Red Winter (16 page)

When our cups were full, he sat back and cleared his throat. ‘So you deserted before you knew what happened in your village? What made you leave?’ He didn’t ask what unit I had come from.

‘This isn’t a war anymore; it’s just people killing people and I didn’t want to be a part of it. I had to go home.’ He didn’t need to know the rest of it, the
real r
eason.

‘So you ran? Just like that? Don’t the Bolsheviks hunt deserters?’

‘It was early morning,’ I said. ‘We entered a village to . . . Anyway, we were ambushed by fighters.’

‘You don’t need to tell me.’

‘My brother was wounded.’ I put a hand to my stomach without even thinking about it, remembering the place where Alek had been hit. ‘I tried to make it look as if we were killed in the fighting – swapped our uniforms with men who were already dead, left our papers in their pockets and . . . it was mayhem. Screaming, shooting, grenades exploding in the houses. People dying. It was all so . . . so out of control. I couldn’t do it anymore. I had to get away. Undressing the dead peasants was easy, but getting them into our uniforms was hard. We left them in a ditch just outside the village we were fighting in, more or less where they died, but we had to make them unrecognisable. No one could know.’ Of all the things I’d had to do, that was the hardest. Bringing the rock down on them again and again. Over and over. Rubbing them from the world. I pushed the image away and reached for the bottle.

‘What made you do it?’

‘So many things.’ I thought for a moment, trying to put it into words. Alek and I hadn’t ever voiced it so bluntly to one another. For us, it was a succession of utterances, of exchanged glances, of silent understandings. We didn’t dare discuss it, because the illegality and wrongness of it were so ingrained in us. We had punished men simply for thinking such things and knew what would happen to us if we expressed the thoughts aloud.

‘All the killing,’ I said. ‘All the suffering. All the terrible things I’d done.’ I glanced at Lev but couldn’t look him in the eye. I had terrorised people like him. ‘I didn’t know myself anymore. I was . . .’ I shook my head and let the thought trail away. ‘My brother and I went home six months ago. It was . . . so good to be there, with Marianna and my sons. Things were hard for them, just like anyone, and Marianna was so
strong
, the way she took care of Misha and Pavel, but I should have been there for them.
That
was my place. Being with them reminded me of that.’

‘Marianna persuaded you?’ Lev asked.

‘Without needing to. I
felt
it. Her need for me, and mine for her and my sons. It was so good to feel something other than the numbness that I had once forced myself to feel but now came like second nature. Like I can be two people. And when Misha, my oldest, started talking about how he wanted to join the fight, I saw . . .’ I looked away and tried to find the right words. ‘I saw a never-ending war. Children of fourteen taking up rifles and doing the things I had done. It was too much.’

‘And that was the first time you considered getting out?’

‘Not really. The idea had always been there, but I suppose I was too afraid even to think it in case I gave myself away, so I crushed it like I crushed every other feeling. Then Misha asked to join Alek and me when we went back to our unit and I remember looking across the table at my brother and that’s when we knew. If there was a single moment that brought everything into focus, it was
that
one. I couldn’t take my son into that world to see what I saw. I couldn’t even bear the thought of him knowing the things I’d done. And there, with my family around me, my eyes opened to what really mattered.’

Lev remained silent, but his expression told me that he understood, and when he reached across the table to pat my arm in a simple gesture of sympathy, the warmth I took from that small connection threatened to choke me.

‘If they thought we were dead, they wouldn’t think twice about us.’ My voice cracked as I spoke, but I cleared my throat and composed myself. ‘That’s what we hoped. But once we were in the forest and we finally talked about what we were going to do, things became so complicated. Maybe we couldn’t just go home and be with Marianna and the boys. Maybe someone would come looking for us. Maybe someone would denounce us. Maybe we would have to take them and leave, find somewhere else to live. Alek’s wound made things worse and . . . there were too many possibilities.’

‘But you had to try.’

‘We decided we’d get to Belev and watch from the forest and make a decision then. Perhaps take Marianna and the boys out under cover of darkness, find somewhere to go. Anywhere.’ I looked up at Lev. ‘Like you did.’

