‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine,’ she whispered.
For a brief moment a faint ironic smile tilted one side of his mouth.
‘Fine,’ he repeated, ‘just fine.’
He lifted a spoon from the bowl and raised it to her lips. Willingly she parted them and felt the thick aromatic liquid flow down into her starved stomach.
‘It’s wonderful,’ she murmured.
‘Only a few mouthfuls now. More later.’
‘But I’m-’
‘No. Your body can’t take much yet, Anna.’
Anna.
It was the first time he’d spoken her name. She badly wanted him to say it again.
‘Thank you… Vasily.’
‘My name is no longer Vasily. I am called Aleksei Fomenko now. It’s important that you call me that. I’m putting it about in the village that you are…’
But he stopped, unable to finish. His eyes were fixed on her face and she could see a thousand thoughts and questions racing through their grey depths, but none that she could decipher. She was all of a sudden acutely conscious of what she must look like to him, a skeletal jumble of bones in a nightdress, her skin as lifeless as ash and weeping sores on…
Nightdress?
Who took her out of her filthy rags? Who clothed her in this pure white nightgown? Instantly she was sure it was Vasily himself. He’d undressed her and bathed her and seen the sickening state of her, and the thought surfaced with a hot surge of shame. He seemed to read her thoughts and put down the bowl, reached out a hand and rested the tips of his fingers on her bare throat.
‘Anna,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I can feel your heart racing. You…’ His breath caught. For a long moment there was only the wind rattling the window pane and Vasily’s finger brushing her throat, ‘You are even more beautiful than I remembered.’
‘Vasily!’
As his name burst out of her mouth she saw something break inside him. And suddenly his arms were around her and he was sitting on the bed holding her to his chest, rocking her, crushing her tight against his own body, as though he could press her deep in his bones.
‘Anna,’ he whispered over and over, ‘Anna, my Anna.’ He kissed her hot forehead and caressed her filthy lank hair. ‘Forgive me.’
‘For what?’
‘For not coming.’
She brushed the line of his jaw with her lips. ‘You’re here now.’
‘I made a promise,’ Vasily explained.
‘To whom?’
‘To Lenin.’ He shook his head. ‘To the bronze statue of him in Leningrad. After I came back from the Civil War,’ a tremor shook his voice, ‘and couldn’t find you – though I scoured the city endlessly for news of you – I swore I would become the perfect Soviet citizen, dedicating my life to Lenin’s ideals, if-’
She lifted a finger to his lips. ‘Hush, Vasily, there’s no need to explain.’
‘Yes there is. I want you to understand. I dedicated my life to Communism. I even spilled some of my blood and wrote the promise in red to seal the bargain, in return for-’
‘For what?’
‘In return for Lenin’s spirit keeping you safe.’
Anna gasped.
‘I kept my word,’ he murmured into her hair, ‘all these years. When I did help people escape from the authorities, it was because they were the intellectual building blocks who would be needed to strengthen Russia.’ He drew a deep breath and repeated fiercely, ‘I kept my word.’
‘Even when Sofia came and begged.’
‘Yes, even then.’
‘To make sure my heart kept beating?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Vasily.’
They clung to each other, motionless, his arms cradling her. Neither spoke for a long while.
Anna slept. She had no sense of time. Just moments that slotted one by one into her feverish mind. At intervals she woke and Vasily was there, always there, feeding her spoonfuls of soup and finely shredded red meat, or dosing her with foul-tasting medicines. He talked to her by the hour and she listened.
‘Wake up.’
Anna had dozed off again into a world of nightmares, but opened her eyes swiftly the instant she heard Sofia’s voice.
‘Wake up,’ Sofia said again. ‘Every time I come to see you, you’re fast asleep.’
She was perched on the side of the bed, wearing a wool dress the colour of dark lavender, and there was a wide smile on her beautiful face.
‘I can’t believe how much better you look already,’ Sofia announced. ‘And you’ve only been here a week. How’s the coughing?’
Anna pulled a face. ‘Give me time. I know you planned for us to move somewhere safer but…’
Sofia took her friend’s hand in hers and gently chafed it. ‘You have all the time in the world now.’
‘Thanks to you.’
‘And to Mikhail. I couldn’t have done it without him.’
‘Yes. And to your Mikhail. Thank you both.’
Their eyes met, two different blues, and something passed between them; a knowledge of what Sofia had done but also an agreement never to talk of it again. Words were too small to voice what lay deep inside them both.
Instead Anna asked, ‘Has Mikhail spoken to Vas-, I mean Aleksei, about the killings… that day at the Dyuzheyevs’ villa?’
‘Yes. They’ll never be friends. But now they’re prepared not to be enemies. It’s a first step.’
‘That’s wonderful.’
Sofia nodded and smiled. ‘Give me a hug, you skinny lazy-bones. ’
Anna struggled to sit up and immediately a spasm of coughing racked her chest. Sofia held her close until the shuddering subsided, and Anna could smell the clean soapy fragrance of her blonde hair and the freshness of her skin. When the spasm was finally over she insisted on sitting up.
‘Wash my hair, Sofia.’
‘It’ll exhaust you.’
‘Please, Sofia. For me.’
‘For him, you mean,’ Sofia said with a ripple of laughter that set her eyes alight.
‘Yes,’ Anna whispered as she entwined her arms round the young woman on her bed. ‘For Vasily.’
62
Sofia was in the icy back yard of Mikhail’s izba when Priest Logvinov arrived. It was just as she was collecting logs from the woodpile that he appeared round the corner of the cottage and called her name.
‘Sofia.’
Then louder. ‘Sofia!’
She’d always known this day would come. That this man would somehow be involved in the disaster that she could sense breathing, snarling, circling round the village of Tivil. The way a wolf nips and nudges at the heels of a moose before bringing it down, blood-streaked, in the snow.
She dropped the logs to the ground and turned to face him.
‘What is it, Priest?’
He was draped in a threadbare coat that reached down to his ankles and a black shapka with ear flaps, his green eyes flashing like summer lightning. He was breathless. He’d been running.
‘They’re coming!’ he gasped.
‘Who? Who are they?’
‘Ask Rafik.’
‘Where is he?’
The priest waved a long scarecrow arm. ‘Out there.’
‘Show me.’
She ran into the house and pulled on her coat. ‘Mikhail,’ she called urgently, ‘someone is coming. Rafik is waiting outside.’
Mikhail lifted his head from the intricate work of rebuilding the model bridge, his calm gaze immediately steadying her. One look at her face and he rose to his feet, two strides and his arms were around her.
‘You don’t have to go, Sofia.’
‘I do.’
‘You have a choice.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. We could leave. You and I, with Pyotr. Right now. We could grab a few things and escape into the forest and head south like we planned and-’
‘Is that what you want, my love? Is that what you came back for?’
Their eyes held, then she leaned against him, her whole body moulding itself easily into his, her forehead resting on his cheekbone, and she felt the fear drain away.