‘Better.’
Anna sighed. She didn’t mean to, but when she saw a sliver of moonlight fingering the soft brown hair that rippled in the shadows ahead of them, it sent a shiver of longing through her. She loved Vasily so fiercely. Would she ever stop missing him? Even though he’d made it plain he didn’t want her, didn’t yearn for her the way she yearned for him, she knew she could never let him go.
‘Shall I tell you what the air tastes of, Anna?’
In the dark Anna nodded, and the muffled sounds of the horse’s tread faded to nothing. Sofia’s breath was hot on her ear and Anna could smell excitement in it.
‘The best taste in the world and the worst. Sweet and sour in the mouth at the same time. It’s the taste of choice. You can choose, Anna. Do you remember how? I had to relearn after all those years without it. It was frightening at first, but now,’ Anna could sense her friend’s gaze seeking out Mikhail in the dark, ‘I’m not frightened to choose any more.’
Anna tipped her head back on a bony collarbone.
‘There’s something else,’ Sofia said, as if the contact had triggered the words, ‘something I wasn’t going to tell you but now I feel I have to.’
‘What?’
‘Something I kept to myself because I didn’t want it to hurt you by raising your hopes.’
‘Tell me.’
A pause during which, somewhere nearby, an animal snapped a twig and made both their heart rates jump.
‘Vasily keeps a lock of your hair under his pillow.’
Anna’s breath stopped. She coughed, wiped blood from her mouth with her sleeve and felt something roar into life inside her. She stuck out her tongue to savour the cool night air and it tasted of happiness.
Nights merged. Anna could no longer separate them from days, as darkness settled in her mind and refused to lift. She could feel her body shutting down and she fought it every breath of the way.
‘She can’t travel any further, Sofia. It’s killing her.’
‘Mikhail, my love, we can’t stop. It’s too dangerous.’
‘Dangerous to stop and dangerous to go on. You choose.’
Sofia’s voice dropped to a fierce whisper, but Anna heard the words as she lay strapped to the horse’s back.
‘She’s dying, Mikhail. I swear on my love for you that I won’t let her go without seeing him one last time.’
The horse walked on and each step jarred Anna’s lungs, but she didn’t care. She was going to see Vasily. Sofia had sworn.
61
Tivil January 1934
‘A horse is coming.’
Pyotr stamped his valenki in the snow. ‘I can’t see any horses,’ he complained, screwing up his eyes to peer into the white fog that lay like a sheet over the valley.
‘They’re coming,’ Rafik repeated.
‘Is it Papa?’
Rafik frowned, his black eyebrows twitching under his shapka. ‘It’s him – and he’s not alone.’
‘How do you know, Rafik?’ Pyotr asked.
But Rafik didn’t answer. He and Zenia were standing with hands linked, muttering strange words that made no sense to Pyotr. To the boy it seemed that the words turned into something solid in the cold damp air, rising like his breath to merge with the fog over Tivil. He didn’t like the feeling. He began to throw snowballs to warm himself up.
They’d been waiting there an hour and his fingers had frozen, but that didn’t worry him. What worried him much more was that his hopes had frozen. He could feel them caught in a hard icy lump inside his chest. He’d been curled up at home in front of the warm pechka, the stove, when Zenia had come bounding in, cheeks glowing, bundled him up into his shuba coat and dragged him out into the snow. Over recent months he’d never quite grown used to the gypsy girl’s sudden bursts of energy. Often he wondered if it had anything to do with all the strange herbs she ate.
‘Pyotr, come on, he’s waiting for us.’
‘Who?’ He trotted alongside her, pulling on his varezhki, woollen mittens, his boots crunching through the snow.
‘Rafik.’
‘Zenia, wait a minute.’ Pyotr was baffled. ‘What does he want with me?’
‘Hurry up.’
‘I am hurrying.’
‘Your father is coming home.’
Pyotr sobbed, a strange animal sound he’d never heard before. Around him Tivil looked the same, the roofs edged with blue icicles, the woodpiles stacked high, the picket fences hibernating under their coating of snow. Still the same dull old village, but suddenly it had changed. Now everything shone bright and dazzling to welcome Papa home.
His excitement had cooled. The wind and the snow and the sound of ice cracking on the river had stolen its heat. They’d been waiting on the road into the village for so long now, but nobody had come and he’d started to believe they were wrong. Though Rafik had given him a smile of welcome when he’d first arrived, now the gypsies paid him little heed. They talked in intense low voices in a tight huddle, excluding him.
‘When’s Papa coming?’ he asked again.
‘Soon.’
Soon had come and gone.
But now Rafik said urgently, ‘A horse is coming.’
Pyotr was the first to hear the whinny of the horse. He straightened up and stared out past Zenia, wrapped in her thick coat and headscarf, into the shifting banks of fog where the road should be. It was like floating into another world, unfamiliar and unpredictable.
‘Pyotr.’
The word drifted, swirling and swaying towards him through the air.
‘Papa!’ Pyotr yelled, ‘Papa!’
Out of the wall of white loomed a tall figure in a filthy coat. At his side hobbled a small grey horse.
‘Papa,’ Pyotr tried to shout again, but this time the word choked in his throat.
He flew into the outstretched arms, burrowed his face into the icy jacket and listened to his father’s heart. It was real. Beating fast. The cloth of the jacket smelled strange and the beard on his face felt prickly, but it was his Papa. The big strong familiar hands gripped him hard, held him so close Pyotr couldn’t speak.
‘What’s going on here?’ his father demanded over his head.
‘We’ve been expecting you,’ the gypsy responded.
Mikhail gently disentangled himself from his son and held out a hand to Rafik. The gypsy grasped it with a fervour that took Pyotr by surprise.
‘Thank you, Mikhail,’ Rafik murmured. Not even the chill moan of the wind could conceal the joy in his voice.
Then for the first time Pyotr noticed the person behind his father.
‘Sofia!’ he gasped.
‘Hello, Pyotr.’ She smiled at him. Her face was painfully thin. ‘You look well,’ she said.
In her voice he could hear no trace of anger at what he’d done, just a warmth that defied the cold around them.
‘Did you miss us?’ she asked.
‘I missed your jokes.’
She laughed. His father ruffled his hair under the fur hat, but his look was serious. ‘Pyotr, we’ve brought Sofia’s friend back with us.’
He gestured at a dark shape lying on the horse. It was strapped on the animal’s back, skin as grey as the horse’s coat, but the figure moved and struggled to sit up. At once Pyotr saw it was a young woman.
‘We have to get her out of the cold,’ Papa said quickly.
Sofia moved close to the horse’s side. ‘Hold on, Anna, just a few minutes more. We’re here now, here in Tivil, and soon you’ll be…’
The young woman’s eyes were glazed and Pyotr wasn’t sure she was even hearing Sofia’s words. She attempted to nod but failed, and slumped forward once more on the horse’s neck. Sofia draped an arm round her thin shoulders.
‘Quickly, bistro.’
Rafik and Zenia led the way, heads ducked against the swirling snowflakes that stung their eyes. Pyotr and Mikhail started to follow as fast as they could, with Mikhail leading the little grey mare. Sofia walked at its side, holding the sick young woman on its back. Pyotr could hear his father’s laboured breathing, so he seized the reins from his hand and tucked himself under Papa’s arm, bearing some of his weight. The horse dragged at every forward pace and Pyotr was suddenly frightened for it. Please, don’t let it collapse right here in the snow.