The Child Thief

23

The soldiers didn’t speak while they took me to the table in the centre of the church. They pushed me down into a chair and stepped away, one on each side, just a few feet away, and there they remained silent. Waiting.

On the table the candles flickered, flames twisting in the air, their light glinting on the surface of a heavy glass tumbler of water that stood by a dented metal jug. I sat straight in the chair, staring at the wooden crucifix lying on the table close to the half-burned candles. Its main upright was as long and thick as my forearm, and I could see where it had once stood in a base. It was not ornate, but a simple representation of the cross. I stared at it and prepared for what was to come. I tried to relax, calm my mind. I tried to close myself off and pretend I wasn’t here. I was at home, at the table in the kitchen. The pich was alight and warm. The table was laid with fresh bread and salo and mushrooms that Natalia had picked from the woods in the summer. There was a full bottle of horilka. And my family was there. Natalia beside me, my sons and my daughter around the table.

But I couldn’t hold the image in my head. I was cold. I was tired and hungry. And for all my strength – for all the things I had seen and done – I was afraid.

When the main church door opened, I could see it was night. I saw no stars or moon, just the darkness.

Two men entered and closed the door behind them. The first was younger than me, maybe in his early thirties, and he was clean shaven. Light blue eyes as cold as the night outside, and thin lips that were dry and broken by the weather. He wore a heavy coat and a small-peaked wide-crowned cap pulled tight on his head. His knee-length leather boots were polished to a proud shine. In his left hand he carried my satchel, and in his right he held my rifle.

The second man was closer to me in age and was dressed in the same way as Kostya, except that he wore an ill-fitting coat and had a cap on his head. His trousers were bagging around the knees because the bottoms were tucked into his boots. The boots looked new. He was bearded and dark and I thought he might be from the village, perhaps a loyal communist who was now part of a newly formed local soviet. Whether he was a true communist or just someone trying to save his own life and that of his family was irrelevant. He did what was expected of him.

They came along the aisle between the discarded and broken pews, and they stopped in front of the table. The young man looked down at me. He stood for a while, not speaking, then made a satisfied sound, low in his throat. He nodded and placed the satchel and rifle on the table, out of my reach, before removing his hat and laying it down so the red star was facing me. The hat looked as if it might be new; the royal-blue crown was still neat and clean, the red band not yet marked with mud and grime, the Soviet star pristine.

It was cold in the church, but the young man took off his coat and draped it over the back of one of the chairs, standing before me so I could see his uniform. The dark kitel tunic with the red collar tabs and gleaming black buttons. He was showing me who he was, and though I was unfamiliar with his uniform, I guessed the man was OGPU, perhaps the head of a provincial department. We used to call them Chekists, but the name made no difference. Whatever you called them, political police were renowned for their power and their brutality.

The young policeman sat down and folded his hands, resting them on the table. He looked me directly in the eye. The man beside him placed his hands in his lap and looked at the tabletop.

I met the policeman’s stare only for a few seconds before I deferred to him, looking down. The policeman responded by taking the glass of water in one hand and drinking its contents in a few long gulps. He refilled it from the jug, then wiped his lips with his fingers before folding his hands again.

‘What’s your name?’ He spoke in Russian.

I opened my mouth to reply but my tongue was dry.

‘Name?’ He asked a second time without taking his eyes off me.

‘Luka Mikhailovich Sidorov.’

He nodded. ‘Russian.’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Then this should be a civilised conversation. My name is Sergei Artemevich Lermentov and I am the head of the provincial OGPU department.’ I remembered the name: Lermentov. The man who’d been in Uroz – the village Aleksandra came from.

He sat back and crossed his arms, still staring. ‘Can you tell me what you’re doing here, Luka?’

‘Your soldiers brought me here.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

He removed a packet of papirosa cigarettes from his pocket and took one out. He left the packet on the table and crimped the tube of the cigarette before putting it into his mouth. Then he produced a match and scraped it across the surface of the table that had once been an altar and he touched it to the tobacco. He drew in a deep drag and blew it out without leaning away. The smoke came at me in a stream, tinged with the smell of alcohol.

‘Why are you in this shit hole? Ukraine, I mean. Why would any Russian want to be here?’

