Red Winter

41

The interior of the izba was like a battlefield. Bodies. Blood. The dead, the confused and the walking wounded.

Ryzhkov lay in the snow, his secrets unspoken, and I propped myself in the doorway feeling cheated and helpless, wondering how it had come to this. I had left my unit to escape the war. Alek had given his life for us to avoid it, and yet here it was, right here in this house. I realised then that it was everywhere. That there was no way to escape it. It touched every corner of our country. The distrust and the separation and the violence were everywhere. It was plain to see on the battlefield, but it was in our homes too. It was thick in the air that we breathed and I understood that it was a part of us now. We had come too far; there was no way to turn back. Whoever won this terrible war, it wouldn’t matter.

The old woman was wailing when I came in, but when she saw me, she stopped. She knew her son was dead, and now she didn’t know what to do or how to feel. She had protected him as any mother would protect her child. Even a grown man. She wouldn’t want to believe my accusations, to accept who her son had been and what he had done, but in her heart, she knew it was true. Ryzhkov had kept his madness from his family, but it was there, raging beneath the calm demeanour, and when I had pushed him, he was unable to deny it. The old woman couldn’t deny it now either.

Sergei, though, he knew. I think he had known all along that his son was out of control; that’s why he had warned us to leave. Now the shame was more than he could bear. He sat motionless on the floor beside his wife, holding one of her hands in his own, but he stared at the wall seeing nothing. His face showed no emotion, as if his senses had all but deserted him, and he gently patted his wife’s hand over and over. It wasn’t that he didn’t care if his son was dead or alive – I think he just didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to be a part of it. And for now he was going to deny us all.

Oksana was nowhere to be seen, but I knew she would have retreated above the pich to be with her children, keeping them safe and out of sight. Where else was there for her to go but to her children?

Anna was sitting where she had been when I last saw her, my revolver still in her hands, but she placed it on the floor as Tuzik brushed past my legs and went to her, a slight awkwardness in his step. She threw her arms around him and hugged him tight, pushing her face against his neck. When she looked up, our eyes met, a silent acknowledgement passing between us, and it was that which gave me strength. Were it not for Anna, I think I might have sobbed at my misfortune. I had come so far, followed Koschei’s trail of destruction for so long, and all the time I had fixed my hope on the information he would give me. But he had given me nothing and now all seemed lost.

I had Anna to make me keep going, though. She depended on me and I on her.

The old woman stood and came across the room, leaving her husband. She stepped over the bodies and I moved aside to let her out into the yard. I didn’t watch her cross to her son and fall to her knees at his side, but I knew it was what she would do. No matter what he was, she would mourn him. He was, after all, her son.

At my feet, Lyudmila lay dead.

‘Kolya.’

My name whispered.

‘Kolya.’

Tanya was on her side by the table, her face bloody.

‘Kolya,’ she said again. She was looking up at me through half-open eyes. She raised a hand and made a weak, beckoning motion, so I crouched beside her.

‘You’ll be fine,’ I said.

Tanya shook her head and put her hand on her stomach. It was only then that I realised she had been shot. There was already so much blood on the floor I hadn’t noticed that a lot of it was coming from the wound in her abdomen.

I put my hands to her injury and pressed hard.

‘Is he dead?’ Tanya asked. ‘Koschei?’

‘Don’t talk,’ I said. ‘You’ll be all right.’

Tanya managed a gentle shake of her head. ‘Is he dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he tell you?’ Tanya asked. Her voice was weak and I could almost hear the life leaving her.

‘Yes,’ I said, running my hand across her brow, moving aside the blood-matted hair. ‘Yes, he did.’

‘You can find your family.’

‘We’ll find them together.’

She lifted her fingers to my face, touching my cheek, and our eyes locked together. ‘Find them,’ she said.

They were her last words.

I sat back, turning my face to the sky and closing my eyes, but allowed myself only a moment. Other things were more important. The living had to take precedent over the dead.

I left Tanya where she lay and went to Anna.

