Red Winter (28 page)

‘Please,’ I said. ‘Tell me—’

‘They’re looking for someone who calls himself Koschei.’ He stood with the door half closed, one hand ready to slam it shut.

The name made me bristle. ‘What did you tell them?’

‘That I don’t know anyone called Koschei.’

‘What about Krukov?’

‘Not Krukov either, but there were some men. Came past here the day before yesterday.’

‘Into the town?’

‘No. They went past. I told those women the same thing.’

‘Soldiers?’ I studied the old man’s face. His eyes were full of defeat, his posture tired.

He shook his head. ‘Chekists maybe.’

‘How many?’

He shrugged. ‘I didn’t count them. Maybe five or six. But they had prisoners and—’

‘Prisoners? Women and children?’

‘Boys. Some women too.’

It was further confirmation of what Commander Orlov had said. Hope and relief surged in me.

‘Did you see them?’ I pressed him, trying to stay focused. ‘What did they look like?’

The door opened wider now and an old woman came out to stand close beside him. She was bundled thick with clothes, like Galina had been, with a scarf tied tight about her head. ‘Devils,’ she shouted at me. ‘You’re all devils, bringing your guns and your bloodshed. Killing old men and dragging children away to fight. You see that?’ She pointed to the
izba
opposite, burned to the ground, almost nothing left. ‘My sister lived there.’

I sighed and lowered the pistol. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What good is “sorry”?’ she said. ‘Can I eat it? Will it keep me warm? Will it give me my sister back? Will it bring my neighbour’s son home and resurrect her husband from the dead?’

I turned my eyes to the ground in shame.

When I looked back at the old woman, she had spotted Anna behind me and was staring at her as if seeing a child for the first time.

‘Is he yours?’ she asked, taking a step closer. She was unafraid of both Tuzik and the pistol.

I turned my body, an unconscious movement to protect Anna. ‘Yes.’

The old woman shuffled closer still, coming out onto the road and pushing past me to get to Anna. ‘A girl? I thought you were a boy.’ She reached out to put her bony hand on Anna’s cheek. ‘Beautiful,’ she said. ‘Beautiful.’

I felt Anna flinch from her and I had to stop myself from warning the old woman away. She meant no harm.

‘Look after her,’ she said to me. ‘Keep her close. Safe.’

‘I will.’

She stood with her arm out, her fingers still on Anna’s cheek, and her lips moved as if she were whispering some kind of prayer or incantation, then she nodded and turned to shuffle towards the
izba
. She struggled up the step and went inside without looking back.

Anna didn’t relax even when the old woman was gone, but she didn’t cower behind me either. She stood straight as a broom handle and lifted her chin as she stood by my side.

‘Which way did they take the prisoners?’ I asked the old man.

He thought for a while, his watery eyes watching me, then he raised his arm and pointed north. ‘There were others too.’

‘Other soldiers?’

He nodded. ‘The day before the ones with the prisoners. Fewer, but they could have been Chekists too.’

I wondered if they were the ones that Lev and Anna had seen. Perhaps Koschei had split his unit, one group riding on ahead while the second brought the prisoners. It would be the second group that Commander Orlov had seen, the same group that Stanislav Dotsenko had been with. It was beginning to make some sense, but I wondered why Koschei wouldn’t stay as a complete unit. What was it that was drawing him north in such a hurry?

Always that question.
Why north?

‘They went past?’ I asked. ‘Without coming into the town?’

He nodded.

‘Did you see what
they
looked like?’

‘No.’

It had been too much to hope for. It didn’t make a great deal of difference if I confirmed that Krukov and Koschei were the same man, but it would settle the question in my mind. It would tell me what Stanislav had meant when he said that I was responsible for his creation.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for—’

‘I don’t want to know.’ The old man held up a hand and shook his head. ‘Don’t tell me.’ He began to close the door. ‘What I don’t know can’t hurt me,’ he mumbled as he shuffled after his wife.

‘There’s an army coming,’ I called after him. ‘From the north. They’ll be here within the hour.’

