Pyotr forgot the woman in the forest and felt the little boy’s excitement slide into his own head when he saw who was driving the cart that was trundling up the valley. It was Aleksei Fomenko.
The cart stopped outside the school yard. The piebald horse in the shafts tipped its back foot on edge to rest it and snorted loudly. Yuri leapt to his feet, dragging Anastasia with him.
‘It’s Comrade Fomenko. Come on, let’s wave to him.’
‘No.’
Pyotr stood up beside her. ‘Why not? What’s wrong?’
‘He took Masha last week.’ Anastasia’s face had gone blank but the mouse-freckles on her skin stood out like warning spots. ‘He just drove that cart of his right up to our back yard and took her.’
‘No, Anastasia.’
Pyotr didn’t know what to say. Masha was the Tushkov family’s last sow. All they had left. Without her…
‘Here,’ he said and thrust his share of the biscuit into her hand.
She crammed it into her mouth.
‘The pig was beautiful,’ Pyotr said and saw a spark of pleasure brighten her pale eyes, but her pointed chin gave a brief quiver. She put both her hands on top of her head and turned away, her elbows hiding her face.
Pyotr’s chest hurt, though not from the running. He grasped Anastasia’s wrist because he didn’t know what else to do, and squeezed it. He was shocked to find it no thicker than a spichka, a matchstick, in his hand, just pale see-through skin stretched tight over a bundle of mouse bones. He glanced over at the rest of his classmates in their shorts, the girls in white blouses, the boys bare to the waist. When had they turned into scarecrows? Why hadn’t he noticed?
‘It’s Comrade Fomenko’s job,’ Pyotr whispered.
‘To take our only pig?’
‘Yes, of course it is,’ Yuri said with determination. ‘We’re a kolkhoz, a collective farm. It’s his duty to do his job properly.’
‘Then his job is wrong.’
Yuri shook his head fiercely at her. ‘You mustn’t say things like that, Anastasia. You could be put in prison for that.’
‘Maybe it was a mistake,’ Pyotr suggested.
‘Do you think it might be?’ Anastasia’s eyes gleamed with hope and Pyotr was furious with himself for putting it there, but he couldn’t bear to let her down now. He straightened his shoulders and ran a damp palm over his rumpled hair. He swallowed hard.
‘I’ll go and ask him.’
Aleksei Fomenko was the Chairman of Tivil’s kolkhoz, the valley’s collective farm, which was called Krasnaya Strela, the Red Arrow. Though he was no more than thirty years old, he controlled it alclass="underline" he was the one who decided the work rotas, allotted the rate of labour days, made certain the workforce was in place each day – and ensured the fulfilled quotas were sent off to the raion centre on time. He had arrived from the oblast Central Office four years ago and brought order to a haphazard farm system that was so behind on taxes and quotas that the whole village was in danger of being labelled saboteurs and put in prison. Fomenko had set them straight. Pyotr worshipped him.
He was talking to the teacher in front of the schoolhouse, a neat white-washed building with a newly tiled roof. Pyotr walked along the side of the cart but it was too high for him to see inside, so he slunk round to the back where a young liver-coloured filly was tethered to the hinge of the rear flap. She was long-backed and skittish, eager to barge her way to freedom. Pyotr tried to soothe her but she would have none of it and attempted to nip him with her big yellow teeth, but the halter was too tight.
‘Comrade Chairman.’
This was the first time Pyotr had ever spoken to Aleksei Fomenko, though he’d seen and heard him often enough at the compulsory political meetings in the assembly hall. He felt his cheeks flood scarlet and his gaze found refuge on Aleksei Fomenko’s boots. They were good boots. Strong. Proper factory-made ones. Not like the ones Papa wore, hand-stitched by a half-blind old cobbler in Dagorsk.
‘Not now, Pyotr,’ his teacher said firmly.
‘No, Elizaveta,’ intervened Fomenko, ‘let’s hear our young comrade. He has the look of someone with something to say.’
Elizaveta Lishnikova touched the elaborate knot of grey hair at the back of her head, a gesture of annoyance, but she said no more. Pyotr looked up at Aleksei Fomenko, grateful for the warmth of his words. Deep-set grey eyes were watching him with interest. The face was strong, like his boots. Straight thick eyebrows. And despite wearing a loose work tunic he looked lean – and authoritative, exactly the way Pyotr longed to be.
‘Well, what is it, young comrade? Speak up.’
‘Comrade Chairman, I… er…’ His palms were hot. He brushed them on his shorts. ‘I have two things I wish to say.’
‘Which are?’
‘Comrade Chairman, last week you took a pig from the Tushkov family.’
The eyes narrowed. ‘Go on.’
‘It’s just that… you see, I thought that perhaps it was a mistake… and if I explained to you then-’
‘It was no mistake.’
‘But they can’t survive without Masha. Really they can’t.’ The words came out in a rush. ‘They have eight children, Comrade Chairman. They need the pig. To sell her litters. How else will they eat? And Anastasia is so…’ He saw Chairman Fomenko’s eyes change, somehow sink deeper in his head, but he didn’t know what it meant. ‘… So thin,’ he finished weakly.
‘Listen to me closely.’ The Chairman placed a hand on Pyotr’s bare shoulder. Pyotr could feel the strength in it, as the man’s grey eyes fixed on his. ‘Who do you think feeds the workers in our factories? In the towns and cities, all the people making our clothes and our machines and our medical supplies, all the men and women in the shipyards and down the mines? Who feeds them?’
‘We do, Comrade Chairman.’
‘That’s right. Each kolkhoz, each collective farm, must fulfil its quota. It supplies the raion, the district, and each district supplies the oblast, the province. That’s how the great proletariat of this vast country is fed and clothed. So which is more important, young comrade? The individual? Or the Soviet State?’
‘The Soviet State.’ Pyotr said it passionately.
Fomenko smiled approval. ‘Well spoken. So which one matters more, the Tushkov family or the State?’
Pyotr was caught unawares by this sudden twist and felt the inside of his stomach burn. How had he come to this choice? He dropped his gaze, scuffed his feet on the brown grass and stared again at the strong boots. Their owner was waiting for an answer.
‘The State.’ It came out as a whisper.
‘That is why I took the sow.’ The voice was gentle. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Comrade Chairman.’
‘You agree it was right to take the sow?’
‘Yes, Comrade Chairman.’
‘Good.’ He released Pyotr’s shoulder. ‘And what was the second thing you wanted to talk to me about?’
Pyotr hated himself. He no longer cared about the second thing.
‘Well?’ Fomenko urged.
‘It’s the filly,’ Pyotr muttered. ‘The tether rope is too short and the halter too tight.’
‘You have good eyes, young comrade. The filly has thrown a shoe.’ He reached into his pocket, pulled out a fifty kopeck coin and tossed it in the air. The sunshine snatched at it. ‘Here, catch. You’re obviously a bright lad and know something about horses. Take her up to the blacksmith for me.’