Red Winter (5 page)

‘Who was it?’ I almost didn’t dare speak. Galina was like a sensitive switch that had settled on sanity for a moment and I feared that if I disturbed her now, she would slip back to the confusion and bewilderment she’d shown before.

‘The men shouted to the children, telling them to run, but they didn’t. They came out because they were so afraid and . . .’ She took her hand away from Sasha’s forehead as if realising for the first time that he was dead. ‘And then he killed my poor Sasha anyway. He swung his sword over and over and over, and the children were screaming, and there was so much blood, and . . .’ She hung her head and sobbed, and I had to resist my need to press her.

‘I had a knife,’ she said, but I could barely hear her voice now. ‘For the mushrooms. I came out of the woods behind him. I should have done it earlier, but I thought he would stop. I thought he would stop before he did this to my Sasha, but he didn’t and then I had . . . I had nothing to lose anymore. He took my Sasha, so I came out of the woods and stuck it in him, but it just made him angry. The knife went in and came out, and there was blood, but all it did was make him angry.’ She ran her fingers along her dead husband’s leg and I saw the pain she felt at his loss. I had felt it too, with the passing of my brother, Alek, and I faced it again with the disappearance of my family.

‘I couldn’t save anyone. He just took my knife and did this . . .’ She turned to me, raising a hand to touch the cheek beneath her empty socket, and with that action, and the way the darkness fell across her face, the injury was obscured so that she was no longer a hag. Now she was just a helpless and distraught old woman who was forced to mourn her husband.

‘I should have buried him,’ she said. ‘I should have . . . You’ll do it, won’t you, Alek? You’re a good man.’

‘Of course. But tell me about the others. What happened to everybody else? The women and the children?’

She turned to look at me, her brow wrinkling in puzzlement. ‘They must have thought I was dead. I heard him say, “Throw her in the lake,” but I couldn’t see. There was too much blood and pain, and I tried to tell them I was still alive, but I couldn’t speak. I might have screamed. There was screaming, I’m sure, but it’s like I was dead already and then their hands were on me and I felt the water and . . .’ Galina stopped. ‘Oh.’ She said. ‘The lake. The water.’

‘What
then
?’ I saw that I was losing her. The lucidity was leaving her. ‘What happened then, Galina?’

‘
You
have to look after them now,’ she said. ‘You have to take care of them. Bury Sasha and find the others. And find Koschei. Find his death.’

‘Where are they? Can you tell me any—’

‘Koschei took them.’

‘Where? Where did he take them?’ I wanted to rip the memories out of her.

‘Please,’ she said, reaching out to touch the pocket where she had seen me put the revolver. ‘Use it. Use your pistol and let me go to my husband. I’ve done what I had to. I’ve told you what happened. Now it’s up to you. Please, Alek, let me be with Sasha.’

‘No.’ I knocked her hand away. ‘Tell me about the others.’ I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘What happened to the others?’ I was losing control of myself, desperate to wrestle the answer out of her. I had been patient enough. I had waited long enough. I had earned my answers.

But Galina just dropped her head, saying, ‘No. No. No,’ and when I saw the blank expression in her eye, I knew I was only driving her madness deeper.

When I released her, Galina turned towards the lake without looking at me. I watched her approach the edge of the water. It was still early winter and the ice was only a thin crust, so it broke when she put the toes of her boots to it. Then she took another step, her foot crunching into the freezing water.

‘What are you doing?’ I called. ‘Galina?’

Before I could reach her, Galina had waded into the lake so she was knee deep in the water, fragments of broken ice floating about her, tangling with the skirt that spread about her on the surface.

I stopped at the edge and waited for her to turn round, but instead she began to take off her coat.

‘Galina?’

She dropped the coat to one side and unbuttoned her cardigan.

‘Galina.’ I waded into the water, but as soon as I touched her, she snatched away.

‘Leave me,’ she hissed. ‘Let me go.’

I tried to pull her back once more, but she resisted, trying to push me from her.