Lev nodded.

‘But my village was empty and my family was gone, and now I’m not sure if our deception worked,’ I said, filling our cups, hands trembling. ‘There have been times, in the forest, when I thought I was being followed.’

Immediately Lev’s eyes went to Anna and I could see his concern.

He watched her for a moment, then took the last cigarette from the packet and lit it, shaking the match and placing it carefully on the table. He sucked the smoke into his lungs, then leaned forward to pass it to me. ‘That’s why you kept looking across the field. You think they’ll follow you here?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. I was in the forest all day; it would be difficult to track me.’

‘But we should leave.’ His worry was clear to me. ‘It’s not safe for us here anymore?’

‘Maybe I imagined it.’ It was the most I could say to reassure him.

‘You’re not afraid?’

‘I’m always afraid.’

He nodded in agreement, and for a while we sat in silence as we shared the last cigarette and drank to families and peace and to not being found.

‘We ran away from the fighting in Tambov,’ Lev said, wiping his lips on his sleeve. ‘With the war and then the uprising, it was like the world had gone mad. Nowhere was safe, and we had nothing left after the requisitions. We joked that the chickens had been drafted into the war, but it wasn’t funny. Not really. Anyway, I had a daughter to protect and thought if we kept off the roads, we could get to Moscow and—’

‘Why Moscow? That’s a long way.’

He shrugged. ‘I thought there might be work for a teacher or . . . I don’t know. Maybe I never really believed we’d get there. We just had to get away. Then we found this place and decided to stay for a while. There’s food. Shelter.’

‘And the man you killed?’ I asked. ‘He was here? You want to tell me about it?’

He looked down at the table.

‘Did Anna see? Does she know?’

‘It was about two weeks ago.’ He continued to stare at the table. ‘We were coming through a village and some people tried to pull us off the horse. We hadn’t been on the road long and were looking for shelter, but soldiers had been there and the people were hungry. They just wanted something to eat and . . . one of them grabbed Anna’s leg and she was shouting for me to do something. More and more of them came, people crowding round us. They were going to pull us down, getting nasty, calling us selfish, and Anna was screaming and I was afraid and . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. I shot him. Right here.’ He looked up at me and patted his chest. ‘I didn’t wait to see what happened. The people stood back and we rode away.’

‘Maybe he lived,’ I tried to reassure him.

‘No.’

‘What about Anna?’

‘She never mentions it. I tried to talk to her about it, but she won’t. Maybe it’s better that way.’

I reached across the table and put my hand on his arm. I didn’t know what to say to him. I tried to remember how I had felt the first time I had taken a life, but it was so long ago and so much had come between that I felt nothing.

Lev forced himself to smile. ‘I did it for Anna.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘That’s the only reason to do something like that – for our children.’

I knew that I would do anything to bring mine home. Anything at all. Even if it meant I would burn for eternity.

My concerns about being followed had worried Lev, so we agreed to sleep in shifts. He insisted on taking the first watch, saying I was more in need of the sleep, and I accepted his offer as another kindness. So with the vodka and tobacco gone, and the state of our country lamented, I went to my bed while Lev blew out the lamp and sat at the table with his shotgun by his side.

It was as dark as any night could be inside the smoky
izba
, and I settled on the straw in one of the berths and held my rifle close as if it were my lover. Beside my head, within easy reach, my revolver.

I believed Lev was a good man, but too many people hid their true colour, so I tried to remain wary and stay awake as long as I could. The vodka had taken its effect on me, though, as had the days of travel and little sleep, and my eyes closed with almost no resistance. And when the dog climbed up onto my bunk and curled himself against my legs, I did nothing to dissuade him.

There was a simple comfort in being with other people, sharing a meal, lying in a bed beneath a roof in the warmth, and so sleep threw herself around me.

The wind was shrill as it rushed across the steppe, slipping over the grass and humming through the furrows. It swirled about the
izba
, lifting the roof and rattling the doors and windows as if all the devils and spirits had come to batter this small refuge. The trees in the copse groaned and creaked, the cantankerous crows complaining from time to time, and in that chaos of the land’s breath, I dreamed of nothing and everything.

