Under a Blood Red Sky

10

‘Run, Pyotr, run.’

Pyotr Pashin tore down the dusty track, legs pumping, arms driving him on into the lead. Hot on his tail nine other boys panted and scrabbled after him. And he felt a kick of joy in his stomach at the sight of nobody between him and the winning post. It was nothing more than a rusty stake hammered into the hard ground but right now in the bright sunshine it gleamed a burnished gold.

Suddenly he felt moist breath on his bare shoulder and turned his head just enough to catch a glimpse of its owner. One final burst and a quick dip of his chest, like a water fowl pulling weed, was all it would take to beat Yuri and to get over the line in first place. But instead Pyotr put on the brakes, not hard enough to be obvious, of course, but enough to do damage. In ten strides Yuri had outpaced him and was hurtling past the winning post. He watched the other boys crowd round Yuri, tumbling over themselves like puppies to be his best friend.

‘Well done, Pyotr.’ It was his class teacher, Elizaveta Lishnikova, who had come to stand beside him. ‘Molodyets! Congratulations.’

He looked up quickly. She was smiling, the wrinkles in her face rearranging themselves. Not often did he make her smile, so he dared to hope that he’d earn one of her red stars today. She was extremely tall with thick grey hair tied in a knot, and stiffly erect like one of the new telephone poles that were beginning to march across the landscape. Her long thin nose could sniff out a lie at a hundred paces.

‘You ran well, Pyotr,’ she said.

‘Spasibo. Thank you.’

Instantly a flying body hurtled on to his back, choking the life out of him and sending him sprawling on to the dirt in a tumble of arms and legs.

‘Yuri, get off me, durachok.’

‘You were brilliant, Pyotr. Fantastic. But I knew I could beat you, I knew it.’ Yuri thumped Pyotr on the chest, making his ribs ache, and raised his own arm in victory.

‘Shut up, Yuri.’ But he couldn’t help grinning.

There was something about Yuri Gamerov that made you want to please him. He was tall and strong with thick ginger hair and an easy way of always being the boss, something Pyotr envied. Pyotr was small and shy but around Yuri he felt more… well, more colourful. And for some reason he couldn’t quite understand, they were good friends.

‘Boys, you’ll both be cleaning school windows after the races today if you behave so improperly.’ The teacher’s voice was sharp this time, more the tone Pyotr was used to.

The grind of school term had finished for the summer and they were now into Young Pioneer Summer Camp, which Pyotr loved. But it was still held in the school yard each day and still organised by Elizaveta Lishnikova and her assistant, so standards of behaviour were not allowed to slip, despite the fact it wasn’t actually school.

‘Take yourselves off the running track immediately. I am about to start the next race.’

The boys scuttled away, naked backs above their shorts tinged by the sun, and threw themselves down on the grass. It prickled their bare legs. Anastasia came trotting over at once.

Yuri groaned, ‘Here comes the mouse.’

Yuri was right, of course, Anastasia Tushkova did look like a mouse: little pointed nose and chin; mousy hair that hung down her back in a skinny plait like a mousetail; and shorts that were much too big for her and made her legs look like pink pins. But Pyotr didn’t mind her really, though he wouldn’t admit that to Yuri.

Anastasia plopped herself down on the grass in front of them and held out a hand. It was very grubby and on it lay a biscuit.

‘It’s your prize for winning,’ she said to Yuri. ‘Teacher sent me over with it.’ She turned to Pyotr and gave him a sweet smile. She was eleven, the same age as Pyotr, but she looked younger, especially when she smiled like that. ‘You should have one too, Pyotr. You almost won.’

‘Almost is never good enough,’ Yuri grinned and took the pechenka from her. Very precisely he broke it in three equal parts and handed one to each of them.

‘No,’ Pyotr said, pushing it away. ‘You won it, you eat it.’

‘I insist,’ Yuri said. ‘Equal shares for everyone. It’s what we believe in.’

That was the trouble with Yuri. He believed in applying Communism to every corner of his life – and everyone else’s life too. Even when it came to biscuits. Anastasia had no such problem.

‘Mmm,’ she mewed. ‘Miod. Honey.’

