Child Thief (29 page)

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.

Two men in uniform, rifles over their shoulders, stood at the base of those damaged steps, leaning against a part of the balustrade that was still intact. They were smoking cigarettes and looking in our direction. I didn't need to see the man behind me to know this was where he wanted me to go. This was
where
they had made their jail in Sushne.

I walked on, heading towards the church, drawing no looks because there was no one in the street to watch me. There was no one outside but the two soldiers by the steps and the two behind me on horseback.

The sun had almost set now, the sky was dark with cloud, and there were lights on in some of the windows. Weak lights that flickered and melted the frost that had formed on the glass.

When I reached the steps of the church, the two soldiers came
forward, flicking their cigarettes away and moving to either side of me, taking my arms.

‘Put him with the rest,' said Yakov, and I heard his horse turn and move away.

The soldiers said nothing. They gripped me tight and bustled me up the steps as if I had resisted. One of them put his booted foot against the door and pushed it open.

Inside, the church was dim and smelled of stone and wood. It was a simple building, like the one in Vyriv, perhaps a little larger. From this place of faith, however, all traces of religion had been stripped away. The simple wooden benches, once arranged before the altar, were now swept aside and roughly piled around the edges. Some of them had been broken with boots and axes, kicked and cut for easy firewood. The altar itself had been stripped of its adornment and was now just a sturdy wooden table in the centre of the room. While it had once been pristine and well cared for, it was now functional and basic. Upon it there were no candlesticks, but there were candles, stuck in their own wax to secure them to the uneven surface. One or two of the candles were burning with strong flames that danced in the breeze from the open door, trailing capillaries of black smoke, giving enough light to see the wooden crucifix discarded on the table and dark patches on the walls where icons had been removed. They had been smashed and burned in the centre of the village along with any other symbols of religion.

The soldiers' boots were loud on the stone floor, the pad of my own bare feet inaudible as we went to the far end of the church, where there was a single door in the wall. We stopped a few feet from it, and one of the soldiers released his grip, running his hands over my clothes, squeezing my pockets, feeling for any belongings. The other stepped forward, taking a key from his belt, and when the first soldier had finished searching me, the second unlocked the door and his comrade pushed me into the blackness.

The door shut behind me and the key turned in the lock.

I stood while my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. The smell was not of wood and stone in there, but of sweat and fear. Of human waste.

The air was thick with it, closing around me.

‘Who is that?'

A single voice in the dark. A man speaking Ukrainian. Then a cough.

The blackness became grey as my eyes took in what light was available, but I could still see very little inside that room. I guessed it was the place where the priest would have prepared for mass, and that it had no windows, explaining the minimal light.

‘Who is it?' The same voice. Weak. An old man with a dry throat.

‘No one,' I answered, putting my hands to the door, running my fingers around its edges, feeling its contours. I could hear the receding footsteps of the soldiers and I put an ear to the wood, listening until they had gone. Then I took the handle and shook the door, barely even rattling it in its frame, it was so solid and well set. I felt the keyhole and crouched to look through into the church, but there was little to see other than the table with the crucifix and the candles burning on it. I felt further, testing the large iron hinges, slipping my fingertips beneath the door and trying to find any way it might open.

‘We'Ve all tried it,' said the voice. ‘Every one of us.'

I stopped, stood, took a step forward, my feet catching on something that moved and pulled away, accompanied by a sharp intake of breath. A person's leg, outstretched.

‘I' m sorry.'

‘Sit down,' said a voice, this one different, but with the same dryness, the same weariness. ‘Sit down before you hurt some–one.'

I touched the section of wall beside the door and put my back to it, sliding down, grateful for the relief in my legs.

Reaching out, I pulled one foot up, lodging it on the knee
of my other leg and rubbing some life back into it. Already the feeling was coming back and the intensity of the pain was increasing.

‘You're from this village?' said the first voice.

‘No.'

‘What's your name?'

I hesitated. ‘Luka Mikhailovich.'

‘Ah. Luka. A strong name. You'll do well. You'll survive with a name like Luka. It's the Mishas and the Sashas that find it hard. My name is Konstantin Petrovich. Kostya. That's a good name too.'

By now my eyes had begun to accept the tiniest light which filtered through the keyhole and beneath the door, and I could see the faint shadow of the man who had spoken. He sat opposite, against the other wall, but he shifted when he spoke his name, and I understood he was holding out his hand.

I leaned forward and took it.

‘Our fellow prisoners,' he said, ‘are my brother Evgeni Petrovich and my neighbours Yuri Grigorovich and Dimitri Markovich.'

I immediately thought of the man whose daughter I had come to find. My own brother-in-law, Dimitri, lying dead in a field with his wife waiting for him at home, but I turned my head, looking for the dark smudges of the other men, reaching out and shaking their hands in a solemn act of mutual understanding.

‘But there are no formalities here,' said Yuri Grigorovich. ‘We're all friends. Call me Yuri.'

‘Where are you from?' Kostya asked. ‘What village?'

Even here, among these other prisoners, I wanted to protect my home from the men who might destroy its heart. I didn't know the people with whom I was imprisoned, but I knew of the OGPU and I knew of the activists sent to control our land. Any of these men might be here to gain my trust, find out something that might be of use to them. There were people everywhere, well placed and well trained to turn neighbour against neighbour,
husband against wife, father against son. Any one of them might be a spy.

