by Sam Eastland
Slowly, his wounds began to heal. In time, the nightmares faded. The only thing that never left him was that peculiar sensation of emptiness, which he had felt when he was lying in the snow. It was as if, for a moment, a curtain had been drawn back and he had glimpsed something normally too vast and horrifying to be held within the scaffolding of human thought – the terrible obliviousness of the universe to the fate of everything contained within it.
The spring thaw came, and with it the season of mud. The ice in the rivers broke up with a sound like cannon fire. Birds began to reappear. The world turned green again.
‘Come with me,’ Belyakina said one day. ‘It is time that we went to the village.’
Stefan followed her along a series of winding trails until they arrived at Markha.
And suddenly Stefan understood why Belyakina had been in no hurry to bring him to the village.
Markha was gone.
The place had been burned to the ground. Only blackened chimneys remained, like sentinels guarding the places where the houses had once stood.
‘I couldn’t tell you,’ explained Belyakina, ‘not until you were strong enough, and then I knew you’d have to see it for yourself.’
It was three days after the murder of the Cheka men that soldiers had arrived from Irkutsk, bringing with them half a dozen trucks, and orders to obliterate the village. The elderly were shot. The animals were shot. Anyone who showed resistance was also shot. Shouting through a bull horn, an officer ordered the survivors to climb aboard the vehicles while, one by one, the houses were set on fire. While the town burned, barrel loads of salt were scattered on the small and tidy plots where cucumbers, turnips, beets and potatoes had been planted. Before they left, the soldiers heaped the bodies of the dead into a pile and burned them, too.
Belyakina’s house, being at some distance from the village and hidden away among the trees, was not discovered. She had stood in her doorway, watching flames light up the evening sky and, later, she heard the trucks departing.
Belyakina waited until the sky above the village was no longer darkened by smoke. Then she went into the village, carrying a shovel, and buried the fire-splintered bones of the dead among the dust of ash and salt.
Within a week, those who had been taken prisoner were sent to labour in the goldmines at Kolyma, where life expectancy was less than one month. Some lasted longer than that, but eventually all of them perished.
Speechless, Stefan wandered among the ruins. In a heap of charred timbers, he found the remains of the walking stick he had made for Bolotov after the old man went blind. As he surveyed the destruction, he felt a rage building in his mind which he knew he would never be able to control.
He walked back to where Belyakina waited for him on the dead and salted earth.
‘What has become of the icon?’ he asked. Until that day, he had thought it was still safely hidden in the church at Markha.
Beluyakina did not speak, but only reached out and took hold of his arm.
In silence, they walked back to her house.
When they arrived, Belyakina went over to her bed, knelt down and pulled from under it a flat, rectangular object wrapped in cloth. ‘On the day you left to block the road, Istvan Kor came here and gave this to me for safekeeping.’
‘And you hid it under your bed?’ Stefan asked incredulously. ‘Did you really think it would be safe there?’
‘You’ve been in this house for weeks and never thought to look,’ replied Belyakina.
‘Thank God the Cheka didn’t find it!’ exclaimed Stefan.
‘As it turns out,’ said the woman, ‘they weren’t even looking for the icon.’
The news stunned him. ‘Then why were they coming to Markha?’
‘To investigate rumours of grain hoarding.’
‘Do you mean to say that all of this could have been avoided?’
‘Perhaps.’ The old woman shrugged. ‘But who knows? They might have found it anyway. What’s done is done.’
‘And what do you intend to do with The Shepherd?’ asked Stefan. ‘Are you just going to put it back under your bed?’
‘No,’ she answered, handing him the icon. ‘I am giving it to you.’
It had been a long time since Stefan had set eyes on The Shepherd. Now, as he carefully removed the cloth, the bright blues and greens and whites of the painting seemed to jump from the flat surface and to shimmer in the air, illuminated by the dim glow of the fat-burning lamps Belyakina used to light the cabin.
‘What you hold in your hands,’ said Belyakina, ‘is all that remains of our world. If The Shepherd is destroyed, then so are we. From this moment on, whether you like it or not, you are the keeper of our faith.’
