Child Thief

by Dan Smith

  ‘What now?’ Viktor asked as he finished the last bite of his bread. He clapped his gloved hands to dust away the crumbs, his palms making a hollow banging sound as they came together.

  ‘You think he’ll come after us?’ Petro said.

  ‘No. I think he’s the kind who waits.’ I took a packet of cigarettes from my pocket. The card was soggy, the lid wrinkled and ill-fitting because the weather had penetrated it. It came away in my hands when I opened it and I could see the cigarettes inside were wet. It didn’t matter. I needed to smoke. I removed one glove and picked out a cigarette, fumbling with numb fingertips. The tobacco was damp and there were brown spots on the paper.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ Viktor asked. ‘That he’s the kind who waits.’

  ‘He works like a sharpshooter.’ I took a burning stick from the fire and touched the tip to the cigarette. ‘Wounding a man and trying to draw out his comrades was a trick we all used.’

  ‘We? You were a sharpshooter? You never told us that.’

  ‘It was never important.’ I threw the stick back into the flames.

  ‘I bet you were good, though,’ Viktor said. ‘The best.’

  ‘The Germans were the best. We were good, but their rifles were second to none. And they had scopes, like this one.’ I clamped the cigarette in my mouth and lifted the rifle onto my knee. ‘That man out there has to be using something like this; otherwise he could never have shot like that. Not at that range.’

  ‘Where would he get a rifle like that?’ Petro asked.

  ‘Where did you get it from?’ Viktor said.

  I dragged on the cigarette. ‘A German.’

  ‘You shot him?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Petro.

  I hesitated, then put a fingertip to the side of my head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I meant where were you? When was it?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I just wondered, that’s all. You never say much about it.’

  I ran my hands along the stock of the German rifle, feeling the smoothness of it. ‘It was in Galicia in the summer of 1917,’ I said. ‘Our final offensive against the central powers, which would make you … just four years old at the time.’

  ‘You’d never seen us,’ Petro said. ‘Did you even know our names?’

  ‘I knew your names. Your mother wrote to me, and I thought about you all the time.’

  ‘You never thought about coming home, though?’ he asked.

  ‘Sometimes. But I was a soldier; I had a duty.’

  ‘You must have been afraid.’

  ‘How was it?’ Viktor said. ‘Being in the army.’

  ‘Not good. Morale was low, officers always being demoted and replaced, soldiers refusing to act without discussing everything with their committees.’ I looked at Petro. ‘Some soldiers did just go home. They abandoned their posts and left their brothers to fight alone.’

  ‘The beginning of the revolution,’ Petro said.

  I smiled. ‘We thought it was going to be Utopia. No more oppression, no more rich and poor.’

  ‘So tell us how you got the rifle,’ Viktor said.

  I thought for a moment, taking myself back. There had been times when these things had filled my thoughts, but the years had moved on and I had learned to put many of the memories away. I kept them behind a strong door in my mind that was rarely opened now.

  ‘Well, when the artillery began to fire in the last days of June, we knew something big was happening. They only ever fired like that when they were going to make us push hard. They went on for two days, driving some of the men so mad they screamed and screamed.’

  I shook my head to dispel the sound of those guns and took another drag on the cigarette. I watched my sons by the fire. Viktor was sitting on a small log, his forearms resting on his thighs, his body leaning forward as he listened. His eyes were alive, the flames reflected in his pupils.

  ‘Go on, Papa.’

  ‘On the first morning of July we came out of the trenches and advanced on the Austro-Hungarians, driving them back. It was the first time we’d been out of our holes in many days. We were the first into the ruins of a town I don’t even know the name of, a place with buildings smashed and blown apart by our shelling. We thought it was deserted, but we were wrong. Shots fired from somewhere in the rubble took down two soldiers before the rest of us had time to find protection.’

  ‘The sharpshooter,’ Viktor said.

  ‘Mm. The shots were well placed and both men were still alive. They lay in the open, calling for help, dying slowly while the rest of us stayed hidden.’

  Petro stared at the flames as he listened. He would be remembering how Dimitri had called to us as he died.

  ‘I was ordered to find him.’

  ‘Why you?’ Viktor asked.

  ‘Because I was a sharpshooter. Three men were sent out to act as decoys while I looked for him. Three men, my brothers, all shot dead so he wouldn’t see me coming, but I found him. A German, lying prone on the roof of a half-demolished building. He’d made a barrier of bricks around himself, leaving just enough room for the barrel of his rifle and the height of his scope. He was firing at us from so far away it was almost impossible to imagine how he could hit his target, but when I was close enough, I put a bullet right here.’ I touched the side of my head once more. ‘Just one. With that rifle you’ve been carrying all day.’

  Viktor glanced at his Russian-made Mosin-Nagant.

  ‘This was the first telescopic sight I ever looked through,’ I said. ‘And my officer gave it to me as a reward.’ I tapped the weapon on my knee and looked at my sons, seeing their different reactions. Viktor was entranced by the story, seeing the heroism and the adventure, while Petro saw the suffering and the loss of life. One story, two different interpretations. For me the events of that July were neither one thing nor another; they were just a part of my past told now so the words could evaporate by the fire.

