Kate Furnivall - Under a Blood Red Sky

‘Yes.’

That’s when the pool of silence started to flow under the door into the hall and Pyotr had to keep throwing words into it to stop it drowning them. They explored even the faintest nook or hint of a crevice, trailing fingers around bricks and behind beams. His father searched in a brisk methodical manner at one end of the hall, Sofia at the other, but her shoulders were hunched, her skin almost blue in the strangely discoloured light. Pyotr kept talking.

‘I think this looks a good place. The plaster is loose.’

‘Papa, that board creaked when you stood on it, try it again. Look at this, Sofia, it…’

A fist banged outside on the oak door. Pyotr’s tongue tingled with fear. Soldiers? He swallowed hard and knew in his heart that what they were doing in the hall was wrong.

‘Pyotr,’ his father whispered urgently. ‘Come here.’

Pyotr scampered over a bench and was seized by his father’s strong hands. Immediately he felt better. Sofia appeared at Papa’s side, though Pyotr hadn’t heard or seen her move. And for the first time the two of them looked at each other, really looked, speaking only with their eyes in a language Pyotr couldn’t understand. Sofia pointed to Pyotr and then to a spot by the entrance. Mikhail nodded, whisked Pyotr over there and pressed him against the wall behind the heavy door, its rough surface cold on his bare arms. The knock came again, rattling the iron hinges. Pyotr watched in astonishment as his father took Sofia’s face between his hands and kissed her lips. For half a second she swayed against him and Pyotr heard her murmur something, then just as suddenly they were apart again and Sofia was reaching for the key.

‘Who is it?’ his father demanded in the big voice he used for his factory workers.

It was Priest Logvinov. He’d come straight from the stables and stank of horse oil and leather. Pyotr had his eye to a knothole in the door as it stood open.

‘What is it you want, Priest?’ Mikhail asked curtly.

Pyotr saw the priest clutch the large wooden cross at his throat. His gaunt cheeks were grey. ‘Mikhail, my friend, I’m looking for the girl.’

‘Which girl?’

Sofia stepped into view. ‘This girl?’

The priest nodded, his expression uneasy. ‘You asked me before about a statue of St Peter.’

‘I did.’

Pyotr heard the rise of hope in her voice.

‘I’ve come here because…’ Logvinov paused, looked wistfully out into the street, ‘because…’ He sighed deeply. ‘Dear Lord of Heaven, I don’t know why I’ve come. Just that I felt… drawn here.’

Pyotr noticed the pebble then. He couldn’t see Sofia’s face on the other side of the door but he could see her hand at her side and in it she held a smooth white stone.

She spoke softly. ‘Tell me, Priest, what have you come to say?’

‘I told you of the statue of St Peter inside the church.’

‘Yes.’

‘But there used to be another.’

‘Where?’

‘Outside, at the back of the church. It was a magnificent marble statue that the Komsomol devils smashed to pieces and used as hard core under the kolkhoz office building.’ He pointed a finger out into the gloom that had enveloped the village. ‘Round the rear of the church beside the buttress, you’ll see the old plinth where it used to stand, covered in moss now.’

‘Thank you, Priest.’

‘Go now,’ Pyotr heard his father say kindly, ‘before you become too involved.’

Logvinov hesitated, then carved the sign of the cross in the air and left.

Pyotr squirmed round the door and raced down the path that led round the building, the damp evening air cool in his lungs. The plinth was there, just where the priest said.

‘You dig,’ Sofia urged.

Pyotr scrabbled like a dog in the dry crumbling earth, using his hands and Papa’s knife to make a hole a metre deep. His breath came fast with excitement.

‘I feel it,’ he cried when the blade touched something solid.

It was a box made of rough pine and wrapped up in sacking. Inside it, enveloped in a sheet of leather that had gone stiff with age, lay a small enamelled casket. It was the most beautiful object Pyotr had ever set eyes on, its surface inlaid with ivory peacocks and green dragons that Papa said were made of malachite. He lifted it carefully and placed it in Sofia’s hands.

‘ Spasibo , Pyotr.’

She slid open the gold catch and lifted the lid. Pyotr gasped as he caught sight of colours he’d never seen before, molten glowing stones.

‘Sofia,’ he whispered, ‘these could buy you the world.’

Sofia stood in Deputy Stirkhov’s office. The pearls hung from her hand like a string of snowflakes, each unique in itself, yet perfectly matched to its fellows.

‘Comrade Deputy, I think these might help you decide.’

She dangled the triple strand of pearls over his desk and set them swaying slightly, wafting the sweet smell of money in the direction of his wide nostrils. Behind his spectacles his eyes had grown as round as the pearls themselves and his lips had parted, as if preparing to swallow them. He held out a hand.

‘Let me see them. They may be fake.’

Sofia laughed. ‘Do they look fake?’

The creamy translucence of the pearls lit up the office.

‘I want to check them over.’

He tried to take the necklace from her but she stepped back and lifted them out of his reach. He was seated behind his desk and half rose from his chair, but one look at her face made him change his mind. In front of him on a soft square of white cotton lay a brooch. It was made of silver gilt in the shape of a long-legged Borzoi hound and in its mouth it carried a dead pheasant that was studded with emeralds. Stirkhov’s eyes slid from the pearls to the brooch and back again. Sofia could see his greed grow the more it fed on them.

‘Half now,’ she said, ‘and half when the job is done.’

Stirkhov puckered his smooth forehead, not understanding.

‘I’ll make it easy for you,’ she smiled, drawing a small pair of sewing scissors from her pocket.

Comprehension dawned.

‘No.’

‘Yes,’ she said and snipped through the strands. Pearls cascaded on to the desk, bouncing and skidding off its glossy black surface like hailstones. Stirkhov scrambled to collect them.

‘You stupid bitch.’

‘Half now,’ she repeated, ‘and half when the job is done.’

She walked to the door, a section of the necklace still in her hand.

‘I could have you arrested,’ he snarled.

‘But then you’d lose these, wouldn’t you?’ she smiled coolly.

She slipped the pearls into her pocket and was out of the building before he could change his mind.

‘Patience.’

She was inside Aleksei Fomenko’s house. The izba that was so bare inside, it scarcely looked lived in. She saw no reason not to be here, as she’d invaded his privacy once already – more than invaded it when she’d stuffed sacks under his bed. She’d violated it. So it was easy to break the trust of an unlocked door a second time and walk into the Chairman’s house.

‘He’ll come,’ she told herself and curled her fingers round the stone in her pocket. It lay there, cold and stubborn. She was staring out of the back window over the neat rows of beetroot and swede and turnips in his plot of land, all regimented and weed-free. Like his house.

Vasily, oh Vasily. How could I have got it so wrong? You gave me no sign, no warning. How could I love someone who doesn’t exist?

Something hurt in her chest, a real physical pain. It felt as though her heart were spilling hot blood into her chest cavity with each beat of its muscle.

Vasily, how did you become Fomenko? What happened to you?