He didn’t look at Sofia but he could feel her seated next to him, upright and alert, hugging her knees. The road was rough, the sky grey-bellied. When Pyotr eventually rolled on to his side he saw a flight of swallows dipping over the river, but today he had no interest in them and he studied Sofia instead. Deep in thought, she had the knack of being very still, so still she became almost invisible, like an animal in the forest. He wondered what made her like that.
‘Sofia.’
She turned to him, her gaze coming from somewhere far away.
‘I didn’t mean it.’
‘I know you didn’t.’ Her voice was gentle.
‘He is my father.’
‘Of course he is. He loves you, Pyotr, and you love him.’
‘You won’t…’ He hesitated.
‘No, I won’t tell him.’
Pyotr grunted a kind of thanks. ‘He’s been… better.’
‘Better than your real father, you mean?’
‘Yes. He never beats me and more than anything he wants me to have schooling. He says it’s the way forward for Russia. And he doesn’t get drunk.’ He laughed. ‘Not all the time anyway.’
He hadn’t meant to say it to her. Any of it.
She studied him solemnly. ‘Your father is a loyal citizen of Russia.’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘Don’t doubt him.’
‘He’s read all Lenin’s and Stalin’s writings, like The State And Revolution, and I’m always pushing the latest pamphlets under his bedroom door for him to read at night when he gets home.’
She smiled. ‘I bet he appreciates that.’
‘He does.’
‘Who are you trying to convince, Pyotr? Me? Yourself? Or the men in the interrogation room?’
‘Papa will be released if he is innocent,’ he insisted.
‘And is he innocent? Or did he take the grain off the truck? What do you believe?’
The question knocked a hole in Pyotr’s chest, letting in the confusion once more. He threw himself back on the floor of the cart and this time wrapped both arms across his face.
‘I don’t know,’ he muttered.
Instantly she was on him. Snatched his arms away, so that he was looking up into her fierce blue eyes as she leaned over him.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she snapped, ‘whether he’s innocent or guilty. Can’t you see that? What matters is that he’s your father. He loves you. You owe him, this man who took you in as his own son when you were tainted by the kulak label of your miller father.’ She dug her fingers into his arms. ‘You owe him everything. That’s what matters – love and loyalty.’
Abruptly she released him. Pyotr felt as if he’d been run over.
‘Not,’ she added softly, ‘a power-frenzied devil with a moustache and a withered arm who gets his thrills by signing death warrants in the Kremlin.’
Pyotr sobbed. The thoughts in his head were crashing into each other. Then suddenly she was close again, her breath brushing his cheek.
‘Help me, Pyotr. Help me get Mikhail out of that stinking prison.’
The village was coming into sight when she spoke again.
‘Pyotr, tell me about Lilya Dimentieva.’
‘What about her?’
‘She and your father are… friends.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good friends?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is she like?’
‘She’s all right.’
‘And the child, Misha?’
‘What about him?’
‘Is he… your father’s?’
‘No, of course not, don’t be stupid. Misha’s father was killed in an accident when he was clearing trees off the high field last summer.’
‘Oh.’
‘Papa helps Lilya out when she needs it, like when Misha broke her window. And she cooks us meals sometimes.’
‘I see.’
‘She’s easy to like.’
He watched the colour rise into her cheeks, slowly at first and then faster, darker. She looked away, and Pyotr was sorry. He hadn’t meant to hurt her.
40
Sofia left Pyotr outside the kolkhoz office. She hurried past the pond where two boys were making a lot of noise trying to capture a duck, and up to Rafik’s izba. She burst into the cottage, calling his name.
‘Rafik?’
No answer, the place was empty. Where was he? She had questions to ask and time was trickling through her fingers too fast.
‘Comrade Morozova.’
Sofia spun round. Outside on the step stood Elizaveta Lishnikova, the schoolteacher, and in her hand she carried a book. Her grey hair was pinned up tidily in a pleat at the back of her head and her grey narrow-waisted dress was as immaculate as ever, but there was something about her that made Sofia’s heart miss a beat. It was in the crispness of her manner, in the shine of her eyes, a bright expectation. She knew something that Sofia did not.
‘Comrade Lishnikova, I intended to come and speak to you today.’
‘Well, I’ve saved you the trouble.’ The woman held out the book. ‘Here, I’ve brought you a gift.’
Sofia accepted it, surprised. It was a good quality copy of Dostoyevksy’s The Idiot.
‘Thank you, comrade.’
‘I expect you’ve read it.’
‘Yes I have, but I will enjoy reading it again.’ She thumbed through the soft pages thoughtfully. ‘Spasibo. But why should you bring me a gift?’
The long face with its fine bones seemed to shift slightly. ‘I thought you might need it. Something to calm you before tonight.’
‘Tonight? What’s happening tonight?’
‘Ah,’ Elizaveta hesitated, then smiled politely. ‘I see, you don’t know yet. Excuse my mistake.’ She turned to leave.
‘Comrade,’ Sofia said sharply, ‘I was coming to thank you for the offer of a job at the school.’
The teacher raised her elegant eyebrows expectantly.
‘I would like to accept,’ Sofia continued.
‘Indeed? That would be a help to me but Rafik tells me you will soon be gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘From Tivil.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Ah, comrade, you must ask Rafik himself. But let me tell you this, that man knows more than you and I put together.’ She laughed, a clear low-pitched sound that belonged to a younger woman. She started to move away.
‘Tell me,’ Sofia called out after her, ‘what happened to your previous assistant teacher?’
Elizaveta Lishnikova froze for no more than a second, but Sofia spotted it.
‘He left,’ the older woman said.
‘Suddenly?’
‘Yes.’ Sofia thought she was going to finish it there, but she continued stiffly, ‘He spoke out of turn one day and a pupil reported him.’ She shrugged. ‘It happens.’
‘Was it Yuri? The pupil who reported him?’ Mikhail had told her on the train about Pyotr’s friend.
Elizaveta said nothing but she sighed, and a layer of her brightness faded. Without another word, she walked away.
Sofia tried to make sense of it. The schoolteacher’s message had unnerved her. Tonight? What did she mean? Why did her mind need to be calmed? What was going to happen tonight?
Suddenly she was frightened. She felt the fear cold and hard in a tight ball just under her heart and she rubbed a hand there to release it.
Anna, oh Anna. I’m not strong enough. I can’t do this.
She sat down in Rafik’s maroon chair, dropped her head in her hands. All the misery and suffering of the last four months when she’d battled halfway across Russia, footstep by footstep, crushed her so that she could barely breathe. She remained like that for a long time, till her fingers grew stiff in her hair, and the whole time she thought hard. About Mikhail. About Anna. About what she was about to lose. And at last, when the pain became manageable once more, she rose and walked over to Rafik’s carved wooden chest against the wall, the one he had drawn her shoes from, the one she’d never opened. The lid was carved with serpents. She lifted it.