Before Pyotr could blink, her share of the biscuit had vanished into her mouth. Something about the speed of it embarrassed him and he collapsed back on the dusty grass, feeling it press shallow grooves in the delicate skin of his back. He loved the sky, the high blue arch of it over Tivil, with the sun a ball of gold, hovering and waiting to be caught. He lifted his arm straight up to see if he could touch it but all he caught was a passing insect. He squashed it between his fingers and wiped it on his shorts. Yuri was sitting up watching the next race, but Anastasia was licking her fingers with the thoroughness of a cat licking its fur.

Through narrowed eyes Pyotr looked out at the dense jumble of greens that made up the forest as it marched up the steep ridges of the valley and over the mountains beyond. She was up there, somewhere, the woman with the moonlight hair. Living in the forest. Maybe he would sneak back to that old cabin tomorrow to see if-

‘Pyotr.’ It was Anastasia.

‘Yes?’

‘Look.’

Her little bony hand was pointing beyond the broad cedar tree that marked the start of the village to a spot in the distance, where a ball of dust was rolling its way along the unpaved road towards them, slicing through the flat fields of cabbage on either side. Traffic on the road was always light, usually no more than a few carts a day and, on rare occasions, a car or truck. One of the boys in the Octobrians, the group for younger children, had also spotted the dust trail and was giggling with excitement, fingering the badge on his shirt. It was in the shape of a red star with a picture at its centre of Lenin as a curly-haired baby, the pride and joy of every young Octobrian who wore it. Pyotr and Yuri were too old for that now. They wore instead the scarlet triangular tie and their badge of membership to the Young Pioneers.

Pyotr forgot the woman in the forest and felt the little boy’s excitement slide into his own head when he saw who was driving the cart that was trundling up the valley. It was Aleksei Fomenko.

The cart stopped outside the school yard. The piebald horse in the shafts tipped its back foot on edge to rest it and snorted loudly. Yuri leapt to his feet, dragging Anastasia with him.

‘It’s Comrade Fomenko. Come on, let’s wave to him.’

‘No.’

Pyotr stood up beside her. ‘Why not? What’s wrong?’

‘He took Masha last week.’ Anastasia’s face had gone blank but the mouse-freckles on her skin stood out like warning spots. ‘He just drove that cart of his right up to our back yard and took her.’

‘No, Anastasia.’

Pyotr didn’t know what to say. Masha was the Tushkov family’s last sow. All they had left. Without her…

‘Here,’ he said and thrust his share of the biscuit into her hand.

She crammed it into her mouth.

‘The pig was beautiful,’ Pyotr said and saw a spark of pleasure brighten her pale eyes, but her pointed chin gave a brief quiver. She put both her hands on top of her head and turned away, her elbows hiding her face.

Pyotr’s chest hurt, though not from the running. He grasped Anastasia’s wrist because he didn’t know what else to do, and squeezed it. He was shocked to find it no thicker than a spichka, a matchstick, in his hand, just pale see-through skin stretched tight over a bundle of mouse bones. He glanced over at the rest of his classmates in their shorts, the girls in white blouses, the boys bare to the waist. When had they turned into scarecrows? Why hadn’t he noticed?

‘It’s Comrade Fomenko’s job,’ Pyotr whispered.

‘To take our only pig?’

‘Yes, of course it is,’ Yuri said with determination. ‘We’re a kolkhoz, a collective farm. It’s his duty to do his job properly.’

‘Then his job is wrong.’

Yuri shook his head fiercely at her. ‘You mustn’t say things like that, Anastasia. You could be put in prison for that.’

‘Maybe it was a mistake,’ Pyotr suggested.

‘Do you think it might be?’ Anastasia’s eyes gleamed with hope and Pyotr was furious with himself for putting it there, but he couldn’t bear to let her down now. He straightened his shoulders and ran a damp palm over his rumpled hair. He swallowed hard.

‘I’ll go and ask him.’

Aleksei Fomenko was the Chairman of Tivil’s kolkhoz, the valley’s collective farm, which was called Krasnaya Strela, the Red Arrow. Though he was no more than thirty years old, he controlled it all: he was the one who decided the work rotas, allotted the rate of labour days, made certain the workforce was in place each day – and ensured the fulfilled quotas were sent off to the raion centre on time. He had arrived from the oblast Central Office four years ago and brought order to a haphazard farm system that was so behind on taxes and quotas that the whole village was in danger of being labelled saboteurs and put in prison. Fomenko had set them straight. Pyotr worshipped him.

