Child Thief

by Dan Smith

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then what are you doing in this shit hole?’

  I looked around, wondering what would make a man describe this beautiful land as a shit hole. But of course the soldier saw nothing of the land. He was blind to the forests and the steppe and the mountains and the fields. He saw only the villages that he moved into. He saw only the squalor and desperation of people whose belongings are taken from them; whose families are ripped apart; whose lives are invaded by greed and malice and poison. He saw men begging for their livelihood, women crying for their lost sons, streets filled with the walking dead.

  I held on to my anger, fought the desire to reach out for the barrel of his rifle and pull him from his horse. ‘This is my home now,’ I said. ‘I live here. And I’m looking for my daughter. Please, I need to—’

  ‘Take off your satchel and put it beside the rifle.’

  I hesitated, once more allowing myself a quick glance to the treeline, before doing as he instructed. The young man shifted as his horse moved and he spoke soothing words to calm it. Then he hardened his look. ‘You’re not from Sushne. I would know you. I’d remember. Not from Uroz either. What village are you from?’

  ‘I don’t live in any village,’ I said.

  ‘You have to live somewhere.’

  ‘In the hills.’ I inclined my head towards the line of trees, the hills beyond. ‘I have a small hut.’ It was a risk. If they made me show them, they’d find the body of the child thief, but I couldn’t betray my own village; my own wife and daughter. They’d find it eventually, but not yet. And not by my word.

  ‘What do you grow?’

  ‘Grow?’ I forced a smile. ‘I don’t grow anything. I sometimes work, but I don’t grow anything. I’m not a farmer. I have nothing.’

  ‘But you have a rifle.’

  ‘For hunting. I shoot rabbits, sometimes deer or wolf. You’re a soldier; you understand I need a rifle.’

  ‘Take off your coat.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take off your coat.’

  ‘In this cold? I’ll freeze.’

  The soldier lifted his rifle so it was pointed directly at my face. ‘I could shoot you right here. Your choice.’

  I nodded and started to unbutton my coat.

  Without taking his eyes off me, the soldier raised his voice and called to the second man. ‘Andrei, get over here and take this man’s coat.’

  Andrei lowered his weapon and trotted his horse over. When he reached us, he swung his leg over and dismounted, coming close, waiting for me to remove the coat and hold it out. Without looking me in the eye, without speaking, Andrei took it and put his hands into the pockets. He pulled out the revolver and held it up for the other man to see.

  ‘You’re well armed.’ The first soldier kept his rifle pointed at me.

  I shrugged, feeling the cold circling.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m looking for my daughter. I need to go after her, she’s very young and she … Look.’ I pointed at the tracks. ‘You can see where she’s gone. I have to follow her.’

  The mounted soldier leaned down to take the revolver from Andrei, sitting straight in the saddle again, inspecting it. ‘Search him.’

  Andrei ran his hands over my shirt and trousers, turning to shake his head when he found nothing.

  ‘Have you seen a young woman and an old man?’ The first soldier asked.

  ‘I’ve seen no one.’

  The young man stuck the revolver into his belt and sniffed. He put his fingers under the peak of his budenovka to scratch his head and stared down at me. ‘They were supposed to be coming this way; coming to report to the commander in Sushne. We were following their tracks along the road and then … and then no tracks.’ He reached into a pocket and took out a packet of papirosa cigarettes, his rifle waving in my face as he steadied it with one hand. He pinched the tube and put it into his mouth. ‘What do you make of that?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘But what would you think? If their tracks just stopped?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know what to think.’ I could feel the cold air around me. I’d been warm under the coat, had even sweated a little from the exertion of trying to move quickly, the adrenalin from confronting the child thief, and now the sweat was cooling in the wind that blew along the road.

  ‘It was like they just vanished,’ the soldier said.

  I glanced over to the trees again, wondering if my sons were there yet.

  The young soldier followed my gaze. ‘Something there?’ he asked. ‘Or are you thinking you can make it to the trees?’

