Dan Smith - Red Winter

‘Marianna persuaded you?’ Lev asked.

‘Without needing to. I felt it. Her need for me, and mine for her and my sons. It was so good to feel something other than the numbness that I had once forced myself to feel but now came like second nature. Like I can be two people. And when Misha, my oldest, started talking about how he wanted to join the fight, I saw…’ I looked away and tried to find the right words. ‘I saw a never-ending war. Children of fourteen taking up rifles and doing the things I had done. It was too much.’

‘And that was the first time you considered getting out?’

‘Not really. The idea had always been there, but I suppose I was too afraid even to think it in case I gave myself away, so I crushed it like I crushed every other feeling. Then Misha asked to join Alek and me when we went back to our unit and I remember looking across the table at my brother and that’s when we knew. If there was a single moment that brought everything into focus, it was that one. I couldn’t take my son into that world to see what I saw. I couldn’t even bear the thought of him knowing the things I’d done. And there, with my family around me, my eyes opened to what really mattered.’

Lev remained silent, but his expression told me that he understood, and when he reached across the table to pat my arm in a simple gesture of sympathy, the warmth I took from that small connection threatened to choke me.

‘If they thought we were dead, they wouldn’t think twice about us.’ My voice cracked as I spoke, but I cleared my throat and composed myself. ‘That’s what we hoped. But once we were in the forest and we finally talked about what we were going to do, things became so complicated. Maybe we couldn’t just go home and be with Marianna and the boys. Maybe someone would come looking for us. Maybe someone would denounce us. Maybe we would have to take them and leave, find somewhere else to live. Alek’s wound made things worse and… there were too many possibilities.’

‘But you had to try.’

‘We decided we’d get to Belev and watch from the forest and make a decision then. Perhaps take Marianna and the boys out under cover of darkness, find somewhere to go. Anywhere.’ I looked up at Lev. ‘Like you did.’

Lev nodded.

‘But my village was empty and my family was gone, and now I’m not sure if our deception worked,’ I said, filling our cups, hands trembling. ‘There have been times, in the forest, when I thought I was being followed.’

Immediately Lev’s eyes went to Anna and I could see his concern.

He watched her for a moment, then took the last cigarette from the packet and lit it, shaking the match and placing it carefully on the table. He sucked the smoke into his lungs, then leaned forward to pass it to me. ‘That’s why you kept looking across the field. You think they’ll follow you here?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. I was in the forest all day; it would be difficult to track me.’

‘But we should leave.’ His worry was clear to me. ‘It’s not safe for us here anymore?’

‘Maybe I imagined it.’ It was the most I could say to reassure him.

‘You’re not afraid?’

‘I’m always afraid.’

He nodded in agreement, and for a while we sat in silence as we shared the last cigarette and drank to families and peace and to not being found.

‘We ran away from the fighting in Tambov,’ Lev said, wiping his lips on his sleeve. ‘With the war and then the uprising, it was like the world had gone mad. Nowhere was safe, and we had nothing left after the requisitions. We joked that the chickens had been drafted into the war, but it wasn’t funny. Not really. Anyway, I had a daughter to protect and thought if we kept off the roads, we could get to Moscow and—’

‘Why Moscow? That’s a long way.’

He shrugged. ‘I thought there might be work for a teacher or… I don’t know. Maybe I never really believed we’d get there. We just had to get away. Then we found this place and decided to stay for a while. There’s food. Shelter.’

‘And the man you killed?’ I asked. ‘He was here? You want to tell me about it?’

He looked down at the table.

‘Did Anna see? Does she know?’

‘It was about two weeks ago.’ He continued to stare at the table. ‘We were coming through a village and some people tried to pull us off the horse. We hadn’t been on the road long and were looking for shelter, but soldiers had been there and the people were hungry. They just wanted something to eat and… one of them grabbed Anna’s leg and she was shouting for me to do something. More and more of them came, people crowding round us. They were going to pull us down, getting nasty, calling us selfish, and Anna was screaming and I was afraid and…’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. I shot him. Right here.’ He looked up at me and patted his chest. ‘I didn’t wait to see what happened. The people stood back and we rode away.’

‘Maybe he lived,’ I tried to reassure him.

‘No.’

‘What about Anna?’

‘She never mentions it. I tried to talk to her about it, but she won’t. Maybe it’s better that way.’

I reached across the table and put my hand on his arm. I didn’t know what to say to him. I tried to remember how I had felt the first time I had taken a life, but it was so long ago and so much had come between that I felt nothing.

Lev forced himself to smile. ‘I did it for Anna.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘That’s the only reason to do something like that – for our children.’

I knew that I would do anything to bring mine home. Anything at all. Even if it meant I would burn for eternity.

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.