Red Sky at Noon

I

True darkness in high summer does not come until very late, and Benya waited until it was well after midnight. He listened to his own heart ticking like a fuse and to the sounds of the village. Cats fighting, the camels nuzzing, scattered shots, planes overhead, Italians singing, horses whinnying – then just a hiss outside the tent. ‘Benya!’

He opened the flap and there was the white blaze of Silver Socks with Fabiana leading him. Socks searched for him, and Benya stroked her muzzle and kissed her neck.

‘Grazie mille,’ he said to Fabiana, ‘grazie mille.’ And Fabiana, now wearing light green Italian uniform with a bustina at a raffish angle on the back of her head, said the same thing to him and then he kissed her cheeks, three times Russian-style, and he could feel her, so warm and close to him, and he kissed her mouth, and she kissed him back and whispered:

‘Benya, you must strike me so…’

‘That’s not easy for me.’

‘Just hurry.’

He slapped her hard across the face and she flinched, and touched her lip.

‘OK.’ There was blood on her fingertip. ‘There’s food in the saddlebags. Go then. Go!’

Silver Socks skittered as he mounted, and he calmed her with a touch on the withers. He meant to say poetical things to Fabiana, to say ‘Somehow forever’, but he was too afraid to think of such things. Instead, without looking back, he kicked Socks into a canter and rode away, knowing that she would wait a while and then cry out: ‘Help!’ They’d agreed that she would say ‘the prisoner’ had knocked her over and escaped into the night. And would the Italians bother chasing one wounded Russian prisoner on the run? Unlikely.

He rode out across the rye fields, staying close to the hedges. In the dark, he could see the heads of a thousand sunflowers, lowered to the dark ground, waiting for the sun to rouse them, and beyond them, the steppes all the way to the Don. As he rode, he realized he had no weapon, not even a penknife to defend himself – just my fingernails, he thought, smiling grimly. He pulled Socks to a halt. Should he go back and steal a weapon – at least a sidearm so he could shoot himself rather than fall into the hands of Mandryka’s men? Indecision overcame him and he rubbed his forehead. He was not very good at this, not good at all. He had no idea where to go, or what to do.

He heard the thud of hooves coming across the fields. His heart scudded – they were chasing him already. He dismounted and stood in the shadows, listening, shaking. It sounded as though just one rider was following him. Was it Malamore? Or one of Mandryka’s Hiwis?

Then he heard the soft voice: ‘Benya, it’s me. Are you there?’

‘Here!’

Fabiana rode towards him on her palomino. ‘You took no weapons. I forgot to give you these.’ She handed over a Parabellum, a couple of grenades, a Papasha with the ammunition, and she had a rifle in her scabbard on the horse’s flank. ‘I didn’t know which to take.’

‘Thank you, but you stole too many. They’ll notice. Take the rest of these back, and hurry!’

‘OK,’ she said but she did not move.

‘I must ride on. I meant to say – I’ll never forget you, or what you’ve done for me, everything—’

‘Va bene,’ she whispered. ‘Somehow forever.’ And she made the extravagant gesture he was familiar with. Briskly he put the Parabellum in his belt, the PPSh over his shoulder, and the ‘zincs’ that held the ammunition for its drum-like magazine in his saddlebags, passing the rifle back to her. She slipped the rifle into her scabbard. He mounted Silver Socks and looked back at her.

Fabiana hadn’t moved. He turned Socks around. She was still there.

‘Right! Thank you. I must go, Fabiana, and you must go back right now. Vai subito! Arrivederci.’

She turned the palomino but in a circle and ended up closer to him. ‘You know, Il Primo, I can’t go back. Not now. You have your horse and your guns and you are gone. They will know and they will shoot me for treason.’

Benya absorbed this in a second: the Italians would presume he was taking a hostage; they would hunt them down; and probably they would die together. It was not what he had planned, but he knew she was right. In bringing him the weapons, she’d put herself in supreme danger. ‘So we ride together. But we must go now!’

The horses were nervous; Socks stamped; there were shouts from the village; lights were going on; and then the first shot rang out.

Benya leaned over and smacked the rump of her horse with his quirt. Violante reared up and almost bucked Fabiana off but she stayed on and then they were galloping. A volley of machine-gun fire thwanged over them and Benya could see muzzle flashes from the village and the pirts of dust on the ground rising from the impacts. A bullet chinged right off his stirrup. A searchlight cast a beam into the dark, seeking them. At this rate, they would shoot him like a dog. He seized her horse’s bridle and pulled Fabiana closer: ‘Stay next to me.’ The searchlight found them and suddenly Benya could see her clearly in boots and britches and khaki, the bustina on her tied-up hair – he thanked God she wasn’t wearing her snow-white nurse’s outfit – and he levelled the Papasha right at her, knowing the Italians could see her too, and sure enough, the voices cried out, ‘Fabiana!’ and then to him: ‘Let Fabiana go!’ But the shooting had stopped. They wouldn’t kill her, he knew this, when it was he they wanted.

Using Fabiana as a shield, he kicked both horses on until they were out of range and the moon was high on that silvery summer night, lighting up the high grasses and the sunflowers and the rye. And, all the time, there she was beside him, concentrating on the riding, spurring her palomino, dressed for this, and he realized that sometime that evening she had made a reckless decision and now they would both live with the consequences. There was a glint of something he hadn’t seen in her before, and sometimes, when he looked back at her, she smiled as she rode, her white teeth bright in the moonlight.

II

It was morning in the Kremlin, and Svetlana was wide awake, and thinking about Lev Shapiro. Waking up early was a symptom of being in love, she decided, but love is the only illness everyone wants to catch.

In a few days, she had gone from the ideal Soviet schoolgirl, the diligent student, to a lover, a dreamer, and now she did not care about her homework at all. She kept looking at the phone. She had given Shapiro the number of her private line to her apartment, the one used by herself, Klimov and the housekeeper. She waited, then waited some more; then it started to ring. She was about to answer on the first ring but would that seem desperate, too keen. She held her breath, counting four rings, five, six, and then she picked it up.

‘Ya sluzhoo,’ she said. ‘I’m listening.’

The phone line echoed and pranged, a sonar echo fathoms away, and she imagined telegraph poles and wires across steppes, rivers, farms stretching away, a fragile line of communication between herself and her lover.

‘It’s me, Sveta,’ he said at last. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes, yes. Wait a moment.’ She jumped up and closed the door so the housekeeper and her nanny would not hear. ‘Now I’m here. The flowers are blossoming in the Alexandrovsky Gardens! How are you?’

‘I’m at the front in the headquarters bunker.’

‘And where is that?’

The throatiness of his virile voice echoed down the rough, reverberating line. ‘My location is top secret except I can tell you it’s a town with your name.’

She laughed too. ‘You’re talking in such deep code that no one could possibly break it.’

‘I know.’ There was a pause. ‘Are you on your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘I just have to tell you, darling Sveta, that I want to kiss you again, passionately, deeply.’