Images of the gaunt rider, immense on the back of his horse, raising his sword to cut me into a thousand pieces. I saw the men in the forest, crucified, hanged, and I turned away in horror when their faces became those of my sons and their eyes were empty sockets burned in the shape of a five-pointed star.

In a moment of waking, I swore I heard wolves howling in the forest and I opened my eyes to stare at the blackness, not even the faintest hint of light, wondering where I was before I remembered Lev and Anna.

‘Lev?’ I spoke into the darkness.

‘I’m here.’

‘Isn’t it my turn to—’

‘It’s not time,’ he said. ‘Sleep, Kolya. I’ll wake you.’

‘But surely—’

‘Go to sleep,’ he repeated.

The dog whined his alertness to the sounds outside, but I patted him and he settled, pressing against me, sharing his warmth while we listened to the wolf song, far away, mingling with the whistle of the wind and the spatter of sleet against the thatched roof. Sleep came quickly once more, and when I woke again, there was a grey light around the blankets covering the window, and Anna was shaking me, calling my name.

‘Kolya,’ she was saying. ‘You have to get up.’

There was an urgency in her voice and I was moving right away, annoyed for having slept so long.

There was no time for a slow awakening, no time for the hangover already thumping at the back of my head. Hands on my revolver, I swung my legs to the floor.

In an instant I was alert. Prepared. Ready to fight.

Anna took a step back and put up her hands in fear. ‘Papa told me.’

‘What?’

‘Papa said to get you.’ She took another step back and turned her body away from me as if she was expecting to be hurt.

I looked down at the revolver in my hands, the muzzle pointed at her, and it took a second for the implication of that to sink in.

‘No,’ I said, moving it. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

‘Papa said to get you,’ she repeated. ‘He saw someone.’

‘Saw someone?’ I said, hurrying to the window and snatching away the blanket. ‘Who? Where?’

‘Across the field. Where you came from.’

The day had barely begun; there was less than an hour’s daylight in the sky, so everything had a grey hue to it. To make matters worse, the glass was uneven and distorted everything outside. In some places, the fields were magnified, in others almost impossible to see due to the grime that had collected on the window.

‘I don’t see anybody.’

‘Papa said—’

‘Where is he?’

‘With the horses.’

‘Get my coat,’ I said, and when I had pulled on my boots, I took it from her, leaving it unbuttoned. I put my rifle over my shoulder and hurried about, gathering my belongings, ignoring the dog that now followed at my heels. I stripped the remaining blankets away from the windows and put them in Anna’s arms, saying, ‘Hold these,’ before taking my satchel and the saddlebags I had brought in. ‘Wait here.’

I went out first, startling a pair of magpies that was sitting on the fence, the dog following me out into the yard. I ignored the flurry of black and white, and scanned the horizon beyond the field but saw no one.

I beckoned Anna out, telling her to hurry. ‘The barn,’ I said. ‘Quick.’

She ran ahead of me, small and afraid, clutching my blankets, and I spent a few more seconds looking into the distance, then followed, skidding on the ice that had formed during the night.

In the barn, Lev had already saddled Kashtan and prepared her for me to leave.

‘What did you see?’ I asked as I ran in.

Lev took the blankets from Anna and spread them into my tarpaulin. ‘A man on the horizon,’ he said. ‘The same direction you came from.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes.’ He folded and rolled the blankets as I secured my saddlebags.

‘On horseback?’

Lev lifted the roll onto Kashtan. ‘I came to check on the horses and there he was.’

‘How far?’

‘As far as he could be. Any further and I wouldn’t have seen him.’

‘And you’re sure it was just one rider?’

‘That’s all I saw, but there could be more.’

‘Why didn’t you wake me last night?’ I asked. ‘We were going to share the watch.’

‘You needed the sleep more than I did.’

I ran a hand across my face, feeling the growth of my beard. ‘You should come with me.’

Lev shook his head. ‘Whoever it was, they could have seen me. If we’re not here, they’ll come after us, think we’ve got something to run from.’