Dan Smith - The Child Thief

‘Kostya.’

‘Hm?’

‘Stay awake.’

‘Mm.’

‘Stay awake. They’ll come for us soon. Take us back to the warm room. We’re no good to them dead. If we’re dead we can’t work.’

The look in Kostya’s eyes was distant, as if he wasn’t seeing anything at all. His face contorted now into something that looked like a smile.

‘What?’ I asked. ‘What is it?’ My teeth hammered together as he spoke.

‘I don’t want them to come for me,’ he said, closing his eyes. ‘Not now. Don’t let them take me.’ His voice was slow and thick.

‘What are you talking about?’ Speaking aloud brought pain to my head. The place where Lermentov had struck me with the bottle. I could feel where the blood had dried or frozen on my skin.

‘I think I’ll go now. Find somewhere warm. In the field in summertime.’

‘What?’

‘Summertime. It’s so beautiful. I’ll go into the field.’

‘Kostya, stay here. Look at me and stay here.’

He had stopped shivering. His breathing was slow and heavy.

‘Kostya, you need to focus.’ I shuffled close so our bodies were touching. Kostya still had some warmth left in him, but his skin was as cold as the floor we were lying on. ‘We need to keep warm.’ For some men hypothermia took longer than for others, but once the cold found its way in, it was almost impossible to get warm again.

‘I am warm.’

‘What? Please,’ I said. ‘Look at me.’

Kostya opened his eyes again, our faces so close that I could feel his weak and sporadic breaths.

‘Tell me about your family,’ I said.

‘This is easier.’

‘What about your brother?’

‘Hm?’

‘Evgeni. Your brother.’

‘He’ll be fine. The harvest will be fine.’

‘Kostya.’

‘Let me sleep now. It’s easier. So easy.’ His eyelids drifted down and his eyes rolled as if he were falling into a drunken sleep.

I nudged against him, trying to wake him, saying his name. ‘Kostya. Wake up. Kostya.’

But Kostya did not open his eyes again.

I continued to say his name, feeling the weakness in my own voice, sensing the drowsiness descending over my own mind. I pulled myself as close to Kostya as possible, taking the last of his warmth, listening for his breathing as my own eyes began to close and I struggled to remember where I was and how I had come to be here. So I told Kostya about my family. About my sons and my daughter. About my wife Natalia, waiting at home, baking fresh bread, preparing hot soup. It was warm in the kitchen and our children were sitting at the table. Outside, spring had come and the steppe was green and lush.

And when the soldiers came to get me, just a few minutes later, Kostya was no longer breathing.

Without making eye contact they dragged me back into the cell, throwing my trousers and shirt behind me. Lermentov wasn’t anywhere in sight, nor did I see them take Kostya’s body away.

I could barely move to get my clothes, let alone put them on, but the others knew what to do. They had been in there long enough to run through the motions. They helped me dress, and they rubbed my skin with their grubby hands, trying to encourage the circulation of my blood. They pressed about me, like a nightmare in the dark, their filthy bodies washing around me like the undead stinking of the grave, but I was grateful for their care and their kindness. They were keeping me alive. Evgeni, Yuri, Dimitri. These good men were doing what they could to save my life, just as they had kept each other alive and sane while incarcerated, not knowing what their fate might be. It was a touching and human gesture, given without thought.

After the freezing cold of the bell tower the room felt like a furnace, and I knew I’d been lucky when I felt life returning to my body and the feeling returning to my fingers and toes. And when I was able to move, I pushed up against the wall and felt two of the others press on either side of me, lending me the only thing they had left. Their warmth.

Later, when the soldiers threw in a few pieces of bread and a tin bowl with a few mouthfuls of water, Evgeni collected it and tore the bread, passing a piece to each man, saying in a quiet voice that he’d save a piece, put it in the corner of the room in case any of us needed it later. It was incredible how those men had managed to remain sane in the obscurity of that room, feeling their way in the dark, and still have the capacity to make provision for later. All instinct was to devour whatever was put through the door, not to save it. And how easy it would be for one man to creep over in the darkness and steal the last piece of bread.

I ate the scraps like a rat, crouched against the wall, gnawing at it to make it last. Tasting every tiny bite, I kept the bread in my mouth until my saliva melted it to a paste, and even then I held it behind my lips until it dissolved to nothing. I ran my tongue about my teeth, savouring every last crumb. And when we had eaten, we passed the bowl around, taking tiny sips until there was almost no water left and Evgeni poured it into the cup he’d handed to me last night.

‘I saw Kostya,’ I said.

‘You spoke to him?’ Evgeni asked after some time.

‘Yes.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He was happy,’ I told him. ‘He said it was easy. That everything would be easier.’

‘How did he look?’

‘Cold and tired.’

‘Beaten?’

‘I didn’t notice anything.’

‘Good. That’s good. Thank you for being with him.’

I drew my knees close and wrapped my shaking arms around them, burying my face and staring at the blackness, trying not to think about what would happen now, about Kostya lying cold and dead in the bell tower. I thought instead about Dariya, and hoped someone was looking after her.

And with those thoughts I tried to keep awake. I didn’t want to talk to the other men right now, and they didn’t attempt to speak to me, but I was afraid to sleep. I didn’t even want to close my eyes for fear that I might not care what happened to me. Like Kostya, I might decide that to die would be easier than to keep fighting and fulfil my promise to Lara. But however hard I tried, my mind kept going back to the bell tower and to Kostya’s freezing body. Something about it made me think of what I had found in the hut. The child thief stiffened by the cold. And somewhere at the back of my mind there was a faint notion that something was wrong.

But whatever it was, it was beyond my grasp, lost when exhaustion finally claimed me into an easier world.

The next time the soldiers came to the room, they took Dimitri. He protested, shouting and struggling, but they held him tight and forced him to do as they demanded.

The rest of us remained quiet in our prison, listening to the voices behind the heavy wooden door but making out none of the words other than an occasional shout from Dimitri. The interview was brief, followed by footsteps and a short moment of stillness before they came back for Evgeni, who complied without any fight. His resistance was all gone.

Again the voices. The footsteps. The respite.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Yuri.

‘I don’t know, but they’re not being beaten. It’s something else.’ I stood and shuffled to the door, putting my eye to the keyhole. In the main hall of the church three men were sitting behind the table where I had been beaten. Lermentov was in the middle, in full uniform, the tunic clean as if new. Anatoly Ivanovich was on his right, holding his cap in his hands, his demeanour apologetic. To Lermentov’s left, another man. Like Anatoly, this third man was in civilian clothes, but his were in better condition and he sat upright and officious.