The Red Scarf Read online

  Sofia had decided to get Anna out of this hellhole before it was too late, and her only hope of succeeding was with help. Vasily was the only one she could turn to. But would he help? And could she find him?

  The day was as colorless as today. It was winter and the new year of 1917 had just started. All around me the white sky and the white ground merged to become one crisp shell, frozen in a silent world, for there was no wind, just the sound of a swan stamping on the ice of the lake with its big flat feet. Vasily and I had come out for a walk together, just the two of us, wrapped up well against the cold. Our fur boots crunched satisfyingly in the snow as we ran across the lawn to keep warm.

  “Vasily, I can see St. Isaac’s Cathedral dome from here. It looks like a big shiny snowball,” I shouted from high up in the sycamore tree.

  I’d always loved to climb trees and this was a particularly tempting one down by the lake on his father’s estate.

  “I’ll build you a snow sleigh fit for a Snow Queen,” he promised.

  You should have seen him, Sofia. His eyes were bright and sparkling like the icicle fingers that trailed from the tree’s branches, and he watched me climb high up among its huge naked limbs that spread out over the lawn like a skeleton. He didn’t once say “Be careful” or “It’s not ladylike,” like my governess, Maria, would have.

  “You’ll keep dry up there,” he laughed, “and it’ll stop you leaping over the sleigh with your big feet before it’s finished.”

  I threw a snowball at him, then took pleasure in studying the way he carefully carved runners out of the deep snow and set about creating the body of the sleigh with long sweeping sides. At first I sang “Gaida Troika” to him, swinging my feet in rhythm, but eventually I couldn’t hold back the question that was sitting on my tongue burning a hole.

  “Will you tell me what you’ve been doing, Vasily? You’re hardly ever here anymore. I . . . hear things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “The servants are saying it’s getting dangerous on the streets.”

  “You should always listen to the servants, Annochka,” he laughed. “They know everything.”

  But I wasn’t going to be put off so easily. “Tell me, Vasily.”

  He looked up at me, his gaze suddenly solemn, his soft brown hair falling off his face so that the bones of his forehead and his cheeks stood out sharply. It occurred to me that he was thinner, and my stomach swooped when I realized why. He was giving away his food.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes, I’m twelve now, old enough to hear what’s going on. Tell me, Vasily. Please.”

  He nodded pensively, and then proceeded to tell me about the crowds that had gathered noisily in the Winter Palace Square the previous day and how a shot had been fired. The cavalry had come barging in on their horses and flashed their sabers to keep order.

  “But it won’t be long, Anna. It’s like a firework. The taper is lit. It’s just a question of when it will explode.”

  “Explosions cause damage.” I was frightened for him.

  From my high perch I dropped a snowball at his feet and watched it vanish in a puff of white.

  “Exactly. That’s why I’m telling you, Anna, to warn you. My parents refuse to listen to me, but if they don’t change their way of living right now, it’ll be . . .” He paused.

  “It’ll be what, Vasily?”

  “It’ll be too late.”

  I wasn’t cold in my beaver hat and cape, but nevertheless a shiver skittered up my spine. I could see the sorrow in his upturned face. Quickly I started to climb down, swinging easily between branches, and when I neared the bottom, Vasily held out his arms and I jumped down into them. He caught me safely and I inhaled the scent of his hair, all crisp and cool and masculine. A foreign territory that I loved to explore. I kissed his cheek and he held me close, then swung me in an arc through the air and dropped me inside the snow sleigh on the seat he’d carved. He bowed to me.

  “Your carriage, Princess Anna.”

  My heart wasn’t in it now, but to please him I picked up the imaginary reins with a flourish. Flick, flick. A click of my tongue to the make-believe horse and I was flying along a forest track in my silver sleigh, the trees leaning in on me, whispering. But then I looked around suddenly, swivelling on the cold seat. Where was Vasily? I spotted him leaning against the dark trunk of the sycamore, smoking a cigarette and wearing his sad face.

  “Vasily,” I called.

  He dropped the cigarette in the snow where it hissed.

