Dan Smith - Red Winter

‘It’s dangerous what I’m doing, where I might have to go. It’s no life for you.’

‘Don’t you want me to come with you?’

‘It’s not that…’

‘You promised.’

‘I know, but don’t you think you’d be safer here? With Oksana?’

‘And the witch?’ Anna glanced at the barn door as if she expected the old woman to come flying in like Baba Yaga.

‘I don’t think they’d hurt you. I think they’re—’

‘No. I want to go with you.’ She shook her head with short, tight movements. ‘I’m safer with you.’

‘I hoped you would say that.’

‘You can’t go without me. Wherever it is. I want to help you. Promise you won’t go without me. Promise .’

There was a desperation in her voice that I couldn’t ignore. ‘I promise,’ I said.

Anna’s relief was evident and I leaned over to kiss the top of her head. ‘We’ll find them together.’

‘When will we leave? We should go soon, shouldn’t we?’

‘Yes. Soon.’ I took off my satchel and put it on the ground between my outstretched legs. I opened it and removed the things I had taken from Tanya and Lyudmila’s pockets.

‘What’s that?’ Anna asked.

‘They never told me who they were,’ I said, staring at the papers, wondering if I wanted to look, if I wanted to know who they were. I didn’t know if it would change what I thought of them. ‘It doesn’t make any difference,’ I said under my breath.

‘What?’ Anna asked.

‘Nothing.’

Tanya’s belongings consisted of a tin containing only three cigarette papers and a pinch of tobacco. There was also a stripper clip of ammunition for her pistol, a folding knife, a small piece of cloth wrapped into a tiny bundle and tied with a piece of string, and her papers. The papers had been folded into a small rectangle and pushed to the bottom of her inside coat pocket and had been difficult to find. It seemed that she, unlike me, had been unable to part with them.

I placed the bundle of cloth on the ground and picked at the string to loosen it. I opened it out in front of me.

The glow from the lamp glinted on the matching pair of gold rings.

‘Wedding rings,’ I said, looking at Anna. ‘Expensive too. Real gold.’

I pinched one of the rings between my finger and thumb, holding it up to the light and turning it before placing it in Anna’s palm for her to see.

‘Did she have children too?’ she asked. ‘Did that man… Is that why she wanted to kill him?’

‘Yes.’ I took the ring when she handed it back to me, then tied it back into the piece of cloth.

Next, I unfolded Tanya’s papers and opened them out in front of me to look at what was left of her.

‘Tatyana Maximovna Tikhonova.’ I smiled to myself and tapped the paper. ‘You see what it says here? She was gentry.’

Anna leaned over to see.

‘Can you believe it? She was gentry. I knew she was educated, from a good family, but…’ I put my head back and thought about when Tanya told me what had happened to her family. I had imagined she had lived in a good village, but the details in her papers said otherwise. Tanya was from a wealthy family; she wouldn’t have lived in a village. She would have lived in a big country dacha, or a many-roomed house in one of the towns, depending on the season. She would have worn fine dresses and attended parties and talked about the latest poets and writers. That explained why Koschei had taken no prisoners. As an overzealous revolutionary, he would have hated her privilege more than anything.

I realised how the revolution must have changed Tanya. It had not been kind to her and her family. She would have suffered even before Koschei descended upon her family, perhaps for years, and then he had come, and I would never know how she had survived that horror.

Tanya had never been a soldier. She was just a woman looking for revenge because she had nothing else left. Koschei had taken everything from her.

He had even taken away who she was.

I put the papers aside and turned my attention to the belongings from Lyudmila’s pockets. Like Tanya, there was little there: a tobacco pouch, a smooth stone, a few coins, some pistol cartridges, her papers.

And a small fold of cloth tied with a piece of string.

I held the bundle in my open hand, reflecting that I knew even less about Lyudmila than I did about Tanya. She had never told me her motive for chasing Koschei, and I had always assumed it was from some allegiance to Tanya, but the fold of cloth suggested otherwise.

‘Are you going to look?’ Anna said.

I pinched it with my finger and thumb, feeling what was inside.

‘Is it rings?’ Anna asked. ‘Like the other one?’

I picked away the knot and opened the bundle to reveal two gold rings. They were fine and expensive, just like Tanya’s were.

‘She was married too,’ Anna said. ‘Did she have children?’

‘I don’t know.’ I retied the rings and placed the bundle beside Lyudmila’s other belongings.

I studied the small collection of bits and pieces, sad to think how little it was to account for a person’s life, and yet it had given me a greater insight into Lyudmila’s truth than the woman herself had ever given me.

When I opened the tobacco pouch, and tipped it into the palm of my hand, something hard and yellowed poked from the small pile of tobacco. I picked it out between finger and thumb, and held the tooth up to the light. It was too small to have come from an adult and I knew it was a memory of her child. Lyudmila was cold and distant, and I had never liked her much, but as I held that tooth up to the light, I felt a tightening in my heart when I realised how wrong I had been about her. I had seen some evidence of softness when it came to Anna, but I had thought her childless and unable to understand my predicament. In fact, it was me who was unable to understand hers. There was a lot the three of us had not shared with each other, but there was one more surprise still to come.

I returned the tooth to the pouch and opened the papers that she, too, had folded into a small rectangle and hidden in her pocket. When I read her details, I understood what had brought the two women together.

Lyudmila Maximovna Morozova.

Maximovna .

It was too much of a coincidence for them to share a patronymic. As different as they seemed, they were bound together by blood.

Lyudmila and Tanya were sisters.

Anna and I returned to the edge of the forest. We went to the place where the sisters lay side by side, and we buried the rings and the tobacco pouch in the hardening soil.

I put my arm around Anna’s shoulders and we stood side by side for a moment, neither of us speaking. I felt her breathing falter, coming in short gasps and I knew the tears were for her father. For me, there were no tears, but my heart was heavy with thoughts of my brother and Lev, and of the two women who had no one to mourn them but us.

Coming back to the barn, I led Kashtan out into the cold. She was eager to leave that place, but I had one last task for her.

‘I’m sorry,’ I told her, ‘but I need you to do this for me. You’re much stronger than I am.’

Anna helped me with the age-worn harness we found. Kashtan was not unaccustomed to pulling a load – she had pulled tachanka machine-gun carriages before – but this cart was loaded with the dead and she baulked as soon as we brought her close enough to smell the blood. Her muscles flexed and bulged under her taut chestnut coat as she backed away, but between us, Anna and I managed to keep her calm.

Anna had hitched a cart before, so she helped me hook up Kashtan while Tuzik sat on the ice and watched.