Red Winter

28

It was early evening and we’d seen nobody for hours when we reached a farm.

Already the sun had begun to set, a hazy orange disc behind the grey clouds, and with its setting so the cold had bitten harder and harder.

‘It look like snow?’ Tanya directed her question at Lyudmila, who stared up at the sky and shook her head.

Lyudmila didn’t talk much, but she watched me all the time. She guarded Tanya with jealousy, and I saw the way she grew tense whenever I came close to her. She hated everything about me and I wondered what it was that burned so deeply in her; what tragedy or otherwise had brought her together with Tanya.

Her reaction to Anna was different, though. Lyudmila barely spoke to her; seemed to avoid being close to her, as if she didn’t like children or didn’t know how to deal with them. Or perhaps she thought it might soften her. I had seen her steal glances at Anna, though, and I knew her coldness didn’t run all the way down to her core.

‘It’ll snow soon enough,’ I said. ‘Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, but it’s coming.’

We had come through a forested area, thick and dark, and spied the farm from the trees. Taking up position to watch it for some time, we thought it would be good to spend the night here. It was a simple place with two wooden houses standing side by side. The nearest was larger than the one beside it, and while they were both basic constructions with pitched, thatched roofs, the farthest was in bad repair. It looked older and had suffered the onslaught of the weather for many years so that the windows were cracked, the walls were patched with moss, and there were places where the thatch had come away from the roof.

It was almost as I pictured One-Eyed Likho’s house to be when Marianna told her skazkas to the boys. If I hadn’t known better, I might have believed the witch was real and waiting in the house to catch us off guard so she could cut my throat and put me in her oven.

In front of the second house, in the far corner of a yard surrounded by a ramshackle fence, stood an outbuilding, which also had a thatched roof. The yard was empty but for a water trough at one end and a cart, which lay idle in the centre.

Behind the farm was nothing but the forest we used for cover. It was mottled with shadow there now, and the trunks leaned in towards the buildings, the crooked and barren branches extending as if reaching out to smother it and take the farm for its own.

Beyond the yard, though, the fields stretched a long way. On the far side of them, there was a hedgerow and evenly spaced trees, beyond which another farm stood. Only the roofs of the far buildings were visible.

There had been no movement for at least half an hour. No sign at all that the near farm was inhabited. No smoke from the chimney and no light from the windows. The evening closed in on us and the air grew colder and we shivered in our heavy winter coats.

When the darkness smothered us, and the time of forest demons was on us, I felt a chill run through me.

I put my arm around Anna’s shoulder and held her close.

Tuzik stood in front of us, Kashtan behind, the four of us inseparable now.

‘We should go down there,’ I said into the eerie quiet. ‘Either that or go back into the forest and find somewhere good to build a fire. It’s getting late and I don’t want to freeze to death out here.’ My breath was white and thick around me.

‘Maybe we should keep going,’ Tanya said.

‘I want to go on as much as you do –’ I didn’t take my eyes off the farm ‘– but there’s too much cloud to travel at night. And the horses need rest. We all do.’

I felt her turn to me, so I met her gaze. Jagged teeth of hair jutted from the fringe of her hat. Her eyes had a distant look.

‘We’ll find him,’ I said. ‘Together. But we need to rest.’ Stopping at Lev’s place had given my pursuers time to catch up, and I was reluctant to make the same mistake, but we were exhausted and needed to rest. My hunters would need to do the same thing.

She looked away, clenching her jaw and pursing her lips tight.

‘It pains me to say this, Tanya, but he’s right. I say we go down there.’ Lyudmila hadn’t spoken for a while and it was a surprise to hear her agree with me. ‘There’s no one there.’

‘And if there is?’ Tanya asked. ‘What do we do then?’

‘If there were soldiers down there, we’d have seen them,’ I said. ‘There’d be horses, equipment… and with three of us, armed, we should be able to deal with any overprotective farmers.’

