‘Mikhail!’ she cried out. ‘Mikhail! ’

Hands touched her head and she started to see things and hear things that she knew were not there.


A small room. A small desk. A small man with a small mind. Long rabbity teeth and pale cheeks that looked as though they’d never seen the sun. His elbows on the desk, his thoughts on the prisoner in front of him.

The prisoner angered him, though he kept all sign of it from his face. He shifted the lamp on his desk to angle the beam more into the prisoner’s eyes and had the satisfaction of seeing him wince. One of the prisoner’s eyes was swollen and half shut, his jaw bruised, his lip as split and purple as an over-ripe plum, yet still the prisoner clung to the wrong attitude. Hadn’t he learned that it didn’t matter whether he was guilty or not guilty of the crimes he was charged with?

Wrong attitude.

That was his real crime, that he still believed he could pick and choose which bits of the Communist creed he would adopt and which ones he would reject.

Wrong fucking attitude.

The prisoner’s mind was a danger to the State. Time to change what was in it or discover that the State could break the strongest of wills and the strongest of minds. The State was expert at it and he, the interrogator, was an instrument of the Soviet State.

There would be only one fucking winner.


‘Mikhail,’ she breathed.

‘Mikhail,’ the circle echoed.

The white stone in Sofia’s hand seemed to grow chill. Or was that just her own skin? She wrapped her fingers tighter around it, dug her nails into its cold hard surface as though they could gouge out the eyes of the man with rabbits’ teeth.

‘A curse on you, Interrogator,’ she hissed.

The flames in the brazier surged as if they fed on her hatred.

‘Mikhail,’ she intoned into the shadows. ‘Come to me.’


***

‘Why me?’ Sofia asked.

The clouds were low and there was no moon. The night felt heavy and cloying despite the breeze that rustled up from the river, fretting under the eaves of the izbas and stealing Sofia’s words from her lips.

‘Why me?’ she repeated.

‘Don’t you know?’ Rafik asked in a low voice. He was pacing with a smooth unbroken stride over the uneven tangles of roots and soil, skirting round the fringes of Tivil. ‘Don’t you know now who you are?’

‘Tell me, Rafik, who I am.’

‘Feel for it, Sofia, stretch your mind back to the beginning and to before the beginning. Reach deep into yourself.’

A bat flitted out of the night sky, circling jerkily above their heads. It was followed quickly by another, and the shadow of their wings seemed to press on Sofia’s mind. Something stirred inside her, something unfamiliar. She experienced again that sense of being high up on a golden pinnacle with the silver-haired figures below her, sending their breath to lift her wings. She shook her head but still the image wouldn’t go away. It lodged there.

Rafik did not push her, but he gave her time. Together they were pacing out the circle that the gypsy trod nightly around Tivil. Through the fields, past the pond and round the back of each izba, weaving what he called a protective thread. When he led her out of the ritual chamber she was not surprised to discover the mysterious ceremony had taken place inside the church, not in the main hall but in the old storeroom at the back of the church, where the lock still bore the marks of her knife.

‘Now,’ Rafik had said with his hands on hers, a prickling sensation growing between their palms as if they were being stitched together, ‘now you shall tread the circle with me.’ His eyes probed hers and she was certain he could see clearly even in the moonless night air. ‘Are you ready, Sofia?’ He’d wrapped a hooded cloak around her shoulders and tied it securely at her throat.

‘Yes, I’m ready.’

Her blood was pounding in her ears. Ready for what? She didn’t know, but without anything being said, she understood that this was the bargain she had struck with Rafik. His help with the safety of Mikhail in exchange for her help with the safety of the village. But it was all so strange. She had a feeling that the cost of this bargain to both could be high.

‘I’m ready,’ she said again.

Suddenly he smiled a gentle smile and softly kissed her cheek. ‘Don’t fear,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘You are strong and you have the power of generations within you.’


More bats came. In ones and twos at first, then a steady trickle of beating wings pursued them. Until finally a swirling black cloud of the creatures swooped down from the mountain ridge, rising out of the depths of the forest and hurtling in a screaming, screeching, scratching wall of eyes and teeth and sharp scything claws, towards the point where Sofia was pacing the circle. Rafik walked an arm’s length ahead of her.

She lashed out at them but there were too many. The dense black shadow fell on her like a net and instantly they were in her hair, nipping and tearing. Tiny leathery wings squeezed under the cloak, furry bodies burned hot against her skin, their razor-sharp teeth cutting strips from her throat and her shoulder blades, slicing into her cheeks, hooking their dagger-claws into her eyelids.

She fought them in the seething dark. She swept them from her body, scraped them from her face, dragged them out of the air and ripped off their wings. She stamped on their evil little distorted faces, attacking them with her hands, her elbows, her feet and even her teeth. Fending them off her eyes…

As suddenly as they came, they were gone. A great susurration of wings and then nothing. There was total silence, not even the wind in the trees. That was the moment she realised that the plague of bats had left Rafik untouched. They had descended on her, but not him. Why? And why had Rafik offered no help? She was shaking violently and raised a hand to her face. No blood, no scratches, no pain. Had it all been in her mind?

Rafik nodded, raising his eyes to where the moon was hidden behind the ancient boughs of the cedar tree at the entrance to Tivil. ‘I told you,’ he said.

‘Told me what?’

‘That you are strong.’


‘I poured you a drink.’

It was far into the night when Sofia slid gratefully into the big armchair that was Mikhail’s. She wondered how long the drink had been waiting for her on the table.

‘Thank you, Pyotr. I certainly need it.’ She tried to smile. ‘I’m sorry I’m so late.’