‘Oh my God,’ she answered, her heart syncopating, almost melting into the mouthpiece.

‘No, really, I can still smell your skin. Taste your lips.’

Svetlana took a deep breath. ‘I want to kiss you too. I wish you were here. I can’t work. I am bored by my studies.’

Shapiro groaned. ‘If we’d only been alone…’

‘If we had been?’

‘If your detective hadn’t been waiting for you.’

‘Oh, he was listening to everything, but we managed to kiss,’ she crowed. ‘And what a kiss!’

‘Was it your first kiss?’

She nodded. ‘Is it bad if it was my first? Am I too much of a novice for you? Will you be bored of me?’

‘No, it’s charming, it’s delightful. It makes it so special for me. And we had so much to talk about as well. I want to know what you’re reading, what you’re thinking – but we don’t have time now. Now I must tell you the essential things, which are that I am thinking of you in the bunker in the city with the famous name on the Volga, and that I want to kiss you again now. Immediately.’

‘I burn for you too,’ she whispered.

There was a gap in the conversation. She heard voices like ghosts ricocheting down the line. And then Shapiro was back again, his voice sounding more urgent. ‘I have to go. All the correspondents have to use this phone. Grossman is waiting and he’s getting impatient. He wants to know who my girlfriend is…’

‘Will you tell him?’

‘God no. You’re a secret. For so many reasons.’

‘Will you be safe?’

‘For you, sweetheart, yes. The fighting is desperate here. But this city won’t fall. Sveta, we will win.’

‘Kisses, Lev, darling Lion. Call me again. Soon.’

‘I’ll call you every spare hour I have, I promise, darling Lioness. I’m sending you a kiss down the phone. Here! Can you feel it? It’s travelling from this bunker on the Volga all the way to you. It’s a sacred vibration. Love sends it. Can you feel it?’

‘Yes, I can feel it. Here’s one from the Kremlin. Across great rivers and steppes and bridges.’

A pause: ‘I’ve got it. Till tomorrow. I kiss you, darling.’

Svetlana put the phone down. The blush ran up her body, emanating from her middle, her thighs, to her feet and up to her neck and lips, to every spot of her body. She closed her eyes. In a few days she had changed completely. She was no longer merely Stalin’s daughter. A beautiful brave man in a bunker faraway in Stalingrad was thinking of her, and she – she was someone’s darling, someone’s secret.

III

Consul Malamore was furious: Fabiana was gone, and the village was in utter chaos. Accompanied by his adjutant and some of his scouts, he had ridden into Radzillovo at dawn, looking forward to calling on her in the Red Cross tent.

He felt he was making progress. She was shocked by the death of the milksop husband – a terrible soldier and not much better as a man – but war always sorted the strong from the weak; and so it had been with Ippolito Bacigalupe, removed so easily in his first skirmish. That was war and Fabiana would soon recover. She was tough and self-reliant, the sort of beautiful Italian woman he wanted to retire with; he would sire her children and those children would rule a new Aryan empire in the sun. He had been at war for a long time and he was weary; this would be his last fight. He was not short of girls. He had an apple-cheeked Russian girl back in Kharkov. But Fabiana of course was different. Hitler’s victory was now so close, just weeks away. If we secure the Don and Stalingrad, he told himself, the Russians will collapse and retreat behind the Urals, and then I can hang up my boots.

As he rode into the village, he was dreaming of buying a vast farm in the rich black earth of southern Russia, like a soldier-settler of the Roman Empire. The Russian peasants would work like slaves on the soil; and he would ride across the golden acres of corn on his black stallion with Fabiana on her palomino, and sometimes he would rest his hand on the amber-coloured skin of her arm…

Instead, as he and his men came to a halt, horsemen were galloping in with reports from east and west and God knew where, and Italian soldiers were running back and forth, some were even weeping, shots were being fired out into the steppe, horses were being saddled, Kalmyks were unpacking ammo boxes from their camels – and when they saw Malamore, they all froze. And here was Major di Montefalcone with his flabby oval face sobbing like a girl – yes, like a girl, for Christ’s sake!

‘She’s gone, consul, she’s gone. The prisoner took her!’ Montefalcone patted his eyes with his handkerchief.

‘I see that,’ said Malamore, dismounting. ‘But who is he?’

‘A Russian. We thought he was Schuma but he wasn’t. He must have been one of the partisans.’

A flash of murderous fury electrified Malamore but he ground it between his teeth. ‘Get on the phone to the Schuma and find out. Then we hunt them and we catch them. And when we do, she belongs to me.’

‘Si, si, signore.’

Malamore scowled at him. These aristocrats lacked Fascist passion; the day would come when he and his fellow Fascists would have to line them up against a wall – but there was more to it than that. He did not like the way Montefalcone was looking at him and he knew why the major was doing it. If the person who’d been kidnapped had not been a girl, if it had not been Fabiana, would they be going to all this trouble, taking this risk?

‘Just obey your orders, Montefalcone. Are you riding out with us?’

‘Me? If you wish it,’ said Montefalcone.

‘The prisoner’s escape was on your watch, major. It’s your responsibility.’

‘Understood, consul.’ He turned to his batman. ‘Jacopo, bring out Caruso.’

Malamore swung up on to his stallion, Borgia, motioning to his squadron of Cossacks and Kalmyk scouts to follow. He took out a thin cigar and one of the Kalmyks lit it for him.

‘He forced her?’ he asked Montefalcone, running the scenario through in his mind.

‘Surely he forced her.’

‘Surely? Madonna santa, Montefalcone, give me firm answers.’

‘Yes. At gunpoint. What Italian girl would ride off with an Ivan? Yes, at gunpoint.’

‘But the horse? How did he get that?’

‘He must have threatened her with a knife?’

‘Who gave him a knife?’

‘Maybe it was one of the surgical instruments.’

‘Guns?’

‘He just grabbed what he could.’

‘How?’

‘I’m not sure, sir.’

‘Isn’t your arsenal guarded according to regulations?’

‘Well, yes. But not every minute…’

‘You bungler,’ growled Malamore. Christ, these aristocrats were no good for anything.

Now that he was sure that Fabiana was his woman, he had to know if she was a traitor. If she’d crossed the line, he’d have to deal with it… There’d been a girl in Abyssinia, a long-limbed, dark-skinned gazelle, who’d betrayed the Italians and he hadn’t hesitated – he’d dealt with her himself. But then she was a native, an African, while Fabiana was Italian. But still… He raised his bushy eyebrows and ran his hands over his face.

‘Jacopo saw them, he saw the prisoner hit her.’ Montefalcone was still babbling.

‘Grazie a Dio,’ said Malamore, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘Thank God.’ She was still his girl, a good Italian, his future wife.

‘When the men spotted them and opened fire, the Ivan grabbed her reins and pointed his gun at her. She had no choice.’

‘Then all is clear,’ said Malamore. When he rescued her, she would belong to him, Fabiana would know that, and there’d be no more stupid mistakes. He turned Borgia. ‘Let’s go,’ he shouted to his posse of men.