‘I will be more than that,’ he told her. ‘I’ll make the people of this country pay for what they did to us.’
‘Be patient,’ cautioned Belyakina. ‘Now is not the time for vengeance. When that day comes, you will know it. In the meantime, you must leave this place. Soon the roads will be passable again. Hunters will come to the woods and fishermen to the lake. It is only a matter of time before one of them spots you and the Cheka learn that you aren’t dead after all. Go, and take The Shepherd with you.’
‘But where?’ asked Stefan. ‘There’s no one left out there who I can turn to.’
‘There may still be someone,’ said Belyakina. She tottered on stiff legs to the window and removed an old book from its resting place upon the sill. It was a cookbook, with a publication date of 1890. The lettering that had been stamped upon its cover had all but faded away, leaving only a faint glint of the embossing, like a sprinkle of gold dust. Belyakina shook the book upside down, and a piece of paper fell out. Written on one side was a recipe for baked carp.
‘Light that candle,’ she told Stefan, nodding at a stump of wax upon her bedside table.
Stefan did as he was told.
Belyakina held the sheet above the candle, so that the glow of the flame showed as a yellow ball through the paper. As the seconds passed, a curious brown stain began to slither across the back of the page, as if worms were crawling through it from the other side.
‘There,’ said Belyakina, handing him the document. ‘That is where you’re going.’
Stefan took the page, still warm from the candle, and saw, in the brown letters, the name of a man, Anatoly Argamak, and an address somewhere in Moscow.
‘How did you do this?’ asked Stefan. ‘How did these letters appear?’
‘It is an ink made from a mixture of alum powder and vinegar,’ she explained, ‘which is used for pickling fruits and vegetables. Copies of all our sacred prayers were written down this way, in books too insignificant for men like the Cheka, or the Okhrana before them, to examine. Of course, no one imagined that they would burn the whole village to the ground.’
‘And who is this man Argamak?’ asked Stefan.
‘One of us.’
‘There is a Skoptsy commune in Moscow?’
She laughed at him. ‘If that were true, it wouldn’t be there long. No, Argamak lives on his own and when you meet him, you’ll know why. In the past, members of our faith who were wanted by the law could go to him and he would take them in. If anyone can help you now, it’s Argamak.’ Then she fetched out a handful of coins from a hole in her mattress. ‘You may as well have these. They’re no use to me any more.’
‘But Moscow?’ argued Stefan. ‘That city is crawling with Bolshevik agents! It won’t take five minutes for them to spot me.’
‘They won’t be looking for you,’ answered Belyakina. ‘As far as they’re concerned, you’re lying at the bottom of a lake.’
The next day, pulling a cart which had belonged to Belyakina’s husband, Stefan set off towards the west. One week later, he arrived on the outskirts of Irkutsk, where he bought a horse with the money Belyakina had given him.
In the months ahead, when Stefan’s money ran out, he would hire himself out as a butcher, the only trade he knew, until he had earned enough
to move on.
One thing Stefan learned in his travels was that the less people knew about the world, the more certain they were that they alone deserved dominion over it. He learned to hide his true identity, far away inside himself, and to become, at least on the surface, precisely what people expected him to be. Like a wandering magician, he mastered the art of concealment. He wore a constantly changing mask which caused people to remark, even at their first meeting with him, that it was as if they’d always known him.
Sometimes, when Stefan found himself alone, out on the steppe near Penza, or resting in a field of young sunflowers on the road to Arzamas, or camped out in the bulrushes on the banks of the River Bug, he would take the icon from its hiding place beneath the seat of his cart and stare and stare at it until the colours and the figures seemed to flow together into something that was not of this earth.
On 30 October 1922, six months after setting out from Markha, Stefan finally arrived in Moscow.
There, he found Argamak working as a gravedigger at the Kalitnikowska Cemetery, not far from Lenin Station.
