Red Winter

14

My concerns about being followed had worried Lev, so we agreed to sleep in shifts. He insisted on taking the first watch, saying I was more in need of the sleep, and I accepted his offer as another kindness. So with the vodka and tobacco gone, and the state of our country lamented, I went to my bed while Lev blew out the lamp and sat at the table with his shotgun by his side.

It was as dark as any night could be inside the smoky izba, and I settled on the straw in one of the berths and held my rifle close as if it were my lover. Beside my head, within easy reach, my revolver.

I believed Lev was a good man, but too many people hid their true colour, so I tried to remain wary and stay awake as long as I could. The vodka had taken its effect on me, though, as had the days of travel and little sleep, and my eyes closed with almost no resistance. And when the dog climbed up onto my bunk and curled himself against my legs, I did nothing to dissuade him.

There was a simple comfort in being with other people, sharing a meal, lying in a bed beneath a roof in the warmth, and so sleep threw herself around me.

The wind was shrill as it rushed across the steppe, slipping over the grass and humming through the furrows. It swirled about the izba, lifting the roof and rattling the doors and windows as if all the devils and spirits had come to batter this small refuge. The trees in the copse groaned and creaked, the cantankerous crows complaining from time to time, and in that chaos of the land’s breath, I dreamed of nothing and everything.

Images of the gaunt rider, immense on the back of his horse, raising his sword to cut me into a thousand pieces. I saw the men in the forest, crucified, hanged, and I turned away in horror when their faces became those of my sons and their eyes were empty sockets burned in the shape of a five-pointed star.

In a moment of waking, I swore I heard wolves howling in the forest and I opened my eyes to stare at the blackness, not even the faintest hint of light, wondering where I was before I remembered Lev and Anna.

‘Lev?’ I spoke into the darkness.

‘I’m here.’

‘Isn’t it my turn to—’

‘It’s not time,’ he said. ‘Sleep, Kolya. I’ll wake you.’

‘But surely—’

‘Go to sleep,’ he repeated.

The dog whined his alertness to the sounds outside, but I patted him and he settled, pressing against me, sharing his warmth while we listened to the wolf song, far away, mingling with the whistle of the wind and the spatter of sleet against the thatched roof. Sleep came quickly once more, and when I woke again, there was a grey light around the blankets covering the window, and Anna was shaking me, calling my name.

‘Kolya,’ she was saying. ‘You have to get up.’

There was an urgency in her voice and I was moving right away, annoyed for having slept so long.

There was no time for a slow awakening, no time for the hangover already thumping at the back of my head. Hands on my revolver, I swung my legs to the floor.

In an instant I was alert. Prepared. Ready to fight.

Anna took a step back and put up her hands in fear. ‘Papa told me.’

‘What?’

‘Papa said to get you.’ She took another step back and turned her body away from me as if she was expecting to be hurt.

I looked down at the revolver in my hands, the muzzle pointed at her, and it took a second for the implication of that to sink in.

‘No,’ I said, moving it. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

‘Papa said to get you,’ she repeated. ‘He saw someone.’

‘Saw someone?’ I said, hurrying to the window and snatching away the blanket. ‘Who? Where?’

‘Across the field. Where you came from.’

The day had barely begun; there was less than an hour’s daylight in the sky, so everything had a grey hue to it. To make matters worse, the glass was uneven and distorted everything outside. In some places, the fields were magnified, in others almost impossible to see due to the grime that had collected on the window.

‘I don’t see anybody.’

‘Papa said—’

‘Where is he?’

‘With the horses.’

‘Get my coat,’ I said, and when I had pulled on my boots, I took it from her, leaving it unbuttoned. I put my rifle over my shoulder and hurried about, gathering my belongings, ignoring the dog that now followed at my heels. I stripped the remaining blankets away from the windows and put them in Anna’s arms, saying, ‘Hold these,’ before taking my satchel and the saddlebags I had brought in. ‘Wait here.’

I went out first, startling a pair of magpies that was sitting on the fence, the dog following me out into the yard. I ignored the flurry of black and white, and scanned the horizon beyond the field but saw no one.

