The Child Thief

26

Without making eye contact they dragged me back into the cell, throwing my trousers and shirt behind me. Lermentov wasn’t anywhere in sight, nor did I see them take Kostya’s body away.

I could barely move to get my clothes, let alone put them on, but the others knew what to do. They had been in there long enough to run through the motions. They helped me dress, and they rubbed my skin with their grubby hands, trying to encourage the circulation of my blood. They pressed about me, like a nightmare in the dark, their filthy bodies washing around me like the undead stinking of the grave, but I was grateful for their care and their kindness. They were keeping me alive. Evgeni, Yuri, Dimitri. These good men were doing what they could to save my life, just as they had kept each other alive and sane while incarcerated, not knowing what their fate might be. It was a touching and human gesture, given without thought.

After the freezing cold of the bell tower the room felt like a furnace, and I knew I’d been lucky when I felt life returning to my body and the feeling returning to my fingers and toes. And when I was able to move, I pushed up against the wall and felt two of the others press on either side of me, lending me the only thing they had left. Their warmth.

Later, when the soldiers threw in a few pieces of bread and a tin bowl with a few mouthfuls of water, Evgeni collected it and tore the bread, passing a piece to each man, saying in a quiet voice that he’d save a piece, put it in the corner of the room in case any of us needed it later. It was incredible how those men had managed to remain sane in the obscurity of that room, feeling their way in the dark, and still have the capacity to make provision for later. All instinct was to devour whatever was put through the door, not to save it. And how easy it would be for one man to creep over in the darkness and steal the last piece of bread.

I ate the scraps like a rat, crouched against the wall, gnawing at it to make it last. Tasting every tiny bite, I kept the bread in my mouth until my saliva melted it to a paste, and even then I held it behind my lips until it dissolved to nothing. I ran my tongue about my teeth, savouring every last crumb. And when we had eaten, we passed the bowl around, taking tiny sips until there was almost no water left and Evgeni poured it into the cup he’d handed to me last night.

‘I saw Kostya,’ I said.

‘You spoke to him?’ Evgeni asked after some time.

‘Yes.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He was happy,’ I told him. ‘He said it was easy. That everything would be easier.’

‘How did he look?’

‘Cold and tired.’

‘Beaten?’

‘I didn’t notice anything.’

‘Good. That’s good. Thank you for being with him.’

I drew my knees close and wrapped my shaking arms around them, burying my face and staring at the blackness, trying not to think about what would happen now, about Kostya lying cold and dead in the bell tower. I thought instead about Dariya, and hoped someone was looking after her.

And with those thoughts I tried to keep awake. I didn’t want to talk to the other men right now, and they didn’t attempt to speak to me, but I was afraid to sleep. I didn’t even want to close my eyes for fear that I might not care what happened to me. Like Kostya, I might decide that to die would be easier than to keep fighting and fulfil my promise to Lara. But however hard I tried, my mind kept going back to the bell tower and to Kostya’s freezing body. Something about it made me think of what I had found in the hut. The child thief stiffened by the cold. And somewhere at the back of my mind there was a faint notion that something was wrong.

But whatever it was, it was beyond my grasp, lost when exhaustion finally claimed me into an easier world.

The next time the soldiers came to the room, they took Dimitri. He protested, shouting and struggling, but they held him tight and forced him to do as they demanded.

The rest of us remained quiet in our prison, listening to the voices behind the heavy wooden door but making out none of the words other than an occasional shout from Dimitri. The interview was brief, followed by footsteps and a short moment of stillness before they came back for Evgeni, who complied without any fight. His resistance was all gone.

Again the voices. The footsteps. The respite.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Yuri.

‘I don’t know, but they’re not being beaten. It’s something else.’ I stood and shuffled to the door, putting my eye to the keyhole. In the main hall of the church three men were sitting behind the table where I had been beaten. Lermentov was in the middle, in full uniform, the tunic clean as if new. Anatoly Ivanovich was on his right, holding his cap in his hands, his demeanour apologetic. To Lermentov’s left, another man. Like Anatoly, this third man was in civilian clothes, but his were in better condition and he sat upright and officious.

‘It’s a troika,’ I said. ‘We’re being tried.’

‘Tried? For what?’

‘Our crimes, Yuri. It looks like we’re leaving. Perhaps now there’ll be a chance.’

‘A chance for what?’

‘To get away, of course.’ I was thinking that trapped inside this room I was powerless, but outside, without the walls to contain me, there might be a moment, just a moment, for me to use to my advantage.

