Dan Smith - Red Winter

I felt a stab of anguish, a desperation to be with my wife again, and I stared into Tanya’s eyes as if it would give me just a taste of what it would be like to have Marianna here.

But then the lightness of Tanya’s countenance was gone again, leaving not a trace. It was a sudden and brief transformation, as if she had swept one personality aside and replaced it with another. Now her face hardened.

‘You have children?’ I asked.

There was a furrowing of her eyebrows, a clenching of the jaw.

‘That’s why I want him,’ I said. ‘You know that. I understand what you’re feeling.’

‘You understand nothing,’ she said. ‘What can you understand?’

‘More than you think.’

‘You’re a professional soldier; you’ve got it written all over your face. It’s in the way you walk and talk. Everything. I’ve seen so many damn soldiers, I know what one looks like.’

‘So what would you see if you were to look in a mirror?’ I asked.

Tanya glanced up at me and sighed before turning her eyes to the ground.

‘Whatever I’ve done,’ I said, ‘whatever I am, I’m still a father. A husband.’

‘When did you last see them?’ she asked. ‘Your sons? You have two, right? When did you last tell them you love them? When did you last hold your wife?’

There was anger growing in her voice and I knew that when she looked at me, she couldn’t see me as anything but a soldier. It was men like me who had shattered her life, whatever colour they had chosen.

‘It’s a long time, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Because you’ve been out there, armed, killing other fathers and sons; mothers and wives too, I’d bet.’

Her stare cut through me just as her words did. She was right about me. There was nothing I could say to change that; nothing I could say to make her think differently.

‘He didn’t take them prisoner, did he?’ I asked. ‘Your—’

‘No. He slaughtered them. Everyone. My son, just fifteen. My daughter, not much older than…’ She looked back at Anna and squeezed her eyes shut, determined that her emotion would be anger rather than grief.

‘And you? Were you there? How did you—’

‘My husband and my father with red stars burned on their skin. Do you know what that does to you? Seeing that?’

‘I can imagine it—’

‘No, you can’t imagine,’ she said. ‘You can’t imagine it at all, because it hasn’t happened to you. You have some hope that your family is alive. Hope . That’s what keeps you going. For me, there is only hate. That’s what it does to you – it fills you with hate. That’s what keeps me going.’

I wondered what was different about Tanya’s family that had made Krukov murder everyone while he took the young people from Belev with him. Her son had been fighting age.

Perhaps it was something to do with who she was. I had come to suspect that she wasn’t a common peasant – she had developed a hard look to her, but she didn’t have the posture or mannerisms or speech traits I expected from a worker. I wondered if she had a background in wealth and education that had riled Koschei into such frenzy. Or maybe there had been some change in the way he operated. Or perhaps he had just had a bad day. It wasn’t uncommon for Chekist leaders to lose their minds – perpetrating such horrors, fuelling themselves with drugs and alcohol, it was little surprise.

‘You were wealthy?’ The words came out before I thought about them.

Tanya didn’t reply, but she turned and stared at me with an expression that at least confirmed it.

‘And educated,’ I said. ‘So you’re not a soldier?’

Tanya glanced back at Lyudmila, then turned to look out at the steppe once more. ‘No.’

‘What about her?’ I asked. ‘Lyudmila? What—’

‘If you want to know about Lyudmila, you’ll have to ask her yourself.’

But I had a feeling she would tell me even less than Tanya had.

‘I’m sorry about your family.’ It was a pointless thing to say. Words couldn’t bring them back, and they couldn’t convey my sympathy for her. Tanya was wrong about something, though. I could imagine how she felt, and I understood that there was an important and worrying difference between us.

I was looking for my wife and sons; Tanya was looking only for revenge.

‘When we find him,’ I said, ‘I want to know what happened to my family.’

‘You’re telling me not to kill him.’

‘Not right away.’ It was more important now than ever that we stayed together. I couldn’t afford for her to find Koschei before me.

‘I’ll make him tell you what you want to know.’ She looked me up and down. ‘Though I suspect you’d be good at that yourself.’

I ignored her comment. ‘After that, you can do whatever you want.’

‘What I want is all of them, not just Kosch— Krukov. Not just Krukov . I want all of them. Every single one of his men.’

‘When was it?’ I asked. ‘How long have you been looking for him?’

‘Thirty-seven days,’ she said. ‘And out here, that’s a long time. It changes you. But we’re getting close, I can feel it.’

‘When it’s done? What will you do then?’

‘I haven’t seen that far yet.’ Tanya adjusted her rifle, moving the strap on her shoulder, then took the tobacco pouch from her pocket. ‘But when the time comes,’ she said, ‘I just hope you’re as good at killing as I think you are.’

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.