The old woman was still outside when dawn broke. She remained at her dead son’s side, stricken despite his crimes, and the day renewed about her, unmoved by the night’s tragedy.

No more snow fell, and that which had settled became a crystalline crust that hardened on the frost and decorated everything from the frozen mud in the yard to the narrow fence tops and the field beyond. The morning light glittered in the countless angles of the flowering ice with an incongruous beauty.

Dragging the bodies from the house was hard work, but had to be done. I couldn’t leave them where they had fallen; Sergei and the old woman wouldn’t be able to move them, nor would Oksana, and I couldn’t leave them in the izba with the children.

With a frankness that saddened me, Anna offered to help, but I couldn’t allow it. If anything ever taught me that our country was hard on people, it was that a twelve-year-old girl could offer to help drag dead men from a family home. She needed to do something, though, so I pointed to the horses, who shied away from the ugly tableau, huddling at the far end of the yard, and I told her to take them back into the barn to shelter. There was hay and warmth for them there.

‘You look bad,’ she said. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘I’ll live. Go on. Take the horses inside.’

She went without question, ignoring the old woman and going to Kashtan first.

Tuzik divided his time between us, patrolling from one to the other.

‘You’re a Bolshevik.’ They were Sergei’s first words.

I was by the door, the night behind me, bent over the corpse of one of the Chekists as I struggled to pull him outside. I looked up to see the old man watching me. His beard was thick over pallid skin, and his red eyes were watery and sad.

‘What does it matter?’ I asked.

‘Were these men your brothers?’

I glanced at the body of the man who had tried to strangle me. He was stiffening now, the side of his neck plastered with drying blood. ‘These men passed beyond being anyone’s brother. They weren’t Bolsheviks. They were…’ I shook my head and looked for the right word, but I wasn’t sure what it was. ‘They weren’t Bolsheviks.’

‘What does that mean, anyway?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps it means something to the men in Moscow, but here?’

I didn’t reply.

‘Perhaps we’ve just forgotten what we’re fighting for.’

I stared at the old man and wondered what he must be feeling. His own son was a monster.

‘So what are you fighting for?’ he asked me.

‘Then? For the revolution. But now for my family.’ I remembered what Commander Orlov had said to me. ‘Nothing else matters now.’

The old man looked over at his wife mourning their son and I understood the irony of what I had just said. I could not tell him I was sorry, though. My only regret was that Ryzhkov had died before I could learn what he had done with Marianna and Misha and Pavel.

Sergei sighed, and his eyes shifted so he could see beyond the yard. He watched the sparkle of the rising sun on the field and I knew our conversation was over. He reached into his pocket to take out his pipe, and when he began to pack it with tobacco, I continued with the task at hand, dragging the body the short distance to the cart, moving it just a few paces at a time before I had to rest, and then struggling to load it on with the others.

The old woman paid me no attention, sitting beside her son with her head hung. The air was bitter and yet she hardly seemed to notice.

Taking the coat from the Chekist’s body, I draped it over her shoulders and drew it around her.

‘Stay warm, grandmother,’ I said. ‘Enough people have died here already.’ She didn’t even acknowledge I was there.

By the time I finished loading the cart, Anna had stabled the horses and remained in the barn, petting Kashtan, but she didn’t take her eyes off me. Tuzik lay in the straw by the door, head up, watching.

I went back to the old woman, touching her shoulder.

‘Time to go inside,’ I said. I had one more body to deal with, but to her, I wasn’t even there. She didn’t move, didn’t even acknowledge my presence. Nothing existed but her and her son’s body, and I think she might have stayed there until she wasted to nothing or froze in place if it hadn’t been for her husband.

The old man came out and crossed the yard, boots crunching on the ice. He reached down and took his wife’s hand in his own, then put another under her arm to help her to her feet. Now she complied as if in a daze, and the vagueness of her expression reminded me of what I had seen in Galina’s face when I had been in Belev.

‘He’s gone,’ Sergei said as she stood. ‘He’s gone now.’ He turned her round and guided her back to the house.

