‘One day I’ll taste those eggs and that coffee again. I swear I will,’ Anna said fiercely.
‘Dura! You’re a fool,’ Sofia retorted and strode away to the far end of the hut.
Anna watched her. Saw her climb up on to her top bunk and pull the brown blanket over her head, burrowing deep into it like an animal into its nest.
The bony finger dug again into Anna. ‘And apples? Sliced up and sprinkled with cinnamon?’
‘Yes,’ Anna answered. ‘And a pot of damson jam, deep purple and glistening with syrup.’
‘You know, malishka, I’d honestly sell my God-fearing soul for a breakfast like that before I die.’
Anna swivelled round and smiled at the old woman, whose body was riddled with sores. She stroked the skin of the babushka’s hand, very gently because it was so paper-thin that the slightest touch could leave behind bruises like ink stains.
‘So would I,’ she whispered.
The woman struggled to sit up, her bird-like chest straining against the first rumblings of a coughing fit, and closed her eyes.
‘Hell couldn’t be any worse than this place,’ Anna murmured. ‘Could it?’
The next day one of the guards called out to her. ‘You! Come here.’
The evening ordeal was finally over. The poverka, the roll-call and counting of heads, was a process that dragged on and on sometimes for hours, even though the prisoners could barely stand after a hard day’s labour in the forest. It went on until the numbers that were lined up in rigid rows in the Zone tallied with the numbers on the lists in front of the Commandant. The procedure was repeated rigorously every morning and every night, and every morning and every night somebody died. The German Shepherd dogs on chain leashes watched with gaping jaws for any movement in the rows.
‘You.’ The guard called to her now. ‘Number 1498. Come here.’
When a guard chose to summon you out of the pack, it meant nothing but trouble. Anna tugged her scarf tighter round her ears to shut out the sound of his arrogant command and concentrated on keeping moving. She folded herself into the back of a group of prisoners as they shuffled their way at last towards the shelter of the huts, out of the biting wind that froze the breath on their lungs. The night sky was a vast velvety cat-black expanse overhead, spangled with stars and lit by a full moon that painted the faces beneath it with ugly colourless shadows. It transformed the long huts into coffins.
Anna heard the rattle of a rifle as a bullet was loaded into the breach. She swung round and faced the guard. He was young. Barely shaving. She’d caught him watching her before, his gaze crawling greedily over her skin, worse than the lice. He swaggered over to her across the icy ground, his rifle tucked snugly under his arm, its tip pointed straight at the spot between her legs to which his eyes kept sliding, even though she was bundled up under a skirt and a padded jacket.
‘Number 1498.’
‘Yes.’ She stared at the black patch of ground at his feet and linked her hands behind her back, as was required of prisoners when addressed by guards.
‘I hear you are willing to sell your soul.’
Her heart thudded. Her eyes leapt to his face.
‘Is that so?’ he asked, a sly smile tilting his mouth.
‘It was a joke, nothing more. I was hungry.’
Loathsome informers, the stukachs. Like the yellow-toothed rats, they were everywhere, swapping a scrap of information for a scrap of bread. No one could be trusted. Survival in the camp came at a high price.
The guard stroked the barrel of his rifle against her cheek, scraping one of the lesions and forcing her to turn her face aside while he pressed the muzzle under the knot of her scarf at her throat. The metal was brutally cold on her skin. She could feel her pulse slowing at its touch.
‘Are you hungry now?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘I think you are lying, prisoner 1498.’
He smiled at her and licked his chapped lips. His back was to the nearest floodlight, which cut a yellow swathe through the darkness of the Zone so that his eyes appeared as deep black holes in his head. Anna wanted to push her fingers into them.
‘No,’ she said.
‘I don’t want your soul.’
‘I didn’t think you did.’
‘So will you sell your body instead, in exchange for a good breakfast?’
From the depths of his greatcoat pocket he drew a package wrapped in brown greaseproof paper. Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he unwrapped the packet and held it out to her. The wind tried to snatch it away, making the paper’s folds crackle and snap. It contained two speckled eggs and a thin sliver of pork. Anna almost sobbed with desire. Her eyes feasted lovingly on the sight of the eggs, on their plump brownness, on the delicacy of the speckles in greys and whites and liver-browns, on the perfection of the curve of the shells. She didn’t even dare look at the meat.
‘So will you?’
He had moved. He was standing beside her now, his breath coming fast and forming small dense clouds of desire in the moonlight. Saliva rushed into Anna’s mouth. There were women in the camp, she knew, who took favours from a guard, who sought one out for protection. Such women did not have lesions on their face or death in their eyes and they worked in the camp kitchen or in the camp laundry, instead of in the killing fields of the forest. Was it so bad? To want to live?
Reluctantly she dragged her eyes from the beauty of the eggs and stared at the guard’s expression. Now she could see clearly the look of loneliness in his young face, the need for something that felt like love even if it wasn’t. He was trapped here the same as she was, about the same age as herself, cut off from all he knew and cared for. Russia had robbed them both and he was desperate for something more. A little human contact. A stamping of self on a blank faceless world. It could help them both survive. Her famished body swayed imperceptibly towards his strong young frame.
‘A good breakfast?’ he whispered temptingly.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ she snapped and swept away into the darkness.
19
Tivil July 1933
That night, Tivil was stripped naked and raw. That’s how it seemed to Pyotr.
‘Stay indoors, Pyotr. And keep the house locked.’
Those were Papa’s words. With a frown he lit himself a cigarette, ruffled Pyotr’s hair and was about to disappear back out into the chaotic night when he stopped abruptly. He looked across at Sofia Morozova, assessing her. Mikhail Pashin had kept a firm grip on her arm, as well as on Pyotr’s, when they left the assembly hall and had marched them both straight to the safety of his own home. Now he was leaving them.
‘Will you do something for me?’ he asked her. ‘Take care of my son tonight?’
‘Of course. I’ll guard him well.’
Pyotr wanted to die of shame but his father nodded, satisfied, and stepped out into the road. A cold drizzle was falling as he pulled the door closed behind him and Pyotr could see the raindrops like diamonds in his father’s dark hair. He tried not to be frightened for him. They were left standing in the tiny porch where boots were kept, the fugitive and himself, just the two of them alone in the house, eyeing each other warily. Pyotr picked up the oil lamp that Papa had lit on the shelf by the door and walked into the living room with it. He was hoping she wouldn’t follow, but she did. Right on his heels.
Neither spoke. He placed the lamp on the table and headed straight for the kitchen. There he poured himself a cup of water, drank it down slowly, counted to fifty in his head and went back into the living room. She was still there. She was leaning over the half-constructed model of a bridge on the table, one of the tiny slivers of wood between her fingers. Dozens of them were scattered over the surface, little lightweight girders.