‘And what about the other farm?’ Tanya asked, looking out at the rooftops beyond the hedgerow. ‘There might be people there.’

‘We’ve seen nothing so far. And if we can’t see them, they won’t see us.’

So we led the horses out of the trees and headed towards the back of the farm, keeping out of view as much as possible.

When we reached the rear of the two houses, Tuzik padded ahead, nose to the ground, and we followed him round to the front.

‘There’s no one here,’ I said, as we came closer and let the horses through the gate.

As we entered the yard, though, the door to the first building opened, making me snap my head round, my hand reaching for my pocket. I half expected One-Eyed Likho to appear from the house like a crazed old hag, but instead it was an old man who stepped out into the cold.

He was as surprised to see us as we were to see him and we all stopped dead in our tracks.

Tuzik lowered his head and splayed his front legs in one sudden movement, his whole body tense. The fur on his neck rose, his ears went back, and he bared his teeth in warning. The growl that escaped him was feral.

‘He’s unarmed,’ Tanya whispered. ‘Don’t do anything.’

‘What do you think I’m going to do?’ I asked, moving in front of Anna. ‘Attack an old man?’

Tanya gave me a look to suggest that was exactly what she expected me to do. ‘You or your dog,’ she said under her breath. ‘Keep the damn thing under control.’ Then she turned and raised a hand. ‘Good evening,’ she said.

The old man nodded once with uncertainty and glanced into the house behind him with a worried expression before casting his eyes over us once more.

‘Let me talk to him,’ Tanya said, handing me the reins of her horse. ‘And hold on to that dog.’

I called Tuzik, surprised when he obeyed and came to my side. Anna held on to him as Tanya strode over to the old man and took off her hat, holding it in the fist of her right hand. As she did so, the old man stood a little straighter and took a deep breath.

‘What do you want?’ He closed the door behind him and took a pace forward to stop Tanya from climbing onto the first step.

‘We thought there was no one here.’ She hesitated with one foot raised.

‘And now you can see there is.’ His voice was deep and rattled with phlegm as if he needed to cough.

‘We’re passing by on our way north. Looking for shelter for the night.’ She withdrew her foot.

‘And you want to get it here?’ He looked down at her, then squinted and peered through the semi-darkness at me and Lyudmila standing with the horses.

‘If that’s agreeable with you,’ Tanya said.

The man’s craggy face broke into a smile that displayed blackened teeth. He put back his head and laughed, emitting a croaky, rasping sound more like a death rattle than a laugh.

Tanya took another step back and glanced across at me.

I made an encouraging gesture with my hands, prompting her to speak again, but before she could say anything, the old man stopped laughing as suddenly as he had started and stared down at her with watery eyes.

‘Three of you, armed, deserters most likely, with a… What is that? A wolf?’

‘A dog,’ Tanya said.

‘A bad-tempered dog, then, and you’re asking if it’s agreeable with me?’ He took a step forward so he was looking right down at Tanya. ‘Of course it’s not agreeable with me, but since when did anyone care about that?’

‘Sir,’ I said, coming forward, ‘we have food we can share in return for shelter and warmth. We mean you no harm. We’re not deserters.’

‘Then why are you armed?’

‘We’re searching for someone.’

‘Searching for someone?’ The old man scratched the back of his head and furrowed his brow as he looked around me. ‘That doesn’t mean anything. Who are you? What…’ As soon as he saw Anna standing with the horses, he stopped scratching. ‘You have a child with you.’

‘Yes.’

He dropped his hand to his side and puffed his cheeks as he blew out a long breath. For a moment I thought he was going to welcome us in. I thought perhaps the sight of a child had softened his heart, but then his face hardened and his next words were spoken with venom. ‘There’s nothing for you here. Go away. You should—’

Just then the door to the izba opened once more, making him look back in surprise.

