Dan Smith - Red Winter

‘What then ?’ I saw that I was losing her. The lucidity was leaving her. ‘What happened then, Galina?’

‘ You have to look after them now,’ she said. ‘You have to take care of them. Bury Sasha and find the others. And find Koschei. Find his death.’

‘Where are they? Can you tell me any—’

‘Koschei took them.’

‘Where? Where did he take them?’ I wanted to rip the memories out of her.

‘Please,’ she said, reaching out to touch the pocket where she had seen me put the revolver. ‘Use it. Use your pistol and let me go to my husband. I’ve done what I had to. I’ve told you what happened. Now it’s up to you. Please, Alek, let me be with Sasha.’

‘No.’ I knocked her hand away. ‘Tell me about the others.’ I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘What happened to the others?’ I was losing control of myself, desperate to wrestle the answer out of her. I had been patient enough. I had waited long enough. I had earned my answers.

But Galina just dropped her head, saying, ‘No. No. No,’ and when I saw the blank expression in her eye, I knew I was only driving her madness deeper.

When I released her, Galina turned towards the lake without looking at me. I watched her approach the edge of the water. It was still early winter and the ice was only a thin crust, so it broke when she put the toes of her boots to it. Then she took another step, her foot crunching into the freezing water.

‘What are you doing?’ I called. ‘Galina?’

Before I could reach her, Galina had waded into the lake so she was knee deep in the water, fragments of broken ice floating about her, tangling with the skirt that spread about her on the surface.

I stopped at the edge and waited for her to turn round, but instead she began to take off her coat.

‘Galina?’

She dropped the coat to one side and unbuttoned her cardigan.

‘Galina.’ I waded into the water, but as soon as I touched her, she snatched away.

‘Leave me,’ she hissed. ‘Let me go.’

I tried to pull her back once more, but she resisted, trying to push me from her.

‘So much pain,’ she said. ‘Let it be gone. You’re here now. You can look after them. I can go.’

‘Don’t do this,’ I said, putting my arms around her from behind, preventing her from going any deeper.

‘Let me go, Alek,’ she cried. ‘Please.’

‘Tell me about the others,’ I shouted. ‘Where are they?’

‘They’re gone.’ Galina struggled. ‘All gone. Let me go too. Let me be with them.’

I held on to her, pleading with her until I knew it was useless. She had told me all she would – all she was able to – and she had made up her mind what she wanted. Something inside me didn’t blame her for wanting it, but there was something else too: a dirty thought telling me Galina would be a burden, that this way would be better for both of us. It was a notion that left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I had learned long ago to find priorities, to shut out emotion and put some thoughts and actions before others. There was nothing I could do for Galina now and nothing she could do for me. I had to think of Marianna and the boys. They were all that mattered. Everything I did had to be for them.

Perhaps this was better for both of us.

So, with a heavy heart, I released Galina and stood back, half expecting her to turn and curse me, but all she did was take off her cardigan and drop it into the water.

‘All of them gone.’ She was lost to the world now and moved deeper into the water, removing her clothing as she went, breaking through the wafer-thin layer of crust. ‘All gone.’

By the time she was waist deep, her upper body was naked. Her arms were thin, and her spine protruded from her back. There was almost nothing of her and I wondered how she could have survived alone.

She pushed out into the water and disappeared beneath the ice.

I waited a long time to see if she would resurface. Visions of my own mother in the water haunted me, her hair washing about her head.

But the lake settled, the ice came together, and Galina was gone.

The light was enough to search the clearing, but I found no evidence of the women and children or the other men from the village. I ventured a little further into the woods, following the sound of the crows, which cawed unseen among the tangled branches. Something was attracting them, but the trees were dense here and it was too dark to see. Alone like that, it was easy to feel eyes watching me, the demons of the forest waiting for me to lose my bearings. Koschei himself might be waiting in there with his sword, and the thought of it unnerved me, making me draw my revolver and stare into the darkness.

I floundered in the impenetrable night among the knotted and crowded trunks for only a short time before I lost my nerve. I would come back in the morning to look again. I had to find something to tell me where Marianna and the children had gone, but now was not the time. I tried not to think what might have happened to them, ignoring the crows and telling myself they were still alive. There were no other bodies by the lake, nothing in the village, and I would find them in the morning. The cold reality of the day would lead me to them.

Or perhaps the black birds would show me the way.

I hurried home as if the night terrors of the forest were close on my heels, and I drew the bolts tight. I checked the izba for uninvited guests then I changed into dry clothes and put Alek’s boots by the oven before I hung my coat and satchel by the door. I inspected the place where the floorboards were missing, bringing the candle close to the hole and kneeling to look in at the small crawlspace beneath the house where Galina had been hiding. I’d been in villages where peasants had made similar hiding places to hold back grain stores from requisitioning units, or to conceal sons and deserters. I wondered for which purpose Marianna had built this one. Perhaps I had inspired it on my last visit with my guarded talk of wanting to come home and of my loss of faith in the revolution. Or maybe it had been to hide Misha and Pavel, to protect them from forced recruitment into the army. Whatever it had been, it seems it had not been enough.

There was a lingering smell in there that reminded me of Galina, so I refitted the floorboards, pushing them down into place before I went back to the table and sat facing my brother.

‘There’s a dead man in the forest,’ I told him. ‘You remember Sasha Petrova? Galina’s husband? They cut off his head. And I think there may be more. Not just one or two like…’ Like when we did it . I closed my eyes and shook my head. ‘I’m afraid it might be all of them, Alek.’ We had never done that. Never like that. ‘I’ll take you to Mama and Papa tomorrow.’ I looked at him. ‘Then I’ll find the others.’

I had only a few snatches of sleep during the night. I put my head on the table and jumped at every sound, every bluster of wind. Sometime in the early hours, a fox screamed from the forest. The noise tore through me like a blunt saw, filling me with a kind of terror I hadn’t felt since I was a child, and I sat for a long time before fetching blankets from the bedroom and returning to watch the fire in the pich burn itself out. I couldn’t risk it still being alight when the day broke, else someone might see the smoke. In the forest, the suspicions of being followed and watched had been a constant companion for Alek and me, and it had increased with Alek’s passing and my growing sense of loneliness. Deep down, I knew it had been a mistake to light the fire for Galina, but the warmth had been a blessing. Now, though, I had to focus on staying alive and free for Marianna and the boys. I had to be unseen.