Under a Blood Red Sky

16

Pyotr liked the meetings. He loved to sit right at the front of the assembly hall, under the nose of the speaker. Every week he arrived early with his Young Pioneer shirt freshly ironed by himself, knees and hands scrubbed clean, hair slicked down into temporary submission. His eyes, like his cheeks, were shining.

‘Dobriy vecher. Good evening, Pyotr.’

A large figure with a smooth shaven head and a spade-shaped black beard took the place next to him. The boy felt the bench sag beneath the man’s weight and heard its groan of protest.

‘Dobriy vecher, Comrade Pokrovsky.’

The blacksmith, too, invariably selected the front bench at these weekly meetings but for quite different reasons from Pyotr’s. Pokrovsky liked to question the speaker.

‘Your father not here again, Pyotr?’

‘Nyet. He’s working late. At the factory.’

‘Hah! Tell me an evening that he’s not working late when there’s a meeting going on here.’

Pyotr felt his cheeks flush red. ‘No, honestly, he’s busy. Producing army uniforms, an important order. Directly from Moscow. He’s been told to keep the factory working twenty-four hours a day if necessary because what he does is so important. Clothing our brave soldiers.’

‘Proudly spoken, boy.’

Pokrovsky grinned at him. The black bush covering his mouth parted to reveal large white teeth, and it seemed to Pyotr that the blacksmith looked impressed. That made him feel less sick about his father’s absence.

‘It’s important work,’ the boy said again and then feared he was insisting too much, so shut up.

But his mood was spoiled. He slumped back on the bench and wished his friend Yuri would arrive. He stared moodily around at the plain walls that had once been covered in colourful murals of Christ and the disciples; at the remains of the ornate icons on the pillars, though most of the carving and decoration had been hacked off, leaving behind jagged edges. All the religious images had been white-washed into a clean and bland uniformity. This pleased Pyotr. As did the metal table set up on a low platform in front of him where the gilt altar had once stood, and the two sturdy chairs that waited for the speakers under the poster of the Great Leader himself. Beside it hung another, a bright red poster declaring, Smert Vragam Sovietskogo Naroda. Death to the Enemies of Soviet People.

This was as it should be. Plain. Real. For the people. Just like Father Stalin had promised. Pyotr and Yuri had read all the pamphlets, learned the Party slogans by heart and Yuri kept telling him that this new world was for them. Pyotr so wanted to believe him, he really did, but sometimes a little worm of doubt wriggled through the slogans, making holes in his certainty. Today, though, the warmth of comradeship swept through his young blood – he could feel it in the hall among the constant murmur of voices.

He looked behind him to where the benches were filling up. Most of the villagers were still in their work clothes of coarse blue cotton, though some of the younger women had discarded their dusty headscarves and changed into colourful blouses that stood out in the drab crowd. The gypsy girl was one. Her scarlet blouse with little puff sleeves looked dramatic against her long black curls, but she kept her eyes lowered and her hands quietly resting in her lap, as if she were still in a church. Pyotr always had the feeling she didn’t quite belong in the village, though he wasn’t sure why.

‘Privet, Pyotr. Hello.’

It was Yuri. He arrived in a scramble of long limbs and squeezed himself in next to Pyotr at the end of the bench, immaculate in his white Young Pioneer shirt and red neckerchief. Only then did Pyotr notice that his own ironing efforts weren’t nearly as effective as Yuri’s mother’s.

‘Have you heard?’ Yuri bent his ginger head to Pyotr’s. He was always one to know the latest news.

‘Heard what?’

‘That Stirkhov is coming to address us tonight.’

Pyotr’s chest tightened just for a second. ‘Why? What have we done?’

‘Don’t be stupid. It’s an honour for us to have the Deputy Chairman of the whole district here.’

‘No, Yuri, Stirkhov only ever comes to Tivil to complain.’

The bulky figure of Pokrovsky leaned close, so close Pyotr could see where the black bristly hairs of his neatly trimmed beard were beginning to turn white in places.

‘This time,’ the blacksmith said, fixing them with his dark eyes, ‘the bastard is probably checking up on people who don’t attend these meetings.’

