Dan Smith - Red Winter

Commander Orlov leaned back in his chair, tunic open to reveal a dirty white shirt beneath, with his right foot propped on a stool. He wore no boot on that foot, and the material of his trousers had been split to the waist so that it hung loose to display the wound that festered in the meat of his calf.

A young soldier knelt on the floor, fumbling with a collection of medical supplies. Unravelling a bandage, it was clear the boy had no idea what he was doing.

Behind the commander, hanging on the wall, a clock told me it was just after ten, but it had to be at least midday by now.

‘So you’re a doctor?’ Orlov said, looking up and beckoning me over. ‘I didn’t know we had any doctors on this train.’

I pulled my hat down further and lowered my head.

‘When did you get on?’

I thought for a moment, trying to think where the train might have been coming from, where it might have stopped, but it would be dangerous for me to guess.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said, before I could answer. ‘We’ve picked up all manner of stragglers. Every time we stop, a whole lot more climb aboard. Don’t they know we’re going to hell?’ He slurred his words and I guessed the vodka on the table was his way of killing the pain. ‘Get over here before this boy keels over from the smell. He’s useless anyway.’

Orlov shooed the boy away with one hand and reached for his glass with the other. The boy stumbled past me, making me step back, and hurried from the compartment, closing the door behind him so that I was left alone with the commander. I stared at the door for a moment, hoping that Lev and Anna had stayed where they were; that they had done as I had instructed.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Fix me up.’

I turned and glanced around the carriage, my eyes settling on the pistol resting on the table for a second, then I approached the commander, pulling the other chair towards me and rummaging among the medical supplies. My fingers worked quickly as I looked for the supplies I needed to dress the wound. The sooner I was back with Lev and Anna, the better.

Close to the commander, the stink of his wound was nauseating, even through my scarf, and I tried to take only shallow breaths.

‘Take off your hat,’ Orlov said. ‘Let me see your face.’

Without looking at him, I reached up and removed my hat. I placed it on the floor beside me, continuing to search through the bandages and field dressings. Outside, the muffled calls of soldiers shouting orders was beginning to die down.

‘The scarf,’ he said, taking a drink from the dirty glass, slurping the liquid.

I pulled down the scarf and looked up at him, our eyes meeting. For a long moment he held that look, breathing heavily, running his tongue round his teeth. His face glistened with sweat, and his whole demeanour was that of a man struggling with a fever.

When he spoke, his lips were wet with vodka, and flecks of spittle fell onto his chin. ‘Do I know you?’

I shook my head.

‘We’ve never met?’

‘No, Comrade Commander.’

‘You look familiar.’ He drank again, staring at me over the rim of the glass as he drained it. He swallowed hard and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. ‘There was a time I never forgot a face.’ He shook his head and sniffed. ‘Now I see so many damned faces I don’t know how I ever remember any of them.’ He reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. ‘Most of them don’t live long anyway, so there’s no reason to remember them all, is there? But you…’ he said, pointing with the hand holding his drink. ‘For some reason I feel I should know you.’

‘I’m just a doctor,’ I said, leaning over and making a pretence of looking through the medical supplies. I was trying to decide what was my best course of action. I could dress the wound and leave – I knew how to do that, but he might decide to keep me as his personal physician. I could simply leave the carriage. Orlov was wounded, probably dying from the infection, so he was in no shape to come after me, but his pistol was close to hand; he could shoot me before I was at the door. I had my own revolver, but even if I could take it from my pocket before he could reach for his own, I couldn’t shoot him, not with soldiers just a few paces away, in the other part of the carriage. They would be in here in an instant, and when I was lying on the floor, bleeding and full of lead, I would have failed my children and my wife. Lev and Anna would be forced to continue into the forest alone.

I would have to overcome him silently, kill him without a sound if I were to escape from here unharmed. Perhaps I could reach the knife inside my coat, but I would have to be fast – his pistol was within easy reach.

In my contemplation, I had looked up without realising it and Orlov followed my attention, putting his hand over the pistol. He dragged it towards him and held it in his lap.

‘You’re not a doctor, are you?’

I stopped what I was doing.

‘You don’t even look like a doctor. Don’t act like one.’

I took my hand away from the supplies.

‘All the doctors I ever met were soft intellectuals. Weak and spongy men who never did a proper day’s work. Soft hands and waxy skin.’

I sat up and looked at him.

‘Not you, though. You move like a soldier – I saw that the second you stepped through that door. I’m not too old and blind to see that. Your hands have done too much work – killing work, I would say, judging by the way your fingers reach for the button of your coat. What do you have in there? A knife would be my guess. The pistol in your pocket would draw too much attention, but the knife… ah… that would be quiet, wouldn’t it?’

I hadn’t even noticed my hand move, but there it was, ready to unfasten the button and reach inside for the blade.

‘But it’s your eyes that really tell me what you are.’ Orlov drained his glass once more. ‘It’s always the eyes that give it away. I can see your intent just by looking into them. I can see you sizing me up.’

He leaned over to put his glass on the table, then lifted the pistol, staring at it. ‘Pour us both a drink,’ he said, ‘but keep those killing hands where I can see them, eh? This wound in my leg makes me… twitchy. It shames me. I’ve been in more battles than I can count and this is where I get shot. It couldn’t have been the heart or the brain – a good clean death – it had to be here so I can die slowly while my men watch. I might as well have been shot in the arse.’

I reached across the table and put two glasses together, looking over to the side of the carriage, wishing I could see through the metal plating, beyond the crowds of men and to the place where Lev and Anna were hiding in the forest. I wanted to get back to them, to be on with our journey. I envied the connection they had to one another, and I had enjoyed what little of it they had been prepared to share with me so far. It had left me wanting more; to be with them, in the presence of warmth and love, rather than here where there was only death.

‘Something out there?’ Orlov’s voice snapped me back to the moment.

‘Hmm?’

‘You were looking at the window. Where there was a window anyway. Is there something out there demanding your attention?’

‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘No.’

Orlov watched me as if he didn’t believe me, pushing out his neck so that his face was closer to mine. He put two fingers to his eyes and narrowed them at me. ‘It’s all there,’ he said. ‘They give it all away.’ Then he leaned back again, wincing in pain and slapping his hand on the table.

‘Probably just as well you’re not a doctor,’ he said, recovering. ‘You’d only want to cut it off. The whole leg. To get rid of the infection, you’d say. Just…’ He made a sawing motion with one hand across the top of his thigh. ‘I’d only be half a man then, and what’s the point of that? What use would I be then? Maybe it’s just as well there are no doctors here – I’d have a train full of cripples.’