USHAK

USHAK WRITTEN BY MICHAEL ASHTON

Š2014 KS PRODUCTIONS all rights reserved

ARTWORK by Kim Ashton (painting as Kim Davison)

Contact Kim Ashton at kim.ashton@ksproductions.com 00 44 7703 830 573 1|Page

PART 1

THE VILLAGE

1

The wars wiped out the stores of food which had been accumulated and the ardent sun made the fields dry. First people sold what they could sell but very soon even the suppliers were running out of produce and they didn’t want to barter things for food. So, as was an inevitable result, all the farm animals disappeared. Then, the people started to eat cats, dogs, vermin, birds, grass, and finally, when the ultimate taboo was overcome in desperation and the thirst for survival, they ate human beings. After the farm animals were gone the cats were always first, always the cats, because they would come with just a gentle word, and they had no fear. When it came down to human beings, it was always those too weak to defend themselves, or too young. It was best if they were too young to know what was happening; the younger the better. Well, that was the prevailing belief during the Povolzhye famine. A family in one village would exchange a baby, or an infant, for a baby or an infant from a neighbouring village. That was how it was. Cook and eat a stranger or eat a friend. The stranger ever is the loser.

The man squinted as he sighted on his prey. It was a faun, young, skinny, the ribs sticking out, the legs so thin it seemed scarce possible they would bear any weight. He drew in a deep breath and his finger began to squeeze on the trigger. Then he paused and looked up from the weapon.

2|Page

How had it survived? In this winter landscape in which even the meanest shoots and grasses struggled to poke a way up from the permafrost, and withered almost at once when they did. He watched as it dug a shiny hoof into the snow and scraped back and forth. He looked down again into the sight. But again, something made him pause. It could not be right to shatter the life of a creature that clearly had struggled to survive, and thus far, in this cruellest mid winter, it had succeeded. On the other hand, he had to think of his Sasha and Beatrice and the other sixty five members of his village community. He had heard what was going on throughout the country and how, in this time of terrible famine, things were happening that were affront to God and Man both. He had followed fat Drapaljo, the preposterous Mayor of the ramshackle village when he had ventured out into Povolzhye a month earlier and he had watched as he met with three men near the mountain road. He imagined darkly what conversation had passed between the men and he understood only too well what fate might take little Beatrice if he was not the only villager possessed of a gun, him and Sasha too more than likely if he did not kill this wretched pathetic creature. It would be the cooking pot for them all. They were Roma in a village of nine Russian families and two Jewish. That was enough and it explained all.

He had hoped for one of the white coated hares when he set off that morning into the forest. Or perhaps a sleek fat bodied mink. The fawn represented a bounty the ravenous villagers had not seen for months. It would be meat, not stew or a thin soup they would devour that night. And yet, what would it do if he spared the wretched creature? How many bellies would he deny a meal or two and how long would the animal survive?

He put his eye back to the sight and the fawn raised its head, slowly, so slowly, and turned to look at him as his finger started to squeeze. Large baleful eyes seemed to turn from black 3|Page

to golden brown and there was something knowing in them, as though the creature were waiting the strike, welcoming it even. “I’m sorry sestrenka” he said and pulled the trigger.

The fawn died instantly, dropping to the snow with a little thud that sent plumes of white up in a cloud spray, its blood pumping from the hole in its chest where the bullet had entered and stopped the heart.

Ushak sighed and stood and patted snow from his coat and his breeches. He regretted killing the fawn, and in better times he would not. Yet he understood that survival often demands courage or cowardice. Always there is a price to be paid and he did not know what this act meant.

He would take a choice piece for himself and the children but no more than was fair. He knew the villagers would quarrel amongst themselves over what he gave them, so he would butcher it where it lay and place the carcass in the sacks he had brought for the purpose. His knife was designed for such work, donated by Janek the Jew butcher. Not willingly surrendered mind, no, only a reasoned argument that without meat to cut and dress a butcher was useless as the empty paddocks which once had been full of livestock bought the blade. Janek donated it, Ushak used it, and the blacksmith Nishevin sharpened it. That such a small village had a smithies shop at all was a wonder, and it was thanks only to the Count’s insatiable love of racing thoroughbred horses. The villagers were not Kulaks exactly and would not warrant being considered landed, but the remoteness of the village nestling almost inside a forest at the foot of the Zhiguli Mountains in the Samara bend around which loops the mighty River Volga rendered them almost free of government interference. And once Count Tsilevich had fled the famine to Moscow it was wondered if anyone beyond thirty miles distant from their village even knew they existed.

4|Page

Ushak worked quickly at the carcass. Night fell without warning at that time of the year and the day was short and he guessed he would have a ten mile hike to reach home, perhaps more. As he worked, slicing, tearing, and chopping as he filled the sacks, his mind fell to musing as it often did. At forty years he was no longer a young man, but he was a strong one. He had often thought about packing everything up in the dead of night and taking the children and just leaving the selfish quarrelsome villagers to themselves. He had done it four years earlier when Beatrice was still a swaddling babe in arms and Sasha just eight years old.

He had brought them from an equally evil village in Romania, walking every step of the way, a thousand miles. The poverty of that place where his children had been born was no paucity compared to their home now and the famine, but poverty is a breeder of desolation in people, and that desolation leads on to anger, and in a place like Romania that anger had only one outlet. Ushak was Roma and so the children were Roma, but their mother, Dani, she was not. He smiled at a memory of her. He had loved her with a furious abandon, that was Ushak’s way, there were never any half measures, and she did love him, though when they came together she did not think it through, but he knew it and she knew it, she should never have married him, that’s what everyone said and it’s what he knew. She was young and beautiful and talented and he, he was just Ushak. The attraction for her escaped him.

She could dance like an angel, he knew about horses. She would sing in the morning and sing in the evening, he would sweat in a field for a few Leu. She lived in her dreams and was never meant for the scars of reality. Her nightmares only started when her eyes opened and she was awake. And Sasha and Beatrice? Well, he was aware that like him they were a part of that world she could not bear; the waking one. It was the world in the end she chose to reject. He didn’t blame her for leaving them or for the way it was done. One day a fine

5|Page

carriage drew up to the door and she was gone. The next day so too was Ushak and his children gone.

He sighed deeply and, his work done, he stood and wiped the knife and his hands on a rag which he stuffed one of the three sacks he had brought with him. The sacks he tied across his shoulders and taking up his rifle he prepared to set off back to the village. He gazed into the sky above the trees to where the Moon was now clearly visible and the sky darkening, with stars beginning to show. Only a wide stain on the ground betrayed where only moments earlier had lain the fawn. He had taken every scrap of meat, even the head. For so scrawny a beast the sacks weighed heavy on his shoulders, the string biting into his flesh.

He began to walk, chiding himself for the thoughts of leaving the village that had crowded unbidden into his mind. “No Ushak,” he told himself, “it cannot be. Even if everything within you screams it is what they deserve. Our lives are not our own to keep, you know this. We are for always bound to others, and those others are bound to the eternal cosmos. If you cannot find it within yourself to give yourself to others you cannot be part of the cosmos and though you live and breathe you are dead.”

Ushak moved with purpose between the frost clad hoary trees and beneath their bare spindly limbs, eager to be back at the village. Ushak did not want to be dead.

6|Page

2

The heads of the eleven families, to whom the single men and women were variously attached by relationship or, in some cases circumstance, gathered in Drapajlo’s barn. Janek the butcher examined the meat as it was being rationed out by Grigorivich, a thug of a man made sour by living and the company of fellow humans, and then he glared suspiciously at the sack Ushak had retained for himself still hanging from his shoulder. At the door to the barn women and children crowded in a noisy babble. Janek, a weasel with a childless wife whom he despised, looked to Drapajlo, who also noticed the sack, and then Grigorivich paused and looked too. Ushak hefted his rifle and Grigorivich turned his eyes and thrust the fawns gore spattered head into Michael Yura’s hands. The phlegmatic little Yura looked down with horror and gasped.

“The head?”

“Take it and be thankful it isn’t the ass!” Grigorivich spat back with a chuckle.

“I have five young to feed. What does mamma Yura do with this?”

“Boil it!” Janek roared. “Maybe if you eat the brains some might rub off!”

People laughed and Yura, a dark scowl on his face turned to his wife. Ushak took advantage of the diversion and turned and shoved his way through the throng to leave. As he passed his friend Isaac Rabinowitz he winked and whispered “See you tonight Issie?” Rabinowitz grinned and leaned in close to him, whispering back “still got a bottle that cherry brandy in my store. The vultures missed it.” Ushak moved on, glancing back to see Drapajlo and 7|Page

Grigorivich with their eyes on him. A shiver ran down his spine and it was a relief to be out into the night where the air was crisp and cold but clean.

Home for Ushak and his children was an old cattle shack in the forest. A respectable distance from the village, Count Tsilevich had explained. What he really meant was, away from supposed respectable folk. The shack had been a wreck when first he took it over but he had gone into the forest and cut timber and in no time it he had made it into a cosy home the children loved. He called it simply, as was his way, ‘the Cabin’. Not much perhaps, but it was home. He nailed his battered wooden crucifix to the wall beside the door and set the small statuette of Blessed Ceferino Gimenez Malia on a shelf he put up. The walls were solid, double timbered, and they were mud caulked. With the fire on the small cabin was indescribably cosy and when the children were asleep and Ushak dozing in the old chair before the flames his days of Roma wandering in his youth seemed a distant memory of another life.

That night they ate well of meat roasted and a gravy made from the juices. He had found some wild onion beside the track in the wood and though bitter they were a fine accompaniment to the meat. After, Ushak told the children stories from the shahnameh and Beatrice quickly fell asleep. He placed her in her little crib and kissed her and forgave that on this one night she did not say her prayers. He gazed down at her for a moment before drawing the curtain across, his heart almost bursting with pride and love. With her lustrous dark hair, large eyes, and flawless white skin she was an image of her mother. He felt a lump come to his throat. A knock at the door and Sasha crossing the room brought him back. The sound of Isaac Rabinowitz voice filled the room as he swept Sasha up in a bear hug that had

8|Page

the young boy giggling. Ushak drew the curtain across Beatrice’ crib and turned on them, eyes fierce but heart singing.

“Shush! Children!” He hissed. “Bea is asleep.”

Isaac released Sasha and the boy looked sheepish, as was ever the case if his father was angry or he thought he was. He pointed and said in a small voice.

“He started it papa.”

Isaac grinned and pulled his bottle of cherry brandy from inside his coat. Ushak indicated Isaac should sit and then he took his own chair, settling down in the glow of the fire. He pointed at the meat on a platter on a small table beside the wall.

“Will you eat Issie?”

Isaac grinned broadly at that question. He was a jolly whimsical fatalist by nature, though many found him sarcastic and trivial by turns. He shook his head ‘no’.

“They were kind enough to give me a hoof. I took it because that swine Drapajlo and his grinning ape Grigorivich expected a protest.”

“And your father?”

“A tail.”

Both men laughed but Sasha was horrified. In his young mind injustice was a palpable force of the Universe. It was something that could be measured, felt, touched, tasted, and eaten.

He could not believe the two adults were laughing. When they saw how it was affecting him the men stopped. Ushak beckoned him close and told him to sit.

9|Page

“You don’t understand it Sasha? It hurts because you don’t understand it.”

“I saw Mrs Horowitz hanging washing this morning. I took Bea for a walk.”

Isaac groaned and put his eyes heavenward. “She had a run in with Drapajlo this morning.

He told her to keep her kike brats out of his orchard. Orchard! I ask you. Sheesh! There isn’t a bud on any of the branches. Orchard.”

“What did she say to you Sasha?” Ushak asked.

“She called us friccs.”

Isaac shook his head at that. “It is a question of the hierarchy of the wretched young Sasha.

You will learn that as you grow older.”

“But papa,” and in this the youngster was genuinely perplexed, “why do they hate us so?”

Ushak was aware this was a thorny and important problem for his son. The temptation to chuckle and make a joke, to laugh it off, was strong. He resisted. Instead he fixed Sasha with an unwavering stare and he provided what he thought would be acceptable by way of answer. “It isn’t a question of simple hatred Sasha, or even in itself a simple question.”

“But everyone hates Roma papa,” Sasha protested. “Chaim Weissman told me. Katya Semyonovich and Alexandra Drapajlo too.”

Ushak and Isaac exchanged a look then and a deep sigh escaped from Ushak as he regarded his sons open honest featured face. He knew instinctively that whatever answer he gave now would shape his Sasha’s future forever more. He managed a smile before answering.

10 | P a g e

“It’s true. The world hates a Roma. Every last one is dirty, filthy, and a beggar or a thief, or both. That’s what they say.

“And is it true then papa? Is that what we are?”

Ushak did laugh then, but not unkindly. What a question to ask, he thought blithely, innocent but straight to the point. Truth. How could he explain truth to a twelve year old?

When a person is that age truth is singular. A thing is either true or it is not. There is no room for middle ground. But all the same Ushak felt a truthful answer for the best, even if painful when delivered. His eyes took in the expression on his friend Isaacs face and he knew he too was awaiting the answer. Ushak would tell his son the truth of their world, even if, far from settling the youngsters mind at ease it hurt him. He took in a deep draught of smoky air and fixed Sasha with an unflinching stare as he spoke.

“The truth Sasha? The truth is the whole world does hate and loathe the Roma, more even than it hates the Romanian, more even than it hates and loathes the poor, and they in their turn hate the Jew. But when it comes to it son, when even the Jew hates us who is there left to love us?”

“We don’t all hate you Ushak,” Isaac chimed in brightly.

Ushak laughed sardonically. “You are the exception to the rule Issie. Besides, even your own people hate you or you probably wouldn’t be sat there.”

Sasha stood abruptly. His pain and bewilderment were palpable things almost made substance. Ushak stood also and took his son by the shoulders and told him firmly. “You must become used to it Sasha now you are growing to be a man. You must bear it and you

11 | P a g e

must endure. We are the hated of the hated. Yes. For we are less than all others in their eyes.”

“Is that why mamma left us then papa? Because she hated us?”

The agony behind the question took Ushak by surprise. Sasha rarely made any reference to his mother and for a long time that troubled him. Beatrice was too young to know her but the boy had doted on her and she on him. He had no answer to give and there was an awkward pause after which Sasha followed up his question with another.

“Do they want us to die then papa? Is that what they want?”

“Die?” Ushak released a belly laugh, more relief the matter of Dani was dispensed with than anything else. “God no Sasha. Die? Why, if we died who would they have to look down upon and despise?”

Sasha looked unconvinced and Ushak leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead and told him, “Now go to bed. Enough philosophy for one night.”

Sasha turned to obey his father, momentarily locking eyes with Isaac. Suddenly he looked uncertain. Isaac flashed him one of his characteristic smiles. “I am still uncle Issie.” The boy grinned then in that boyish way his father loved in him and went to Issie and received a kiss on the cheek. “Sleep well Sasha,” Isaac whispered.

“And say your prayers,” Ushak ordered, and both he and Isaac grinned as Sasha trudged away again deflated.

With Sasha gone the men set to the bottle of cherry brandy and smoked two thin rolled cigarettes Isaac somehow produced. Ushak shook his head.

12 | P a g e

“Now where have these come from?”

“I liberated them from Mister Horowitz when they asked me to chop wood.”

“Issie. From your own people?”

The reproach stung and Isaac became suddenly serious. “You think a pot of tea fair wage for three hours chopping?”

“It’s why they don’t like you Issie.”

“They don’t like me because they think because I befriend you like this I have Roma in my veins. But I am no gypsy.”

“You know how these people think,” Ushak said gently.

It seemed to anger Isaac, which was unusual between the two friends. He wagged a finger and spat out. “I am a Jew. They are Jews. But I am also Russki Ushak. Why should what they think be different to what I think?” He paused, allowing the pause to calm the sudden tension before informing an astonished Ushak. “I heard them discussing you earlier.

Drapajlo and Grigorivich and a few others stayed on in the barn to talk.” An expectant smile fleeted on to Ushak’s face, even though he knew that what was coming next would be bad news. “They want the rifle old friend,” Isaac continued and then sneered. “A unanimous decision of their village council.”

“Well they can’t have it!” Ushak retorted. He finished his cigarette and tossed the tiny butt into the flames of the fire. “I mean ...”

Isaac interrupted him unceremoniously. “Of course they can’t! But what will you do? Shoot them?” He paused and sighed deeply and offered the bottle. Ushak poured himself a 13 | P a g e

generous measure and drank deeply. Isaac placed more logs on the fire as he spoke. “You wandered here didn’t you Ushak? All the way from Romania.”

“Four years it has been. Four years since I came down the forest road with Sasha by my side and Bea in my arms.” He smiled at the memory. “I swear, I had to work every farm in the Ukraine to earn wet nursing for Bea. And Sasha even though he was young he worked too.”

“Then you are either Romanian or you are Roma and both are as bad in their eyes,” Isaac answered caustically. “They think you would steal the coins from their pockets given half a chance.”

Ushak laughed at that. “They don’t have any coins. They don’t even have pockets.”

Isaac stood up abruptly and, for once there was no joking in him. “I was born here Ushak.

Right down there in the Weissman house. My mother died giving me life and she is buried in our little cemetery.”

“Yes, you are one of them and I am grateful to call you friend, but what are you trying to say Issie? That I should give them the rifle? Remove my value?”

Isaac sighed and shook his head. “You have more value than a rifle with not more than thirty bullets left.”

“More like twenty truth to tell.”

“You have made most of the furniture for most of the houses these past four years. Built two of those house’s yourself in fact.”

“With these own two hands of mine.” He offered the bottle back to his friend, but Isaac shook his head and refused it. Ushak knew then the seriousness of what was unfolding 14 | P a g e

between them. He closed his eyes momentarily and shook his head and whispered “not you as well my old friend.”

“You have a knowledge of healing we have called upon and had the need of many times.

Knowledge of the old ways only a Roma could.”

Ushak became bitter then in the sudden realisation that one of them, Drapajlo most likely, had asked Isaac to approach him to surrender the rifle. He sighed, for something, an image even, came to him then. It was the bitterness and the hurt that came with the knowledge he had agreed. He looked to Isaac’s eyes but his friend could not meet his gaze. He shook his head and snorted derisively. “How could you Issie? Every morning through this hard year of famine, every morning no matter what the weather I go into the forest and I have even been up into the mountains.” He forces the bottle of cherry brandy into Isaacs hand and crosses the room suddenly and picks up the rifle and runs a hand lovingly down the stock as he speaks. “I take this rifle you want me to give them and I hunt for game. And always I share the meat. Always.”

Isaac could not argue with that. “You do Ushak. Hashem help me. You do.”

“Then what more do they want of me? What is my cardinal offence?”

The sigh that escaped Isaac’s body then was one of the most terrible and genuinely heartfelt regret, but the words were something else. “You are not one of us.” He rose abruptly and moved to the door and threw it open, saying harshly over his shoulder “you must give them the damn rifle Ushak!”

15 | P a g e

Ushak was puzzled and a frown of deep bewilderment crossed his features. He whispered to himself. ”But who are they?” Then he called out. “If I give them the rifle will I be one of them?”

Sasha’s head popped out from behind the curtain of his crib and the little girl Beatrice started to cry as Isaac Rabinowitz called the answer from the blackness of the night.

“You will never be one of them!”

16 | P a g e

3

It came at night, always at night; that old monster; scratching at the edge of reason. Like a succubus haunting him in the depths of the sleep that came hard. It is persistent rather than insistent. A shrieking howl as the wind outside battered against the logs and the caulking seeking to gain entry. He opened his eyes but saw nothing. He was asleep still. His subconscious or some defence mechanism mostly inert left over from when humanity was still a beast allowed him to banish it once again from him to go shrieking haplessly into the void. He sleeps but his conscience does not.

Outside, winter holds fast the world in her ice bound grasp. Snow deep and with the appearance of an inescapable permanence is banked up against the houses and cabins to window level. Branches hang drooping and the tree trunks are slick and glistening with frost.

A gale gusts intermittently, sending swirling eddies of snow fluttering like mini whirlwinds, howling as though in protest at this choking of the world. Occasionally a slab of white would slither down a sloping roof and deposit itself with a puff at the side of a building. A leaden sky thick and cloying pressed up from the horizon against the vast blackness of the night.

Somewhere a wolf howls. The trees shake. The village snores with full bellies for once.

Ushak wakened before the dawn. The fire had died and he liked it lit and blazing before the children rose. He threw off his blanket and stood, the previous nights confrontation with

17 | P a g e

Isaac still fresh in his mind. He stared for a moment at the rifle. It is cold and his breath steams in the air, but he is already dressed so he tends not to notice. Besides, it is too cold to sleep unclothed and since Dani left him there is only Ushak to warm Ushak.

He knew they would arrive early to demand he surrender the precious rifle to them. Once he had the fire up and going and the little cabin was warm he woke the children. They ate breakfast together of meat with some dried berries Ushak had been saving. Beatrice, though only four, had woken ravenous and she made her father and Sasha laugh as she no sooner finished one chunk of meat than she was demanding “mo papa” with her mouth wide open.

After, he sent them hand in hand for a walk by the river that looped about the village and flowed to empty into the mighty Volga. Sure enough, as he had surmised, they arrived shortly after the children disappeared from sight.

The delegation was led by Drapajlo with at his side the hulking Grigorivich. Old Chaim Weissman was with them, probably to represent the minority Jews in the tiny community Ushak surmised, and the ferret like Michael Yura whom he guessed was intended to set him at his ease. As the four made their way down the forest path a small crowd gathered a respectable distance behind to look on. Ushak had placed the rifle just inside the door of the cabin loaded and ready and he had the butcher knife tucked into his belt in plain sight, but it was just as the delegation reached the bare space of grass in front of the cabin the tension was lifted as Yura slipped on a patch of ice and fell straight on his rump. The crowd bellowed with laughter and a wit called out “has the gypsy shot him?” A furious Grigorivich bent and unceremoniously yanked Yura to his feet, sneering and hissing to Drapaljo. “Why ever did we bring this fucking fool Georgy?”

18 | P a g e

Drapajlo ignored him and went straight at the point with Ushak, putting on his best and what he thought most convincing official tone of voice.

“You know the reason for this visit Ushak.”

Ushak was non committal and matter of fact in his answer. “I know none of you would walk down that path if there wasn’t an ulterior motive. I will save you a wasted journey. You cannot have the rifle.”

“It is an Austrian rifle. The Jaegers use it.” Chaim Weissman said with a wheeze and a sneer and a clear inference behind the words. “Where would a Roma acquire such a weapon?”

Ushak sneered back, “You’re right Jew,” and instantly regretted stooping to the other’s level. He smiled and explained. “My father was a Jaeger in the Emperors army for nineteen years.”

Grigorivich scoffed at that. “A Jaeger! Boot boy more like.”

Drapajlo’s patience snapped. He demanded. “You should give the rifle to the village for the good of all.”

“It is your duty,” said Yura.

“If you wish to be a part of this community,” added Chaim Weissman.

“But I am a part of the community,” Ushak protested, pointing out reasonably, “I have lived here with my children four years.”

19 | P a g e

There was a pause. Thought raced but did not register. After a moment Drapajlo leaned forward and fixed Ushak with a hard uncompromising stare and persisted. “You must give the rifle to the village Ushak if you wish to remain among us.”

Ushak thought about this for a moment then asked, not unreasonably, “and what will the village do with it? That is, if I do give you my rifle?”

Drapajlo was smug then. “We will give it to him who will make best use of it for the good of all,” he announced in a loud voice.

“Yes,” Yura added, primed for that moment, “the best marksman.”

Ushak grinned boadly, mocking the delegation, and retorted, “and if it is I am the best marksman? What then?”

Grigorivich grew wearied with debate and grunting “hell with this, we just take it as agreed,” he lunged forward. But Ushak was ready for such a move and too fast for him and the butcher blade came out from his belt in his hand and delivered a sharp nick to the bigger man’s chin that made him squeal and reel back to fall on his rump in the snow. This time there was less laughter from the onlookers, but some did laugh and the bully spun his head around to fix on any that had. Ushak used the distraction to whip the knife back in his belt and reach into the doorway for the rifle. The delegation retreated under the menace of the rifle as Ushak advised them. “Yes, it is loaded.”

Grigorivich climbed slowly to his feet, a hand over his chin, blood dripping between his fingers, hatred burning in his eyes. Ushak motioned him to withdraw and as he did he ordered. “Come here Georgy Drapajlo. This is what you wanted, now come have a closer look.” When Drapajlo hesitated he barked out fiercely “Come here!”

20 | P a g e

Drapajlo walked slowly back to stand before Ushak. His eyes never left the round black hole of the rifle barrel, out of which at any moment he knew death could come spewing. Ushak smiled reassuringly at him but the man seemed as though mesmerised and he stared woodenly and wide eyed into the barrel.

“How has it come down to this Georgy?” Ushak asked softly. “Am I not as you? Do I not deserve the same respect others get as a man? Or is it only the Roma you see?”

“Grigi will kill you for this,” Drapajlo muttered.

Ushak sneered. “It could have been his throat. It is no more than a shaving nick.”

“His pride ...”

“His pride?” Ushak laughed, and over Drapajlo’s shoulder he could see the lumbering Grigorivich striding off back to the village holding a rag to his bleeding chin. “If he had any of that commodity he would not bully those in the village weaker than him. He would act to help them.” Drapajlo raised his eyes then and Ushak nodded his head. “You know this is true.” He paused to allow Drapajlo’s somewhat dull brain room to digest his words, and then pressed on. “When Grigorivich and the forest crew failed with their traps you came to me. I did not ask payment or friendship and definitely not kinship. I went into the forest and for many months it is what I bring back feeds this village. It is my meat has kept it alive. And always I share, but if Janek or one of the others do manage to trap a hare, a rat even, me and mine see not a morsel of it. Not a scrap. Do I complain? Do I say a word?”

Drapajlo retorted in a rush. “Last night you kept a sack of meat to yourself. You handed over two to Grigi but you kept back one. And it is only this rifle stops me from demanding you hand all over.”

21 | P a g e

“I took only what was my fair share to feed me and my children.”

“Three sacks you brought and one you kept. That is ...” and on this Drapajlo had to think for a moment, “one third. One third for three bellies when there are sixty five more besides must share the rest.”

Ushak laughed and shook his head. “Oh you miserable fool! There was so much less in my sack than the other two.”

“No!” Drapajlo persisted doggedly. “One sack from three is one third. And what do you think they say,” he waved a hand in the direction of the huddle of villagers gathered at the margin of the trees looking on intently, “when they see the likes of you behave like that?”

“Oh I can imagine what they say,” Ushak replied drily. “The dog cocks its leg to pee because a dog can only behave as a dog.”

“It is why we want the rifle.”

“Not because I am Roma? Or Romanian?”

Drapajlo sneered and looked once more at the barrel of the rifle and turned away, muttering low. “He will kill you. Not because you are what you are but because you defy us.”

Before Drapajlo could reach the crowd of villagers Ushak called to him and made him pause.

“Georgy, do they never wonder why you and Marta and your little fat ones remain so plump? Do they not wonder what you have in that cellar and do not share?” Drapajlo paused and Ushak sneered. “Is it why you now grow desperate?”

22 | P a g e

Drapajlo called back derisively without turning his head as some of the villagers looked away nervously and ashamed while others turned their backs and grasped the children by the hand and began to leave. “Anything we had is now gone.”

