The Red Scarf by Kate Furnivall

Author:Kate Furnivall
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-TWO

Davinsky Camp

July 1933

AFTER the business with the cat, Anna lay awake, propped upright against the damp wood of the hut wall to ease her breathing. Beside her on the bedboard lay a squat nervy woman who spent every waking hour angry and resentful, to the point that she could barely sleep at night. She lay on her side staring wide-eyed at the degraded world inside the hut, hating it with a passion that was killing her.

Anna didn’t want to be like that; she didn’t want to hate until it was all that was left inside her. She’d seen it again and again, the way prisoners died from hate, and she tried to spit out its insidious bitter taste in the mouth, but sometimes it was hard. Especially without Sofia to make her laugh. She missed Sofia.

Ever since the cat she had missed Sofia even more. Sofia would have known how to rid her head of the images that swarmed inside it, images that buzzed and stung like bees. It was that stupid cat’s fault, scratching Tasha’s hand like that. Because now that Anna had let that terrible Cranberry Juice Day back into her head, it settled there like a carnivore, gnawing at her and refusing to go away. Even as she hacked away at the branches all day in the forest and tried to block her mind with thoughts of the futile arrogance of the guards or the fragrance of the pine sap, the memory sank its powerful teeth into her and kept dragging her back to Petrograd and that cold winter of 1917.

She had became a shadow after her father died in the snow. No longer a person, just a twelve-year-old shadow inside a cramped and stuffy apartment that belonged to Maria’s brother, Sergei, and his wife, Irina. Her skin turned gray; she rarely spoke and only picked at the barest crumbs of food. But she learned to call Maria “Mama,” and she wore a plain brown peasant dress without complaint and ate black bread instead of white. At night she shared Maria’s narrow cot and spent the hours of darkness lying obediently on the sour-smelling mattress, but never seemed to close her eyes. They had changed from their bright cornflower blue to a dull muddy color that matched the winter gloom of the River Neva. Yet still she wouldn’t cry.

“It’s not natural,” Irina said in a low voice. “Her father has just died. Why doesn’t she cry?”

“Give her time,” Maria murmured to her sister-in-law as she ran a hand over the silky blond head. “She’s still too shocked.”

“A shock is what that girl needs,” Irina said, miming a quick little slap with her hand. “It’s like having a corpse in the house.” She shivered dramatically. “The child gives Sergei and me the creeps, she does. How you can sleep with her in your bed, I don’t know.”

“Irina, please. She’s silent but she’s not deaf.”

“No, you’re not deaf, are you, Anna? Just willful. Well, child, it’s time to snap out of it and give your poor Maria a chance to get on with her own life.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.