She sighed, unable to make herself leave him. The kerosene lamp in the living room had burned out so that the night’s darkness was complete, denser now as dawn approached. She knew she had to move. But instead she nestled closer in the crook of Mikhail’s arm, rubbing her skin against his, feeling the warmth of him as he slept wrapped around her. She loved the weight of his body against hers. She listened to the rhythm of his breathing and wished sweet dreams into whatever life he was leading behind his flickering eyelids.
Her mind shut down to all else. Everything that was not love ceased to exist and, even though she knew for certain there would be a heavy price to pay, right now the price seemed nothing. Nothing. She slid a hand possessively down the length of his thigh and heard his breathing pick up as if she had slid into his dream. Her fingers sought out the bruised swelling on the side of his leg that throbbed hot as a reminder of where he had been and what had been done to him. It was all she needed. Anger drove her from his bed where love could not.
She dressed quickly and quietly, then drank the shot of vodka she had abandoned on the table last night. But before she left the house to step out into the early morning darkness, she returned soundlessly to Mikhail’s bedside and bent over his sleeping form. So lightly it was barely a kiss, she brushed her lips against his forehead. Even in the dark she knew his mouth had curled into a smile as he slept.
She longed to keep him like this, hers for ever, hers alone, to love and to cherish. To live a whole life together till they were old and grey and could look back on these days with laughter and say that magical phrase Do you remember when…? Why not? She could. He loved her, he’d said so. Her heart tightened painfully in her chest. She could. It would be so easy to say nothing and start a new life here and now with Mikhail.
Oh Anna, I can’t.
Slowly she straightened up, her bones heavy and cumbersome, lifeless things that were no use to her without his touch on them, without his kisses on them, without his arms crushing them. She stepped back from the bed and tears filled her eyes. She turned away and from her pocket drew the key Pyotr had made for her.
Today everything would change.
Pyotr heard movement in the house. It woke him but he buried his face in his pillow, refusing to wake up. What was happening to him and to his world? It felt as if the foundations were cracking under his feet and it terrified him. He tried to drive himself back into the comfort of his dream but it was no good, the dream was out of reach. Like Papa.
The noise of a saucepan banging on the stove in the kitchen reached his ears and his heart gave a little skip behind his ribs. Sofia was still here. That cheered him and he jumped out of bed. She’d know what he should do, she’d help him… but Sofia was a fugitive. She’d actually confessed to him that she’d escaped from prison, so by helping her he was making himself an Enemy of the People.
That thought made him feel dizzy.
Is that how Comrade Stalin felt last year when his wife, Nadyezhda Allilueva, shot herself inside the Kremlin? Sick and uncertain? How much did love weigh in the balance against the words of the Great Leader? He kicked a shoe across his tiny room in an outburst of anger. Most of all it frightened him to think what might be happening to Papa. In a rush to escape his thoughts he hurried out of his room.
The figure at the table rose slowly from the chair, the movement awkward and ungainly, not like his father at all. Not quick and confident like Papa. Yet they were Papa’s strong shoulders and it was Papa’s voice calling his name.
‘Pyotr.’
Pyotr threw himself into his father’s open arms and together they tumbled back into the chair where the boy clung tight and hid his face in his father’s shirt. He was crying like a girl and didn’t want Papa to see.
‘Pyotr, my son.’
Something in his voice made Pyotr look up. Papa’s cheeks were wet with tears.
48
‘An unanticipated pleasure, my dear. I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.’
Deputy Stirkhov exhaled a grey snake of smoke that coiled round the room as he waved Sofia into a chair in his gleaming chrome office. A vodka bottle sat on his desk without its lid. It was half empty but the glass beside it was full.
Sofia slid on to the leather seat in front of the desk. ‘You underestimate me,’ she smiled.
‘You have information for me?’
‘Of course. It’s what you paid me for. Didn’t I promise it?’
A satisfied smile split his smooth moon face in half. ‘Not everyone does what they promise in this world.’
‘I do. If you think otherwise, you don’t know me.’
‘I intend to get to know you much better,’ he said smoothly and reached into his desk drawer. He drew out another shot glass, filled it and pushed it across to her. The glass had Lapland reindeer etched on its surface.
‘Thank you,’ she said, but didn’t pick it up.
She felt his gaze on her blouse. It was one of Zenia’s, of homespun cloth, a dusky rose-pink with embroidered woodland flowers on the collar and cuffs.
‘I am informed that a member of your village is in prison right now.’ He seemed to be talking to her breasts.
‘If you mean Comrade Pashin, he has been released.’
His eyes shot up to hers. ‘Indeed? When?’
‘Today.’
‘That’s a shame, I was sure they’d hold on to our wayward factory director. Dagorsk is better off without the likes of him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s a troublemaker. Oh yes, I grant that he knows his stuff as an engineer and has shaken up those lazy imbeciles who work in his factory, but he’s one of those arrogant bastards who think they know better than the Party line.’ He leaned forward on his elbows and pointed a manicured finger at her. ‘That one is not a man of the people like he pretends. He’s hiding something, I’m certain. I tell you I can feel it in my piss every time I see him. Just wait,’ he threw the vodka down his throat and stubbed out his cigarette, still jabbing at it long after the butt was out, ‘he’ll trip himself up one day and I’ll be there to catch him.’
Sofia scooped up her drink from the desk. For a split second Stirkhov’s eyes widened as though he believed she was going to throw it in his face, but instead she raised her glass to the portrait of Stalin and drank it straight down. She made a soft noise in the back of her throat that was almost a hiss, then she smiled at Stirkhov.
‘How perceptive you are, Comrade Deputy.’
‘And how very beautiful you are, Comrade Morozova.’
She let her eyelashes flutter and put a hand to her throat, as though to still the sudden race of her heart. ‘I’m glad we understand each other,’ she smiled. ‘Now we can do business.’
‘So what’s this information you’ve brought me from Tivil? A kolkhoznik been late to work, has he? Or did one of your hamfisted peasants get into a drunken brawl and is now being denounced for singing obscene words to the tune of the Internationale?’
‘No, nothing like that.’
‘Then what?’
‘Someone in Tivil is hoarding, and I mean large quantities of potatoes, swede and grain.’
It was like throwing a grenade. In her mind she heard the explosion rip through the quiet smoke-filled office. Comrade Stirkhov’s mouth hung open.
‘Now I’ll grab Tivil by the throat,’ he growled, ‘and shake it till it begs for mercy. Who is this Enemy of the People?’
Sofia raced back to Tivil. The morning sky was a vivid splash of blue and a handful of crows hung on the breeze, barely dipping their wings. The street was noisy when she reached the village – two women and a gaggle of girls were trying to wash a goat under the water pump and the animal was putting up a struggle. Its bristly white coat was caked in mud from the pond and the children were shrieking with laughter each time it butted their skinny chests. Sofia paused, observing the scene, memorising it, savouring the ordinariness of it. From now on, nothing would be ordinary.