by Smith, Dan
While the old man remained quiet, his wife talked about the revolution and about the war the before it and the war that had come after it.
She leaned forward across the table as if she was going to invite us into a conspiracy. ‘They even fired shells at the field just on the other side of the farm.’ She nodded her head. ‘Men fighting, shooting, killing one another – there was so much noise we hid under the table waiting for it to stop. Full of holes it is now, that field. No use to anyone.’
Sergei looked at his wife as she spoke, his eyes shifting away to watch me and Tanya and Lyudmila in a way that made me nervous. With the light and the warmth and the food and the family sitting about us, I should have been comfortable, but there was an undeniable tension here.
‘And no one came to the house?’ I asked. ‘After the fighting?’ I couldn’t help look around at the full cupboards, the tidy clothes and the clean boots. There were even enough spoons and bowls for each of us at the table.
The old woman shared a glance with her husband, then shrugged. ‘They passed on. Hardly even knew we were here.’
‘You went to look, though,’ said Tanya. ‘You went to see where they had been fighting.’
The old woman nodded. ‘It was terrible.’
‘That didn’t stop you from taking what you could.’ It was Lyudmila who spoke this time, and I wondered if she had seen what it was that had filled their cupboards and put fresh clothes on their starving bodies. She understood what was making the old woman and her husband so edgy. They had stolen from the dead.
The old woman looked down at the tabletop. They were ashamed of it. ‘Times are hard.’
‘I understand,’ I told her. ‘Nothing can be wasted.’
She nodded.
‘We’re not bad people,’ Sergei said. ‘We’re just . . .’
‘You don’t need to explain yourselves,’ I said.
Sergei lifted his eyes to look at me across the table before he reached for his pipe and took a healthy pinch of tobacco from a worn but full pouch.
‘All of this didn’t come from a battlefield,’ Lyudmila said, as he packed the tobacco tight and clamped the pipe between his teeth. ‘Not all this food.’ She cast her eyes around the room.
Sergei shook his head.
‘Papa brought us things too,’ the boy said, making his mother squeeze him and give him a stern look. Everybody watched him but the old woman. She kept her eyes on the three of us, sitting on the opposite side of the table.
‘What’s that you said?’ Lyudmila sat back and put one hand on her thigh.
‘Nikolai misses his papa.’ The old woman smiled, displaying blackened teeth, before leaning in and whispering to us. ‘He imagines he sees him sometimes. It’s very hard for the children, you know.’ The stink of her breath soured the air.
‘Of course.’
For a moment there was no sound in the room but the fire crackling in the pich.
‘But tell us about you.’ The old woman sat back and raised her voice. ‘Where are you from?’
I looked at Tanya and Lyudmila, none of us saying anything.
‘I understand,’ the old woman said. ‘You’re deserters – of course you don’t want to talk about it.’
‘No, we . . .’ Tanya stopped.
‘It’s all right.’ The old woman pulled her shawl tighter. ‘We won’t tell anyone, will we, Sergei?’
‘No. No, of course not.’
‘So what brings you this way?’ she asked. ‘You said you’re looking for someone.’
There was an awkward silence as we considered what to tell them, what kind of threat they could be to us, or what information they might have.
‘We’re looking for a man calling himself Koschei,’ I said eventually, glancing at Tanya. ‘Have you heard of him?’
‘Koschei?’ Sergei took his pipe from his mouth and studied the glowing tobacco in the bowl as if the answer might be hidden in the embers. With his other hand, he reached up and stroked his beard, smoothing it round his upper lip and running his fingers down its length. ‘Like the story?’
‘Yes, but this man is real. Have you heard of him?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said the old woman.
‘He’s a Chekist. His real name is Krukov.’
‘I don’t know the name.’
‘And you haven’t seen anyone pass by?’ I asked. ‘Soldiers taking prisoners? Or maybe—’
‘We don’t see anybody here.’ The old woman spoke a little too suddenly.
