‘You promise?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll write to you, so-’
‘No, Anna, it’s too dangerous. In six months, when all this blood-letting is over we’ll be together again. You’ll be staying with a distant cousin of mine but eventually I’ll come and care for you, like I promised your dear papa. I love you, my sweet one, and now we both have to be strong.’ Gently but firmly she detached Anna from her neck. ‘Now give me a smile.’
Anna smiled and felt her face crack into a thousand splinters.
33
The train jolted to a halt. Mikhail reached across and pulled the leather strap, so that the window slid all the way down. Sluggish air drifted into the carriage from outside, hot and heavy and laden with smuts from the engine. On the platform vendors fought to peddle baskets of food.
‘This compartment is like a bloody oven,’ complained the man in the seat on Mikhail’s right. It was his chief foreman from the factory, Lev Boriskin, a stocky man but powerfully built, with thick grey hair and a habit of fingering his lower lip.
‘I’ll see if there are any rain clouds ahead,’ Mikhail said.
He leaned again towards the window because it meant he would brush against Sofia. She was seated in the corner next to the window, her blonde head turned away from him, looking out at the crush of bodies on the platform. All day she had spoken very little, but could he blame her? From the start things had gone wrong. They had travelled into Dagorsk in a cart with four others, including a married couple who quarrelled at full volume all the way to the station. Then on the platform he had introduced her to Boriskin and to Alanya Sirova, Boriskin’s secretary, a woman of about thirty with ambitious eyes behind thick tortoiseshell spectacles. It was only when he saw Sofia’s face grow rigid with dismay and her gaze turn to him questioningly that he realised he’d forgotten to mention their travelling companions. He’d ushered her into the seat by the window.
‘I thought,’ the foreman said, with a sideways shift of his eyes to Sofia, ‘that as Direktor Fabriki, you should have the best seat. Instead of-’
‘Comrade Morozova has been commissioned to write a report,’ Mikhail cut in sharply, ‘on this delegation. She will cover our contribution to the Committee, as well as our travel arrangements. So I think she is entitled to the window seat, don’t you?’
Boriskin paled, pulled at his lip and shook open a copy of Pravda with a show of indifference. Mikhail sat himself next to Sofia, a barrier between her and his foreman. She looked at him with stern blue eyes, but in their depths he could see a ripple of laughter.
The crowded carriage made it easier. For much of the time there was movement and chatter, as passengers retrieved or replaced packages from the racks above their heads. The man over by the door was constantly fiddling with his pipe and muttering to himself, while Alanya Sirova, on the far side of Boriskin, shuffled documents in and out of her briefcase with a zeal that Mikhail felt certain was aimed at the mythical report. The noise and bustle meant he could talk to Sofia in a low voice without anyone noticing.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured.
‘No need,’ she smiled.
‘It’s a long journey. There’ll be moments.’
‘As long as there’s no quota to them.’ She raised a teasing eyebrow at him.
They couldn’t say more, not with Boriskin at Mikhail’s elbow, but it was enough. He felt the warmth of her arm along the length of his own, and occasionally their feet touched as though by accident. Mikhail was unable to relax, but through half-closed eyes he watched the railway lines snake past the window like silver veins. He once spotted a hawk rising in a spiral, as if weightless on the bleached air, its great wings outstretched. Its shadow fell like a dead body on the field beneath.
‘Look,’ he pointed out to Sofia. And in a lower tone he added, ‘The spirit of Russia.’
‘Don’t,’ she breathed.
Too many hours were spent reading documents that were passed down the line from Alanya Sirova to Boriskin to himself, pages of facts and figures that danced in front of his eyes. He had no interest in the damn things. He became increasingly restless and everyone in the carriage irritated him, especially the pipe smoker and the military man who snored. They all prevented him from being alone with Sofia. Even the well-meaning woman opposite who picked at food constantly, like a plump pigeon, drawing from the depths of a large red carpet bag blinis and kolbasa sausage which she broke into tiny pieces and popped into her mouth. Kindly she offered some to Sofia, but Sofia shook her head.
Vast regions slid past. Forests that stretched for ever, pine trees burnished gold by the sun, and silver birches that shook their delicate threads as the train roared by. Sometimes a river or a ragged village or a crooked water tower appeared to break the monotony, but not often. Once in a long while a bustling station where everyone was shouting and great clouds of white breath shuddered from the engine, while hawkers thrust out filthy hands offering pelmeni or hard-boiled eggs and pickled cucumber in paper cones.
‘Come, Comrade Morozova,’ Mikhail said, rising to his feet at one such station. ‘Time to stretch the legs.’
‘Comrade Direktor,’ Alanya Sirova intervened quickly, ‘first I’d like your comments on this report from-’
‘Later,’ Mikhail said curtly.
He yanked open the door, took hold of Sofia’s hand and escorted her out into the fresh evening air.
‘Do they believe you?’ Sofia asked in an amused voice once they were on the platform. ‘That I’m here as an observer of the delegation?’
Mikhail laughed easily. ‘Who cares? You’re here, that’s all that matters. And they’re so used to the system being riddled with informers that there’s no reason for them to doubt your role. It’s simple really. Alanya Sirova informs on Boriskin, Boriskin informs on me, but who is there to inform on Alanya?’ He grinned at her. ‘You, of course. It makes sense.’
She grinned. ‘Ingenious.’
He carved a path through the jostling crowd to where passengers were replenishing their tea kettles with kipyatok, boiling water from the station samovar. He filled a tea flask and poured a drink for them into a kruzhka, an enamelled metal mug that all travellers carried. They took it over to a quieter spot near the station railing. As far as the eye could see a wide flat plain spread in every direction, dotted with the hunched figures of kolkhoz workers and a few straggling cattle seeking shade in the long evening shadows. The land shimmered in a lazy golden haze as if it had all the time in the world.
‘Have I told you that you look lovely today?’ Mikhail let his eyes feast on Sofia openly at last, as he watched her sip the tea.
‘You did mention something similar earlier this morning,’ she laughed. ‘Thank you for the dress.’
‘If I tell you I chose it because it matches your eyes, will you scoff at me?’
‘Definitely.’
‘OK, the truth is that I grabbed the first garment off the top of the pile in the factory storeroom.’
She looked at him, her blue eyes the exact shade of the cornflowers on the dress. He could see she didn’t believe a word of it.
‘That’s more like it,’ she smiled. Something about the mischievous sideways glance she gave him made the hour he’d spent yesterday, searching out a style and size of dress and jacket that would be perfect for her, worth every second. When he’d handed over the leather satchel to her last night, she had grown soft in the moonlight, seeming to melt inside. It was obvious she was unaccustomed to receiving gifts.
‘Tell me about this conference I’m supposed to be reporting on,’ she said.