Kate Furnivall - Under a Blood Red Sky

Just in case? Of what? Anna wanted to scream. What would they do to her, these huge soldiers whose shoulders packed the small room with their hard muscles and their long rifles and the stink of their damp uniforms?

‘And this pretty little kitten with the eyes that would kill me.’ The officer’s laugh held no humour. ‘Who is she?’

‘She’s my niece,’ Sergei said. He placed a protective arm round Anna’s shoulders. ‘She’s not important. She helps with our own baby, so that my wife can spend more time knitting scarves and gloves for our brave soldiers.’

The man walked over, placed his hands on his knees and lowered his face until it was at the same level as Anna’s. He inspected her closely.

‘So. Shall I take you down for interrogation as well?’

Anna gave a faint nod.

He smiled a snake’s smile, and she spat at him. Her spittle hit his cheek and slithered down. Without a thought, his gloved hand slapped her face, bouncing her head off the wall. She didn’t cry, but Maria did.

‘The child didn’t mean it,’ Maria called out. ‘She’s upset and frightened. Apologise immediately, Anna.’

Anna glared at the man. She wanted him to take her wherever Maria was going, so she started gathering more spittle in her mouth.

‘Anna!’ Maria begged.

‘I’m sorry,’ Anna whispered.

Abruptly he lost interest. ‘Come,’ he said. Suddenly they were gone and only the smell of them remained.

Five days. Anna counted the breaths.

Twenty-five breaths in a minute. Fifteen hundred breaths an hour. Thirty-six thousand breaths in a day and night.

She wasn’t so sure about the nights. When you sleep you breathe more slowly. But alone in the bed she didn’t sleep and when she did close her eyes on the sofa during the day, she woke up with nightmares. Irina scolded her for disturbing Sasha with her screams.

Five days. One hundred and forty-four thousand breaths.

On the sixth day Maria came home.

She said little and didn’t go to work. She lay on her side on the bed hour after hour, eyes wide open. Anna sat on the floor beside the cot and twisted her fingers into the quilt because it was the nearest she could get to Maria without touching her. And she knew that if she touched the fragile figure, Maria would break.

So she sat still, made no noise, just fed tiny cubes of pickled beetroot into Maria’s mouth. They turned Anna’s fingers and Maria’s lips the colour of cranberry juice.

When eventually Maria did emerge, her hair was styled differently. Even so, it didn’t quite hide the ugly marks on the side of her neck.

‘What are they?’ Anna whispered.

‘Cigarette burns.’

‘Was it an accident?’

‘Yes,’ Maria said quietly. ‘An accident of beliefs.’

Anna didn’t understand, but she knew she wasn’t meant to.

‘You have to go.’

Anna couldn’t believe the words.

‘You have to go, Annochka. Today.’

‘No.’

‘Don’t argue. You have to go.’

Maria was holding a small hessian bag in her hand and Anna knew it contained her own few belongings.

‘No, Maria, please no. I love you.’

That was when tears started to slide down Maria’s face and the bag shook in her hand.

‘It’s time for you to go, my love,’ Maria insisted. ‘Please don’t look so terrified. Sergei is going to take you to the station and then a good kind woman will travel with you all the way to Kazan.’

Anna wrapped her arms round Maria’s neck. ‘Come with me,’ she whispered.

Maria rocked her. ‘I can’t, little one. I’ve told you, the men who came here to the apartment want to ask me more questions. ’

‘Why?’

‘Because they want to know where Vasily is. He killed one of their own when they shot his parents and they don’t forgive that. They questioned me about where he could be hiding and I told them I know nothing but they… didn’t believe me. So they want to ask me more. It’s all right, don’t tremble so, I’ll be fine.’

‘No accidents?’

‘No, no more accidents.’ But Maria couldn’t stop a shiver. ‘Even though your papa is dead they have declared him an Enemy of the People and that means that you are in danger. You must leave. I’ll come for you as soon as I can.’

‘You promise?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll write to you, so-’

‘No, Anna, it’s too dangerous. In six months, when all this blood-letting is over we’ll be together again. You’ll be staying with a distant cousin of mine but eventually I’ll come and care for you, like I promised your dear papa. I love you, my sweet one, and now we both have to be strong.’ Gently but firmly she detached Anna from her neck. ‘Now give me a smile.’

Anna smiled and felt her face crack into a thousand splinters.

The train jolted to a halt. Mikhail reached across and pulled the leather strap, so that the window slid all the way down. Sluggish air drifted into the carriage from outside, hot and heavy and laden with smuts from the engine. On the platform vendors fought to peddle baskets of food.

‘This compartment is like a bloody oven,’ complained the man in the seat on Mikhail’s right. It was his chief foreman from the factory, Lev Boriskin, a stocky man but powerfully built, with thick grey hair and a habit of fingering his lower lip.

‘I’ll see if there are any rain clouds ahead,’ Mikhail said.

He leaned again towards the window because it meant he would brush against Sofia. She was seated in the corner next to the window, her blonde head turned away from him, looking out at the crush of bodies on the platform. All day she had spoken very little, but could he blame her? From the start things had gone wrong. They had travelled into Dagorsk in a cart with four others, including a married couple who quarrelled at full volume all the way to the station. Then on the platform he had introduced her to Boriskin and to Alanya Sirova, Boriskin’s secretary, a woman of about thirty with ambitious eyes behind thick tortoiseshell spectacles. It was only when he saw Sofia’s face grow rigid with dismay and her gaze turn to him questioningly that he realised he’d forgotten to mention their travelling companions. He’d ushered her into the seat by the window.

‘I thought,’ the foreman said, with a sideways shift of his eyes to Sofia, ‘that as Direktor Fabriki, you should have the best seat. Instead of-’

‘Comrade Morozova has been commissioned to write a report,’ Mikhail cut in sharply, ‘on this delegation. She will cover our contribution to the Committee, as well as our travel arrangements. So I think she is entitled to the window seat, don’t you?’

Boriskin paled, pulled at his lip and shook open a copy of Pravda with a show of indifference. Mikhail sat himself next to Sofia, a barrier between her and his foreman. She looked at him with stern blue eyes, but in their depths he could see a ripple of laughter.

The crowded carriage made it easier. For much of the time there was movement and chatter, as passengers retrieved or replaced packages from the racks above their heads. The man over by the door was constantly fiddling with his pipe and muttering to himself, while Alanya Sirova, on the far side of Boriskin, shuffled documents in and out of her briefcase with a zeal that Mikhail felt certain was aimed at the mythical report. The noise and bustle meant he could talk to Sofia in a low voice without anyone noticing.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured.

‘No need,’ she smiled.

‘It’s a long journey. There’ll be moments.’

‘As long as there’s no quota to them.’ She raised a teasing eyebrow at him.

They couldn’t say more, not with Boriskin at Mikhail’s elbow, but it was enough. He felt the warmth of her arm along the length of his own, and occasionally their feet touched as though by accident. Mikhail was unable to relax, but through half-closed eyes he watched the railway lines snake past the window like silver veins. He once spotted a hawk rising in a spiral, as if weightless on the bleached air, its great wings outstretched. Its shadow fell like a dead body on the field beneath.