‘What about your neighbours? Might they have—’
‘No one passes by. No one sees anything. It’s safer that way.’ An edge had crept into her tone and the atmosphere in the room had become more tense. When I looked across at Sergei, he was still staring at the tabletop. Oksana busied herself with her children, stroking their hair and bringing Natasha to sit on her knee, as if she was finding something to do so she didn’t have to make eye contact.
‘Is there something wrong?’ I asked.
‘There is always something wrong,’ the old woman said.
‘We do what we have to.’ Sergei looked up with sad eyes. ‘What else can we do?’
I was about to ask him what he meant by that, but Oksana pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘It’s late,’ she said, making it clear it was time for the conversation to end. ‘The children need to sleep, and you must be exhausted.’ She gave Anna a sympathetic look.
‘I’m fine,’ Anna said without expression. ‘I’m tougher than I look.’
Oksana smiled, but there was sadness in her eyes. ‘I’m sure you are.’
‘Well, you can sleep in the izba next door,’ the old woman said. ‘The roof’s not so good, so it’ll get cold, but there are some old blankets, and if you light the fire, you’ll be warm enough.’
Before we left, I thanked the old woman for her hospitality and shook Sergei’s hand.
‘Oksana,’ I said, ‘may I ask where your husband is?’
‘Our son is fighting the war,’ the old woman answered for her, filling her chest with pride and standing as straight as she could. ‘He’s a good boy.’
I didn’t ask which uniform he wore.
29
The night was bitter and black. The cold had rooted itself deep in the earth, and the frost had thickened. The first few flakes of snow were in the air, small and light and almost nothing, but they lay where they fell.
No breeze stirred in the forest, and the air was silent.
I was the first to step out of the warmth, Anna at my side as always. Tuzik must have jumped to his feet as soon as he heard the door open, because he was trotting over before I had even crossed the threshold. He was almost invisible in the darkness and came without sound, a creature of the night, nuzzling into my hand to take the morsel of food I had promised. As he snapped it down, I felt a wetness in my palm, and when I turned to look at it in the weak light from the lamp Sergei was holding, I saw the blood of a fresh kill.
‘Looks like he’s already eaten,’ I said to Sergei. ‘You have one less rabbit to eat your crops.’
Sergei took us to the front door of the empty izba next door and stood aside so that Tanya and Lyudmila could go in first. Sergei didn’t object when I let Tuzik enter, but when I stepped up to go in, he put his hand on my chest and stopped me.
‘Are you sure you want to stay?’ he asked. ‘The woods make for good shelter if you know how to build a fire.’
‘Have we taken advantage of your kindness?’ I asked.
‘No, it’s not that . . .’
‘You have no reason to be afraid of us,’ I told him.
‘I know. It’s just . . . you seem like good people.’ He looked down at Anna and put out his hand to put it on her head, but he stopped himself, closing his fingers and letting his arm fall to his side.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What’s the matter?’
Sergei paused with his mouth open as if the words had caught in his throat, then he shook his head. ‘Sleep well,’ he said, h
anding me the lamp. ‘And God protect you.’
When he was gone, I bolted the door and turned to Tanya and Lyudmila, who were standing by the table in the cold room. It was dark and dusty, as if no one had been here for a long time, but there was a pile of old blankets on the table just as the old woman had said.
‘What do you think?’ Tanya said. ‘Did anyone else feel uncomfortable in there?’
‘They’re hiding something,’ Lyudmila said.
‘Everyone’s hiding something,’ I told her. ‘These people are ashamed of stealing from the dead.’ I put the lamp on the table and looked around the room, seeing my breath form in clouds. There wasn’t much in there to speak of. The table was bare, apart from the blankets, and the shelves were all empty. True to the old woman’s word, there was a man-sized hole in the far corner of the roof, just to the right of the pich, which explained the temperature in the house, and from time to time a snowflake found its way through and dropped to the floor. It would have been easy enough for a young man to fix if he had the right tools and supplies, but for a man Sergei’s age, it would be too much.
‘Great,’ Tanya said. ‘It’s snowing inside.’