Ushak laughed and put up the rifle nonchalantly resting it on his shoulder and called out a final parting shot. “Then you will be eating your own within a week I suppose.” His laughter echoed and just before he turned to retreat into the cabin his eye caught Isaac standing beside a tree off to one side half hidden. Their eyes met for a moment. Isaac half smiled but Ushak did not return the smile, instead entering the cabin and shutting the door at his back.

Isaac stared at the closed door, which seemed now to be so small set into the wall beneath an overhanging porch heavy with snow. Once the door always seemed huge and inviting to him, an entry portal through which he found acceptance and friendship and in the children love. Now it appeared distant, forbidding and remote. A great well of sadness flowed through him from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head for he knew that Ushak would never forgive his betrayal. He was like that. Through the long winter nights they had sat together before the licking flames of the fire in the cabin Ushak had told him of his life; of how his soldier father served the Empire and was rarely seen by his family but how he always sent money to find their wandering Roma group no matter where they went. He spoke of how he and his extended family journeyed from village to village and town to town across Romania and Moldova, making a living from their music and dance and repairing kettles and sharpening scissors and, especially, trading horses. Ushak was proud to boast of his own horse mastery, though of course the magnificent thoroughbred beasts he had cared for in the employ of the Count before the coming of the famine were by now all either transported to safer and more distant places or they had been eaten. Then his eyes would 23 | P a g e

mist over and tears would well up as he described the terrible events that overcame many Roma bands in the year 1896 when violence erupted in local hotspots throughout Romania.

He lost his mother and two sisters and a brother then, beaten, stabbed, and clubbed to death in their camp near the town of Cluj. He was fourteen years old, big and hard to kill, so he survived, except they locked him in a prison for strangling the man who murdered his mother. They put him in a tiny brick cell in the basement of the prison which was freezing in winter and stiflingly hot in summer. He was grim when he explained to Isaac why such a punishment was as a death sentence to a Roma, the flames from the fire casting dancing shadows across his craggy granite features.

“You see Issie, for my folk the world of nature is as a public domain. We believe that three especial things belong to all people: the wood that lies on the ground, the birds and the beasts that live in the forest and on the heath and the fish in the water. It was ordained by God himself they were all free for the taking and no one has the right to deny another the privilege of the taking. We do not see ourselves as thieves but as the children of God. But for them they considered us heathen and guilty of every crime from sorcery and witchcraft to stealing and spying for the Infidel Turk.” He would laugh then as he went on, rambling a little but enjoying himself too. “They levelled all the same charges against us my people faced for two thousand years that we were lazy, shiftless, and immoral. They said we were noisy.” He would laugh again. “We loved to sing and play music but for them we were noisy.” Then in 1900 when they released him from his prison cell he recalled how as an angry young man of eighteen he would pursue a course of bare knuckle boxing for prize money and bar fighting to vent his rage and how he had been utterly convinced that either alcohol or his anger at the world would prove his inevitable end, until he met and married

24 | P a g e

the impossibly beautiful and talented Dani and how thereafter two things came along into his life for the first time in many years more important to Ushak than Ushak; Sasha and Beatrice.

Isaac realised from their night time conversations that Ushak, who had learned to read and write in a Bucharest prison and managed to escape in the wanderings of books, was a more intelligent and complex man than he cared to reveal to the world. The monster who had been tamed by Dani and the children was not the man of the prize ring and the Black Sea bars and the open road. This man was a man of high moral principle and with a deep sense of responsibility for himself, those who depended upon him, and the world at large. Isaac had the deepest respect and love for him and it was for such reasons that he revealed himself to Ushak as Ushak had revealed himself to him.

The younger man had lived in the village all his life but together with his father, after his mother had died in childbirth, as a Sephardic Jew there were but two, him and his father and they were largely viewed with suspicion even by the other Jews. Isaac could not see how the expulsion from Spain more than three hundred years earlier of the Sephardim and their use of the Sidduch, a prayer book differing from the Torah proper hardly at all, rendered them outcast almost. It was true that Janek’s and the Horowitz’s skin colour was different to his, more olive toned, and the Weissman’s were positively perpetually sun blanched it seemed, but they said the same prayers on the same day and worshipped the same God and any differences seemed more trivial than real. Not that this seemed to matter to the superstitious villagers, locked away in the almost exile of their remote forgotten village. With the death of his mother in giving him life Isaac was considered bad luck. It was as simple as that. Perceived bad luck and perceived bad blood was all it took. As 25 | P a g e

a child he would be shunned so that as he wandered alone he became what others, the so called normal folk, viewed as strange and only really the kindly Chaim Weissman and his wife took to him. Whilst his father did not directly blame him for his wife’s death, with the loss of his beloved Hannah old Rabinowitz was a distant figure who beat his son mercilessly, not with fists or belt but in denying him love. There were plenty of his child peers in the village would furtively show the bruises inflicted on their bodies by unyielding Russian fathers, which is ingrained in the nature of the Slav, flaunt them even. But not Isaac, all he could boast, if ever he could bring himself to speak of it and if ever there would be anyone who would listen, was the pain that assailed his heart like a sharp knife. So he came into adulthood solitary and withdrawn with only playing the fool the interface he showed the world to hide the agony of within. Then came Ushak and the children.

Once each month an Orthodox priest would travel all the way from Zhigulevsk and preside over a mass in Georgy Drapajlo’s barn. He would rail and chastise his flock in God’s name, and always the theme of his sermon as he addressed the frightened villagers was how lazy they were in not putting up a proper place of worship. Every three months a Rabbi would make the hard journey from Beryoza over the rocky Strelnaya and a shacharit would be held in the morning in the Horowitz home and a mincha in the afternoon in the Levy home.

Before the famine there had been three other Jewish families living in the village but death and fear had sent them fleeing into the West to the Ukraine. The village had fast become an almost forgotten byword to the neighbouring residents in the Samara, especially once the famine took firm hold and people had the largest issues of all in life to grapple with, food and survival. No one reached out to the village and the village did not reach out to anyone else and ever since the start of the civil war between the Bolsheviks and the Whites no

26 | P a g e

government minister or agent had made the difficult journey to the village and once the Count and his family and staff had fled there was no authority save Georgy Drapajlo and his henchman Grigorivich. When Isaac fell desperately ill with a fever just before the famine hit, there had been no one to attend him until Ushak had forced his way into the Weissman house. He had simply taken charge. No one asked him. No one invited him. He had simply done what needed to be done, and his knowledge and his skill with herbs had saved Isaac’s life.

At first the Weissmans muttered darkly of devilry and dark doings and gypsy things not fit to be part of medicine, but then as Ushak gently nursed the boy back from the doors of Hades into the realm of the living there grew in them and in Isaac’s father a grudging respect. After that Ushak and Isaac became firm friends and the younger man found there was a salve for his lifelong agony in the giving heart of a despised man and his laughing children.

He was a man of multi skills the Romanian Roma and though most often they would only come to him late in the night so as not to be seen by their neighbours, they did come. He mended pots and pans and kettles, he cured illness and he delivered babies, he made tables and chairs and wardrobes, he erected fences, he dug ditches, and he did anything they asked of him, seeking as wage only what could be afforded; never more. All this he did in the hope of acceptance, in coming to their land and giving more than he took, but the more he improved the environment of the village and their lives the more they despised him and the further away he was driven. They allowed Sasha to attend the small school class run by Madame Tatarov in Drapajlo’s barn, or rather it would be or more accurate to say they tolerated it, even though the stern schoolmistress sometimes had to grudgingly admit the young boy was the brightest pupil she was teaching. But she had died the year before and 27 | P a g e

who else was there to teach the children, and even had the will been there who would come to that squalid place squeezed as it was away from the world between the mountains and the river in the great loop of the Samara. So they lived alone in the cabin in the forest a half mile from the village. The only visitor was Isaac and his only friend was Ushak.

It was with a heavy heart then the young man took a last long lingering look at the door before turning away. He trudged with a broken heart back towards the village and as he passed the line of trees that pointed like a finger along the riverbank he did not see the crouching figure of Grigorivich among them, glaring towards the cabin and with blood caked on his chin. A few moments later the returning children did not see him either. Beatrice was running on ahead of Sasha and the boy chased her suddenly, calling out “last one to the door is babla!”

Abruptly the little girl was brought up short as Grigorivich rose up from the deep foliage. He loomed above Beatrice as a terrifying giant above an expectant victim. Sasha raced to her and took her hand and pulled her back. But for that moment she was transfixed by an unnamed and unreasoning horror her child brain could not rationalise and she could not move as the man stared into her eyes, boring deep. She whimpered and began to cry. Sasha glared defiance at someone he had only ever seen about the village and had never spoken to or encountered at such close quarters. He saw the hatred in the dark eyes and the blood on his face. He could even smell the fetid rancid breath exuding from his mouth. He brought the trembling little girl in close to him, putting a protective arm about her shoulder and holding her hand tightly. The great bear sneered and grinned evilly and said in a low voice “hello children.”

28 | P a g e

Sasha pulled his sister with him and they turned and hand in hand ran for the safety of the cabin. Grigorivich laughed loudly and harshly, the sound grating, and his laughter echoed among the trees. Ushak heard and opened the cabin door and went out as the children arrived. He knelt and enfolded them in the protection of his arms. They were both trembling. He knew something had happened and he could guess at it. He looked out towards the village, but there was nothing to be seen.

29 | P a g e

4 Imagine if you will a land so very beautiful the pain of its existence is etched in every fold of its being, every blade of grass, every tree, every hill, every small brook and rivulet of water dripping down the face of mountain rocks. A land so beautiful but so tortured by history its actual essence is permeated by memory. Then imagine this same land locked in the throes of war between two world wide ideologies the one bent on the destruction of the other.

To imagine as Drapajlo and others did the war would pass them by forever was naive of course. And had they but known it a column of Czechoslovakian and Moldovan mercenaries, formerly commanded by the renowned Jan Hus, was intent on an invasion of the Samara.

Lines drawn on maps passed straight through the village to the mighty Volga and where such a red line was drawn war and death were certain to follow. But on that early frosty morning when Ushak sat at his front door with his rifle across his lap he was not to know it.

Nishelev in his smithie who had vowed to the village he would craft a rudimentary rifle out of old horseshoe metal but who lacked the skill, he was not to know it. Janek sitting staring at an old yellowed frayed newspaper in his empty butcher shop and Drapajlo and his wife Marta fretting in their cellar over empty shelves, they were not to know. Osipenko, who had been university trained under the regime of the old Czar Nicholas and of whom it was rumoured he had been secret police prior to the October Revolution, and his sweetheart Tatiana were at the small stream trying to catch tiny fish in a net, they were not to know.

30 | P a g e

The implacable Grigorevich hiding in his stand of trees by the brook watching intently Ushak’s cabin, he was not to know it. No one in the village knew or could suspect.

In fact the only one who did know was one Colonel of volunteers Pavel Simonov Dravek. He sat his horse atop a hill just west of the great loop in the river Volga peering through binoculars across the snowy desolate landscape, searching for signs of what hidden dangers might await his company. A solitary bird wheeled and looped across the iron grey sky above him, screeching occasionally in frustration, he surmised, at what was not to be found available to hunt on the earth far below. He turned from his binoculars for a moment and watched it. His second in command strode up the hill to join him, cursing at the deep snow which impeded his progress. Captain of volunteers Nikolas Sebotari was a Moldovan of some fifty years old, a man who had been a soldier thirty one years and had risen through the ranks and was not known for his wit, his humour, his patience, or his tact. He preferred violence to reason and at this moment his temper was foul. He looked up at his superior and barked out with no preamble. “This is fucking madness Colonel!”

The Colonel drew in a deep breath of the icy air into his lungs and turned his head and looked down at his Captain. He felt the horse’s flanks ripple beneath his calves. It had been a feat to keep the animal fed and safe in the two months since they had decamped on the outskirts of Odessa. On more than one occasion Sebotari and some of the men had muttered darkly about killing and devouring it. That was in the often hard times when food could not be had. But somehow the Colonel had managed to find forage where there apparently was none to be had, raiding sparse fields where often the stubborn Kulaks would need to be killed, or else they were tortured into revealing hiding places in barns or where stores had been buried in woods. It was thankless and it went against the grain and against 31 | P a g e

the Colonel’s true nature, but it was war and famine and a world in crisis. Still, it did not make for good sauce the simple harsh fact there was reason to it. On one occasion when they took over a farmhouse in the Don Basin and he and Sebotari and Sergeant Major Brindt sat down in the kitchen to a meal of dried Boar meat, potatoes, and cabbage washed down with rough Vodka, he happened to glance out of the window to the tree where the farmer and his wife and their daughter were swinging dead on the end of ropes from a stiff old Oak tree. The sight made him feel ineffably wretched for what they had done and the thought came into his head ‘life without character and reason is nothing. Without pity and compassion for those weaker than us it is nothing. It is the domain of the beast’. But then, he did love that horse.

The Captain’s voice cut across his thoughts, harsh on the icy air. “Fucking madness to be going in there with a hundred and forty men!”

The Colonel was phlegmatic as he sighed and spoke. “There is a village lying some twenty or so miles from the Volga at the far eastern end of the bend. Our orders are to scout that far.”

“The army is moving north. There’s no point and nobody knows if this village even exists.

And Trotsky himself and half the Red Army could be waiting in there.” The Captain pointed.

“We should go north. Follow Stefanik.” He paused and changed direction and pointed behind to the west. “Or go home. I long to see Brno again” The Colonel liked the doggedness of his Captain. He was a typical soldier; spend all his time moaning and complaining and threatening mutiny and then when it came to it he would walk a hundred miles in his bare feet for his commander and fight a battle at the end of it.

He smiled and said, “you know what they say Captain, the fact of history is geography.”

32 | P a g e

“That would be a Communist saying that.”

“We must know what is in that bend of the river, if anything, and what may come out at the army’s rear.”

The Captain spat. “The army’s rear is its fucking general!”

The Colonel laughed. “The men have rations for six days. After that it’s foraging. Get them on the move Captain.”

The Captain, his face a mask of thunderous darkness, sighed and spat again, gave a cursory salute, and turned away. The Colonel put the binoculars back to his eyes and smiled.

The children were trying to squeeze past Ushak. He stopped them and put his big arms about them and pulled them close, one either side. Beatrice kissed him on the side of his head and Sasha said, “but papa, there is a rope swing down by the water.” Ushak responded almost absently as he looked to where he knew Grigorivich was hidden among the trees and bushes. “No Sasha, not today.”

“We won’t stay long papa,” Sasha protested and promised.

Ushak smiled at his son and whispered, “not today. Take Bea inside by the fire and read to her. Read Baba Yaga. I had to move mountains to get it for you.” Sasha hesitated. Beatrice said in a small voice, “go swinging papa.” Ushak kissed her and stroked her hair. Sasha understood. He followed his father’s gaze to the stand of trees where the previous afternoon he and Beatrice had their encounter with the terrible giant. He kissed the side of his father’s face and reached behind him to take his sisters hand. “Come on Bea,” he said.

33 | P a g e

“I’ll read to you.� The little girl tutted petulantly but followed her big brother and a quietly angry Ushak narrowed his eyes and tightened his grip on the rifle as he stared at the trees.

The next day Ushak ventured out into the forest. He climbed out of the single small window at the back of the cabin. He was uncertain if Grigorivich would harm the children if he was not there and he wanted to give the impression that he was. The big man was oafish and unpredictable at the best of times and leaving them was a risk Ushak had no choice but to take. He did not stay away long, only two hours, and his only catch was a skinny undernourished fox, for the fear that his children, or little Bea at the least, might be snatched to be exchanged with a child from somewhere else and then be eaten was something that made him sweat like a pig under his fur jacket and had him running all the way back home. When he was back in the cabin he hugged the two children fiercely as though seeing them again after a very long and painful absence. Then he went outside and skinned and gutted the fox carcass and roasted the meat before the fire. He sang songs to the children until they went to sleep and then kept a vigil through the long dark night hours.

As he sat before the fire he pondered what life would have been like and how it would have been turning out had Dani not left. The roasted meat in a pot on the small table by the fire still gave out an aroma and it had the saliva running in his mouth, his belly rumbling, and his appetite almost a palpable desire unmatched by any other sensation. But he would not touch it. The children would need it and he had no idea how long it might have to last. He shook his head to clear away the thoughts that had assailed him suddenly and turned back to his contemplation of the flames. The logs sparked and sent up showers.

He sighed. He was the rarest kind of man, one who only felt alone around people. He knew it was the right thing that Dani had left him alone in the house she insisted they take and 34 | P a g e

live in, and that it was something that eased both their pain. In that little house on the outskirts of Cluj with him and the children she was a caged bird, and in that little house with her he was a caged bird. He was Roma, destined to wander the earth wither he wished and whenever he wished, and to live as he wished. She was a dazzling gifted actress and singer and in him she had married so far beneath her station. She had done that most dreadful and oftimes terrifying thing that mortal creatures will engage in, often without thought of consequence or the how and the why, she had married for love. Love he knew from the most bitter experience is rarely ever enough, especially once children arrive, for then it must be rationed and apportioned.

But still, he could not help himself and it was the reason he would often spend such nights alone by the fire sitting into the wee small hours thinking and pondering. Better that than sleep where through the night his dreams were filled with her, except he was never quite certain if it was her he dreamed of or if it was a memory of her, or something he had created which corresponded to his ideal of her. Whatever it was it was something beyond his control and beyond his desire. And the most pathetic of all was that he did not then, after four lonely years, know what he would rather have, the dream or the reality, or the reality of the dream. He knew only that he would never physically touch either. So it was his great pain was the pain of loss and memory both.

Suddenly a noise outside shook him from the reverie and the half slumber into which he had been sinking. He came instantly alert and went to the door and took his long fur coat from its hook and reached for the rifle. He took a bullet from his pocket and placed it into the breech and cocked the weapon. He reached for the wooden bar on the door that made for the lock and raised it, and, apprehension and fear both filling him and making the hair on 35 | P a g e

the back of his neck stand up, he slowly and gingerly opened the door. A gust of wind blew it all the way open. He raised the rifle and stepped out into the open doorway, eyes alert, body tense. He did not think Grigorivich foolish enough to set a fire about the cabin and burn him and the children to death, not for a little cut on the chin and for being humiliated before villagers he lorded it over, but a person can never be sure what another will do.

A noise to his left among the trees made him turn sharply. He raised the rifle to his shoulder and placed his finger on the trigger and stepped forward. He had excellent night vision and though he saw nothing he hissed, “I know you are there!� At that there was a sharp crack of a twig. He advanced three paces, wary to ensure the snow and ice underfoot did not cause him to slip and fall and become vulnerable. Then, without warning, a small ball of white fur erupted from out of a clump of thorny twigs sparse and winter barren. The hare seemed to hang in the air for a moment as Ushak fired instinctively without knowing what it was he was shooting at. It was the cleanest shot he had ever made he swore later to himself and the startled animal was dead before its twisting body thudded into the hard snow packed earth. Ushak breathed a huge sigh of relief and went to it and looked down in no small wonder at how clean the shot was. He picked the animal up by the neck and was whistling to himself as he returned to the cabin. A thought that warmed his bones entered his head then as he closed the door; he would have some of the meat from yesterday after all. He would warm it before the fire, and to complement his midnight feast he would gather some snow in a pail and boil some water and make tea with the few leaves he had remaining. He was grinning as he lifted the lid on the smoke blackened pot where it sat beside the table by the fire. He had made a kill that would feed them for some days and he would take the fur and make a pair of mittens for little Bea, and he had not had to venture more than five

36 | P a g e

yards from his front door. There was no long cold trek into the desolate forest; no hours spent trailing some poor wasted creature. God was good.

But outside what Ushak did not see was Grigorivich and Janek crouched together beside a tree on the margin of the forest. Janek whistled. “Shit! Did you see that Grigi?”

“A fluke!” Grigorivich spat.

“Maybe,” Janek conceded doubtfully, “but I wouldn’t want to be under the bastards aim.”

Grigorivich stood. There was a thoughtful look on his face as he took one last long lingering look at the little cabin and the glow behind the door and the smoke rising from the hole in the roof. He felt a sudden spasm of envy, and longing. He had been orphaned as a young child when his parents were arrested and shot in the purge that followed the assassination of the old Czar Alexander. He was unwanted and lived his life unloved, one of thousands of street urchins fighting to survive on the streets of Jaroslav. But he grew big and tough and when he was old enough he set off into the south, going from town to town and village to village, for seven months even passing through Moscow. Sometimes he worked where he could and with whoever would have him, sometimes he stole, and when he was old enough he robbed those weaker and less able to defend themselves. It was rumoured in low whispers in the village that he had even murdered and that he was a wanted man. When he reached the Samara one day late in July 1919, a day on which the Sun was baking the earth and drying up small rivers, it was to encounter a fat man and his wife and two small daughters being accosted at knife point by a drifter just like himself. He had not meant to rescue the family when he disarmed the would-be robber and sent him scurrying off running for his life. He had in fact only meant to take his place and complete the robbery himself,

37 | P a g e

perhaps even stealing the buckboard wagon. Why walk when you can ride he thought to himself. But when the fat man came down off the wagon and started to shake his hand enthusiastically and told him “we are important people where we come from. You have done yourself no disservice in this,” and gave him a shrewd meaningful look and added, “I could use a man like you,” life changed for him completely. He was given his own room in the Drapajlo house, he ate with the family, and he was appointed the fat man’s pravaya ruka, his right hand man, and Georgy Drapajlo was a man of means. He owned a small general store, an apple orchard, cattle, two pigs, a wagon, and he had four fields under cultivation. In the many towns and cities he had passed through Grigorivich was the meanest of the mean, the lowest of the low, in the village where he learned to strut instead of skulk he was somebody.

“You think he will share Grigi?” Janek’s voice cut across his reminiscence.

Grigorivich grunted and turned and strode away leaving Janek still crouching, “he better.”

38 | P a g e

5

He allowed the children their time as children. He knew instinctively, even though his role as both mother and father deprived them of mother, that the best thing he could do for them, beneath his protective arms, was to allow them to discover the world for themselves and to experience life on its own terms. They went to play on the swing by the riverbank in the company of other children whose parents ingrained in them a hatred for others, especially the Roma, that was centuries old.

He fretted for them of course as he sat before the cabin door with the rifle across his lap.

But what could he do? The practicalities of leaving the village and taking them meant preparation, and that would take time. And then where would he go? Often he imagined the long trek out from the Samara and Russia and across the Ukraine to Romania and then Bucharest and a joyful reunion with Dani, but in his heart he knew that would never be. So it meant remaining where they were, and children, being children, meant they wanted to do the things children did. He could not deny them. All he could do was sit at the open door with a loaded rifle and worry.

Katerina Semyonivitch was described by her mother as a ‘good girl’ and by her father as ‘the sweetest daughter any man could have’. They were well off middle class professional people, he a notary and his wife a pharmacist, owning and living in a fine three storey property in Smolensk, from which they also earned rental income. They lavished love and presents on their two children, Katerina and her elder brother Peter, but they also made what they later came to regard as a mistake with these children upon whom they doted and 39 | P a g e

in the years that followed what they called their ‘catastrophe’ they cursed the education they had given them.

When she was thirteen years old Katerina had a vision when out wandering in a meadow on the edge of the city one hot summer day when the family made an excursion for a picnic. It was a Joan of Arc moment for her, but for her parents it was something sinister beyond belief. That night when she crept out from her bedroom to sit on the stairs she could hear them in heated debate.

“The Czarina has the madman Rasputin as her chief advisor and no one seems to mind that,” her mother was saying.

“Everyone does mind!” her father said angrily, “and it is precisely because he is mad.

Besides, she isn’t even Catholic. And what will the Patriarch make of it? What will he say? He will have to be told.”

“No!” she heard her mother respond in a loud screech. “We must not do that.”

“God visits our Katya in a field and calls her to him ...”

“According to her ...”

“And we must say nothing about it? Are you insane woman?”

There was a pause. Katerina had strained to listen, then after a moment she heard the very words she had been dreading.

“We will send her to her baboushka. The old lady will beat some sense into her.”

“Can’t you beat her husband?”

40 | P a g e

“What! Me? Beat our Katya? No. Better them well practised in that sort of thing do it.”

That night Katerina ran away from home and started the journey across a war torn landscape towards a nunnery in distant Poland. Even if she had not been under the threat of being packed away to her stern grandmother’s cold house at the foot of the Ural Mountains there would have been no choice for her. She had received a command from almighty God. But what she could not know and what made her flight infinitely worse for her loving mother and father was that not three weeks later her brother Peter went off to join the Army in the fight against the hated Germans. Five months later he was killed.

Ushak watched now as she walked slowly towards him, and, somehow, though the ice and snow underfoot on the forest path was treacherous, it was with an elegance and grace that did not belong in that cold place. She had been a maid in the Count’s household, but he and the Countess had left her behind when they took their staff and fled the famine. Although the great house had been boarded up and there were chains and padlocks everywhere on doors and window shutters for a time she had lingered there, until cold and hunger drove her down to the village.

Rumour spoke of her as the Count’s mistress and so, although her arrival among them was not welcome, the villagers did not dare to turn her away. After all, the famine will pass, they told one another, one day it will end, and the Count and the sharp faced Countess would return. There would once again be work for them all, coin, paddocks filled with livestock, verdant fields lush with produce, The Countess would fuss over her garden and the Count would race his horses along the course he had had set out on the east bank of the river, now all overgrown of course. One day it would all be as it was, and what if the Count and Countess did return, and what if they then demanded, “Where is Katerina Semyonivich?

41 | P a g e

What did you do with her?” No, they reasoned, better just to take her in, and anyway what could be better for the delusionally ambitious Georgy Drapajlo and his wife but to have a trained maid of their own? So she was given a small shed in the top field owned by the Drapajlo’s and went to work in their house in return for shelter and a share of food. To her credit and much to the admiration of Ushak, despite her circumstances, for the Drapajlo’s did not grasp that a maid was a human being and not a slave, she was always a happy soul who made the best of her lot and never did she complain about the ill fortune that had brought her to such a low station far away from everything she knew. She kept herself clean. She washed and mended her two worn dresses, and she was a small beam of radiance in a place of gloom. Whenever Beatrice saw her she would run to her and Sasha often took his sister up to visit her in her little hut.

She was not quite shunned as the Roma Ushak and his children were, but not far off it.

Another rumour had it she had been taken by German soldiers when her village in Belarus was overrun in the war and had been made to whore for them, only finally being released after Lenin pulled Russia out of the Great War. The women of the village became shrewish if she had contact with any of their men and on more than one occasion had she been pelted with mud and stones. Yet another rumour had it she was in fact the Count’s bastard daughter.