  ‘What? No. I told you, I’m looking for my daughter.’

  The second soldier, Andrei, glanced out towards the trees. ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Eight years old,’ I said, trying to catch his eye. ‘Her name is Dariya. Let me go after her.’

  ‘How long has she been missing?’

  ‘A few hours. Please. She’s just a little girl and she’s lost out here in the cold.’

  ‘Only eight years old?’ He studied me, pursing his lips, as if considering my plea.

  ‘What does it matter?’ said the first soldier, making his comrade look up at him. ‘One less kulak.’

  ‘No, we’re not kulaks, we’re—’

  ‘You’re all kulaks,’ he said. ‘All trying to keep your wealth to yourselves. Hide it from those that have nothing; people who are willing to work.’

  ‘We have nothing.’ I spoke to the man standing beside me. I could feel he was more sympathetic. Perhaps he might be able to influence his comrade. ‘Please, I need to find her. Look.’ I pointed again. ‘You can see her tracks. She went along the road. Please. Just let me follow her. Come with me.’

  The mounted soldier shook his head. ‘All you ever do is lie. You’re all enemies of the people.’

  ‘I’m telling the truth.’

  ‘Maybe we should follow these tracks now,’ Andrei said. ‘We’re going that way anyway.’

  ‘He’s trying to trick us. Trick us so he can run.’ The mounted soldier stared down at me. ‘You think you can run?’

  ‘No. No, I’m just looking for—’

  ‘Take off your boots.’

  ‘My boots?’

  ‘There are tracks, Yakov.’ Andrei said. ‘And they are small. Maybe he’s telling the truth.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘We could follow them.’ He turned to look along the road. ‘If he’s lying, we’ll arrest him – it doesn’t make any difference.’

  Yakov turned to look down at his comrade, contempt in his eyes and on his lips. ‘You’re right about that – it makes no difference. Lying or not, we’re going to arrest him.’ He turned back to me. ‘Take off your boots.’

  ‘Let him keep them,’ said Andrei. ‘He’s done nothing wrong.’

  ‘He’s a kulak. Take them off.’

  I hesitated, looking first at Andrei, then up at Yakov. I wondered if I was quick enough to overpower these two young men, but my question was answered by a vicious and powerful blow. The man on horseback thrust the barrel of his rifle hard into the place where my neck met my collarbone, a sharp and sudden pain which took me by surprise and dropped me to my knees, gasping for breath.

  ‘Take off your boots or I’ll kill you right here.’

  I coughed, putting a hand to the place where Yakov had hit me, and I sucked air into my lungs before looking up at him, wanting to drag him from his horse and beat him for what he’d done.

  ‘Take them off.’ Yakov pointed the rifle at my face, and I had no doubt he would use it if I didn’t do as he instructed.

  I nodded and pulled the boots off, leaving them in the snow.

  ‘All right,’ Yakov said. ‘Now there’s no running away. Now there’s only walking.’ He motioned ahead of him with the barrel of his rifle. ‘Go on, tsarist. Start walking.’

  Andrei collected my satchel and rifle, putting them across his ba
ck before he picked up my boots. He looked at me, but only caught my eye by accident, and there was something like shame in his expression. He was not comfortable; this was not what he wanted; he was doing his job. Yakov, though, was enjoying himself.

  ‘I’m no tsarist,’ I said.

  ‘You’re whatever I say you are. Go on. Walk.’

  22

  It was only a matter of minutes before my feet were numb and I felt nothing of the ground upon which I walked. I might have been walking on a bed of feathers or a field of the sharpest nails, it wouldn’t have mattered. And as the sun dropped from the sky, the temperature fell with it and the cold wind plucked at my clothes, finding its way through. I stayed upright, head straight, eyes ahead. I was a soldier. I had marched in the cold before. But I was older and my age punished me as if it were scornful of what I’d become. My steps were laboured. I was exhausted, hungry, and with no feeling in my feet I couldn’t help stumbling from time to time. And every time I fell to my knees, the riders stopped behind me and waited for me to stand and begin walking again. If I took too long, Yakov would edge forward and prod me with the barrel of his rifle, digging at my ribs, my spine, the back of my head. He had learned to poke at the places where the bone was close to the skin.

