Under a Blood Red Sky

27

Davinsky Camp July 1933

Hundreds of skeletal figures in ragged clothes stood in rows in front of the shabby wooden huts, waiting. The women’s patience stretched beyond endurance. It had been a hard day out in the Work Zone and an exhausting march back to camp, but now they were being made to stand in the compound. They stared at the ground, slapping at the marsh flies and mosquitoes.

Two hours they’d waited for the roll-call to begin under grey evening skies, no talking and hands behind backs. Around them the barbed-wire fences and well-guarded watchtowers breathed out a menace that the prisoners had learned to deflect with their own private rituals: a memory here, a snatch of a song there. Or even a shifting of weight from one foot to the other in a secret internal rhythm inside their lapti, their birch-bark shoes.

The door to the building finally opened. The Commandant emerged and all eyes turned to admire his smooth plump cheeks, the way you admire a pig’s fat flank before slitting its throat. He strutted, swished a long lead-tipped cane, ordered the start of evening roll-call, but his speech was slurred, his tongue slow and laboured. He strode through the rows while the numbers were called out, disgusted by the fleshless bodies and the bloodless lips, but his cane enjoyed its daily dance on fragile bones and tender skin.

‘You.’ He rapped a shoulder. ‘Name?’

‘Prisoner 1498.’ Eyes on his leather-clad feet. ‘Fedorina, Anna.’

‘Crime?’

‘Convicted under Article 58, section-’

The lead tip of the cane slipped under her chin and raised her head, silencing her. She looked straight at the Commandant, at his soft loose lips and his greedy unfocused eyes, and coughed. A slender thread of blood and sputum flew from her lips to his. He lashed out with his cane on her cheek and scrubbed his mouth with his sleeve, but turned and lurched drunkenly away from her.

She managed not to smile. But the faintest of chuckles issued from Nina at her side and Anna was aware that the whole row of women experienced a surge of fresh energy.

An idea came to Anna when she was drenched in sweat, labouring on the road construction, mashing up rocks into gravel with a hammer she could barely lift, and she wondered why on earth she hadn’t thought of it before. There was something she had to ask Nina, but today the big Ukrainian was working in a different brigade, so Anna had to bide her time.

She spent the day trying to focus her mind on something neutral, such as how fast a single tree could repopulate its small patch of forest when its companions were hacked down, given the savage Siberian winters and the small mammals and cross-bills that nibbled the seeds from the fallen cones. Or whether the stars existed before our own sun in the vast arch of the northern sky, or the other way round. But as soon as the women were herded into their crocodile formation for the return trek, she couldn’t stop herself whispering her question to Nina.

‘Nina, there’s a civilian worker in the office, isn’t there? The tall dark-haired one.’

Her big-boned companion nodded her head, like a horse chasing flies. ‘Yes. She lives in the civilian quarters and deals with the paperwork.’

‘You talk with her sometimes, I’ve seen you.’

Nina laughed softly. ‘I think she fancies me.’

Anna smiled. ‘Would she know about any escapees and what happened to them? Surely there must be a record in the office.’

It wasn’t much to go on. Just a flicker of Nina’s eyes to one side, before she shrugged her broad shoulders and said, ‘Knowing how drunk our beloved Commandant is most of the time, I don’t think there’s much chance of an efficient filing system in his office, do you?’

But the flicker of the eyes was enough for Anna.

‘Nina,’ she muttered, ‘you’re lying to me.’

‘No, I-’

‘Please, Nina.’ Anna brushed her arm against the other woman’s sleeve. ‘Tell me.’

They shuffled along in silence for a few steps, the sky drained of colour as the sun slid away from them. Around them nothing but the vast pine forest listened to the sighs of the hundreds of women.

‘What have you heard?’ Anna pressed.

Nina spoke quickly. ‘An unnamed female escapee from this camp was reported found at the railway station in Kazan.’ She hesitated, then added. ‘Found dead, shot in the head.’

Anna’s feet stumbled, blind and boneless. White noise, the sound of pain, filled her head. Nina was still speaking but Anna couldn’t hear her words.

‘No,’ she choked, ‘it’s not her.’

Her lungs closed up completely and she couldn’t breathe. She stumbled, bent double, fighting to drag in air, and the crocodile behind her shuffled to a halt.

‘Move yourself, suka, you bitch!’ The nearest guard raised his rifle butt and brought it down with impatience on the small of her back.