‘Who’s out there?’ said a voice, and an old woman came out onto the step, dressed in black and with a shawl draped around her shoulders. She shuffled in an unsettling way, like Galina had done. Like I imagined a witch would.

‘It’s no one,’ said the old man. ‘Go back inside.’

‘I want to see who it is,’ she said. Her voice was coarse and hard and unsympathetic.

‘It’s no one.’

‘Well, it has to be someone, you old fool. Who is it?’

The old man sighed and shook his head. ‘They say they’re looking for someone.’

‘Who? Who’re they looking for?’

‘Chekists,’ Tanya said.

It was more than I thought she should have given away, but there was something in the old man’s eyes when she said it; some sort of recognition, or perhaps it was just sympathy.

‘Well, bring them in, Sergei, bring them in.’ The old woman’s tone changed, but it still sounded unfriendly. It was as if she were hiding her true nature, like One-Eyed Likho settling the tailor before cutting his throat. ‘You can’t leave them standing in the cold.’

‘Maybe we should let them move on,’ he said. ‘We can’t spare any—’

‘Don’t be such a miser,’ she told him. ‘Bring them in, bring them in.’ She stepped back and beckoned with gnarled hands.

Sergei rolled his eyes and grumbled.

‘We should move on,’ Lyudmila said under her breath, and I knew why she said it. We weren’t welcome here – the old man made that clear enough – and his wife reminded me too much of Galina and the skazka witches. But it was getting colder by the minute and I had to think about Anna. She needed warmth, food and a good night’s sleep.

‘Look,’ I said, taking the piece of salo from my satchel and showing it to him as I unwrapped it. ‘We can share what we have.’

‘They have food?’ the old woman said. ‘Even better. What are you waiting for? Bring them in.’

The old man studied the piece of salo, small as it was, moving his mouth as though he were eating the greasy fat already. He came down the step, making Tanya move out of his way, and he reached out to take my arm and bring the salo closer. He looked it over, then leaned in to smell it.

When he had done that, he released me and fixed his eyes on mine. ‘Red, White, I don’t care who you are. Are you an honest man?’ he asked. ‘That’s what matters.’

‘Yes.’

‘A man of your word?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you give me your word you mean no harm here?’

‘I swear it.’

He thought for a moment before taking a deep breath and holding out his hand, but he didn’t look me in the eye as Lev had done when he offered me his olive branch. His was not a warm greeting, as Lev’s had been, and I felt my friend’s absence with some pain.

I removed my glove and took the old man’s hand in mine, feeling the coarseness of his skin. His fingers were strong, his grip tight, despite his age. And in that moment I felt pity for him. Winter was close, and the war had brought food shortages. The old were vulnerable and exposed. Many would not see the spring.

‘There’s hay in the barn for your horses,’ he said, ‘and the dog stays outside. Bring some logs with you when you come in. We light the oven at night.’

The old man stood by the pich, pointing to the place where he expected us to pile the logs. The izba still held the remnants of warmth from last night’s fire, the pich having kept its heat well. A good oven was always the heart of any home, and a good pichniki was one of the most valuable tradesmen. It took great skill to build a stove with enough passages to channel the smoke and hot air through the bricks to build a good heat. If the old man only lit his oven at night, then the pichniki had done a good job – the bricks still gave off enough heat to make it warmer inside than it was outside. The iron door was open to reveal an oven large enough to keep even Baba Yaga or One-Eyed Likho happy – either witch could accommodate a whole adult in there, if need be.

The pich was well placed in the room, and there was a good space between its top and the ceiling above it. The corner of a blanket hanging down gave the impression that more were bundled on top of it, and I knew it would be a warm place to sleep.

‘You have a good pich,’ I said, piling dry birch logs on the floor beside it. I couldn’t stop myself from leaning to one side to inspect the interior of the oven, as if to reassure myself there weren’t any children roasting in its coals. When I saw it was empty, I told myself to stop being so foolish. I’d listened to so many skazkas they were starting to affect me the way they were supposed to frighten the children.