  Ignoring the pain, I focused on the footprints ahead. The only prints on the road. Dariya’s small feet leading the way; her amazing, resilient little feet that had endured so much walking and so much horror and yet walked on. I stared at those prints and kept my mind away from the cold and the snow and the riders behind. I thought of Natalia at home, sitting with Lara, wondering when I would return with the boys. And I thought about my sons following, wondering when I would hear their first shot, waiting for the moment when they would shoot these two men from their horses and come for me.

  But when we rounded the last corner and I saw the village ahead, I knew my sons were not going to rescue me.

  Dariya’s trail led all the way to the village, where it disappeared in the clutter of a thousand prints crossing and re-crossing the paths between the houses and through the centre of the village. Here the snow was trampled by the feet of many people and horses and carts.

  ‘Over there,’ Yakov ordered.

  I had been to Sushne before, a few years ago, when times were good. It was much like Vyriv, but larger. There were houses arranged around a central space, with others lying behind them. Families had expanded; new people had come to live here during the good years, and so the village had grown and houses had been built. Far to the left a simple church with a belfry that stood empty. To one side of the church’s broken steps, the bell lay on its side, half the height of a man, a great piece smashed from it so it would never ring again. There was evidence of the path it had taken when the soldiers had cast it from the tower, the great weight of a symbol of faith and calling, free-falling to the steps, where it shattered the concrete, powdered the balustrade and fractured.

  Two men in uniform, rifles over their shoulders, stood at the base of those damaged steps, leaning against a part of the balustrade that was still intact. They were smoking cigarettes and looking in our direction. I didn’t need to see the man behind me to know this was where he wanted me to go. This was where they had made their jail in Sushne.

  I walked on, heading towards the church, drawing no looks because there was no one in the street to watch me. There was no one outside but the two soldiers by the steps and the two behind me on horseback.

  The sun had almost set now, the sky was dark with cloud, and there were lights on in some of the windows. Weak lights that flickered and melted the frost that had formed on the glass.

  When I reached the steps of the church, the two soldiers came forward, flicking their cigarettes away and moving to either side of me, taking my arms.

  ‘Put him with the rest,’ said Yakov, and I heard his horse turn and move away.

  The soldiers said nothing. They gripped me tight and bustled me up the steps as if I had resisted. One of them put his booted foot against the door and pushed it open.

  Inside, the church was dim and smelled of stone and wood. It was a simple building, like the one in Vyriv, perhaps a little larger. From this place of faith, however, all traces of religion had been stripped away. The simple wooden benches, once arranged before the altar, were now swept aside and roughly piled around the edges. Some of them had been broken with boots and axes, kicked and cut for easy firewood. The altar itself had been stripped of its adornment and was now just a sturdy wooden table in the centre of the room. While it had once been pristine and well cared for, it was now functional and basic. Upon it there were no candlesticks, but there were candles, stuck in their own wax to secure them to the uneven surface. One or two of the candles were burning with strong flames that danced in the breeze from the open door, trailing capillaries of black smoke, giving enough light to see the wooden crucifix discarded on the table and dark patches on the walls where icons had been removed. They had been smashed and burned in the centre of the village along with any other symbols of religion.

  The soldiers’ boots were loud on the stone floor, the pad of my own bare feet inaudible as we went to the far end of the church, where there was a single door in the wall. We stopped a few feet from it, and one of the soldiers released his grip, running his hands over my clothes, squeezing my pockets, feeling for any belongings. The other stepped forward, taking a key from his belt, and when the first soldier had finished searching me, the second unlocked the door and his comrade pushed me into the blackness.

  The door shut behind me and the key turned in the lock.

