Her pale oval face popped into the gap above, blocking the light.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No.’ He rubbed his knee and his palm came away damp, but he just wiped it on his shorts. ‘It’s very dark.’
She laughed. ‘What did you expect, you idiot?’
But she didn’t tell him off. He liked her for that.
‘Now you’re down there, feel around – but be careful. See if you can find a box or a bag of some kind. Maybe even some candles.’
Pyotr scrabbled to his feet and stood still for a moment, staring into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Faint shapes began to emerge, grey on black. He took a deep breath. The air smelled dry and faintly sweet. He stretched out a hand in front of him and took two cautious steps. That was when the plank was slammed into place above him and total darkness swallowed him whole.
43
Davinsky Camp July 1933
Anna was too sick to work. She knew the day was close when she wouldn’t be able to get enough air into her lungs to allow her to walk, never mind work, but she hadn’t expected it so soon. She lay on her bed board and fought against the coughs that were tearing holes in her half-starved body.
The strange thing was that she became convinced that each spasm in her chest was the growling of a sharp-toothed monster inside her, with eyes like glowing coals and slick green scales for skin. It was a fantasy, she knew that, but she couldn’t shake free of it however hard she tried.
‘It’s lack of oxygen,’ she gasped aloud. ‘It’s turning my brain to pulp.’
But she could smell the monster’s foul breath coming out of her own mouth and hear its scales rustling and crackling inside her lungs as it shifted position.
‘Here, eat this.’
Nina was pushing a small piece of black bread between Anna’s lips and her broad face was creased with concern. Anna let the heavy morsel of food settle on her tongue and she sucked it slowly to make it last.
‘And this.’
Tasha did the same with another nibble of bread, and her fingers caressed Anna’s damp brow. ‘Stupid bitch, you are,’ she said gruffly.
Anna sucked the bread and smiled. She couldn’t speak, but it wasn’t just the coughing that stopped the words. It was the fact that these two women, who each day were fed nowhere near enough to fuel the hard manual labour they were forced to perform, were sacrificing some of their paiok, their ration, to her. You didn’t ask that of anyone, not even friends. It was like asking for their life.
With a great effort she swallowed hard and said, ‘I’ll be better tomorrow. I’ll work again then.’
‘Sure you will.’
‘After a day of lazing around doing nothing, you’ll be strong as an ox.’
‘You’re just jealous,’ Anna murmured.
They laughed. ‘You bet we are.’
Anna put out a hand and lightly touched Nina’s muscular arm. ‘Spasibo,’ she whispered.
Nina shrugged. ‘Don’t be stupid. It’s only because I want you back in the line to tell us stories once more. We’re dying of boredom on the march without you, aren’t we, Tasha?’
‘Hell, yes. Nina tried to amuse me today with a tale about her experience of birthing a breach calf. I tell you, it fucking made me vomit.’ Her prim little mouth pulled tight. ‘Get some sleep now, you idle layabout, and you’ll feel better tomorrow.’
‘Spasibo.’
Anna closed her eyes, grateful for the blackness. Her eyes were becoming increasingly sensitive to light, causing little pinpricks of pain in her eyeballs. She recalled Sofia having the same problem that time she was ill with her hand and was eating nothing.
‘I can’t see,’ Sofia had said one evening in the hut. Anna had heard the suppressed panic in her voice, despite her determination to hide it.
Anna had waved a hand in front of her friend’s eyes. ‘It’s pellagra. ’
‘I know.’
Pellagra, like scurvy, was caused by vitamin deficiency and was the curse of the prisoners. One of its effects was an inability to see in the dark. Anna took Sofia’s undamaged hand and quietly steered her through the rows of bunks to her bed board. She was shocked by the fire raging in her friend’s veins. That was the moment she decided to go to find Crazy Sara.
‘Sara.’
‘Get away, you whore.’
Anna tried again. ‘Sara, I’ve brought you some bread.’
The wild green eyes rolled in their sockets. ‘Putrid bread from a whore.’
But the wizened claw shot out, snatched the grey knob of clay bread from Anna’s hand and rammed it into her toothless mouth before the gift was retracted. Anna waited patiently for the woman to cease snuffling a stream of obscenities and stop scratching herself.
‘Sara, I’m told you have knowledge. Of what lies out there in the forest that can heal ailments.’
The woman cackled and pointed a crooked finger at Anna. ‘More than you’ll ever know.’
They were standing beside the vast rubbish dump at the far end of the camp. It was raining, a gloomy chill downpour that had gone on all day, making the rocks slippery to handle on the road. In the distance the sun hovered on the horizon where it would sit until morning, reluctant at this time of year to leave. The stench of the dump was foul, as of dead bodies buried in the filth, but Anna gave no sign of repulsion.
Sara was one of the brodyagas, the garbage eaters, the band of pathetic wretches who lived off what they could scavenge from the dump. They scurried over it like crabs, seeking out things to thrust past their white gums, and they welcomed the advances of any guard desperate enough to handle their diseased bodies. Most were insane, their minds rotting as fast as their limbs, but this one, this Sara, was Anna’s only hope. She clung to it.
‘They say you are a witch.’ Anna spoke slowly and clearly to ensure the woman heard above the rain, but she didn’t risk coming too close. ‘That you can-’
Sara shrieked and it took Anna a moment to recognise the noise as laughter. The woman’s lungs were wheezing with delight. She had lost all her hair long ago, including her beetle-black eyebrows, and her pink scabby scalp glistened in the rain.
‘What will you pay?’ Her hands were grasping like claws.
‘What do you ask?’
‘Butter, bread and beetroot. And…’ she swung her head from side to side, searching in her bewilderment for some other demand, ‘and your coat. Yes,’ she screeched the word, ‘da, your coat. I want it now… now… now… I want…’
Anna recoiled. It was summer now, but come the winter… ‘I need a cure for an infected hand. If it heals, you shall have my coat. But not before.’
The woman’s hand slithered forward between the raindrops like a snake’s head and fastened on the wet collar of Anna’s coat, fingering the padded material. Her sunken mouth started to drool.
‘Bring me butter,’ she crooned. ‘Then I will see.’
Anna nodded and, holding her breath against the stink of decay, hurried away from the dump and the scuttling crabs. The other woman’s cackle was not drowned out by the rain.
It didn’t take her long to get it. She brought butter and bread for Sara and in exchange received herbs in a poultice for the splitting flesh of Sofia’s hand. Some of the women in the hut stopped speaking to Anna when they saw her draw a brown greaseproof packet of meat and fat and even a sweet biscuit from her pocket each day.
Everyone knew, but Anna didn’t give a damn about them as she watched Sofia heal. She could feel their scathing disgust like sandpaper on her skin. People whispered behind their hands and even out in the Work Zone, fingers pointed when guards sidled up to smile at her. Whatever filth the women thought of her, it wasn’t even close to what she thought of herself. But that didn’t stop her and each evening she walked out from behind the tool hut with food in her pocket and fire in her belly.