Even Yuri could not suppress a shiver. His father attended diligently but his mother always claimed she was too ill. Pyotr thought of his own father and felt that horrible tightness in his chest again.

‘You wait and see, Pokrovsky,’ he blurted out. ‘Papa is soon to be awarded the decoration Hero of Labour First Class for his work for the Soviet State.’

Pokrovsky slapped a hand down on Pyotr’s fragile shoulder and roared with laughter, so loud that others in their row turned and stared.

‘May God forgive you, boy, for telling such lies in His church.’

It was the hands. That’s what Pyotr decided. The way they moved through the air, strong and controlling. Wide slicing gestures to underline words; sharp jabs to force a point home. Even the flat palm to silence a rowdy voice from the floor. The hands held the power. Aleksei Fomenko, as Predsedatel kolkhoza, Chairman of the collective farm, had been speaking for an hour and a half, and Pyotr couldn’t take his eyes off him. He was seated behind the table, broad-chested and so full of energy that his lightweight brown jacket didn’t look strong enough to contain him.

So far he had been listing the recent quotas set by the Central Control Commission, naming the shirkers who had fallen behind on their labour days and urging them all to greater achievements. Fomenko leaned forward as he spoke, fixing his audience with a sharp gaze and scanning each villager in the hall. No one escaped.

‘Beware of complacency,’ he urged. ‘We are nearly at the end of Stalin’s First Five Year Plan that is building our country into the leading industrialised nation in the world. We have swept aside the superstitions of the past’ – here his eyes turned to a tall, bony man with fierce eyes, a lion’s mane of chestnut hair and a straggly red beard, but his open shirt revealed the tip of a large wooden cross hanging round his neck – ‘and the concept of servitude has been replaced by the doctrine of freedom.’

He clenched both fists.

‘A new world is emerging. One that will sweep away the mistakes of past centuries, and we are the engine that drives it. Yes, you and I. And collectivism. Never forget that. The grip of the kulaks – those rich bourgeois farmers, class enemies who laughed at the tears of the poor and exploited you all, lashing your backs with their tyranny and their knout – their grip is broken thanks to the inspired vision of our Great Leader.’

Fomenko turned to the giant poster of Stalin’s all-powerful face, swathed in the red banners that hung behind him. ‘Our Great Leader,’ he repeated.

A murmur rippled through the gathering. But nobody picked up the invitation, so it was Yuri who leapt to his feet.

‘Long live our Great Leader!’ he shouted.

‘Fine words,’ Fomenko said solemnly. ‘It takes a boy to show the rest of you the way. This young tovarishch, this comrade, is a true proletarian, a man of the future.’

A woman in the row behind Pyotr rose and echoed, ‘Long live our Great Leader!’

‘Josef Stalin, the Father of Our Nation,’ Fomenko’s voice filled the hall right to the rafters where the debased remains of the saints stared down on them, ‘is the one who is carrying throughout this great Union of Soviets the torch that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin lit for us. Stalin is the one who is ridding us of the saboteurs and subversives, the wreckers and the spoilers who would destroy the drive forward of the great Five Year Plan.’ The Chairman linked his hands together, fingers firmly entwined. ‘We must unite in the great fight towards the Victory of Communism.’

‘What about some great bread to eat instead of a great fight?’ Pokrovsky the blacksmith demanded.

Yuri scowled at him. Pyotr felt himself caught between the two of them. Hesitantly he rose to his feet and in a quiet voice he declared, ‘Comrade Stalin will feed us.’

Beside him he heard the blacksmith groan and he felt himself yanked back down on the bench. Black fingernails like cockroaches sank into his freshly scrubbed flesh as they tried to hold him back, but Pyotr was determined now and started to sing the words of the Internationale: ‘Arise you workers from your slumber…’

‘Comrades.’

The man who spoke was seated next to Fomenko at the table, a stocky figure with a smooth well-fed face, wiry hair and strangely colourless eyes. He wore a sleek leather jacket, the cost of which even Pyotr could see would have fed Anastasia’s family for a month. This man was the District Party Deputy Chairman, sent by the Raikom, and however much Yuri insisted it was an honour to have him at their meeting, it didn’t feel like that to Pyotr. It felt more like a rebuke.