When I went to the pich and looked in, it was clear of ashes. No fire had been burned in there for some time, but there was a pile of logs and kindling, ready to be used.
‘You think they were expecting us?’ Lyudmila ran her hand along the top blanket. ‘Or someone else?’
‘You know how to light this?’ I asked Anna.
‘Yes.’
‘Good girl. See if you can give us some heat.’ I handed her my small bundle of matches. ‘And try to use only one of these. I don’t have many left.’
‘Not like them,’ Tanya said. ‘You see how many matches the old woman had?’
‘What about everything else?’ Lyudmila pulled out a chair and sat at the table. ‘All that food in the cupboard. And these blankets are more like what you’d expect in their house, not those nice clean ones they had.’
‘They swapped their old for new,’ Tanya said. ‘I suppose it can happen, but . . .’
‘They’ve been looting dead men,’ I reminded her. ‘They admitted that.’
‘Or, at least, it’s what they told us.’ Lyudmila took out her pistol and put it on the table. ‘But they didn’t get all that food from dead men.’
‘It’s possible,’ Tanya said. ‘Look at the supplies we have with us.’
‘We don’t have soft shoes with us,’ Lyudmila said.
Anna went to the pich and found a small square of cloth, which she tore into pieces using her teeth before bunching them together and arranging them inside the oven.
‘No, they’re hiding something.’ Lyudmila put her rifle across her knee. ‘I’m sure of it. Did you see how they reacted when you mentioned Chekists?’
‘Most people would get nervous if you mentioned Chekists,’ I told her. ‘Some people won’t even say the word for fear of what will happen to them. Maybe that’s what it is – they’re afraid we’ll report them.’
‘To who?’ Lyudmila asked.
‘That’s what we’ve come to? People afraid to say words?’ Tanya sighed. ‘Afraid, maybe, to even think them.’
‘Or maybe they’re planning on cooking us in that oven and eating us,’ Anna said, as she layered small pieces of kindling over the cloth, preparing the fire. ‘She looked like a witch.’
‘This is no joke.’ Lyudmila’s words were clipped and sharp. ‘And there’s more to it than them just being scared.’ She checked the bolt on her rifle, sliding it back and pushing it forward with the heel of her hand. A cartridge ejected from the breech and she caught it in her left hand. There wasn’t much light from the lamp, but I suspect she would have caught the cartridge if there had been no light at all in there. ‘We should leave,’ she said again.
‘Where did you learn to handle a weapon so well?’ I asked, making her look up and stare at me. ‘You’re more comfortable with that than a lot of soldiers I’ve seen.’
‘I always liked shooting.’
‘People? You always liked shooting people?’
‘Animals,’ she said. ‘Hunting. Our father taught us. He said girls were better at shooting than boys. That they were calmer and more patient.’
I was searching the single room as we spoke, checking the cupboards and drawers, looking through the windows, while Tuzik made his own inspection, but now I stopped and looked at Lyudmila. It was the most information she had ever offered about herself, and her voice had taken on a hint of warmth when she mentioned her father. It made her seem more human.
‘Where is he now?’ I asked.
She was still hunched over the rifle, checking and cleaning. ‘Gone. And now I just hunt men.’
‘What happened to—’
‘Enough questions,’ she said, glancing up at me with dark eyes before returning to what she was doing.
I knew it was pointless to press her further, so I went back to my search.
The dog’s claws ticked on the wooden floor as he poked his nose into every corner, but it didn’t take us long to check the room. The izba next door, where Sergei lived with his family, was bigger, and I had seen a door into a second room, much like my own home in Belev, but this was smaller even than the one Lev and Anna had made theirs at the farm. Here, there was just the pich, a pair of sleeping berths along each sidewall, scattered with old straw, and a small wooden chest that contained only dust and stale air. In the far corner, a dented samovar that looked as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. The room was barely big enough for the four of us.
Lyudmila remained at the table, checking her weapons, and Tanya sat beside her, both of them facing the door. Anna managed to get a fire going, feeding it with more kindling, encouraging the flames higher.