Argamak was a short, moon-bellied man with a bull neck and fleshy lips. He wore mud-plastered boots and coarse wool trousers patched with leather at the seat and on the knees. His grey shirt, on which the dried sweat showed as hazy blooms of salt, had come untucked. He gave the impression of a man so disgusted with mankind that he could barely acknowledge his own membership among the human race, and so preferred to live among the dead.
Argamak stood by himself in the middle of the cemetery, surrounded by headstones in various states of disrepair. He was in the process of filling in a grave when Stefan approached him, cap in hand, and asked for a moment of his time.
‘What do you want?’ demanded Argamak, as Stefan stood before him in the rags of his worn-out clothes. ‘Only the dead are welcome in my cemetery.’
‘I am from the settlement at Markha,’
‘Never heard of it,’ snapped Argamak.
‘I am one of your brothers,’ said Stefan.
‘I have no brothers,’ replied Argamak, ‘only a sister and she is uglier even than you!’
Having come all this distance, only to be turned away by the very man he’d come to find, Stefan felt his last reserves of energy crumbling away. ‘Belyakina,’ he whispered, ‘what have you done to me?’ He turned to leave, but he had only gone a few paces before Argamak spoke to him again.
‘Did you say Belyakina?’
Stefan turned. ‘I did. Yuliya Belyakina sent me here.’
Argamak leaned on his shovel, its blade sinking into the freshly dug earth. ‘Why should I believe a word you say?’ he asked, but now his tone was more cautious than belligerent.
‘I will show you,’ replied Stefan.
He led Argamak to his cart, lifted the package out from under the seat and carefully unwrapped the picture.
Argamak gasped when The Shepherd slid into view. For a while, he only stared at the icon. Then he turned slowly to Stefan. ‘Come with me,’ he said quietly, as if afraid that even the graves might be listening.
He brought Stefan to a hut at the edge of the cemetery, where it bordered the Skotoprogonaya Road. Stefan tied up his horse behind the hut, against which pieces of old headstones, broken and indecipherable, leaned like huge extracted teeth.
Inside was a small, wood-burning stove, a few chairs and a table made from coffin planks.
Argamak put a fresh log in the stove, and gestured for Stefan to sit.
‘Will I be safe here?’ asked Stefan.
‘Yes, but not for long,’ replied Argamak. ‘Where are you headed from here?’
‘From here?’ replied Stefan. ‘But this was my destination!’
Argamak slowly shook his head. ‘I can shelter you for a day, two days maybe. But no more.’ He gestured around the cramped space of the hut. ‘This isn’t a hotel, as you can see.’
‘Then I am done for,’ Stefan muttered.
‘At times like this,’ said Argamak, ‘people should turn to their own flesh and blood.’
‘My father disowned me when I became a Skoptsy,’ Stefan remarked flatly. ‘As far as he’s concerned, I no longer exist.’
‘And you have heard from your family recently?’
‘Well, no . . .’ admitted Stefan.
‘Then how do you know they have not been regretting what happened between you ever since the day you left their house?’
‘I don’t know. Not exactly.’
‘Then you don’t know at all!’ growled Argamak. ‘Whatever happens in a family, no child is ever forgotten by the ones who gave them life.’
‘Are you saying I should throw myself on their mercy?’
‘I am asking if you think you have a choice.’
‘It is a long way to travel on nothing more than faith.’
‘Faith got you this far, didn’t it?’ asked Argamak. ‘And as for how you’ll get there, I think I can help you a little.’ He walked over to one of the bare wooden beams which formed the ceiling, reached up and fetched something down. It was a small leather bag, which he tossed into Stefan’s lap.
Stefan emptied out the bag into his hand, and a dozen rings tumbled into his palm. Most of them were gold. Some had diamonds fitted on them, others a mixture of rubies, emeralds and sapphires. ‘Where did these come from?’
‘From people who don’t need them any more,’ replied Argamak.
It took Stefan a moment to understand the meaning of his words. ‘You mean you stole these from the dead before you buried them?’
