Red Winter

31

Oksana was afraid. She held her hands together as if in prayer, clutching them close to her chest, and her whole demeanour was withdrawn. Her shoulders hunched, her head lowered, her eyes turned down.

She refused to come into the house, staying on the threshold, trembling with the cold. It was clear that she had come out in a hurry and had not intended to be long.

I took a tentative step outside, glancing around the yard as I came closer to her. ‘What kind of danger?’ I asked.

‘Sergei’s gone for the Cheka. Svetlana said you were deserters and made him go.’

‘The old woman?’ I realised it was the first time I’d heard her name. ‘For the Cheka? What are you talking about?’

‘Please,’ she said. ‘You have to leave.’

Behind me, Tanya and Lyudmila were moving through the house, coming to stand behind me to find out what was happening.

‘What’s this about the Cheka?’ Tanya asked.

‘The other farm…’ Oksana’s throat was dry and the words didn’t come easily to her.

‘The one we saw from the woods?’

‘Yes. There are Chekists there.’

‘Chekists?’

She nodded.

‘The ones who were following you?’ Tanya looked at me.

‘They couldn’t be…’ I looked down at Oksana and let her see my anger. ‘When did they get here? When?’

‘Yesterday morning.’ She cowered away from me.

‘It’s not them.’ I shook my head at Tanya. ‘It can’t be. It’s someone else.’

‘I knew there was something wrong here.’ Lyudmila stepped closer to Oksana and leaned right in to stare at her. ‘I—’

‘Is it him?’ Tanya said to me, her face draining. ‘Do you think it’s him?’

Lyudmila stopped mid-sentence and stared. She turned her head slowly, all three of us looking at one another. Tanya hadn’t needed to say the name.

‘Did we… ? While he was so close?’

The thought of it was like a thousand cannons firing in my head. It was almost too much to comprehend – that we might have found him. That our search might be almost at an end. That we might have been sitting in the izba sharing our food with Oksana and her family while Krukov was so close.

‘It can’t be…’ I shook my head. It was too hard to believe.

‘We stay,’ Tanya said, hefting her rifle. ‘Let him come. Kill them all.’

I imagined us barricading ourselves in the tiny izba, with its broken roof, waiting for Krukov and his unit of well-trained soldiers to arrive, but all I saw was bloodshed and death. Ours. ‘We wouldn’t have a chance.’

‘We have rifles,’ Lyudmila said. ‘Pistols and enough ammunition to kill a hundred men. Will they have a hundred men?’

‘They’ll have explosives,’ I told her. ‘Gas. Maybe a Maxim gun.’

‘Please,’ Oksana said. ‘My children.’

‘And we have Anna. We can’t… We don’t have a chance. We should get the horses ready, go into the forest.’

‘Run away?’ Tanya said. ‘After all this?’

‘We can fight from the forest if we have to,’ I said. ‘And remember, I need to know where my family is. I need him alive.’

Tanya said nothing. She looked out into the darkness and said nothing.

‘We don’t have a chance,’ I told them again. ‘If we stay here, we’ll die. We need to get the horses ready and leave. Now.’

‘There’s no time for the horses,’ Oksana said. ‘They’ll be here any minute. Please just go.’

‘We’ll find time.’ It would take a few long minutes to saddle the horses, but there was no question of leaving without them. We needed them. Without Kashtan, I would probably be dead in the forest already; I had no intention of leaving her anywhere. ‘Take her.’ I pushed Oksana towards Tanya, who gripped her tighter than necessary, and then the three women hurried towards the outhouse where the horses were stabled.

I ran back to the izba and called to Anna, telling her to help me carry the few belongings we had brought inside, then she and I followed the women, Tuzik on our heels.

The door to the barn was open and we rushed inside.

The animals were agitated; that was clear straight away. They had moved to one side of the barn, shying away from the place where Tanya stood, pressing Oksana against the wall.

Tanya had taken the front of Oksana’s dress in her left fist, twisting to cut off her breath and pushing her forearm against her chest. In her right hand, she held a pistol, the barrel forced so hard into the soft tissue on the underside of Oksana’s chin it was pushing the woman’s head back. I had been on the receiving end of Tanya’s temper when we first met in Belev, so I knew how fierce she could be.

As soon as she saw, Anna tugged on my coat. ‘Make her stop.’

I understood Tanya’s reaction. I knew how she felt because I felt that way too. We had compromised ourselves for the promise of some little comfort, for the protection of a young girl, for the slightest sense of humanity, and our decision to let down our guard had been rewarded with this. And if this kind of betrayal was the result of placing even the slightest faith in other people, then what hope was there for any of us?

