said under her breath.

‘About what?’ Anna asked.

‘That we’re soon to be put to work constructing a stretch of railway.’ She picked off a fat scab on her arm and slipped it into her mouth for something to chew on.

‘The northern railway?’

Nina nodded and the two women exchanged a look.

‘They say,’ Anna murmured as they started marching, ‘that the railtrack has killed forty thousand this year already.’

Yet always more came, an unending river of prisoners carted across the country in cattle wagons. Each new arrival in the hut raised Anna’s hopes but each time she drew a blank.

‘Have you spoken to anyone called Sofia Morozova? In a transit camp? On a train? In a prison cell? ’

‘ Nyet .’ Always the answer was ‘ Nyet ’.

Anna’s eyes travelled to the dense wall of copper-coloured tree trunks on either side of the road, a raw scar that raked its way through the forest to another godforsaken camp and then another and another. Was Sofia out there? Somewhere? She raised her face to the silvery summer sky. She tried to hear the words again: Anna, wait for me, but they had gone. She felt cold and the pain in her lungs sharpened. She coughed, wiped away the blood with her sleeve.

‘I can’t wait,’ she murmured.

One foot. Then the other. And the first one again, left right, left right, keep them moving. A brief summer storm had passed, leaving the evening sky pale and drained, much like the snaking trail of women beneath it. The pine trees stood like stiff green sentinels along the track as if in league with the guards.

One foot. Then the other. Don’t let them stop.

The ground was soft with pine needles, the path worn into deep ruts by the daily tramp of hundreds of feet as they marched to and from the Work Zone. Only occasionally did the women catch a glimpse of a lone wolf among the shadows or hear the blood-chilling calls of a hunting pack like ghosts in the forest. That was when the guards’ rifles suddenly became a source of comfort rather than a threat.

It was during the hours that Anna spent walking – or shuffling, if she was being honest – that her mind would skid out of control. It slid from her grasp like a dog slips its collar and runs wild. Without Sofia to laugh at her stories, she no longer had the strength to keep her thoughts together and they raced around in places she didn’t always want to follow them to, colliding with each other.