When they had left, I went to their son’s body and took the papers from his pocket. I checked the uniform beneath his coat and kept anything that might be of use, then I hauled him onto the back of the cart with the others, taking my time and resting often.

Piling the men like that had been a great effort and had taken me over an hour. My muscles protested, my back screamed in pain so I could hardly stand straight, and my face throbbed, but I had to keep going. I wanted to finish, so I gathered an armful of split logs from the woodpile and went to the cart, packing them around the bodies. I would not allow these men to have anything. Not even six feet of land. I would burn them and let them scatter to the wind.

When I returned for more wood, Anna was waiting for me.

‘Let me help,’ she said.

I considered for a moment, then reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Aren’t you cold? It’s warmer in the barn with Kashtan.’

Anna responded by turning to the woodpile and grasping a log in each hand. ‘This will keep me warm.’ She offered them to me.

I took the wood from her, seeing that she wanted to be with me, and I smiled at her. It was not a smile of happiness, but one of understanding and togetherness.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

So Anna lifted the wood from the pile and I took it to the cart, and when there was enough, I covered the bodies with dry straw from the barn.

With that done, Anna and I returned to Kashtan, who nickered and came to me, putting her nose against my chest. I looked into her soft brown eyes and rubbed her neck.

‘Stay with her,’ I said to Anna. ‘There’s one last thing for me to do.’

‘What is it? Can’t I come with you?’ she asked.

‘I need you to keep Kashtan company. Don’t worry. You’re safe.’

‘I don’t feel safe.’

‘I know.’ I turned to Anna and opened my arms to her and she stepped against me. I embraced her and held her tight, putting up a hand to stroke her hair. ‘But I have to bring Tanya and Lyudmila out.’

‘I don’t want to be alone.’ Her face was pressed against my coat and her voice was muffled.

‘You won’t be. I’ll be close. And Kashtan is here. Tuzik too.’

Inside, the old woman was sitting at the table, and Sergei had put water on to boil. He made tea while I took Tanya and Lyudmila into the yard, but I didn’t put them in the cart with the Chekists. They deserved better than that. They deserved the land, so I laid them on my tarpaulin, one at a time, and wrapped it round them before I returned to the barn to collect some tools.

‘I’m going to take them to the edge of the forest,’ I told Anna. ‘To bury them. It may take a little while.’ I glanced over at the izba. There was a glow at the window and it would be warm inside.

Anna saw me looking and began to shake her head. ‘Don’t leave me.’ There was desperation in her voice. ‘Please don’t make me go—’

‘I want you to come with me,’ I said, removing one glove and putting my hand to the side of her face. ‘I won’t let you out of my sight.’ It was the only choice I had. I couldn’t leave her out here in the barn, and though it would be warm in the house, I couldn’t send her inside to be alone with the old woman, the mother of the man she had helped kill.

Anna’s relief was clear. Her shoulders slumped and she closed her eyes, releasing her breath.

‘Come on,’ I said, putting my glove back on. ‘You can bring the tools.’

I gave her an axe and a shovel from the back of the barn and we went to the wrapped tarpaulin at the far end of the yard. I took the end in both hands and walked backwards, dragging it through the gate, to the edge of the trees.

Anna walked beside me while Tuzik followed, and when I broke the ground with the axe and dug a shallow grave, they watched in silence, Tuzik sitting motionless, Anna standing beside him with one hand on his head.

As I dug, I remembered how I done the same thing for my brother not long ago. I had broken the ground as the sleet came down, and the two women had watched from shelter. It occurred to me that I knew so very little about them.

When the grave was deep enough, I checked their pockets, removing all papers and belongings and putting them in my satchel. Then I rolled them into the hole to lie side by side under the trees. They looked small and insignificant like that, as if they didn’t matter. I wondered who would miss them or if they’d even know they were gone.

The cold, black, rich soil was like heavy rain on their clothes as I shovelled it onto them, and when all I could see were their dead, white faces, I paused. I closed my eyes and touched the chotki round my wrist. I said a small prayer and wished them luck wherever they were going, then I threw the last of the soil over them and they were gone.