Red Winter (48 page)

‘Not really,’ Manarov said with a shrug. ‘Sometimes you were clumsy, but mostly you were almost impossible to follow. In the forest, you were like a ghost.’

I smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You’re too kind.’

The men tried to talk to Anna, showing a kindness I had hardly known in them, reminding me that they were also brothers and father and sons. As a unit, we had taken our job seriously and had gathered conscripts and punished deserters just as we were supposed to, but we had not been animals. I had become caught up in my duty, as these men had, but I had woken to the horror of what was being done across our country and I wondered if these men’s eyes had been opened too. Perhaps they had seen enough to instil in them a little compassion. Or perhaps they were just loyal men taking care of their commander’s ward.

Even so, Anna did not speak to any of them. Not a single word.

They put down a tarpaulin for her to sit on, but she refused to leave my side, sitting only when I did. When they made a fire to boil tea, she drank only when I did. One of the men, Nevsky, even brought a medical bag, offering to check her over, but she refused, staring at him and narrowing her eyes in distrust.

Krukov sat beside me, the breeze ruffling his fox-fur hat, and watched her without expression. ‘She’s the child from the farm?’ he asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘We thought she was a boy. What happened to the man who was there?’

I shook my head.

Krukov adjusted his hat. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I didn’t leave because I’m a coward,’ I said. ‘I’m not a coward.’

‘I know that.’

‘I shouldn’t have gone, though. If I hadn’t, none of this would have happened.’

‘Or perhaps it would have happened in a different way,’ Krukov said. He removed his gloves and tore a chunk of bread in two, offering one of the pieces to me.

I took it and stared at the river. It was beautiful, the sun reflecting from its surface, the water still chasing through the wide channel. A few more weeks and the worsening weather would freeze it right down to the bed. The cold would halt all nature but man.

‘Why did Ryzhkov send you after me?’ I asked, still watching the water. ‘Why not come himself?’

‘He did.’ Krukov took a bite of the bread and reached for a piece of
salo
. ‘At first, anyway.’

‘You told him I was still alive?’

‘It was my duty.’

I took my eyes off the river and looked at Krukov sitting beside me. His sunken cheeks were corpse-like, tight around angular cheekbones. His eyes were almost too large for their sockets, bulging, and his lips were thin. If any one had told me this man was Koschei, I would have believed it. He had the look, the cold disposition, the literal interpretation of orders. For a moment I felt uneasy in his presence, wondering if I had been fooled. It wouldn’t be the first time I discovered that someone wasn’t who they said they were. Perhaps Ryzhkov had lied. Perhaps he had been protecting Krukov’s true identity. Perhaps it was
he
who was afraid of Koschei.

My mind spun as it tried to follow the endless strands woven into the blanket of deceit that smothered us. I felt as if I would never be certain of anything again. Everything was a lie. Everything was shrouded in dishonesty. Everyone was hiding something.

‘Are you all right?’ Krukov asked.

‘Of course.’ It was a ridiculous notion. If Krukov was Koschei, he would have killed me by now, and the deception would be too elaborate. I couldn’t let go of it, though. Everyone was someone else. It almost hurt to think about it. All I wanted was to be alone with my family, to put the world behind me and find a place where a man is just a man. A friend is a friend.

‘I had to tell him,’ Krukov said. ‘Without you, he was my superior.’

‘I understand.’ Disobeying orders was a capital offence. Ryzhkov had been commander of his unit before it was attached to mine, so when I was no longer there, leadership fell to him. The Red Army had done away with rank and title, but it could not do away with leaders. Without leaders, an army was just a rabble.

Krukov studied the bread in his hand as if he were thinking hard about something, and when he looked back up at me, his expression had softened.

‘All my life I followed orders,’ he said. ‘I was never in command . . .’

‘You’re a good soldier.’

‘Let me finish.’ Krukov reached into his pocket and took out a flask, which he opened and raised to me. ‘Alek,’ he said. Then he put it to his lips and drank. He grimaced and offered it to me. ‘Vodka.’

‘Alek,’ I toasted, and drank. It stung the cuts and swellings in my mouth, burned as it went down, but it spread a good warmth in my chest. I passed it back and bit into the black bread as Krukov returned the flask to his pocket.