‘No village,' I said. ‘I live alone with my daughter, close to the forest.'

‘No wife?'

‘No. The famine was not kind to us.' I hated saying it, denying my own wife.

‘I'm sorry to hear it. You farm?'

‘Nothing to speak of. I hunt for food and skins.'

‘So what brings you here?' asked Kostya, then he chuckled to himself, a low throaty sound that again made me picture him as an old man, his skin beaten by the weather, his hands hardened by years of working on the land. ‘I think you probably should've stayed in the forest.'

‘I'm looking for my daughter,' I said.

‘Your daughter?'

‘She's lost.' I took my foot in my hands and began rubbing again.

‘How does one lose their daughter?' asked Yuri.

‘It's a long story.'

‘We have a long time.'

‘She wandered off, that's all. I was following her tracks when the soldiers found me on the road.'

‘That's unlucky.'

‘Do you know anything about her?' I said.

For a while the men were silent. No one spoke.

‘Have I said something to offend you?' I asked.

‘Tell him why you're here, Dima.'

I waited for Dimitri Markovich to speak. He cleared his throat, shuffled a little, moved against the hard stone floor.

‘A girl came into the village this afternoon.' Like the others, his throat was dry, his voice tight in his throat. He sounded as if he had resigned himself to his fate, sitting in that dark room.

‘A girl?' I asked, sitting up straight. ‘Did you see her? Was she all right?'

‘She came and she stood, waiting for someone to see her, to say something, but no one dared go to her.'

‘Was she
hurt
?' I asked, feeling my anxiety rise, but it was as if he didn't hear me.

‘No one … no one dares to even come out of their home for fear of being brought to the church, or their husband being taken away in the night. Or their children. But I saw her from my window, so I went out. My wife tried to stop me, but I went anyway. You see, we had a daughter and—'

‘Was she hurt?' I asked him again, wanting to reach over and grab him, shake the answer out of him. ‘The girl who came into the village. Was she
hurt
? It's important you remember.'

‘When I got to her, she just stood there, saying nothing. She didn't even look at me.'

‘I need you to tell me how she was,' I said, trying to stay calm. ‘Please.'

When he spoke again, there was a low grumble behind his voice. ‘I'm sorry. She had a lot of blood on her. On her face and on her hands and her clothes. In her hair.'

‘Her hair?' I tried not to think of the scalp we'd seen hanging from the tree. ‘What about her hair?'

‘Beautiful,' he said. ‘But there was blood.'

‘She had her hair?'

‘Yes. Yes, of course, but she was …' His voice trailed away. He was either remembering or he was reluctant to go on, but my attention had slipped for a moment. All I could think was that the scalp
wasn't
Dariya's. I almost hadn't dared to believe it before. But now, with Dima's words, it seemed even more real. That terrible obscenity had not been hers.

‘Tell me what happened,' I said. ‘Tell me about Dariya.'

‘That's her name? Dariya?'

‘Yes.'

‘I tried to talk to her, but one of the soldiers came over and shouted at her, asking where the blood was from. She said nothing so he shook her like she was going to fall to pieces. It was like she was switched off. She made no sound at all. No
reaction. Nothing. He shook her and shook her, asking who she was, and she stayed silent, her body moving like she was a pile of rags. She just stared ahead of her. Staring and staring like she'd seen something terrible and it was still fixed right in front of her. I wanted to tell him to stop shaking her but I was afraid he would punish me. I was a coward.'

‘No,' Kostya said. ‘Not a coward.'

‘But then he hit her, slapped her so hard he knocked back her head, and when he raised his hand to slap her again, I felt like my blood was going to boil. Before I knew it, I grabbed his hand and when I realised what I'd done, I begged him not to hit her again. I got to my knees and begged him. So he hit me. He hit me over and over, shouting how could I question a soldier of the state, and when I fell, he started kicking me. He kicked me so hard I don't remember them bringing me in here.'

‘And Dariya?'

‘I don't know,' Dima said. ‘I wish I could tell you.'

‘I have to get out of here.' I turned back to the door, pulling at the handle, raking my fingernails over its solid surface. ‘I have to find her.'

‘There's no getting out of here,' said Kostya. ‘Not until they come to take us out.'

‘I have to,' I said, trying to find purchase on the door, a way of opening it. Then I turned my fists on the wood, beating it as if with two hammers, venting the frustration and rage that had grown these last few days.

The other men left me to my madness as I rattled the door in its secure frame, and when my energy abandoned me, I stopped, putting my forehead against the cold wood. ‘I made a promise,' I said. ‘I made a promise.'

‘Sit down.' Yuri put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Save your energy for later.'

‘Later?'

And there was a silence in the room. I sensed the men turning to each other in the darkness, something unspoken passing among them. But I knew. I'd seen things that would make
these men cry out in their sleep, and I knew what was coming later. I understood at least a part of what was going to happen to me.

I reached up and put my own hand on Yuri's. I patted it and then took it from my shoulder. ‘You're right,' I said, turning, sitting once again. ‘You're right.'

I sat on the stone floor once more, leaning my head back to rest on the wall, my mouth falling open. I thought about poor Dariya and everything she'd had to endure. She'd seen her father raise a rabble to hang a man from the old tree in the centre of the village. She'd become dependent on the man who had stolen her from her family, and she'd eventually murdered him in a most horrible manner. It was little surprise she was silent when she came into Sushne, thinking she had found safety.