  “What is it, Princess?”

  He came over, but he didn’t smile. His gray eyes were staring at his father’s house, three stories of elegant windows and tall chimneys.

  “Do you know,” he asked, “how many families could live in a house like ours?”

  “One. Yours.”

  “No. Twelve families. Probably more, with children sharing rooms. Things are going to change, Anna. The tsarina’s evil old sorcerer, Rasputin, was murdered last month and that’s just the start. You must be prepared.”

  I tapped a glove on his cheek and lifted one corner of his mouth. “I like change.”

  “I know you do. But there are people out there, millions of them, who will demand change not because they like it but because they need it.”

  “Are they the ones on strike?”

  “Yes. They’re desperately poor, Anna, with their rights stolen from them. You don’t realize what it’s like because you’ve lived all your life in a golden cage. You don’t know what it is to be cold and hungry.”

  We’d had arguments before about this, and I knew better now than to mention Vasily’s own golden cage. “They can have my other coat,” I offered. “It’s in the car.”

  At that the smile he gave me made my heart lurch. It was worth the loss of my coat. “Come on, let’s go and get it,” I laughed.

  He set off in long galloping strides across the lawn, leaving a trail of deep black holes in the snow behind them. I stretched my legs as wide as I could to place my fur boots directly in each of his footsteps, and all the way I could still hear the wind tinkling in the frozen trees. It sounded like a warning.

  SOFIA sat cross-legged on the dirty floorboards without moving. The night was dark and bitterly cold as the temperature plummeted, but her muscles had learned control. She had taught herself patience. So that when the inquisitive gray mouse pushed its nose through the rotten planks of the hut wall, its eyes bright and whiskers twitching, she was ready for it.

  She didn’t breathe. She saw it sense danger, but the lure of the single crumb of bread placed on the floor was too great in the foodless world of the labor camp, and the little creature made its fatal mistake. It scurried toward the crumb. Sofia’s hand shot out. One squeak and it was over. She added the miniature body to the three already in her lap, carefully broke the tiny crumb of bread in two, popped one half of it into her own mouth, replaced the other on the floor, and settled down again into an immobile silence.

  “You’re very good at that,” Anna’s quiet voice said.

  Sofia looked up, surprised. In the dim light she could just make out the restless blond head on one of the bunks and the delicate pale face.

  “Can’t you sleep, Anna?” Sofia asked softly.

  “I like watching you. I don’t know how you move so fast. It takes my mind off”—she gestured about her with a loose flick of her hand—“off this.”

  Sofia glanced around. The darkness was cut into slices by a bright trickle of moonlight through the narrow gaps between the planking of the walls. The long wooden hut was crammed with a hundred and fifty undernourished women on their hard communal bunks, all dreaming of food and filling the chill air with their snores and coughs and moans. But only one was sitting with a precious pile of meat in her lap. Though only twenty-six, Sofia had spent enough years in a labor camp to know the secrets of survival.

  “Hungry?” Sofia asked with a crooked smile.

  “Not really.”
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  “Don’t fancy roast rodent?”

  “Nyet. No, not tonight. You eat them all.”

  Sofia jumped up, bent over Anna’s bunk, and breathed in the stale smell of the five unwashed bodies and unfilled bellies that lay on the bedboard.

  She said fiercely, “Don’t, Anna. Don’t give up.” She took hold of her arm and squeezed it hard. “You’re just a bundle of bird bones under this coat. Listen to me, you’ve come too far to give up now. You’ve got to eat whatever I catch for you, even if it tastes foul. You hear me? If you don’t eat, how are you going to work tomorrow?”

  Anna closed her large blue eyes and turned her face away into the darkness.

  “Don’t you dare shut me out, Anna Fedorina. Don’t do that. Talk to me.”

  Only silence. And the quick shallow breathing. Outside, the wind rattled the wooden planks of the roof, and Sofia heard the faint screech of something metal. One of the guard dogs at the perimeter fence barked a challenge.

  “Anna,” Sofia said angrily, “what would Vasily say?”