‘The dead do not care how they are dressed,’ said Argamak. ‘It is the sentimentality of the living that slid those rings on the fingers of their loved ones. And once they said goodbye, that chapter of their life was closed. The rings had served their purpose. What use are they to anyone if they are buried in the ground? You may not like where I got them, but ask yourself if you can afford to turn your back on what you know you will need to survive.’
‘Very well,’ Stefan said quietly, as he poured the rings back into the bag. He spent that night lying on a horse blanket in front of the iron stove. He listened to the soft roar of the logs as they burned in the grate, and the wheezy breaths of Argamak, who slept in a camp bed nearby.
The next morning, when he woke, Argamak had already left for work. A slice of cheese, hardened and glassy at the corners, lay on a piece of black bread on the stove, along with a lukewarm cup of tea.
Stefan ate the food, put on his coat and went out to his wagon.
By the end of that day, he had crossed the Moskva River, passed through the Zamoskvorechye district south of the city and moved out into the countryside beyond. All through that autumn, Stefan travelled west. He never stayed long in one place but pushed on, as restless as the wind. He had no idea what to expect when he reached Ahlborn. He wasn’t even sure if his family still lived there and, even if they did, he had no way of knowing if they would welcome him or turn him away once again.
On a freezing January morning in 1923, Stefan Kohl crossed into Germany.
One week later he had almost reached the village of Ahlborn when his cart broke down in a snowstorm.
A passing rider stopped to help. Beneath the man’s black winter coat, he wore the habit of a Lutheran pastor.
It was his father, Viktor Kohl, returning from a visit to a local parishioner who had been too sick to come to church.
For a moment, the two men just stood and faced each other, the snow falling thickly around them.
As the seconds passed, and the cold worked its way beneath the layers of his clothing, Stefan began to wonder what madness had driven him to travel so far when part of him had always known how little chance there was of finding refuge.
But then the father spread his arms and embraced his son, whom he had thought he’d never see again. The guilt of having driven out his youngest child had never left him. He had even made a pilgrimage to Lourdes, to beg the Virgin for the return of his son, returning with a single bottle of ho
ly water, which he kept in anticipation that his prayers might one day be heard. Now, as his son stood before him, the father saw the workings of a miracle in giving him a chance to set things right.
There, in the middle of that storm, the two men made their peace. They agreed never to speak of the things that had driven them apart. From this moment onwards, Kohl knew that the harmony between them would be balanced on the lie of his silence.
He learned that his mother had died soon after their arrival in Ahlborn, never having recovered from the trauma of being evicted from her home and then transported like livestock to a country she had never known except in stories passed down over the generations.
Stefan also learned that there would be no mending of the rift between him and his brother. When Emil, now living far away in Leverkeusen and busy with his work at IG Farben, received word from his father that Stefan had returned he could scarcely believe that his brother had their father’s blessing to remain in Ahlborn. As far as Emil was concerned, it was Stefan’s departure, and not the shock of deportation, that had caused their mother’s untimely death.
In pleading letters, Viktor Kohl begged Emil to return and reconcile with his brother. Anxiously, he awaited a response from Tübingen, but no letters ever came. Viktor Kohl had traded one son for another and, in his own mind, he had no one to blame but himself.
Stefan found employment as a butcher. In addition, he dug graves, repaired the leaking roof and tended to his father’s ailing health. Both men worked hard to make up for the time they had lost.
Weeks became months, which carried over into years, and there were times when it seemed to Stefan Kohl as if he had always been there, in Ahlborn, and the life he’d lived before held no more substance than the gauzy fabric of a dream.
But the scars of Skoptsy ritual would always remind him of the truth.
From time to time, Kohl would check the icon’s hiding place, tucked away among the rafters of his house. He did not know where else to keep the painting and he worried constantly about its safety. Crouched in the attic, he would unwrap the oilcloth covering, stare by candlelight at the image of the Shepherd, and remember how it had felt to be standing in the ruins of Markha. Then the rage which never slept would fill his mind again. Belyakina had warned him to be patient. The time would come for vengeance.