Red Winter (13 page)

‘It’s the safest way,’ I agreed, smiling at Anna to reassure her I meant no harm. I opened the door a touch and looked out again. It was almost dark now and the distant trees were little more than a dark smudge on the horizon.

‘I know they get shot,’ she said. ‘Or hanged.’

‘Anna.’ Lev shook his head at her as he tapped her hand harder than necessary and took another nail.

‘We saw someone hanged,’ she said, ignoring him.

‘Where?’ I asked, pushing the door shut and turning to face them.

‘A farm we passed.’

‘Just one person?’

She shook her head. ‘Two. And they had stars right here.’ She tapped her own forehead, right in the centre. ‘We even saw—’

‘That’s enough,’ Lev told her.

‘No, that’s not enough,’ I said, raising my voice, making both Lev and the dog look up in surprise. ‘Did you say “stars”? Here?’ I stepped closer to her and touched my forehead just like Anna had done.

The girl’s whole body tensed and she backed away from me, moving nearer to her father.

‘Did you say “stars”?’ I repeated, taking another step.

‘Yes,’ Lev said, dropping Kashtan’s hoof and moving in front of his daughter. He held the driving hammer tight in his right hand. ‘You’re frightening her.’

‘Like they were branded?’

‘What?’

‘Did it look like they had been branded? Burned? The hanged—’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose so, yes.’

I made a calming gesture with my hands and tried to relax. I took a deep breath and nodded. ‘All right. Good. I’m sorry, Anna. Sorry if I scared you.’ I took a step back and spoke to the girl. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s important you and your papa tell me everything you saw.’ I tried to keep my voice even and looked at Lev. ‘Please. When was it?’

‘It was days ago.’ Lev put out his left hand to bring Anna further behind him. ‘I don’t know where it was, what the place was called.’

Lev’s chest rose and fell, his body having begun to prepare itself for defence. His brow glistened with sweat, and his eyes were wide, reflecting the lamplight, his fist tight round the driving hammer. When he spoke, saying, ‘South,’ his tongue clicked in a dry mouth.

‘Carry on working,’ I said, thinking it might help him to relax, give him something else to concentrate on. ‘Tell me when you’re ready, but I need to know.’

I moved to stand beside the door, giving him plenty of space, showing him I meant no harm, and he watched me for a long while before he crouched and put his arms around Anna. He whispered something in her ear and she nodded and hugged him in return, all the while keeping her eyes on me. When they broke apart, she stepped back and Lev picked up Kashtan’s hoof once more, gripping it between his knees as he returned to work.

He took nails from Anna, one by one, hammering the shoe in place then he nipped away the nail ends that protruded.

‘We’d been travelling a while,’ he said after some time. ‘We saw a farm much like this one but closer to the road.’ He took a rasp and filed the nail ends flat as he spoke. ‘There were men there. With horses.’

‘Soldiers?’

‘We weren’t close, but . . . probably.’

‘Chekists?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You didn’t see their faces?’ I wondered if it was the same men who had been in Belev. The branding was the same – the red star. I had never seen it before, never heard of anyone doing such a thing, so I was sure it was the same man. Perhaps Lev and Anna had seen Koschei.

He shook his head.

It had been too much to hope for. ‘How many were there?’

‘I don’t remember. Maybe as many as ten.’

‘What were they doing?’

‘Leaving. They were mounting up when we saw them, so we let them ride away. We thought . . .’ He rasped around Kashtan’s hoof, smoothing the edges to match the shoe. ‘We thought we might find something to eat there. That they might have left something.’

‘Did they have anyone with them?’ Having not found any women or children in the forest, I was hoping that he had taken them with him. Tanya said Koschei liked to drown the women, but I had to believe there was a chance for Marianna, and when villages were attacked in the way Belev had been, people were often taken away.

‘You mean prisoners?’ Lev asked.

‘Yes.’

Boys of any age could be indoctrinated and taught to fight, or they could be sent to labour camps to work. Women and girls were also forced to work and fight, but men at war had other uses for them. I could only hope my family had been taken for labour. If that were the case, I could still find them. I could still bring them home.