  I stood while my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. The smell was not of wood and stone in there, but of sweat and fear. Of human waste.

  The air was thick with it, closing around me.

  ‘Who is that?’

  A single voice in the dark. A man speaking Ukrainian. Then a cough.

  The blackness became grey as my eyes took in what light was available, but I could still see very little inside that room. I guessed it was the place where the priest would have prepared for mass, and that it had no windows, explaining the minimal light.

  ‘Who is it?’ The same voice. Weak. An old man with a dry throat.

  ‘No one,’ I answered, putting my hands to the door, running my fingers around its edges, feeling its contours. I could hear the receding footsteps of the soldiers and I put an ear to the wood, listening until they had gone. Then I took the handle and shook the door, barely even rattling it in its frame, it was so solid and well set. I felt the keyhole and crouched to look through into the church, but there was little to see other than the table with the crucifix and the candles burning on it. I felt further, testing the large iron hinges, slipping my fingertips beneath the door and trying to find any way it might open.

  ‘We’Ve all tried it,’ said the voice. ‘Every one of us.’

  I stopped, stood, took a step forward, my feet catching on something that moved and pulled away, accompanied by a sharp intake of breath. A person’s leg, outstretched.

  ‘I’ m sorry.’

  ‘Sit down,’ said a voice, this one different, but with the same dryness, the same weariness. ‘Sit down before you hurt some–one.’

  I touched the section of wall beside the door and put my back to it, sliding down, grateful for the relief in my legs.

  Reaching out, I pulled one foot up, lodging it on the knee of my other leg and rubbing some life back into it. Already the feeling was coming back and the intensity of the pain was increasing.

  ‘You’re from this village?’ said the first voice.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  I hesitated. ‘Luka Mikhailovich.’

  ‘Ah. Luka. A strong name. You’ll do well. You’ll survive with a name like Luka. It’s the Mishas and the Sashas that find it hard. My name is Konstantin Petrovich. Kostya. That’s a good name too.’

  By now my eyes had begun to accept the tiniest light which filtered thro
ugh the keyhole and beneath the door, and I could see the faint shadow of the man who had spoken. He sat opposite, against the other wall, but he shifted when he spoke his name, and I understood he was holding out his hand.

  I leaned forward and took it.

  ‘Our fellow prisoners,’ he said, ‘are my brother Evgeni Petrovich and my neighbours Yuri Grigorovich and Dimitri Markovich.’

  I immediately thought of the man whose daughter I had come to find. My own brother-in-law, Dimitri, lying dead in a field with his wife waiting for him at home, but I turned my head, looking for the dark smudges of the other men, reaching out and shaking their hands in a solemn act of mutual understanding.

  ‘But there are no formalities here,’ said Yuri Grigorovich. ‘We’re all friends. Call me Yuri.’

  ‘Where are you from?’ Kostya asked. ‘What village?’

  Even here, among these other prisoners, I wanted to protect my home from the men who might destroy its heart. I didn’t know the people with whom I was imprisoned, but I knew of the OGPU and I knew of the activists sent to control our land. Any of these men might be here to gain my trust, find out something that might be of use to them. There were people everywhere, well placed and well trained to turn neighbour against neighbour, husband against wife, father against son. Any one of them might be a spy.

  ‘No village,’ I said. ‘I live alone with my daughter, close to the forest.’

  ‘No wife?’

  ‘No. The famine was not kind to us.’ I hated saying it, denying my own wife.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it. You farm?’

  ‘Nothing to speak of. I hunt for food and skins.’

  ‘So what brings you here?’ asked Kostya, then he chuckled to himself, a low throaty sound that again made me picture him as an old man, his skin beaten by the weather, his hands hardened by years of working on the land. ‘I think you probably should’ve stayed in the forest.’

  ‘I’m looking for my daughter,’ I said.

  ‘Your daughter?’

  ‘She’s lost.’ I took my foot in my hands and began rubbing again.