‘Si, signore! What vehicles do you require?’ asked Montefalcone.

‘This is horse country. We ride out now. Catch us up, Montefalcone,’ and he spurred Borgia towards the east and clattered out of the village, with his Italian men in their black shirts, the Kalmyks on their bony ponies, followed by the Cossacks in their German uniforms, the steel of their spurs catching the morning rays.

Montefalcone mounted Caruso and followed Malamore’s men through the dust, his eyes burning. He too was thinking about Fabiana. She was forced, of course she was. He wiped his forehead, his head pounding. And yet he did wonder why she had her horse with her, why she had changed out of her white nurse’s uniform, and why so many weapons had gone missing.

He sighed. There was nothing as unpredictable as women – whatever Malamore said.

IV

Martha Peshkova wore her favourite lilac scent and the dress copied from American Vogue magazine by Cleopatra Fishman for her first date with the handsomest young man in Moscow. He was Sergo Beria, who could not have been more different in looks from his father. If anything, Martha thought, he resembled the swashbuckling film star Errol Flynn with his slim figure, his thick black hair, his elegant pencil-thin moustache and his well-cut uniform. He was eighteen; she was sixteen, and too young to go out to the Aragvi Restaurant so he had invited her to a lunchtime feast at his house.

Beria was the only Soviet leader to live in a mansion right in the middle of Moscow; most of the leaders, such as Molotov and Satinov, lived in the grand apartment block on Granovsky. But Beria was special. Sergo’s father worked so hard that he barely returned to eat or sleep, so it was his mother, Nino, a pretty blonde woman, and also a Georgian, who served Martha and Sergo a Georgian supra in the kitchen of the heavily guarded house.

Martha watched Sergo carefully. She knew that his father was in charge of the dark realm of power, the Organs and the Camps. She was acquainted with this world because an earlier secret police chief, Yagoda, had been in love with her mother Timosha and had openly pursued his passion under the nose of her father, in front of her father-in-law Gorky, right there in his famous mansion. But Yagoda had been tried and shot before the war; and his successor Yezhov had also been sacked and had vanished, almost certainly shot too. Then Beria had been appointed, and it was clear that he was a much more impressive leader, intimately trusted by Stalin himself. Still, Martha had grown up in this carnivorous milieu and even though she was so young, she knew its dangers. Her friend Svetlana was kind but she was still a princess who liked to get her own way in all things, while Vasily Stalin was a vicious goblin, a budding Caligula, a future Nero. Martha’s mother, Timosha, had told her again and again: ‘Marthochka, don’t marry into the Berias. That man Beria is… Don’t ask but I know things. Just don’t!’ But Martha had argued with her: ‘Mama, Sergo isn’t like his father. Really he’s a sweet and decent person.’

But there was already one fly in the ointment. Someone else was also in love with Sergo Beria: her friend Svetlana Stalina. Martha knew that, when she was a little girl visiting the seaside in Georgia, where they had been guarded by Beria, Svetlana had fallen for Sergo. But now Sveta was infatuated with her screenwriter Lev Shapiro and she had quite forgotten about Sergo. So, surely, the coast was clear…

After the Georgian feast, cooked by Nino herself, of khachapuri, a sort of pizza, lobio bean soup, mtsvadi and spicy pkhali, Sergo said, ‘Mama, I’m going to take Martha for a walk. Marthochka, shall we stroll?’

‘I’d love that…’ said Martha.

It was a hot afternoon in Moscow as they walked through the battered streets. They came from similar worlds, attended the same schools, knew the same people – the Stalins, the Mikoyans, the Satinovs. They had to be careful but they could speak with some honesty to each other. So naturally as they strolled around Moscow, through the Alexandrovsky Gardens beside the Kremlin, around the Patriarchy Pond, up Tverskaya (now renamed Gorky Street, for Martha’s grandfather), they chatted in a way that was possible only for the tiniest coterie of young people. Sergo knew everything – how the Germans were about to burst across the Don and push for Stalingrad, how it was even possible that they might reach Stalin’s city and how the Red Army would fight to the death there, street by street, factory by factory – so when he asked after Svetlana, Martha hesitated and then told him all about her passion for Lev Shapiro.

‘I’m so glad for her,’ said Sergo, lighting up a Herzegovina Flor for himself and for Martha. ‘She must be so lonely in the Kremlin. So lonely. How lovely that she has someone. We all need someone.’

‘We do,’ agreed Martha. ‘But promise me, don’t tell a soul about Sveta. She told me in strictest confidence, no one else must know…’

V

Benya and Fabiana had ridden their horses through a stream and were now headed back the way they had come. Benya was no tracker but, like so many Russians, he had read The Last of the Mohicans and wondered if there had ever been a mounted Jewish scout before! He remembered that Prince Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s lover, had created a regiment of Jewish cavalry, the Israelovsky, but the Prince de Ligne had written that Jews couldn’t ride – they looked like ‘monkeys on horseback’. Well, it’s true Jews aren’t born horsemen; we are scholars not soldiers, and now I am trying to be both – just to live another day, he thought.

Benya knew nothing about the countryside he was riding through except the books he’d read – And Quiet Flows the Don by Sholokhov and Babel’s Red Cavalry – and what the Cossacks had taught him. Where were his friends now? Were they even alive? Had they joined the Hitlerites? Not Panka, perhaps, but Prishchepa, light-footed and thoughtless as a wolf cub, could change his path like the flick of his whip. Knowing the Kalmyks would be tracking them, Benya assessed their position. It was not good. As the adrenalin thinned in his veins, he started to become more and more afraid. And Fabiana’s presence just made things worse. Then he remembered Panka telling him, ‘This is a big country, you’ve got to stretch yourself just to keep up with it, you’ve got to hear its voice,’ and he understood that he had to expand his plans to match its cunning, its expanse. He guessed their pursuers would presume he would head eastwards towards the Russian lines, so decided to take a more roundabout way to safety.

After an hour of riding, they heard horsemen. They stopped, dismounted, and Benya unhitched his Papasha and pulled the horses into the high grass. A group of men, silhouetted over the marsh grass, were riding towards Shepilovka, the Schuma headquarters. Of course, he calculated, the Italians from Fabiana’s command had guessed he would be heading east and had decided to ride into Shepilovka to try and find out who he really was. This was good and bad; good because it gave him more time, but bad because if they recruited any of the auxiliaries or Germans there, the end – if they got him – would be a terrible one.

Malamore and Montefalcone were riding towards the Schuma headquarters at Shepilovka as Montefalcone started to sing a love song in a strong tenor.

‘Shut up,’ said Malamore, and they rode on in silence.

As they rode into Shepilovka, they heard the clucking of poultry, the nuzzing of camels, and tuneless soused yelling – even though it was mid-afternoon.

The Schuma and Cossacks, many glassy-eyed, shirtless and reeking of alcohol, brandishing sabres and Schmeissers, came out into the street when they heard the horsemen clatter in.