‘We have nothing to give them. Nothing they would want. And there’s nothing more they could do to us.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I glanced along the street once more, thinking about the army I had seen on the horizon. ‘Within the hour,’ I said, turning back to the old man. ‘They’ll be here soon.’

But he had already closed the door.

For a moment it was as if the old man had shut me away from the rest of the world, rather than shutting himself in his own house. He understood there was nothing he could do.

They had no one here to defend them. All those people who had gone away to fight for this cause or that cause had, in effect, deserted them. They were of no use when they were fighting in a field far from here, leaving their families unprotected, as I had done.
That
had been my desertion, not my escape from the army.

I stared at the closed door, not seeing the timbers or the cracks but seeing what was happening to our country. While trying to unify itself, it was tearing itself apart, and I could find nothing honourable or just in that. As long as men like Koschei were permitted to commit the crimes that he perpetrated, our country was no better now than it had been before the revolution. We had only swapped one kind of tyranny for another. And I had been a part of it.

We moved on, knowing there was nothing I could do to change the course of these people’s lives. I could only ride on and hope for them. The new machine was in motion, and now that the Whites were gone, the Green and Blue and Black would soon fall under the red flag.

When the wide path between the houses came to an end and opened onto the centre of the village, Tanya and Lyudmila were waiting for us. They had probably seen us on the steppe and had been listening to the approach of Kashtan’s hooves among the buildings so had taken defensive positions behind the well that stood almost exactly in the middle of the central market space of Dolinsk. There was no market here to speak of anymore, just a collection of skeletal frames that had once been stalls.

The well was surrounded by a circular wall that rose to waist height and was covered by a pitched wooden roof that housed a draw wheel. On a normal day, this would be a busy place, full of women come to collect water. There would have been traders here too, and locals just coming together to talk about the weather, the crops and the state of the country. Today, however, it was almost deserted.

Behind Tanya and Lyudmila, Dolinsk’s church stood taller and larger than the other buildings in the town. It was more impressive than our church in Belev, but it was still not much more than just another
izba
with a domed roof that housed a bell and had a cross mounted at its highest point. The blue paint was worn by the frost and the winds and the autumn rain so that it was cracked and wrinkled like old skin.

A handful of weary people was gathered in the square, mostly older women. They wore heavy skirts and an assortment of coats and shawls to protect them from the cold, headscarves tied in bows under their chins. One of the younger women wore a dress the colour of the pink chamomiles that bloomed in the late spring; a dress that would once have been kept only for special occasions. A girl, perhaps two or three years old, clung to the hem of her skirt, but other than that there was a conspicuous absence of children. There were three men standing by, dressed like common peasants returning from the field, one of them with a pipe clamped between his teeth, but there was not a single young man among them. All were old and beyond fighting age.

They looked our way as we came from between the houses.

Tuzik led, trotting out into the open space and pausing to look back, making sure we were following. He went halfway into the square, then stopped and sat down, watching. I was close behind, a step in front of Anna, leading Kashtan so she would shield Anna as much as possible.

Tanya and Lyudmila’s horses were tethered to the frame of one of the wooden stalls and they became agitated by Tuzik’s presence, just as Kashtan had done when she first saw him. There was something of the wild still in that big dog and the horses feared him.

I let the revolver hang at my side, visible but not threatening.

‘You have to leave,’ I called out.

‘Where did you get the horse?’ Tanya called back. The barrel of her rifle was resting on the edge of the well, muzzle pointed at me. ‘And who’s the boy?’

I felt Anna stiffen behind me.

‘There’s an army coming,’ I said. ‘We should be gone before they get here.’

‘An army?’ Tanya was hesitant. ‘Whose army?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It might.’

‘All I know is there’s a column of men less than an hour’s ride from here and they’re coming in this direction.’

The locals exchanged glances, and the one wearing the pink dress edged away.

‘Wait!’ Tanya called, but the woman ignored her and the others began to follow. They moved in silence, like spirits, making for the alleys and tracks that ran off from the centre, disappearing as if they had never been there. One of them, an older man, not so quick on his feet, entered the church and closed the door behind him. The bolts were loud and sounded firm when he pushed them across.