‘I always followed orders,’ he said, ‘always trusted my senior officer, so when I realised it wasn’t you in that ditch in Ulyanov, it was like you’d betrayed me. I was angry, so I reported it to my new commander, Ryzhkov, and we came after you right away. Ryzhkov was . . . His behaviour was strange. He was like a man whose wife has cheated on him. I had never seen anything like it. I think he admired you.’

I remembered what Ryzhkov had said to me in the
izba
last night. It felt like it was a long time ago, but it was only a matter of hours since he had told me how I had disappointed him.

‘We received orders to crush the local peasants,’ Krukov said. ‘There had been resistance to grain and animal requisitions, and the Bolsheviks were afraid the uprising was spreading.’ He took a deep breath. ‘So we went into the first village we came to.’ Once more he reached into his pocket for the flask and I noticed his hand was shaking when he drank from it and offered it to me.

‘That’s when we saw what kind of man Ryzhkov was; what kind of unit he was leading.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I said. ‘You didn’t know.’

‘We should have stopped him.’

I realised that the other men had grown silent and were listening to Krukov. When I glanced around at them, none of them would meet my gaze. The river, the open steppe and the road cutting through it had become fascinating to them.

‘They took the boys and some of the women. Others they . . .’ He looked at Anna, then lowered his voice and leaned closer to me. ‘They raped them. Shot the men, hanged them . . . Ryzhkov himself flayed an old man’s hand. And there was that brand. The star that—’

‘I’ve seen the things they did,’ I told him.

‘But you didn’t see their faces when they did it. You didn’t hear them laugh. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, couldn’t believe that my commander would . . . He was like an animal. Like the devil. Like—’

‘Koschei,’ I said.

Krukov shook his head. ‘He was worse than that.’

He held his hands out in front of him, fingers outstretched, as if he had just noticed they were shaking, then he clenched them into fists and held them tight to his thighs. ‘When we left the village, I told him it was wrong, so he went ahead to the next village and sent me to find you alone.’

‘You’re lucky he didn’t try to kill you.’ I kept my tone flat, so he didn’t hear the question in it. If Krukov had disagreed with a man like Ryzhkov, I was surprised he had just let him go.

‘I think he wanted to. I saw him kill one of his own men for disobeying an order to . . .’ He noticed Anna watching him. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter.’

‘So what stopped him?’ I asked. ‘From trying to kill you?’

Krukov looked at the others sitting with us. ‘Loyal men, I suppose. He knew these men might support me, and he didn’t want to fight soldiers – that wasn’t his style.’

‘But he sent a couple of his men to watch you?’

‘Yes.’

‘He should have sent more.’

Krukov allowed a wry smile to show, the first sign of emotion, but it was gone in a second. ‘Some of the men were taken in by him and stayed. Dotsenko—’

‘I saw him. After the farm, there was a train in the forest.’

‘We saw it too. All those wounded men. How was Stas?’

‘Dead.’

Krukov sighed. ‘It was as if Ryzhkov had put a spell on them, convinced them they were doing revolutionary work.’

‘But not you?’ I asked. ‘He didn’t convince you?’

Krukov shook his head. ‘Not me.’ He looked around. ‘Not us.’

I hoped he was right. All it would take was for one of them to share his twisted idea of patriotism, for one of them to turn his weapon on me.

‘I never had any intention of executing you as a deserter,’ he said.

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Maybe at first. It was a crime. I thought you were a coward, but then . . . the more we saw . . .’ He shook his head. ‘You’re a better man than he ever was. You’re the commander of this unit, and now you’re back where you belong.’

It took a moment for his words to sink in.

‘You want me to take command of this unit again?’ I couldn’t quite believe what he was saying. I couldn’t let everything turn in a circle; all that death and nothing gained.

‘Of course. If you come back now, no one need ever know you left. Ryzhkov and the others are dead now.’

I swallowed my words. This was not the best time to tell Krukov I had no intention of commanding this unit again. I wanted a life of peace; to forget the things I had done, to atone for them by taking care of my family as a father and a husband. I wanted to leave the soldier behind, but I didn’t know how Krukov would react. He was giving me a chance to come back, but if I refused, perhaps he would turn on me as Ryzhkov had done.