  ‘This man, though,’ I said, ‘the one who shot at us today – I’ve not seen shooting like that before. And he was so well hidden. He’s very dangerous.’

  No one spoke. Petro and Viktor stared into the fire, dry sticks popping and crackling in the flames that rose and fell, rose and fell, snapping and twisting in the wind. Somewhere out in the darkness a wolf howled, but none of us reacted to the sound. We had heard wolves before.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ Viktor asked, breaking the silence. ‘Are we going back?’

  Both sons were watching me again, waiting for an answer.

  I sighed and looked down at the cigarette in my fingers, as if I’d forgotten it was there. I wished I had something to drink. A mouthful of horilka to take the edge off my thoughts.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Petro was surprised. ‘Yes? You mean we’re going to leave Dariya?’

  ‘That’s not what I said.’

  Now Petro was confused. ‘What then?’

  I passed the cigarette to Viktor.

  ‘We can’t leave her,’ Petro said.

  ‘She’s not your responsibility,’ I told him. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  Petro shook his head. ‘I should have brought her back with me.’

  ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself Viktor passed him the cigarette. ‘No one blames you.’

  Petro snatched it from his brother without looking at him and sat for a while with it between his finger and thumb before lifting it to his mouth. ‘If I had—’

  ‘If you had nothing,’ Viktor told him. ‘Papa said it isn’t your’ fault and he’s right. You didn’t know what was going to happen. We all thought the man we found did … that to those children.’

  ‘You too?’ I asked, looking up.

  Viktor shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to. You were so sure about him, but …’ He searched for the words. ‘There was no one else.’

  ‘You thought I was wrong?’

  Viktor nodded. ‘Yes, Papa.’

  I smiled at that. I p
ut my head back and laughed, releasing some tension.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Viktor asked.

  I patted his shoulder. ‘You’re a good boy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you stood by me anyway. You thought I was wrong but you stood by me.’ I smiled and wondered how many years, maybe months or days, it would be before Viktor would no longer trust my judgement or respect my decisions. What would it have taken for him to tell me he thought I was wrong?

  Petro stood and leaned over to hand me the cigarette. I took it with cold fingers, and while Petro was leaning towards me like that, I spoke, saying, ‘What about you, Petro? What did you think?’

  ‘I thought you were right.’

  I waited for him to sit down again, put his hands towards the fire for warmth. I finished what was left of the cigarette and threw it into the flames. ‘I want you two to go back,’ I said. ‘I want you to go home. I’ll find Dariya.’

  ‘Alone?’ Viktor looked up.

  ‘It’s better that way.’

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Safer. It doesn’t make sense for all of us to head on.’

  ‘I want to come with you,’ Petro said. ‘Viktor can go back if he wants to, but I’m coming with you.’

  ‘You have nothing to prove to me, Petro. You’re a good boy. A good man. You already make me proud.’

  Petro looked away.

  ‘I can’t take you with me. Not with things as they are. That shot might have hit either of you today and I don’t want to have to take that back to your mother. It’ll be bad enough seeing Svetlana’s face.’

  Petro stared at the fire. He was listening but he didn’t want to hear.

  ‘I’m coming too,’ Viktor said.

  ‘No. You need to get away from here. Go back to the shelter we saw. Stay there until first light, then make your way home. You know the way?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So wait for me at home. And if anyone comes to the village, give them what they want.’

  ‘You mean communists?’ Viktor asked.

  ‘We’re all communists,’ Petro said.

  ‘Communists, Chekists, Bolsheviks, whatever you want to call them.’

  ‘Whoever it is, don’t put yourselves in any danger,’ I said. ‘Just give them what they want, and when I come home we’re going to leave this damn country.’

  ‘We’re not going to leave you alone.’ Viktor looked at his brother, and I knew they both wanted to come for different reasons. Petro felt responsible. He thought it was his fault Dariya was missing and he felt a duty to her. He had failed to bring her back once, and he was determined not to do it again. Viktor, on the other hand, was drawn to the fight. He wanted to find Dariya and he wanted to help his father, and the promise of action excited him.

  ‘I’ve already told you, it’s safer for me alone. Don’t argue with me.’

  ‘What about you, then?’ Petro said. ‘If we go back, what will you do?’

  ‘I’ll cross the fields tonight, when it’s dark. I’ll find his trail in the morning and follow him.’

  ‘And if he’s waiting?’

  ‘I don’t think he will be. Not there, anyway.’

  ‘But later. In the forest. Or maybe when you come out into another field. He’ll be waiting then, won’t he?’ Viktor said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ll be alone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then it’s better to have us to help you.’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I’ll move faster on my own. I know what I’m looking for.’

  ‘Then teach us,’ said Viktor.

  ‘And I’ll be harder to see if I’m alone. If we’re together, we’re easier prey.’

  ‘We’ll keep apart.’