She crunched to her knees on the dusty pine needles, but the shock of the blow jerked her lungs back into action. Nina yanked her on to her feet and into some kind of forward motion before the guard could strike again.

‘That bastard needs his rifle butt shoved up his arse,’ Tasha muttered from behind.

‘It won’t be her,’ Anna whispered. ‘It won’t be Sofia.’

Beside her Nina nodded but she said nothing more.

After that, Anna had no ability to control what went on in her head. It took all her strength just to keep her feet and lungs working long enough to prevent a repetition of the rifle-whipping. Sweat gathered in sticky pools in the hollow of her throat and her thoughts seemed to slide into them and drown.

Throughout her years in the camp she had carefully steered her mind away from the razor-edged memories. But now, despite all her efforts, it returned again and again to the day in 1917 that she still thought of as Cranberry Juice Day. She shivered, despite the heat of the evening.

The day had started well in the Dyuzheyevs’ drawing room.

When Anna moved her bishop, Grigori Dyuzheyev had frowned and tapped his teeth with a long finger.

‘Anna, my girl, you are becoming lethal. I’ve taught you too well.’

Anna laughed, looked out of the window at the snow drifting down from a leaden sky and tried to hide the ripple of pleasure she felt. Papa wasn’t interested in chess, he was over by the fire buried in yet another of his dreary newspapers. But when she was young she had badgered Grigori to teach her and she’d learned fast. It seemed she had a natural flair for strategy and now, four years later, she was threatening to steal his king from under his nose. He never gave her any quarter and made her battle for every piece.

But at the very last moment she saw his heavy eyebrows swoop together in a spasm of alarm at the prospect of losing to a twelve-year-old slip of a girl. Suddenly she’d had enough. She didn’t want to humiliate this generous man, so she left the back door open for his king and let him win.

‘Well done, my girl,’ Grigori snorted his dragon sound. ‘That was close, by God. Next time maybe you’ll do better – if you’re lucky!’

Papa glanced up from his paper and chortled. ‘Got you on the run, has she, my friend?’ But he leaned his head back against his armchair and stroked his whiskers the way he did when he was unhappy about something.

‘What is it, Papa?’

He tossed the copy of Pravda aside.

‘It’s this damn war against Germany. It’s going so badly for us because of sheer incompetence and two more factories are on strike here in Petrograd. It’s no wonder young men like Vasily are up in arms and on the march these days.’

‘They should be horsewhipped,’ Grigori growled. He blew out smoke from his cigar in a blue spiral of annoyance.

‘Grigori, you can’t hide yourself away among your Italian paintings and your Arab stallions and refuse to see that Russia is in crisis.’

‘I can, Nikolai. And I will.’

‘Damn it, man, these young people have ideals that-’

‘Don’t give me that tosh. Ideology is a word used to hide evil actions behind a cloak of justice. These bloody Mensheviks and Bolsheviks will bring about the disintegration of our country, and then we can never go back.’

‘Grigori, I love you like a brother, but you are blind. The Romanovs’ Russia is not an ordered Utopia and never has been. It’s a doomed system.’

Grigori rose to his feet and strode over to stand with his back to the log fire, the colour deepening in his whiskered cheeks. ‘Do these fools really think their Party membership card will be the answer to all their problems? I tell you, Nikolai, they have a lot to learn.’

‘Maybe it’s we who have a lot to learn,’ Papa said hotly.

‘Don’t be absurd.’

‘Listen to me, Grigori. Do you know that Petrograd, this glorious capital city of ours, has the highest industrial accident rate in Russia? At the Putilov works alone there are fifteen accidents a month and no one is doing a damn thing about it. No wonder the unions are angry.’

‘Papa,’ Anna interrupted, quoting something she read herself in the newspaper the day before, ‘this is the twentieth century, yet nearly half the homes in this city are without a water or sewage system.’

‘Exactly my point. But does Tsar Nicholas care? No, no more than he does about the bread shortages.’

‘That doesn’t mean we have to face the downfall of the tsars,’ snapped Grigori.

‘I rather fear it does,’ Papa retorted.

‘Enough, gentlemen!’ From her place on the sofa beside the fire Svetlana Dyuzheyeva scolded her husband and his friend, shaking an elegant finger at them both. ‘Stop your politicking at once and pour us all a drink, Grigori. Anna and I are bored to tears with it all, aren’t we, malishka?’

But Anna wasn’t actually bored. Recently she’d taken to dipping into Papa’s newspaper when he’d finished with it and was alarmed by the reports of sabre charges by the cavalry in the street. Blood had been spilled on both sides.

