Dan Smith - The Child Thief

‘You’re well armed.’ The first soldier kept his rifle pointed at me.

I shrugged, feeling the cold circling.

‘What are you doing out here?’

‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m looking for my daughter. I need to go after her, she’s very young and she… Look.’ I pointed at the tracks. ‘You can see where she’s gone. I have to follow her.’

The mounted soldier leaned down to take the revolver from Andrei, sitting straight in the saddle again, inspecting it. ‘Search him.’

Andrei ran his hands over my shirt and trousers, turning to shake his head when he found nothing.

‘Have you seen a young woman and an old man?’ The first soldier asked.

‘I’ve seen no one.’

The young man stuck the revolver into his belt and sniffed. He put his fingers under the peak of his budenovka to scratch his head and stared down at me. ‘They were supposed to be coming this way; coming to report to the commander in Sushne. We were following their tracks along the road and then… and then no tracks.’ He reached into a pocket and took out a packet of papirosa cigarettes, his rifle waving in my face as he steadied it with one hand. He pinched the tube and put it into his mouth. ‘What do you make of that?’

I shook my head.

‘But what would you think? If their tracks just stopped?’

‘I wouldn’t know what to think.’ I could feel the cold air around me. I’d been warm under the coat, had even sweated a little from the exertion of trying to move quickly, the adrenalin from confronting the child thief, and now the sweat was cooling in the wind that blew along the road.

‘It was like they just vanished,’ the soldier said.

I glanced over to the trees again, wondering if my sons were there yet.

The young soldier followed my gaze. ‘Something there?’ he asked. ‘Or are you thinking you can make it to the trees?’

‘What? No. I told you, I’m looking for my daughter.’

The second soldier, Andrei, glanced out towards the trees. ‘How old is she?’

‘Eight years old,’ I said, trying to catch his eye. ‘Her name is Dariya. Let me go after her.’

‘How long has she been missing?’

‘A few hours. Please. She’s just a little girl and she’s lost out here in the cold.’

‘Only eight years old?’ He studied me, pursing his lips, as if considering my plea.

‘What does it matter?’ said the first soldier, making his comrade look up at him. ‘One less kulak.’

‘No, we’re not kulaks, we’re—’

‘You’re all kulaks,’ he said. ‘All trying to keep your wealth to yourselves. Hide it from those that have nothing; people who are willing to work.’

‘ We have nothing.’ I spoke to the man standing beside me. I could feel he was more sympathetic. Perhaps he might be able to influence his comrade. ‘Please, I need to find her. Look.’ I pointed again. ‘You can see her tracks. She went along the road. Please. Just let me follow her. Come with me.’

The mounted soldier shook his head. ‘All you ever do is lie. You’re all enemies of the people.’

‘I’m telling the truth.’

‘Maybe we should follow these tracks now,’ Andrei said. ‘We’re going that way anyway.’

‘He’s trying to trick us. Trick us so he can run.’ The mounted soldier stared down at me. ‘You think you can run?’

‘No. No, I’m just looking for—’

‘Take off your boots.’

‘My boots?’

‘There are tracks, Yakov.’ Andrei said. ‘And they are small. Maybe he’s telling the truth.’

‘Shut up.’

‘We could follow them.’ He turned to look along the road. ‘If he’s lying, we’ll arrest him – it doesn’t make any difference.’

Yakov turned to look down at his comrade, contempt in his eyes and on his lips. ‘You’re right about that – it makes no difference. Lying or not, we’re going to arrest him.’ He turned back to me. ‘Take off your boots.’

‘Let him keep them,’ said Andrei. ‘He’s done nothing wrong.’

‘He’s a kulak. Take them off.’

I hesitated, looking first at Andrei, then up at Yakov. I wondered if I was quick enough to overpower these two young men, but my question was answered by a vicious and powerful blow. The man on horseback thrust the barrel of his rifle hard into the place where my neck met my collarbone, a sharp and sudden pain which took me by surprise and dropped me to my knees, gasping for breath.

‘Take off your boots or I’ll kill you right here.’

I coughed, putting a hand to the place where Yakov had hit me, and I sucked air into my lungs before looking up at him, wanting to drag him from his horse and beat him for what he’d done.

‘Take them off.’ Yakov pointed the rifle at my face, and I had no doubt he would use it if I didn’t do as he instructed.

I nodded and pulled the boots off, leaving them in the snow.

‘All right,’ Yakov said. ‘Now there’s no running away. Now there’s only walking.’ He motioned ahead of him with the barrel of his rifle. ‘Go on, tsarist. Start walking.’

Andrei collected my satchel and rifle, putting them across his back before he picked up my boots. He looked at me, but only caught my eye by accident, and there was something like shame in his expression. He was not comfortable; this was not what he wanted; he was doing his job. Yakov, though, was enjoying himself.

‘I’m no tsarist,’ I said.

‘You’re whatever I say you are. Go on. Walk.’

It was only a matter of minutes before my feet were numb and I felt nothing of the ground upon which I walked. I might have been walking on a bed of feathers or a field of the sharpest nails, it wouldn’t have mattered. And as the sun dropped from the sky, the temperature fell with it and the cold wind plucked at my clothes, finding its way through. I stayed upright, head straight, eyes ahead. I was a soldier. I had marched in the cold before. But I was older and my age punished me as if it were scornful of what I’d become. My steps were laboured. I was exhausted, hungry, and with no feeling in my feet I couldn’t help stumbling from time to time. And every time I fell to my knees, the riders stopped behind me and waited for me to stand and begin walking again. If I took too long, Yakov would edge forward and prod me with the barrel of his rifle, digging at my ribs, my spine, the back of my head. He had learned to poke at the places where the bone was close to the skin.

Ignoring the pain, I focused on the footprints ahead. The only prints on the road. Dariya’s small feet leading the way; her amazing, resilient little feet that had endured so much walking and so much horror and yet walked on. I stared at those prints and kept my mind away from the cold and the snow and the riders behind. I thought of Natalia at home, sitting with Lara, wondering when I would return with the boys. And I thought about my sons following, wondering when I would hear their first shot, waiting for the moment when they would shoot these two men from their horses and come for me.

But when we rounded the last corner and I saw the village ahead, I knew my sons were not going to rescue me.

Dariya’s trail led all the way to the village, where it disappeared in the clutter of a thousand prints crossing and re-crossing the paths between the houses and through the centre of the village. Here the snow was trampled by the feet of many people and horses and carts.

‘Over there,’ Yakov ordered.

I had been to Sushne before, a few years ago, when times were good. It was much like Vyriv, but larger. There were houses arranged around a central space, with others lying behind them. Families had expanded; new people had come to live here during the good years, and so the village had grown and houses had been built. Far to the left a simple church with a belfry that stood empty. To one side of the church’s broken steps, the bell lay on its side, half the height of a man, a great piece smashed from it so it would never ring again. There was evidence of the path it had taken when the soldiers had cast it from the tower, the great weight of a symbol of faith and calling, free-falling to the steps, where it shattered the concrete, powdered the balustrade and fractured.