Child Thief

by Dan Smith

  ‘Children.’ Dimitri seized the word from the air as if it were a solid entity. He snatched it with his fist and he threw it back at my face. ‘Children. That’s who we’re trying to protect.’

  ‘Bring him out,’ someone said.

  ‘So you can kill him?’

  ‘So we can judge him.’

  ‘And who will be the judge? You?’ I looked at the crowd, singling someone out with a pointed finger. ‘You?’ I pointed at another. ‘All of you?’

  No one spoke.

  ‘You think you can know what this man is? What he’s done? You think you can know him without even speaking to him?’

  ‘Then let him speak,’ someone called out.

  ‘He can’t,’ I said. ‘He can hardly even breathe.’

  ‘Bring him out!’ Another shout, this time louder, joined by others as the people began to work themselves up again.

  Dimitri had told them what he’d seen. He’d told them about the bodies and the butchery. They were old enough to remember the pain of ten years ago, the terrible hunger. They knew how it could turn men into monsters, and they knew what Dimitri had seen on that child’s leg. By telling them, and stirring them to his own cause, he had infected them with his own brand of anxiety and bigotry. It settled deep in them, pricked at the fear they all kept buried just beneath the surface. And now they had found something to strike at, someone to punish for their situation. A way to release their demons into the open.

  ‘You tried to keep it from us,’ someone called out. ‘Keep a child-murderer hidden. A monster.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And then the police will come,’ a voice called. ‘So they can take all our children.’

  ‘And our wives.’

  Another uproar from the people. Another mess of voices and shouting, and then a tentative surge, not actually moving forward but a testing of the water, as if the crowd had, as one, decided to try my resolve.

  Dimitri was pushed forward by the swell so that he fell against me. I stopped him with one hand, pushing him back and raising the pistol into the air. I fired a single shot – a sharp, clean crack in the morning air – and the people fell silent once more.

  When the sound of the gunshot had settled I spoke again.

  ‘Go home. All of you.’

  And now there was a different kind of movement among the people standing at my front door. A softer movement as someone pushed through them to come and stand beside me.

  Josif nodded once at me and turned to look at the others. ‘Luka’s right. We have to stop this before it goes too far. We don’t know anything about this man—’

  ‘Then why do we keep him among us?’ Dimitri said.

  ‘We need to calm down.’ Josif held up his hands.

  ‘You wanted to keep this from us too, Josif. You, Leonid, Ivan. All of you respected here, trusted, and yet you wanted to keep it a secret. Those children out there in the cemetery were murdered by that man. Is that what you want for our children? To be butchered and eaten?’

  ‘We don’t know that for—’

  ‘I saw what I saw, Josif. That man is a murderer.’ Dimitri turned to the crowd again and they responded by raising their hands into the air. ‘Bring him out!’ he shouted, and the villagers began to chant those words: ‘Bring him out! Bring him out!’

  Then a snowball came from somewhere within the crowd. A hard ball of ice and snow crushed into a vicious projectile. It struck Josif and he bent at the waist, putting his hands to his face. When he stood straight again, there was blood running from his nose.

  He held up his gloved hands to show the people what they’d done. He shook his head at them. ‘Is this what you want?’ he shouted over their chanting. ‘Blood?’

  ‘Yes,’ someone yelled back. ‘Blood.’ It wasn’t the answer he had expected. Josif had wanted to shame them, but the people had moved beyond that emotion. They were angry and they were becoming frenzied. There was an approaching wickedness that threatened to harm all of them, and this was the only thing they had to aim their anger at. They had found something upon which to focus all their dark emotions, and their collective mood was moving them to act without reasoned thought. If there was to be any chance of stopping them, I knew I had to break them apart, restore their individuality if they were to see sense.

  I fired a second shot and pointed my pistol at the crowd. ‘Move away. Now. I want you all to leave my home.’

  ‘You’re going to shoot us?’ Dimitri asked.

  ‘I’ve shot many men. You’d be no different.’