  ‘Stop.’ I held up a hand and raised my voice. ‘I said no and I mean no. I’m not taking you out there for that man to put a bullet in your belly like he did with Dimitri. I’m not going to listen to your screams. I can’t do that. I won’t go home to your mother to tell her I couldn’t keep you safe.’ I closed my eyes and remembered the times I had done the same as the child thief had done that day. The times I had waited for the moment to take the shot. I had dropped a man alive so his comrades would try to help him, and I had taken them too, when they came into the open.

  ‘Everything has changed,’ I said, my voice quiet. ‘We’re not just hunting him now; he’s hunting us.’

  14

  By the time the wind dropped and the snowfall subsided, night had come to the steppe. We huddled by the fire, our clothes more or less dry now, our stomachs empty and grumbling.

  ‘We need to find our things,’ I said, standing. ‘You two wait here.’

  I didn’t give them time to object. I took the revolver from my satchel and stuffed it into my coat pocket before breaking a solid stick, half my height, from the pile of firewood. I put the satchel in the snow where I’d leaned my rifle against a birch and walked through the trees to the place where they formed a line along the edge of the field. It was dark, the sky still clouded, but the snow brightened the open ground. My silhouette would stand out, but I kept low, hoping it would be enough, knowing that if the man was still watching, his telescopic lens would be unable to take in enough light. I was invisible to him now.

  I moved down to the place we’d escaped from earlier, where everything was now under a thick covering of snow, and began poking the stick into the soft undulations. I pushed hard, moving from side to side, searching for our packs, and within a few moments the end of the branch touched something solid but with a little give in it. This was not frozen soil but something else, so I knelt down to brush the snow aside.

  This wasn’t where I had left my pack. This was the place where Dimitri had died.

  I squatted and cleared away the fresh snow, revealing a patch of dark cloth, moving my fingers around the edge until I made out Dimitri’s shoulder.

  I paused for a moment, imagining him lying beneath the covering, his face frozen in that expression of fear and confusion and begging. I heard the ripple of his dying sounds in my mind, shook them away, and continued to dig. I knew I could let nothing go to waste; nothing useful should be left behind.

  I followed the line of Dimitri’s leg until his feet were uncovered, digging down and lifting them in turn, pulling off his boots and socks. I stuffed the socks into the boots, tied the laces and then strung them around my neck so they fell against my chest. With that done, I removed Dimitri’s coat, wrestling with his frozen limbs, before I reburied him and stood up.

  Dimitri would stay there until spring, hidden just below the surface, but when the temperature rose and the snow melted, he would thaw and lie in the open, by the forest which would be freshly adorned with leaves and new life. And then something would find him and make him its meal.

  I intended there to be one more body to join him.

  Continuing to search, I found all of our belongings before going back to the trees, looking for the vague glow of the fire. The windbreak I’d made had done its job well, and the fire pit helped to keep the flames hidden from sight as well as from the wind. It was hard to spot anything, even this close.

  When I came back to the fire, both Viktor and Petro were pointing their rifles in my direction. Viktor kneeling behind a fallen tree, Petro standing close to the trunk of another, the barrel of his rifle resting on a low branch. Shadow cast from the flames flickered across his shape.

  ‘It’s only me,’ I said, feeling a touch of pride that they’d thought to take up a defensive position. They had been alert to the sounds in the forest, and that was a good sign. Despite everything that had happened, they were still thinking. I was certain they would make it home without me.

  My sons came back to the fire as I rummaged through the packs, making some things more accessible than others, ensuring I had everything I’d need. The situation had changed now; my priorities were different. Before, there had been three of us to carry everything, but now there would be only me. An
d when we left the village this morning we were just following tracks, chasing a thief. But now the thief had turned on us and I saw his intention was not as I’d first thought. There were some items I’d need to have close to hand.

  ‘Let us come,’ Viktor said as I finished packing the bag.

  ‘Don’t make me talk about this again.’ I checked the red nine pistol was loaded, and put it into my satchel. I closed the top and fastened the buckle.

  ‘I’m not planning on taking too long,’ I said. ‘I’il be over the fields in no time, pick up his trail in the woods as soon as it’s light. I’ll be fine. And if the sky clears, and I can see the tracks at night, it’ll be easier for me to follow if I’m alone.’ If I could, I would go on in the dark, as I had failed to do the previous night. There was a chance the child thief would do as he had done before – find a place to rest – and if that were so, I might discover him as he slept and be able put an end to this hunt.

  ‘And if it is too dark to go on?’ Petro said. ‘Where will you sleep? What will you eat?’

  ‘I have wire, I can make a snare. I’ll find tracks and catch something. I have enough guns to shoot something – I’m a hunter for God’s sake. And anyway, how will it be any easier if you come? Will I be less hungry? Less tired?’

  Petro didn’t answer. He didn’t even shake his head.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Do as I ask. Go home to your mother. Tell your sister I’ll bring her cousin back soon.’

  ‘And Dimitri?’ Viktor asked. ‘What do we tell them about him?’

  I stared down at my feet and thought about Svetlana. I couldn’t ask my sons to carry that news. ‘Tell them he’s still with me.’