Red Winter (21 page)

In the far corner a small stove, this one in full working order, and beside it a stool with a colourful samovar balanced on it. In the centre of the compartment there was a table laid with maps and papers, a collection of used glasses, a lamp, a bottle of vodka and a pistol.

The large man who sat behind the table was Division Commander Orlov, whom I knew by reputation and had met once, a long time ago. I hoped he would not recognise me and was glad for the hat and scarf to cover my face.

Everything about him seemed square, from his shoulders to his chest and his short legs, and he would have been powerful in his youth, sturdy and well built, but he had aged a lot since I had last seen him. There was a beaten look about him now; a strained weariness reflected from him, filling the room. His hair was cropped close to his head, but there was little growth there anyway, and his cheeks were shaved clean. He still had the thick moustache I remembered, dropping at the corners of his mouth and pointing to the edge of his square jaw, except now the whiskers had turned from black to grey.

Commander Orlov leaned back in his chair, tunic open to reveal a dirty white shirt beneath, with his right foot propped on a stool. He wore no boot on that foot, and the material of his trousers had been split to the waist so that it hung loose to display the wound that festered in the meat of his calf.

A young soldier knelt on the floor, fumbling with a collection of medical supplies. Unravelling a bandage, it was clear the boy had no idea what he was doing.

Behind the commander, hanging on the wall, a clock told me it was just after ten, but it had to be at least midday by now.

‘So you’re a doctor?’ Orlov said, looking up and beckoning me over. ‘I didn’t know we had any doctors on this train.’

I pulled my hat down further and lowered my head.

‘When did you get on?’

I thought for a moment, trying to think where the train might have been coming from, where it might have stopped, but it would be dangerous for me to guess.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said, before I could answer. ‘We’ve picked up all manner of stragglers. Every time we stop, a whole lot more climb aboard. Don’t they know we’re going to hell?’ He slurred his words and I guessed the vodka on the table was his way of killing the pain. ‘Get over here before this boy keels over from the smell. He’s useless anyway.’

Orlov shooed the boy away with one hand and reached for his glass with the other. The boy stumbled past me, making me step back, and hurried from the compartment, closing the door behind him so that I was left alone with the commander. I stared at the door for a moment, hoping that Lev and Anna had stayed where they were; that they had done as I had instructed.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Fix me up.’

I turned and glanced around the carriage, my eyes settling on the pistol resting on the table for a second, then I approached the commander, pulling the other chair towards me and rummaging among the medical supplies. My fingers worked quickly as I looked for the supplies I needed to dress the wound. The sooner I was back with Lev and Anna, the better.

Close to the commander, the stink of his wound was nauseating, even through my scarf, and I tried to take only shallow breaths.

‘Take off your hat,’ Orlov said. ‘Let me see your face.’

Without looking at him, I reached up and removed my hat. I placed it on the floor beside me, continuing to search through the bandages and field dressings. Outside, the muffled calls of soldiers shouting orders was beginning to die down.

‘The scarf,’ he said, taking a drink from the dirty glass, slurping the liquid.

I pulled down the scarf and looked up at him, our eyes meeting. For a long moment he held that look, breathing heavily, running his tongue round his teeth. His face glistened with sweat, and his whole demeanour was that of a man struggling with a fever.

When he spoke, his lips were wet with vodka, and flecks of spittle fell onto his chin. ‘Do I know you?’

I shook my head.

‘We’ve never met?’

‘No, Comrade Commander.’

‘You look familiar.’ He drank again, staring at me over the rim of the glass as he drained it. He swallowed hard and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. ‘There was a time I never forgot a face.’ He shook his head and sniffed. ‘Now I see so many damned faces I don’t know how I ever remember any of them.’ He reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. ‘Most of them don’t live long anyway, so there’s no reason to remember them all, is there? But you . . .’ he said, pointing with the hand holding his drink. ‘For some reason I feel I should know you.’