None of the rumours was true, but Ushak knew what was fact rather than what was fiction and his admiration for the girl was the higher for it. She had made it to her nunnery in the ancient diocese of Krzysztofa not far from Bialystok, and she had made it into a habit. The nuns did not laugh at her when she recounted her tale of how she had been running in the meadow among the tall grass and the waving red poppies chasing a butterfly, and how God 42 | P a g e

himself had suddenly appeared to her. They did not laugh when she told them how He had commanded her to come to Him and how she must do so as a Catholic. They did not laugh when she told them in serious hushed tones how He informed her she must travel to Bialystok and become a nun. They did not laugh when she said she believed God had a sacred purpose for her in mind and that she was certain one day she was destined to be sanctified. They dressed her in a habit and placed a stiff pristine white coif secured by a bandeau on her head; they gave her a wimple of white linen and a scapular; and a rosary they said once belonged to blessed Saint Adalsindis herself, and they told her that soon she would begin her training in the mysteries of the Catholic faith and her induction as a bride of Christ. Katerina was gloriously deliriously happy. The nuns thought she was mad. The Bishop of Bialystok’s maidservant had somehow managed to topple headfirst from a balcony in the Bishop’s palace while cleaning a chandelier and break her neck. They put her to work for him as the unfortunate gir’ls replacement. At first she could not comprehend how this could possibly form part of her training, but, although not an unintelligent or ill educated girl, she naively reasoned that manual labour must be a part of the curriculum, and in any event if it was God’s will she must do it then it must be right. As to the Bishop he complained mightily he did not want some untrained girl as his maid and especially not one that was a nun. He hated nuns. When after ten months Katerina fell pregnant the nuns did not consider it an immaculate conception. They dragged her from the Bishop’s palace and beat her and put her in a tiny cell deep in the basement of the nunnery and kept her a prisoner during her confinement. When the child, a boy, was delivered they took him from her at once and allowed her one day of recuperation before beating her again and casting her out into the street. The Mother Superior informed her she was a worthless harlot and that far from sitting at the feet of Christ in Heaven she would finish sucking the Devil’s cock in Hell. A 43 | P a g e

battered, disillusioned, and desolate child herself she made her way back to Smolensk, where almost immediately her mother packed her off on a train into the east to a baboushka she had only met once in fourteen years. From departing the train ahead of her intended destination at a station somewhere south of Moscow to the Samara was but a short hop really.

This was Katerina Semyonivich’s story and Ushak knew it because he had pieced it together out of what Sasha told him, for she spoke often with the young boy, and what Isaac told him, for she spoke to him also, seeing in him he supposed a kindrid spirit. She was a blue eyed blonde haired beauty, tall for a woman, slender and delicate and without awareness she had made herself an object of unattainable lust for every adult male in the village.

Grigorivich had, in his own uncomfortable and clumsy way, been attempting to woo her for the better part of a year. When she rebuffed him he of course turned nasty as only people such as he could. It was most evident particularly when it came to the distribution of the meat Ushak brought, for Grigorivich was Drapajlo’s appointed distribution manager. On one occasion he tossed an eyeball in her direction and only Ushak raising his rifle a little made the bully relent.

Now she walked the forest path to his door, a thing she had never done before. A coat he knew was not her own was about her shoulders half hiding the old dress she habitually wore. He suspected it was an inducement from Drapajlo to coerce her into visiting him. She walked slowly, not with purpose, and she was nervous when she stood before him and he stood up. There was a cold grim look about Ushak that he did not affect. He placed the rifle to one side. She eyed it warily. He laughed.

44 | P a g e

“Do not fear it Katerina Semyonivich. It is only for animals we need for meat and pigs who wear a human face, like Grigorivich.”

She smiled. “Katya.”

He frowned. She stressed.

“Katya. My name is Katya.”

“Katya,” he said, with a reassuring smile. He gestured with a hand. “Will you come into my home and have some tea? Katya.” Her eyes widened at that. He suspected she had had nothing but water from melted snow for a long time. He grinned and turned and picked up his rifle and went inside. She followed, standing at first nervously just inside by the door. He placed the rifle against a wall and went to the fire and poked it with a stick and placed two thin logs on it. He turned.

“I keep it lit as much as I can. For the children.”

“It must use a lot of logs.”

He pointed to his axe in a corner. “I sweat, they stay warm.”

She smiled and looked around. “Sasha and Bea ...”

“They are children Katya, and though I do not like them venturing away from me I must let them be children.”

He took his water pot, which was half filled already with tea from the morning, and placed it on the grill he had on one side of the fire. She blurted out suddenly in a rush. “They say you

45 | P a g e

are a sorcerer and that you meet with the devil in the deep forest. They say you are evil.

They say ...”

He went to her quickly and placed his hands on her shoulders and fixed her with an intense stare. He spoke quietly and slowly and gently. “They say many things Katya, because they are ignorant fools. What do you say? What does Katerina Semyonivitch say?” She smiled at first and then she grinned. “I say yes, Ushak, they are fools.”

He released her and sat down in his chair and invited her to sit opposite him. He grinned.

“Then you can make up your own mind if it is safe to sit beside me.”

She sat down. The pot bubbled. He took a wooden beaker he had fashioned out of a piece of elm he had found lying by the river. He poured tea and handed it to her, saying apologetically, “I have no sugar I am afraid.”

She grinned and held the steaming cup in two hands and muttered “tea, oh lord.” Then she frowned and looked at him. He explained. “It’s the last of it, unless I can persuade fat Drapajlo to part with some. I’m rationing myself.”

“They made me come,” she said suddenly.

“I know.”

“They want the hare you shot last night.”

“I know.”

She frowned. “You know?”

46 | P a g e

He grinned. “Of course, why else would you be here? You have never visited before.” She looked down at her feet. “I may be a dirty thieving gypsy Katya but I am no fool.”

She looked up then and their eyes met and she thought herself such a dupe for never coming before. She loved Sasha and little Bea, and in many ways their visits to her were what kept her going in the long months of the terrible famine. “When I refused to come they sent Grigorivich to my hut.” He threw up his eyes and groaned and she went on, trusting him now. “He told me the only reason he had not yet ... you know ... taken me was because Drapajlo had forbade him. He said ...”

“I know what he said!” Ushak stopped her sharply. He did not mean to startle her. He softened and smile. “He threatened to rape you if you refused to come here.” She nodded her head. He said, “Drink your tea. Don’t let it get it get cold.” He stood and crossed the room to a small table beside Beatrice’s crib. He liked this girl. He liked her honesty and her open way. He moved the few things from the top of the table and placed them on the floor and then picked up the table and set it down beside her where she sat sipping at and savouring the tea. He placed a hand on the table and explained. “Two years ago I built that stupid big barn of Drapajlo’s.” He laughed, holding a memory in his head. “He calls it the village hall now. He would not give me any tools outside of what I was doing for him and his friends, but when I had a spare minute or two to myself I would do my own thing.” She flashed him a curious long lashed look above the rim of the cup. He shook his head at her.

“You see Katya, give me the material and the tools and Ushak can make you a chair, a wardrobe, a house even. Yes ... I can do that. What I cannot do is make the world what it is not. That only God can do.” He slapped a hand on the table. “Look ... here ... see ... this table is beautifully carved. Would you agree?” She nodded her head. “It is made from the wood of 47 | P a g e

a single Oak tree. It stood just at the back of this house of mine. You do not see the material as it was. You do not see that oak as it stood rooted in the ground. You see only the table.

But inside ... in its heart ... in its soul ... it remains that ancient tree.” Ushak sighed very deeply then, as though the regret at felling the tree was a physical thing for him. He made the sign of the cross across his chest and she marvelled at that. “You think there is a difference. You perceive it.” he went on. “You hope there is. But I tell you Katya, Grigorivich remains Grigorivich.”

She finished the tea and stood. “I understand Ushak,” she told him.

He went to a recess where he stored meat and took a hunk of the hare carcass, a leg and part of the flank. He wrapped it in some rag and handed it to her. “Put it under your coat,” he told her. She did as he suggested. “Drop it as you walk near the bend in the track. Come back and get it later.” She nodded her head and an expectant look was on her face. “No,” he told her with a smile, “I give them nothing. The bully intimidated my children.” She nodded.

She understood only too well.

He took her arm and they went to the door. He said, matter of factly, much as though the world they inhabited was one of normality where people visited their neighbours for a cup of tea and a chat every day without remark or comment, “Come again soon. This has been pleasant.”

When he opened the door the children tumbled in, excited because they had seen a wolf on the far bank of the river. When they saw Katya their excitement overflowed and they whooped and danced and grabbed her. She was equally excited and it took Ushak moments

48 | P a g e

to quiet them and get them into the cabin. Once they were inside he closed the door against them and he and Katya laughed. He shook his head and then a sudden thought struck him.

“Katya, I have an idea. Wait there.”

He ducked back inside the cabin and emerged a moment later with meat wrapped in more rag. He thrust the package into her hands. “Now you can deliver that to that greedy fat bastard Drapajlo and his bully boy and tell him if he will allow you to look after Sasha and Bea in the day I will return to the forest and hunt.”

Her face brightened and through the door he heard Sasha yell. “Yay! Katya and Sasha and Bea!” Ushak grinned at her. “What do you say Katya? I fear leaving them when things are as they are. Will you come and be with them?”

She nodded her head and grinned also and whispered. “Thank you Ushak.” Then she turned and walked away into the gathering twilight. He watched her go. The dying sun was a pale reflection of her beauty and he found himself strangely stirred in a way he had not known since Dani. He caught his breath. He did not want to feel the way he was feeling precisely at that moment, for he knew only too well today’s romance was but tomorrow’s heartache, and yet even though she was not yet out of sight he found himself aching to see her again.

49 | P a g e

6

For a full week all was as it was before. The only difference was that each day in mid morning Katya came to the cabin and stayed with Sasha and Beatrice, reading to them, doing their words and sums with them, and taking them on long walks by the river. And she was there when Ushak returned in the evening with his share of the meat from the animal he had tracked and shot that day. Some days it was not much, for a rabbit or two does not go far between more than sixty souls, but whatever it was they would cook and eat together in the small cabin and after the children had gone to sleep Ushak and Katya would sit together before the fire and talk. It was always a wrench for him when late at night she would return home along the white snow glistening track under a gibbous moon to her own hut.

But even though Ushak and Katya were now in their own worlds happy there was one who seeing and knowing it was thus was not. The cut to his chin had largely healed but the wound to Grigorivich’s overblown pride never would. He regarded the girl he had once coveted, on those occasions when he caught sight of her, with a deep hatred, and to the man he hated above all others he now added that infinitely more dangerous of emotions, jealousy.

He went to Drapajlo. What he proposed filled the fat mayor with terror, but his wife Marta who had overheard the conversation from the kitchen was made of sterner stuff than her husband. She bustled in with her eldest daughter, sixteen year old Nadia at her side and wagged a finger under her husband’s nose.

50 | P a g e

“Let Grigi do it husband. What he says is right. The gypsy filth is a thief and a parasite. What we have from him is small rent for the home we have given him on our land.”

“But it is murder wife,” Drapajlo hissed back darkly.

“It is more execution than murder sir,” Grigorivich said evenly in contradiction.

“Did not everyone vote he should give over the rifle?” Marta demanded.

“And didn’t he refuse?” The Drapajlo daughter Nadia chimed in. “And then didn’t he attack poor Grigi with a knife?”

“Tried to cut his throat he did,” Marta said as she ran a finger across her own throat.

“Everyone saw the brute do it.”

Drapajlo, a coward at the best of time, and positively a spineless jellyfish when confronted

by Marta and Nadia, tried to protest. “But ... but ...”

Marta would have none of it. “Is he one of us?” She demanded. He shook his head dumbly.

“Is it better for all if he has the rifle or if we have it?” He looked down at the carpet on the floor at a small round dark stain and mumbled, “Better for us to have it.”

“Then give the order,” Marta said firmly.

He turned his eyes to Grigorivich and nodded his head. The big man grinned wickedly and spun on his heel and left them to make his preparations. When he was gone Drapajlo looked to his wife and said, almost matter of factly, “there is a stain on the carpet. You must have that girl scrub it.”

51 | P a g e

“I will see to it husband,” Marta replied ever dutiful before she and Nadia returned to the kitchen where Drapajlo as he stood fretting and biting his nails in the other room could hear the two women laughing.

Night fell with a suddenness and finality across that winter world. Ushak had no luck through the day in finding anything and the great forest was still and white and apparently empty, but late in the afternoon he stumbled across a bear meandering near an ice stilled brook and now the great animal had made the hunter the hunted. When first he saw it the creature was at the edge of the river hoping for fish. He tried to back away without disturbing it but a boot had crunched down on an ice frosted twig. The huge beast had turned its black cold eye upon him and, as its fat pink tongue snaked out across black lips he could guess what thoughts of a full belly flashed into its mind.

For almost two hours he managed to evade its relentless pursuit but now he was squatting beside a tree near the forest track he knew as the back of his hand. It was true he could shoot the bear, but if he did not stop it with his first shot, better still kill it outright, then he knew he would not get a chance to reload. He could distinctly hear the odd roar and the growling, not immediately on him but near. It was snowing and though it was not a heavy fall the puffy white flakes were slanting horizontally across his field of vision and, where they landed on exposed skin, melting so that rivulets of icy water ran down his face and mingled with sweat.

“Damn you you big old meyvet!” he spat and cursed. “Why are you not tucked away in some cave asleep at this time of the year?” It was a valid point, he reflected, but then he knew also that although bears are hibernators they are not necessarily all hibernators. This one, a grizzled old male, had apparently found enough to sustain it, or perhaps it had been 52 | P a g e

surviving on what was stored within its body, or something might have awoken it from its torpor. Whatever it was he had foolishly allowed his rambling thoughts to distract him and now a menacing snarl warned him it was close. He cursed again, this time aiming the curse at himself.

Though a bears brain is smaller than a human beings its olfactory bulb, the area that manages the sense of smell is five times larger. Ushak knew the bear could smell him and that now it was coming for him. There was a creaking and a crunching and he could sense the lumbering creature was on the other side of the track, waiting for him to move, and if he did he knew it would cross the space that divided them in seconds and smash him to the ground with a swipe from a massive paw. Then it would gore and tear him until he was dead. Then it would devour him. His choices were limited. The rifle was in his hand and ready to fire. He could try to turn and get his shot off. He could try to outrun it. He could place the barrel to his own head and escape that way. He considered all these options.

The bear roared. A memory flashed into his brain of one of the few occasions his father had returned to the small caravan and they had gone hunting together into the Carpathians. He was a boy then, very frightened of the bear his father intended to shoot. His father understood and he had reassured Ushak as he sighted down the barrel, almost whispering the words that came to the man now.

“Forget the head, the target is too small to be sure,” his father had said, “and don’t bother with neck or chest. The lungs. That is how you will stop him. Trace the front leg up to one third of the way on the chest and there is your aiming point.” His father had chuckled. “Like the white target they pin to cowards chests when the firing squad shoots them if they flee from battle.” Then he squeezed the trigger.

53 | P a g e

The bear gave out a mighty bellow that echoed in the depth of the silent forest and shook snow from branches and twigs and Ushak spun himself round the tree trunk and fell prone to the ground with the rifle aimed. The bear charged. Ushak fired. A fount of red spray erupted out from the great chest and the creature stopped and choked and alternated a whimper and a snarl. Ushak groaned. It stood still, as huge and menacing as when first he had encountered it two hours earlier. He closed his eyes and began to say a prayer as he waited for the inevitable. It did not come for him for the bear fell with a thud, twitched a few times and then died.

Ushak stood. He grinned. He kissed his father’s rifle and looked up into the now dark sky where stars were twinkling, seeming then more beautiful to him than ever they had before and he roared. “Not today! You shall not have Ushak today!�

Darkness and adrenalin made him work quickly and he butchered the bear and stuffed the meat into his sacks. He could not carry all of it of course and if it had been earlier in the day he would have made a rough travois to drag it the miles back to the village. He left what he could not carry where it lay and trusted no scavengers would come upon it before he returned the following day.

Grigorivich and Nishelev sat in the deep shadows inside Nishelevs smithie. It was icy cold and the blacksmith shivered even with the thick blanket wrapped about his shoulders. The forge had a coating of ice on it, the floor had snow across it which had blown in through a broken open window Nishelev could not motivate himself to repair. Ushak had offered to do it for him, but the blacksmith was a proud man and considered himself the only proper trained man in the village and he sneeringly turned down the offer. Bad enough being forced to accept meat from the Roma to feed his family.

54 | P a g e

Grigorivich was smoking a roll up cigarette and blowing smoke in lazy rings. Nishelev coughed. In the darkness the gap left by the four missing teeth in the front of Grigorivich’s mouth were very pronounced and almost the blacksmith laughed, but he did not. Doubt and uncertainty had him regretting he had ever agreed the venture. He had only done so because of the shame he felt at having to rely on another. Grigorivich he knew would not now allow him to back out, but even so, even as the bully spoke, Nishelev was weeping inside.

“So then, we are agreed Nishelev?”

“Well, yes,” the blacksmith responded a little hesitantly, “but ...”

“But what?” Grigorivich snarled darkly. “You want to be in thrall to that bastard for the sake of some scraps of meat? What will little Pavel say when he grows up and learns his father could not feed his family? What will he think of you when they tell him a Roma put the food in his belly?”

“I am only saying ...”

“Besides,” and Grigorivich clapped the blacksmith on the shoulder and added merrily, “maybe it will be you who is the best shot and you who will carry the rifle.”

“I am only saying,” the blacksmith persisted, “he is a big man. It is a long way for us to carry such a weight.”

“We must have one more then.” Grigorivich stood. “I will go and speak with Janek. We meet at the forest in one hour. Bring a hammer, a heavy one” He turned to leave. The blacksmith stopped him.

55 | P a g e

“What about his children?”

Grigorivich laughed as he left, saying over his shoulder. “They are gypsies, let them wander.”

Isaac Rabinowitz stood beside a broken picket fence beneath the shade of a withered tree and watched as Grigorivich made his way along the street away from the disused blacksmith shop. He stepped back behind the tree itself when a moment later Nishelev emerged and looked furtively this way and that before setting off in the direction of his house. Isaac noticed clearly he was carrying a short handled stubby hammer. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up sharply and a sudden cold fear gripped him. Moonlight lanced down through puffy snowdrops that were falling lazily and his soul swooned at the memory of his betrayal of Ushak and he knew with certainty the suspicion that ate at him then at the sight of Grigorivich and Nishelev was as certain as it was possible to be. He emerged from behind the tree and turned for home with his stomach knotted and the dilemma of what to do next eating at his brain.

The barn was unusually silent when Ushak delivered his bounty of meat. It was later than usual, but late is better than never he reasoned. The gathered villagers were unusually silent also and Ushak noticed at once Grigorivich, Janek, and Nishelev were not there. Drapajlo explained without sincerity the three men had gone out on a hunting trip themselves.

“What do they have,” Ushak asked with a little laugh, “spears? Bow and arrows?” No one else laughed with him and he did not press them further. He shrugged his big shoulders and took his sack and left them to their squabbling over the meat. But nevertheless the absence of Grigorivich and Janek and Nishelev bothered him and he suspected some sinister meaning behind it. What he did not believe for one moment was that they had gone into

56 | P a g e

the forest to hunt for themselves. That had already been tried with a spectacular lack of success.

Outside he stood in the small rutted street in a quandary, uncertain what he should do. He desperately wanted to get to his home and the children, but he needed also to locate the real whereabouts of the three absent men. Grigorivich he counted a fool; Janek he counted incompetent; Nishelev he counted a coward. He had absolute faith in Katya and her ability to watch over and protect the children, so it was he determined to make a round of the village and go home via the small river that looped and snaked beside the fields and into the forest. If the three were in hiding and somehow intent on ambushing him he would come upon them from behind and thus the ambushers would be the ambushed.

The houses all had chimneys and smoke was rising and there was a glow behind the wooden shutters. Grim faced he placed a bullet into the rifles chamber and set off into the night.

Isaac Rabinowitz sat with his father beside a fire that was banked high so that even the old man was finding it uncomfortably hot. They had eaten well as Drapajlo was less stingy towards him than Grigorivich would have been. He opened the bottle of harsh homemade potato vodka he had zealously been saving for a celebration day and he drank with his father and hummed an old tune. His father asked him what was wrong and when he did he burst into tears and rose and put on his coat. He kissed his father and told him “something terrible is going to happen papa. I can’t let it. I have to warn Ushak.� And he went out into the night and left the old man alone by the fire puzzled and drinking.

Grigorivich hushed Janek and Nishelev to silence as the crunch crunch crunch of someone walking on the snow echoed. He looked towards the cottage, where smoke was rising from

57 | P a g e

the hole in the roof and quite clearly he heard the sounds of children laughing. For the briefest moment he considered calling off the venture and abandoning it. It was a momentary weakness, one he had experienced on a previous occasion years earlier when he broke into a remote house on a hilltop above a small nondescript town somewhere south of Moscow. It was burglary but when the lady of the house, a beautiful widow, disturbed him he could not resist the urge and he overpowered and raped her. He knew that for rape they would hang him, as they would for murder. He regretted the rape when the woman sat on the floor sobbing, but he knew what had to be done. Old Nizlevsky, his mentor from Jaroslav, would often hiss in his ear when they were out on a job. “Don’t never leave a witness with breath in ‘em Grigi. The dead are the worst witnesses.”

The woman’s daughter was only ten years old and when she came downstairs and the woman made a plea for life he almost relented his decision. Vodka brought sense back to him. He murdered them both, took what he could carry, and burned the house to the ground. He whispered absently to himself as the crunch of footsteps came closer, “Don’t never leave a witness.” Janek and Nishelev exchanged puzzled looks and Janek muttered “what’s that you say Grigi?” Grigorivich ignored him. He was intent upon the prey. The shadow of the man passed across them as he headed for the cabin and without waiting Grigorivich emerged from his hiding place and rushed up behind him and put an arm about his neck and stabbed him in the back with a curved knife. He covered the mouth as a cry was stifled and bore his hapless victim to the ground on the track and hissed out loudly, “now you fools!”

Janek and Nishelev emerged from their hiding place among the bushes and stood terrified and dumbstruck on the track, the one holding a butchers chopping axe in his hand, the 58 | P a g e

other a hammer. Grigorivich looked at them with disgust as he drew his blade across the fallen man’s throat and ended his life in a voiding of bowels that raised a fetid stench and a froth of blood and gurgles and choking.

When he was done Grigorivich stood up and stared down at the corpse, his hands red and his eyes wild. He was joined by his confederates, who gazed down also. The moonlight lanced down from high above and fell on the murdered thing as though God in his heaven was outraged at the deed. After a moment Janek said, “Oh shit! By all the saints and all the devils! It is Isaac Rabinowitz you have killed.” Grigorivich grabbed him suddenly by the collar and pulled him close and as he spoke Janek’s eyes could not leave off from staring at the bloody knife in the big man’s hand. “It is Isaac Rabinowitz we have killed. We!” He emphasised.

Janek nodded his head and muttered weakly “yes Grigi, meant we”, as he and Nishelev exchanged a glance. Grigorivich ordered them to pick up the body, one on the arms the other on the legs. He muttered darkly, “I have done the hard bit for you,” and as they bore the dead boy away to the dark deserted blacksmith’s shop Nishelev and Janek wisely refrained from replying ‘yes, but this is the wrong man’.

Ushak emerged from the forest on to the track. He did not notice the pool of blood reflecting the round pale moon on its black surface or the blood smears a little way up from him in the direction of the village. He stood staring into the night with the rifle poised for what seemed an age, apprehensive and puzzled, but then the sounds of life in the cabin drew him away and he turned for home.

59 | P a g e

Inside the blacksmith’s shop at midnight even Grigorivich was horror struck as the realisation of the mistake they had made and what they had done hit him. He held a candle in his hand and looked down at the corpse, which though the limbs were grotesquely splayed the face was in peaceful repose in death with no hint of the slaughter showing on it, as though Isaac Rabinowitz merely slumbered within a pleasant dream.

“What shall we do with it?” Nishelev asked in a fearful whisper.

Janek seemed as if the entire mass of the world was bearing down upon his head. He could not look at the dead man. Murder! Murder! Murder! That was all that was screaming at the back of his brain in a voice he did not recognise. His throat was dry and his voice croaked as he weakly suggested, “we could throw him in the river. The current will carry it miles before it washes up.”

“What current idiot?” Grigorivich spat back. “The river is half ice bound.” Then an idea formed itself in his brain and it was one which came to him all too easily and which he embraced all too eagerly. He stepped forward and placed a hand on Janek’s chest and pushed him back. Then he cocked his head and looked down at Isaac in a curious way and squinted a look at Nishelev. A wicked smile creased his craggy features as he asked them both.

“How much do you think he weighs?

60 | P a g e

7

Ushak slept late, for him. He was woken by little Bea clambering up on to his chest and pulling at his ears. Groggy he grinned at her and pulled her close and asked her “what if I was a great shaggy hungry timber wolf in disguise?” She giggled and he grasped her around the waist in his big hands and held her aloft and shook her back and forth as she squealed and cried “no, you ah a big shaggy hungry dada.” He placed her on the floor and she still nuzzled into him, her head in the crook of his neck. He kissed her. She kissed him back. He whispered, “is Sasha awake baba?” and she complained “Sasha snores. An’ he makes pumpy noises.”

He laughed at her still babyish ways. He knew that little Beatrice was resistant to growing up, and, even if it could not be rationalised in her little girl brain, she much preferred life for her to be as it was rather than what it would inevitably become and certainly what it was for grownups. He babied her. Sasha babied her. And from what he had observed the evening before so too did Katya baby her. He supposed it had something to do with her developing without a mother in her life and with Ushak having to be both mother and father. Where Katya was concerned he did not want to admit to himself but he did harbour hopes, although his mind said it would be good for the little girl to have a mother figure his heart said something different. As he sat there now on the end of his bed with Beatrice sitting on his knee snuggled into him his thoughts turned to the night before and he smiled at the memory so that the little girl looked up at him and frowned, her brain racing to interpret his emotional state.

61 | P a g e

Sasha awoke. Beatrice was delighted. She ran to him. If anything the little girl doted on her brother more than she did her father but there was no resentment; Ushak understood why.

It was cold even though pale lemon yellow sunlight shone through the hole in the roof that was the chimney. He set to work building a fire and then he would make the children breakfast of heated meat and a gruel made from water and the juices from the roasting from last night’s meal.

As he worked his thoughts again turned back to the night before. On his return he had a sense that somehow he was fortunate to be returning, and it was not merely the fact of his survival of the encounter with the bear. An image of Grigorivich’s face came into his mind’s eye and, though he could not imagine how or why, an overwhelming sense of relief had him whispering a small prayer of thanks to God. Then there was Katya. He spoke her name out in a small whisper that had the children frown and look to him. “Katya.” And he marvelled at feelings rising within him that had lain dormant since Dani and which he never expected or dared hope would rise again. And the most wondrous aspect to him was that it happened in such a short space of time, as sometimes these things will. Before last night he knew she liked and was fond of his children and had an avuncular way about her with them, now he knew she loved them and them her, and for him the feelings she had stirred within him were of only the welcome kind, like the ones he had when he first met Dani in that ballroom in Bucharest.

Last night had been something so magical for him he had not wanted it to end. If those few hours had been frozen in time and replayed through all eternity and was all his life would ever be he would not have minded. And the memory of it as he knelt and banked logs on the flickering fire had him pause and smile wistfully as he sighed and recalled how when the 62 | P a g e

children had gone off to sleep he and Katya sat close before the fire and spoke of everything and nothing. By the middle of the night when her eyelids were drooping and his eyelids were drooping he knew everything there was to know about her and she knew everything there was to know about him. He walked her home of course, to her mean draughty little hut which lacked even a fire, under the moonlight which made all luminous in that world of white, walking close together, crunching the snow underfoot, close, longing to be closer, but not daring to touch or reach out. An owl hooted. He said “I should go and shoot it. If they hear it they will want to eat it.” She laughed. Then, at her door, she stretched up and planted a kiss on the side of his face, and then she was gone and he was standing before a closed door. He held a hand up to his cheek and grinned and turned, and feeling foolish as a raw schoolboy, he trudged away through snow fresh fallen for home.