Two long gallows of swaying bodies with placards saying ‘Partisan’ had been placed on the green; one of them a woman. Not all of the men wore Red Army green, Malamore noticed. A couple were Cossacks in German uniforms with placards that read: ‘Double agent’. The Schuma were hanging their own people too.

The Italians halted and stared. The gallows creaked like the rigging of an old sailing ship. ‘Take a look at that!’ said Malamore. There was nothing he loathed more than an unruly unit and these people were dangerous clowns.

Montefalcone peered around him as if he was in the last circle of Dante’s Inferno.

The new commander, Bron Kaminsky, now apparently calling himself an SS-Brigadeführer, was drinking with his crew of renegades. His shirt was wide open, chest like his face, a sunburned puce. Malamore could tell that he wasn’t too impressed with the Italians as he showed them to a chair.

‘Brigadeführer, was the partisan one of your prisoners?’ Malamore asked Kaminsky through his interpreter after he had recounted the bare essentials of how the wounded prisoner had escaped. They were in the handsome single-storey house commandeered by Kaminsky. Once owned by a well-off farmer, it had been converted into a mess room, and cheese and bread and tomatoes were spread on one table, half eaten. Bottles of vodka and local moonshine and boxes of Pervitin tablets were on another. A rack of weapons, mainly German but some Russian, had been stacked nearby.

Kaminsky was half cut and high. ‘I don’t know,’ he drawled. ‘We just held a trial. We found two traitors in my outfit, and we hanged them. Over there.’

‘I’m more interested in the prisoner we lost.’ Malamore’s nostrils flared with distaste. Kaminsky called in a short garishly over-made-up girl in a German tunic and jodhpurs that did nothing for her sturdy legs.

‘Do we know anything about an escaped Russian prisoner?’

‘Yes, Brigadeführer,’ said the girl, who had a Schmeisser over her shoulder, ‘one of our prisoners got away after the ambush that killed Colonel Mandryka.’

‘How did he get away? And who was he?’ demanded Malamore.

‘Our doctor knows all about him.’

‘Get the doctor,’ ordered Kaminsky.

A man was brought in, a sober and sensible professional; Malamore was somewhat relieved to find a sane person in this madhouse. Dapper in his German tunic with Red Cross armbands and riding boots, his handsome intelligence radiated from his lineless face.

‘Dr Kapto knew Colonel Mandryka at school,’ the woman explained in her nasal drone. She told the doctor the story of the escaped Russian partisan who had taken an Italian nurse as a hostage or human shield.

‘Yes, it’s probably him,’ Dr Kapto agreed. ‘After Mandryka’s funeral, one prisoner got out and I saw him ride off. I raised the alarm, got off a couple of shots but… it was dark.’

‘Who is he?’

‘His name is Golden. He was a prisoner in the Gulags, a Shtrafnik who took part in the Mandryka ambush.’ It was only now that Malamore noticed the little girl who stood close beside the doctor’s legs, almost hiding in the skirts of his tunic, watching them all with the big, deep haunted eyes of a child who had seen the rottenness of the world in all its intricacies. She had a bandage on her leg and a ripped dress.

He was about to ask who she was and what the hell she was doing here when Montefalcone, patting the sweat from his face and his upper lip, said, ‘Sir, let’s get out of here.’

For once, Malamore agreed with him. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said to Kaminsky. ‘Will you let me know if they come this way?’

‘He’s a Jew,’ said the woman with the stout legs.

‘Who is?’ asked Malamore.

‘Golden, the Soviet partisan who’s taken your nurse,’ said the woman. ‘A Jew has taken your nurse.’

VI

Fabiana was swaying in the saddle. It was early evening, and the sky was a turquoise blue strewn with crimson-lit clouds. As the sun set, they looked at each other, eyes like sleepwalkers, surprised to be alive. The horses were labouring; Socks had been unhappy for a while, fretting, ears back. She tripped in a marmot hole and lost her footing, and Benya had got down to check her fetlock, but they were lucky, nothing broken. Yet he knew if they went on much further, they would destroy the horses.

‘We must stop. Here.’ They’d arrived at a farmer’s cottage that seemed abandoned.

Fabiana dismounted first, stiffly, staggering a little as she hit the ground. ‘I’ll water the horses if you check the house.’

Papasha levelled, Benya walked through the cottage. It was empty. There was running water from a well in the copse, and Fabiana tried to lead Silver Socks but the horse stiffened and wouldn’t go with her.

‘Leave her, I’ll take her,’ Benya said. Together they poured water over their horses who snorted and threw back their heads. Silver Socks stamped her hooves impatiently.

‘Eh! Damned horse,’ muttered Benya. ‘Don’t I look after you all right? Don’t I spoil you?’

Fabiana got the food out of the saddlebags and the two of them sat beside the horses and silently ate the Italian rations of smoked meat, black bread, army biscuit, dried cherries and sunflower seeds. There were two beehives by the well and they scraped out the honey with pieces of wood to get to the wads of honeycomb.

‘Ouch!’ Benya winced as he was stung but they scooped out the honey, excited at this amazing find, he eating with his knife and she with her hands like a little bear.

Fabiana stood, rinsed her hands and drank water straight from the bucket, her brown throat straining as she gulped, and then she poured the rest of the bucket over her head. She glanced at Benya and went to the well, bringing out a full bucket for him. As he drank, he wondered whether he could really trust her: she was an Italian on the Fascist side, an enemy, and he was a Russian Jew. Yet she had placed herself in peril for him, and if he sent her back, she could well be tortured and shot. It was true she had served as a human shield during his escape – some Italians were still romantics – but now they were hunting him because she was with him. He was intensely aware that having her by his side would probably hinder his own chances of escaping to safety. And then there was his own side: if any Soviet soldiers saw him with a Fascist woman, he would be the one before the firing squad as a traitor.

He looked at her. Her dark wet hair was slicked back, and he knew she knew he was sizing her up. The way she had ridden out after him, bringing the guns – that took reckless courage, he thought. She was an astonishing character, that was for sure. He exhaled, making up his mind. They should stay together for now. If they survived the night and the next day, they could go their separate ways then. She could tell Malamore that he had forced her, as a hostage perhaps, and recount his cruelties and his violence. This might even squeeze a few tears out of that old crocodile.

‘You’re worrying,’ she said, looking at him.

‘Is it so obvious?’

‘I know you. How’s your shoulder?’

‘Sore.’

‘It will be. I’ll re-dress it. Check it hasn’t opened up again.’ A pause. ‘You’re thinking I should go back to Malamore, aren’t you?’

He could see her suntanned skin. Every pore was engrained with dust yet shining from the water. Her bravery briefly overwhelmed him: she had lost her husband, and now had to cope with this. He thought of her, the massacred Jews in the woods, the child on Kapto’s knee, his own hopelessness – and he wanted to cry.