‘I fought here,’ I said. ‘And when we were demobilised I stayed.’

‘Red Army?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you fought the anarchists, you crushed their resistance and then you stayed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Interesting.’ He dragged on the cigarette again, raising his eyes as if he were mulling over what I’d just told him.

‘And before that?’ Lermentov asked. ‘Before the Red Army?’

‘Before that I fought for the Imperial Army.’

‘A war hero, no doubt.’

‘Just a soldier.’

‘Is that where you got this?’ He reached across and took up my rifle. He drew back the bolt as if to show that it wasn’t loaded, then he pulled it to his shoulder and sighted across the church using the scope.

‘Yes.’

‘Of course, we have better rifles now. Better marksmen.’ The policeman held the rifle out for one of the soldiers to take, then he waved him away with one hand. ‘Get rid of it.’

Lermentov looked down at his hands and used a fingernail to scrape something from beneath his right thumbnail. Perhaps some oil from the rifle.

‘Are you a tsarist?’ he asked.

‘No. I joined the revolutionary army.’

‘But you didn’t stay.’

‘No.’

‘A counter-revolutionary, then.’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure? I can find out. It’s easy enough to make you admit to it.’

‘I think you can make me admit to almost anything.’

He nodded. ‘And now? Where do you live? What village?’

‘No village,’ I said. ‘I live by the hills. I grow a few potatoes, I hunt—’

‘With your illegal guns.’

I bowed my head. ‘I’m a soldier.’

‘I understand,’ he said, reaching down and unbuttoning the holster at his side. He drew out his pistol and put it on the table in front of him. ‘I feel naked without my weapon. Like you, I’m a soldier.’

‘Please’ I said. ‘I’ m looking for my daughter.’

‘We’ll get to that. What village are you from?’

‘I already told you, I live not far from here, in the hills.’

‘Hm.’ He took the pistol and sat back again, turning it over in his hand. The cigarette in the corner of his mouth burned with grey smoke that filled the space above us. He lifted a hand to take it between two fingers. ‘Something about you isn’t right.’

I didn’t reply.

‘Do you know why I’m here?’

‘No.’

‘They brought me from my nice life in Moscow to this shit hole because these peasants won’t do as they’re told. Did you know that the people in this village murdered the party activist who came here? They burned him alive just a few weeks ago.’ He shook his head. ‘And because these peasants want to keep everything for themselves, because they don’t want to be a part of the great plan, people like me – good communists, loyal to their leader – have to come down here and make sure they do what they’re told. And it makes me angry. It makes me…’ Again he shook his head, lips pursed tight. He dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it with his boot heel before leaning forward again and staring right at me. ‘This morning two enemies of the state were sent from Uroz. Agitators. They were – they are – withholding vital information for the furtherance of the collective, so they were to walk here for interrogation, but they didn’t arrive. Do you know anything about that?’

‘No.’

‘I think you’re lying.’

‘No.’

His hand shot out, still holding the pistol, and struck me across the left side of the face. The violence of the blow twisted my neck, knocked me sideways from the chair. It had come with such speed and such ferocity that I had hardly even registered the movement before I found myself on the stone floor of the church, lying on my side, staring under the table at the policeman’s boots.

The floor was cold against my cheek, and I put my palms flat on the stone to push myself up, shaking my head, seeing brightness in my eyes.

‘Help him up,’ the policeman said with a hint of boredom, and there were hands on my clothes, dragging me up and pushing me back into the chair.

I rubbed the side of my face and raised my eyes to look at the man who had struck me. He was staring right back at me, leaning forward, his pistol on the table, one hand placed over it. Beside him, the bearded one refused to meet my eyes.

Lermentov continued to look at me for a while before he smiled. ‘I know. You hate me now and you’d like to kill me.’

‘No.’

‘Liar.’ He struck out again, but this time I saw him move and I leaned back, the blow missing me by the breadth of a blade of grass. The muzzle of the pistol hissed past the end of my nose, almost brushing it, and the policeman’s hand swung into nothing but air. I saw the strength he had used, because the man unbalanced himself, lurching sideways in his chair.

When he had composed himself, he spoke to the soldier behind me. ‘Hold him.’