  She held her breath. Never before had she spoken those words or used Vasily’s name as a lever. Slowly the tousled blond head rolled back and a smile curved the corners of her pale lips, a faint smudge in the darkness that couldn’t hide the fresh spark of energy that flickered in the blue eyes.

  “Go and cook your wretched mice then,” Anna muttered.

  “You promise to eat them?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll catch one more first.”

  “You should be sleeping.” Anna’s hand gripped Sofia’s. “Why are you doing this for me?”

  “Because you saved my life.”

  Sofia felt rather than saw Anna’s shrug.

  “That’s forgotten,” Anna whispered.

  “Not by me. Whatever it takes, Anna, I won’t let you die.” She stroked the mittened fingers, then pulled her own coat tighter and returned to her spot by the hole and the crumb. She leaned her back against the wall, letting the trembling in her limbs subside until she was absolutely still once more.

  “Sofia.” Anna’s whisper rippled inside a gentle laugh. “You have the persistence of the devil.”

  Sofia smiled. “He and I are well acquainted.”

  THREE

  SOFIA leaned against the hut wall, shutting her mind to the icy drafts, and let Anna’s words echo quietly in her head.

  That’s forgotten.

  Two years, eight months ago. Sofia pulled off the makeshift mitten on her right hand, stitched out of blanket threads and mattress ticking, and lifted the two scarred fingers right up to her face. She could just make out the twisted flesh, a reminder every single day of her life. So no, not forgotten.

  It had started when they were taken off axing the boughs from felled trees and put to work on the road instead. It was progressing fast. The prison labor brigades were not told where it had come from nor where it was headed, but the pressure was hard and unrelenting and it showed in the attitude of the guards, who grew more demanding and less forgiving of any delays. People started making mistakes.

  Sofia reached such a state of exhaustion that her mind became foggy and the skin on her hands was shredded despite the makeshift gloves. Her world became nothing but stones and rocks and gravel, and then more stones and rocks and gravel. She piled them in her sleep, shoveled grit in her dreams. Hammered piles of granite into smooth flat surfaces till the muscles in her back forgot what it was like not to ache with that dull grinding pain that saps your willpower because you know it’s never going away. Even worse was the ditch digging. Feet in slime and filthy water all day and spine fixed in a permanent twist that wouldn’t unscrew. Sleep became a luxury, and eating became the only aim in life.

  “Can any of you scarecrows sing?”

  The surprising request came from a new guard. He was tall and as lean as the prisoners themselves, only in his twenties and with a bright, intelligent face. What was he doing as a guard, Sofia wondered? Most likely he’d slipped up somewhere in his career and was paying for it now.

  “Well, which one can sing?”

  Singing used up precious energy. No one ever sang. Anyway, work was supposed to be conducted in silence.

  “Well? Come on. I fancy a serenade to brighten my day. I’m sick of the sound of your fucking hammers.”

  Anna was up on the raised road crushing stones into place, but Sofia noticed her lift her head and could see the thought start to form. A song? Yes, why not? She could manage a song, yes, an old love ballad would . . .

  Sofia tossed a pebble and it clipped Anna’s ankle. She winced and looked over to where Sofia was standing three meters away knee-deep in ditch water, scooping out mud and stones. Her face was filthy, streaked with slime and covered in bites and sweat. The summer day was overcast but warm, and the need to keep limbs completely wrapped up in rags against the mosquitoes made everyone hot and morose. Sofia shook her head at Anna, her lips tight in warning. Don’t, she mouthed.

  “I can sing.”

  It was a small dark-haired woman in her thirties who’d spoken. She was usually quiet and uncommunicative.

  “I am an . . .” She corrected herself. “I was an opera singer. I’ve performed in Moscow and in Paris and Milan and . . .”

  “Excellent! Otlichno! Warble something sweet for me, little song-bird. ” The guard folded his arms around his rifle and smiled expectantly.

