The sky was darkening. Pyotr could sense the village huddle deep in its valley, shutting out the world beyond. Something stirred inside him, something strong and possessive, and he tightened his grip on his father. The snow underfoot was loose and slippery but, instead of stopping at his own house, the little procession continued right past it.
‘Where are we going, Papa?’
His father didn’t speak, not until they stood outside the izba that belonged to the Chairman. It hunched under its coat of snow, shutters closed and smoke billowing from its chimney.
‘Aleksei Fomenko!’ Mikhail bellowed against the wind. He didn’t bother knocking on the black door. ‘Aleksei Fomenko! Get out here!’
The door slammed open and the tall figure of the Chairman strode out into the snow, dressed in no more than his shirtsleeves, the wolfhound a shadow behind him.
‘Comrade Pashin, so you’ve decided to return. I didn’t expect to see…’
His eyes skimmed over Mikhail and Pyotr, past the gypsies, and came to an abrupt halt on Sofia. His jaw seemed to jerk as if he’d been hit. Then his gaze shifted to the wretched horse. No one spoke. Fomenko was the first to move. He ran over to the horse and, working fast but with great care, he untied the straps.
‘Anna?’ he whispered.
She raised her head. For a moment her eyes were blank and glazed, but snowflakes settled on her lashes, forcing her to blink.
‘Anna,’ he said again.
Gradually life trickled back into her eyes. She pushed herself to sit up and stared at the man by her side, as though uncertain whether her mind was confusing her.
‘Vasily, are you real? Or another ghost of the storm?’
He took her mittened hand in his and pressed it to his cold cheek. ‘I’m real enough, as real as the sleigh I built for you and as real as the songs you sang for me. I still hear them when the wind blows through the valley.’
‘Vasily,’ she sobbed.
She struggled to climb off the horse but Fomenko lifted her from the saddle as gently as if he were handling a kitten, cradling her in his arms away from the driving snow. Her head lay on his chest and he kissed her dull, lifeless hair. He turned to face Sofia and Mikhail.
‘I’ll care for her,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy the best medicines and make her well again.’
‘Why?’ Sofia asked. ‘Why now and not before?’
Fomenko looked down at the pale woman in his arms and his whole face softened. He spoke so quietly that the wind almost snatched his words away.
‘Because she’s here.’
Pyotr saw that Sofia’s cheeks were wet. He didn’t know if it was snow or tears.
Fomenko turned away from the watching group. At a steady pace so as not to jar her fragile bones, the dog walking ahead of him over the snow, he carried Anna into his house in Tivil.
The air was warm. That was the first thing Anna absorbed. Her bones had lost the agonising ache that had pulled at them for so long and seemed to be melting from inside, they felt so soft and heavy. She opened her eyes.
She’d forgotten what it was like to feel like this, so comfortable, so cosseted, a downy pillow under her head, a clean-smelling sheet pulled up to her neck. No brittle ice like jagged glass in her lungs. She tried breathing, a swift swallow of the warm air.
Bearable.
Her gaze explored the room, sliding with slow consideration over the curtains, the chair, the carpet, the shirts hanging on hooks, all full of colour. Colour. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed it. In the camp everything had been grey. A small sigh of pleasure escaped her, a faint sound, but it was enough. Instantly a whining started up outside the bedroom door and brought her back to reality.
Whose house was she in? Mikhail’s? Or… No. She shook her head. No, it wasn’t Mikhail’s. Only dimly did she recall being carried in a pair of strong arms, but she knew exactly whose bed she was lying in and whose dog was whining at the door.
The latch lifted quietly. Anna’s heart stopped as her eyes sought out the figure standing in the shadows. He was tall, holding himself stiffly, and in a flash of anxiety she wondered whether the stiffness was in his mind or his body. His shirt fitted close across his wide chest, and his hair was cropped hard to his head.
Vasily. It was Vasily, with the Dyuzheyev forehead, the long aristocratic nose – and the eyes, she remembered those grey swirling eyes. But the once generous mouth was now held tight in a firm line. At his heel stood a large rough-coated wolfhound; Anna recalled Sofia telling her its name.
‘Hope,’ she breathed. It was easier than saying Vasily.
The dog loped towards her, its claws clipping the wooden floor, and nuzzled her hand. The simple display of affection seemed to persuade Vasily at last to walk into the room, but there was something deliberately formal in his step and he came no nearer than the end of the bed.
He spoke first. ‘How are you feeling?’
His voice was controlled, and deeper than it used to be, but she could still hear the young Vasily in it. A shiver of pleasure shot through her.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Are you cold? Do you need another quilt?’
‘No. I’m warm, thank you.’
Another awkward silence.
‘Are you hungry?’
She smiled. ‘Ravenous.’
He nodded and, though he didn’t move away, his eyes did. They looked at the dog’s shaggy head now resting on the quilt, at the round wooden knobs at each corner of the bed, at the white-painted wall, at the window and a gust of snowflakes sweeping across the yard outside. Anywhere but at her.
‘You look well, Vasily,’ she said softly.
He studied his own strong hands, but didn’t comment.
This time she let the silence hang. She didn’t know what was happening and her mind felt too weak to struggle with it. Was he angry at her for coming here? For risking his position as Chairman of the kolkhoz? Who could blame him? She didn’t want him to be angry, of course she didn’t, but at the same time, in some strange way, it didn’t matter if he was. This was what mattered. Being here. Seeing the way his grey eyes had sparked as he stepped into the room.
She studied the long lean lines of his body, the familiar set of his head on the broad shoulders. The only thing she missed was his hair, the way it used to fall in a soft brown tumble across his high forehead and make him look… what? She smiled. Look lovable. These shorn hard spikes of hair belonged to a different Vasily.
He saw the smile. Even though he wasn’t looking at her, still he was aware of the smile and she saw him move closer. She felt choked by the wave of love that engulfed her. So much was unsaid. And she felt no need to say it. Just looking at him was enough.
Abruptly, when she least expected it, he turned and disappeared from the room. She had no idea whether he was gone five minutes or five hours, but when she again opened her eyes he was sitting in a chair beside her bed, so close she could see the shadows that lined his eyes and a tiny web of lines etched at the tight corners of his mouth.
‘Here, time to eat.’
In his hands lay a bowl of soup. Steam rose from it and brushed his chin, and she couldn’t take her eyes from that strong square line underpinning his face.
‘Eat,’ he said again.
She tried to sit up and failed, so struggled instead to lift her head higher on the pillow. She was shocked to find herself so weak. Everything ached. Even that little movement of her head set off more coughing, and when she’d finished gasping for breath he wiped a damp cloth across her lips, studied the red smear on it with a frown and put the cloth aside. He looked at her intently.