I beckoned Anna out, telling her to hurry. ‘The barn,’ I said. ‘Quick.’

She ran ahead of me, small and afraid, clutching my blankets, and I spent a few more seconds looking into the distance, then followed, skidding on the ice that had formed during the night.

In the barn, Lev had already saddled Kashtan and prepared her for me to leave.

‘What did you see?’ I asked as I ran in.

Lev took the blankets from Anna and spread them into my tarpaulin. ‘A man on the horizon,’ he said. ‘The same direction you came from.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes.’ He folded and rolled the blankets as I secured my saddlebags.

‘On horseback?’

Lev lifted the roll onto Kashtan. ‘I came to check on the horses and there he was.’

‘How far?’

‘As far as he could be. Any further and I wouldn’t have seen him.’

‘And you’re sure it was just one rider?’

‘That’s all I saw, but there could be more.’

‘Why didn’t you wake me last night?’ I asked. ‘We were going to share the watch.’

‘You needed the sleep more than I did.’

I ran a hand across my face, feeling the growth of my beard. ‘You should come with me.’

Lev shook his head. ‘Whoever it was, they could have seen me. If we’re not here, they’ll come after us, think we’ve got something to run from.’

‘Maybe you have,’ I said. Running was no life for a child, but if the rider on the horizon was hunting me, then he could be a Chekist, and who knew what might be in store for Lev and Anna? ‘You should come with me.’

‘We’re just a poor farmer and his daughter,’ Lev said. ‘They’ll leave us alone. If it’s you they want…’ He shrugged.

I tried to convince myself that Lev was right. Whoever he had seen, they were coming after me.

‘Maybe they won’t even stop,’ I said, thinking I would be much faster without them. If I took them with me, it might cost Marianna and the boys their lives. ‘They won’t want to waste time, lose my trail.’

‘Exactly,’ Lev replied. ‘We’ll tell them you gave us no choice. That you threatened Anna.’

I nodded, allowing him to persuade me it was the right thing to do, knowing it would be too dangerous for them to come with me. Where I was going, I foresaw only blood and death.

‘I hope you have found the peace you’re looking for,’ I said to Lev, holding out my hand. It was what he wanted – for me to go and for him and his daughter to be left in peace. It was what a part of me wanted too – to be free from any bonds or responsibilities, to leave them right now and continue my search unhindered by anyone else.

But my eyes met with Anna’s and something about it didn’t feel right.

‘And I hope you do too,’ Lev replied, ignoring the hand and putting his arms around me. ‘Perhaps we’ll meet again, Kolya,’ he said into the fur of my hat as he embraced me. ‘When all of this is over.’

With the sense that I was abandoning this man and his child, I returned the embrace, enjoying the friendship but hating the other, darker feelings that plagued me.

‘When they come, leave the shotgun above the pich,’ I said, as I put my foot in the stirrup. ‘Keep the dog calm and tell them I forced you to…’ Kashtan pressed herself towards me, eager to be out ‘…to give me a bed for the night. I ate your food, drank your vodka and threatened to kill you. You’re lucky to be alive.’ I pushed up and swung my leg across, looking down at the teacher and his daughter. ‘Give them whatever they want.’

‘Come,’ Lev said, jogging to the back of the barn. ‘This way they won’t see you leave.’ He drew back the bolt on the rear door and pushed it outwards before beckoning me with both hands.

‘Lev Andreyevich Filatov,’ he said, as I passed him. ‘That’s my name. Will you remember it?’

‘Yes.’

Kashtan stepped out, the dog following as if he intended to go wherever I went. Anna ran alongside, coming out into the cold air and crossing to the fence at the far side of the rear yard. When she opened the back gate, I stopped to look down at her.

‘I hope you find Koschei,’ she said.

‘I will. And… look after each other. Be safe.’

‘What’s your name?’ Lev asked, coming to put his arm around his daughter’s shoulder. ‘Who are you really?’

‘It’s better you don’t know,’ I told him. ‘If you did, you’d wish you hadn’t asked.’