‘Who are you?’
‘I’m your friend, your good friend,’ Mikhail grinned lop-sidedly and thrust out the bottle. ‘Here, have a drink.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’ Mikhail upended the bottle and took a slug of the vodka himself. He felt it burn the knots in his stomach. ‘Is good stuff,’ he mumbled.
‘You’re drunk, you stupid oaf.’
‘Drunk but happy. You don’t look happy, tovarishch.’
‘Neither would you if you had to deal with such-’
‘Here.’ Mikhail thrust the bottle at the man again. ‘Some left for you. You could be out here all night.’
The fire reflected in the man’s spectacles. His hesitation betrayed him, so Mikhail seized the hand that had discarded the cigarette and wrapped it round the bottle. ‘Put fire in your belly.’ He rocked on his heels with laughter. ‘Fire in your belly instead of in our barn.’
The man’s mouth slackened. He almost smiled.
‘Let’s have it.’ He took a mouthful. Smacked his lips.
‘Good?’
‘It’s cat’s piss. It’s no wonder you peasants are mindless. This homemade brew rots your brains.’
‘Come with me, Comrade Officer, and I will show you…’ Mikhail lowered his voice in conspiratorial style, ‘the real stuff. The good stuff.’
‘Where?’ Another swig.
‘In my house. It’s just over-’
‘No. Piss off. I’m guarding this truck.’
Mikhail yawned, stretched, scratched himself and stumbled on his feet.
‘Come, Comrade Officer, there’s no one here. Your sacks are safe.’ He draped an arm across the man’s shoulders, could smell cheap tobacco on his breath. ‘Come, friend, come and taste the good stuff.’
The man was drunker than a mule. His eyes turned pink and his tongue seemed too large for his mouth, so that the words slid off it into his glass. But when Mikhail yanked him to his feet after an hour of pouring his best vodka down the bastard’s throat, it came as a surprise at the door to find he still had a few wits clinging to him.
‘You come too,’ the man said, his head lolling on his thick neck.
‘No, my friend, I’m off to bed,’ Mikhail grinned.
He started to close the door but the man put his shoulder to it. ‘You come, my Tivil comrade. To the truck.’ With astonishing speed of hand for someone swilling with vodka he produced the Mauser and pointed it at Mikhail. ‘You come. Bistro. Quickly.’
So they stumbled up the road together, their path lit by the flames in the night sky. The truck loomed ahead. Even in the darkness it was obvious that the flatbed now held no more than a handful of sacks. The man stared at them and swallowed hard.
‘Where’s the grain?’
Shock was sobering him fast and with a grunt of effort he swung the pistol at Mikhail’s jaw, but Mikhail side-stepped it with ease. He was tempted to seize the gun and break the bastard’s skull with it but he knew any act of violence would lead to retribution for the whole village. Party officials were like cockroaches: you stamp on one and ten more come out of the woodwork. He tried walking away but the muzzle jammed against the back of his skull.
‘Tell me where the fucking grain is, you thieving village bastard. Right now.’
Mikhail didn’t move. ‘Comrade,’ he said with a slur, ‘you’ve got me all wrong. I am just-’
‘I’ll count to three.’
‘No, comrade-’
‘Odeen.’ One.
‘I know nothing about the grain.’
‘Dva.’ Two.
Mikhail’s body tensed, ready to lash out, but a quiet voice from the side of the truck distracted them both.
‘Comrade Officer, I think you have made a mistake.’ It was Sofia. She and the gypsy approached out of the darkness together as if it had been a cloak over their shoulders.
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Sofia Morozova. And this is my uncle, Rafik Ilyan, a member of the Red Arrow kolkhoz.’
‘You know where my grain is?’
‘Of course. It’s here.’
The gun released its pressure and Mikhail breathed. He swung round and saw Sofia waving what looked like a shawl in the officer’s face, her lips bone-white in the torchlight. Then suddenly Rafik was so close to the man that their shapes seemed to merge into one. The gypsy’s black eyes were sunk like boreholes in his head and he was holding fiercely on to the man’s arm, pressing his fingers into the flesh beneath the sleeve, and staring fixedly up into the narrow bloodshot eyes. And yet the officer made no word of complaint. What the hell was going on? The man was gazing back at the gypsy with a slightly baffled expression, as though he’d forgotten where he’d left his cigarettes rather than more then a dozen sacks of grain.
‘You made a mistake,’ Rafik stated clearly and, as he said it, his other hand whipped out and fixed on Mikhail’s arm. The gypsy’s voice was soft, but somehow it crept into Mikhail’s head and crawled through the coils of his brain until he could hear nothing else. ‘There were only ever four sacks in the truck, and you have them all there,’ Rafik said. ‘No grain is missing.’
Mikhail and the officer stared at the sacks. Away in the forest an owl screeched, or was it the bark of a fox? Sounds were tumbling around indistinctly in Mikhail’s head as the gypsy’s words spilled into the night air, and behind them was a dull roaring noise. He couldn’t quite recall what that was.
Of course there had only ever been four sacks. What had he been thinking of?
Sofia watched in disbelief.
From nowhere the gypsy had appeared at her elbow when she was shifting another sack off the back of the truck and he had helped her carry it to a small handcart. The cart was pushed away by an old woman with a crooked back and a mischievous grin that had more gaps than teeth to it. Hot cinders were floating down from the blood red sky like fireflies that nipped at the skin. Rafik draped a soft shawl over Sofia’s bare arms.
‘Come,’ he said and led her round to the front of the truck where they were hidden by the black shadow of the church. ‘You want to help Mikhail Pashin?’
‘Yes.’
‘He has done well, but now the danger will be great for him when the officer returns.’
Sofia could feel the skin on her face tighten and prickle, as if ants’ feet were swarming over it. ‘What can I do?’
‘I will deal with the man in my own way. But I need you to distract his attention so that I can get close to him.’
It occurred to Sofia that the gypsy appeared so frail he didn’t look as if he could deal with a pack of cards right now, never mind an armed OGPU officer.
‘Rafik,’ she said with concern, ‘you’re not well.’
The sound of footsteps echoed up the shadowy street. Men’s voices were coming closer and one of them was Mikhail’s. She had no choice, she had to trust Rafik.
‘Distract him, Sofia.’
It was the sight of the gun jammed against Mikhail’s skull that nearly robbed her of control. But she managed to say calmly, ‘Comrade Officer, I think you have made a mistake.’ And a moment later she was flapping her shawl at him, the edge of it just clipping his jaw and making his eyes flare with annoyance. But what Rafik did then was beyond anything she’d ever seen. In some strange, impossible way he seemed to take hold of the men’s minds, first the OGPU officer’s and then Mikhail’s, and manipulate their thoughts the way a child shifts and shuffles a set of toy bricks. She stared in disbelief at Mikhail, at the boneless way his arms hung at his sides and the confused expression in his eyes, as the glare from the blaze turned them red.
‘Sofia!’
Rafik had to repeat it. ‘Sofia!’
She blinked and saw the gypsy stumble in the darkness. Her hand shot out to steady him and she could feel the tremors shaking his body under the light cotton of his shirt.