Under a Blood Red Sky

30

Davinsky Camp July 1933

The cat crept into the camp out of nowhere. Its arrival occurred at the end of one of the fierce summer storms that were sweeping through the region. The small creature picked its way daintily round the puddles in the yard as if walking on eggshells. It was young and painfully thin, its bedraggled fur a sort of non-colour, neither grey nor brown but somewhere in between. But there was a jauntiness to it that attracted attention in a world where limbs were heavy and movements slow.

The women couldn’t help smiling. A group of them tried to encourage it into a corner but it looked at them with scornful green eyes and slipped effortlessly through their legs. It scampered straight into one of the huts, gazed with interest at the array of bunks and leapt up on to Anna’s. It nudged its bony little head against her arm and plunged its needle claws into her blanket, kneading with a steady rhythm that tore holes in the threadbare material. Anna touched its head, a light tentative brush of her fingertips over the damp fur, and immediately the young cat started to purr.

The loud rackety sound of it did something to Anna. Happiness sprang into her chest like something solid. She could feel it warm and contented in there, soothing the inflamed passages in her lungs. Like the cat, it seemed to have come from nowhere. She scratched a finger under the animal’s furry chin until it stretched out its neck with pleasure and watched her through half-closed eyes, totally content.

‘I’m sorry I have no food to give you, little one.’

Other prisoners were gathering round the bunk board.

‘It’s so pretty,’ one crooned.

‘It needs meat.’

‘Don’t we all!’

‘It’ll be riddled with fucking fleas,’ Tasha warned.

Anna laughed. ‘Fleas, bed bugs, mosquitoes, marsh flies – what’s the difference?’

The young animal suddenly hiccupped and everyone chuckled. Tasha put out a hand to stroke its soft fur. But at that moment one of the guard dogs outside barked and the cat hissed, flattening its ears, its sharp claws raking Tasha’s skin.

‘Fuck the little bastard!’

The cat shot off the bed, its hollow belly low to the floor, and disappeared out of the door in a flash. Several of the women chased after it.

‘I hope they eat the miserable piece of gristle,’ Tasha said, sucking at her hand.

‘Oh Tasha, that’s what this place does to us. I’m sure they will. Eat it, I mean. I just hope the poor little creature has enough sense to head straight for the barbed wire.’

‘Wouldn’t we all like to do that?’

‘Give me your hand. Here, this will help.’ She took Tasha’s hand between her own and pressed hard to stem the blood. The tiny needles had done no more than scrape the surface and the trickle soon stopped.

‘Thanks,’ Tasha said. She went over to the grimy window to watch the chase.

But Anna didn’t hear because she was staring blindly at the wall opposite. The brief sensation of a hand pressed hard against her own had already whisked her back to that day at the Dyuzheyev villa when the dancing had been stopped for ever by a light knock on the door.

‘No.’ Maria had hissed the word. ‘No, Anna.’

Twelve-year-old Anna had come hurtling out of the house, but her governess seized her with a grip that hurt and yanked her back on to the front steps, tight against her skirt. Maria placed one hand on Anna’s shoulder and the other gripped her hand. She was not going to let go.

‘Say nothing,’ she breathed, not taking her gaze from the group spread out on the drive in front of her.

Grey uniforms were everywhere, red flashes on their shoulders. Snow trampled and dirty under their boots. A circle of rifles, glinting in the sun, was aimed at the three figures in the centre of it: Vasily, Svetlana and Grigori. Grigori was splayed awkwardly on the snow in a sleep that Anna knew wasn’t sleep and in a pool of red juice that she knew wasn’t juice. She choked and gasped for air. Svetlana was kneeling beside her husband, a terrible low bone-scraping moan escaping from her lips, her head bowed to touch Grigori’s chest. There was more of the cranberry juice on the front of her beautiful grey dress and on her sleeve. On the fur and on her chin.