  ‘And women? You’ve shot women too, Luka?’

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘And you’d shoot us?’ Dimitri looked behind him. ‘Your friends and neighbours? To save a man you don’t even know?’ Now he showed me the defiant expression of a victor and he pointed to the corner of the house. ‘In front of your own daughter?’

  Petro was standing far back from the crowd, with his arm around Lara, pulling her close as if for protection. She in turn had squeezed herself into the folds of his coat as her older brother watched with interest. I held a hand out to them, indicating they should remain where they were.

  ‘What about you, Dimitri?’ I turned my attention back to my brother-in-law. ‘You want to drag that man out into a mob? In front of your wife? What does Svetlana think of this?’

  ‘She wants to protect the children as much as I do.’

  ‘Then where is she now?’

  ‘Where she should be. With our daughter.’

  I shook my head. ‘Don’t do this, Dimitri. Please. Don’t do this. We’re still human.’

  Dimitri stepped forward so the barrel of the pistol was against his chest, but it wasn’t the act of a brave man. It was the act of a coward who knew he’d won. I had shot men in this way before – pressed the barrel of a gun against the cloth of their coat and fired right through them – felt their bodies become heavy and watched them fall aside. But Dimitri knew I wouldn’t shoot him in front of my wife and daughter. There was nothing more I could do to save the man in my home.

  I lowered the pistol, putting my free hand against Dimitri’s chest. ‘Don’t do this.’ But I knew I’d lost my ability to control this situation. Dimitri had weakened me and now he looked down at my hand, shoved it aside and pushed past me. Others followed him, the chanting beginning again as Natalia’s own kin poured in to defile our home.

  ‘Put it down, Viktor,’ I heard Dimitri say, and I nodded to my son, who was standing beside Natalia, the revolver held out in front of him. Viktor lowered it and moved to protect his mother.

  I continued to protest as the villagers lifted the stranger from his resting place. I appealed to each of them, pulling them back, trying to make them see what they were doing. It was as if I were trying to wake them from a trance, and they neither saw nor heard me, and I knew I was beaten even as I went on pleading with them.

  They put their hands under the stranger’s arms and they pulled him up, his head lolling to the side. People crowded in to touch him, to carry him, to be a part of what was happening. The blankets that fell from his body were cast aside and they saw his nakedness. His bloated belly. Skin tight around his ribs, clinging to the bones. His legs so thin, his arms without any fat on them.

  Seeing him like that, I knew the man was close to death. Perhaps, with food and rest and warmth, he might survive, but otherwise he was already almost gone.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked as they set upon the stranger.

  ‘What needs to be done.’ Dimitri gestured to those who were holding the emaciated man and they dragged him to the door, his feet trailing the floor. The man made no effort to help himself. He didn’t even make a sound.

  ‘We should help him,’ I said. ‘Look at him. This man needs our help.’

  ‘We don’t help child-murderers,’ Dimitri answered before turning to follow the others out of my home. ‘Not in Vyriv.’

  ‘Stop this.’ Josif remained by the front door as the men dragged the outsider
into the snow. ‘Please. Stop this now.’ His nose was still bleeding, the blood running across his lips and down his chin, following the line of his neck. ‘Stop.’

  But their furore was high. There was no stopping them now.

  I hurried out and beckoned to Petro and Lara, telling them to come inside at once. Lara went straight to her mother. Her eyes were wide with confusion and fear. Tears welled and fell across her cheeks. She held her mother tight, wrapping her arms around her waist and burying her face in her stomach.

  ‘We have to stop them,’ Josif said, standing in the doorway. ‘Luka?’

  ‘What can we do?’ I said. ‘You saw them.’

  ‘There must be something.’

  ‘Would you have me shoot them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what else? You’re the man of words, Josif. What else can we do? You heard me try to reason with them, but a crowd like that? That feeling? It’s powerful.’

  The crowd had passed through our gate and was now at the centre of the village, beneath the old tree.