I turned to see the old man watching me. His black hair was streaked with grey, bushy around his ears but thinning on top, and his face was almost covered by a thick beard. His eyes were hooded with heavy lids beneath unruly eyebrows, and his nose was bent at an odd angle as if it had once been broken. His clothes looked clean and in half-decent repair.

‘The pichniki must have been very skilled,’ I said.

The old man grunted and spat into the open oven, the gob of saliva arcing into last night’s ashes. It was a gesture used to ward off bad luck if a compliment is given.

‘He built it himself,’ the old woman said from the far corner of the room, ‘though he doesn’t like to admit it.’

We gathered more logs from the pile outside and returned to the izba, Tanya and Lyudmila entering first. Tuzik tried to follow Anna and me up the step, but I pushed him away with my leg, trying to be gentle.

‘He would enjoy the pich,’ I said to Anna, ‘but we have to honour the old man’s request.’

‘Why won’t they let him come in?’ she whispered.

‘Maybe they’re scared of dogs.’

‘He’s not as scary as they are. That woman is so ugly.’

‘Sh.’ I put a finger to my lips. ‘She’s just old. Tuzik doesn’t seem bothered anyway,’ I said. ‘Look at him – he doesn’t care.’

‘Because he can see how scary she is. She looks like a witch.’

I couldn’t help smiling. ‘I think he wants to stand guard. Maybe even go hunting.’ I put the logs inside the door and squatted to let Tuzik bury his head into my armpit. ‘Guard us well, my friend,’ I told him, as I rubbed his back. ‘I’ll bring you something to eat later, I promise.’

Tuzik moved back into the yard and watched us go into the house, but he made no more attempt to follow.

‘I don’t blame him,’ Anna said. ‘This place is creepy.’

We dumped the logs on the pile, and the old woman stepped out of the shadow as if she’d been lying in wait for us. She came to the table, put a candle in a holder and lit it with a match before putting a glass storm shield round it. The flame flickered for a moment and then grew, lighting the surface of the table and the chairs round it.

The old woman was stooped a little, bent at the waist, and hunched; thin and bony beneath her black dress and woollen shawl. She wore a tight black headscarf to match the dress, and it covered her hair, making it look as if she might be bald beneath it. All I could see were her wrinkled forehead, her watery eyes and veined nose. She had soft shoes on her feet, and when she shuffled over to greet us, her hag-like manner made my skin crawl.

‘Pretty girl,’ she said, reaching out to pinch Anna’s cheek between her hardened thumb and the gnarled knuckle of her first finger.

She smiled, revealing more gum than tooth, and I felt Anna recoil.

The old woman’s breath was rancid, like sour milk. She was as repellent to my eyes as she was to Anna’s and I kept thinking of Galina with her putrid eye and her unsettling insanity. And the way she touched Anna, it was as if she was testing her tenderness, sizing her up for the pot.

I had to laugh at myself and try to dismiss my unease.

‘Very pretty,’ she repeated, nodding to herself, and the tip of her tongue slipped out to wet her lips. ‘Her name?’

‘Anna.’ I introduced all of us, giving them our first names, but the old woman only had eyes for Anna right now.

‘Your daughter?’ she asked.

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘In a manner of speaking?’ She craned her neck to stare at me. ‘Either she is or she isn’t. Which one is it, my dear?’

‘She is now,’ I said.

‘An orphan of the war?’

‘I’m right here, you know.’ Anna pulled away from her.

‘She doesn’t like to be reminded,’ I said.

‘Hmm.’ The old woman peered at Anna. ‘Well… sit, sit. Let me see what else you’ve brought us.’