‘Thank you for bringing the guns and food. For everything.’ He yawned suddenly, shaking himself to stay awake. ‘I’m exhausted.’

‘Me too.’ She peered at him. ‘You’re very pale.’

‘We must sleep a bit. We’ll be safer outside, I think. Let’s move the horses.’

The cottage was in a clump of poplars which in turn was guarded by a gilded escort of sunflowers that stood as high as a man. They hobbled the horses just on the edge of the wood so they could eat the grass but not stray, and they spread their horse blankets and lay down in the shade, almost surrounded by the sunflowers, and pulled their boots off. He was so stiff from the saddle that he wondered if he would be able to ride again later. His lower back, thighs and buttocks were in agony, as if the saddle had grated his bones.

Keeping his pistol right beside him, a grenade on his belt, the Papasha within reach, he closed his eyes.

Fabiana Bacigalupe, he said to himself, a name out of a Benya Golden novel.

He felt her lie down, then move over, now almost against him. He sensed her breath on his neck. She was asleep.

VII

It was evening in the special family mansion, and Sergo Beria had just got home from his office, where he worked in foreign intelligence while finishing his scientific studies. Only a highly educated person could work in foreign intelligence and Stalin himself had suggested this job for Sergo, who was one of his favourite youngsters.

‘Lavrenti,’ Stalin had said to his father, ‘let me read his reports. I think I’ll be impressed…’

Sergo spoke perfect English and had read the classics of French and English literature. In the office today he had read the American and British newspapers, analysing the statements of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill. He was also allowed to see the transcripts of the devices that listened to the Western diplomats in Moscow. As he came into the house, he heard the skid of brakes outside. A Packard limousine followed by a Willys jeep full of guards had pulled in and officers with sub-machine guns stood in the courtyard. His father was home.

Balding and wearing rimless spectacles, Lavrenti Beria, overweight and ashen with exhaustion, yet seethingly alert, dressed in a flowery Georgian blouse and baggy linen trousers, burst into the kitchen and hugged his wife Nino, and then Sergo.

‘Darling Lavrenti,’ cried Nino. ‘You look terrible! You must sleep. How are you?’

‘I haven’t slept for twenty-four hours,’ he said. ‘But I’m not the only one. He hasn’t slept for seventeen hours and he’s a lot older than me, twenty years older.’ They all knew who ‘He’ was. Dictatorship had the power to turn day into night and night into day. Stalin was nocturnal and worked at night so the entire government did too.

‘What’s the news?’ asked Nino.

‘Nothing good. We’ve made idiotic mistakes and now we’re paying the price.’ Beria was the only man in Russia who could say such a thing and he revelled in his ability to do so. No one was bugging his house; he did the bugging. He radiated the energy of a man at the height of his powers during the greatest crisis of his nation. ‘We’re surrounded by too many cowards, too many fools.’ He stopped and looked at his little family: ‘Darling! What a joy to see your face. Kiss me again.’ Then he turned to Sergo: ‘How’s my clever son? How did you get so handsome with an ugly father like me? I’m so proud of my Sergo!’ He took Sergo in his arms and kissed him three times on his cheeks. ‘Come and talk to me while I rest…’

Upstairs in his study-cum-office, Sergo pulled down the blinds, Beria kicked off his shoes and fell back on the wide sofa where he often napped when he got the chance.

‘Mamiko’ – Sergo used the Georgian for ‘Daddy’ – ‘is it really so bad in the south?’

‘Worse, bicho, my boy,’ replied his father. ‘We could lose the war there. Not just our war, but if the Germans break through, the British and Americans would lose too. It’s desperate. Now tell me about your life. Tell me what the war drums are saying?’ All the leaders had read The Last of the Mohicans and every one of them talked about war drums and white chiefs. Sergo told him that he had been on a date with Martha Peshkova.

‘That girl is adorable,’ said Beria. ‘And what news of Sveta? He never lets her out. Poor child! She’s a prisoner in that gloomy apartment. Still so lonely?’

‘Well, yes and no…’

‘Still in love with you? I’d never let you marry into that family. Stay away!’

‘Don’t worry, Mamiko, she’s over me.’

Beria sat up. ‘She’s got someone else?’

Sergo took a breath, remembering what he’d promised Martha. ‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You know something, bicho. Tell me.’

‘I shouldn’t say. It’s a secret.’

‘I think I can keep a secret or two, don’t you?’ said Beria. ‘Tell me about Svetlana.’

When he was alone, Beria closed his eyes. He saw the grey face of Stalin earlier that morning hearing that the Russians were losing the battle of the Don Bend; remembered the cowardly panic of the headless-chicken generals at Budyonny’s headquarters in the North Caucasus; reminded himself that he had to recheck the plane, tank, rifle production figures and the mines of the Gulag Camps; and noted that the death roster of 124 eminent prisoners signed by Stalin would, by now, have been executed in Lefortovo Prison; some of their names meant nothing but he had tortured a couple himself back in ’38. Finally he indulged himself with the vision of the young woman with her Veronica Lake figure, golden hair and wanton thighs who’d been brought to him by his adjutant Colonel Sarkisian, how she’d ridden him naked in his office and then asked for an apartment for her mother. One day he’d find a girl who loved him for himself, he mused.

And out of all this murkiness and toil, only one thing was bright: Sergo his son, his sun, his hope for the cruel realm in which he was himself the cruellest. I will never let him work in my filthy world, he promised himself. He is too good for that. How I love him.

And Beria slept.

VIII

‘A Jew?’ asked SS-Obersturmführer Oskar Dirlewanger from the doorway of the house in Shepilovka where the collaborator SS-Brigadeführer Kaminsky had his headquarters. Malamore, who had been about to leave, looked up. The commander of the Sonderkommando, Oskar Dirlewanger, was just forty-seven but wizened by booze, pills, opium and the years in prison for petty thefts and raping children. His needled head was almost shrunken and too small for his body, which itself was so thin that his patron Himmler nicknamed him ‘Gandhi’. ‘A Jew has taken an Aryan nurse? Shameless.’ He pulled on his shirt and started to button it up.

‘He simply used her as a human shield to escape,’ said Malamore, aware that he was sounding almost apologetic.

‘Fuck that.’ Dirlewanger absentmindedly fingered his necklace of what appeared to be yellow beans, wrinkled and shapeless. ‘Can’t you see the Communist Jew has taken her for sexual gratification? Look, gentlemen, I know all about sexual congress with our enemies. You should see the Polish girls, the little Jewesses I’ve had along the way. But we can’t allow it the other way round.’ He strapped on his gunbelt.

‘Nonsense, Obersturmführer, and besides we didn’t ask for your help,’ replied Malamore in German.

‘What is this girl to you?’ Dirlewanger asked, alert suddenly.

‘Careful, Obersturmführer,’ said Malamore. ‘She is the respectable widow of an officer of the Tridentine killed in action this week, an Italian nurse.’

‘But you know her, don’t you?’

‘I do.’

‘Biblically? Inside and out?’