The boy, clothed in a pair of cut-down pyjamas, picked up the glass of vodka and handed it to her. His brown eyes were so pleased to see her that she risked a light reassuring brush of her hand against his. His skin felt wonderfully warm and alive, like skin should feel. Not like her own. Her own was drained of moisture, dry as paper to the touch, as though everything of worth had been sucked out of it tonight, sucked out of her. A pulse throbbed behind her eye.

‘I couldn’t find you anywhere tonight, Sofia. I thought you’d decided to-’

The cuckoo in the kitchen clock called twice. Two o’clock in the morning.

‘Pyotr, I’ll never run away secretly. If I leave, I’ll tell you first. Believe me?’

He smiled tentatively. ‘Da. Yes. But where were you? In the forest?’

Sofia threw the slug of vodka down her throat and felt it kick life into her exhausted body. ‘Not the forest, but somewhere just as dark.’

Without comment he refilled her glass, wiped a drip from the neck of the bottle with a grubby finger and licked it off with his tongue. Sofia experienced such a sense of relief at the normality of the boy’s action that she almost told him what had happened to her tonight. The words wanted to spill from her mouth so that she could hear Pyotr say, No, Sofia, don’t be silly. You fell asleep in a field and had a bad dream. And then they’d laugh together and everything would be back to normal.

She drank the vodka.

‘I was with Rafik. We were… trying to find out more about what’s happening to Mikhail.’

‘I’ve been helping, too. Look, I made the key.’ He extracted from his pyjama pocket a large iron key that was a rich purple-black metal, shiny and new. He held it out to her. ‘And I took the old one back to the office, like you said.’

Sofia dragged herself out of the comfort of the chair and hugged the boy close.

‘Thank you, Pyotr. You are as clever as you are brave. We can’t search the hall now in the dark, as any candle would show at the windows and attract attention. So we’ll start on it tomorrow. ’ She grimaced. ‘Today, I mean. It’s not far off morning already.’

Pyotr nodded, but she spotted the flicker of unease in his eyes.

‘Pyotr, what is it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Chairman Fomenko came here.’

‘What did he want?’

‘He was looking for you.’

Sofia froze. Not now. Don’t let him take me now. ‘What did you tell him?’

‘That I didn’t know where you were. It was the truth.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t have to lie to him. Don’t worry, I’ll speak to him tomorrow. Now go and get some sleep or you’ll be dead on your feet in the morning.’

He continued to stand there for a moment, his face in shadow, half boy, half man. ‘You too,’ he said at last and left.

Sofia collapsed back into Mikhail’s chair and rested her head on the place where his head had rested. But she didn’t sleep.

46

Davinsky Camp July 1933


The next day Anna wasn’t any better, but with the help of Nina and Tasha and even young Lara, she got herself out to the Work Zone again and back to shovelling grit. Her work rate was pathetically slow but at least it would earn her a bare scrap of a paiok to eat without robbing others of theirs.

Her own lack of strength made her mind wander to the image of Sofia’s weakness during that bad shuddering time when Sofia almost died. Slowly the injury to her hand had healed, but even now, all this time later, the memory of what it cost made Anna spit blood on the ground. The shame still gathered in her mouth and she had to rid herself of it or suffocate.


In August of that bad year the old babushka died, the one who slept next to Anna on the bed board, and the first thing Anna did was steal her coat. Now that Crazy Sara had taken hers, it was essential to keep warm. When the early snows came she had no intention of dying. In October typhus raged through the camp, sweeping up lives as indiscriminately as a fox chokes chickens in a hen house, but both Anna and Sofia had escaped its teeth. In fact it made life a fraction easier for them. Because the hut became less overcrowded, Anna was able to move up to a middle bunk near a window. She also stole a second, thicker coat from a dead body.

Work on the road was brutal as the temperatures dropped in November. Ice broke hammers and froze fingers to rocks. The snow drifted down out of a misleadingly soft pink sky, settling on the road and the bent backs of the labourers, transforming the scene into one of stark beauty. Except nobody could acknowledge beauty any more. They’d forgotten what it looked like. The nearest thing to beauty they ever saw was an extra bowl of kasha when the cook pocketed a bribe.

When the long line of prisoners finally trudged back into the Zone after a two-hour march through the snow in the dark, even the searchlights looked welcoming, great moons of yellow warmth. But as Anna shuffled numbly towards the hut, head lowered against the wind, a hand pulled her out of the line and a pair of eager lips stinking of cheap beer sought hers. It was the guard, the one with the surplus of pork fat and pelmeni. Mishenko was his name. Ilya Mishenko. She tugged away from him.

‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ His hand strayed to her head, brushed snow from her headscarf, touched her cheek. ‘You aren’t very friendly any more, are you? Not long ago you couldn’t get enough of me and all that good food I gave you, but for weeks now you’ve been as cold as this fucking weather. How about an extra blanket? Or a bowl of good meat stew to keep out the-’

‘Fuck off.’ She jerked herself free. ‘I don’t want anything. I’ve told you to leave me alone.’ She gave him a bitter stare and hurried across the trodden snow towards the hut door.

‘I won’t leave you alone, you hot little cunt!’ he shouted after her. ‘Not till you say yes again. And you will, I know you will. One day when you’re sick or hurt, you’ll say yes again!’ He rammed his fur shapka tighter on his head and laughed. ‘It’s just a matter of time.’

Anna’s hands blocked her ears, disgust sharp as copper on her tongue. He was dirty. She was dirty. So what was the difference between them, both exploiting what they had? But as she joined the crush to squeeze through the door into the hut she suddenly saw Sofia standing off to one side, oblivious of the snow. Watching Ilya Mishenko.