Lev shook his head, saying, ‘No. Nothing like that,’ and a little of my hope fell away. Maybe Koschei took no prisoners. I tried not to believe that Tanya was right, that Marianna was at the bottom of the lake, and I began to regret my flight from the woods. Koschei had taken the men into the trees beyond the village to torture and execute them. Perhaps he had done the same to the boys. I should have searched further, hunted deeper, and I despaired at the thought of my boys lying out there in the decaying leaves on the floor of the dying forest. I looked to the door, seeing through it and beyond to the forest, considering whether or not I should go back, but Koschei was ahead of me and I was growing certain that there were men following me. I had covered my tracks, but I had to consider that it might not have been enough.

There was no point going back to look for the dead. I had to go on, look for the living, and cling to the smallest hope.

‘How long ago was this?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. A week maybe. There was nothing at the farm for us, and when I saw them hanging, we moved on.’ He returned to his work. ‘We’ve seen some strange things. One village was empty. No one there at all. After that, we kept away from the villages and towns. Until we found this place.’

‘Belev?’ I said.

‘Hmm?’

‘Was the village called Belev? The empty one?’

‘I don’t know. Is it important? Is it where you’re from?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘Somewhere I passed through. Did you see the bodies before or after the deserted village?’

‘Before.’

So perhaps Koschei didn’t take prisoners until Belev. It was possible, and I was willing to cling to any hope.

‘Are you all right?’ Lev asked.

‘Hmm?’

‘You look . . .’ He didn’t finish, and when I turned to look at him, our eyes met.

‘Have you heard of Koschei?’ I asked.

He was confused. ‘The Deathless? It’s a story, isn’t it? Wasn’t he in a place called Buyan? The island of Buyan, or . . . No, that’s where his soul was . . . Why d’you—’

‘But you haven’t heard of a man by that name?’

‘A man?’ Lev paused as he watched me and a long silence passed before he broke the spell and said, ‘No.’ He ran the rasp once more round Kashtan’s hoof, then set it down. ‘Good as new. Have a look.’

I went forward to inspect it, nodding at the cleanness of his work. ‘It’s good,’ I said in a flat tone. ‘The best I’ve seen in a long time. Thank you.’

‘I’ll do the others if you want.’ He looked at me. ‘And thank
you
.’

‘For what?’

‘For not killing me,’ he said.

And his words confirmed for me what a terrible country this had become, where a man thanked another for letting him live.

With Kashtan reshod, Anna put half a bucket of oats into a raised wooden trough for each horse and we closed the barn, leaving them stabled for the night. Lev led the way back to the house, Anna sticking close by him, the dog running ahead in expectation. Anna held the lamp from the barn to light the way.

‘Turn it off,’ I told her. ‘We can see well enough until we get inside.’

She waited for her father to nod in agreement, then did as I asked, saying nothing as she stepped up and pushed open the door. The dog slinked in first, eager to be in the warmth. Once Anna and her father were inside, I stood on the threshold and looked out at the night. Towards the brooding forest, there was nothing to see but darkness, but above us, the sky was so cold and clear it glittered with countless stars.

‘We’ll cover the windows,’ I said, ‘
then
we’ll light the lamp.’

‘Is someone following you?’ Lev asked.

‘Hmm?’

‘In the barn, you kept looking out. And again now. Are you expecting someone?’

I didn’t reply. I just stepped in and closed the door.

The farmhouse was small, with bare wooden walls and a modest
pich
at the far end. To the right of it, primitive wooden platforms, one above the other, provided sleeping berths, each one scattered with straw for comfort. To the left, the
krasny ugol
– the beautiful corner – had been arranged with a collection of modest icons and a small wooden cross. This was a traditional way for peasants to show their faith, but most had removed their icons for fear of being reported to the authorities. Religion was not part of the new way, and Chekists were already rounding up the priests. Bolshevism was the new religion, with Lenin as its god and the persecution of counter-revolutionaries as its ceremony.