‘I warn you—’ Malamore seethed inside with a disquieting mixture of anger and nerves.

‘Fine.’ Dirlewanger waved a hand. ‘Let’s leave it at that.’ He turned to Kaminsky. ‘We’re responsible for this, Kaminsky. I shall join your detachment, Consul Malamore, with a few of my chosen poachers.’

This was not turning out as Malamore planned. This Dirlewanger was not a real soldier at all. More like a ratcatcher or someone who belonged in a straitjacket in an asylum. He would make a complaint to the High Command of the Armarta Italiana, General Gariboldi himself if necessary. If these cutthroats were with him, how was he to keep Fabiana safe?

‘I insist,’ replied Dirlewanger. ‘Our mission to Russia is to wipe out the very possibility of Blutschande – blood-shame – yet you let a Jew, yes a fucking Bolshevik Jew, right here in Russia where we’re annihilating the Jewish bacteria forever, steal your own whore from under your nose—’

No one had spoken to Malamore like this, ever. He wheeled around towards Dirlewanger, his hand on his Beretta. ‘She’s not anyone’s whore.’

‘Pardon me, Malamore. Apologies. No need to take offence. None was meant.’ Dirlewanger smiled, revealing yellow teeth, little and sharp like a ferret. A point scored. ‘But, esteemed consul,’ he went on. ‘She is something to you or I’ll be damned. This is the most reaction I’ve got from you in six months. Forgive me for speaking directly to a comrade but I can have a whore and cut her throat five minutes later. You can see one of mine hanging outside right here. Duty’s everything to me, and we all know you Italians are notorious for letting romance interfere with our mission.’

A vein started to throb on Malamore’s forehead.

‘Don’t do anything,’ whispered Montefalcone, who suddenly recognized that the necklace Dirlewanger wore was made of human earlobes. ‘Let’s get out of here. She’s getting further away all the time.’

‘He’s right,’ said Dirlewanger. ‘Pardon me but I am known for my frankness. I get the job done and if I upset the prudish bourgeois, I am proud of that. My patron the Reichsführer-SS himself regards it as an admirable quality. Lucky you have us Germans behind you, Consul Malamore.’ He turned to the doctor. ‘Dr Kapto, we need to get you to the Sixth Army today, but let’s also be clear. The Jew escaped under your watch, and I call that a strange occurrence. If you don’t want that investigated, I suggest you join us.’

‘But the child—’

‘Bring your little “lady friend” if you must. Everyone should see this beautiful countryside at least once. I’ve called the Sixth Army headquarters for you and they know about your map and they are keen to get it urgently. Wehrmacht units will ensure your map reaches Colonel von Schwerin.’

‘Thank you. It will be my pleasure to ride out with you, Obersturmführer,’ said Dr Kapto, ruffling the girl’s hair. He glanced brightly around the room with his colourless eyes.

‘All is agreed then,’ said Dirlewanger. ‘Brigadeführer Kaminsky, report this anti-partisan Aktion to the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe as well as our Italian, Romanian and Hungarian allies in case we pass through their sectors. Grishaka! Mironka!’ he shouted. ‘Saddle the horses!’

Two Cossack grooms, teenaged boys with topknots and unbuttoned German tunics, appeared at the doorway and then skedaddled towards the stables. There was no time to be lost.

IX

When Fabiana awoke, she imagined herself as a girl during the school holidays lazing in a field in the countryside. All she could smell was the sweet dust that she associated with harvest and the masculine leather of saddles. She was on the ground, on a blanket, her head on a saddlebag. A crackle of shots somewhere, then the familiar boom of the big guns, and the smell of burning and diesel. Though the evening light was beginning to fade, it was still hot. Her blouse was open; fingers of sweat ran down her chest and her back. She opened her eyes. There was someone else with her. She heard a horse whinny and the reality struck her: she was in the war, her husband was dead, Malamore was out there looking for her; and she, a nurse of the Armata Italiana, was with a Russian man – a Jew and probably a Communist, a convict who’d served in the Camps – a stranger whom she hardly knew.

She felt sick. She couldn’t see how she could return to her own side now. Her people would surely execute her. She imagined scenarios of shots fired through the grass; she could taste her own end, feel the massive blow of a bullet smashing into her; she could see herself lying on the grasslands, her mouth a little open, her eyes staring. Could she lie about what had happened? Would they believe her? Or court-martial her? If so, better to perish out here. The shame for her darling parents if she was shot for treason… Everyone would hear of it on the Campo San Stin, the archive, the school… She would ruin them all.

Fabiana lay still and cursed her own impulsive stupidity. In normal life, there’s always a way to reverse even the silliest of decisions but not in war and she wanted to weep. She was going to die very soon and with this knowledge came a bracing surge of freedom. She could be anything now, do anything. She could say what she wished. She belonged to no country, no city, no man. She was living breath to breath. She had seen many men die, she had been beaten by her husband Ippolito, she was in a wild, hostile land and she was surprised to find that she was not so afraid of dying any more. She had seen so many young men step across that threshold, just a breath one side, and no breath the other. Instead, a sudden joy rushed through her. This field of sunflowers was her own private kingdom and here things couldn’t be simpler. A cottage, two horses, two beehives, a well – and this man.

She turned over and Benya Golden was looking back at her, lying on his side. Blue eyes speckled with yellow. She had spent hours watching him in the tent but then he had been weak, unconscious, like a sick child. Now he gave her a look of greeting and she returned it. He too, she sensed, was as much himself as he could be out here on the steppe, on the run. They said nothing for a while. He was very thin, she noticed again, his nose hawkish, and he had a certain sort of Jewish face and very long black eyelashes. The thinness made him seem older than his early forties; his fair skin was tanned by riding on the steppe; his shorn hair and his beard though growing fast in the heat were sown with grey.

He sat up and shook off the dust and hay, and the ashes, that seemed to float in the air all the time.

‘You’ve been awake long?’ she asked.

‘I’ve been up for a while. I must ride on soon,’ he said. She reached into her saddlebag and handed him bread and some fruit. Then they fell upon the honey and this time he watched her as she scooped chunks of honeycomb and ate it off her cupped fingers and he did the same, which made them both laugh as the honey revived them. Then she brought out a flask, a man’s regimental flask engraved IB, which he knew had belonged to her husband Ippolito Bacigalupe.

‘Armenian cognac.’ She handed it to him. He took a mouthful; then she did the same.

‘We mustn’t take too much,’ he said.

‘Why not?’ she answered. ‘We deserve it and’ – she shrugged – ‘this is a beautiful place and we’re alive…’ She took another swig and he accepted it too. ‘There’s nothing more decadent and delicious than drinking at breakfast,’ he said, the sort of urbane line he’d used to say in his old life. Now it seemed absurd.

Beside them their horses whickered as they drank water from the bucket Benya had brought them. Standing guard on every side, the sunflowers whispered and swayed, raising their focus towards the last rays of the setting sun.

‘You said, “I must ride on…”’ she started.