Then we were alone in the square, no sight or sound to suggest there was anyone else in Dolinsk.

‘We should leave now.’ I raised my voice. ‘We can’t afford to wait any longer.’

‘Who said anything about “we”?’ Tanya stood up so the wall of the well came only to her waist. She held her rifle to her shoulder and aimed along the barrel at me.

‘If you were going to shoot me, you’d have done it in Belev,’ I said. ‘Get on your horse.’

Lyudmila stayed where she was, crouched behind the well with her rifle pointed at me, but Tanya lowered hers. ‘You didn’t say you had a horse.’

‘You didn’t ask.’

‘And who’s the boy?’

‘I’m not a boy.’ Anna stepped to my side, puffing her chest and putting back her shoulders, as she had done just a few minutes ago.

‘There’ll be time for this later,’ I called. ‘But not now.’

Tanya sighed and nodded to Lyudmila. ‘We’d better go. If he’s right—’

In the church tower, the bell began to ring. Slow and baleful, it was more like a funeral toll than a warning.

Tanya looked in the direction of the church, then went to her horse and unhitched it, climbing up into the saddle.

‘Come on,’ I said to Anna. I pocketed the revolver and put my hands under her arms.

‘I can do it myself.’ She pulled away.

‘All right.’ I stepped back. ‘After you.’

Lyudmila was the last to move, but she finally lowered the rifle and went to her horse just as Anna put her foot in the stirrup. It was a stretch for her to reach that high and she only just managed it, but once there, she hopped a few times as if to build momentum and then, with a grunt, heaved herself into the saddle.

‘Well done,’ I said, as I climbed up behind her, and I felt a certain pride that she had managed it. She was resilient. She would survive.

Tanya looked back at me. ‘What about these people?’

‘There’s nothing we can do for them.’

‘They’ve already endured so much,’ Lyudmila said.

‘And we haven’t?’ I asked.

Lyudmila held my stare, then looked to Tanya for her orders. Tanya responded by putting her heels to her horse. ‘Which way?’ she asked.

‘Follow me.’

The bell continued to toll its low, mournful beat as we passed more charred
izbas
and homes with broken doors.

‘What did they tell you?’ I asked Tanya, as we rode through the deserted street. ‘Those people back there.’

She ignored my question. ‘Who’s the boy?’

‘I’m a
girl
,’ Anna said. I couldn’t see her face, but it sounded as if she had spoken through gritted teeth. Perhaps her grief was turning to anger, and while that could be useful in some circumstances, I didn’t want her to become awkward.

‘A girl?’ Tanya came alongside us to see Anna. ‘So you are. And is the dog yours?’

‘He’s called Tuzik,’ Anna said. ‘He’s
ours
.’

Tanya looked at me, raising her eyebrows, and I felt my pride in Anna grow. There was something reassuring about the way she had said ‘ours’. We were together now, a partnership.

‘So what did they tell you?’ I asked again.

‘Not much.’

‘Then it won’t take long for you to tell
me
.’

‘Let’s get out of here first,’ Tanya said. ‘Then we’ll talk.’

‘Keeping it to yourself?’ I said. ‘Making yourself important to me?’

‘Something like that.’

‘What if something happens to you? I need to know what you know.’

‘You’ll have to make sure nothing
does
happen to me.’

Tanya was smart. She knew how to keep herself alive.

‘And what can I do to make myself important to you?’ I asked.

‘Nothing.’

Coming out of the town, we pressed the horses harder, pushing them out of the bowl of the steppe and up towards a cluster of trees on the horizon just west of the town. As we rode, I glanced across to see the column that had halted a kilometre or so north of Dolinsk.

‘You believe me now?’ I asked.

A little further away from the town, I brought Kashtan to a stop and lifted the binoculars to scan the line of soldiers. Tanya and Lyudmila rode a few steps ahead before they realised I had stopped.

Tanya came back to me, breathing hard, saying, ‘Red Army.’ She didn’t need binoculars to know who it was, because we were above them now, with the sinking winter sun behind us, and they were closer than they had been when I first saw them. The red flags flying over the heads of the vanguard were plain enough.