‘Isn’t Vasily supposed to be here by now?’ she asked, but was careful to keep her concern out of her voice.

‘The infernal boy is late again,’ Grigori grumbled as he went over to the drinks table and picked up the vodka bottle.

The furnishings in the drawing room were as ornate and elaborate as the house itself, all elegant tables and highly polished cabinets on delicately carved legs. Two electric chandeliers glittered down on beautiful ornaments of fine porcelain, each as thin as paper.

‘Give him time,’ Svetlana smiled, as indulgent as ever.

Anna abandoned the chess table with its inlaid squares of ivory and ebony and took up a new position on the padded window seat.

Don’t die without me.

She whispered the words to the window pane and watched it cloud over with the warmth of her breath, blocking off the white frosted world outside.

Don’t die without me, Vasily.

All kinds of imaginings jostled each other inside her head as the reason why Vasily hadn’t yet appeared, each one sending shivers racing down her spine.

‘Are you cold?’ asked Maria, Anna’s governess, who was quietly bent over a piece of needlework on her lap.

‘No, I’m not cold.’

‘Anna, why don’t you come and sit over here by the fire?’ Svetlana Dyuzheyeva asked with an encouraging smile. ‘It’s warmer than by the window.’

Anna looked round at her. Her own mother had died when she was born, so her ideas of what a mother should be were all pinned on Svetlana. She was beautiful, with alabaster skin and soft brown eyes, and she was kind. Vasily complained that she was too strict but when Anna whispered it to Papa, he said it was for the boy’s own good and, in fact, a sound thrashing from time to time would keep him more in line, instead of roaming the streets with the trade unionist demonstrators and getting himself into trouble.

‘No, thank you,’ Anna replied politely to Svetlana. ‘I prefer to sit here.’

‘Don’t worry, he won’t be much longer, I’m certain,’ Svetlana smiled gently. ‘Not when he knows you’re here.’

Anna nodded to please Svetlana, though she didn’t believe a word of it. She knew too well how strongly the activity in the streets drew Vasily into its coils. On the other side of the window the lawns were covered in a crisp coating of fresh snow that glittered sharp and silent in the intermittent sunshine, as they tumbled away from the house like billowing white skirts all the way down to the lake. With her fingertip she made a tiny round space in the mist on the glass, exactly like a bullet hole, and put her eye to it. The drive was still empty.

She couldn’t ever remember a time in her life without Vasily’s laughter and his teasing grey eyes, or his soft brown hair to cling to when he galloped her round the lawns on his back. But recently he had become more elusive and he was changing in ways that unnerved her. Even when he did sit quietly at home she could see his mind was rushing out into the streets. Turbulent, he called them, and that just frightened her more. That’s when she suggested she should go with him.

‘Don’t be silly, Anna,’ he’d laughed and his laughter hurt. ‘You’d be trampled to death. I don’t want you to be harmed.’

‘That’s not fair, Vasily. I don’t want you to get hurt or be trampled to death either.’

He laughed and shook his head, drawing himself up taller. She’d noticed he was growing so fast these days, he was leaving her far behind.

‘Life’s not fair,’ he said.

‘It should be.’

‘That’s the whole point.’ He waved his arms around in exasperation. ‘Can’t you see, that’s why we’re all out demonstrating on the streets for a fairer society, risking…’ He stopped the words before they came out. ‘The government will be forced to listen to us.’ The grey of his eyes swirled with as many shades as the sea up at Peterhof, and Anna wanted to dip a finger in it.

‘Vasily,’ she said impatiently, ‘take me with you next time. Please, Vasily, I mean it.’

‘You don’t know what it’s like out there, Annochka. However bad you’re imagining it, it’s far worse.’ Slowly his eyes darkened, like the tide coming in. ‘The government leaves us no choice but violence.’ He took her hand between his own and chafed it hard. ‘I don’t want you hurt, Anna.’

And now she was stuck here gazing out of the window, wondering where he was. Don’t die without me, Vasily.

There was the swish of a troika, the jingle of its bells.

Before she’d even jumped off the window seat, the door swung open and in strode a tall youth with grey eyes that sparkled brighter than the chandeliers. A dusting of snow still lay on his brown hair as though reluctant to be swept away, and his cheeks glowed red from the wind. He brought a great swirl of vitality into the room, but instead of his usual immaculate jacket and trousers he was wearing what looked to Anna like horrible workman’s clothes, brown and baggy and shapeless. A flat cap was twirling in his hand.