And then hands were on me again and I was held tight.

The policeman stood and came to me, pulling the table away, making his bearded companion shift quickly.

‘Fast,’ the younger man said, raising the pistol and pressing it against my eye, pushing hard enough for light to explode in my vision. ‘But not fast enough.’ He removed the pistol, slipped it back into the holster before taking up the crucifix from the table. He smiled at me again and swung the crucifix against the side of my head, darkening my world.

When I opened my eyes, I was on the floor once more. Hands were on me, dragging me, but I was a deadweight. My face was numb and my feet were numb and everything refused to work. For a moment I wanted to be left alone on the cold stone. I wanted to curl into a ball and close my eyes and not wake up. But then I thought of all the things that were waiting for me and I forced my mind to work; forced my body to work.

I willed resolve into my muscles and I climbed back to the chair, seeing that the table had been straightened and the two men were sitting opposite me once more. I wiped a hand across my face and looked at the blood smeared on my fingers.

‘I think now we understand each other,’ the man said. ‘Am I right?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m in charge here and you will accept my authority.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you will stop lying to me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ He smiled. ‘Now let’s talk about my missing agitators. Where are they?’

‘I don’t know.’

He reached out and slapped me across the cheek, bloodying his hand. ‘Where are they?’

‘I don’t know.’

He slapped me again. ‘You killed them.’

‘No.’

He struck me again, turning my head, opening the cut on my cheek, spraying blood onto the table.

‘Admit to it.’

‘No.’

He hit me once more and the bearded man opposite flinched, looking away, pushing back his chair to avoid the blood.

The policeman turned to look at him with distaste. ‘If this is too much for you, Anatoly Ivanovich, then maybe you should leave.’

Anatoly Ivanovich swallowed and nodded. ‘There are things I should do. I—’

‘Just go.’

The peasant nodded and stood, scraping his chair on the stone as he pushed it back. He glanced at Lermentov before turning and walking away. He had almost reached the door when the OGPU man called out to him, his eyes still on mine.

Anatoly Ivanovich stopped and waited for Lermentov to leave the table and go to him. They spoke for a moment in the darkness at the far end of the church and then the bearded man left and the policeman returned to the table.

‘So, you were just saying that you killed my agitators.’

‘No.’

Lermentov rolled his eyes and sighed. ‘Am I going to have to keep hitting you, Luka? You’re a soldier; you know how this works. It’s my job. It’s what I was sent here to do, whether I like it or not, and I’ll do it properly. So I’ll keep hitting you and then I’ll put you back in that room to bleed. And before you can get any sleep, I’ll bring you back out here and I’ll hit you again. And it will go on and on. And when I finally get bored, I’ll have you shot.’

I stared at him.

‘Unless I get a confession.’

I looked away.

‘Where did you leave their bodies? It doesn’t matter that you killed them, they were enemies of the state, but I want to know where the bodies are.’

‘I didn’t—’

Lermentov picked up the crucifix and poked it at the hollow of my throat, the same place where Dariya had stabbed the child thief. I coughed loudly, doubling over.

‘All right,’ I said, straightening up, rubbing my neck. ‘All right. I saw tracks in the forest, but I didn’t see anybody. I was following other tracks, trying to find my daughter.’

‘Why didn’t you say so before?’

‘All I want is to find my daughter.’

‘Maybe we should talk about her for a moment. Your daughter. What did you say her name was?’

‘Dariya.’

‘And you lost her in the woods, is that right?’

‘Yes. She came here. To this village.’

‘And she was well?’

‘What?’

‘She was well when you last saw her?’

‘Yes.’

Behind Lermentov the church door opened and he turned to look.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘How convenient. We speak about her and she arrives. As if by magic.’ He smiled a wide grin, but his eyes held something other than laughter, something other than the bored look of an official performing yet another interrogation. Now there was dark hatred in his eyes. ‘Bring her in, Anatoly.’ I noticed he had dropped the formal usage of his comrade’s name.

Anatoly came forward with Dariya at his side.