There was a dilapidated table in the centre of the room, and benches fixed around the walls. A cabinet was the only other piece of furniture, an old
garmoshka
lying on top of it, the decorative paint faded and chipped. Seeing the instrument brought a mixture of sadness and warmth as I pictured my brother playing it and remembered his insistence that Irina had loved him for his music.

The
pich
was topped with a chimney, which poked through a hole cut in the thatched roof, but the interior of the
izba
still carried a smoky smell, as if the place had been cured with years of burning straw and wood and dung. Despite the heavy odour, there was a homely feel to the place. It was warm and dry, and I was blessed with being out of the forest at least for one night. Looking at Lev and Anna, I knew I would be glad for the company. Though Lev might have been hiding something, I didn’t think he was dangerous. He struck me as a good man, and his daughter was spirited and strong. Being with them here in the warmth reminded me of being with my own family.

As soon as he was inside, Lev bowed once to the
krasny ugol
and made the sign of the cross over his body with his right hand.

‘You think He sees you?’ I asked, propping Lev’s shotgun by the door.

Lev looked over his shoulder and shrugged. ‘What does it hurt?’

I smiled and followed his lead, thinking that if God was looking down on us, it wouldn’t hurt to have Him on my side, but the irony wasn’t lost on me. I had tied the
chotki
round my wrist, I carried the family icon in my satchel, and now I was crossing myself at the
krasny ugol
and thought I might have even whispered a prayer when I was stumbling about in the forest. Yet I was a revolutionary and I had done unspeakable things in the name of strengthening the crop.

My
belief had been that to make the motherland stronger, it was vital to remove the disease that threatened to decay the new vision. I wasn’t supposed to believe in God. God was
part
of the disease, one of the things that stopped the common man from being free from his restraints. And yet here I was, carrying Him in my pocket and round my wrist, finding comfort in His totems while I had purged myself of all the symbols of the revolution. There wasn’t a red star anywhere about my person and I didn’t feel the worse for it. And right there, in front of the
krasny ugol
, my changing beliefs were only reinforced. It wasn’t God who had taken my children. He hadn’t tortured those people in the forest. Men had done that. And I was certain those men would have been wearing red stars on their caps.

There were no blankets in the
izba
, no sheets or cloth of any kind, so I unrolled my blankets and tarpaulin, fixing them over the two small windows before telling Anna to relight the lamp. When the interior was filled with a cosy orange glow, I circled the table, checking the floor and pressing hard on any floorboards that felt loose.

The dog found a good spot close to the
pich
, while Lev and Anna stood with confused expressions as I banged my heel down on an area that sounded hollow. I got to my knees and studied the boards.

‘You’d be surprised,’ I said.

Lev shook his head and took off his coat, throwing it across one of the benches along the wall. Underneath, he wore a dark jacket, which matched his trousers and might have once been smart but was now faded and dirty. He went to the
pich
and used a wooden paddle to take a clay pot from inside.

I went to the cabinet and put my fingers to the
garmoshka
, running them along the concertinaed mid-section.

‘You play?’ Lev asked. ‘It would be good to hear a tune.’

‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘My brother, Alek, used to play, but not very well.’ I smiled as a thought came to me. ‘My wife fancied she could sing, but the pair of them were as bad as each other. Sometimes he’d play and she’d sing and the only thing that made it bearable was a lot of vodka.’

Lev smiled and banged the wooden paddle on the side of the pot. ‘Hungry?’ he asked. ‘It’s not much, but there should be enough.’

He set it on the table and removed the lid, letting the steam rise above it.

‘The best thing I’ve smelled in a long time,’ I said, leaning my rifle against the end of the table and hanging my satchel over a chair before taking off my jacket. I sat so I was facing the door and waited for Anna to bring three wooden bowls and a heel of black bread. She pulled her chair round so she was close to her father.

‘So you’ve been travelling a long time?’ I asked Lev as he spooned soup into the bowls. It looked to be full of turnip and pieces of dried fish, but not much else.

‘You could say that.’ He pushed a bowl of salt towards me and I took a pinch for my soup before tearing a piece of bread.

‘And that’s all you’re going to tell me?’ I asked, lifting the spoon to my mouth.

‘Who’s Koschei?’ Anna asked.