While Sergei lit the pich, the rest of us sat at the table and spread our supplies across its surface. We had left most of our belongings in our saddlebags in the outbuilding, which was just as well because the old woman had hungry eyes and a hungrier stomach. By the time we had unpacked what we’d brought in with us, there was the piece of salo, some strips of dried meat, three chunks of sausage and a slab of kovbyk. Lyudmila had been reluctant to hand it over, but the old woman hadn’t given us much choice. She had taken our satchels and rummaged through them, pushing the ammunition to one side and handing us the knives to hold while she searched for food. It was bad luck to leave a knife on the table and these were superstitious country people.

‘We’ll sup well tonight,’ she said, smiling at Anna for longer than necessary before handing back our satchels.

‘There’s enough food there for us to eat well for two days,’ Lyudmila said to Tanya. ‘We need that.’

‘We can find more,’ Tanya replied.

‘Where? Where do we find more?’

‘The forest is full of things to eat, and we’re close now. We can spare it.’

‘But—’

‘We can spare it,’ Tanya said again.

The old woman watched closely as they spoke, as if she was hanging on every word they said, waiting to learn the outcome. And when they had finished speaking, she put out a crooked and liver-spotted hand to touch Tanya’s. She patted it once and smiled her near-toothless smile. ‘You said there’s enough for you for two days.’ She looked at Lyudmila. ‘Then perhaps there will be enough for nine to eat just one good meal.’

Lyudmila stared back at her as if about to challenge the old woman to explain herself, but I understood what she meant. She and Sergei were not alone on the farm. There were others here too.

The old woman shifted and turned to Sergei, who had finished lighting the oven and was watching from a distance. ‘Tell them to come down,’ she said.

Sergei hesitated.

‘Go on. Go.’ She waved a leathery hand. ‘It’s safe. Kolya won’t hurt us.’

I dropped my hand beneath the table and slipped it into my coat pocket. The pistol was still cold when I wrapped my fingers round it.

Sergei looked at the floor as if his feet had become interesting, but his wife snapped his name, making him jump. ‘Sergei.’

He looked up.

The old woman sneered at him. ‘It’s all right, you old fool. Tell them to come down.’

Sergei went into the darkness at the far end of the room and lifted a ladder from its place against the wall. He put it up to the side of the pich, placing it carefully.

‘You can come down,’ he said, but as he spoke, he cast a look in our direction. He wasn’t as convinced as his wife that we were harmless.

The first feet to step onto the ladder protruded from the hem of a dark skirt and the woman came into view as she climbed down. For a moment I was taken aback, as I saw my own wife, Marianna, descending those rungs and I had to close my eyes and shake some sense into my head. When I opened them again, the woman was looking at me. She wasn’t Marianna, but there was a resemblance. She had hair like Marianna’s, and it was tied back in the style that Marianna wore it, loose at the front so that it fell across her forehead. She had a similar build, with a waist that had once been full and healthy but had narrowed as times became harder. She was pale like Marianna too, but not as pretty, and when she stepped into the light, I saw she had dull green eyes, while Marianna’s were blue.

‘Our daughter, Oksana,’ said the old woman, and as she spoke, the first set of children’s feet touched the ladder and Oksana stretched up to help the girl down.

‘Natasha,’ said the old woman with a smile.

The girl, perhaps five or six years old, clung to her mother’s skirt as the second child descended the ladder; a boy who looked to be at least ten years old. Both children were pale and thin like Anna, their cheeks almost hollow, dark circles under their eyes.

‘And this is Nikolai,’ she said, looking at me. ‘Your namesake.’

The three of them stood huddled like refugees at the bottom of the ladder, holding each other close, and I imagined Marianna might have looked the same when she tried to protect our sons from Krukov. Except for them, it would have been different, because Marianna would have only been able to hold them for a few seconds before snatching up their coats and ushering them out and across the footbridge to seek the false safety of the forest. I could only imagine how she must have felt, seeing them go, having to return home to wait for the devils, only to be dragged across the road and into the trees, forced to witness the murder of Galina’s husband and then…

He likes to drown the women.