She came to the cabin in the middle of the following morning, having first been summoned early to the Drapajlo house for chores, and she was surprised to find him still there. He explained as Beatrice danced about their legs and tugged at her coat and Sasha grinned shyly how he was fairly certain the bear carcass would probably still be where he had left it lying the evening before. “No rush this morning,” he said, and felt foolish for doing so for he was certain she would know he had waited for her.

She was secretly delighted but did not show it. He suggested she and the children accompany him into the forest to fetch the meat, and the children whooped with delight on hearing this. It was not so cold that day, there was some Sun shining across a pallid blue sky and on the eaves of the houses and the limbs of trees snow was melting. She handed him a small paper parcel of tea she had, as she explained in her defence, “taken as payment” from the Drapajlo larder for spending an hour on her knees scrubbing a stain out of a carpet. They 63 | P a g e

laughed. He made tea and they sat together drinking from steaming wooden beakers while the children dressed and, impatient in the way children most often are, went outside to wait for them.

The forest was whipped cream white, with snow banks and troughs that undulated between trees slick with frost that was melting in silvery streamers. The branches were still rimmed with snow and there was yet a threat it would snow again, but sunbeams danced across pale shadows and the weather was certainly on the turn, the air feeling warmer. Here and there a bird could be heard whistling and the forest did not seem to Ushak the cold winter place it had been, even on the day before. It was foolish he knew, but he mused that somehow Katya and the children being there had breathed life back into the place and delivered the world from the clutches of the Snow Queen as Gerda had saved Kai in the old Danish folk tale. He laughed aloud and the sound echoed and resounded and Katya and the children looked to him, suddenly startled. He laughed again and told them, booming.

“Ushak is happy. Have you never seen a man happy?” Then they all laughed.

When the sun was going out towards the west they stopped and made a lunch of dried meat and some nuts Katya brought. Ushak took off his coat and spread it on a fallen tree and watched as Sasha and Beatrice chased one another in and out of the trees throwing snowballs.

Katya watched them and smiled. There was a question he knew she would ask and one she knew she must. “Their mother ...”

“In Bucharest.” He cut her off and sighed wistfully. “Alive, dead, I don’t know. She left us. It is how we ended up here.”

64 | P a g e

“She abandoned you!” Katya exclaimed, appalled and astonished.

“Wasn’t quite that way Katya,” he answered, then tried to explain. “Bea was just a baby and Sasha a young boy and a handful for her. She was a singer and a dancer and she hailed from a good family, minor aristocracy in fact.”

“Still, for a mother to abandon her children,” and here she looked up into his eyes and was intent, “and you Ushak.”

He noticed the look she gave him. He smiled. “Yes, you are right of course, but sometimes in order to live sacrifices have to be made, even if it means dying inside. With us, well, with me most I think, all that she could be was stifled, snuffed out almost, and bit by bit, day by day, she was dying. Do you know what it is like to watch someone you love so much die? After a while a part of you dies also. And when you are the cause? Yes Katya, to give her life I let her go. I chose to die for her, to die for life.”

“And are you still dead Ushak?”

He looked down at the slushy snow at their feet, and then he smiled and stared into her eyes, large, honest, pools behind which there were no intrigues, no hidden agendas, and not a shred of malice.

“Are you?” She persisted.

“I think I have been brought back to life Katya, like Lazarus risen from his tomb at the call of Our Lord.”

With a serious intent that bridged whatever gulf of uncertainty had remained between them she reached out and took his large hand in her smaller one and stared straight ahead.

65 | P a g e

The gesture was all and it was everything. He squeezed her hand gently and she squeezed back.

The children returned to them boisterous and shrieking and both stopped dead when they saw the two adults seated close together hand in hand. Beatrice giggled and Sasha stood rock still. Ushak was apprehensive and Katya was downright terrified. The boy said absolutely nothing. For a moment that might have stretched time stood still, until Sasha looked down at his coat, which had snow on it he brushed off with a gloved hand. Ushak whispered tentatively, “Sasha?” The boy looked up and there were tears in his pale eyes as he ran at his father and Katya and embraced them both, hugging them close. Beatrice whooped her delight and the little girl threw herself in and joined the hugging group. Over Sasha’s head Ushak looked at Katya and she grinned broadly. It seemed then in that moment all obstacles were removed and the order of the world set right.

Ushak marvelled as they went on, the children ahead, and he and Katya following hand in hand, how one human being could make so enormous an impact and a difference to the lives of three others in so short a span of time. If he had been a writer, or a poet, or a musician creating grand opera, then if Katya had not existed he would have had to invent her. The joy that was manifest in his heart then was mirrored in the joy exhibited by the two children as they ran on, often looking back. She was not so very much older than Sasha, and she was almost half his age, but if convention might look on and frown in disapproval then he thought, damn with convention. He whistled. She laughed. He looked at her, a frown on his face.

“You’re whistling.” She laughed again.

66 | P a g e

“Was I?” “Yes, you were.”

“Then it must have been my heart doing it for I did not notice.”

“Oh Ushak, you are a romantic.” She chided him playfully.

He stopped her and took a quick glance along the track to make sure the children weren’t watching and turned her to him and kissed her lightly on the lips. “All Roma are romantics,” he informed her with a mischievous wink.

Now it was her turn to glance up the track, and, satisfied the children were otherwise preoccupied, she kissed him back, but far more forcefully and passionately than he had her and when she broke away she told him with a twinkle in her eye. “I know that.”

They both laughed as they walked on and now the two miles or so left till they would arrive at the carcass of the bear seemed not far enough for them. They were almost there and Ushak called for the children to return to his side. “There could be wolves,” he told them.

Hearing this Sasha and Beatrice pulled back behind the two adults. Ushak added, to reassure them, and Katya too, “there probably won’t be, but we must be careful. Wait here. It is just around the fork in the track.”

He set off, raising the rifle, but not so as to cause any alarm. After a moment he paused and looked back at the little group. “Take care of them for me Katya.” She smiled at him and nodded reassurance.

He turned the bend passing some bushes spangled white and stopped dead in his tracks.

Now that he was out of sight of the others he raised the rifle and loaded a bullet and pulled 67 | P a g e

back the cocking hammer. He knelt. Where the carcass should have been there was now nothing but some bones and offal. The dead creature had been skinned and expertly butchered and only one animal on earth was capable of that. He peered at the forest ahead and around him, not looking at the trees and bushes but looking through them. His eyes were alive to hearing the minutest of sounds and he even tried sniffing out what might not belong there. After a moment Beatrice called “papa” and he stood and returned to them swiftly.

Katya and Sasha frowned in puzzlement and Beatrice placed her tiny hand on her hips and protested “wha bear papa? You say we see bear.”

Ushak scooped the little girl up in his arms and slung the rifle over his back. “Not today baba. Bear gone away.” He flashed a look of warning to Katya and Sasha that both understood and whispered urgently. “We have to go. Now! Men have been here.”

He was almost at a trot with Beatrice crying on his shoulder at not having seen the bear and Katya and Sasha following as they headed back west for the village.

Once the little party disappeared out of sight up a small rise and around a bend in the track five uniformed men emerged from a clump of bushes and trees beyond where the butchered bear had been. They were Red Army soldiers, each wearing a fur jacket and a cap with a badge displaying the red star of communism. They carried rifles, all bar one, the officer, and he had in his hand a British Army issue Browning pistol. A sergeant hawked and spat and looked to his Major.

“You think he spotted us sir?”

68 | P a g e

The Major shook his head. “No,” he looked down at the wide bloodstain where the bear had lain and added, “but he knows sestrenka did not drag himself off and that he was not carrion ate.”

“We go after them?”

“We must not alert our presence Sergeant.” The Major clapped his sergeant on the shoulder. “Besides, see how well we shall feast this evening. Come, we return to the camp.”

“But sir,” the sergeant protested, “did you see that rifle he carried?”

“An Austrian Jaeger rifle, I know. Killed many of my good lads down in Galicia during the war.”

“Well then sir ...” the sergeant continued.

The Major shut him off sharply. “I said we go back to the camp!”

There was a cellar beneath Janek’s butcher shop and Grigorivich and Nishelev helped him move what he needed down there to complete the job he had been designated. He had vomited twice that day as he worked for this meat was not what he was accustomed to hacking and chopping at. Grigorivich had laughed, finding the butcher’s predicament highly amusing. Nishelev stood in a corner with eyes averted holding a hand over his mouth and nose seeking to ward off the appalling stench.

Late in the afternoon when Janek was done and meat was hung from hooks from the rafters of the ceiling they each took a sack containing the bones and offal and, in Grigorivich’s case, the head of Isaac Rabinowitz, and furtively made their way to the river and thence up to a dip in the land beside the forest. There they buried what they did not propose to consume 69 | P a g e

in a pit they dug. When they were finished they kicked snow over the hole that hid the evidence of what they had done and stood for a moment. Night was falling and the stars were twinkling high in the heavens. Nishelev coughed nervously and whispered. “We should say some words. It’s the Christian thing to do.”

Grigorivich sneered and walked away. “You say words if you want Nishelev. I’m too fucking tired and I didn’t fucking like him anyway.”

Janek pushed past Nishelev and hissed in passing “he was a Jew you idiot!”

But that would not stop Nishelev as the full realisation of the deed he had participated in consumed him and tore at his guts. He had been consigned into a black tomb of despair by the inhumanity of others, was what he told himself, not so much for comfort but more by way of what he imagined an excuse; although he knew full well it could not be denied that he had been a willing partner in the venture and that the desperation for survival for him and his family would overcome his erstwhile humanity and he would have his wife cook and eat what was his share of Isaac Rabinowitz. He almost groaned and he looked up at the dark sky with the billions of stars and the promise of endless life and he knew his soul was damned, for it was a betrayal of all it meant to be human, made manifest in every act he had joined in with, however motivated, however mean, however cruel, however small his role might have been. And he knew also that from the moment when he bit down upon that first morsel of meat that very night he would bite away the soul of eternity.

Tears tumbled down his cheeks as he made the sign of the cross over his chest and put his hands together and began to murmur, “Heavenly father ...” And somewhere out in the

70 | P a g e

ephemeral night, which was only so because God created things to live in a cycle, a wolf howled out in protest.

71 | P a g e

8

Katya stayed with Ushak and the children that night. She slept in his crib and he sat through the long hours into the night in his chair and kept the fire going and pondered what to do.

Men in the forest who had slaughtered the remainder of the bear carcass and carried the meat away meant there must be several out there. It could mean the Bolshevik army had moved east, for whatever reason, through the narrow neck of the Samara into the wider lands beyond, though he could not begin to guess at why that would be so; there was no military threat or importance for them he could discern in the farthest loop of the bend and the nearest garrison to the village was situated at distant Pervomaysky. They could of course, although it was highly unlikely he thought, be White forces. But how could they have crossed the entire Samara without detection and gotten there? A brigand band, or partisans, again, he mused, unlikely. It was an enigma, but it was not one he was going to spend too much time puzzling over. Whoever they were they were at least ten to fifteen miles from the village in the north east, and for them to reach the village they would have to pass through the cold inhospitable depths of the forest. The bounty they had earned from the bear carcass would not last them long and a band of men venturing into the deep forest without food at that time of year would be foolhardy in the extreme.

One thing he would not be doing, he decided firmly, was to say anything to the villagers. The anticipation of their panic if they believed a force of men was near at hand and might descend on them at any time caused him more anxiety than the prospect of it happening for real. He remembered only too well what had happened the last time a visiting force of soldiers came to the village, the only time in fact. It had been eighteen months earlier, when 72 | P a g e

the famine had first begun to bite in earnest throughout the Povolzhye. Their arrival was sudden and unexpected as they had crept up from three different directions simultaneously.

One minute the village was going about its business and the next it was full of dun brown coated soldiers with red stars on their caps carrying rifles cocked and ready to blast into eternity any resistance. They were Red Army men led by a big uncompromising political commissar, a woman from Perm who had been there in that spider and rodent haunted cellar in Yekaterinburg when the Tsar Nicholas and the royal family were put to death in the face of White forces advances on the town, and a ruthless nineteen year old Lieutenant who had denounced his own royalist father. With such stalwarts of the Bolshevik revolution leading the invaders, Drapajlo and Grigorivich and the rest had very wisely offered no resistance when their food stores were pillaged, when clothing was removed from wardrobes and door pegs, blankets ripped from beds, and the few ancient rifles and muskets and axes and the like were seized. Of all in the village only the Drapajlo family came out smiling after a fashion. Somehow the raiders had completely missed his underground supplies in a cellar that was accessed only through a trapdoor beneath a carpet in the kitchen.

Ushak was lucky too, his cabin being situated as it was a distance from the village itself. He had time to make preparations and he hid larger items among some bushes and then took his rifle and his children and what he could carry and fled into the forest. Two soldiers came to the cabin and went through it and stole some cloth and a bag of tea and a flask of Tuic창 he had brought from Romania and was saving for a special occasion, but that being all there was to plunder it was mean enough and the two left the cabin alone and went off back to

73 | P a g e

the village laughing and sharing the fiery Romanian plum liquor. That was Ushak’s only regret that day, the loss of his Tuicâ.

Before they left the thoroughly ransacked village the political commissar stood on top of a crate and addressed the whole of the gathered villagers, a ring of soldiers surrounding them as rain began to fall and one or two of the weaker children cried.

“Comrades, you must be happy,” she told them. “Today you are no longer Kulak, today you are comrades in the struggle for the Fatherland. You must not fear for your lives or your village, for your donations this day will clothe our brothers fighting the invaders and the traitors, you have put food into their bellies to sustain them, vodka to ease their wounds, and blankets to keep them warm.”

The rain began to fall hard but she would not let them go. She stared across them, seeking for signs in the expectant fear filled expressions on their faces for some hint of dissent or resentment. If she had detected anything, even a twinge from the big thug Grigorivich from whom she had expected trouble sometime through the afternoon, she would have ordered the village burned to the ground. But Drapajlo had warned the bully against any display of bravado, and in any event Grigorivich had been only too well aware of what outcome these visits by the army could have as he raped and thieved his way south from the north of the country.

“Comrade Evdokimov in his office in Camapa will place a blue line about the village on his map and you will not be troubled again for, oh, at least a half a year. Be joyful that your pood is a part of the whole. When victory comes you will be rewarded.”

74 | P a g e

She stepped down from the crate and mounted her horse and together side by side with the grinning young Lieutenant she led her soldiers in a column down the road to the west, watched by tearful villagers as rain teemed down upon them. As they went the soldiers sang the marching song polyushka pole and ‘there march the soldiers’. Janek shook a fist and turned his head to look at the empty shelves and empty hooks in his plundered butcher shop and with rain coming down in cascades he shouted at the retreating backs of the soldiers, “bastards!” But he did not shout it too loud, and anyway his voice was drowned out by a great clap of thunder and a peal of lightning that streaked across the slate grey sky as the villagers ran for shelter.

The next day a monster storm tore across the Samara, uprooting trees and tearing timbers from rooftops, and the villagers stayed indoors and huddled around their fires. The river flooded and the roads turned ankle deep mud. Wind howled in the trees. Heavy rain hammered down in stinging sheets. The earth was angry, the superstitious villagers muttered darkly they should have heeded the priest’s warning and built a place of worship; and many knelt for hours before frozen icons on walls and prayed to a God they were not entirely convinced heard them anymore. The visitation by the Red Army on them had been as traumatic an event as the eruption of Vesuvius at ancient Pompeii. It had shaken all of them to the core and reminded them that though their little village was the remotest of all settlements in the great loop of the Samara Bend, protected by the vast forest, the mountains, and the mighty rushing Volga, someone somewhere knew of their existence and someone somewhere plotted them on a map on a wall. What made it all the worse for them was there was no one now to protect them, and while many of them depended for some two months on Drapajlo for food and small comforts, his stocks ran out and besides no one

75 | P a g e

really trusted or had any liking for the village’s only fat capitalist and his family. The Count and Countess had abandoned them to their fate and no longer did the priest or rabbi visit. It was as if Heaven had looked down, considered their plight, and abandoned them as unworthy of further consideration.

Their fear knew no bounds as the storm raged through a second and then a third day and the village sat silent and forlorn, with scarce any movement, save for Osipenko’s little white dog, which seemed to enjoy being outside. It was a creature which had it but the wit to understand what would follow it would have fled howling into the trees, for its small life was now measured in days and not even weeks.

The next day, with the storm dissipated and the black roiling clouds settling in another place on the distant horizon to the south, the hunger began.

No, Ushak determined as he placed another log on the fire and listened to Katya snoring gently behind the curtain on his bunk where she slept, he would not tell them there were men in the forest. He would spare them the misery and the terror he knew would engulf them. It was not that he felt pity for them exactly, although he did feel sorry that they could never overcome their own weakness and prejudice and accept him and the children on an equal footing, or that they could not at least allow their own children in their innocence to accept Sasha and Beatrice as being human like they were, for he knew that in life you paid a price for any comfort you felt. Or rather, he reflected as the log flared suddenly into life and he watched the yellow flames dance a cokek, for the comfort people imagine the world provides. But he knew too that that what people don’t realise, and what they cannot appreciate for it requires an acceptance of the truth, is that any comfort is illusory. The fact is in almost every instance human beings are the inescapable result of their own tragedy, 76 | P a g e

which naively we choose to attach the label history. And memories, be they cherished or hateful, what else are they but a series of forever now lost ‘what ifs’?

He sighed deeply and whispered to himself, “what if I had never let Dani go? What if I had never left Romania? What if I had never brought us here?”

He shook the thoughts from his head as he understood how readily his cyclothymiacs personality could drag him into the pit. He stood and crossed to the door and fetched his coat from its hook and his axe. He would go into the forest a little way and chop wood. He would fill the night hours with some sweaty labour and set aside his regrets for a while.

Twelve miles away to the north east at that moment in a tented camp where the tents were scattered and dotted among the trees, the Bolshevik Major was awakened by his sergeant.

The Major struggled up from the zenith of a dream in which Lenin and his Bolsheviks had never come to power, one in which Potemkin had been sunk by shore batteries and the Germans and Austrians had been thrashed and thrown back west from a long line stretching from Galicia to Lithuania. In his dream the Tsar himself had pinned the hugely coveted medal The Order of St George on his chest as he and his troopers were on the point of crossing the Pripet marshes to commence the long march on Berlin herself.

He woke with a start. The dream victories faded with the blunt headed hammer of reality returned. The stubbled face of the sergeant, a Siberian peasant with onion breath, stared down at him.

“What is it you want?” he demanded groggily.

“Patrol returned sir,” the sergeant answered laconically.

77 | P a g e

The Major rose and spent a minute splashing cold water from a small barrel on to his face before going outside into the cold night and crossing to the headquarters tent. The Captain of scouts was waiting for him. He had a haunch of bear meat in his hand and a small flask of vodka. The Major nodded to him and the scout came to attention, but relaxed when his superior frowned.

“They are moving quickly sir”, the scout reported.

The Major lit a small cigar and sat by a table on which was spread a map. “Where?” he muttered as he blew smoke into the air.

The scout went to the map and peered down and after a moment jabbed a finger on it.

“There,” he informed the Major, who peered down also at where the scout indicated, “possibly less than four day’s march from the village, maybe less at the rate they move.”

“They are aiming for the river,” the Major commented thoughtfully.

“Surely they can’t mean to try a crossing of the Volga?” the scout said incredulously, then added with a laugh. “It is not much of an invasion force sir. There’s barely a hundred men.”

The Major stood and yawned and stretched. “No, their main forces are moving north towards Moscow and they simply want to make sure nothing unexpected emerges from the Samara at their rear.”

“Do we move to the village then sir?”

“No Captain, we let them come on. You and your scouts get some sleep. We will let the village serve as distraction and then we will take them.”

78 | P a g e

It was barely dawn and seeping light from the horizon was sifting here and there across the landscape creating shadows on the undulating snow banks within the forest. Ushak had dozed in his chair, having spent four hours chopping wood and carrying the logs back to stack them at the rear of the cabin. He woke with a start to insistent banging on his door.

Katya and the children woke also and heads peeped out from behind curtains. Ushak whispered an order “stay where you are,” then fetched his boning knife and went to the door and opened it a fraction and looked out through the crack. Old Isaac Rabinowitz stood there wearing the frayed and much mended top coat and a silk scarf that reminded him of older more cherished and happier times, and with his cap in his hands and a fretful worried look on his face. Ushak frowned and stepped outside and closed the door at his back. The old man looked down with apprehension at the knife. Ushak set it aside behind him on the makeshift porch at his feet and explained “these are dangerous times Master Rabinowitz.”

“It is my son,” Rabinowitz blurted out. “Have you seen him Ushak? He has not been home and no one knows where he has gone.”

“I am unlikely to have seen Issie,” Ushak replied a little coldly. “Betrayal is betrayal sir, no matter if it is Jew or Gypsy, or anybody else for that matter.”

The old man looked crestfallen. “You have not seen him?”

“I said.”

“He had great regard for you Ushak. In fact he loved you and your children.”

Ushak sneered. “He did not show much of that when he came at their bidding to persuade me to part with the only thing keeps me and mine safe in this wretched place.”

79 | P a g e

The old man turned then and thrust the cap on his head. Katya came out and stood in bare feet with a shawl wrapped about her slender shoulders. The old man had not gone five paces when he turned back briefly and spat out bitterly. “The night he did not return he was coming here to warn you of something terrible he feared was going to happen. Oy vezimir!

May Hashem blight your life with a curse if anything has happened to him for it was you that was last in his heart and in his mind Ushak!”

The old man turned back then and walked disconsolately away back to the village toward his cold empty home. Katya looked up at Ushak and he sighed and looked down at her feet. “It is bitter Katya,” he told her, “you should not be out here with nothing to cover your feet.”

She smiled at him, wise beyond her years and understanding him as no other had. It unsettled him a little.

“I mean it,” he emphasised with mock severity.

She turned to go back inside the cabin, where they could hear the children inside being children, but looped an arm through his also and whispered to him. “I know you will go and look for him.”

He sighed, resigned. “I suppose I must Katya.”

“He did not betray you Ushak,” she told him. “Drapajlo threatened the old man with eviction if Issie did not try to persuade you to give up the rifle. The thought of the old man being cast out into the cold without shelter terrified him.”

“Why did you not tell me this before?”

80 | P a g e

She shrugged her shoulders and went back into the cabin, saying over her shoulder. “It never came up and it was never an issue before.”

He cursed himself for a blind fool and guilt flooded through him, seeping into his soul. He had known on the night Grigorivich and Janek and Nishelev were not in the barn to receive their share of the day’s catch something sinister was afoot. He had known it in fact since the day he had cut Grigorivich when he tried to seize the rifle. He had felt it in his bones for days. He went to the spot where he had seen what he believed was blood on the track leading to the village only the previous day. He knelt. There was nothing but some dark stains on melting snow and slush churned by footprints. He placed a hand there.

“It could be anything Ushak,” he told himself in a whisper, “or nothing except an owl kill,” but even as the words came slowly out from his mouth he knew he was wrong. He knew with certainty and finality and with a dreadful instinct that made his flesh creep and all the hairs on his body stand on end that he was wrong. He lifted his hand and looked at the palm and there was a small dark stain. He placed it to his nose and sniffed and turned to look back at the cabin, at how near this spot was to it. Then he looked towards the tangled bushes at the foot of the fat bellied tree at the place Sasha and Beatrice told him the hidden Grigorivich had risen up and frightened them, then, grim faced and seething with anger inside, he stood and walked purposefully and fast to the cabin.

At midday it was obvious the worst of the winter weather was passing. The sun was stronger and higher in the sky, birds were whistling in the topmost limbs of the still stark trees, and as Ushak strode down the middle of the only road through the village, his features set in an angry scowl and the rifle looped across his arm, mud underfoot sucked at his boots where the snow had all but melted.

81 | P a g e

From the shelter of the empty butcher shop the eponymous bully Grigorivich scowled and Janek watched Ushak march on with his heart filled with sudden fear. “He’s going to come here,” he muttered darkly. “The bastard will come. I know it.”

“I have sent Nishelev to fetch Osipenko.”

The butcher seemed not to hear the bigger man. He carried on speaking, almost frantically, while his eyes never left the man out on the road. “He’s going to go down into the cellar.

He’s going to find him. I tell you he will. All morning he has been going from house to house and place to place. He has even been down to the Horowitz boat house. He ...”

Grigorivich had listened to enough. He back handed Janek viciously and sent him skittering across the room on to the floor. The bully moved quickly for a big man, too quickly really, and stood over the fallen man and now the knife that ended the life of Isaac Rabinowitz and brought such terror to Janek was in Grigorivich’s hand. “I swear to God Janek,” the bully snarled, “you will hold it together. You will hold it together or you will join him downstairs on hooks. I have a powerful appetite.” Janek swallowed hard and nodded his head dumbly and Grigorivich gave a little smile and put the knife away in his belt under his coat.

“Anyhow,” he shrugged his shoulders, “what will he find if he does come but meat on hooks? Did we not go out hunting ourselves as far as everyone is concerned?” Janek knew Ushak would see through that at once if he did make it down into the cellar but he did not say anything as Grigorivich pulled him to his feet.

The big man crossed to the open shuttered window and looked out at Ushak’s retreating back as he made his way to the Weissman house where old man Rabinowitz lived. He hawked and spat out and cursed. “Look at that bastard! That dolboeb! That son of a gypsy

82 | P a g e

whore! Look how he struts around. A foreigner. Roma shite! Thinks he owns the place just because he has that rifle. I swear, the day he does not have it, the day the bullets run out, I will kill the fucker! Then I will slit his children’s throats and leave them out for wolf food.

Janek, standing behind Grigorivich and watching his broad back and listening to his tirade aimed at the now vanished figure of Ushak it occurred to him that he too now habitually carried a knife. A hand snaked down slowly to his belt but before he could translate the potential of thought into action the lumbering Grigorivich, his sense of impending danger heightened absurdly and schooled by years of surviving on the margins of society, turned slowly. He smiled knowingly and Janek swallowed and sweated. The bully pointed to a spot beside the window and he murmured low. “Why don’t you stand there butcher? Where I can see you, where nothing will happen you may come to regret.”

The old man sat alone in the cold front room, still dressed as he had been when he went to Ushak in the early morning and now with an old coat draped over his knees and gloves with holes in them on his hands. His breath steamed in the chilly air and Ushak noticed the window shutters on one window were fully open allowing the cold air to come in. He closed them and the wretched old man’s only response was to mutter “I would be able to see him when he comes back.”

Ushak thought abstractly, if he comes back, but did not voice his fears. He set his rifle against a wall and dropped the bar across the window shutters, sealing them, and then went and knelt by the fire and began to put the few logs into the grate and to light it with flint laid to one side. As he worked the old man spoke, almost as though the man kneeling before the fire that was now beginning to flare into life was not there. “Many times when my Isaac returned from an evening with you, Roma, he would tell me about it and he would 83 | P a g e

laugh and he would say he almost believed you could be a Jew. We only stayed on in this accursed place because of you.” The fire was going now and Ushak turned his head and looked at the old man, who now favoured him with a weak smile that spoke of pain. “There is an old saying, treat people as you would yourself be treated. There is an older saying, which we Jews believe to be fundamental, treat them as they deserve to be treated.”