My trial wasn’t over. I wasn’t done with the soldier just yet, and it was likely there was more blood to be spilled.

‘Maybe we should go,’ I said, standing up.

Krukov stood too, coming to attention. ‘It’s time to put on your uniform,’ he said.

Nagai was barely recognisable as a village. There was no life there. Not even a dog strolled in what was left of the street, but it was not like it had been when I arrived in Belev. Not one of the houses here was intact, not a wall left standing. The husks of the buildings were blackened, collapsed in on themselves or blown out into pieces, and there was rubble all about: cracked stones, crumbled bricks, charred beams, broken fences. The ground was a mess of craters big enough to swallow a man, and the air was thick with the scent of old smoke. Last night’s snow had settled in places, stark against the burned wood that lay all about.

‘Shellfire,’ Krukov said, as we rode among the ruins, sweeping our eyes around the destruction. ‘They didn’t stand a chance.’

‘I wonder which side it was,’ said Nevsky from behind me.

‘What difference does it make?’ I asked. ‘People are people.’

Krukov glanced across at me. ‘Those who oppose the revolution must be . . .’

‘Crushed?’ I said.

He clenched his teeth and the muscles at the side of his jaw bulged.

‘Would it not be better if we could just live in peace?’ I suggested.

‘Once the counter-revolutionaries are quiet, then there will be peace. We remove the weeds and the crop grows strong, right?’

I sighed and shook my head. ‘That’s too much black and white.’

‘No, for him there’s only red,’ Bukharin said, making some of the men laugh.

Krukov cast a stern look at them. ‘I saw the wrong in Ryzhkov,’ he said, looking at me once more. ‘The war is only against those who bear arms.’

‘And those who refuse to give up their grain?’ I asked. ‘Do they not need to be crushed too?’

‘They need to be educated,’ he said. ‘Not crucified and tortured.’

‘And how can they be educated?’ I asked.

‘Labour. It’s the great leveller. No man is better than another when there is sweat on his brow and he’s working for the good of the people.’

‘Like my family?’ I asked. ‘They should be in a labour camp, should they?’

‘No, I . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Everything used to make sense.’

‘Yes, it did,’ I agreed.

We came to a halt among the ruins, where what remained of the road cut through them, passing back onto the steppe and curving round the forest to the north.

‘It should be in there,’ Krukov said. ‘Among the trees.’

Among the trees, I thought. Would I ever get away from them?

‘All right, then,’ I said, feeling my anticipation build. ‘Repnin and Manarov, you come with us. Bukharin, I want you and Nevsky to stay here with Anna. Guard her with your lives.’

‘I won’t stay with them,’ she said, refusing to dismount. ‘I won’t let you leave me.’

‘Anna.’

‘You can’t go without me.’

So I asked her to ride to the end of the village with me, alone.

‘This is going to be dangerous,’ I told her.

‘I don’t mind. As long as I’m with you, I’ll be fine.’

Her confidence in me made me feel good, proud even, but this was not a time for pride.

‘What I mean is that
you’ll
make it dangerous. You see, a commander riding into a camp is one thing, but a commander riding into a camp with a child is something else altogether. People will wonder why you are there. They may ask awkward questions. Remember when I spoke to the Cossacks? This is no different.’

‘You’re a Chekist commander,’ she said. ‘You can tell them whatever you like.’

‘No one is immune,’ I said. ‘No one is safe. You have to stay. I’m sorry.’

Anna said nothing. She pouted and stared ahead, reminding me she was only twelve years old.

‘I’ll be as quick as I can. The camp won’t be far into the forest. It won’t take long.’

‘I won’t talk to them.’

‘You don’t have to. In fact, I don’t want you to.’

She looked at me like she didn’t understand.

‘I want you to keep away from them, and I’ll tell them to keep away from you.’

‘Why? I thought you trust them?’

‘I do. I
want
to. I
think
I trust them, but they want me to lead them again and—’

‘You’re not going to, are you?’

‘No. And I don’t know what they’ll do if they find out, so you keep apart, and if anything happens, I want you to ride away as fast as you can. I’ll find you.’