carried a fire in its heart to make it go, and the fireman shovelled in the fuel and the train moved, sometimes slowly as if the engine was tired of pulling the long line of trucks, sometimes flying along through the forests, the smoke from the engine trailing behind it.
First, there was the sound of the whistle, then the smoke through the trees and the line would start to sing as the train came nearer and nearer and then burst along the track. Da da dah, da da dah, Marek would sing the song of the train. West to east and east to west, the trains ran night and day.
Eva loved the trains. Before she was old enough to walk the woods on her own, she would dawdle behind her brother, carefully, infuriatingly, holding him back from the things he wanted to do, until he became distracted and she could slip through the undergrowth and into the shadows and make her way through the trees with their shivering fronds that hung down and ran their fingers across her face and tangled in her hair.
She knew the times and the places. She would come to the clearings, the places where the trees had been cut and the ground built up with stones to carry the iron rails. And she would crouch by the line with her fingers on the rail, waiting. And then the iron would begin to hum beneath her fingers, before her ears could hear it, and she would leave her fingers there a bit longer and a bit longer, daring herself, then she would move back to the edge of the trees, waiting as the iron sang. And she would hear the beat of the engine, and sometimes the wail of its horn, and then it would be there, on top of her, in a rush of power and steam and smoke, and she would smell the burning cinders and see the men as they powered the engine, and sometimes they would see her crouched among the trees, and they would sound the horn and wave and laugh, and she would wave back, and then the train was gone, and Marek was calling with frantic anger from the forest behind her: ‘Eva! Eva!’
And she would go home with him and help Mama feed the hens, or sort the eggs, or draw water from the well. And the summer wind would blow, soughing in the trees, and she would hear birdsong and the sound of the carts bringing the men back from the fields. Nearby, the hens scratched and clucked, and bees hummed in the flowers that grew round the door.
And away in the distance, to the east, she heard the whistle of the train.
Jake parked his car in the road outside the Yevanov house. It was in a similar suburb to Marek Lange’s, from the same era, and built in the same style. But there, all similarities ended. Sophia Yevanova’s house was surrounded by a well-kept garden that had been planted with a view to year-round colour. As Jake walked up the drive–swept free of autumn leaves weeks ago–he admired the brilliant reds and greens of the dogwood, the yellow of the winter jasmine that climbed up the front of the house among the last leaves of the creeper, whose stalks were now almost bare.
As he stepped through the front door, smiling his thanks to the woman who admitted him, he felt the warmth of the house envelop him. The hallway gleamed with polished wood. Vases of spring flowers on the hall table and windowsills dispelled the winter. ‘Good morning, Mr Denbigh.’ The woman, Mrs Barker, greeted him with the warmth that befitted a favourite. She led him through to the room at the back of the house where Sophia Yevanova customarily spent her days.
She was confined to her chair, but she sat upright, as though she could rise from it with the ease of a dancer rising en point. In fact, she looked like a dancer, with the fine-boned delicacy of a classical ballerina, or like a sculpture or a painting, a work of art ravaged by time.
As Jake was ushered through her door, she put down the tapestry she was working on–every time they had talked, her hands had been restlessly occupied–and held out her hand to him. For all her elegance and composure, he thought she looked poorly–paler and more tired than the last time he’d talked to her. The illness that had imprisoned her must be making its presence felt.
‘Miss Yevanova.’
‘Mr Denbigh. How good of you to call.’
‘My pleasure.’ The courtesy was the simple truth. He took pleasure in her company.
Her dark gaze held his, then she smiled. ‘I will have tea, Mrs Barker.’ She raised an enquiring eyebrow at Jake, who nodded. ‘Mr Denbigh and I would like tea–the Darjeeling, I think. Thank you.’ The woman withdrew.
Sophia Yevanova laid her tapestry carefully on the table and waited until the door was closed. ‘I thought I had told you enough stories to keep you occupied for longer than this, Mr Denbigh,’ she said. ‘I see I must try harder.’
The last time he’d visited, they had talked about her life in Minsk as a girl, living in the shadow of Stalin’s terror. In a way, she was right. There was more than enough in everything she had already told him for a book, but so far, they hadn’t talked about the Nazi occupation. They’d touched briefly on the deaths of her fellow partisans, and her response had been unequivocal: ‘They are gone. I will not speak of such deaths.’
He looked at the wall behind her chair. An icon hung there, its jewel-like colours gleaming from the shadows. It had been the one thing of value, ‘apart from my son’, that she had brought out of Belarus. She had smiled when she said that, her eyes going to the photograph on the side table that she kept within easy reach–her son, Antoni Yevanov.
She’d told him the story. Passing by the church in Minsk after it had been looted by the fascists as they retreated from the Red Army, she’d seen the gleam of gold in the dirt and rubble, and found the icon–the virgin and child–intact and undamaged. It had been a sign. ‘I knew then that God was going to let me live, He was going to let me get away.’ She had brought the icon to England, and even in her darkest moments, she had never considered selling it.
He was struck again by the shadows under her eyes, the parchment-like whiteness of her skin. ‘You look tired,’ he said.
She arched her eyebrows at him. ‘If you tell a woman she looks tired, she will assume that you mean she looks old.’ He began to speak, but she raised her hand to stop him. ‘I am old. I am not foolish enough to pretend otherwise.’
‘I’ve got something I’d like you to see,’ he said.
‘Well then, you must show it to me.’ The tea arrived, and she took care serving it. For her, tea was an important social ritual, poured from a silver teapot into white, translucent china.
He took the photographs out of his wallet, and waited until she put her cup down on the occasional table beside her, then passed them to her. She studied the first one, the family standing outside the house, holding it away from her face. ‘There were many such,’ she said indifferently, handing it back to him.
He watched her carefully as she gave the photo of the young man in uniform the same careful scrutiny. He thought her lips tightened a bit, but otherwise she displayed no emotion. ‘Old photographs,’ she said. ‘You have been doing your research, Mr Denbigh.’
He nodded, not letting his disappointment at her lack of reaction show. He knew from past experience that she would sometimes appear to ignore something he said or something he asked, then return to it later when he’d given up hope of an answer.
‘So you are going to Minsk,’ she said.
He’d told her about his planned trip. ‘I’m leaving after the weekend,’ he said. ‘Just for a few days. Where should I go?’
She
