The Child Thief

18

‘Maybe it’s not Dariya,’ Petro said. ‘Maybe it’s…’

‘Who else would it be?’ I asked. The others had joined me as soon as they saw me fall back against the tree. They knew right away something was wrong and they came across, keeping in the cover of the trees.

They had each stared at the clump of hair and flesh that hung from the twisted branch, but now all their heads were turned away.

Petro’s face was pale. He was scared and concerned in equal measure. He was wondering, once again, if there was something he could have done to stop this from happening.

‘Could anybody survive a thing like that?’ Aleksandra asked.

‘It’s possible,’ I said. ‘It’s just skin and hair.’ It sounded dismissive – as if I was suggesting that scalping a child was nothing. An irritation. ‘But all that blood.’ I put a hand to my mouth and saw Dariya’s face in my mind. I saw her small round face, her dark eyes and her white skin. I saw her standing at my door, looking up at me, smiling, asking if Lara was allowed to come out, and I heard myself teasing her, telling her Lara still had work to do – there were chickens to feed, a harvest to take in – and Lara was behind me, calling me Papa, telling me not to joke.

I went to the tracks leading away and took off a glove, putting my finger into one of the prints. ‘He was carrying her when he walked away,’ I said.

‘Alive?’ Petro asked.

‘There’s no way of knowing.’

‘So what are you going to do now?’ Aleksandra asked.

I took one of the two last cigarettes from the packet and put it between my lips. I lit it with a match and sucked the smoke deep. ‘Keep going,’ I said, looking at the boys. ‘I’m going to find this man and I’m going to kill him.’ And I knew I wanted it more than ever now. Never had I wanted to take a life as much as I wanted it now. Until this moment I had been intent on finding Dariya, and the fate of the child thief was always secondary, but now I wanted him dead. I wanted to see his life fade. I wanted him to look into my eyes as his own glazed over and became dry.

‘Maybe it’s time to go back,’ Petro said. ‘Maybe it’s time to go back to Mama and Lara. I want to find Dariya, but I’m worried about Mama. And if Dariya’s already…’ He took a deep breath. ‘Maybe we should go back to them.’

‘They’re fine,’ I told him. ‘They’re strong.’

‘The Bolsheviks might be there already. In our village. Taking our—’

‘They won’t do anything to your mother or Lara. It’s the men they want. It’s our belongings and it’s the men.’

Petro looked at Aleksandra, who stared at him for a moment and then turned away. Her mouth was tight, her lips pressed together, her hair falling about her face. She knew different. We all did.

‘I don’t know,’ Petro said. ‘I just can’t help feeling we should go back. I want to keep looking but…’

A part of me wanted to listen to him. I wanted to go back and be with my family, to protect them from the oncoming storm, but the truth was that there was little I could do to protect them from the Bolsheviks. When the party officials and the OGPU and the Red Army were upon Vyriv, there would be nothing anyone could do other than cooperate with them. They could have our chickens and they could have our field and they could have our grain and what few potatoes were left in the cellar. Natalia and Lara were no threat to them, but they might think I was. A veteran of the Imperial Army. A former Red Army soldier who defected because he grew to despise an army that treated its soldiers with disdain, executed young soldiers who were afraid to fight, dragged men from their homes to fill their ranks. If they came to Vyriv and they found out who I was, they would take me out in the night and they would shoot me. They would murder my family as counter-revolutionaries.

‘Maybe we should go back,’ Petro said again. ‘There’s no point if she’s already gone.’

‘No. We should follow him.’ Viktor spoke now, and I could see myself in my son’s eyes. He felt what I felt. He felt the rage and violent necessity for retribution. For Viktor this was a direction for his feelings, something to obliterate what he’d done back on the road. It was his nature to deal with it this way. ‘Papa’s right. Mama and Lara will be fine.’

‘And if someone denounces them?’ Petro said. ‘What then?’

Standing out there in the wilderness and the cold, my heart faltered and it was my turn to look at Aleksandra. I knew Petro was right. There was nothing to stop one of the other villagers from denouncing them in order to make themselves look more loyal. Aleksandra had already made that clear. In their delusion, they would try to deflect the horror onto others rather than accept it upon themselves. The truth was that we would all suffer, and in the years to come millions would lie dead in the streets with their bones pushing through paper-thin flesh and their eyes bulging in their skulls. But human instinct is to survive, and if someone in our village saw a way of making their own situation less severe, there was a strong chance they would use my history to save themselves.

I looked back at the way we had come. Then I looked forward at the single track leading away. Ahead, the child thief was increasing his lead. Behind, there might be soldiers already following our trail, searching for Aleksandra. And, further back, our village hid in the dip of the valley, trembling at the approaching terror. I could see no right decision. There were too many possibilities and too few certainties.

