Under a Blood Red Sky Read Free Page A

dim light she could just make out the restless blonde head and delicate pale face on one of the bunks.
    ‘Can’t you sleep, Anna?’ Sofia asked softly.
    ‘I like watching you. I don’t know how you move so fast. Besides, it takes my mind off…’ she gestured about her with a loose flick of her hand, ‘… off this.’
    Sofia glanced around. The darkness was cut into slices by a bright shaft of moonlight, slipping in through the narrow gaps between the planking of the walls. The long wooden hut was crammed with a hundred and fifty undernourished women on hard communal bunks, all dreaming of food, their snores and coughs and moans filling the chill air. But only one was sitting with a precious pile of food in her lap. Though only twenty-six, Sofia had spent enough years in a labour camp to know the secrets of survival.
    ‘Hungry?’ Sofia asked Anna with a crooked smile.
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘Don’t fancy roast rodent?’
    ‘ Nyet. No, not tonight. You eat them all.’
    Sofia jumped up and bent over Anna’s bunk, breathing in the stale smell of the five unwashed bodies and unfilled bellies that lay on the bed board.
    She said fiercely, ‘Don’t, Anna. Don’t give up.’ She took hold of her friend’s arm and squeezed it hard. ‘You’re just a bundle of bird bones under this coat. Listen to me, you’ve come too far to give up now. You’ve got to eat whatever I catch for you, even if it tastes foul. You hear me? If you don’t eat, how are you going to work tomorrow?’
    Anna closed her eyes and turned her face away into the darkness.
    ‘Don’t you dare shut me out, Anna Fedorina. Don’t do that. Talk to me.’
    Only silence, save for Anna’s quick shallow breathing. Outside the wind rattled the wooden planks of the roof and Sofia heard the faint screech of something metal moving. One of the guard dogs at the perimeter fence barked a challenge.
    ‘Anna,’ Sofia said angrily, ‘what would Vasily say?’
    She held her breath. Never before had she spoken those words or used Vasily’s name as a lever. Slowly Anna’s tousled blonde head rolled back and a smile curved the corners of her pale lips. The movement was barely there, a faint smudge in the darkness, but Sofia didn’t miss the fresh spark of energy that flickered in the blue eyes.
    ‘Go and cook your wretched mice then,’ Anna muttered.
    ‘You promise to eat them?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’ll catch one more first.’
    ‘You should be sleeping.’ Anna’s hand gripped Sofia’s. ‘Why are you doing this for me?’
    ‘Because you saved my life.’
    Sofia felt rather than saw Anna’s shrug.
    ‘That’s forgotten,’ Anna whispered.
    ‘Not by me. Whatever it takes, Anna, I won’t let you die.’ She stroked the mittened fingers, then pulled her own coat tighter and returned to her spot by the hole and the crumb of bread. She leaned her back against the wall, letting the trembling in her limbs subside until she was absolutely still once more.
    ‘Sofia,’ Anna whispered, ‘you have the persistence of the Devil.’
    Sofia smiled. ‘He and I are well acquainted.’

3
    Sofia leaned against the hut wall, shutting her mind to the icy draughts, and let Anna’s words echo quietly in her head.
    That’s forgotten.
    Two years, eight months ago. Sofia pulled off the makeshift mitten on her right hand, stitched out of blanket threads and mattress ticking, and lifted the two scarred fingers right up to her face. She could just make out the twisted flesh, a reminder every single day of her life. So no, not forgotten.
     
    It had started when they were taken off axing the boughs from felled trees and put to work on the road instead. It was progressing fast. The prison labour brigades were not told from where it had come nor where it was headed, but the pressure was hard and unrelenting and it showed in the attitude of the guards, who grew more demanding and less forgiving of any delays. People started making mistakes.
    Sofia had reached such a state of