‘So much pain,’ she said. ‘Let it be gone.
You’re
here now.
You
can look after them. I can go.’

‘Don’t do this,’ I said, putting my arms around her from behind, preventing her from going any deeper.

‘Let me go, Alek,’ she cried. ‘Please.’

‘Tell me about the others,’ I shouted. ‘Where are they?’

‘They’re gone.’ Galina struggled. ‘All gone. Let me go too. Let me be with them.’

I held on to her, pleading with her until I knew it was useless. She had told me all she would – all she was
able
to – and she had made up her mind what she wanted. Something inside me didn’t blame her for wanting it, but there was something else too: a dirty thought telling me Galina would be a burden, that this way would be better for both of us. It was a notion that left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I had learned long ago to find priorities, to shut out emotion and put some thoughts and actions before others. There was nothing I could do for Galina now and nothing she could do for me. I had to think of Marianna and the boys. They were all that mattered. Everything I did had to be for them.

Perhaps this was better for both of us.

So, with a heavy heart, I released Galina and stood back, half expecting her to turn and curse me, but all she did was take off her cardigan and drop it into the water.

‘All of them gone.’ She was lost to the world now and moved deeper into the water, removing her clothing as she went, breaking through the wafer-thin layer of crust. ‘All gone.’

By the time she was waist deep, her upper body was naked. Her arms were thin, and her spine protruded from her back. There was almost nothing of her and I wondered how she could have survived alone.

She pushed out into the water and disappeared beneath the ice.

I waited a long time to see if she would resurface. Visions of my own mother in the water haunted me, her hair washing about her head.

But the lake settled, the ice came together, and Galina was gone.

The light was enough to search the clearing, but I found no evidence of the women and children or the other men from the village. I ventured a little further into the woods, following the sound of the crows, which cawed unseen among the tangled branches. Something was attracting them, but the trees were dense here and it was too dark to see. Alone like that, it was easy to feel eyes watching me, the demons of the forest waiting for me to lose my bearings. Koschei himself might be waiting in there with his sword, and the thought of it unnerved me, making me draw my revolver and stare into the darkness.

I floundered in the impenetrable night among the knotted and crowded trunks for only a short time before I lost my nerve. I would come back in the morning to look again. I had to find
something
to tell me where Marianna and the children had gone, but now was not the time. I tried not to think what might have happened to them, ignoring the crows and telling myself they were still alive. There were no other bodies by the lake, nothing in the village, and I would find them in the morning. The cold reality of the day would lead me to them.

Or perhaps the black birds would show me the way.

I hurried home as if the night terrors of the forest were close on my heels, and I drew the bolts tight. I checked the
izba
for uninvited guests then I changed into dry clothes and put Alek’s boots by the oven before I hung my coat and satchel by the door. I inspected the place where the floorboards were missing, bringing the candle close to the hole and kneeling to look in at the small crawlspace beneath the house where Galina had been hiding. I’d been in villages where peasants had made similar hiding places to hold back grain stores from requisitioning units, or to conceal sons and deserters. I wondered for which purpose Marianna had built this one. Perhaps I had inspired it on my last visit with my guarded talk of wanting to come home and of my loss of faith in the revolution. Or maybe it had been to hide Misha and Pavel, to protect them from forced recruitment into the army. Whatever it had been, it seems it had not been enough.

There was a lingering smell in there that reminded me of Galina, so I refitted the floorboards, pushing them down into place before I went back to the table and sat facing my brother.

‘There’s a dead man in the forest,’ I told him. ‘You remember Sasha Petrova? Galina’s husband? They cut off his head. And I think there may be more. Not just one or two like . . .’
Like when we did it
. I closed my eyes and shook my head. ‘I’m afraid it might be all of them, Alek.’ We had never done that. Never like that. ‘I’ll take you to Mama and Papa tomorrow.’ I looked at him. ‘Then I’ll find the others.’