Viktor and Petro waited, but I didn’t know what to say. For the first time since we had left, I didn’t know what was the best thing to do. I had made a promise to Lara that I would return with her cousin, but the blood and the scalp suggested I had failed in that already.

It was Aleksandra who gave me the answer. ‘You said she could survive this.’

I tried not to look at the scalp. ‘I said it’s possible, but…’ I blew my breath out, puffing my cheeks and shaking my head.

‘Then maybe you should give her a chance,’ Aleksandra said. ‘You have friends in your village?’

‘Of course.’

‘And your wife is with your daughter.’

I could see what she was saying. She was weighing the options, trying to find who needed me most right now.

‘But this girl… she has no one. She is just a girl, alone. With a killer.’

I took the last drag of the cigarette and dropped it into the snow.

‘Maybe we should separate,’ said Petro. ‘I’ll go back to—’

‘No. That’s the thing we should not do,’ I said. ‘Not now. You’d never get back alone.’

I could see Petro was about to protest. I’d seen the expression enough times to know what was in his head. ‘I trust you, Petro. It’s not that. I know you’re strong and I know you’re capable. You’ve proved that. You can hunt, build a shelter, keep warm, but it’s a mistake to go alone. We should stay together.’ I gestured at the forest behind us. ‘There might be soldiers out there searching for Aleksandra. Or maybe this man we’re hunting wants us to split up, so he can pick us off alone.’ I looked my son in the eye. ‘If we separate, we can’t take care of each other.’ I felt as if we were being led, drawn into the child thief’s trap, but I saw no alternative other than to press on. And it troubled me that, while we discussed our options, the child thief had left his trail, knowing before we knew ourselves that we would follow. There was no choice.

‘I’m afraid for Mama,’ Petro said.

‘So am I. But I’m afraid for Dariya too. If she’s still alive, then she’s alone and afraid and hurt. We have to keep after her until we know for sure.’

‘For how long?’ There was relief in his expression. He had voiced his concern, but the decision was out of his hands. I had chosen to go on and I had told him to follow. He wanted to find Dariya, appease his guilt for what had happened to her, and he had spoken aloud his worries about his mother. I had made the difficult choice for them, and the decision had been prompted by Aleksandra, the only one of us who had any objectivity.

‘We’ll keep going until nightfall,’ I said. ‘After that, we’ll rethink if necessary.’

So we walked in silence again. Petro to my left, the faint remainder of the child thief’s lonely tracks to my right. And behind, Viktor and Aleksandra kept up, all of us forging through the snow until we came to the edge of the forest, opening onto another clear area. But this was not like the fields we had come across before. Here the ground was rocky and undulating. And unlike the flat fields of fertile black soil where Dimitri had been shot, this area was on a steeper incline.

‘Stay close to the trees,’ I said, crouching at the trunk of a large maple and taking out my binoculars. The snow had begun to ease off now, just a few light flakes falling from a translucent sky.

‘You see anything?’ Viktor asked.

There was almost nothing to see on the plain of white, other than the places where black rocks broke through. Without the trees for protection, almost all trace of any track was gone, smothered by the heavy fall of snow. Close up, I could see the child thief had come to the spot where we now stood, but further out in the open I saw nothing.

I looked across towards an overstood coppice of hornbeam just less than a kilometre away. And there, among the cluster of trees, I could see a small, primitive building.

‘Shepherd’s hut?’ I passed the binoculars to Viktor for him to look.

Viktor wiped the lenses and held them to his eyes. ‘I don’t know.’

I called Petro, asking, ‘What do you think?’

Petro hesitated before taking the binoculars and looking into the distance. ‘Where’re the sheep?’

‘Hm?’

‘Sheep. If it’s a shepherd’s hut, where are the sheep?’

‘On a collective?’ I suggested.

‘And why would there be a hut this low?’

Petro had a point, but a shepherd’s hut wasn’t impossible down here.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘It’s where the tracks lead us.’

‘No sign of life at all,’ Petro said. ‘Nothing.’

‘We can’t go that way now,’ Viktor said. ‘Cross open land in daylight. That hut’s a perfect place to watch from: he’ll see us coming.’

‘You’re right.’ Viktor was thinking now and I was pleased he had something to occupy his thoughts other than what he’d done on the road. ‘What would you do?’

‘Wait until dark?’

I nodded. ‘Or maybe just one of us going up there would be hard to spot. Keep low. There are rocks,’ I pointed. ‘I could use them to stay hidden.’