He was talking to the teacher in front of the schoolhouse, a neat white-washed building with a newly tiled roof. Pyotr walked along the side of the cart but it was too high for him to see inside, so he slunk round to the back where a young liver-coloured filly was tethered to the hinge of the rear flap. She was long-backed and skittish, eager to barge her way to freedom. Pyotr tried to soothe her but she would have none of it and attempted to nip him with her big yellow teeth, but the halter was too tight.

‘Comrade Chairman.’

This was the first time Pyotr had ever spoken to Aleksei Fomenko, though he’d seen and heard him often enough at the compulsory political meetings in the assembly hall. He felt his cheeks flood scarlet and his gaze found refuge on Aleksei Fomenko’s boots. They were good boots. Strong. Proper factory-made ones. Not like the ones Papa wore, hand-stitched by a half-blind old cobbler in Dagorsk.

‘Not now, Pyotr,’ his teacher said firmly.

‘No, Elizaveta,’ intervened Fomenko, ‘let’s hear our young comrade. He has the look of someone with something to say.’

Elizaveta Lishnikova touched the elaborate knot of grey hair at the back of her head, a gesture of annoyance, but she said no more. Pyotr looked up at Aleksei Fomenko, grateful for the warmth of his words. Deep-set grey eyes were watching him with interest. The face was strong, like his boots. Straight thick eyebrows. And despite wearing a loose work tunic he looked lean – and authoritative, exactly the way Pyotr longed to be.

‘Well, what is it, young comrade? Speak up.’

‘Comrade Chairman, I… er…’ His palms were hot. He brushed them on his shorts. ‘I have two things I wish to say.’

‘Which are?’

‘Comrade Chairman, last week you took a pig from the Tushkov family.’

The eyes narrowed. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s just that… you see, I thought that perhaps it was a mistake… and if I explained to you then-’

‘It was no mistake.’

‘But they can’t survive without Masha. Really they can’t.’ The words came out in a rush. ‘They have eight children, Comrade Chairman. They need the pig. To sell her litters. How else will they eat? And Anastasia is so…’ He saw Chairman Fomenko’s eyes change, somehow sink deeper in his head, but he didn’t know what it meant. ‘… So thin,’ he finished weakly.

‘Listen to me closely.’ The Chairman placed a hand on Pyotr’s bare shoulder. Pyotr could feel the strength in it, as the man’s grey eyes fixed on his. ‘Who do you think feeds the workers in our factories? In the towns and cities, all the people making our clothes and our machines and our medical supplies, all the men and women in the shipyards and down the mines? Who feeds them?’

‘We do, Comrade Chairman.’

‘That’s right. Each kolkhoz, each collective farm, must fulfil its quota. It supplies the raion, the district, and each district supplies the oblast, the province. That’s how the great proletariat of this vast country is fed and clothed. So which is more important, young comrade? The individual? Or the Soviet State?’

‘The Soviet State.’ Pyotr said it passionately.

Fomenko smiled approval. ‘Well spoken. So which one matters more, the Tushkov family or the State?’

Pyotr was caught unawares by this sudden twist and felt the inside of his stomach burn. How had he come to this choice? He dropped his gaze, scuffed his feet on the brown grass and stared again at the strong boots. Their owner was waiting for an answer.

‘The State.’ It came out as a whisper.

‘That is why I took the sow.’ The voice was gentle. ‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Comrade Chairman.’

‘You agree it was right to take the sow?’

‘Yes, Comrade Chairman.’

‘Good.’ He released Pyotr’s shoulder. ‘And what was the second thing you wanted to talk to me about?’

Pyotr hated himself. He no longer cared about the second thing.

‘Well?’ Fomenko urged.

‘It’s the filly,’ Pyotr muttered. ‘The tether rope is too short and the halter too tight.’

‘You have good eyes, young comrade. The filly has thrown a shoe.’ He reached into his pocket, pulled out a fifty kopeck coin and tossed it in the air. The sunshine snatched at it. ‘Here, catch. You’re obviously a bright lad and know something about horses. Take her up to the blacksmith for me.’

Pyotr caught the coin and glanced at Elizaveta Lishnikova. She nodded.

‘Take Anastasia with you,’ she said, and there was a surprising softness in her voice that was usually reserved only for the younger children.

It made his shame worse, knowing she’d heard every word. His cheeks burned. He ran from the adults, unhitched the filly and as he trudged up the street in the dust with Anastasia in tow, he threw her the fifty kopeck coin. ‘You can have it.’

‘Thanks, Pyotr. You’re the best friend in the world.’