She looked pale and small, but she was alive. And she was, more or less, unharmed from what I could see. My deductions from the scene at the hut and my fellow prisoner Dimitri’s account had been accurate – the scalp that the child thief had left for us had not belonged to Dariya – and seeing her standing there was overwhelming both because I was relieved and pleased but also because I had wished to find her under different circumstances. I’d hoped to rescue her and take her home, but that outcome now looked unlikely. My chest heaved at seeing her, and I had to control my emotions. I had been searching only for two days but it felt as if I had been on Dariya’s trail for weeks. All the time I had been looking for her I had closed everything away, locked my feelings behind the strong door I kept in my mind and in my heart. I had kept those feelings so well contained that I hadn’t known how afraid I was for her, but now that door threatened to burst open. I took a deep breath and hardened myself. Now was not the time for weakness.

Dariya’s eyes were ringed red and her hair was tangled about her small face. Her sheepskin coat hung open, and beneath it she wore the same dress she had been wearing when I last saw her, but now it was dirty and torn in more than one place. There were rusty patches where the child thief’s blood had dried on the material, and when the snow fell away from her woollen boots, I could see dark stains there too. She stared ahead of her as if she saw nothing. Like a blind child being led into the room.

Anatoly did not hold her hand; instead he had one hand on the top of her head as if to make her move in the right direction, but that was all. He brought her close to the table and I started to stand, but Lermentov prodded me with the crucifix once more and I stayed where I was.

‘So this is your daughter?’

‘Yes. Let me go to her.’

Lermentov turned to Dariya standing at his side. She looked so small and empty, and it filled me with despair. ‘Is this your father?’

Dariya offered no response. Nothing. She didn’t move her lips. She only blinked, but it was not in response to his question.

The policeman shook his head. ‘She doesn’t recognise you.’

‘What have you done to her?’

‘What have we done to her? We don’t harm people, we protect them. She was like this when she arrived. Well. Not quite like this. She had blood on her hands and face, but one of the women has washed it away. At first I thought maybe it was her blood, but she seemed unharmed.’

‘Thank God.’

‘There is no God.’

‘Of course. I just meant… I’m glad she’s unharmed.’

‘She isn’t. I thought she was, but when we looked further…’ He leaned to one side and lifted the hem of Dariya’s dress.

She remained still as he drew it up her leg so I could see a rough bandage wrapped around her right thigh. Lermentov took one end of it between his fingers and pulled it away to reveal the wound where a piece of flesh had been cut away from her leg. It was an area about the size of a cigarette packet, dry and well tended. It looked as if it had been treated as soon as it had been done. Cauterised, perhaps, with something hot, but done so perfectly and so completely that in only a few places did it look raw, and there was almost no weeping of blood or fluid from the wound.

I turned away, remembering the screams I’d heard in the night. I didn’t know if the child thief had mutilated Dariya like this for his amusement, his hunger or just to frighten his pursuers with her terrible screams. I was sorry for her in ways I could barely understand.

When the policeman spoke again, his words were slow and considered, and with those words came an awful understanding.

‘Why did you do this to her?’ he asked.

I turned to meet his stare. Thoughts and feelings confused themselves into a terrible jumble as I realised what Lermentov was saying. ‘What? No. I…’ But I didn’t know what to say. Nothing would convince the policeman.

‘She’s not your daughter, is she?’ Lermentov almost curled his lip. The interrogation about the missing prisoners was just a lead into this. Before it had been routine, mundane, but something in Lermentov’s expression and intonation felt personal. As if Dariya’s condition meant something to him.

I looked at the man across the table and wondered what I could tell him. I had lied about Dariya being my daughter because I thought it would make them more sympathetic, make them hand her over. But now they thought I’d done something to harm her. The only people who could confirm who I was were the people from Vyriv, but I couldn’t risk exposing them. Perhaps it was time to change my story. Give them more of the truth. Let them think they had beaten it out of me.

‘She wasn’t lost.’ I hung my head. ‘She was taken from me. That’s why I had my rifle. I was hunting for the man who took her.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘Would you have believed me?’

‘No.’ Lermentov carefully reset the bandage and dropped the hem of Dariya’s dress, letting the cloth fall over the wound. ‘And I don’t believe you now, either. You’re lying.’

‘No.’

‘You’re lying to me again. This girl isn’t your daughter any more than she’s mine. You did this to her. You hurt her like this. You’re an animal.’