  The man was in a bundle on the ground and I knew he wouldn’t last long. He might even be dead already.

  They were shouting at him, spitting on him. These were people I had known since the end of the civil war but now I hardly recognised them. They were no longer men and women; they were a pack of wild beasts, savage and raw.

  I pushed the door shut behind me, to spare my daughter the sound and sight of people beyond their own control. Even Dimitri was holding up his hands now, trying to bring them to order, but he had stirred a beast. He had awakened the animal that slept in these people and there was no soothing it now.

  When the first kick landed on the stranger’s bony ribs, a cheer went up. Another kick, another cheer. Then feet came in from all angles, prodding at him, striking him. People who had never harmed a person in their lives were aiming tentative blows, becoming more confident, more intoxicated by the crowd.

  And I watched from my doorstep.

  I watched as a rope was thrown over one of the tree’s strongest boughs. Thick and rough and black. The living wood dusted white and crystal on its leeward side. I watched as it was tied off and a crude noose was formed. And I watched as the starving man’s head was slipped through the thick rope and he was hoisted into the air. His body didn’t resist. His untied arms didn’t struggle. His legs didn’t kick. He simply rose into the air like a bag of grain and he swung, his body rotating slowly on the rope as the last of his life escaped into the cold air.

  A naked man hanging from a naked tree.

  7

  With death came a stiff silence. Their mania was now in a trough; their madness fallen into a hush of contemplation and realisation. It was done. The intoxication had passed and reality had slipped back into their world.

  They stood and watched as if they were one. Heads inclined upwards to gape at what they had done, breath tangible in the air around them. They huddled close to one another, feeling the weight of their actions, before their humanity returned to them, wanting to distance them from this and from each other. The first of them to step back was a woman at the edge, Akalena Vernadsky. She crossed herself and turned to walk along the road from the place where she had sung traditional songs last summer. She looked at the ground and trudged the frozen mud.

  Then others began to peel away from the pack. Like a serpent shedding its skin, the layers stripped back as the villagers woke from their trance and edged away in silence.

  They left their agitator until only Dimitri was left before the tree, looking up at the naked body twisting on the rope. A gentle rotation. The man’s head tipped to one side, his eyes bulging, revolving until his back was visible, his narrow torso, the spine clear under thin skin, his emaciated buttocks, the red marks where he’d been kicked. Then he swung round to show his face again, the ragged beard covering most of his neck and face. More marks on his chest and legs. His genitals exposed. No dignity. No mercy. No pity.

  I left Josif to wonder at what his people had done and I stepped away from the door. There was no sound but for the breeze that brushed the surface of the snow and skimmed the gentle valley. The sun still shone low in the sky, a faded orange arc made ill defined by a thin layer of cloud. The world was still a beautiful crisp blue and white. My boots made hardly a sound as I stepped in the prints of those who had come to my door that morning. I walked in their footsteps without being one of them, and I went to the place where they had brought dishonour and humiliation upon themselves.

  At Dimitri’s side I looked up at the hanged man, at peace on the end of a rope. I considered cutting him down, taking him to the cemetery and putting him in the ground – the stranger deserved some dignity at least – but I chose not to. The man’s body had another purpose now: to act as a reminder to the people who had done this. I knew as well as anyone that people are capable of terrible things but must recognise the things they have done. Without that recognition, they are nothing more than animals, empty of any feeling.

  ‘Shame on you,’ I said. My voice was hoarse and my words were quiet. ‘Shame on you, Dimitri Spektor. Shame on your family. Shame on this whole damn village.’

  Dimitri continued to stare up at the hanged man.

  ‘Is this what you wanted?’ I asked him. ‘Is it?’

  Dimitri opened his mouth, but whatever words he intended to say were caught in his throat. They stuck there and refused to come out.

  ‘Does this make our children safe?’ I asked him.

  He stared as if no thought could pass through his mind, then he blinked, shook himself and refocused. ‘I didn’t do this.’

  ‘You were part of it. You led it. You caused it.’