Ushak stood and took a piece of bear meat wrapped in a cloth from his pocket and went to the old man and handed it to him. He took it gratefully and looked down at his feet and muttered laconically. “I was never good to him when he was a boy. His mother you see. I became a brute like them.” He waved a hand vaguely. “He did not deserve me inflicted on him, I don’t know if I deserve him.”

“I know,” Ushak said softly, he told me, “but if it is any comfort he did not hate you for it. I think your Issie could not hate anyone” He took his rifle and added, “Stay warm old man.

There is still enough of this winter left to kill you if you do not.” He was at the door when the old man asked him, candidly, for in every breath of life in a human being hope is an ever present. “Will you find him and bring him home to me do you think Ushak?” Ushak did not answer. He went out the door and closed it softly at his back.

When he went out and looked up the road it was to see a small group of men gathered before Janek’s butcher shop. Janek was there standing with Nishelev, and Grigorivich of course clearly barring the way to the front door with his bulk, and Drapajlo together with, surprisingly enough, Osipenko, the man who believed an unfinished university education qualified him in almost everything. The man was sneaky and shiftless and long before Ushak judged him not worthy of trust or respect. The village trusted him though and often he was consulted when there was a question needing an answer. The river is rising, what 84 | P a g e

precautions do you think we should take? There is a rumour the Tsar and Tsarina have been executed Osipenko, what do you think, can it be true? I have a piglet born with three ears, should I cut one off?

It was he who stepped before Ushak, who had the rifle fully ready in his hands and Grigorivich’s hate filled glare on him, when he came to the small group.

“Isaac Rabinowitz has left the village,” Osipenko told him without waiting. You have been searching high and low for hours Ushak for a phantom,”he snapped the fingers of one hand in the air before Ushak’s face and added with a smile, “a spectre.”

Ushak told him grimly, “If you do that again Osipenko I will snap those fingers off for you and shove one in each ear.” Grigorivich stirred and Ushak raised the rifle a fraction, no more than an inch, and, the mood Ushak was in right at that moment it was wise the bully subsided and tried nothing.

Drapajlo stepped forward. He tutted with annoyance and puffed himself up, putting on an air of importance and bravado only the presence of the other men surrounding him gave him the confidence to do. “You are disturbing decent folk with your seeking here and there and your questions. The Jew could not cope with looking after old man Rabinowitz any longer and since you spurned him he left. Told Osipenko here he intended travelling to Moscow to seek a better fortune there.”

The mention of his spurning Issie brought a pang to Ushak and caused a moment of doubt to creep in. He looked to Osipenko.

The illusory scholar nodded his head in agreement. “He came to me, oh, I think it was three days ago. He was seeking information from me as he knew I could answer his questions.”

85 | P a g e

Ushak raised his eyebrows. “He asked me the best way for getting to Moscow. I was puzzled of course. I mean the old man was never what you would call a good father to him when he was growing, but still, blood and all that eh?” The men about him nodded their heads knowingly almost as one. Emboldened Osipenko went on. “So I thought, oh well, what the hell. I showed him an old map I have and he made some sketches and then he informed me he intended leaving that very night, so, here we are.”

Ushak thought hard for a moment and then he fixed Osipenko with a long hard stare and said simply. “You lie.” He turned from them and as quickly as the mud and slush would allow he headed off in the direction of the cabin, his thoughts now crowded with the dreadful certainty of what had happened and the thoughts of how it could have happened, while the men gathered about Osipenko pointed at his retreating back and cursed.

When he was away retreating up the road Drapajlo glowered at Grigorivich for a moment before hissing. “You damn fool Grigi!” Then he left them also and slurped his way across and up the road to his own home. He entered the garden and was almost at the front door when a sudden nausea threatened to overwhelm him. He rushed to the side of the building and, his skin turning a green pallor with the thought of the feast he had enjoyed with his wife and daughters and Grigorivich at the big table in the pantry last night, and the laughter and jokes they had told with full bellies, and the songs Nadia had sung, he vomited. After he had released everything from his guts and the stinking steaming pools were at his feet, he looked up into the sky and whispered earnestly. “Why have you done this to us? Why?” And yet even as he leaned against the wall and felt hopelessly wretched he reasoned, well, I did not know for certain what it was in the pie before a few moments ago, and yet I ate it, and nonetheless it was succulent and tender and delicious, what difference is there now?

86 | P a g e

What if I did not know it was the rabbit Grigi said it was? Would it make a difference to me now? Has God struck me down with a thunderbolt? Does my stomach raise a protest? Have I sprouted horns from the side of my head? No. He remembered a story from far in his past when he was a boy, of some explorer wandering distant shores in the last century. He recalled, in far distant and remote places in the Pacific Ocean, on lost islands, the inhabitants call it ‘long pig’ and they swear by the beneficial properties of the meat. Still, even so, the nausea stayed with Drapajlo as he looked down at the pools of his vomit, pulled a face and muttered “ugh!” But he felt sure the feeling would soon pass. When he went into the house it was to find Marta preparing a meal of liver in a sauce made from beets they had saved and leftover juices from the previous night. She looked up at him when she caught a sight of him in the hall and grinned lasciviously and her small pig like eyes set in her cherub round face twinkled and he thought to himself, irrationally for how could she know?

“My God! She does know.”

Ushak sat by the fire. Little Beatrice was asleep. Sasha sat cross legged near him reading his book. Katya made tea. When he had a steaming mug in his hand she came and stood beside him. He looked up at her and smiled wanly.

“No luck?” She asked him. He shook his head. “None.” She was beginning to know him and she knew better than to press him for words when he was not in the mood. She sat in the chair opposite him, staring into the flames licking in their fire, trying to fit together the pieces of the jigsaw of life and wondering where events would take them all next. After a while he sighed and said, “I don’t think people are meant to be alone. When you do find someone, when you get that special person, it’s so important to let go the little things, the insignificant things that may otherwise ruin it. Wouldn’t you agree Katya?”

87 | P a g e

She nodded her head and regarded him sagely, half suspecting already something of what he said next. “I think after supper I will go to old Isaac Rubinstein, take him some meat and tea. There’s no one to look out for him now. Will you look after them Katya?”

She said yes, and added with a knowing look at him, “but when you do find that special person Ushak it is also important to know where the limitations lie and what risks are justified.” He understood perfectly and as they sat together before the fire lost in their own thoughts, with Beatrice snoring loudly in her crib and Sasha reading avidly, they were then and for all time to come one.

88 | P a g e

9

The abysmal depth of famine is one of the worst terrors that may be visited upon humanity.

When first the food runs out there is hunger, of course there is hunger, but then after a while the hunger settles into a dull ache. Weakness creeps slowly and still there is hunger, but the desperate first pangs soon go away. Then, slowly by slowly and bit by bit, as each person’s fat stores are depleted, the hunger returns with a vengeance and a ravenous desire takes over the body. There is the most terrible pain, constant, grinding, and a desire that will see people eat quite literally anything, grass, shoe leather, hard baked mud, as the desire to alleviate the unrelenting torture of starvation becomes overwhelming. So it had been in the village until the unspoken agreement with Ushak saw him go out into the forest on a daily basis. But when it comes to human flesh as a food source there is one more factor above starvation that is capable of seeing a person overcome the final taboo, and that is the fear of starvation.

Ushak went to old Isaac Rabinowitz when the night was drawing on towards midnight. He made sure the old man had tea and meat and was comfortable for the night with a fire banked high, and then he furtively sneaked out of the house and made his way down to the river where the Horowitz family boat house stood at the edge of a small pool made where boulders in the river banked beside an old disused beaver dam. It was a memory of better days which now, having been stripped of its floors and walls and roof of the timbers for use as firewood, and with the boat similarly having been gone up in smoke, all that remained was a rotted spindly frame. The snow was still banked here and Ushak cursed the full moon which bathed the land in a luminescence that was spectral. He felt certain his suspicion

89 | P a g e

concerning the butcher shop was all too horribly right on the mark, and yet he hoped and prayed that he might be wrong.

He went half crawling along the bank of the river till he reached the bend that looped towards the deep brooding forest. There, he knew, he must take a sharp left turn and go up the steep low slope at a horizontal angle to where his cabin lay and there beyond the house occupied by the old man Andre Misov and his blind wife he would come across the rear of the butcher shop.

The shop was a single storey timber building and it was not where Janek and his family lived.

In better times, now almost forgotten but less than two years in the past, he had built a log and planking two bedroom house for himself and his wife a respectable distance from where he worked. Ushak had therefore no fear of discovery, unless of course Grigorivich and his friends suspected he suspected, and if of course his fears were grounded in fact.

When he forced the shutters on one of the two rear windows the noise of splintering seemed to crack and echo maddeningly loud in the night and when he climbed up on to the sill and stood peering inside into the deep blackness of the fetid interior where the smell of blood lingered sweet and cloying, he could imagine ambushers waiting to strike him down and he could imagine what fate might become him then. He had left the rifle back in the cabin as the weapon would have proven too unwieldy at such close quarters, but he did pull his boning knife from his belt and as he dropped into the interior of the building it was in his hand and he was alert and ready to lash out with it. He waited a moment, listening, allowing his night vision to kick in, but all was silent and deserted. He was the only living thing there.

He made a thorough search of the shop, feeling his way along benches and shoving his hand into corners and below the tables which Janek stolidly refused to burn. He made one turn 90 | P a g e

and then another, and then he turned his attention to the trap door in the floor that led into the cellar. It was not locked and when he pulled it up and stood on the first step of the stairs that plunged steeply down into impenetrable gloom the unmistakeable aroma of meat and blood rose up to enter his nostrils. He did not know why but he gagged at it.

When he did descend into the cellar he struggled to see more than a foot in front of his face and he defensively held the knife out before him. He advanced three paces and held out a hand in front of him so that he would not stumble into any hard object without warning and he came up against something soft and yielding hanging from a hook set into a roof beam. It was icy cold and it swung when he pressed against it. A shaft of moonlight speared down into the cellar through the open trap door and his eyes flashed wide open at the sight of the horror with which he was surrounded. He caught sight of a human arm dangling from a hook just as the shaft of moonlight was extinguished and he let out a strangled cry and disoriented he found himself among the hung meat. The flesh was white and speared on hooks, dangling down, bits of sinew and gore hanging, blood pools on the floor, the long pig shrieking in protest in an endless night. He flailed at the hunks of meat as he panicked and sought escape and it was seconds before he found the stairs and clambered up and out of that terrible place. He slammed the door down shut and lay on his back panting like an animal. Bitter bile rose into his mouth which he swallowed back with difficulty and tears streamed from his eyes. He knew now for certain the fate of his friend. He panted like a dog as he whispered plaintively. “Oh Issie, dear Issie, what have they done to you?�

He got suddenly to his feet. For the first time in Ushak’s life, or at least for as long as he could remember, he felt an unreasoning terror that he could not shake and his chest was gripped by palpitations as his heart raced. So, finally, what had gripped the Povolzhye from 91 | P a g e

one end of the country to the other was come to the village. The horror of it was unimaginable and the fear of it a primordial instinct. Cannibalism. He bent forward and placed his hands on his hips and sucked in deep draughts of the cold air to compose himself and when he was ready he went back out the window, closing it so that it would not hopefully be noticed as having been a point of illegal entry.

As he made his way home via a circuitous route he prayed would not attract any attention.

His fear turned to a cold fury, not the least because he knew that if circumstance had not dictated and it had been he on the track and not Issie then it would be bits of his body hanging from hooks in Janek’s cellar, for he had no doubt the stain on the ground not far from the cabin is where they murdered his friend and indicated the site where the dread deed had been done.

Before he entered the cabin and returned to those he loved, conscious, however irrational the notion, that somehow he would be carrying with him soaked into his very skin the awfulness of what he had discovered, that in some way he might taint them with it, he paused and stared out towards the village he now considered not merely a hostile place but the entry portal to Hades itself. To him paradoxically the night air was both cold and cloying, and the moon hung like a pearl on a satin black cushion decorated with silver studs.

Katya was quickly developing an instinct where Ushak was concerned. Besides, as the night wore on after the children were in bed and asleep, she had begun to fret. As he stood with his back to the door she quietly opened it and came out to join him. She looped an arm through his and smiled and whispered. “Look, see, I do listen.� He looked down to see she had wrapped her feet in rags which were tied about her ankles with old string. He smiled

92 | P a g e

back at her. They stood close together, not speaking. She knew he would tell her when he was ready. He sighed and shivered when he was.

“One time, just before last Christmas it was, I went right through the northern part of the forest and up into the mountains. It was a two day trip for me. I hated leaving the children but game had been scarce.” He grinned. “I wish I knew you then.”

She grinned back. “So do I,” and he squeezed her arm when she said it.

“I met this Bolshevik officer on a road I stumbled across when I was after this goat. He was on a horse and aiming for the ferry at Beryoza. I swear to you he was the cleanest most pristine fellow I have ever encountered. His uniform trousers had a crease in them, his boots and belt leather shone and his buttons gleamed. He thought I would shoot him and I thought he would shoot me. Instead we found a cave and sat down for a night and shared some meat and cabbage I had and a bottle of American bourbon he had, though God alone knows where he got it. He wouldn’t tell me.” He shuddered at the memory of it. “The things he told me about what was going on everywhere because of the famine.” He shuddered again and shook his shoulders and she felt him trembling against her. “He claimed millions had been ...”

She stopped him, placing a finger to his lips, and whispered “I too have heard the rumours.

It doesn’t make them true.”

“No, but ...” he began to protest. Again she stopped him. “Don’t stay out here too long thinking.”

“You are staying?” He asked her tentatively.

93 | P a g e

She grinned at him and went back into the cabin. He stood watching the brooding dark village for a few more minutes more and then turned and followed her inside. When he looked about him it was to see that Katya was in his bed with the curtain open. He frowned and she sighed and grinned and thought to herself ‘my Lord Ushak must I put it in a letter for you?” She pulled back the old frayed blankets and his eyes almost popped out of his head as she was lying naked, beautiful beyond his imagining and seductively inviting. He said, “oh,” and bent and pulled off his boots and was as swiftly out of his coat and his shirts, and when he joined her and they were covered with the blankets to their chins she nuzzled against him and whispered “I will stay forever ... if you will have me.” And in the joy of that moment when he placed his lips on hers and tasted her sweetness, for a few hours at least the horror of the world was forgotten and he would not have Katya anywhere else in all the endless Universe but right there by his side, and he would keep her thus though all the world conspired against it

94 | P a g e

10

There was a tension in the air across the village. It was unfathomable but pervasive, not anything that could be touched or seen with the eyes, but it was there. It was as though a basin of boiling water had been covered with a cloth and the steam had nowhere to go but to roil and press down upon the surface of the liquid. As the ice on the river melted and it burst up with swollen banks, and white began to give way to green and brown and the sky turned from grey to blue, and life returned to the earth, so the village seemed to be falling into a lethargic stupor and was dying.

Ushak only ventured down into the place to visit the Weissman house where old Isaac Rabinowitz sat alone in his room with his tears wet on his face a constant reminder of how he had failed his son. Ushak’s daily visit to him was a reminder also of how he had himself failed Issie. He would light a fire for the old man and make him tea and feed him and then, feeling inexpressively sorry for turning his back on his only friend, he would return through the town to the cabin morose and introspective.

Whenever he was passing through the town he stuck doggedly to the middle of the road as he trudged with thick cloying mud sucking at his ankles. He was wary for he felt the strange pressure all around him and sensed there had been somehow some subtle change in the atmosphere. He kept the rifle ready in his hand at all times and did not turn his head to look back at those who watched his passing with hatred and resentment in their eyes. When he arrived back at the cabin he and Katya would sit together on the small rudimentary porch while the children played or Sasha sat inside before the fire and read to Beatrice, who never

95 | P a g e

grew tired of hearing the same stories over and over, though her clever elder brother did try to inject some subtle variations into the tales. While the children were preoccupied Ushak and Katya would discuss what to do. They were not making plans exactly, but the weather had definitely turned and spring was on its way. The snow was melting and the days were longer and warmer; birds could be heard singing in the trees early in the morning and flocks of geese could be seen high in the sky soaring in formation and calling to one another.

Ushak would always tell her before falling into a morbid silence. “We cannot stay in this place Katya.”

She would ask him, often persistent in it, “has something happened Ushak?” but he would not reply. He would simply sit grim faced and steely eyed with his rifle across his lap and his gaze fixed firmly on the track that led down to the village and the wooden houses, most just ramshackle cabins really, distant and yet too close for his liking.

This state of affairs continued for three days, days which Ushak found a drain on his emotional resources, for he knew matters could not continue thus indefinitely. He calculated they had stores of food in the cabin sufficient for four more days, if they were careful, and Katya understood and so when she cooked she was careful. Any edible roots or berries she and the children found while they went out foraging in the nearer forest went to bulk out a stew into which she carefully and judiciously rationed their meat. Thus he knew he would not be forced to leave them and go out into the forest again for at least five days.

It was a comfort he had five days, but it was also a terror that caused gripes in his stomach as each minute and hour passed inexorably.

96 | P a g e

In the village the tension snapped with a crash like a dry twig beneath a heavy boot.

Nishelev could contain the insistent screaming of his sublimely ordthodox Christian conscience no longer. His wife and his children had been perplexed and frightened by his erratic behaviour so out of character for him. For days on end he would alternate sitting staring vacantly with fervent praying on his knees before their icon with silent weeping in his darkened bedroom. At last, unable to bear it any longer, he went to Georgy Drapajlo.

Marta Drapajlo sat him down at the table in the pantry and her husband poured a generous tot of vodka into a glass. Nishelev looked down at the glass. It was not the fact there was still some liquor to be had in the village that surprised him, it was the glass. This was no wooden beaker or clay tankard. This was real glass.

“You have something terrible to tell us Mikhail,” Drapajlo said coldly, knowing precisely what he had to reveal, though of course Nishelev did not know this, “so, let us have it.”

Tears welled up and pooled in the blacksmith’s eyes and Marta came behind him and placed a meaty hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Go on and drink,” she softly told him, all reassurance. At that he burst into tears and was spluttering, “We have done a terrible thing Marta! Terrible! An affront to God! We ...” just as Grigorivich burst in through the door without knocking as though his was free rein. Nishelev was stopped dead in his tracks and his eyes widened in utter horror and fear.

“She is living with him!” Grigorivich bellowed.

Nishelev stood abruptly and pushed past Grigorivich and Drapajlo and stumbled out the door. They heard his footsteps in the hall and the front door opening and then closing with a loud bang. Grigorivich turned puzzled eyes on Drapajlo and Marta.

97 | P a g e

“What the fuck?”

His question was ignored as Marta asked him, Nishelev and his dilemma forgotten by her already, “who is living with who?”

“Her! The whore Semyonovich!” Grigorivich spluttered outraged, the veins standing out on the sides of his head and his eyes bulging. “That ... that ... so called maid of yours! She is living with the gypsy!”

Marta laughed raucously, her jowls wobbling with her mirth. “You did not know that Grigi?

Everyone knows it.” Drapajlo crossed to the table and picked up the glass and the bottle he had poured from and very carefully, trying not to lose a drop, he commenced to decant the vodka back from whence it had come. Marta laughed again. “Husband! Such prudence.”

“The only thing that separates us from them out there wife is that we have and they do not.

And them that do not have may as well be as the beasts of the field. We Marta Drapajlo,” he informed her smugly, “are not beasts. We are persons of means.”

Grigorivich ,frustrated by the meaningless meandering exchange, was still highly agitated.

“We must do something about it; you must give an order,” he demanded. “I must do no such thing,” Drapajlo replied firmly. “She is, as you say a whore and such as he is welcome to her.” He crossed to a cabinet, opened the door, placed the bottle among others stored within, then closed the door and locked it with a key he had with another on a chain about his neck. His daughters Nadia and her equally plump eleven year old younger sister Alexandra, so named by her mother after the murdered Tsarina, who back then when the girl was born was of course Empress of Russia, came into the room and took place either

98 | P a g e

side of their mother, who placed a chubby arm about each of their shoulders. Alexandra wrinkled her nose and commented. “And that Sasha stinks like a old smelly goat.”

Marta looked down at her daughter as Drapajlo came round the table so that he was close to Grigorivich. “How do you know who we speak of Lexie?” Marta asked her, amused. The young girl giggled impishly and Nadia answered for her with a sneer. “We only have three gypos in this village mama.”

Drapajlo ignored the banter passing between his wife and daughters. He fixed Grigorivich with a meaningful stare and tapped a chubby finger on the bigger man’s chest, drumming a beat that under other circumstances would have seen the bully snap the finger of any other man, and in fact most women too. “Now see here Grigi, you must put the Semyonovich bitch from your thoughts,” Drapajlo said sincerely, “one day this famine will end, the war will end, even the Bolsheviks will end, and if we stick together you and I on that day you too will be a man of property.” He puffed himself up and looked with pride to his daughter and went on with a pomposity that the bully could scarce comprehend as being what it was.

“When you are you may come to me and you may ask for Nadia’s hand in marriage and I will look with favour upon your request.” Nadia blushed and looked down at the floor demurely and Marta beamed, but Grigorivich could scarcely hide his revulsion as he looked at the short statured thick waisted peasant girl with her small dark eyes and thin mouth. Drapajlo dragged him back from the edge of the dark void which the prospect of a future life married to Nadia presented. “Now go and find Mikhail Nishelev and fetch him back here.”

Grigorivich frowned and Drapajlo drew in a deep breath and hissed low. “The coward is on the point of breaking!”

99 | P a g e

But even as Grigorivich rushed out into the road to find Janek and go and look for Nishelev, the desolate broken guilt wracked man was sitting on a pool of slushy mud that had formed on the mound of earth under which the remains of Isaac Rabinowitz was buried. He did not notice the wet underneath his bottom which soaked into his patched trousers, he did not notice he was dressed only in a thin shirt and although the sun was high in the sky it was still bitterly cold, he did not notice the rangy wolf which slunk into a stand of bushes down by the riverbank watching him intently with hungry eyes. All he noticed was the short handled knife in his hand which he knew was the only solution which was capable of salving his conscience and delivering his soul. Tears flowed freely down his face and soaked on to his shirt collar and snot dribbled from his nose into his mouth.

The past is most often a realm which calls to a man and beckons with an enchantment that is difficult to resist, for in the past a man may shape what he will to suit the temper of his mood. The future is a mystery ungovernable by emotion. It is a place of dread for the unreasoned. It was not the future which plagued Mikhail Nishelev that day as he looked down at the mound of wet earth on which he sat and groaned pitiably, “forgive me Isaac Rabinowitz. Forgive this wretched foolish man!” It was the past. And as he stared intently he imagined he saw the head of the murder victim and the eyes flash suddenly open and the mouth form a round black ‘O’, a maw, a bottomless emptiness which was awaiting him if he did not do that redemptive deed he must do, for in that pit he saw there was no tomorrow but only endless guilt wracked yesterdays.

From somewhere in the distance he heard a voice call “Nishelev! Where are you man?” and he knew he could not wait. He whispered a final time “forgive me neighbour” and then he gouged the knife up into his throat and sliced savagely to the side from one end of his neck 100 | P a g e

to the other as a gout of blood spurted out and sprayed like an Italian fountain into the air and the hungry wolf’s ears pricked up and its nose twitched at the sudden rich scent.

As he made his way back to the cabin from the Weissman house later that same afternoon, with Madam Weissman’s words ringing in his ears: “why don’t you leave off bothering the poor man Ushak? Does he not suffer enough with Isaac deserting him and going off to Moscow?” Ushak passed a sight he suspected was pregnant with intrigue, but as he sloshed through the mud he scarcely turned his head to look as Janek and Osipenko ushered Nishelev’s wife and children with their bags into the Drapajlo house. On his return home he closed the cabin door at his back and leaned against it. The fire was blazing and Katya and the children were seated on the floor before it with a stubby stick of charcoal and a piece of wood bark on which Sasha was drawing stick figures. The place was cosy and warm but Ushak did not feel it. An icy chill ran down his spine. He laid the rifle against the door and dragged deep draughts of air into his lungs. Katya looked up at him and smiled. He did not return the smile. She frowned. He shook his head. She left the children giggling at Sasha’s efforts at a depiction of his father on the bark and went to him. She kissed his cheek and stayed close and whispered. “What has happened?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered back. “Something has happened I think.” He allowed a pause.

She raised her eyebrows. He had said nothing to her about what was hanging from hooks in the cellar of Janek’s butcher shop, but she was an intelligent girl and he knew she suspected something. He sighed. “When I was returning home from my visit to old man Rabinowitz I saw Janek and Osipenko lead Mikhail Nishelev’s wife and children into Drapajlo’s house.

They had bags with them.”

“What does it mean do you think?”

101 | P a g e

He shook his head. “I can’t say. Something ... or nothing, I don’t know.”

She reached past him for her coat hanging from a hook on the door. “I’ll go and see what I can find out.”

“No!” he blurted out suddenly, so that the children stopped what they were doing and turned their eyes to the two adults. “No Katya, I don’t want you going down there again.

This is where you live now.” She smiled at him. “In fact,” he went on, “no one is to leave this house without my express permission and certainly not unless I know where you go.” He added sternly as he went to Beatrice and scooped the little girl up, and hungry for the reassurance of that innocence all possess before adulthood begins to smear he kissed her, “and that especially goes for you my little minx. Do you understand?” She kissed him back and giggled and whispered earnestly in his ear “I unerstan’ big bear.” Katya and Sasha laughed and Ushak sat down by the fire, and though the presence of his family offered him comfort beyond measure the fear of what lay just beyond the confines of their secure world filled him with dread.

Once again it was night and Grigorivich and Janek stood together in the cellar beneath the butcher shop, which now was an abattoir. On the table lay the dead body of Mikhail Nishelev, a great rent in his throat with caked blood and what was left of the front of his shirt and one arm smeared with gore. The wolf had little enough time to scavenge at the body of the self slaughtered man, but it had still managed to tear open the stomach and rip out the innards before Grigorivich and Janek chased it off. It slunk away back into the forest with its snout red and its fangs drizzled with blood.

102 | P a g e

Janek looked at the mangled corpse of his one time friend and he hissed fearfully. “This isn’t going to end here Grigi. It is going to go on and on.”

Even Grigorivich felt a shudder, not of fear certainly, but apprehension. He was aware Janek hated his gap toothed wife with a vengeance and she him, so he did not suppose he would reveal anything to her about the source of the bounty that had been going into their bellies now for several days. But he was also aware that since there had been no nightly gatherings at the barn to receive a share of what Ushak might bring from the forest folk probably suspected or feared the worst. Not that it mattered, he reflected sourly and cynically, for he well knew they would either pretend the meat was not what it was or else hunger would overwhelm morality.

“We deal with what we have now Janek and not what will follow.” He muttered laconically.

Janek shuddered and the sight before his eyes and the thought of what he must do filled him with revulsion and he replied surprisingly firm for him.

“I will do it tomorrow.”

“Why not now?”

“I stood godfather to his eldest,” Janek muttered weakly.

“And now he is cuts of fucking beef!” Grigorivich snarled.

Janek regained composure. He maintained firmly. “I said, I will come early tomorrow before the dawn and do it.”

Grigorivich turned his head and glared at the butcher. He was going to growl an order but something warned him he should not push the man at that minute. His glare turned into a 103 | P a g e

curious stare and Janek muttered, “I will come in the morning.” Grigorivich spun on his heel and went to the steps, barking out “see that you do!”