‘You notice they said Oksana was their daughter –’ I went to the front door and tested the bolts once more ‘– but they said her husband was their son?’ I held back the curtain across the window by the door and peered out, seeing nothing but black, spotted with the white of the light flakes that fell like they were a hallucination. ‘Which do you think is actually their child? Oksana, or her husband?’
‘Does it matter?’ Lyudmila asked.
‘Probably not.’ I looked back at her, thinking I knew almost nothing about her. Even less than I knew about Tanya. We were four strangers thrown together by circumstance. People who, in another time, would never have even known of the others’ existence.
Lyudmila picked up Tanya’s rifle and started checking it. ‘We shouldn’t be staying here. We should leave now. I’ve got a feeling . . .’ She shook her head.
‘I agree there’s something strange,’ I said, ‘but I don’t know about leaving. Where would we go?’
‘We could go into the forest.’ Lyudmila looked up. ‘Keep moving, stop when we’re tired. It’s always been good enough before.’
‘You wanted to come down here,’ I said. ‘You agreed.’
‘That was before.’
‘We can’t go anywhere tonight,’ Tanya said. ‘The clouds are too thick for the moon, and it’s starting to snow.’
‘It’s snowing in here,’ Lyudmila said.
‘And Anna’s got the fire going.’
‘We can light a fire out there.’
‘You have to admit, though, the idea of a blanket and a bed is tempting. When was the last time you slept in a bed?’ Tanya asked her.
‘Right now, it feels as if I never slept in a bed, but I’ll survive. And remember –’ Lyudmila inclined her head in my direction ‘– he’s being followed.’
‘Not in the dark,’ I said, but I couldn’t help wondering if Lyudmila was right. Something was telling me it might be better to move on. If it hadn’t been for Anna, I might have done just that, but she needed the warmth and shelter of the house, not the cold damp of the forest. There might have been a hole in the roof, but with the fire burning, it would soon warm up.
‘So what do we do?’ Tanya asked.
‘We leave,’ Lyudmila said.
‘I think we should stay,’ Tanya replied. ‘We need to rest, and the horses do too.’ She looked at Anna, who was coming back from the pich, great yellow flames roaring behind her. Already the heat was flooding the room. ‘And we have to think about you, don’t we?’ She smiled at Anna. ‘The forest at night is no place for you.’
‘Don’t go soft,’ Lyudmila warned her. ‘Don’t let the child make you forget who you are.’
‘I’ve already forgotten,’ Tanya said. ‘That’s what Krukov did. Anna can only help me remember.’
Lyudmila shook her head and went back to checking their weapons.
‘You don’t have to stay here because of me,’ Anna said, watching Lyudmila. ‘If you think we should go . . .’
‘We all need to rest,’ I told her. ‘Don’t listen to what Lyudmila says. Don’t be scared of her.’
‘I’m not scared of her. I just don’t want us all to stay because of me. If it’s not safe.’
‘It’s safe enough,’ Tanya said. ‘What can an old man and woman do? We’ll take turns to stay awake,’ Tanya said. ‘Leave as soon as it’s light. The dog will let us know if there’s anything out there.’
‘Tuzik,’ Anna said, making the dog look up. ‘His name is Tuzik.’
‘Well, that makes it all right.’ Lyudmila’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. ‘We’ll be safe for sure, cooped up in this house with those people next door, not knowing what’s outside, because Tuzik is here. The wild dog that doesn’t belong to anyone.’
‘Of course he belongs to someone,’ Anna said. ‘He’s mine and Kolya’s dog. Any idiot can see that.’
Lyudmila’s head snapped up, her face a picture of surprise and indignation.
Anna took a step back, one hand going to her mouth as if her thoughts had betrayed her and the words were never meant to have been spoken. ‘I’m sorry.’
Lyudmila took a deep breath and shook her head. ‘It’s all right. Don’t worry.’ And for a moment the briefest smile touched her lips and the hardness in her eyes softened. Then she cleared her throat as if to shake the weakness away, and her sullen expression returned.