There was also the thought of our proximity to Krukov. The soldiers in the nearby farm might not be Krukov and his men, but there was a good chance they were. We had been following them for days, and everything had pointed us in this direction. The temptation to stand and fight was a powerful one, and our decision to leave, right though it was, was a difficult one for any of us to stomach. The thought of letting him go was like a pain in my heart, and I knew it would be the same for Tanya, perhaps more so. If it weren’t for Anna and for my need to have Krukov alive, Tanya might have chosen to make a final stand against him. With nothing to lose, she might have taken that risk. Tanya, though, was not as filled with the need for vengeance as she wanted to be, and she had a small chink in her armour. She had us. Or, rather, she had Anna.

‘Please,’ Anna said, and her single word cut through my own anger like a light splitting the dark. In that moment I saw one thing more clearly than anything else. She needed my strength to reassure her. She needed the father in me as much as my family needed the soldier.

I took a deep breath and banished my rage to its dark place to fester for a while longer, but I knew that when it finally came – when I finally allowed it freedom – the soldier in me would surface and my rage would be colder and blacker than it had ever been before.

‘Leave her,’ I said to Tanya. ‘We don’t have time for this.’

Tanya heard me but didn’t respond right away. Whatever questions she had been asking Oksana now stopped, but the pistol remained against her skin.

I looked down at Anna, seeing the expectation in her face. She believed me to be the strong one. She wanted me to stop this. I couldn’t let her down, and that in itself was another source of anger and frustration for me.

‘We don’t have time,’ I said, striding across the barn.

Lyudmila tried to stop me. She saw the nature of my intent, if not exactly what I was going to do, and she stepped between me and Tanya, but she was neither powerful nor quick enough and I pushed her aside. She stumbled and fell as I grabbed Tanya’s arm and tore it away from Oksana, who sank to her knees in the straw.

Tanya had allowed her anger to take control of her, as my own had threatened to do, and now she wheeled round, raising her pistol to point at me.

Arm outstretched, barrel against my cheek, her eyes like a demon’s. She couldn’t focus on me, such was the intensity of her feeling, and she was taking long breaths, sucking the air into her nostrils as if trying to calm herself. But her arm was like iron. Unmoving. The barrel of the pistol unwavering.

My own revolver was less visible, but just as deadly. I’d had no intention of using it against Tanya, but her action had triggered my reaction and now I held it at waist height, aimed at her stomach.

Lyudmila tried to get to her feet beside me, to protect her comrade, but Tuzik stood over her, and when she tried to back away from him, he showed her his teeth.

‘Look at yourself,’ I said. ‘Save your anger for him.’

Tanya stared. For a moment she struggled to speak, and when she finally did, the words were spat through gritted teeth. ‘They betrayed us.’

I looked down at Oksana, but she had lowered her gaze. She remained on her knees, head bowed as if in prayer.

‘I know.’ My eyes met Tanya’s. ‘And I know how you feel. After everything. All this way. All the things we’ve seen and done, and all that came before. But this is not the end, Tanya. This is not where it ends. We still have further to go.’

‘They betrayed us.’ It was as if the treachery stood in front of her, blinding her to everything else.

‘Oksana warned us.’

‘Kill him and have done with it,’ Lyudmila said. ‘We have to go.’

Tanya’s eyes flicked in her direction, almost imperceptible, and the idea in her mind grew larger. Shoot and be gone. But I was armed too, my revolver pointing at her stomach, angled upwards for maximum damage. If there were to be shots tonight, there would be more than one.

‘She changed her mind,’ I said. ‘She warned us, gave us a chance. Let’s not waste it.’

‘They betrayed us,’ Tanya said again, quieter this time, and pressed the barrel harder.

‘Leave him alone,’ Anna said, and I heard her coming forward, but I held out a hand and told her to stop.

‘Stay back. Don’t watch.’

Now Tanya’s eyes went to Anna, just for a second, but it was long enough for a new image to burn itself into her mind. The image of herself murdering me in front of this child. Perhaps the irony of that was not lost on her, that she should become the hated aggressor.

‘She’s afraid,’ I said. ‘Oksana is afraid like everyone else. And you’re just making it worse. I want to hurt someone as much as you do, but this is not the right person. We don’t have time for this. Krukov might be coming across the field right now. Do you want him to find us in here? Like this?’

Or perhaps she did want that to happen. Maybe that’s what this was about – delaying our escape so that she could meet Krukov face to face.

‘If he comes here,’ I said, ‘we’ll all die. You, me, Anna, the children in the farm. He’ll kill everyone and burn this place to the ground. We’ve seen that everywhere we’ve been.’ But something in those words didn’t ring quite true; a big question whispered quietly at the back of my mind, like a bad seed planted in a dark corner. If Krukov was here, why hadn’t he already killed Oksana and her family?

Tanya lifted her left hand to the grip of the pistol and altered her stance. She set her jaw tight, but I knew there was a shift in her resolve. It was a sign of her doubt.