‘Comrades,’ the man repeated, then paused. He was waiting for absolute quiet.

Fomenko eased back in his chair, instantly yielding control to his superior. The hall fell silent.

‘Comrades, I am proud to be here. With you, my brothers, the workers of Red Arrow kolkhoz. You all know me. I am Deputy Chairman Aleksandr Stirkhov from the Raion Committee. I am a man of the people. I bring a message from our Committee. We praise what you have achieved so far in this difficult year and urge you to greater efforts. The failure of the harvest last autumn was the work of wreckers and saboteurs, funded by foreign powers and their spies who plot to destroy our great new surge forward in technology. Throughout parts of Russia it meant we had to tighten our belts a notch or two-’

‘Or three,’ a man called out from somewhere at the back of the hall.

‘Your own belt doesn’t look so tight, Deputy Stirkhov.’ Another voice.

‘Listen to me, Comrade Deputy, I lost my youngest child to starvation.’ This time Pyotr recognised the voice. It was Anastasia’s mother. He would never forget the morning he’d seen her rocking the dead baby in her arms. Anastasia had missed school that day.

Stirkhov pursed his mouth. ‘Admittedly some shortages have occurred.’

‘It’s a famine,’ Pokrovsky declared at Pyotr’s side. ‘A fucking famine. People dying throughout-’

‘Comrade Deputy Stirkhov is a busy man,’ Fomenko interrupted quickly. ‘He is not here to waste time listening to your observations, Pokrovsky. There is no famine. That is a rumour spread about by the wreckers who have caused shortages through their sabotage of our crops.’

‘That’s a lie.’

Stirkhov rounded on the blacksmith. ‘I remember you. You were a troublemaker when I was here before. Don’t make me note you down as a propagator of Negative Statements, or…’ He left the threat unsaid.

Everyone knew what happened to agitators.

Pokrovsky hunched his massive shoulders as though preparing to swing his hammer on his anvil, but he said nothing that the Comrade Deputy’s ears could pick up. Only Pyotr heard the muttered words lost inside the beard: ‘Fuck you, arse licker.’

‘Blacksmith.’ Stirkhov spoke quietly. He lifted a sheet of paper from the pile on the table. ‘I have here a list of items you made and services you performed in this village which were not strictly for the kolkhoz. Not for the collective farm at all, in fact.’

Pokrovsky ran a hand over his shaven head in a gesture of indifference. ‘So?’

‘So you made a metal trough for Lenko’s chickens, you repaired a stove chimney for Elizaveta Lishnikova, you mended the wheel on Vlasov’s barrow, a pan-handle for Zakarov…’ He raised his reptilian eyes and studied Pokrovsky. ‘Need I go on?’

‘No. What is your point?’

‘My point is whether you were paid for these items?’

‘Not paid exactly. But they thanked me with vegetables or a chicken, yes. And Elizaveta Lishnikova darned my shirts for me. I’m not much good with a needle.’ He held up his thick muscular fingers. There was a gentle titter among the benches. ‘Like I said, not paid exactly.’

‘Without your services, those gifts – and I have a long list of them here – would not have been given to you, so I believe we can class them as payment.’

‘Possibly.’

‘Which makes you a private speculator.’

There was a hush. An intake of breath.

Pyotr wasn’t watching Deputy Stirkhov any more. His eyes were on Chairman Fomenko and he could see the stiffening of sinews in his strong neck. Everyone knew what happened to speculators. Pyotr felt a moment’s panic and glanced swiftly round him.

That was when he saw her, the figure at the back near the door, standing motionless. It was the young woman from the forest, the one with the moonlight hair and her blue eyes were fixed right on him. He felt his throat tighten and he looked away quickly. Why was she here, the fugitive? A wrecker and a saboteur come to make trouble? Should he speak out? If only he possessed Yuri’s absolute certainty of action in a black and white world. He dragged in a deep breath and jumped to his feet again.

‘Comrade Chairman, I have something to say.’