‘Have you seen how many soldiers are in this village?’ Yuri said.

‘It doesn’t matter. If there’s the slightest chance—’

‘You’re no good to that little girl if you’re dead.’

‘And I’m no good to her in here, either.’ I kept an eye to the keyhole, watching the men take Evgeni from the church. ‘You know, you never said why they put you in here, Yuri.’

‘Didn’t I?’

But already the soldiers were approaching the door, and I took my eye from the keyhole, moving back to where I had been sitting. And when they took Yuri, bringing light into the room, he turned to look me in the eye. ‘I’ll tell you another time,’ he said. And then I was left alone in the room.

I went back to the keyhole, seeing Yuri sitting with his back to me, a soldier on either side. His shoulders were slumped and his head hanging so his chin was almost on his chest. He would be feeling some relief at his release from the room, but at the same time it may have become a refuge for him. Inside the room he was safe; it was only when removed from it that he was threatened. But at least he was outside, and at least something was happening. Sometimes waiting is the worst thing.

It was only a few moments before the soldiers pulled Yuri from the seat and he began walking towards the main door of the church. Still hanging his head, his feet shuffling, he waited for them to open it and usher him out into the daylight. They all disappeared and the door closed, only to reopen a few moments later.

They would come for me next.

I went to the corner of the room, feeling for the piece of bread and the cup of water the men had saved. I swallowed the dry bread and drank the last of the water, putting the empty metal cup on the floor and stepping on it with as much force as I could muster in my bare feet. I crushed the cup flat and picked it up, feeling the sharp point where the edges had come together. I slipped it into my trouser pocket and sat with my back to the wall, waiting for them to come.

The blood was gone from the tabletop. The crutifix was pushed to one side. There was no bottle of borilka, no satchel, no parcel of flesh.

Instead there was a book, the left page filled with handwritten names and information. The page on the right was half full.

Sergei Artemevich Lermentov held a pen in his hand. He barely looked up as the guards ushered me to the chair.

‘How long have I been here?’ I asked.

‘Name?’

I waited for a moment, watching the other men sitting either side of the policeman. Anatoly Ivanovich, the farm labourer turned party faithful, sat on Lermentov’s right-hand side. On his left sat another man, short and stocky, bearded. He was wearing a cloth cap and a woollen jacket. He would be another member of the local council. I studied them, wondering what kind of men they were. Hungry for power maybe, or just frightened like everybody else was.

‘Please. How long have I been here?’

‘Name?’ Lermentov repeated.

I rubbed my face. ‘Luka Mikhailovich Sidorov. But you know that. How long have I been here?’

Lermentov wrote in his book and looked up. ‘You are accused of crimes against the people.’

‘What crimes?’

‘Assaulting an OGPU officer—’

‘I didn’t touch you.’

‘—and owning a rifle.’ Lermentov leaned forward and spoke quietly, voicing the charge that was of no consequence to the regime: ‘And assaulting a child.’

‘No.’ I felt immense frustration at this charge. I owned a rifle, that much was true, and although I hadn’t laid a hand on Lermentov, I didn’t care about that lie because all three of these men knew I was not an enemy of the people. They knew I was not a counter-revolutionary but they really did think I had harmed Dariya, and the injustice of that accusation swelled my anger at the world immeasurably. The stranger who had come to Vyriv, pulling his own dead children on a sled, had been accused of the same thing by Dimitri. The child thief had managed to orchestrate that man’s guilt just as he had orchestrated mine. Whether it had been intentional or not, he had consigned us to similar fates: to be thought of as men who butchered children. And that fate was almost too much for me to bear.

In Vyriv they had hanged such a man from the tree in the centre of their village. I would be sentenced to a slower, harder death. Perhaps cutting forests in the frozen wastes of Siberia with a few grams of bread each day until either my mind or body gave up the will to continue. But either fate carried the same ultimate penalty, and even though the child thief was long gone, a frozen corpse in a deserted cabin, his game was won.

‘Where is she?’ I asked. ‘Is she safe?’

Lermentov looked to Anatoly Ivanovich. ‘Guilty?’

‘Guilty,’ Anatoly agreed.

‘Guilty,’ said the other man.

Lermentov wrote in his book, his penmanship slow and deliberate. The nib scratched on the paper as he wrote, and when he was finished he put down his pen and folded his hands. ‘You will go for correctional labour,’ he said. ‘Fifteen years.’

‘You always need more workers,’ I said.

‘Always.’