When Oksana came closer, I took my hand from my pocket and acknowledged her with nod and by speaking my name but little else.

Oksana and the old woman made soup, while the children stayed close to them at the pich and the rest of us waited at the table. Sergei sat with his hands on the coarse surface, fingers laced together as if in prayer, eyes fixed on the tabletop. He only looked up from time to time, catching my eye and then looking away again.

‘It’s good of you to take us in,’ I said, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

Sergei shrugged.

Behind him, the old woman opened a cupboard to retrieve a bowl of salt and I noticed the cupboard was not as empty as I might have expected it to be. There were bottles lined against the back of it, jars of what looked like pickles, and bundles of cloth like the ones Marianna used to keep dried fish and meat.

‘The war hasn’t been too unkind to you?’ I said, making Sergei raise his eyes and follow my gaze.

‘Oh. No. Not too unkind.’ He nodded and looked away, embarrassed.

I glanced sideways at Tanya and saw that she had spotted it too. I could almost hear what she was thinking – that these people would take our food when they had plenty of their own – but I gave a small shake of my head, warning her to keep quiet. This was a family trying to stay alive, and they had offered us shelter.

Now that I had seen the well-stocked cupboard, though, I began to notice other things inside the izba, such as the boots by the door. I paid them no attention when we came in, but beside the rifles Tanya and Lyudmila had propped against the wall, there were two pairs of good boots that looked hardly used. The woven mat on the floor still had its colours – bold reds and blues and clean whites – and there was another hanging on the wall at the back of the room. There was a shotgun on nails close to the door. The blankets above the pich were plentiful. The soft shoes on the old woman’s feet were clean and still held their shape, and the clothes they wore were in better condition than I might have expected.

This was the home of poor peasants, so it would have been a surprise they owned so much and lived so comfortably at any time, but especially in these years of confiscation and requisition. Yet they did not have the appearance of people who lived well. Their skin had the waxy pallor of those who have had little nourishment. The children had the sunken and hollow faces of those who were growing close to starvation. Their demeanour didn’t match their possessions and their well-stocked cupboards. The acquisition of this food had come recently.

Perhaps they had found this place, like Lev and Anna had found the farm where I met them. Or perhaps there was another reason. Something darker.

When the meal was ready, Oksana brought it to the table and the old woman served it and we sat together round the table to eat, as if we were a family. The hot broth was good and went well with the cold meat, but nothing about that meal made me feel the security I ever felt at home, or the inclusion I had felt with Lev and Anna when they took me in.

While the old man remained quiet, his wife talked about the revolution and about the war the before it and the war that had come after it.

She leaned forward across the table as if she was going to invite us into a conspiracy. ‘They even fired shells at the field just on the other side of the farm.’ She nodded her head. ‘Men fighting, shooting, killing one another – there was so much noise we hid under the table waiting for it to stop. Full of holes it is now, that field. No use to anyone.’

Sergei looked at his wife as she spoke, his eyes shifting away to watch me and Tanya and Lyudmila in a way that made me nervous. With the light and the warmth and the food and the family sitting about us, I should have been comfortable, but there was an undeniable tension here.

‘And no one came to the house?’ I asked. ‘After the fighting?’ I couldn’t help look around at the full cupboards, the tidy clothes and the clean boots. There were even enough spoons and bowls for each of us at the table.

The old woman shared a glance with her husband, then shrugged. ‘They passed on. Hardly even knew we were here.’

‘You went to look, though,’ said Tanya. ‘You went to see where they had been fighting.’

The old woman nodded. ‘It was terrible.’

‘That didn’t stop you from taking what you could.’ It was Lyudmila who spoke this time, and I wondered if she had seen what it was that had filled their cupboards and put fresh clothes on their starving bodies. She understood what was making the old woman and her husband so edgy. They had stolen from the dead.

The old woman looked down at the tabletop. They were ashamed of it. ‘Times are hard.’

‘I understand,’ I told her. ‘Nothing can be wasted.’

