Dan Smith - The Child Thief

‘Do you think she saw what happened?’ Natalia asked her sister.

‘I saw,’ I said. ‘The shame you must feel. Do you know who that man was? He—’

‘Enough.’ Natalia cut me short. ‘Sveta has lost her daughter. Your niece. Have some sympathy.’

‘I’m not sure I have any left.’

Natalia tutted. ‘Come in, Sveta. Come out of the cold.’

The little warmth we managed to conjure with the small fire was escaping through the open door, so Natalia invited Svetlana inside and closed it behind her.

Svetlana Ivanovna was a large woman. Not fat though, nobody had enough food to be fat. She was tall and strong; from a long line of farmers. She had strong shoulders and strong hands, a large frame beneath the extensive dress. She wore a plain dark headscarf which covered black hair, and she watched with dark eyes. Svetlana and Natalia shared some features – they had the same sharp nose, the same prominent chin and searching eyes – but they were different in more ways than they were similar. Svetlana was more insular, she had grown up and outlived her parents in Vyriv, spent her whole life in this village, marrying Dimitri and working the same land for years. Natalia, on the other hand, had forged away from rural living and farming. She had travelled to Moscow to find a life other than farming. She became a worker and could recount stories of the first revolution, the unrest spreading from Petersburg to Moscow in the year after I was conscripted. I was a soldier when we met in Moscow, and she became pregnant with our sons, but my life as a soldier gave little support so she returned home to Vyriv before the outbreak of the war with Germany. For many years we saw little of each other. First the Great War and then the civil war kept us apart. But when they were done, I came home to her and my sons. A woman and two ten-year-old boys I barely knew. But our bond grew strong, and when Lara was born, our family was complete.

‘Lara might know where she is,’ Petro said, looking at me and shrugging. ‘They were playing together when I found her. Maybe she knows where she was going.’

I didn’t want Svetlana in the house. After what she and her husband had participated in only a few hours earlier, I wanted to turn her around and push her through the door, and the only things stopping me were Natalia and a small vein of sympathy just below the surface of my anger. She was worried about her daughter, just as any mother would be, and I had to tell myself it was Dimitri who had instigated the hanging, not Svetlana.

I put the heavy revolver on the table and pushed it away before waving a hand. ‘Ask her.’

Natalia called to her, and when Lara came from the other room, she was still wearing the medal around her neck. The orange stripes in the ribbon stood out against the black of her dress, and the colours depicting the slaying of the dragon were vibrant. ‘What is it, Mama?’

‘Do you know where Dariya is?’

Lara thought about it for a second, pursing her lips. ‘No.’ She shook her head.

‘You sure?’ I asked. ‘There isn’t somewhere she goes?’

Again she shook her head.

‘If there’s something, you must tell us,’ Natalia pressed her. ‘Whatever you can think of. Your aunt is worried about her.’

‘Anything.’ Sevetlana’s eyes pleaded. ‘Anything at all, Larissa.’ She was willing her to know where Dariya was.

Lara tightened her lips and shook her head.

‘Where did you go with her this morning?’ I put out a hand and brought Lara to me. I lifted her to sit on my knee and I put my face against the back of her head, above the place where her hair was gathered into a bun. I could see the pale skin of her scalp in the parting and I breathed the scent of her hair and rubbed my hands on her shoulders.

‘Just at the back,’ she said.

‘In the field?’

‘Yes. Where Petro came.’

‘And when Petro came, what then? What did Dariya do then?’

‘She stayed.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’

I looked up at Svetlana and opened my hands to her. ‘She doesn’t know.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Natalia.

Svetlana watched us as if she thought we might be hiding something from her, then she nodded and turned to the door.

As soon as Svetlana was gone, Lara jumped down from my knee and went to the other room without looking at any of us.

‘Is there something she’s not telling us?’ Natalia said in a quiet voice. ‘Do you think she knows where Dariya is?’

‘No, why wouldn’t she tell us?’ I said. ‘She can see how upset your sister is.’

‘Because she’s nine years old?’ Natalia said. ‘And because children sometimes have secrets.’

‘She’s probably just worried about her cousin.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’ll talk to her,’ Petro stood up. ‘Sometimes she talks to me.’

I looked at him. ‘Really? About what?’

Petro shrugged and there was the trace of a smile in his eyes. A small victory for him. A moment of subdued pride. ‘Nothing much,’ he said. ‘Sometimes we talk, that’s all.’

‘Fine. Talk to her.’

Outside I could hear voices.

‘It’s Dimitri,’ Natalia said, going to the window. ‘He’s with some of the other men.’

‘Coming here?’

‘Looks like it.’

Viktor went to stand beside his mother, but I remained where I was, wondering what else could happen today.

‘No,’ Viktor said. ‘They’re going round the back. Where Lara said they were playing.’ He looked at me. ‘Maybe we should help.’

The sound of voices outside grew quiet again as the group of searchers moved away.

‘They’ll find her,’ I said. ‘They don’t need us.’

‘You mean they don’t deserve your help?’ Natalia said. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’

I picked up the photograph on the table and studied the family burned onto it. A trick of light that captured an image and stored it as if it would exist for ever. A family that had no inkling of what the future held for it. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

‘She’s your niece .’

I could feel their eyes on me as I stared at the photograph. ‘They don’t need my help.’

‘Of course not,’ Natalia said. ‘There are enough of them.’

‘Right.’

‘And they’re good men.’

‘Are they?’

‘Mostly, yes, I think they are, Luka. You’ve said yourself that they’re afraid, and people do bad things when they’re afraid. Rash things.’

‘ We didn’t.’ I looked at her.

‘No, but I know you too well, Luka Mikhailovich. I know what’s in your heart, even when you try to hide it from me.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I can see it,’ she said. ‘You think you should’ve done more to stop them. You feel like it’s your fault too.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘No, it isn’t. And that’s what makes you even more angry – they put you in that position.’

I opened my mouth to reply, but caught my words when Petro came out from the other room, holding the door wide. ‘I think they’ve found something.’

‘Found what?’ Natalia asked after a moment of silence. ‘What have they found?’

‘Come and look.’

Standing at the back window, my knees against the bed, I could see much of the area behind the house. To the left, the side of our barn. There was a small yard, the snow trampled and kicked into furrows and tracks that came from everywhere and went nowhere. So many times had the ground outside been trodden over the past two days. The sled, the animals, the mob that had lynched a man from a naked tree, and now this.

The group of men, I counted seven of them, had gone through the yard, looking for the place where Lara and Dariya had been playing. Beyond, there was an open field, white, glistening in the orange light from the falling sun. There was a patch of disturbed snow just on the other side of the fence where Lara must have been because I could see how the snow had been built up into balls, and I knew she and Dariya liked to roll the snow.