Vasily looked strange. He was standing stiff, his limbs rigid as he spoke to the soldier with the peaked cap, the one with a revolver still pointed at Grigori’s motionless body. The words that rushed out of Vasily were hot and angry.

‘You’ll get the same, whelp, if you don’t stop yapping.’ The soldier’s eyes were hard and full of hate. ‘You and your family are filthy class enemies of the people. Your father, Grigori Dyuzheyev, was a parasite, he exploited the workers of our Fatherland, he had no right to any of this and-’

‘No.’ Vasily was struggling for control. ‘My father… treated his servants and tenants well, ask any of them what kind of-’

The soldier spat on the snow, a jet of yellow hate. ‘No one should own a house like this.’ His moustache twitched with anger. ‘You should all be exterminated like rats.’

Anna mewed.

The soldier swung his gun so that it was pointing directly at her. ‘You. Come here.’

Anna took one step forward but that was as far as she could go with Maria still holding her tight.

‘Leave her alone,’ Vasily said quickly. ‘She is only a servant’s brat.’

‘In that dress? What kind of fool do you think I am? No, she’s one of your kind. One of the rats.’

‘Leave her,’ Vasily said again. ‘She’s too young to make choices.’

‘Rats breed,’ the soldier snarled. Without shifting the aim of the gun he turned his head to address a boy of about sixteen standing to attention at his shoulder, his cap low over his forehead. He was wearing ragged boots and his chest was heaving. Anna noticed that despite the chill winter air his young skin was damp with sweat. His uniform was someone else’s cast-off, with sleeves and trousers flapping loose and a telltale hole just over his heart.

‘Son, fetch the rat.’

The boy looked directly at Anna. His pupils were so huge she feared they would swallow her up, black and bottomless. She glared back at the boy as he started towards her.

‘No, comrade.’ It was Maria. Her voice was as cool and crisp as the snow. ‘The girl is mine. My daughter. I am a servant, a worker, and she’s a worker’s child, one of the Soviet proletariat.’

‘No worker wears a dress like that.’

‘They gave it to her.’ Maria gestured to the body of Grigori and to Svetlana bent over him. ‘They like to dress her up in fine clothes.’

The soldier rubbed an old scar on the side of his head and Anna saw he had no ear there. He turned to Svetlana. ‘Is it true? Did you give the brat the dress?’

Svetlana ignored the soldiers but smiled lovingly at Anna.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly, ‘I gave dear Annochka the dress. But you are the rats and the scum. My husband spent his life at the Foreign Office helping his country. What have you ever done for Russia? You are the rats that will gnaw the heart out of Mother Russia until there is nothing left but blood and tears.’

The shot, when it rang out in the stillness of the January day, made Anna jump. Her feet would have skidded off the step if Maria had not held her. She bit her tongue, tasted blood. She saw Svetlana hurled backwards off her knees, her head flying so fast that her neck was stretched out, revealing blue veins and translucent white skin above the grey collar. A red hole flowered in the exact centre of her forehead and leaked dark tendrils.

Vasily roared and ran to her.

Anna stared at the soldier boy in the too-big uniform and cap, rifle steady in his hand, and realised he was the one who had fired the bullet. The older soldier placed a proud hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Well done, my son.’

The other soldiers murmured an echoing contented sound, passed from one to the other, so that rifles relaxed and attention lapsed.

Vasily came fast. It took no more than a second for the knife in his hand to sink into the soft throat of the older soldier in command, the one without the ear, and for Vasily to leap up the steps and vanish into the house. Anna smelled the sweet familiar scent of him as he raced past her, his ugly road digger’s jacket flapping against her cheek, making it sting. The soldiers fired after him and a bullet grazed Maria’s temple, but they were too slow. Their shouts and stomping feet echoed in the marble hall and up the stairs as they searched. There was the sound of glass shattering inside.

Anna barely moved her lips but she turned her eyes to Maria and whispered, ‘Do you think he’s safe now? Vasily has escaped, hasn’t he?’