  ‘Don’t be so damn self-righteous. I didn’t want this. I—’

  ‘What did you want? What did you think was going to happen? You knew what you were doing, Dimitri; don’t pretend this was an accident.’

  He swallowed hard. ‘What now?’

  ‘Now? Now you have to live with it.’

  I left Dimitri standing alone and went back to my family. Viktor and Petro were at the window, their faces at the glass as I approached.

  When I went into the house, Viktor was still holding the revolver. Lara was clinging to Natalia.

  ‘What the hell is happening to them?’ I said.

  ‘People are afraid of what’s coming,’ she told me. ‘And who can blame them?’

  ‘It’s no excuse.’

  Natalia looked down at our daughter, but Lara showed no sign of understanding.

  ‘Close the shutters,’ I told my sons. ‘I don’t want Lara to see what Uncle Dimitri has done.’

  ‘But … all those people,’ Petro said. ‘How could they do that?’ He was even paler than usual. His brow creased so tight in bewilderment that the bridge of his nose wrinkled. He looked as if he’d woken in the night and forgotten where he was.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I said.

  ‘To do that to another man. They just—’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘But, Papa …’

  ‘I said I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we cut him down or something?’

  ‘Petro!’ I turned on him. ‘I don’t want to hear about it.’

  ‘He’s only asking,’ Natalia said. ‘He’s—’

  I slammed my fist hard on the table and raised my voice so it filled the small room. ‘Don’t talk about it. I don’t want to hear it. Don’t talk about it any more.’

  Natalia pulled Lara closer, placing her arms so they covered the child’s ears.

  ‘Please.’ I lowered my voice. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ I held up a hand and bowed my head. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I looked back at my wife, I nodded an apology before glancing at my children, each in turn. Then I went to the door. I hesitated, took hold of the old iron handle and pulled it open.

  I stepped out into the cold and glanced at the hanged man as I yanked the door shut. I le
t my gaze linger on the body for a moment, then I turned and headed round the back of the house.

  Entering the barn, the chickens complained at my intrusion but soon settled. The ones which had ventured out from the coop scurried back inside to the warmth.

  I went to the pile of belongings from the man’s sled and took up a milking stool to sit down before them. A small collection of essentials and a few items that meant nothing.

  The fact that he had the weapons though told me something important. There had been so much gun registration and confiscation – the last being just a year ago – that few farmers were armed. Unauthorised possession of a gun was punishable by hard labour. It was a way of pulling the peasants’ teeth – take away his weapons and you remove his ability to fight. It made life easier for the authorities when they came to enforce collectivisation if the farmers had no means of striking back. But this man, like me, had kept his weapons, and that confirmed my belief that he was a soldier. Because whichever army the man had fought for, our recent history was so filled with war and violence that no man who had ever been a soldier would willingly give up his arms.

  Searching the rest of his belongings, I felt even more kinship with this unknown man. An aluminium water bottle, heavy and hard with its frozen contents. It was the same as the one I owned, issued to those of us who fought in the Imperial Army. A trenching shovel still in its leather sheath. Just like the one I owned. A black spike bayonet. And a leather satchel almost identical to the one I used to carry ammunition for my own rifles. There were other things too, essentials for a man who intended to live away from civilisation, but it was the satchel which took my eye.

  I leaned down and lifted it to my knees, where I let it rest for a moment, feeling the cold of it against my legs. Putting my hands on top of it and turning my face to the ceiling of the barn, I paused to give a thought for the dead man, then I nodded to myself and opened the satchel.

  Inside there was a handful of ammunition for the weapons he’d been carrying, the brass casings loose in the bag. There was a flat tin bound with a black and orange striped ribbon. When I turned the tin in my hands, I saw that in the place where the ribbon was knotted, a medal hung from the material. I had never seen one like it, but I knew what it was and what it meant. If the man with the sled was the owner of this medal – if he had earned it – then this man had not been my brother. He had not been my kin. He would most probably have been an officer.