Janek was good as his word. The following morning he left the comfort of a warm bed and a wife he swore only had value as a source of heat from lying beside her bulky body. He made his way furtively among the shadows to his butcher shop as the cold light of day began to streak the horizon and the first pink of the day’s sun limned the tree line in the east. He was only at work in the cellar an hour when the column of White soldiers marched into the town behind their Colonel on his rangy cavalry horse and he was the only one who had no idea they had arrived.

The Czechoslovak and Moldovan mercenaries were practised and accomplished plunderers and while Colonel Pavel Simonov Dravek sat his mount and smoked a cigar while he draped one leg over the saddle pommel and looked on with a small smile on his face, Captain Nikolas Sebotari directed the sergeants and their squads in their searches of houses and outbuildings. His men were raking in whatever could be found, which he considered was pitiful enough as it started to pile up in the front garden of what was the only part stone built house, in front of which trembled a fat man and his fat wife and equally fat daughters.

A big sullen looking man who seemed out of place in that village, a dangerous looking fellow with hands large as shovels, stood also in the garden staring moodily, but, strangely, the Colonel thought, without resentment at the soldiers who stood guard over them with rifles levelled.

Once most of the buildings had been ransacked the Captain had his men gathered the villagers together in and about Drapajlo’s garden. The Colonel addressed them lazily, contemptuously, as only an aristocratic sort would: “Alright then, you Bolshevik bastards, 104 | P a g e

which of you is the head man in this shithole?” And then he added a witticism he was inordinately fond of his men had heard often enough before, but at which they still laughed.

“Or in this new Marxist system of equality is it a head woman you have?”

He was interrupted when two of his men dragged a shaking blood and gore covered Janek from his shop and across the road and threw him down at the horse’s hooves. The butcher had a cut to his lip and a bruise on his head and as he lay in the mud quivering from head to foot he looked up and his eyes met Grigorivich’s. The big bully gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head Janek acknowledged in the same way as the Colonel demanded to know what it meant. One of the soldiers spat on Janek’s head and pointed toward the butcher shop. “Down in the cellar over there sir,” the soldier said with a look of disgust at the man in the mud. “It’s horrible,” his comrade added as he delivered a hefty kick to the butchers groin that had him groan heavily and clutch at himself and curl into a foetal ball. “Fucking animals!” the first soldier screamed at the gathered villagers as he raised his rifle intent on shooting. The Colonel barked suddenly: “Mladec! Put up your weapon soldier!” The soldier named Mladec, eyes full of venom, spat again on Janek and lowered his weapon and stepped back. The Colonel slid down from his horse and looped the reins over its head. He pointed and ordered Mladec, “Show me.”

As the two made their way across the street through the mud the Captain turned to the assembled villagers and they understood at once that brutal and uncaring as the Colonel could be, and indeed was, Nikolas Sebotari was infinitely worse. He stepped into the garden and took one look at fat Drapajlo, smiled at him and was rewarded with a weak smile in return, at which he punched the jowly face and broke his nose and sent him sprawling on to

105 | P a g e

the ground. Grigorivich instinctively stepped forward but two soldiers levelling their rifles before his face made him subside and step back with his teeth gritted with frustration.

The Captain regarded the fallen man for a moment. He sneered as he stepped forward and wrenched the keys on their chain from about Drapajlo’s neck and hissed at him “only one so fat could lead this bunch!” He regarded at the keys for a moment, then took his pistol and held it to Marta’s forehead. Drapajlo looked in horror, his nose pouring blood and his world in a state of utter collapse. The Captain grinned evilly as he looked now to Nadia and Alexandra tightly holding to one another. Marta raised her head defiantly and sneered at the Captain and said “don’t you dare say anything husband.”

The Captain looked to Drapajlo and a thumb pulled back the hammer on his pistol and he demanded “well fat man?” Marta snarled “tell them nothing!” But it was too late because whatever nerve or hidden courage Drapajlo may have possessed had evaporated. He lowered his eyes and muttered “there is a cabinet in the parlour and a cellar door beneath the carpet in the pantry.” The Captain tossed the keys to a sergeant and ordered “go!” As the sergeant and a three man squad entered the house the Captain pulled back his arm and raised his pistol as if to whip it across Marta’s face, and she, being made of much sterner stuff than her husband, simply closed her eyes and waited the blow, indeed she welcomed it if only to let the coward cowering bleeding on the grass see what a real Russian is made of.

The Captain did not let the blow fall. Instead he leaned forward and with a mighty laugh that was echoed by his comrades he planted a wet kiss on her lips. She pulled back startled and wiped her mouth with the back of a meaty hand.

The Colonel and Mladek came out from the gloom of the butcher shop. Both men were visibly shaken and the Colonel had to reach out a hand and lean against the door frame for 106 | P a g e

support for a moment. He wiped bile from his mouth. He was reeling as he squelched through the mud on the street followed by his soldier and pointing at Janek and ordering “get rope!” His men hesitated. He screamed almost hysterically. “Get rope I said, and hang that fucking beast from a tree!”

Soldiers rushed to obey their commander and the pitiful Janek looked up from where he was lying soiled with mud and his own faeces, and he tried to explain “please, it is not what you ...” but his guard towering over him hammered his rifle butt down into his face, breaking teeth and shattering bones. Janek whimpered and as they dragged him away to the big old tree rooted next to his butcher shop he looked one last time at his neighbours and caught a sight of his wife among them with a smile creasing her face. They hanged him swiftly and without ceremony and as he twisted on the end of the rope and choked until he dangled lifeless villagers covered the eyes of their terrified children with their hands and averted their own gaze.

The Colonel and his men were well inured to the horrors of war, and though they had passed through places infested with those who would kill and eat their own species, or deliberately starved a child so that it could be eaten, or robbed cemeteries of the recently deceased; and they even knew of many instances where doctors or medical students would sell bits from a cadaver intended for research by dissection, they had never encountered a nest of cannibal’s up close and personal in this way. What made it all the worse, as the Colonel informed them in his tirade against them, was that they had clearly preyed upon their own neighbours and used the butcher shop for the filthy work and for storing the meat. They were stunned speechless when he further informed them the village would be burned to the ground, eligible females desired by his troops would be ravished and all adult 107 | P a g e

males would be shot. They were a pathetic rabble without hope and wailed loudly until Grigorivich stepped forward and they fell silent. The Captain levelled his pistol but the Colonel said “no, I will hear this fellow.” The Captain lowered his pistol just as abruptly as it had come up and the Colonel leaned his hand nonchalantly on the pommel of his cavalry sabre, a much cherished possession of his he often used as a prop but rarely removed from its scabbard. He looked the bully up and down, appraising him closely and with a shrewd eye. “You are not one of these,” he stated with conviction.

Grigorivich managed a small smile, which the Colonel did not return. The smile faded on the bully’s face. He gave a little cough. “From Jaroslav sir.”

“City boy,” the Colonel mused. “You are a long way from home. Howso?”

“It is a long story sir,” and saying this Grigorivich did smile properly.

“Perhaps I should tie you at my horse’s tail and have you tell me in the long nights that will follow when we leave this hell hole.”

Grigorivich, panic suddenly welling up within him and, for one of the few occasions in his life, fear also, blurted out “I have information for you sir.”

The Colonel’s interest was piqued now. He raised his eyebrows and squinted a look at his Captain, who muttered with a sneer. “I say we skin this man eating swine alive before we shoot him.”

“Good supplies sir, a young woman, very beautiful,” Grigorivich spluttered hastily and anxiously, his panic bringing beads of sweat out on his forehead, “and a Jaeger rifle.”

108 | P a g e

“A Jaeger rifle you say?” The Colonel looked to the Captain and he whispered and commented “if true that’s a prize indeed sir.” The Colonel considered. He looked up at the sky where an eagle soared on thermals of warm air. Spring was coming but yet winter still would not easily let go its grip on the land and he wanted the column to be deep into the forest before night fell. He knew from his scouts there was a large Red Army force somewhere to his east. It was noticeable there was an absence of animal life of any kind in the village, which was understandable enough when famine strikes, but as he took a glance at the hanged man with his bulging eyes and his swollen protruding blue tongue, he reflected perhaps it would have been prudent to check his anger and hear what the man had to say before his soldiers rifle butt silenced him. “What do you want for this information?” The Colonel abruptly asked Grigorivich.

The bully hesitated and looked around at the villager’s expectant hope filled faces, while his thoughts toyed with the possibility of requesting that in exchange for his information he might be allowed to join the White army column. Fighting and plundering did hold appeal for him. Drapajlo saw and tried to raise himself up, but Marta was too quick for him. She reached out and pushed his hand down sharply and told him coldly “quiet you! Let Grigi tell the General.”

“Colonel, madam,” the Colonel said lightly.

“What?”

“I am a Colonel.” He sighed, now wearied with the place. He really was indifferent to whether or not women were raped, houses burned, and men were shot to death. He sighed and went to his horse, which had waited patiently throughout the unfolding drama, and as

109 | P a g e

he looped the reins across the animals head and mounted he called back “you have seconds only Jaroslav man.”

“Spare the village sir.” Grigorivich said swiftly. “Spare it and I will lead you there.” The villagers jaws dropped almost as one and their eyes widened in astonishment and hopeful eyes were turned up to the Colonel. The Colonel hardly considered. “Very well,” he said curtly. ”Take ten men Captain and follow the fellow to the place he speaks of.” He waved a hand and the sergeants ordered their squads with their booty in their hands or slung across their shoulders, including everything from Drapajlo’s house and cellar, including blankets from the beds and clothes from the wardrobes, into column formation at their commanders back. As the smiling Colonel led his men away heading north east around the back of the Drapajlo house and across their lower field which would take them past Katya’s mean little hut and on to the wood, and the evilly grinning Captain placed Grigorivich in the middle of his squad of ten and set off, Marta looked down at her husband and sneered and spat at him “you fool Drapajlo!” He bleated out “what else could I do?” His daughters closed around their mother, who they now saw with fresh eyes, but before Marta could answer him Osipenko stepped forward from the huddle. He also spat at the bloody fallen Mayor, “your cowardice Drapajlo has cost this village everything we might have had to survive a while longer,” and Madam Horowitz added bitterly “and who but a great fool would strut about with the keys to a hidden place on display dangling about his fat neck?” And in that moment as the villagers loudly muttered their agreement Drapajlo was quite assuredly deposed as Mayor and husband, father and man. He hung his head as the disconsolate people dispersed to their ransacked homes and Madam Nishelev left her children and went to him and stooped and hawked and spat full in his face.

110 | P a g e

Before marching away up the road with Grigorivich the Captain and his men set the butcher shop ablaze to deny the village the human meat that hung from the hooks in the cellar, and as the little column set off up the track towards Ushak’s cabin with flames and a plume of smoke billowing up into the sky behind them a deliriously happy Grigorivich was tempted to whistle a tune and shout out, now you will see what is what you Roma bastard!

111 | P a g e

11 Katya was by the fire preparing food. The children were on the floor again looking at a book.

Ushak was whiling away the hours seated on his crib whistling and whittling a piece of wood into a rough dog figure as a toy for Beatrice. He was unaware of course that danger was approaching swiftly the little cabin, but a sudden sense of heightened alertness made him rise up and set aside his knife and the half finished figurine. He ambled to the door casually so as not to alarm Katya and the children but before he could open it the door crashed inward and slammed him straight in the face and chest and he went down. Soldiers crowded into the tiny cabin and Katya and Beatrice screamed and Sasha yelled as Ushak was dragged outside by his heels and everyone else tumbled out behind.

The soldiers were practised at this and the children were quickly tied up and gagged to still their annoying shrieks and their tears. When they were tied they were taken back into the cabin and laid unceremoniously on the floor and Ushak knew what fate held in store for them. He looked up groggily through eyes half blinded by the blood that poured down his face from a gash on his forehead and his gaze met that of Grigorivich where he stood covered by the rifles of two soldiers. When their eyes met Grigorivich grinned wickedly and Ushak recognised the truth of what happened.

Katya’s shriek brought his head sharply about as the Captain emerged with the rifle in his hand. There were three men at Katya and they had torn her dress and were in the process of pulling her legs open. One man was already standing ready opening his breeches. The Captain glanced momentarily at the scene while inside the cabin the remaining members of the squad searched and removed anything that prove of value, even the old soot blackened pot. The man was kneeling between Katya’s legs now panting like a wild beast with his cock 112 | P a g e

erect and angry looking while his comrades held the struggling sobbing girl’s arms and legs spread wide. Ushak knew that the rest of this squad would also have their way with Katya when these were done with her and that then they would shoot him and her in the head and put their bodies in the cabin, which they would set on fire so that the children would be roasted alive. His mind raced, seeking a solution. The Captain demanded without looking at him “bullets.”

He looked up at the Captain and gasped out in a rasp. “I can give you something better than the rifle and bullets sir.” Ushak looked across to Katya and she turned her head and her anguished gaze met his. The Captain noticed where Ushak’s gaze fell and he commanded sharply “wait!” The would be rapists stopped and stepped back from Katya and the man shoved his dangling erection back out of sight into his trousers and she huddled into a ball on the ground pulling her torn dress about her as best she could.

Grigorivich exclaimed sharply as he perceived suddenly his pleasure might be cut short.

“No!” The Captain fixed him with an angry stare and hissed at him “no? No you say?”

Grigorivich lowered his eyes and muttered weakly “he is a fucking Roma sir, an invader here.”

The Captain chuckled mirthlessly and informed the hapless bully. “My auntie was a gypsy, and what else would you say we are but invaders?” One handed he pointed the rifle at Grigorivich and said, “I suggest you fuck off back to your nest of flesh eaters before we nail you to a tree.” Grigorivich did not answer. He cast a murderously venomous glance first in Ushak’s direction and then at Katya, and then he spun on his heel and headed away back towards the village. One of the soldiers who was very fluent in the language yelled after his

113 | P a g e

retreating back, mocking him, “maybe you will be the next to be eaten you big bastard!” and the Captain shook his head and sneered “fucking Russians!”

“The old Count had me help bury his treasure from the gtrat house,” Ushak said quickly. “It is in the forest. I know where. I can show you. Gold and silver coin, jewels, silver platters, a lot. You will all be rich men” The Captain looked doubtful as his men stood around with booty from the cabin. “The Colonel is on his way to Tsilivech’s house now.”

“He will find nothing of value there,” Ushak said honestly, for it was true the Count had had everything of value taken from the chateau, except it was in fact removed to a safe house across the river near the foot of the Ural Mountains and did not lie buried and hidden in the forest. “Unless of course you want to carry off tables and wardrobes,” Ushak added, as though it did not matter to him one way or another. The Captain snorted, “You lie.” Ushak responded with a depth of sincerity only his folk could manage. “Ushak never lies.”

The Captain thought hard for what seemed a long moment before he made his decision.

“You and you go to the Colonel and advise that he should join us on the forest track,” he ordered two of his men, “and you,” he pointed to Ushak, “you best pray this treasure of Tsilevich’s is where you say it is.” “I swear it,” Ushak said. The Captain ignored him then long enough for him to make it to Katya and hiss at her where she lay still. “Take the children and go to Isaac Rabinowitz.” She looked up at him as the Captain turned sharply on hearing his voice. “Do not let any see you Katya. Not even the Weissman’s.” He winced as a rifle barrel was lashed across his back and a harsh voice barked out “come on gypo! Get moving!”

114 | P a g e

As he was led away into the forest along the track he tried to look back over his shoulder to see if the traumatised Katya had understood him, but they pulled him along with them too fast and so he was left in a state of anxiety and no little trauma himself.

Night was falling and the dark forest had some life returned to it where only a few days earlier all would have been silent and hinting of a pervasive desolation. An owl hooted and it seemed it was a signal for the dour taciturn Captain to call a halt. The snow was melting and the forest floor was mulch and wet, so they remained where they were on the track huddled about a low bank resigned to spending a miserable night under the stiff limbed trees. Clouds banked across the moon and when they did the blackness in the forest became almost a physical thing. One of the soldiers had a canvas sheet rolled up in his pack and two others had the blankets pilfered from Ushak’s cabin. The canvas sheet was stretched out between the trunks of four trees and so they had some protection from the drizzly rain that came down and pattered on the canvas of the makeshift shelter above their heads. The Captain would not let them light a fire and brew some tea or even smoke for fear this would draw the attention of any Red Army patrols which might be roaming. Someone had a flask of vodka and it was passed around, and even Ushak had a share, which made him reflect bitterly how comfortable these brutal soldiers were in accepting a complete stranger into their midst, they had even earlier cleaned the wound on his forehead and sealed it with mud, and he also reflected it did not seem to matter to them what he was or where he came from. They all spoke passable Russian and rarely slipped into their own language as they whispered among themselves. Their Colonel insisted the unit language be Russian so that none of them would fail to be understood by the local populations they passed among as they spent the long years many miles from their own homes and families

115 | P a g e

fighting a war which was unwinnable and which, after the execution of the Tsar and the royal family, was already lost. One of the men asked Ushak how he a Roma had come to be living where he was beside a nest of cannibals and they all sat up and listened as he told them the tale of his life in low whispers while the vodka was passed from man to man until it was finished and someone else produced a second flask.

When he was done with the tale and it was brought right up to the present, although he omitted the grittier part of the events at his cabin earlier that day, ending instead with “and then along came you boys to liberate old Ushak� which made the men chuckle, the Captain ordered them settled for the night. He set sentries along the track a little, and as Ushak settled down beside a portly Galician corporal named John under one of his own blankets he watched bitterly as the Captain cradled the rifle beside him where he lay and gave Ushak a knowing look. But it mattered little now to Ushak, who, ever a pragmatic man, had already resigned himself to its loss. Besides, he knew that in the excitement of hearing about the imaginary treasure buried deep in the forest the Captain had forgotten about the bullets and the nineteen acorn shaped lead slugs it would require if the rifle was to have any practical value, and they remained in their hidden recess between logs in the wall of the cabin. The one round ready loaded into the breech would be of little use if it came down to a battle and Ushak reflected sourly that despite the beautiful rifle’s intrinsic and monetary value, if that happened the Captain would simply discard it as useless once the single shot was fired. It was such a shame for his father had owned the .69 calibre rifle since it had come out of the Werder factory in 1886. It was widely regarded as the finest design ever produced by the Bavarian genius Johann Werder and Ushak had hoped that just as his own father had passed the weapon on to him one day he would pass it on to Sasha.

116 | P a g e

The night was cold and beside him fat John spent the hours until it was his turn for sentry duty just before dawn snoring and farting. Ushak was much too consumed with anxiety to sleep. He had confidence Katya would do what he had asked of her and sneak into the Weissman house with the children and take shelter there. He was equally confident that old Isaac Rabinowitz would take them in and keep them safe and hidden. The old man had a cold way about him developed in the years after his wife died and he could be sullen, but inside he had a good heart. He learned also from the men that only the butcher had been killed when they took the town, so he knew that Isaac lived. And yet however comforting these thoughts should have been he could not prevent himself from brooding on the worst possibilities which he turned over and over in his thoughts, and he could not shake the image of Grigorivich’s face from his mind’s eye. He knew with a deep and dreadful certainty that if the bully discovered Katya and the children then they would be lost to him, and so he did not sleep.

In the morning the Captain allowed a fire to be lit and tea to be brewed. He told them they would wait where they were for the Colonel and the rest of the column to catch up with them. He and his men looked on in quiet amusement as their captive knelt beside a tree and said his morning prayers. They did not laugh at him or make rude comments. In fact they respected him. When he stood and made the sign of the cross over his body and turned back to them the Captain asked him, “Catholic?” and smiled and nodded his head sagely when Ushak answered he was.

One by one the men wandered into the forest to see to their toilet, but when Ushak had to go the Captain sent fat John with him. As he squatted, embarrassed and unable to go with someone watching, the fat corporal chuckled and turned his back so that Ushak only then 117 | P a g e

managed to relieve himself. When he was done and stood and the corporal still had his back to him he noticed a fallen branch lying near his feet. He considered fleetingly picking it up and bashing John on the head and then running off back to the village, but then just as quickly he discarded the idea. He knew they would only come after him. He clapped John on the shoulder and muttered his thanks as they returned to the track.

They stayed sitting on the track for three hours, during which time Ushak continued to fret, until the Captain despatched a man to go east to find out if somehow the column had bypassed them. Ushak informed the Captain, who sat still cradling the rifle across his lap, there was such a possibility, for a rough track did snake between fields and meadows from the Count’s mansion down to the forest and on all the way through the densest part of the trees all the way on to the mighty Volga. It was very narrow in places and could scarce be discerned in others but it was there, and as it ran south east into the forest it bisected the track they sat on some eight miles distant east of them. The Captain took this information in but still insisted they remain where they were, and so they sat, drinking tea and swapping stories, while Ushak gazed up to where flocks of geese were flying across the sky in lazy formations calling to one another and became frantic with worry.

Late afternoon in the stricken village was not the best of places in the world to be at that time. Nishelev’s widow and her children had knelt in a little line beside the still smouldering ashes and fire blackened ruins of Janek’s butcher shop and they prayed for the soul of a father and a husband. Most people stayed indoors, still traumatised from the events of the previous day, and women wept for lost possessions and hungry children wept for their stomachs were beginning to gripe. Some emergency goods such as blankets and a pot or two had been hidden in buried places a distance from the village, but it was little enough to 118 | P a g e

sustain an entire community. So the place was wretched and the air of despondency that had hung in the air before deepened. Men sat by fires and cursed Gods and generals and men in black suits smoking cigars and making decisions. Georgy Drapajlo lay on his large bed in a cold bedroom curled up foetus like and he shivered as he held a hand to his ruined nose and endured the pain of it. What he could not endure was the pain of his loss and it paralysed him so that spasmodically tears would flow and sobs would wrack his body.

Only Marta Drapajlo acted with any decisiveness. She summoned Grigorivich and Osipenko to the parlour in her house, Chaim Weissman and Michael Yura too, and when the five were seated about the table and her daughter Nadia had served tea from a stock her mother had wisely hidden, Marta told them bluntly. “Something must be done and that fool of a husband of mines laying upstairs nursing his wounds and crying like a newborn babe is not the man to do it.” She smiled sweetly at Grigorivich and he muttered dourly, “who would have thought it?”

“He was badly mauled Grigorivich,” Chaim Weissman said with a sneer. “I should like to see the man could suffer as he has and function well.”

Grigorivich sneered back. “Hah! That’s your Jew for you.” He pointed menacingly with a finger at the older smaller man. “I once fought a Lithuanian wrestler for two hours with a broken arm.”

“Did you win?” Michael Yura asked laconically. Grigorivich turned his head and looked down at Yura and snapped back the answer “of course I fucking did. Bit off his nose and won myself sixty roubles, you little weasel.” He laughed. Osipenko said loudly, “I don’t think this is what Madam Drapajlo had in mind when she invited us here.”

119 | P a g e

“No, it is not,” Marta said, and the men fell to silence and turned their heads to look at her again. She smiled her thanks to Osipenko before going on. “There is not a morsel of food to be had anywhere in the village. Shelter we have, and blankets and clothing can be got if we barter or buy from the towns and villages to the west, but this is famine and nowhere can we buy food.”

“Spring is coming and things will be better then,” Chaim Weissman said.

“There is no seed for planting,” Yura said bitterly. “The whites stole what I had hidden in my shed.”

“It is meat we need,” Marta told them firmly, “protein. And it is up to us to make the decisions that will see us have that meat. The village must act as one or we will die as surely as Janek did.”

“There is one meat supply that is readily available,” Grigorivich said, voicing the thought which had been at the front of all their minds.

“That is an abomination!” Chaim spluttered.

“Oh hold on to your foreskin rabbi!” Grigorivich told him with a little chuckle, while at the same time absent-mindedly fingering the puckered scar on his chin Ushak had given him.

“What the fuck do you think we have been eating for nigh a week already?” Yura and Weissman in company with the rest of the village had suspected of course, but like everyone else they preferred to not let the abominable thought enter their heads, even while they filled their bellies. Grigorivich laughed raucously as he added “and you don’t have to worry yourself Weissman, the meat was kosher.”

120 | P a g e

Weissman stood abruptly, his face red and his beard spittle flecked. Marta told him wearily, “sit down Hymie.” He glowered at his laughing tormentor, who under Marta’s glare let his mirth dissipate, and then he sat again. “You know we have to stand together,” she went on.

“We five will be the committee which will make the hard decisions that must be made.”

Yura asked “what about the Mayor?”

“What Mayor?” she answered with a sneer.

“So now we are Bolsheviks then?” Chaim Weissman said with an equal sneer. “Forming committees in gloomy rooms?”

Marta loved her parlour and took pride in it, but she did not rise to the bait. Instead she smiled sweetly at the old man and told him sincerely, “we are a survivor, that’s what we are.”

“And if you don’t want to survive Weissman,” Grigorivich added with an icy malice as he pointed, “there is the door.” Weissman subsided and Osipenko got the distinct feeling this entire meeting and how it was to play out had been planned between Marta and the bully so thaty the stage management would lead to one inescapable finale. He smiled grimly and commented with unerring logic, “I have to agree with Grigi. Meat is meat and we must have sustenance and if the meat is to come from man then so be it. I for one will worry about God and my conscience once this famine is at an end and the fields and paddocks are filled once more.” “And you all know of course Grigorivich will do anything to survive,” the bully added with relish.

“Then we are agreed,” Marta said.

“Janek is still at the foot of what is left of the tree,” Yura suggested tentatively.

121 | P a g e

“He is burned to a charred mess you idiot!” Grigorivich spat at him. It was true. The wind had fanned the flames straight on to the tree on which the soldiers had hanged the hapless butcher and the body had been burned right through and now lay an unrecognisable mass of black ruin in a slushy puddle of mud. The indignity did not occur to any of them, only the loss of a meat source. “No,” Grigorivich went on, “we need fresh meat.”

“My husband had a meeting with some head people from Ulitsa a few months ago,” Marta informed them casually, ignoring the knowing look and smile she received from Osipenko, “just in case you understand. An,” she gave a little cough, “arrangement was made.”

“What kind of arrangement?” Chaim Wiessman asked doubtfully.

“The kind will keep your Jew ass alive,” Grigorivich said with a sneer. Weissman scowled.

Marta ignored them. “If we deliver to them some live meat they will give us double pound for pound in dead. They prefer their meat fresh.”

Yura could scarce believe his ears. There he was sitting amongst people who were discussing human beings, living, breathing, thinking people in terms of ‘meat’. He ventured tentatively.

“We are speaking of people here aren’t we?” His companions regarded him as though he was mad but before anyone could answer him he added swiftly, “and who is going to volunteer to sacrifice themselves? I mean, we cannot simply bash someone on the head and tie them up and force them.”

There was a brief moment of silence and then Grigorivich said firmly, “it must be the outsiders, the immigrant gypsy children. Ushak kept them well fed and they are fairly plump. It must be them. They are not part of the village.”

122 | P a g e

“You are not from the village either,” Weissman pointed out, bringing a dark scowl to the bully’s face. “Somewhere far to the north isn’t it you come from?”

“Yes, true,” Grigorivich conceded, then added, almost with a vocal flourish, “but I am Russian” “Ach! You are such a racist Grigorivich.”

Grigorivich was about to answer but Osipenko cut across him, seeing an opportunity to exercise what he considered his considerable faculties of logic. “Well naturally, Master Weissman, he is a racist. I am a racist too. Aren’t you? I mean, don’t you love this country?

With a passion?”

“Of course I do,” Weissman agreed warily, unsure where this could be leading, and, as all in the village were, he was awed by Osipenko and his education, both what he claimed it to be and what in fact it actually was.