Her governess’s face was grey as stone except for the small trickle of blood at her hairline. She was staring at the body of Svetlana. It was only then that Anna realised tears were pouring down her own cheeks. She dashed them away, scraping her cold fingers over her face, and that was when she saw Papa. He was running, except to Anna it looked like flying. His long dark cloak was billowing out around him like great black wings, as he ran up the slope of the snow-covered lawn to the drive, his face twisted in anguish at the sight of his two dearest friends sprawled on the trampled snow.

‘Stop there!’ one of the soldiers shouted.

He was older than the rest, with heavy-set shoulders and troubled brown eyes that kept darting back to the body of his superior lying on his back in the snow.

‘What happened?’ Papa demanded. ‘Why have you shot these people?’ Anna could see the tick in his cheek muscle. ‘I shall report you.’

‘Who are you?’ the older soldier raised his voice.

‘I am Doktor Fedorin. I was tending to someone wounded by your men here.’

He stepped back and dropped on one knee next to Grigori. His eyes glanced over at Anna. Almost imperceptibly he shook his head. He touched first Grigori’s wrist, then Svetlana’s, his head bowed. Anna saw his lips move soundlessly and a deep shudder gripped him. She felt it ripple in an echo through herself.

‘The boy killed my comrade here,’ the soldier growled.

Papa looked up. Slowly rose to his feet. ‘What boy?’

‘The Dyuzheyev son.’

Papa stood very still. ‘Where is he?’

‘My men are searching for him now.’

Papa looked at Anna but said nothing.

‘I am taking over this house,’ the soldier suddenly declared. ‘I requisition it in the name of the Soviet people and-’ He stopped abruptly and pointed at the black Oakland parked further along the drive, its headlamps sparkling in the sunshine. ‘Whose is that vehicle?’

‘It’s mine,’ Papa said. ‘I’m a doctor. I need a car to visit the sick.’

‘The rich sick,’ the boy soldier spat. ‘The sick that possess big houses and big bank balances.’ He pointed his rifle at the Oakland and fired. The windscreen exploded and glass flew like ice.

The older soldier scowled. ‘Why ruin a perfectly good car? We could use it for-’

‘It is American. It stinks of injustice just like this doctor does.’

‘Tell me, Doktor,’ the older man in command demanded sharply, ‘do you also live in a big house? Do you also keep servants? Do you own horses and carriages and more silver samovars and fur coats than you can ever use?’ The man took a step closer. ‘Do you?’

Anna saw Papa’s eyes go to the silent bodies of Svetlana and Grigori. Suddenly he yanked the handsome silver watch from his waistcoat pocket. ‘Here,’ he shouted, ‘take this. And these.’ He hurled his cigar case and his beaver hat on to the trampled snow at their feet. ‘And take my house too, why don’t you?’ His heavy bunch of keys hit the boy’s toecap. Papa’s rage frightened Anna. ‘Take everything. Leave me nothing, not even my friends. Will I then be fit to doctor your glorious proletariat? And are you fit to decide who is fit to be cared for and who isn’t?’

The boy’s eyes filled with loathing.

Anna watched Papa take four long strides towards her. Odeen. Dva. Tri. Chetiri. One. Two. Three. Four. Her heart leapt at the sight of his familiar reassuring smile, at his eager blue eyes, his hair ruffled by the wind. The cloak that so many times had wrapped her close against his warm cigar-smelling body swirled in welcome, as though seeking her out. His hand reached for her and she felt Maria’s fingers uncurl.

There was a loud crack. Anna knew now that it was the sound a rifle makes when it’s fired. The boy, she thought, shooting at the car again. She expected Papa to be angry with him, but instead his mouth jerked open into a silent ‘oh’ and his eyes rolled up in his head, so that only their whites showed. His knees went soft. And then he was falling, face first like he used to do in the enticing waters of the Black Sea to amuse her when they spent the summer at their dacha. Face first into the snow. The back of his head was blown open. The boy soldier was gripping his rifle proudly.

Anna ripped herself free of her governess and started to scream.