Under a Blood Red Sky

51

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?

She touched the board where he cut his bread, the skillet in which he fried his food, the towel where he dried his hands, searching for him. She walked into his bedroom, but it was like entering a dead person’s room. A bed, a stool, hooks on the wall for his clothes. She brushed her fingers over the three check workshirts that hung there and they felt soft and worn. She scooped a handful of cloth up to her face, inhaled the scent of it. It smelled clean and fresh, of pine needles. No scent of him, of Aleksei Fomenko. He hid even that.

On a shelf stood a mirror and a dark wooden hairbrush. She picked up the brush and ran it through her own hair as she gazed into the glass, speckled with black age spots. No sign of him there, only her own reflection – and that was the face of a stranger. She went over to his plain pinewood bed. It was covered by a patchwork quilt over coarse white sheets, but when she lifted the top one there was no imprint of his body underneath. She touched his pillow and it felt soft. That surprised her. She had expected it to be hard and unyielding like his ideas. She bent over and placed her cheek on it, sank into its feathers and closed her eyes. What dreams came to him at night, what thoughts? Did he ever dream of Anna? Her hand slid under the pillow, feeling for any secret talisman but found nothing. When she stood upright she felt a dull kind of anger rise to her throat.

‘You’ve killed him!’ she shouted into the dead air of this dead house. ‘You’ve killed Vasily!’

She picked up the pillow and shook it violently. ‘You had no right,’ she moaned, ‘no right to kill him. He was Anna’s. I know I borrowed him, but he was always Anna’s and now you’ve killed her as surely as you killed him.’

She hurled the pillow across the room. It hit the log wall and slid to the floor, but as it did so something tumbled out of the white pillowcase. Something small and metal rattled into a corner as though trying to hide. Sofia leapt on it. She picked it up, placed it on the palm of her hand and studied her find. It was a pill box fashioned out of pewter, small and round and grey. A dent on one side. It reminded her of the pebble in her pocket. She opened it and inside lay a lock of blonde hair, bright as sunshine.

She waited, her skin prickling with impatience. She watched the sun march slowly across the room from one side to the other. At some point she drank a glass of water. And all the time she brooded about Mikhail Pashin and about who he really was. About what he’d done. About what she, Sofia, had sworn to do to him.

She peeled back each layer of pain, like stripping bark, and looked at what lay underneath. It was a mass of confusion and error.

Oh, my Mikhail, you made yourself suffer for what you did. You scourged yourself like the penitents of the Church, but found no divine forgiveness at the end of it. Instead you constructed a life for yourself that tried to atone and you did it with as much care as you built your bridge. I don’t want to smash my fist on it and bring it crashing down now. But… you killed Anna’s father.

Again and again darkness descended on Sofia as she sat there alone. What kind of mind? What kind of person? What kind of boy shoots human beings in cold blood? She took out the pebble and placed it on her lap but it lay lifeless, a dull white. Yet as she stroked its cold surface, she felt herself change. A vibration rippled through her body and she almost heard the stone hum, high-pitched and faint inside her head. Its colour seemed to gain a sheen, just like a pearl.

Was she imagining this? Was Rafik imagining it all? The seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. Was it true? And if it was, did it mean anything at all? Vasily was gone. That knowledge, that the Vasily she had loved in the camp no longer existed, had torn an important part of her away. It left a terrible hollowness inside, like hunger. But worse than mere hunger, it was starvation at some deep level. It gnawed at her with sharp rodent teeth. Now Vasily was gone and she was mourning the loss of him. She moaned and rocked herself in Vasily’s chair.

Finally she sat up and wrapped her fingers tight round the stone.

‘Anna,’ she said firmly, ‘wait for me. I’m coming.’