“And don’t you love your own people above all others?”

“Yes, of course I do. The soul of my people is embedded here,” and on saying this the old man tapped his chest with a finger, “ingrained in my heart, but I know too as a Jew I could feel a tug on my beard at any time.”

“But you are Russian?”

Weissman nodded his head, and Osipenko continued apace. “Jew or otherwise, you are one of our people.”

“Yes, I am one of your people.”

123 | P a g e

Osipenko jabbed his finger in the direction he thought Ushak’s cottage lay. “They are not our people,” he stated flatly, “and because you agree with me, land and people, you are as I am and as all sitting at this table should be by sacred duty, you are a racist.”

Weissman frowned. He knew somehow he had lost the debate but he could not quite rationalise how. Nevertheless, he tried to refute the irrefutable and said, “No Master Osipenko, I am a patriot.” Marta laughed and asked him, “is there a difference?”

They did not need a vote and neither did they ask for one; Marta simply informed them what was going to happen. They would take Sasha and Beatrice and swap them as food for the meat they would receive in exchange from a neighbour village. If they husbanded that meat properly, living off stews mainly, then they could survive perhaps a month. It was nearing the middle of March and so, Marta reasoned with the unerring logic of a matriarch well accustomed over many years to running a household, if they could survive into May the village might emerge from the famine relatively unscathed. That was, of course, if the famine ended, but in any event, she told herself, even if the famine did not come to an end there were the Jews.

That night Grigorivich and Osipenko left to walk the eighteen miles to Ulitsa to make the necessary arrangements and conclude the deal first brokered by Georgy Drapajlo four months earlier.

124 | P a g e

12 Ushak was falling through space, tumbling and spinning, freewheeling through a cloying darkness that enveloped him. Hands reached for him and tugged and sought to grasp him as he fell and voices yelled at him, hurling the old familiar insults, spitting them; fucking dirty gypsy bastard! Roma demon! Worse than a Jew! Move them on before they steal the babies in the cribs!

Then abruptly he found himself bathed in golden sunlight running beside the banks of the wide and mighty River Danube with his sister by his side, a happy laughing child, mesmerised as the kite above their heads in the oh so blue sky wheeled and dipped on the end of the string.

Then just as abruptly, he was riding the great powerful black colt Beordynn along the forest track returning to the camp they had made near the meandering brook on the slope above the town of Cluj. He was a boy wild and untamed and free, and his thoughts were filled with the prospect of the succulent Boar steaks mama would be roasting that night over coals on an open fire. It was as he emerged from the trees he heard the first shots and saw men with clubs running toward the garishly coloured wagons and caravans.

Then his eyes flashed open and he awoke to the face of the Captain looming over him and John with a hand on his shoulder shaking him. “Get up gypsy!� the Captain barked, and as Ushak struggled up from the depths of the place into which his alternating dreams and nightmares had plunged him, he saw the Colonel seated on his horse on the track.

They had joined the main column the previous evening and the Captain spent an hour locked in conversation with his superior discussing the hoard of treasure their captive was 125 | P a g e

going to lead them to in return for his life and the life of his family. The Colonel had been furious and disappointed both when the Tsilevich mansion was searched from top to bottom and the search had not yielded so much as a bottle of wine, and it was true that for him and his men the war was probably over. He doubted if the inadequately supplied and numerically inferior White army even then marching north against Moscow would find victory. Trotsky and his fanatical Red Army would smash them probably in a single battle. It was therefore the prospect of the treasure and then, laden with booty, retracing their steps fast all the way to Moldova and beyond and safety, returning home rich men, that persuaded him to go on. But yet, he was also aware there was a large Bolshevik force at large somewhere in the region, probably hunting for him and his men.

As he gazed down at the bewildered Ushak, while all about him his men were preparing their breakfast and brewing tea, his mind raced on the possibilities and the dangers. He did not let his doubts show on his face as he affected his best and most haughtily aristocratic air. “So, gypsy, the Captain informs you know the whereabouts of the Count’s trove.”

Ushak sat up and affected his most deferential peasant air. “It is east sir, a quarter mile from the edge of the forest at the base of a great oak. Did I not myself direct the crew that dug in the earth and buried it there?” He added with relish and for effect, “oh a great hoard it is sir.

The Count is a rich and fortunate man indeed.”

The Colonel thought about this. He frowned. “There are enemy troops out there somewhere. What is to say you do not lead us into a trap?”

Ushak smiled as he stood up, much to the Colonel’s irritation. “Sir, I encountered soldiers on the mountain road only a week ago,” he lied.

126 | P a g e

“Many soldiers?” The Colonel probed.

“Oh an army sir!”

“In which direction did they go?”

“North on the mountain road to Zhigulevsk sir,” Ushak lied again, smoothly and with conviction, and, incongruously he thought to himself at that moment he gave thanks for his heritage. And that heritage dictated that if it came to survival of hearth, home, and family, a lie was no lie but merely the truth cloaked.

The Colonel was not entirely convinced, but since a march east through the forest to the place Ushak said the treasure was buried would take them less than a day, he decided to take a chance. He gave the order for the column to form up. Scouts were sent ahead and Ushak, under the Colonel’s orders, had his hands tied before him and was placed in the middle of the column in the care of the fat corporal John, who spent the first hour of the march telling jokes in an effort to keep his captive’s spirits up. Ushak pretended to laugh only to humour the corporal. His heart was pounding with fear and apprehension, his mouth was dry, and his mind was racing as the march continued, becoming a slog through mud churned on the track by a hundred pair of feet. He had to get away and return to the village and Katya and the children, that was his first thought, his second was that with every passing minute they were drawing nearer to the place he had said was where the imaginary treasure was buried, and he knew only too well what would happen to him then when it was discovered it was not so, and he imagined in what direction the Colonel’s fury with him might after that lead. He tried not to let himself fall into a wretched despair, but it was hard.

So many times when he had fought for a prize in the alleyways behind sordid bars on Black

127 | P a g e

Sea waterfronts he had surprised opponents and spectators and gamblers by coming back as it seemed from the dead and winning, but not this time, he reflected sourly. This time he was tied like a shackled dog in the middle of a company of grim soldiers marching towards the place he felt would mark his grave.

A light smattering of sleety snow fell down from the grey sky, probably the seasons last.

Birds whistled in the trees. The mud sucked at his ankles. John clapped him on the back and whispered into his ear, “have no fear my gypsy friend, I have followed my Colonel four hard years and I tell you when we get our hands on the Count’s fortune he will fill your pockets with coin,� and laughed. But Ushak recognised where they were and he felt his mood darken perceptibly. It was where he had shot and killed the bear, and he knew that just paces beyond where the animal had lain there was a clearing in the trees.

In the village a strange expectant hush had descended. The rain that fell in the night had mostly washed away all that had remained of the burned body of the butcher Janek, and all that did remain as evidence of what had once been a man was a black smear beside a charred stump of old tree. The little man Yura spent hours sitting inert and passive in his chair by a weak fire staring moodily into the flames, much to the puzzlement of his wife. He did not endure the fierce spasms of guilt that had wracked Nishelev the blacksmith, and he knew that he would partake of the meat when it came, but he knew also that it would be the aftermath when it came to living in a place with his neighbours where everyone knew what his fellow had done and what depths they had plumbed to survive. No such thoughts plagued Marta Drapajlo as she fussed about in her kitchen or when she sat at the table in the parlour with Nadia scribbling recipes into a notebook, while upstairs her husband lay still on the bed.

128 | P a g e

But in the Weissman house old father conscience had paid a visit. Chaim Weissman knocked on Isaac Rabinowitz’s room. Inside the old man hushed Katya and the children to silence. He did not answer and the knocking persisted, then after a moment Weissman called, “I know you are in there Isaac,” and added after a pause, “and I know Katerina Semyonovich and Ushak’s children are with you.”

Katya and Isaac exchanged a frightened glance and the old man sighed and called back.

“How do you know this Hymie?”

Weissman chuckled. “Sheesh! Isaac, does a Jew not know who is hiding under his own roof?”

Isaac rose and went to the door and opened it a fraction. His eyes met the red rimmed eyes of Chaim Weissman, who hissed in a low urgent whisper “they are in mortal danger.”

Isaac whispered back. “They are children Hymie, whatever their origin, what man with a conscience would harm children?”

“Conscience is only a tool of necessity old friend,” Weissman answered caustically, then crooked a finger and added, “come out here to the hall and I will tell you.”

Isaac glanced at a frightened Katya with her arms about the two children almost buried in her skirts and he went out and closed the door at his back.

The Colonel looked down at the Captain as he stared across the small clearing. He was apprehensive. “I don’t know sir,” he said after a moment, “the scouts report nothing back.”

“The scouts have not returned yet,” the Colonel pointed out, without realising of course that the five men he had despatched ahead to scout were even then all lying together in a 129 | P a g e

heap not a hundred yards from where he sat his horse with their throats cut. One particularly belligerent sergeant, the man who had been Katya’s would be rapist, the Red Army Soldiers had beheaded brutally so that now his head stood on a stave of wood with the eyes staring vacantly towards the east.

“It is only three miles to go sir,” the Captain said. “We could be there and digging in an hour,” he suggested.

The Colonel thought about this and then he waved an arm and the column set off forward again, and as the Captain passed him the Colonel said grimly to him “and best you keep that fine rifle ready Sebotari, I have a feeling it will be needed.”

And at that very moment a torrent of rifle fired erupted from the trees all about them and men fell screaming and dying.

What Ushak heard was the sharp staccato of a machine gun. Then he heard the rifle shots that spoke of hundreds of men all firing at the same time, and then he heard screams and cries of agony from all around him. John reacted at once, his years of soldiering telling him instinctively what he should do. He grasped Ushak firmly by the collar and pulled him off the track and down into a small gulley where they tumbled together in a heap in mud, snow, twigs, and mulch. The firing was incessant from all sides and the corporal knew that his company was unlikely to survive it. He pulled Ushak to his knees and drew a bayonet from a scabbard on his belt and stared into the bound mans eyes. “Tell me you did not bring us to this?” he asked fiercely, the point of the blade glinting. Ushak shook his head. “I swear I did not know.” Ushak held his breath, apprehensive, aware the corporal was grappling with what he ought to be doing. Kill his prisoner? Is that what his superiors order would be? John

130 | P a g e

was in a dilemma; did he have a duty? He was a good soldier, but a soldier in the ranks of this strange White army fighting in a country which had undergone so radical a change it did not seem any longer there was a cause to fight for, and so should he even be there? He pondered. The bullets whistled. Men shouted, groaned, died. He grasped Ushak’s hands and the blade flashed down and severed the rope bonds about his wrists. He thrust his bayonet away back in its scabbard and picked up his rifle and began to scramble out of the gulley.

“Wait, John!” Ushak cried. The corporal turned. “It doesn’t have to end like this for you,” he told him. “Don’t go.” John chuckled. “I care nothing for the world as it should be Ushak. In here,” he tapped a finger to the side of his head, “I am bounded by the world as it is.” He laughed. “Besides my friend, where else should I go?” and then he was gone.

Ushak waited a few moments as the firing subsided perceptibly and he suspected the Colonel and his men would be largely all dead. The crunching of feet could be heard and he burrowed his way into and amongst broken twigs and a mound of snow which lingered in the base of the gulley. He remained hidden beneath the snow bank for what seemed an age, at times almost suffocating, aware that if discovered by the Red Army soldiers he would certainly share the fate that had overwhelmed the Moldovan’s and Czechoslovakian’s. After a time harsh voices echoed among the trees on the chill crisp air and there was laughter and he knew the victors would be stripping the dead. It was a less than comforting thought to him knowing that those who had ransacked his little home and stolen his goods would now themselves be robbed. He heard muted groans as the mortally wounded were despatched with cavalry sabre or bayonet. Once a shot boomed out and echoed and a harsh voice bellowed, sounding so close its owner might have been sitting next to him, “Don’t waste lead on the cunts! Stick ‘em!” and he squeezed his eyes shut and whispered a prayer.

131 | P a g e

After what seemed an eternity the Bolsheviks began to move off north, laughing and joking amongst themselves as they recounted their individual deeds and drank their vodka on the march and munched on the beets and the cheese and the black bread that comprised their standard rations. Ushak did not hate them as they made their crude jokes in the aftermath of that field of death. He knew they told their jokes not because they were callous and unfeeling, although many of them were, or had the capacity for it, but rather it was relief it was not them lying there slain in the snow and mud.

Ushak emerged from his hiding place when once more all was silent save for the birds. He was snow smattered and resembled a white ice ghost and he avoided the track as he pushed through between the trees where tangled twigs whipped at his face. He was making for the clearing where he hoped to recover by some miracle the rifle. Before he reached it he came upon the Colonel’s cavalry sabre sticking up from a tree root. The Colonel, ever proud, and even whilst he and his cherished mount were being riddled to death with bullets at the hands of Kazakh peasants, had thrown his almost equally cherished sabre out into the trees. Ushak wrenched it out from the wood and smiled ruefully. It was not a fair exchange but it would do for now.

He emerged stumbling into the clearing where at least sixty of the White soldiers had died and his eyes widened as he surveyed the slaughter. The dead men were naked and pale skinned and already fingers, stiffened and splayed, reached up to Heaven as though pleading with the Valkyries to come and release souls trapped within frozen flesh. The Colonel’s horse lay close by his almost unrecognisable corpse, black and smashed, the legs jutting obscenely, eyes white and marble like. Ushak shivered. The rifle was gone, the one possession he had nurtured and guarded for months as a precious gem. Put it from your 132 | P a g e

mind Ushak, he commanded himself, and he did, although he could not put it from his heart.

He knew what he would do. He took the sword and hacked at one of the horse’s legs, aware that once he made it back to the village he and Katya and Isaac and the children would need sustenance. He estimated he could manage to carry two of the limbs, all four if he found any rope. He sweated as he worked, chopping at bone and gristle, tearing and twisting as he went. He had one leg off and was at a second when his instincts came alive and roared at him and he looked up to where two hungry rangy grey and black furred timber wolves regarded him impassively from the farther edge of the clearing. Where there were two such he knew there would be more, for he was well aware of their range and the location of their den on the slope of the mountain in the north. He stopped what he was doing and picked up the gore spattered leg he had already severed in his left hand and held out the sabre in his right hand and hissed at the massive feral creatures. “Be gentle brothers, there is enough here for all.�

The starving animals emitted low snarls and bared fangs and blinked across black eyes, and as if they understood him they moved away, skirting the clearing, keeping close to the dense mass of trees, till they reached the pot bellied corpse of a mutton chopped corporal when they slunk in low on their bellies and, growling and tearing and rending, they commenced to feast.

Ushak backed away slowly, fully aware that once the animals had eaten they would raise their snouts and howl and summon the rest of the pack, and thereafter they would turn their attention to him. They would attack and kill him not out of a desire to devour him but because he was a living man among dead men and he did not therefore belong in that place.

133 | P a g e

The light was fading and something warned him he must return to the village quickly. He knew that the smaller river that looped about the village and ran through the forest before snaking south to where it first emerged from the Volga lay only a mile from his position. He knew also that the woodsmen, who in happier times managed the forest for the Count, felling and hunting game had a shack by the river and that they had a boat there. In all the long months of the famine on his forays into the forest he had never ventured near the place, fearful some of the woodsmen might have taken shelter through the famine, though he knew they all lived in Ulitsa some twenty miles distant to the north. Now he thought if by some miracle the boat was still there and if he took it he could be back at the village in an hour. The snows had been melting for days and the river was swollen and the current was normally fast flowing. His mind made up he turned into the depth of the trees and with the wolves snarling and howling at his back, battered and bruised, with the dripping horse leg in one hand and the curved sabre in the other he set off trudging south.

There were no men at the foresters shack. It was empty and eerily silent. The river had risen there and burst its bank and the dilapidated abandoned shack was flooded to a depth of a foot, but miracle of miracles behind it among the trees standing on end propped against the ice slimed trunk of an elm was the boat. It did not entirely look as though it would not immediately sink once it hit the water but he determined to risk it. He found a paddle and then pushed and strained and heaved and shoved the boat into the river before throwing in the sabre and the horse leg and the paddle and jumping in himself.

The current was strong and the river a torrent, foaming white in places over half submerged rocks he gave thanks to God for luck or providence he did not once strike, though on a number of occasions he went close. He went rushing between the trees, the boat rocking 134 | P a g e

from side to side, not at all under Ushak’s control, flashing madly along. He marvelled but was also a little frightened until he saw on the bank sights familiar to him and came out of the forest to where he could see the rooftops of the village. The boat slowed, but not much, as he went past the place where Issie Rabinowitz was buried and Nishelev had committed suicide, until he realised that if he did not gain control he would smash into the old ruined beaver dam. He frantically stuck the paddle into the water and strained and struggled until he felt the veins in his neck might burst and the muscles on his arms explode, striving to halt the forward surge and bring the boat to the bank near the Horowitz’s old boathouse. It was as mighty a struggle as Jesus with Satan in the wilderness and when it was done, like Jesus, he won. He dragged the boat out of the water on to the bank and threw himself down on his back beside it, soaked, sweating, cold, panting hard like a wild animal. Moonlight bathed him. It started to sleet. He had made what would otherwise have been a five to seven hour journey in not more than a half hour and at speeds which were breakneck and reckless on that torrent tossed waterway and among the rocks and ice floes. He laughed as he struggled to his feet and made his way to the Weissman house.

But once inside the house with Katya hugging him and kissing him deep and with Beatrice in his arms and Sasha clutching him till he thought he would never let go, he did not find the comfort awaiting him he had hoped and prayed for and he was not laughing. He had never doubted Katya would see the children safe to the old man, not really, and he had never doubted she would give her life to protect them, but he could never have prepared himself for the reality of the dilemma with which he was presented when they were reunited. To have it explained first hand away from the children Isaac Rabinowitz took him out to the back of the house where he and Ushak spoke with Chaim Weissman. The old Jew could not

135 | P a g e

look Ushak in the eyes and when he was done speaking there was a small silence as the full moon above them bathed them in spectral light.

At length Ushak spoke and when he did it was bitterness. “I have put food in your belly Jew, and I have chopped wood for your fire to warm your bones.” He pointed up. “Last year I mended your roof.” Weissman, ashamed, looked down at his feet. “No one would come help me. I did it alone. And do you recall what my wage from you was? Do you?”

“An old coat and boots my granddaughter outgrew,” Weissman replied abashed.

“A very old coat,” Ushak sneered. He shook his head and placed a finger under Weissman’s chin and tilted his face up. “Who do you think will be next into the pot Hymie Weissman when they are done with my children? Hah?” A tear tumbled from Weissman’s eye and rolled down his cheek. He whispered very low.

“You had better go and take your children with you Ushak. They are coming tonight.”

Cold fury swept through Ushak then and his first desire was to smash his fist into the old Jew’s face, to bear him to the ground, to close his fingers about his throat and squeeze the life from him, but he did not. He leaned in very close to the wretched man and whispered into his ear “you are pathetic Chaim Weissman, and a disgrace to humanity and to your faith. If you survive, try to remember this, it is something my mother taught me, let not the prison of the body be the prison of the heart and soul. Cherish the mind which is free.” Then he turned to Isaac and told him, “come, there is little time.”

They left Chaim Weissman sobbing in his back garden a broken man for all time to come. In Isaac’s room Ushak took Katya to one side and told her about the boat down by the river beneath the bank not far from what had been the butcher shop. She said “but you must rest 136 | P a g e

my love. Look at the mess they have made of you.” It was true he was a mess. His forehead was gashed and the rend caked with mud, he was battered and bruised and his coat and trousers torn by twigs and branches in the forest, and even his hands had cuts on them. He grinned at her and said “you should see the other fellows.” “And food?” She persisted.

“What do we eat on this boat ride?” And at that she glanced to where the two apprehensive children sat by the fire watching them. Again he chuckled and told her, “thought of that.

There is food.” And he was not lying, even though the prospect of cold raw horse flesh was not a pleasant one.

But it was the old man who put up the most difficult obstacle for Ushak to overcome. He said simply and firmly he would not go. Katya went to him and she whispered into his ear, “You cannot stay father. They will kill and eat you.”

Isaac chortled. “What! Skinny rancid old me? Too tough Katya my dove.”

Ushak went to him and drew him aside and the old man hissed, “Take your children and go Ushak!” Ushak hissed back “I will not!” He softened. “You are coming with us Isaac.”

The old man sighed deeply and gave the only answer he felt made sense. “I am too tired Ushak.” He smiled and said with incredulity. “You want me to go on the river? Fifty six years I have lived here and I have never been on that river.”

“Well you will now,” Ushak responded smoothly with a fleeting smile. “I owe it to your son you survive and you owe it to him to do so.”

This mention of Issie broke the old man’s resistance but yet he protested, albeit in a quiet weak voice. “This is my home.”

137 | P a g e

Ushak snorted and sneered. “This is not your home Isaac. This was your home when your son walked in the world, now it is the place where Satan has no work left to do.”

“You are a Jew Isaac, and they will kill you for it.”

The old man chuckled weakly. “Oh is that all Katya my dear? I thought it might come because they will be hungry.”

Ushak stepped in close to him and told him firmly, but with a gentle tone and eyes that pleaded: “The persecution my people have endured for two thousand years is not less than yours. Many times I have asked myself, especially since my family was butchered and taken from me, how do we heal? How is it possible to stand tall, not in spite of being Roma, but because of it? What does it mean to be Roma and proud?” He smiled reassuringly and the old man smiled back, understanding the strangely surprising and enigmatic gypsy. “Come Isaac, do not let them have you because you are a Jew.” The old man’s resistance was completely broken then and he looked to where Katya and the two children smiled hopefully, and he made his decision. He allowed himself to be led by the hand by Sasha as Ushak with Beatrice in his arms led them out from the house and through the shadows towards the river and the boat. He did not doubt for one moment that Chaim Weissman would tell Grigorivich where they were going when the bully demanded Beatrice be delivered up, for he had admitted he already divulged to Marta Drapajlo his house was sheltering the children, but he did not expect events to move so quickly. Clearly Weissman had left the house before they did, and so when Ushak and the little party emerged from around the corner of the Horowitz residence Grigorivich and Osipenko were already waiting for them on the bank barring their way to the boat. The bully had a long

138 | P a g e

bladed knife in one hand and Osipenko was holding a flaming torch that threw out a ring of light. Ushak drew in a deep draught of cold night air and rued he had left the Colonel’s cavalry sabre in the boat.

Grigorivich grinned wickedly. “Got no rifle I see Ushak,” he said jocularly. “Didn’t think we’d be seeing you again when you went off with them soldier boy’s.”

Ushak handed Beatrice into Katya’s arms and indicated she should take them back to the illusory safety of the shadows at the side of the Horowitz house. He turned and Grigorivich grinned again and with a finger of his free hand fingered the scar on his chin. “I owe you for this you fucking gypo.”

Osipenko blurted “Wait Grigi! It was agreed.”

Grigorivich sneered. “He’ll never go for it. Look at the bastard!”

Osipenko went on anyway, ignoring the bully. “Think about it Ushak, they’re only children, probably starve to death anyhow. Huh, be saving them the agony you will.”

Ushak growled. It was almost an animal sound that came out from him, mingled with a question he knew the answer to. “What the hell are you trying to say fool?”

“Katya is young,” Osipenko answered firmly, confident Grigorivich, now straining at a thread thin leash only put around his neck by Marta Drapajlo, would get them what they wanted anyway. He smiled ingratiatingly. “You and she can always make more babies Ushak.”

It was the wrong thing to say and as Ushak balled his fingers into fists the leash snapped and Grigorivich snarled and sneered. “See, Osipenko, told you.” He levelled the knife and advanced slowly on his intended victim, measuring each step.

139 | P a g e

Osipenko tried a last time. He called weakly, “it is only the young one we want. That’s right isn’t it Grigi?” But it was too late for that, even had Ushak or Katya, or for that matter Isaac Rabinowitz, been the sort of people who would surrender a little girl’s life to save their own.

And besides, the fury the words ignited within Ushak and the long months of torment and rejection when all he had wanted for himself and his family was to fit in, to integrate, to be a part of this microcosmic society, saw him spur forward and cross the gap that separated him from Grigorivich before the bully could react. He slammed into him and bore him to the ground and they rolled together on the muddy soil. He had taken the bully by surprise with the suddenness of the onslaught and he managed to drive a series of blows into his face, spraying blood from his nose and above one eye, but Ushak was grappling with a bigger stronger man and the bully threw him off after a moment. Grigorivich slashed with the knife, but Ushak jumped lithely away from it, once, twice, three times, and then ducking under a swinging blow without aim he hammered his fists into the bigger mans ribs and received blows on his back from a fist in return and a slash that tore his coat and reached his side but did not go deep. They pulled back from one another and faced off on the bank.

Both men were panting and under the moonlight and the sputtering flames from the torch they looked like demons.

Sasha could not look and he buried his face in Katya’s tattered skirts, but Isaac groaned as Grigorivich jumped forward suddenly and slashed the knife blade down Ushak’s arm and raised a small cry for him and blood that sprayed to the earth. In that moment the practised street fighter also slammed a punch to Ushak’s jaw and a kick to his stomach that doubled him and sent him to his knees. Beatrice cried out “papa!” and tears filled Katya’s eyes as in

140 | P a g e

that awful moment she saw the end of the world that had come to her unbidden but which she welcomed joyously and the end of all that her dreams had hoped for.

Grigorivich kicked his fallen adversary savagely in the stomach, muttering through gritted teeth, “You don’t know how long I have waited for this fucking minute you gypo bastard!”

Ushak groaned again and rolled over, struggling to his knees as the bully’s shadow fell across him. The victor drew in a deep breath and bent his knees slightly, and Ushak felt his fingers reaching into his hair to grip and twist savagely and pull his head up for the death blow for the knife. He was beaten and Grigorivich knew it, and so too did the watchers, but Ushak did not know it. Time seemed to stand still and the words of his old Bulgarian mentor and coach Tato from his days in the prize ring came to him. “It is okay Ushi, let them think they have you, let them think they have won, surrender yourself to the inevitable, for it is in that moment ...” And then Beatrice screamed and he looked into the grinning face of his tormentor and saw the moon and the flames glint on the steel that would at any moment end his life. He grinned. Grigorivich frowned. It lasted but a second but it was a fatal pause.

Ushak swung a savage fisted jab straight into the bully’s groin that had him gasp sharply and release his hold on his hair. He rose up impossibly fast and stabbed fingers into his eyes that forced a screech from the bully and saw him release the knife, and even whilst it was falling Ushak grasped it in mid fall and drove it straight into Grigoprivich’s throat. The big man’s eyes widened with disbelief and he tottered and was dead almost before he slammed into the mud with a dull thud. Osipenko was astonished and terrified at the same time. That should not have happened that way he thought to himself absurdly, it defied logic with what had gone on before in the fight, but then he had more to worry about as the bloodied battered Roma stood before him mud covered and now holding the knife under his nose.

141 | P a g e

Ushak barked an order over his shoulder. “Get them down to the boat Katya.” And as the little party went past him down the slope he glanced down at the wet stain which appeared at the front of Osipenko’s trousers and he raised his eyebrows and smiled a grim humourless smile at the terrified man. Osipenko swallowed hard, his awareness of the blood streaked knife before his eyes all his world now consisted of. Ushak let him sweat, then, with a suddenness that made the hapless man jump he reached out a hand and took the torch from his unresisting fingers. He replaced the torch with the knife so that it was Osipenko who had the opportunity, had he possessed one ounce of courage, which he did not, to strike.