‘I’m just a doctor,’ I said, leaning over and making a pretence of looking through the medical supplies. I was trying to decide what was my best course of action. I could dress the wound and leave – I knew how to do that, but he might decide to keep me as his personal physician. I could simply leave the carriage. Orlov was wounded, probably dying from the infection, so he was in no shape to come after me, but his pistol was close to hand; he could shoot me before I was at the door. I had my own revolver, but even if I could take it from my pocket before he could reach for his own, I couldn’t shoot him, not with soldiers just a few paces away, in the other part of the carriage. They would be in here in an instant, and when I was lying on the floor, bleeding and full of lead, I would have failed my children and my wife. Lev and Anna would be forced to continue into the forest alone.

I would have to overcome him silently, kill him without a sound if I were to escape from here unharmed. Perhaps I could reach the knife inside my coat, but I would have to be fast – his pistol was within easy reach.

In my contemplation, I had looked up without realising it and Orlov followed my attention, putting his hand over the pistol. He dragged it towards him and held it in his lap.

‘You’re not a doctor, are you?’

I stopped what I was doing.

‘You don’t even look like a doctor. Don’t act like one.’

I took my hand away from the supplies.

‘All the doctors I ever met were soft intellectuals. Weak and spongy men who never did a proper day’s work. Soft hands and waxy skin.’

I sat up and looked at him.

‘Not you, though. You move like a soldier – I saw that the second you stepped through that door. I’m not too old and blind to see that. Your hands have done too much work –
killing
work, I would say, judging by the way your fingers reach for the button of your coat. What do you have in there? A knife would be my guess. The pistol in your pocket would draw too much attention, but the knife . . . ah . . . that would be quiet, wouldn’t it?’

I hadn’t even noticed my hand move, but there it was, ready to unfasten the button and reach inside for the blade.

‘But it’s your eyes that really tell me what you are.’ Orlov drained his glass once more. ‘It’s always the eyes that give it away. I can see your
intent
just by looking into them. I can see you sizing me up.’

He leaned over to put his glass on the table, then lifted the pistol, staring at it. ‘Pour us both a drink,’ he said, ‘but keep those killing hands where I can see them, eh? This wound in my leg makes me . . . twitchy. It shames me. I’ve been in more battles than I can count and this is where I get shot. It couldn’t have been the heart or the brain – a good clean death – it had to be here so I can die slowly while my men watch. I might as well have been shot in the arse.’

I reached across the table and put two glasses together, looking over to the side of the carriage, wishing I could see through the metal plating, beyond the crowds of men and to the place where Lev and Anna were hiding in the forest. I wanted to get back to them, to be on with our journey. I envied the connection they had to one another, and I had enjoyed what little of it they had been prepared to share with me so far. It had left me wanting more; to be with them, in the presence of warmth and love, rather than here where there was only death.

‘Something out there?’ Orlov’s voice snapped me back to the moment.

‘Hmm?’

‘You were looking at the window. Where there
was
a window anyway. Is there something out there demanding your attention?’

‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘No.’

Orlov watched me as if he didn’t believe me, pushing out his neck so that his face was closer to mine. He put two fingers to his eyes and narrowed them at me. ‘It’s all there,’ he said. ‘They give it all away.’ Then he leaned back again, wincing in pain and slapping his hand on the table.

‘Probably just as well you’re not a doctor,’ he said, recovering. ‘You’d only want to cut it off. The whole leg. To get rid of the infection, you’d say. Just . . .’ He made a sawing motion with one hand across the top of his thigh. ‘I’d only be half a man then, and what’s the point of that? What use would I be then? Maybe it’s just as well there are no doctors here – I’d have a train full of cripples.’

I said nothing and glanced at the clock. It was still just after ten, the hands stuck in the position they’d been in when the clock stopped.

‘So have you come to kill me?’ he asked as I picked up the bottle. ‘To give me a good clean death?’

‘No.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘I’m looking for someone.’ I had to tell him something and perhaps this was the best thing. He might have information I could use.

He made an impatient gesture over the glasses. ‘Pour. Pour.’ When he put his hand down, he studied me with unblinking eyes. ‘Looking for someone? Someone you
do
want to kill?’

‘Maybe.’ I poured vodka into each glass and pushed one across to him.