‘So what are we going to do? Shoot each other?’ I kept my eyes on her and lowered my revolver. ‘What then? Who will punish Krukov then? Who will look after Anna?’

Tanya blinked.

‘We have to go,’ I said. ‘We have to live. If there are men coming, we have to go. Now. This woman is not worth dying for.’

Tanya said nothing.

‘Let’s ride into the forest, disappear, find the right moment.’

She stayed as she was, trying to calm herself.

‘We don’t have much time,’ I told her. ‘Save your bullets for when we need them most.’

Tanya looked away now. She let herself see Lyudmila lying on the floor with Tuzik standing over her. She saw Anna, small and vulnerable and needing our help, and she turned to look at Oksana kneeling in the straw, shamed by her actions.

‘If we wait much longer,’ I said, ‘we’ll all be dead.’

When Tanya lowered her weapon, she said nothing.

She collected her rifle from the floor and walked away from me, holstering her pistol.

‘Get this damn dog away from me.’ Lyudmila stole my attention and I called to Tuzik, unsure if he would even listen to me, but he came as soon as I spoke his name, and Lyudmila jumped to her feet, casting a hateful look at me.

On the other side of the barn, Tanya lifted her animal’s bridle from the beam where it was stored and began securing it over her horse’s head.

‘Help me with Kashtan,’ I said to Anna.

Anna seemed to deflate then, as if she had been holding her breath for a long time.

‘Quick,’ I told her, feeling the urgency return. This was not over yet.

Kashtan was a little agitated by what had happened and she moved away as I tried to put the saddle onto her back, so I soothed her as gently as I could, feeling the time draining away, imagining the approach of the soldiers.

‘Have you done this before?’ I asked Oksana as I struggled to fit Kashtan’s bridle, my fingers moving as quickly as I could make them. ‘Taken people in like this? Betrayed them to—’

‘Yes,’ Oksana replied. She was still on her knees, in the gloom at the back of the barn. ‘I’m so sorry. I…’ She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t explain the wickedness of what they had done to us. ‘That’s why I came to warn you. I… Anna. The child. The children. I don’t know what I would do if someone took my children.’

My fingers fumbled with the buckles, my hands shaking.

Anna reached up to take the fastenings in her small hands, saying, ‘I’ll do that.’

‘You’re lucky they haven’t taken your children,’ I said, taking my saddle and hefting it onto Kashtan’s back.

‘Perhaps they still will,’ Lyudmila said.

Oksana looked over at her, and the realisation was clear in her eyes. Her children were no safer than ours were. Reporting and trapping deserters might earn her a few favours, but there was no guarantee.

‘What have they given you in return?’ I asked, pulling the straps tight under Kashtan’s stomach and tightening the buckles. The fixings were larger and my fingers managed them well enough. ‘The Chekists? What have they given you?’

Oksana shrugged and shook her head.

The saddle was secured, the bridle on, and I straightened up, running a hand along Kashtan’s smooth coat, feeling some of the anger and tension drain away. As always, there was something about her that calmed me, the sense that no one would ever be as in tune with me as she was.

‘Good girl,’ I whispered, patting her shoulder. ‘Good girl.’ Then I handed her reins to Anna, while Tanya helped Lyudmila to finish tacking her horse.

‘How many are they?’ I asked, drawing my revolver and heading towards the door. ‘The Chekists?’

Oksana thought for a moment. ‘Five or six, but they come and go. Sometimes there are more.’

‘Have you seen any of them with prisoners? Women and children?’ I stopped and looked back at her. ‘Tell me the truth.’

Oksana lowered her head again and cowered against the wall of the outbuilding as if she wished the earth would swallow her whole.

‘The truth.’

Tanya and Lyudmila had finished now and were preparing to lead the horses from the barn, but they too stopped to hear Oksana’s answer.

‘Yesterday. There were more here yesterday.’

‘With prisoners?’

‘I think so. We didn’t see them, but—’

‘Didn’t see them? Then how can you be sure?’

‘Not close, I mean. There were people, not soldiers – I saw that, but not who they were. Not really. They stayed at the other farm. They didn’t come here.’

‘Are they still there?’

She shook her head.

‘And you kept that from us?’ Tanya said. ‘You kept that from us and you were going to let the Chekists come and drag us out in the night?’ She looked at me. ‘You should have let me put a bullet in her.’

‘She’s protecting herself,’ I said, looking at Anna, knowing the depths to which people would sink in order to keep themselves and their family safe.

‘You’re wrong,’ Tanya said. ‘She’s wrong. Nothing would make me betray someone like that.’

‘Not even for your own children?’ I asked her. ‘Would you not have done anything to protect them?’

Tanya stopped and stared at me, knowing I was right. We lived in times that made people do things they would never have considered before.

‘Come on,’ I said, crossing the short distance to the door and looking out to check it was clear for our escape. ‘We need to leave.’

But we were already too late.