There was a bustle of kissing cheeks and shaking hands, then Vasily bowed very stylishly to Anna.

‘Don’t look so fierce, Anna,’ he chided her. ‘I know I promised to be here earlier but I was… distracted.’ He laughed and tugged at a lock of her hair but she was not ready to forgive him yet.

‘I thought you’d had your head cut off,’ she said accusingly and turned her back on him, just in time to catch Papa giving Grigori an amused wink.

She flounced over to the chaise longue where Svetlana was sitting, elegant in a dove-grey costume, the sleeves trimmed with smoky fur at the cuffs like bracelets. Anna inhaled the wonderful scent of her and glared at the three men.

Vasily came over and knelt before her on the Persian rug. ‘Annochka,’ his voice was low and it made her scalp tingle, ‘please forgive me for being late.’

‘Vasily, I was so…’ but before the words scared for you rushed out of her mouth, something in her sensed he would not welcome her fears, so she changed it just in time, ‘… so tired of waiting. To dance.’ She kissed his cheek. It smelled of tobacco. ‘I want you to dance with me.’

With another elegant bow that made her heart thump, Vasily swept her up into his arms and twirled her round and round, so that her dress billowed out like a balloon.

‘Mama,’ he called, ‘let’s have some music for our ballerina. ’

‘Let me,’ Grigori offered, moving over to the grand piano at the other end of the room. ‘Here, how’s this?’ With a flourish he struck up a lilting piece.

‘Ah, a Chopin waltz,’ Svetlana sighed with pleasure and rose to her feet, as graceful as the swans on the lake. ‘Doktor Nikolai, will you do me the honour?’

‘Enchanted,’ Papa responded courteously and took her in his arms.

They danced round the room. Outside, the world was cold and growing colder each moment, but inside this room the air was warm and bathed in laughter. Smiling down at her, Vasily held Anna tightly by the waist so that as she twirled in circles her cheek rubbed against the rough serge of his jacket. Every bone in her body was transfixed with joy. She blocked out all thoughts of workers and demonstrators and sabres. Vasily was wrong, she was certain. This world would last for ever.

A knock. The drawing-room door burst open and Maria entered, followed by a maid in black uniform and white lace cap who bobbed a curtsy. Maria’s voice was tight and pained.

‘Excuse me, madam, but there’s been an accident.’

All dancing ceased. The music stopped mid-phrase. Anna felt a shiver of shock in the air.

‘What kind of accident?’ Grigori Dyuzheyev asked at once.

‘There’s been trouble, sir,’ Maria said. ‘Down by the orchard. The head gardener is hurt. A bayonet wound, they say, a bad one.’ She was punctuating each sentence with little gasps. ‘By a troop of Bolsheviks. I thought Doktor Fedorin might be able to help.’

Instantly Papa was all business.

‘I’m coming right away. I’ll just fetch my medical bag from the car.’ He was rushing to the door. ‘Tell someone to bring clean water, Svetlana,’ he called over his shoulder and was gone.

Svetlana hurried from the room. Grigori and Maria followed. Vasily was still holding Anna in his arms and she could feel the rapid pumping of his heart.

‘Well, my little friend, it looks like it’s just you and me. Let’s have one last dance,’ he said, his eyes serious. ‘There won’t be any more dancing after today, Anna.’

He started to twirl her round the room again, even though the music had stopped and there were voices shouting outside. He kissed her on the forehead and she inhaled quickly to capture the scent of him. A single shot rang out. A scream outside. Instantly Vasily was pushing her to the floor and bundling her underneath the chaise longue. She could smell old horsehair and the acid tang of her own fear.

‘No, Vasily,’ she whispered.

‘Yes, Anna. Lie still. You must stay here. Do you hear me?’ He was on his knees, leaning sideways to peer into the low gap between the floor and the seat. The lines of his face had changed, sharper now and suddenly older than his fourteen years. ‘Whatever happens, Anna, don’t come out. Stay here.’ He took her hand, kissed a fingertip, and was gone.

But she had no intention of being packed away like a china doll and immediately started to back out from under the chaise longue. She scurried across the floor on her hands and knees, feet catching in her hem, to the window, where she placed her hands flat on the icy pane, nose pressed beside them, looking out. Why was there a pool of cranberry juice in the snow? As though someone’s cold fingers had dropped a jar of it. But next to the pool lay Grigori Dyuzheyev. He looked asleep.