Benya nodded. ‘You have to go back. The longer you’re with me, the harder it will be for you. It won’t just be Italians looking for us now. Germans and Hiwis will be too. The Kalmyks scouts will track us, and will work out we didn’t take the direct route back to the Russian lines. Please, ride to the nearest village… You can blame me, say I held you at gunpoint, that I kidnapped you, I committed untold cruelties, appalling liberties, ravished you savagely…’

‘Am I a danger to you too?’ she asked, understanding suddenly what was bothering him.

He sighed. ‘If they have you back, no one will bother to chase a Russian prisoner. It’s you they want. I’m unlikely to make it but I have a better chance alone. And you don’t need to die too… Please, Fabiana. You must live.’

‘That’s a generous offer,’ she said, looking at him deeply. ‘Traditionally only the gods could make such an offer but you, a fugitive, a convict on the run, make it too… That’s magnificent.’

‘We have a word for that. Chutzpah.’

She knew he was right. ‘OK, I’ll go.’ She pulled on her boots and stood up, rolling up the blanket, carrying her saddlebags towards her palomino.

Their two saddles sat side by side, between the two hobbled horses, the leather warmed by the sun. He came to help her with the saddle and, without a thought, she dropped the blankets and bags.

‘Arrivederci. Somehow forever,’ she said, turning towards him. ‘No, maybe just goodbye. Forever.’

X

‘Alt!’ Malamore held up his hand and raised his binoculars in the gathering dusk. ‘The scouts are coming back.’

Dirlewanger rode on one side of him, Montefalcone on the other. Behind them followed a circus of men in uniforms: a band of Dirlewanger’s ‘poachers’ wearing German army grey with SS runes and those gruesome trophy necklaces, a few Italian Savoy Celere with their feathered caps, some Blackshirts, Hiwi Cossacks and Schuma militiamen. The Baby Doctor brought up the rear, his satchel of papers around his neck. The girl sat on his saddle in front of him, his hand on her belly. Wearing tank commander’s goggles against the dust, Malamore was scouring the long horizon.

Night was falling but the steppes – so empty in the early morning – were buzzing with activity. They encountered lines of German tanks, hatches open with their drivers wearing goggles. Wehrmacht soldiers were riding on them, dusty boys waving through the haze. Montefalcone noticed that they smirked at the motley exoticism of their squadron and seemed unimpressed by these apparent freaks conducting ‘anti-partisan aktions’. Occasionally they saw Soviet tanks; a T-34 with a broken track now on the back of a truck was being repaired by some of Kaminsky’s engineers, and a burnt-out heavy KV was surrounded by charred wizened figurines the size of children. And everywhere there were dazed families riding in horse-drawn carts piled high with mattresses and pans and household icons, or heaving wheelbarrows, or just walking, walking and pleading for water: ‘Water for the children…’

In the distance, Malamore saw the Kalmyk scouts, wiry men with Mongol faces, drooping moustaches and scarlet blouses, curved swords on their backs, riding on quick, scrawny ponies. They were approaching fast.

The Kalmyk scouts, Altan and Gushi, saw Malamore’s squadron awaiting them and looked at each other. They had only joined the Italians a month earlier. As the German panzers had raced across the steppes towards their villages in Kalmykia, the elders had gathered in the open teahouse in the middle of the village to discuss what to do. The elders warned against acting too quickly, but all agreed that if the Germans reached Kalmykia, they would at last be liberated from the evil Bolsheviks who had destroyed their farms, forced collectivization upon them and banned their Buddhist rites that had endured since Mongol times. But Altan, who was a superb rider and the father of two children, had decided not to wait but to ride across the lines to join the Fascists. Gushi, who was just sixteen and as slim as a reed, joined him as did his cousin Ubashi. Instead of working on the collective farm, drying the grain in the dryer, they could go back to riding their horses, the proper pursuit of a Kalmyk man since the days of Genghis and before. But Ubashi had been wounded in the fight against the Shtrafbat and captured by Communists, and they knew he was dead.

‘Not just Italians,’ said Altan, the older one, spotting the different uniforms in Malamore’s posse.

‘Germans, Cossacks and Schuma,’ Gushi said, clicking his tongue.

They didn’t have the information Malamore wanted. ‘He won’t be happy,’ Altan said, spurring on his pony.

‘Well?’ asked Malamore as they pulled to a halt in front of him.

‘We don’t think they’ve come this way,’ said Altan.

Malamore shook his head and ground his teeth in frustration.

‘We rode almost as far as the front. Close to the Don.’

‘Is it possible they got through?’

‘Possible,’ said Altan. ‘But not likely. They’re not experienced riders.’

‘So where are they?’

The scouts conferred in their own language then Gushi suggested, ‘If they were clever, they wouldn’t have come this way at all but ridden around the village, waited out in some barn during the daylight hours, then they will come this way from the other direction.’

Malamore wiped the dust from his eyes and opened his map. The Kalmyks leaned forward and pointed to the route, nodding and chatting in their impenetrable tongue.

‘We split up into two squadrons and we’ll trap them,’ barked Malamore, coughing hoarsely. ‘The scouts are right. Even if they looped back, they must come this way in the end – and we’ll be waiting.’

XI

Fabiana leaned against Benya and took his face in her hands and kissed him on the lips, once, twice, to check his eyes, but they were closed, eyelashes black against his skin. She could taste honey and the brandy they’d just been drinking, savour the strong smell of his skin, pure and unscented by soap or cologne. Then there was the hay, the horses, the leather of the saddles, and to her this blend smelled of the happiest moments in her life, the freest.

He never lifted the saddle. Instead she unbuttoned his shirt and ran her hands over his shoulders, the hair on his slight chest, then his trousers. He undressed her too and she could feel him hesitate when he found the Browning pistol in the belt of her britches. He seemed to come to a decision. She’d been armed all the time yet hadn’t tried to shoot him, hadn’t tried to return to her people. He dropped the Browning on the discarded britches and they fell on to the blankets. She felt him kissing the sweat on her neck, her forehead, then, as her legs came up, behind her knees. They were so close that the laws of sound were reversed: hers resounded out of his throat; his came out of her mouth.

She had never wanted anyone like this, nor known such wanting, nor even considered doing such a brazen thing, or having such things being done to her so boldly. She was shy for a moment, but in the Secret Kingdom of Sunflowers these things seemed natural. He talked to her, told her what he was doing, how delicious she was, and did things that made her skin fizz where he touched her. She felt herself melting with pleasure where she had been untouched, and treasured the words and the nameless feelings that now had names. This was the poetry she hoped to be able to recite in her old age, and she felt her body was the book in which these poems were written.

When the red wave came, she found herself thrilling, exulting, and it came out as ringing laughter, her head right back, her hair wild as snakes and her mouth open, teeth gleaming. Imagine myself: Fabiana Pellegrini, doing these things, feeling like this, making someone else feel this. There had only been Ippolito before Benya. But her husband, who had never looked at her in this way, who had become frustrated and angry that she didn’t excite him enough, had blamed her for his own shortcomings, slapping her hard in the face till her nose bled and she’d tasted blood. If he saw me now, what would he think? she asked herself, smiling – and then didn’t care any more as another wave overtook her.