She nodded.

‘We’re not bad people,’ Sergei said. ‘We’re just…’

‘You don’t need to explain yourselves,’ I said.

Sergei lifted his eyes to look at me across the table before he reached for his pipe and took a healthy pinch of tobacco from a worn but full pouch.

‘All of this didn’t come from a battlefield,’ Lyudmila said, as he packed the tobacco tight and clamped the pipe between his teeth. ‘Not all this food.’ She cast her eyes around the room.

Sergei shook his head.

‘Papa brought us things too,’ the boy said, making his mother squeeze him and give him a stern look. Everybody watched him but the old woman. She kept her eyes on the three of us, sitting on the opposite side of the table.

‘What’s that you said?’ Lyudmila sat back and put one hand on her thigh.

‘Nikolai misses his papa.’ The old woman smiled, displaying blackened teeth, before leaning in and whispering to us. ‘He imagines he sees him sometimes. It’s very hard for the children, you know.’ The stink of her breath soured the air.

‘Of course.’

For a moment there was no sound in the room but the fire crackling in the pich.

‘But tell us about you.’ The old woman sat back and raised her voice. ‘Where are you from?’

I looked at Tanya and Lyudmila, none of us saying anything.

‘I understand,’ the old woman said. ‘You’re deserters – of course you don’t want to talk about it.’

‘No, we…’ Tanya stopped.

‘It’s all right.’ The old woman pulled her shawl tighter. ‘We won’t tell anyone, will we, Sergei?’

‘No. No, of course not.’

‘So what brings you this way?’ she asked. ‘You said you’re looking for someone.’

There was an awkward silence as we considered what to tell them, what kind of threat they could be to us, or what information they might have.

‘We’re looking for a man calling himself Koschei,’ I said eventually, glancing at Tanya. ‘Have you heard of him?’

‘Koschei?’ Sergei took his pipe from his mouth and studied the glowing tobacco in the bowl as if the answer might be hidden in the embers. With his other hand, he reached up and stroked his beard, smoothing it round his upper lip and running his fingers down its length. ‘Like the story?’

‘Yes, but this man is real. Have you heard of him?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said the old woman.

‘He’s a Chekist. His real name is Krukov.’

‘I don’t know the name.’

‘And you haven’t seen anyone pass by?’ I asked. ‘Soldiers taking prisoners? Or maybe—’

‘We don’t see anybody here.’ The old woman spoke a little too suddenly.

‘What about your neighbours? Might they have—’

‘No one passes by. No one sees anything. It’s safer that way.’ An edge had crept into her tone and the atmosphere in the room had become more tense. When I looked across at Sergei, he was still staring at the tabletop. Oksana busied herself with her children, stroking their hair and bringing Natasha to sit on her knee, as if she was finding something to do so she didn’t have to make eye contact.

‘Is there something wrong?’ I asked.

‘There is always something wrong,’ the old woman said.

‘We do what we have to.’ Sergei looked up with sad eyes. ‘What else can we do?’

I was about to ask him what he meant by that, but Oksana pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘It’s late,’ she said, making it clear it was time for the conversation to end. ‘The children need to sleep, and you must be exhausted.’ She gave Anna a sympathetic look.

‘I’m fine,’ Anna said without expression. ‘I’m tougher than I look.’

Oksana smiled, but there was sadness in her eyes. ‘I’m sure you are.’

‘Well, you can sleep in the izba next door,’ the old woman said. ‘The roof’s not so good, so it’ll get cold, but there are some old blankets, and if you light the fire, you’ll be warm enough.’

Before we left, I thanked the old woman for her hospitality and shook Sergei’s hand.

‘Oksana,’ I said, ‘may I ask where your husband is?’

‘Our son is fighting the war,’ the old woman answered for her, filling her chest with pride and standing as straight as she could. ‘He’s a good boy.’

I didn’t ask which uniform he wore.