Child Thief (34 page)

‘I didn't do that to her, and you know it. If you really think I did, I wouldn't be here now. You'd have taken me into the forest and shot me.'

‘We don't shoot workers.'

‘That's not true.'

‘And if you didn't do it, then who did?'

‘Someone else.'

‘Who?'

‘Another man. He stole her and he cut her. Please. Go to my hut and you'll see. It's close to where your soldiers found me. The man who did that to her is dead.'

Lermentov put his elbows on the surface of the table and looked me right in the eye. ‘You killed a man?'

‘No. I didn't kill him.'

‘Then who?'

‘I …' I dropped my gaze and thought about what Dariya had done. ‘Yes. I killed him.'

‘So you're a murderer
and
a mutilator?'

‘No. I—'

‘It doesn't matter.' He leaned back again, drinking the last of the
horilka
but keeping the bottle in his hands, looking at it for a moment as if lamenting its emptiness. ‘You could be the Devil and it would be none of my concern. I'm not here to investigate your crimes. I'm here to make sure the peasants join the
kolkhoz
and that the kulaks are dealt with. As an officer of the OGPU, I
don't care what you've done; I'm not
that
kind of policeman. You could have cut a hundred children and it would be none of my business. My job is to feed the camps and to make you damn Ukrainians do as you're told.'

‘I' m Russian. Like you.'

‘I don't care. As a policeman, I don't care. But as a man …' Now he stared right into me. ‘As a
man
, I care what you've done. If there's even the slightest chance you did that to that little girl—'

‘So how do you justify how many children you've deported?'

Lermentov stared at me for a second, then told me the lie he must have told himself every night. ‘They're all in good health when they leave me.'

‘And their fathers?'

‘This is different.'

‘Different how? You destroy their lives. Don't try to justify it by saying it's your job; that you send them away in good health. You know what's going to happen to them. Their families too.'

‘Yes.' Lermentov clenched his hands into fists. He glanced at the guards before leaning forward and lowering his voice. ‘And I barely sleep at night. I do my job and I drink and I try to sleep and I hope that when this is finished I can go home to my—' He stopped and glanced away.

‘Family,' I said. ‘That's what you were going to say. Family. You have a wife. And a child?'

The policeman snapped his head round, setting his jaw tight.

It had been a guess, but I knew from Lermentov's reaction that I was right. And with that turn of the head – that telling change in the policeman's expression – came a strengthening of my resolve. Lermentov had a weakness that I could exploit. He was drunk and he had an Achilles heel. There was something that made this man human.

The policeman stared.

‘You do, don't you? A son? A daughter?'

He looked away.

‘A daughter. What's her name? How old is she?'

‘That's none of your business.'

‘No, but it's why you want to punish me. Because you think there's a
chance
I hurt Dariya. It gives you an excuse. But I didn't hurt her.
You're
punishing her by taking her away, don't you see that? By separating us,
you're
making her suffer.'

‘I do my job.' Lermentov held the bottle by its neck, his fist so tight his knuckles were white.

‘And you're punishing me because you hate that your job demands you send children to labour camps.'

‘I'm punishing you for what you did to her.'

‘And Dariya? Why punish her? Let her stay here. You know what happens to people on those trains. In those camps. Don't send her away. She'll die and you know it.'

‘Shut up.'

‘Please,' I said. ‘If you must punish me, then do it, but not Dariya. You have a daughter; I can see it in your eyes.'

‘
Shut up
.'

‘You know this is wrong.' I leaned forward, putting my fingers together as if in prayer. ‘You know that what you're doing is wrong. Would you do it to your own child?'

‘You know nothing of my own child. You, a man who cuts the flesh from little girls.'

‘I would never do that.'

‘Lies.' Lermentov spoke through his teeth. ‘No one tells the truth any more.'

‘Please,' I said. ‘Let her stay here. Think of your own daughter.' I stood, raising my hands, almost unable to control myself.

‘Sit down.'

I tried to reach out to Lermentov, not to hurt him but to plead with him. I wanted to put my hands on his tunic and pull him towards me, and for a moment I almost managed it. ‘Let her stay here. Let someone take care of her. Think of your own—'

But my words were cut short as Lermentov struck out with the bottle he was holding. He swung it hard against my head, the same place where he had hit me with the crucifix, and for a while I saw nothing. I heard nothing. My world was nothing.

The cold bit so hard that it hurt. There was a throbbing ache in my back that lived at the base of my spine and pulsated along its length. My fingers and toes were numb, and I couldn't feel my face. I opened my eyes and discovered a harsh pain in my head.

‘Luka?'

I took a deep breath of cold air that gripped my lungs and made me cough hard.

‘Luka?'

I tried to sit up, but my arms and legs wouldn't move and I felt a slow ease of panic creep into my consciousness. I fought to keep it away and concentrated on moving.

‘Luka?'

I ignored the voice and focused on my arms, but they refused to do as I wanted.

‘Luka, they tied you.'

That explained why I couldn't move. I wasn't paralysed, I was bound. My hands were tied together behind my back, and my feet were fastened with the same binding. I was roped like a pig that's to be slaughtered. I was also naked. Dehumanised. Made less than nothing.

I moved my head, hardly feeling my cheek scraping across the cold wooden floor, but the voice was coming from behind me, so I couldn't see who was speaking. I took another deep breath and rolled over. The hard wood was cruel against my spine, my shoulders, my elbows. Arms and legs pulled against each other in their bindings and it was a struggle to turn so that I flopped without grace onto my other side and found myself staring at Konstantin Petrovich. Both of us naked but for our beards.

‘Are you all right?' I asked him.

‘Cold.'

‘Where are we?' I tried to look around, but my vision was restricted. By my head there was a wall and by my feet a construction that had once supported a bell. We were in the belfry. I had seen the bell when I first came to the village, broken and abandoned by the church steps, a symbol of the casting out of
religion. The wall that ran around this part of the bell tower was low, probably waist height if I were to stand, and I could just about see over it to the sky beyond. It was night. There was a pitched roof over us, and in its beams old cobwebs shifted in the wind.

‘How long have I been here?'

‘A few minutes.' Kostya's voice was weak.

I tried to remember how long it had been between Kostya leaving the prison room and Lermentov coming to interrogate me. It wasn't long, but it was long enough for a man to be close to death. Beaten and left to freeze in the bell tower.

‘You married?' I asked Kostya.

‘No.'

‘My wife … she doesn't know where I am.' I looked at Kostya and saw he was crying. There were tears on his cheeks and frozen patches in his beard. There was blood on his face too, places on his body where he had been beaten. Some of the bruises were old – they had spread the width of his thighs, covered his upper arms and shoulders. There were other marks on his chest, almost a perfect match for the base of the same crucifix Lermentov had used to beat me.

‘I don't want to die,' Kostya said.

‘You won't,' I told him.

‘It's so cold.'

‘But we're sheltered.' It was difficult to speak, my teeth chattered so much. My whole body shook with the cold, and I still couldn't feel my fingers and toes. ‘And they'll come for us. We're precious workers; they won't let us die.'

‘It'll be too late.'

‘No,' I said. ‘We'll be fine.'

Kostya closed his eyes, squeezing them tight. This close to him, and with just enough light from the stars and the moon, I saw how his wrinkles were exaggerated by the expression, lines spreading from the corners of his eyes and reaching into his hairline. They were not lines that had grown from years of laughter; they
were the marks of a hard life. A man who had aged before his time.

‘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.

26

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.