They lay still, the sweat running down them like rivulets. The unbearable tenderness passed and soon she found herself weltering once more. This time she did not feel as shy as she had before. She was utterly at ease and she thought she would do anything he asked and still she would not feel guilty or dirty. It was something quite different she felt now. She wiped her face, using the back of her sunburnt arm, with a ravenous triumph.

Afterwards they lay naked under the tree in the moonlight, guarded by the horses and by the sunflowers, their faces closed and downcast now in the darkness. In the distance, the clatter of gunfire was closer though it now sounded as familiar as the bees that droned home to their hives, as the hooting of the owls.

‘Do you really want me to go?’ she asked quietly.

‘You must. I want you to live even more now. Go back.’

‘What if I don’t want to go back?’

‘Then you’re mad.’

‘What if I am mad?’

‘Are you?’

She considered this gravely. ‘Yes, yes, I think you’ve made me so.’

‘It will pass. And then you must return. You must do whatever you need to survive.’

She sighed. ‘I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to be Malamore’s trophy. I don’t want him to think he owns me, and I don’t want my old life.’

‘Wouldn’t that be a small price for being alive?’ Benya paused and took a breath. ‘Has it occurred to you that Malamore killed your husband?’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘To get you, of course.’

A long silence.

‘It would explain a lot,’ Fabiana said slowly. ‘Though oddly that never occurred to me.’

‘He was right there when it happened, wasn’t he?’

‘Just after,’ she said quietly. It made sense, and what she was going to do now also made sense. She was suddenly clearer about this than she had ever been. ‘I’m no longer Fabiana Bacigalupe or Fabiana Pellegrini. I’ve always wanted to be this woman, the way we are now. Isn’t this what all those poems are about, the ones I have read ever since I was a young girl? And I can’t go back to a creature like Malamore. I just want to tell you something, Benya Golden: I will not return to the Italian lines. If you ride I must ride with you.’

He nodded, seemingly relieved.

‘Can we just be bandits in love? That’s what I call us,’ she said. ‘Bandits in love. Nothing more than that. Just for once, for one last time, in our own world.’

They ate together. ‘When did you know this might happen?’ she asked him.

‘I never knew. I am always amazed. Are you studying history now?’

‘Every woman knows love is about history,’ she said. ‘Our history. So, did I choose you or you choose me?’

‘I could hardly choose you when I was unconscious,’ he joked, and a lazy drowsiness overcame them. Benya, usually so alert, became careless and languid, longing to enjoy the harvest night, the dense, treacley air, the lilac blackening in the mixed palette of the wide-slashed sky. They lay together, still naked, the air was so warm, and the horses settled, swishing their tails, their chests twitching to drive off flies – and she felt new muscles jumping in newly discovered sinews and chambers of her body. She had never understood why people fussed about sex – it had seemed as awkward as it was futile, like a language she couldn’t understand. But now, when time was so short, she had learned the language instantly.

Each time they awoke, they sipped brandy and feasted on the spread of stars on the banqueting table of the sky. She could taste the liquid pleasure on her lips, like melting toffee. The lava powered through her veins, fizzed in her skin and set off the weltering again within her, and her thighs came up again, and they made love between bouts of almost deliriously deep sleep. Around them they could feel the trees and sunflowers, the very earth itself, moving and buzzing as they were – as if they were resting on the back of a giant, stirring, breathing beast.

But soon the howitzers were building up once more. She saw the black-crossed bombers flying like giant stencils across the sky heading to demolish Stalingrad. The distant roaring was perhaps columns of tanks. Suddenly, over the Don Bend in the east, the sky was ripped wide open, turning a rage of red, as if it had been skinned to reveal the flesh beneath.

It was then that she knew what the intensity of the battle meant for them. Benya was risking his own life for her happiness, sacrificing it for something that could only be horribly short-lived. She should return to her people; she knew she could persuade Malamore she was innocent, to call off his pursuit, and she would make it home to Venice. But every day Benya lingered with her, there would be fewer Russians on this side of the Don. Soon there would be none and it would be nearly impossible for Benya to get back to the Soviet side. Malamore was chasing Benya because of her and if they caught him, a Jew, they would kill him. If he was ever seen with her by his own side, she would be the death sentence of the man who had given her the kiss of life. The threads of their dilemma were unravellable except by her leaving.

‘Darling Benya,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve decided. You were right: I must go back. Don’t try to dissuade me now. It is decided.’

He did not reply for a long time; then he sighed, knowing now how sometimes men perished because they were too weary to go on.

‘It’s too dark now to do anything. I think we bandits in love must stay together. Somehow forever. And for us forever means now. No one will find us here. Let’s decide what to do in the morning.’

XII

The Kalmyks saw the clump of poplars and within it the roof of a peasant cottage. They stilled their horses and their own bodies and listened. They thought they heard the whinny of a horse but couldn’t be sure. Altan signalled at Gushi and they slipped their Schmeissers off their shoulders and dismounted deftly with barely a sound, peering through the granular lilac of the falling night.

This place was set perfectly on the route the Russian and the nurse would take if, as they suspected, they had chosen the indirect way back to the Don and the Russian lines. When the scouts had left Malamore, they had ridden hard back over the steppe around the other side of the village in a giant half-circle, starting again at the Italian headquarters, Radzillovo. When they saw the stream they let their mounts drink and then rode them into the water and along it, searching the banks for the tracks of two horses. And, sure enough, they had found the marks of hooves entering the water and they knew what the prisoner had done.

‘Not bad for a greenhorn,’ said Altan to Gushi as they tracked the place where the two horses came out of the stream and loped up to the cottage.

They listened; then they tied up their ponies, slipped off their soft boots and, clamping a djindal between their teeth, they crept on all fours closer to the cottage until they could just make out its gate, wattle fence, white windows. They were looking for horses but nothing moved. No smoke was rising from the house.

They looked at one another and Altan shrugged, gestured backwards and they rose to their feet and returned to the ponies. By now it was pitch dark. Even with the moonlight they would be unable to see properly and there were only two of them. So much could go wrong.

‘Why are we stopping?’ asked Gushi. ‘I sense they are here.’

‘Based on what, boy?’ asked Altan.

‘On the tracks on the ground – and the pulse in my throat,’ said the younger one. ‘We can cut his throat and take his ears back to the Italians and win promotion.’

‘And what if by mistake, shooting in the darkness, we harm her? The colonel’s mare! What promotion will we get then, puppy? We will be promoted to the noose, that’s what.’ Altan drew some dried camel meat from under his saddle and offered Gushi some distilled mare’s milk from his canteen. ‘Here’s the plan,’ he said. ‘We sleep here, and before it’s dawn we will catch them like rats in a trap.’