I had only a few snatches of sleep during the night. I put my head on the table and jumped at every sound, every bluster of wind. Sometime in the early hours, a fox screamed from the forest. The noise tore through me like a blunt saw, filling me with a kind of terror I hadn’t felt since I was a child, and I sat for a long time before fetching blankets from the bedroom and returning to watch the fire in the
pich
burn itself out. I couldn’t risk it still being alight when the day broke, else someone might see the smoke. In the forest, the suspicions of being followed and watched had been a constant companion for Alek and me, and it had increased with Alek’s passing and my growing sense of loneliness. Deep down, I knew it had been a mistake to light the fire for Galina, but the warmth had been a blessing. Now, though, I had to focus on staying alive and free for Marianna and the boys. I had to be unseen.

By dawn, it was freezing inside the house. The walls retained some of the heat, but the night had been harsh, and when I dared look from the window, a thick frost had grown across the land. There was great beauty in it. The sparkle of the weak winter sun on the dappled layer of crystal. The dusting on the roofs of the houses and the dark trees beyond the river. The sails of the windmill glistened, and the mud in the road had frozen hard in peaks. Last night’s faint mist still swirled in the air as if I were seeing the world through cataracts.

My breath steamed against the window as I watched the morning rise and wondered at the strangeness of the world. The country was turning against itself, filled with anger and confusion. Men killed men, brutalised women and children, looked for ways to maim and destroy. There were fields where a thousand bodies lay frozen in death, yet the world seemed not to notice. The sun still rose, the frost still came, the rivers still flowed, and the dark forest still watched. When we were all gone, buried or burned, the trees would live on without us, watching the next generation grow in the place where the last had fallen. The river would give life to new people, the fields would feed them, and the sun would warm them in the summer. It didn’t make any difference what we did. We were only here for a few moments and all that mattered was making those small moments bearable; being where we wanted to be.

I wrapped my arms around myself and turned to look down at my brother.

‘The ground will be hard,’ I said.

Outside, the frost touched everything. It glittered on the steps and took on the prints of my boots when I went down onto the road. The air was fresh, and the wind carried a purity, as if it might be able to wipe everything clean with its freezing breath. It pinched at my cheeks and froze the hairs in my nostrils.

I looked each way along the road, but the village was as deserted as it had been when I arrived, so I went round the back, crunching the hard frost as I crossed the yard towards the outbuilding. I had to tug hard to pull open the door, which had frozen in place.

Kashtan nickered as I came in, and she moved over to greet me. The inside of the shed was warm, she had left her smell in there, and it gave me a good feeling to be close to her. Her bright chestnut coat was alive and vibrant, while everything else around me was grey and stripped of life.

I rubbed her nose and put my face against it, taking a deep breath and closing my eyes. I imagined climbing onto her right then, riding away from the silent village and whatever horror waited in the forest, but I couldn’t leave without checking for any sign of where Marianna and the others might be.

Something was attracting the crows; something more than a single beheaded man.

If I found nothing, I would head north to Dolinsk on the only track from the village and put my faith in God or fate or whatever it was that had so far forsaken me, but I had to look.

And I had another duty to perform. I had to bury my brother.

‘You stay here, Kashtan. I won’t make you carry him again. I have to do this. It’s my turn.’

Returning to the
izba
, I took Alek under the arms and hefted him up. For a moment we were face to face, almost as if we were about to embrace one another, and strong memories flooded me, making me pause to look at his face, to remember him as he had been. The older brother I had loved and hated as a child, just as brothers do.

I saw the sharp whiteness of the scar over his blanched upper lip, where he had fallen against the fence when he was eleven years old. The mottled marks on his neck caused by shrapnel he took in the Great War. His hair cut close against his scalp, a perfect job made by the company barber from the army I had encouraged him to join. Alek had wanted to come home then, even though he’d already received a letter about Irina’s passing, but I had persuaded him to join me in the revolution. He probably would have been conscripted anyway, as most men were, but I couldn’t help thinking that I had brought him to this.