‘Maybe an hour ago,’ Viktor said. ‘The way it was snowing, you could have tried it, but now? No, you’d never get up there without him shooting at you. Some of those rocks are too far apart. It’ll take too long to get from one to the other.’

I studied the way the land rose and fell, wondering if I could make it to the hut without being seen. But there wasn’t a direct route to the crest of the hill that would provide sufficient cover.

‘You could follow the forest,’ Aleksandra said. ‘It curves around that way.’ She indicated north. ‘Maybe if you come from that direction, he won’t be watching.’

I looked at the arc of the forest edge, the way the trees hugged the hillside, embracing it. ‘I thought of that already,’ I said, ‘but it would take too long.’

‘Longer than waiting for dark?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘And you already decided there’s no direct approach.’

‘Right.’

‘Then what choice do you have?’

‘You think like a general,’ Petro said. ‘Outflank him. I like it.’

‘All right, you three stay here,’ I told them. ‘If I move fast, it shouldn’t take me more than an hour to get around there. Make yourselves visible from time to time. Not for too long, but if he’s seen us already, it’ll be enough to make him think we’re still here. If we’re lucky he’ll think we’re trying to decide what to do and it’ll keep him focused on this place. I’ll signal if it’s safe to come.’

I took the rifle from my shoulder, removed my pack and placed it on the ground, thinking I’d move better without it. The others could bring it with them, or I’d collect it on my return. I adjusted the way the satchel was hanging and retrieved my rifle.

‘Keep watching,’ I said, handing the binoculars to Viktor. ‘If there’s anything that looks like trouble, fire two shots.’ I wanted to keep Viktor busy, give him something to do. He had been quiet for a while after we’d left the place by the road, and I was glad to see him regain some of his spirit. What he had done would haunt him, but he needed to accept it, and if he had something else to share space with those thoughts, he would get some perspective.

Viktor hesitated with the binoculars in one hand, then shook his head and offered them back. ‘Why don’t you let me go?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I’ll go up there.’ He glanced across at the hut nestling in the trees. ‘Let me.’

I watched him, looking to see what was in his eyes.

‘Please. I want to do it. Let me go.’

I knew it was his guilt talking. The kind of guilt that could make a person stoop with the weight of it on their back, sitting like a devil on his shoulders, whispering in his ears, pulling at his cheeks. ‘Your head’s not clear,’ I said.

‘It’s clear enough.’

‘You’ve nothing to prove. Nothing to feel guilty about.’

‘I don’t—’

‘You need to stay here. You’re not ready for something like this.’

‘What do you mean I’m not ready? I can shoot. I can walk. I can go up there just as easily as you can. Maybe better. Let me go and I’ll find this man and kill him. Let it be me.’ He began to walk away, so I took his arm and pulled him away from the others.

‘I’m not letting you go out there on your own, Viktor. I can see what’s in your mind. It’s in your eyes, the way you move and talk.’

‘What?’

‘There were men,’ I said. ‘In the war. Soldiers who survived their comrades. Soldiers who took the last reserves of food from a village and left the children to starve. Soldiers who killed women when they—’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ He tried to break away but I held him tighter, gripping his coat with both hands and shaking him.

‘Because they had the same look in their eyes,’ I said. ‘They weren’t strong enough to live with what they did, so it ate at them until they were mad. The first to run into battle when there was no chance of survival; the first to charge through artillery fire, raise their heads above the parapet, go over when the time came for attack. They fought beyond the call of duty and they were doomed men, Viktor. Doomed because they couldn’t live with themselves.’

Viktor stared at me.

‘That’s why you can’t go. Because I see that in your eyes, and I’m afraid that if I let you go, you’ll do something rash.’

I put my arm around him and held him so our cheeks were touching.

‘Look after Aleksandra,’ I said. ‘That’s your duty now. I know how you’re feeling, and I know you want to do something to make it feel right, but this is not the best thing for you. Going up there instead of me isn’t going to make you feel any better. It won’t rub out what happened. You have to just accept it. Live with it.’

‘Let me try,’ he said.

I shook my head and stood back. ‘What you did, Viktor… I would have done it too.’

‘But you didn’t. And last night, when we followed you, you didn’t shoot. You called out to us.’

‘It was a mistake,’ I said. ‘One that could’ve got me killed if it hadn’t been you. I should’ve shot.’

Viktor took a deep breath and blew it out into the cold air. ‘You don’t mean that. I know you don’t.’

‘Do what I asked. Look after Aleksandra. I’ll go up there and I’ll let you know if it’s safe. We’ll talk about this later.’

Viktor turned away, anger rising in his eyes, but I liked that better than seeing the guilt.