  The woman didn’t hesitate. She threw down her hammer with disdain, drew herself up to her full height, took two deep breaths, and started to sing. The sound soared out of her, pure and heart-wrenching in its astonishing beauty. Heads lifted as smiles and tears altered faces.

  “Un bel di, vedremo levarsi un fil di fumo dall’estremo confin del mare. E poi . . .”

  “It’s Madame Butterfly,” murmured a woman who was hauling a wheelbarrow piled high with rocks into position on the road.

  As the music filled the air with golden enchantment, a warning shout tore through it. Heads turned. They all saw it happen. The woman with the barrow had dropped it carelessly to the ground as she stopped to listen to the singing and it had started to topple. It was the accident all feared, a barrow load of rocks plunging down over the edge of the raised road surface on top of you in the ditch. You didn’t stand a chance.

  “Sofia,” Anna screamed.

  Sofia was fast. Water up to her knees hampered her escape, but her reflexes had her spinning out of the path of the rocks. A great jet of water leaped out of the ditch as the rocks crashed down behind her. Except for one. It ricocheted off the rubble that layered the side of the new road and came crunching down on Sofia’s right hand just where her fingers were clinging to the bank of stones.

  She made no sound.

  “Get back to work,” the guard yelled at everyone, disturbed by what he’d caused.

  Anna leaped into the water beside Sofia and seized her hand. The tips of two fingers were crushed to a pulp, blood spurting out in a deep crimson flow that spilled into the water.

  “Bind it up,” the guard called out and threw her a rag from his own pocket.

  Anna took it. It was dirty and she cursed loudly. “Everything is always dirty in this godforsaken hole.”

  “It’ll be all right,” Sofia said as Anna quickly bound the scrap of cloth around the two damaged fingers, strapping them together as a splint for each other and stemming the blood. “Here, take my glove as well.”

  Sofia could feel the blood draining from her face as well as her fingers, and there was an odd chalky taste inside her mouth.

  “Thank you,” she muttered.

  Her eyes stared into Anna’s and though she kept them steady, she knew Anna could see something shadowy move deep down in them, like the first flutter of the wing of death.

  “Sofia,” she said as she thrust the hand first into her own glove and then into Sofia’s wet one for greater protection against knocks, “don’t you dare.”

  Sofia reclaimed her hand and looked at the bulky object as though i
t didn’t belong to her anymore. They both knew it was inevitable that it would become infected and both knew that her body lacked sufficient nutrition to fight the infection.

  “Back to work, you two,” the guard shouted. “No talking.”

  “Don’t dare what?” Sofia asked under her breath.

  “Don’t you dare even think that you won’t come through this. Now get on that road in my place and haul stones. At least they’re dry.” Anna seized the shovel from where it had fallen and set to work in the water.

  Sofia scrambled up onto the road and for a second stared down at Anna’s blond head, as if she were memorizing every hair of it. “One day, Anna, I’ll repay you for this.”

  AFTER that, Sofia became ill. They both knew she would, but the speed of it shocked them.

  “Tell me something happy, Anna,” Sofia had said. “Make me smile.”

  It was past midnight and they were sitting on the floor of the barrack hut, backs to the wall in their usual place, only four days after the accident. Sofia could sense Anna’s concern like something solid in her lap. Neither said much, but they weren’t fooling each other. The injured hand was worse, much worse, and her skin had grown dry and feverish. Her cheeks were so flushed that Anna told her she looked almost healthy, which made Sofia laugh, but what little flesh she possessed was melting away, leaving just bones and sharp angles behind. Her work rate was too slow to earn anywhere near the norm and even though Anna fed her pieces of her own meager paiok, Sofia couldn’t always keep it down. The fever made her vomit.

  Sofia cradled her throbbing hand against her breast and said once more in a low whispery voice, “Tell me something happy, Anna.”

  From somewhere nearby came the popping sound of thumbnails crushing the plump gray bodies of lice, but Anna started to weave her words and the pain began to drift away into the darkness. That was the time that Anna told her about when Vasily taught her to ice-skate on the frozen lake. At the end of it Sofia had laid her head on Anna’s shoulder and chuckled.