Orlov nodded and glanced at the glass but left it where it was. ‘You know, there’s someone
I
want to kill,’ he said.

I waited for him to go on.

‘We’ve been fighting in Tambov. Trying to put down this damn rebellion.’ He turned the pistol in his hand as if looking for the secrets of life in its design. ‘Returning with the wounded, picking up men along the way.’

‘But you’re heading
towards
Tambov,’ I said.

Orlov looked up. ‘Excellent observation. And that’s who I want to kill – the man who issued that order. I get this far, bringing my injured men and anyone else who cares to catch a ride with us, and they send new orders. Turn back, they say. They need the train, they say. Drop off the wounded and come back, they say. So I drop them here, in the forest. To die.’ He sniffed hard. ‘What else can I do?’

‘Disobey?’

Orlov waved his hand as if that didn’t deserve a reply. He picked up his glass and raised it to me. ‘The wounded,’ he said.

I toasted with him and took a sip. Orlov drained the glass and indicated I should refill it. He continued to talk as I poured, vodka glistening on his moustache. ‘Did you know that this man Antonov – the one who they say started this peasant uprising – he’s a petty criminal? Put in prison for stealing from railway station offices of all things, and when the revolution pardons him, what does he do but go to war against us.’ Orlov scoffed and shook his head. ‘What a bloody mess. This whole damn country has gone to hell and we can’t even pick our enemies properly. Too many colours to choose from, I say.
Tokmakov
is the real leader of this uprising, though, a former Imperialist. A decorated soldier, no less.’

Commander Orlov winced in pain and lifted his glass to his lips, stopping as he was about to drink. ‘Damn Imperialists,’ he smiled. ‘I was one myself once.’ He paused for thought. ‘You know the uprising began when some soldiers beat up an old man in Khitrovo?’ he said. ‘I went there and it was just like anywhere else. Just another unimportant town.’

I had been there too, but I didn’t tell Orlov that.

‘As if we don’t have enough trouble with all the other damn armies who want to stop the people’s revolution. This isn’t war; this is chaos. No one knows what the hell is going on. We push the White Army down to Crimea, send Wrangel to the dogs, deal with the Blacks, and now our own people are rising against us. Now we have a Blue Army to fight.’

‘The Whites are defeated?’

‘More or less. Wrangel and his men disappeared into the Black Sea, going to who knows where, and now there’s just all these other colours to finish off – Blue, Green, a whole
rainbow
of colours – but they might as well all be brown for the shit this country has gone to.’ He seemed pleased with that analogy and smiled to himself before tipping back his head and swallowing the vodka.

‘They say they’re diverting men who are coming back home from Perekop,’ he said, wiping his moustache on his sleeve and looking at me, ‘but they’ll be as useless as the men I’ve just kicked off this train. Every one of them battle-weary or wounded, and I am ordered to leave them here rather than take them to a place where they can be treated, which is what I promised them.’ He nodded at me. ‘Drink.’

I put the glass to my lips and sipped again.

‘All of it. Drink it all,’ he said, so I drained the glass and put it down beside his.

‘More.’ Orlov waved the pistol in my direction.

When I had refilled the glasses, he fell into a sombre silence, shaking his head every now and then, staring at the pistol. Outside, the sounds of the men had settled. No more orders were shouted. There was only the occasional voice that lifted above the constant murmur and moan.

I watched Orlov, wondering if now was the time for me to leave. He was so deep in thought I might have been able to slip from the carriage without him noticing. Or perhaps I could get to my knife and put an end to him, but I realised I had no reason to want to harm him. He had done nothing to me. He was a wounded commander trying to do his job, and it was refreshing to see the remorse he felt at having to leave his men to die. It would take huge courage for him to defy his orders, and looking at the state of the men outside, many of them would be dead before long anyway.

‘Nikolai Levitsky.’ The words came at me like a slap. It was the second time today that someone had spoken my name and I missed a breath, my hand tightening round the glass, some of it spilling over and running through my fist.

‘Nikolai Levitsky,’ he said again, this time turning his head to stare at me. ‘You’ve heard of him?’ He looked me up and down as if assessing me with new interest.