‘No. Please. She is my daughter.’ I looked at Dariya, my eyes filling with tears, my nose streaming. ‘Tell him, Dariya. Tell him who I am.’

But Dariya just stood and stared ahead of her as if none of us was even there. The man standing beside her, with the farmer’s clothes and the hands of a man who worked the fields, looked away at the far wall of the church.

The policeman pulled my satchel towards him, dragging it across the surface of the table. I had forgotten about it. I had barely even looked at it since my interrogation had begun, but now I stared at it as Lermentov opened the fastening and put his hand inside.

A couple of cartridges rolled out when he removed the aluminium water bottle, and he took out the bottle I had brought from the cabin where Dariya had killed the child thief.

‘This yours?’ Lermentov asked, placing the bottle upright on the table.

‘Yes.’

He considered the clear, unlabelled bottle for a moment, then looked across at one of the soldiers. ‘Open it.’

The soldier came round to Lermentov’s side of the table and took the bottle, biting on the cork and pulling hard. After a few seconds the cork eased from the bottle with a quiet pop and the soldier put it on the table, pushing it towards the policeman, who nodded once. The soldier returned to his post behind me.

The OGPU man sniffed at the open bottle and looked at me. ‘Vodka?’

‘Horilka.’

He nodded and raised the bottle, saying, ‘Your health.’ He took a sip, tasting, before smiling and taking a deeper drink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. ‘It’s good.’ He took another drink and put the bottle aside.

‘She is not your daughter, is she?’

‘She is.’ I turned to Dariya once again. ‘Please. Tell him. Tell him who I am.’ I looked at the OGPU man again. ‘I swear it. She is my—’

‘Then explain this.’

Lermentov reached into my satchel once more and removed the waxed paper parcel I had taken from the shepherd’s hut. He put it on the table, pushing the satchel away.

And I knew. Before Lermentov unwrapped it, I knew what it would contain. Even in death the child thief had won his game. From his grave he had found a way of killing me.

The OGPU officer took the edges of the paper in his fingers and pulled them apart, opening them out and smoothing them against the surface of the table. Then he turned the open package around and pushed it a little closer so I could see the piece of meat it contained.

When I had first taken it from the cabin, I had expected salo. Salted pork fat that I had intended to share with my sons to stave off the hunger. But this was not pork fat. This flesh was from a different animal altogether.

My world stopped. Nothing was real any more.

Dariya was not my daughter, but I had said it so many times, tried hard to believe my own story, that now I felt as if I truly were her father. After all, she had no other father to protect her, for her own lay dead beneath the snow. Somehow she had managed to do what I – and who knew how many men before me – had failed to do. She had killed the child thief. She had pierced his throat with steel and taken his life, and now she had stumbled from one nightmare into another and her child’s mind was unable to cope with it. She had receded into her own head and I found myself envying her. Right now I wanted to do the same thing, but my mind was stronger and I was conditioned to withstand atrocity. I was hardened to the things around me, just like all those who had grown to maturity in those godless times. From the Great War to the revolution and the civil war and the following hardships, we were all conditioned to a life of struggle. But this child before me, not even nine years old, she knew none of those things. She had lived apart from those things, but now they had entered her life, and they had turned her inwards and broken her.

I wanted to reach out to her. I wanted to hold her. This poor girl with no one to help her. No one to protect her.

I stood and took a step towards her, wanting to pull her close and let her bury her face in the folds of my shirt. I wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone, to whisper in her ear and tell her I would keep her safe. And for a moment she was Lara, standing there on the cold stones, looking at me, asking me to bring back her friend.

‘I promised,’ I said. ‘I promised.’

‘You child-hating bastard.’ Lermentov spat his words into the cold church and the blow from the crucifix was like none that had come before it. The old wood cracked into the side of my head hard enough to knock me off my feet. I fell against the chair, forcing it away from me, my face smashing against the seat before I was on the floor.

From my prone position I looked up at the policeman standing over me, the crucifix in his hands. The bearded man from the village was looking at me now, his lips pursed, a slight shake in his head. Beside him Dariya continued to stare ahead.

Then I closed my eyes.