Ushak backed away, the torch now in his hand, and as he went down the slope he laughed and called “if it is meat they want Osipenko go tell them now they have all they can eat lying there in the mud.”

He was still laughing as the five of them in the boat, with the torch held aloft by Sasha shining on the dark water, and Isaac Rabinowitz holding Beatrice, and him sitting at the rear with the paddle to steer and Katya at his side, went past the old beaver dam into the west away forever from the village. And then they all laughed when under the moonlight as the boat rushed along borne by the current a joyful little girl shouted: “Yay! We go on a boat wide!”

END OF PART 1

142 | P a g e

PART 2

THE WORLD

1

Ushak sat at the stern of the leaking boat, guiding it with the makeshift steering paddle he had made and fastened to the rear, as it moved sluggishly forward through the dark waters under a pale three quarter moon. Katya slept with her head resting in his lap; the children slept with their heads propped against the old man Isaac Rabinowitz, who was snoring loudly and did not seem to feel any discomfort at the puddle of water he lay in.

The little boat party had a small stock of supplies at the forward end of the boat, wrapped in canvas Katya earned for a week’s work cooking for a Red Army detachment guarding a monastery on the outskirts of the city of Saratov. The fifty or so soldiers were rough peasants from Siberia but their two officers were educated gentlemen and the famine had not bitten so harshly so far to the south, and besides, the monks sheltering in their ancient monastery had husbanded their supplies with great care. Ushak found work with them and so the little party had stayed in their camp beside the mighty rushing Volga, using the canvas as a blanket on nights when there was no downpour of stinging rain sleeting from the heavens, and on nights when there was a downpour using it as a shelter. They remained two months with the monks and the soldiers, while the snow of winter melted away completely. Often after a hard day of ploughing and planting in fields or sapping in the monastery’s orchard, Ushak would sing while a soldier played a violin, and there would be

143 | P a g e

dancing and telling of tales, as Katya and the children fell into sleep and the chanting of the monks rose from within their blue domed chapel. Isaac Rabinowitz spent many hours debating with the older monks the relative merits of the religions God had given to each of them as though the bestowing of such faith was a divinely personal gift rather than the creation of Man. They ate well, they were safe, they were together, and they were happy.

But, as is the way with these things, as with all things in the world, an end had to come. At the beginning of June the soldiers were summoned north with news the war was coming to an end, and Ushak feared that the forced collectivisation program promised by political commissars stationed in the not too distant city would be visited upon the monastery. It would come, he knew, with the clearing of the roads of the deep clinging mud that were a feature of wet springtime in that part of the world. And Bolsheviks, he informed Isaac and Katya, are no lovers or respecters of religious faith.

One day in the second week of June when the sun was blazing high in an impossibly blue sky he told them they would be leaving the following day. The children wailed and protested, for they had grown fond of the monks and the dark cowled men had grown fond of them also, and as only children can they loved to run and play in the lush meadows filled with flowers and insects, and to explore in the little woods. Isaac begged for three more days and Katya for a week, the children for eternity, but Ushak was resolute. He went to the monks and told them and they offered prayers and food. He did not reveal his plans to them, for he knew that what was coming for the kindly men of God was terror. He did tell Katya and Isaac. They would continue south on the river to Volgograd where the Volga meets the River Don, praying the leaking old boat did not finally give up the ghost and sink on them, and then when they reached the Don they would carry on to Rostov and the Sea of Azov before

144 | P a g e

striking overland for the Crimea and the great sea port of Sevastapol, where he hoped they could earn passage on a ship crossing the Black Sea to Costanja on the coast of his native Romania. With luck when they reached Rostov they might even be able to sell the boat.

So it was, four nights after they had left the kindness of the doomed monks, Ushak sat steering the boat by moonlight into the south down the sluggish moving black waters. He stayed close in by the western bank, but not so close they would easily be seen from the wooded and fern clad banks. With one hand on the tiller and the other on Katya’s head he looked with pride and love at his family, and his mind strayed back to their flight from the village some three and a half months earlier. He still carried the cuts on his body inflicted by Grigorivich in their fight under the moon on the bank above the Horowitz boat house, before after a mighty struggle he had killed the giant, and the memory of it made him shudder. Katya stirred and moaned in her sleep and he stroked her head and soothed her and she fell back into a deep slumber.

“Have wonderful dreams my sweet beautiful girl,” he whispered, as he put out from his mind all thoughts of the village and the horror of the desperate struggle for survival in that last month before they fled, of his friend Issie’s murder and cannibalisation, and the White soldiers descent upon the village and the attempted rape of Katya, and the final climactic battle in the forest and the slaughter of the Czechoslovak and Moldovan mercenaries.

He marvelled that so much had happened in such a short span of time in that lost remote winter wonderland world in the village deep in the Samara Bend, in which he and the children had lived as outcasts for four years. And he smiled to himself now as he looked down at the face of the woman he loved with a depth of passion it scared him sometimes.

He had loved Sasha and Beatrice’s mother Dani, but he realised now he had never been in 145 | P a g e

love with her, and he understood that was why it had been possible for him to let her go as he did. In fact the only other woman he had loved with an intensity even nearly approaching his love for Katya was his mother. As he looked down at her face he saw a young woman, a girl really if he admitted such a truth to himself, or if such a thing mattered when two human beings shared such a raw and powerful emotion as true love, who in a short space of time had become so a part of his life and the children’s, and Isaac Rabinowitz, that none of them could imagine or comprehend a future without her. He saw it in their eyes when they looked at her, Sasha and Beatrice and Isaac, as she fussed about cooking for them, washing clothes, playing with the children, or just sitting deep in conversation with the old man. They loved her and she loved them; and Ushak loved her too, and he was firm in his belief she loved him back.

She never complained and she always had time for those in her new family who made demands of her, and on the day after they left the monastery, on the river at midday under a baking sun, when she handed Beatrice a drink the little girl inadvertently said, “thank you mamma”. Katya turned her eyes to Ushak then, betraying a small tremor of fear, but he smiled at her and she was reassured and she took Bea in her arms and kissed her on the top of her head as she drank from the beaker and whispered, “no little darling, it is I must thank you.”

After that day at every opportunity that was what Katya was to the little four year old, she was mamma, and for Ushak as he watched them together nothing seemed more natural.

Old Isaac sidled up to him one evening and nudged him playfully in the ribs with his elbow and said, “Perhaps I should start calling her daughter, Ushak.” Ushak turned his head sharply as the old man walked away chortling to himself and added, “And call you son.”

146 | P a g e

The old river ran on as these thoughts crowded into his head and filled him with a warm cosy glow inside he never believed he would experience again after Dani. He had believed his fate would be one of protecting and raising a son and a daughter until, as was the inevitable with all life, they left him on his own, perhaps living in a caravan and wandering the Carpathian Mountains or the Hungarian steppes in old age until death. He thought if he could instil into Sasha and Beatrice the values his mother taught him and they grew fine and strong and caring of the things of the world, including people too stupid, or too greedy, to care for anything in their own right, then a wandering old age would represent a fitting finale to his existence and perhaps the almighty might look kindly upon him and enfold him in His arms. He sighed deeply and stroked Katya’s hair again and whispered softly “and then you came along my dove.” She woke, her heavy lids blinked across her large eyes, she smiled at him. Moonlight fell across her fine boned features.

“Is it morning?” she asked him blearily He laughed, but not so loud that he would wake the children. “Morning?” he said, “No my darling, it is yet three hours from dawn. See, there.”

She looked down into the dark water and where the moonlight fell on the lazy ripples crisscrossing the mighty river she could see tiny silver scaled fish darting hither and thither. She gasped in wonder. “What are they Ushak?”

“They are the fry of the white eye Bream,” he told her. “The Sturgeon and Beluga that make the caviar those rich people in the West pay a great deal of money to eat from their little silver platters feed on them and grow fat.”

147 | P a g e

She laughed. “How do you know this?” A dark frown passed across his features and she said quickly and apologetically, “oh, I see.” She knew he didn’t care to speak of her anymore and that when he told her weeks earlier he wanted to forget her and that she was now his love, he meant it, but she had been a large part of his life once and she was the mother to the children Katya doted on, and so sometimes unavoidably she would creep back. He put a hand into the water and looked down and she whispered, “Dani told you.” She placed a hand over his where it rested on the tiller and grinned at him and chided him gently. “It’s alright my darling; she isn’t sitting here in the boat with us.”

“I will put the boat in over there beyond those reeds.” He pointed, face set and, without knowing it, eyes steely and a scowl in place. “That small wood will shelter us. We can make a camp and I will try for an hour or two of sleep.”

She sat up and leaned forward and kissed him and he kissed her back, and then she smiled and he smiled back as he pulled on the tiller and turned the boat through the current for the shore.

And that’s how it was in those early day’s as they journeyed south away from the old life they had known in the village to a new life in a distant land.

148 | P a g e

2

Ushak slept late. The sun was high in the sky when he stirred and the sound of the birds in the trees, alternating screeching with sing song melodies, was loud, and, for anyone not used to it they may have considered it intrusive. He stretched mightily to find Beatrice sat with her back leaning against his legs as she examined carefully a ladybird settled in the palm of her hand, her little face screwed up with concentration.

“How many spots does she have my little dove?” he whispered in her ear. She spun her head around quickly, startled, but in control as she placed the palm of her hand over her outstretched palm where the ladybird sat. She screwed up her features in mock annoyance and he said, “Well then?”

She held her hands up before her face and beyond her shoulder he could see where Katya stood over a cooking fire stirring a spoon in a pot bubbling on their grill above it. She exchanged a grin with him as Isaac looked up from the darning of the worn threadbare trousers he was struggling with. Katya replaced the lid on the pot and took the trousers and needle and thread from his hands, shaking her head and tutting as she sat down on a shelf of rock and took over the task. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled warmly at her.

“Five!” Beatrice announced in triumph as she peeped under her hand. “There are - one – two – three – four – an’ five dots.”

149 | P a g e

Ushak swept her up in his arms and sat her down and planted her on his lap and kissed her and she giggled and told him, “I calling her,” she screwed up her face again as she thought, then with a nod of her little head that shook her long black tresses, announced, “Vasilisa.”

“Vasilisa, a good name Bea,” he nodded his head in approval, “but is that Vasilisa the Wise or Vasilisa the Beautiful?”

“Oh the beautiful papa,” she answered firmly. “See, see how bootiful she is,” and she opened her hand to show her father and the little creature seized the moment for freedom and spread its wings and took flight, hastening down the riverbank among the reeds.

Beatrice shrieked and jumped up and went off after the ladybird, ignoring, or not noticing the dozens of identical others that fluttered here and there on the shimmering hot air that rose from the river and the grass, calling as she ran “Vasiliya! Vasiliya!” After a moment she gave up the chase and returned to them, trudging disconsolately, her patchwork dress trailing and her large luminous dark eyes welling with tears. Ushak stood quickly and went to her and scooped her into his arms and took her to the edge of the riverbank, where he stood looking out, with his broad back to the others. He pointed.

“Look there little dove. See the Heron there?”

She nodded her head and sniffled and he snuggled her close as he spoke softly to her.

“It comes here when the sun shines to feed and make little ones, and when there is no longer sun it goes somewhere else. It is free, as all things made by God are free, like the fish swimming in the water.”

She gazed down momentarily to where sleek dark shapes flitted hither and thither under the surface of the water, an abundance nature provided for the season. She shook her head, 150 | P a g e

puzzled, her child brain striving to reason the ways of life. “But then papa,” she ventured tentatively, “why is Sasha go down the river to fish them? Sasha naughty stopping them do what they want.”

He chuckled and squeezed her, his love an outpouring that almost made him choke. He sighed. “Well my Bea, it is sad, but it is how God made the world. Some must give themselves so that we may eat and stay alive, but if we make sure we say our prayers every morning and at night then the sacrifice is remembered up in Heaven.”

“I will say my prayers all the time,” she told him deeply earnest as she kissed the side of his grizzled face.

“Good girl. So you see, you must not cry for Vasiliya, she is free, as we Roma are free, and just like the Roma, cage her and she will die.”

Beatrice gasped and Ushak set her down by his feet while the pair of them continued to look out across the vast expanse of the mighty river, where now small fishing boats were out and a ferry hugged the current near in the eastern bank, and the sun’s rays splashed the surface of the water shimmering with dazzling gold.

Katya paused in her sewing and was staring at the backs of Ushak and Beatrice. There was a small smile fixed in place on her face and love shining in her eyes, but old Isaac Rabinowitz was a canny old sort, though he had never in his life been much farther from the Samara than Zhigulevsk, so that his world had been bounded within a radius of not more than fifty kilometres. He sensed there was something going on behind her lovely blue eyes, and he knew that something was worrying her and causing her to lose sleep at night.

“It is warm, so I will not die from cold,” he said.

151 | P a g e

She looked up suddenly startled as his words cut across her thoughts. He glanced down at his frayed long johns loose on his skinny legs and chuckled. She threw his trousers at him and stood and growled, “I am finished anyway you old goat. Have more of a care when you are wandering in the woods.”

She put the sewing kit away in her small bag and returned to where the pot was bubbling.

He pulled on his trousers and stood. He eyed her. She noticed. “What?” she demanded. He crossed to her and took her slim shoulders in his bony hands and gazed intently into her eyes. “What?” she repeated. “You know Katya, if anything is troubling you,” he said. She clutched the old man close then, urgent, wrapping her arms about him as though there was a terror awaiting her if she let him go, and there were tears in her eyes that did not pool out for she fought them back. He whispered in her ear. “You can tell me anything little neshama.”

Ushak turned from his contemplation of the river. He did not pay attention to the pair hugging for theirs was a loving little group. He roared, “Hey there does a man get any breakfast here?” And beside him Beatrice added, “ An’ a chavi,” and they all fell to hoots of laughter as Katya ladled stew on to plates and a frustrated Sasha returned throwing down his fishing pole in disgust and complaining the fish would not eat his worms.

After breakfast was eaten and they had drunk their tea and lazed for an hour on the riverbank watching the dragonflies and smelling the heady aroma of the wild flowers, Sasha returned to his fishing, more determined than ever to bring home a good catch, and Katya and Beatrice went off hand in hand to look for Vasiliya. Isaac fell asleep beside where they had pulled the boat out of the water and Ushak left him, and, as was his way, he went off alone into the forest that fringed the river. There was a small hill that rose from out of the 152 | P a g e

trees, or beyond them, he did not know, which was perhaps five miles distant and that was where he intended to trek. As always when he went off on his lonely forays the cavalry sabre accompanied him, held across one shoulder.

It took him two hours to reach the summit of the hill, where he stopped and looked down across the canopy of the forest to where the mighty Volga snaked into the south. The sun was a ball of fire and the sky full of birds and all about him flying insects whirred and buzzed. The abundance and variety of wild flowers sprouting in lush verdant patches on the slope all about him made him shake his head and wonder how such a land could have suffered so devastating a famine and how it could have lasted for two years. He knew the Bolsheviks had panicked when first they seized power in Russia and that they had sold off everything to bring in hard cash to their reserve bank, including vast stores of food which had been accumulated in great storehouses. Still, he reflected, as he took in the sight and smell of the flowers, yarrow, buttercup, daisies, cornflower, willow herb, wild geraniums, cow parsley and yellow mugwort, what bounty the Almighty bestows always ends in the hands of that most unreliable of custodians, Man. He set the sword to one side and lay back, resting his head against the granite grey of a rock, and closed his eyes and allowed his mind free rein to wander. Memories crowded into his head as he dozed. He was a boy and he saw again his mother and his sister Carmen as each held up before his eyes something natural which will heal and something which will kill. It was how his serious minded mother taught her children whenever they stopped and made a camp. His mother rapped him on top of his head with a gnarled knuckle, making him yelp and return his wandering attention to her instruction. She held a mud crusted bulb up before his eyes.

153 | P a g e

“Garlic, Ushak, good for the bowel, thins the blood.”

“And vampyren hate it,” Carmen added with a laugh, for which she also received a rap on top of her head from her mother’s knuckle. That was their mother’s favoured method of chastisement, and it worked, and it hurt like hell he recalled with deep fondness, as her voice echoed on in his memory: “Aconitum,” she said as she held up Carmen’s hand which held the herb, and warned them darkly, “it is wolfsbane, monkshood, and every part is poison. You children will know about it if you make a salad with that. It will stop your heart, even if you only touch it.”

And then the gypsy witch faded and he was lying on a rug before a fire with his head in her lap within a circle of wagons and a circle of friends and family, listening to Boiko and Ferka play their violins, while Carmen and Florika and Nadya danced before the flames and cast shadows as they whirled and spun.

And then he saw Dani, and when he did he gasped aloud and sat bolt upright, clutching at his chest and sucking in great draughts of air. He remembered. He remembered everything at that moment, and the memory was not as his dreams of her had been in the past four years when he lived in the village with the children.

But he had no time then to dwell upon it as Isaac’s voice came to him, carried from below on the humid still air.

“Ushak! Ushak! Where are you?”

He snatched up his sword and jumped to his feet, mind racing, heart filled with fear at what may have happened to bring the old man out from their camp looking for him. He ran down the hill, tripping and tumbling once and grazing his arm on a briar covered rock. When he 154 | P a g e

reached the old man he was standing on the track Ushak had followed directly from their camp by the river. He was munching on a wild apple he had found and looked wholly unperturbed as though out for an afternoon stroll.

“What has happened?” Ushak demanded.

Isaac frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Something must have happened.”

“No, nothing has happened.” The old man yawned lazily. “Hashem knows Ushak but it is hot, especially for the time of the year, though I suppose the farther south you go ...”

Isaac stopped prattling on immediately as Ushak cursed and venomously stabbed the sword down into the soft yielding earth leaving it protruding and swaying back and forth, the blade almost singing. He turned his back on the old man and placed his hands on his hips and counted off to ten before turning back. “Nothing has happened, nothing at all?”

Isaac shook his head and pointed at Ushak’s arm. “That will develop a nasty bruise,” he commented casually. He was about to put the apple to his mouth and take another bite but his companion snatched it from his hand and held it under his nose. “The seeds of wild apples are poisonous you old goat! Won’t kill you but I don’t want you laid up with a griping stomach and watery arse for a week.” He tossed the half eaten apple into the trees. “Lord above Isaac, have your long years taught you nothing?”

“Your walk has not helped your mood son,” Isaac said sourly.

Ushak heaved a deep sigh, regretting his anger. His arm throbbed where he had hurt it in his fall. “I’m sorry Isaac,” he said, “but I thought ...”

155 | P a g e

“That something had happened, yes, I got that.”

“It was your shouting, sorry.”

“I only came looking for you so we could talk alone.”

Ushak frowned. He sucked in a deep draught of oxygen into his lungs. Now he was filled with anticipation. He did not mind the old man chanting his thrice daily incantations and pleas for help and forgiveness to God, for like all his kind he was tolerant of any man’s faith, and besides the chanting was comfort and he knew Katya and the children liked it also. But he knew also that the old man would probably be missing being among his own people. The community of Jews he had known in the village was small, but they were a tight knit community nonetheless, even the Horowitz’s, and that had been his experience of the Diaspora Jewry he had encountered on his journey through life wherever he wandered.

With the sword over his shoulder and blood seeping down his arm slowly from his cut he looped a free hand through Isaac’s arm and they walked together slowly back towards the camp.

“You know Isaac, I understand completely,” he told the old man.

“You do?” Isaac said, puzzled by this.

“Yes, of course. There is a large Jewish community at Kamyshin, we can be there in a day. I know you want to be with your own people, and ...”

“Ach Ushak!” Isaac pulled free from the younger man’s solicitous embrace. “Sometimes you can be such a buffoon, a shemiel. Even my old bubba had more sense. Oh feh!”

156 | P a g e

“What have I said now?” Ushak was confused and taken aback by the old man’s outburst, but then, laughing and clapping him on the shoulder as they continued to walk, he said loudly, “Come on Isaac, let this silly goy in on what it is.”

“You are a goy Ushak, yes, and I am a gadje, but we are human beings first and sometimes I despair of you.” He tapped the side of his head with a finger and added sarcastically. “You really must try to use this at least some of the time.”

“Then what in heaven’s name is it?” Ushak demanded, exasperated.

“It is Katya.”

Ushak paused as he spluttered. “Katya? My Katya?”

“Oy veh, man, and how many Katya’s do you know?”

Ushak sighed deeply as they continued onward, fearing the worst, hoping for the best, already feeling a little hurt she had not come to him herself. “Come on then” he said wearily “tell me what it is.”

Katya sat on the bank in a small dip that swept down from bushes and trees to the river. She dangled bare feet in the cool water, savouring the feeling, while Beatrice bustled here and there around her, catching the fat little ladybirds where they settled on reeds and fronds and boulders. Whenever she did catch one of the insects she would examine it carefully and in minute detail, her inspection always producing the same result. She would release the ladybird from her open palm, watching it flutter away as she announced to the world in her little girl voice “you ah not Vasiliya.”

157 | P a g e

Katya so enjoyed hearing the sound of Beatrice voice as she went about the daily business of being a four year old child, or watching her as she played or slept, or having her snuggle into her at night, she could not imagine life without her. The little girl was a wide eyed bundle of joy for whom the world and everything in it awaited exploration, but she was also one whose boundaries had been confined within the confines of her life with her father and Sasha, and latterly of course Katya and Isaac. It was a small enough world but it was one in which she was safe and adored, and it showed in her carefree attitude and appetites which would grow as she did.

Katya felt a lump come to her throat and she fought back tears as the little girl sang a song and continued to search for insects. A butterfly flitted across her field of vision, hovering lazily above the sluggish heat shimmering river. She marvelled at how creation had made such a myriad of wondrous things to live in harmony and symbiotic co existence, and yet the most wonderful and complex of the almighty’s works was beset always, it seemed to her, with woe. She worshipped the two children; she had known Sasha since he was a little boy, four years in the village, and now with his thirteenth birthday only two months away she watched him develop quickly, getting bigger and assuming responsibility without being asked, and she knew he would soon enough grow into as fine a man as his father. But following their escape from the village and its horrors, which now seemed a lifetime ago, and the further south they went, the more the feeling grew within her she was abandoning something which she should not. The feeling gnawed at her as a worm at a piece of rotten fruit. She was a mother to Sasha and Beatrice and she was wife to Ushak, she was even a daughter to Isaac, in fact if not by formality, but somehow it was not enough. She was a mother also in biological terms, but a mother to a child she had never met and would never

158 | P a g e

know; and so it was with each passing mile that carried her further away from Smolensk in the distant north a hollow sensation entered her and she could not shake it.

A tear threatened until the little girl sneaked up behind her and wrapped her arms about her neck and tugged her backwards so that they both tumbled on the grass laughing and shrieking, with Beatrice shouting “you ah my Vasiliya! You ah my Vasiliya Katya Semnunvish!� And, in that moment, though the hollow feeling had not left Katya, at least for then it was banished to some inner place beneath her awareness.

Sasha had caught a fat Zander and a Bream and two young Eels, and in gratitude for this bounty he placed his hands together and stood on the bank of the river and gave thanks to Heaven. He was satisfied that supper this evening would be a welcome change from the stew which was their normal fare. He watched the fishing boats at work on the river and wondered what the lives of the people out there were like. All he could really remember of his life was what happened after they left their home in Romania. The house on the outskirts of Cluj was something of a fog in his memory, with snatches of clarity emerging and passing like a slide show. There was a Turkish carpet spread in a lamp lit parlour and a smiling woman with sharp features who wore her black hair high in a bun on her head.

There was a trip out in a carriage to the market. There was a framed music hall poster with the name Dani Azaraneau blazoned across it. And it was late at night, moonlight slanted in through a crack in the curtains, an old grandfather clock in the hall ticked sonorously, a bat banged against the window pane and the boy gasped and made the sign of the cross. But the most vivid memory of all and what never left him was the was the memory of a small boy curled up with his knees drawn up to his chin and his back against his bedroom door, trying desperately to shut out the noise from downstairs of his mother and father screaming 159 | P a g e

at one another as they argued. For a time he hated his father because he thought that he had driven his mother away and stolen him and baby Bea from her. Then there was the pain of living as an outcast in the village, which was an agony in one way or another from day to day, even though he knew, young as he was, that being Roma it was something he must learn to bear. He did not forgive Ushak exactly, because he did not know if there was anything to forgive, but through suffering as an outcast and living in that small family unit with Ushak and Beatrice over time he came to worship his father again, admiring the way in which he always put his children first and loved and protected them, and no matter what provided for them. And now they were going home. He would learn the truth, whatever that meant, and he did not know if when he did it would be welcome and so he feared it. He sighed as he flicked a pebble out on to the water and was thankful when he heard his father call for him.

Ushak watched Katya carefully as she grilled the fish Sasha had caught earlier in the day, supplementing them with what Ushak gathered in the forest and along the banks of the river; acorns for starch, cattail for carbohydrate, lily and ramsons, which he informed everyone was wild garlic and had a better taste than its cultivated cousin.

It did not seem to him that she was behaving in any way other than how she did normally.

She would sweep back a strand of hair which always fell over her face when she bent forward to stir the pot, a long slender finger pushing towards the side of her head as her tongue protruded slightly from her mouth when she concentrated. She would occasionally stretch her back and turn and smile in his direction or at whatever the children were up to.

Every now and again a snatch of song would escape her, but she was self conscious about singing in front of others and so this would be followed by a shy look and a grin.

160 | P a g e

No, all seemed as it should be with Katya, and so he was puzzled. He longed to simply grasp her by the shoulders and pull her close and ask her “What is wrong my love?” But he knew that if he did that he might be betraying Isaac’s trust, and in any event he knew also she would not tell him. For a moment his attention was diverted from Katya when Sasha stated he would have to go into the forest to make a toilet. Far off, many miles most likely, a wolf howled at the now risen Moon. Ushak glanced at the brooding dark woodland fringing their camp site and the river, which was only a small copse really when set against the great forest which had surrounded the village, and he shivered slightly. He said he would accompany Sasha but the young boy stubbornly refused to go until Ushak relented. He sighed as he watched his son disappear among the bushes and trees and Isaac chuckled and told him “He is on that road now and you would not deny him, would you?”

“What road?” Ushak asked him doubtfully, failing entirely to grasp the metaphor.

Again the old man laughed: “It is the road to manhood Ushak, the road to manhood my son.”

Sasha returned uneaten by wolf or bear and Katya served up their feast, one the boy declared to be fit for a king, which Katya corrected by retorting “Or a Tsar Sasha.” Ushak did not join with the mirth this comment raised as in his preoccupation he continued to watch and drive himself almost insane wondering as they ate and laughed at Beatrice and her ferocious appetite. The little girl demonstrated her zest for life by firstly feeling sorry for the grilled fish with their dead black staring eyes, and then assiduously picking every scrap of meat from bones and sucking on them till juice dribbled down her chin. After, while the flames from their fire licked and spat and cast dancing shadows, the little girl fell asleep on Katya’s lap and Isaac related the tale of Midrash from the Talmud.

161 | P a g e

As he spoke and the fiction unfolded the old man watched carefully the reaction of both the man and woman towards its apocryphal moral meaning: “This aggadot is a story about a wise woman who is forced to separate from her husband. It does not matter why she is forced to do this, she is. In the case of the Jewish woman in the Sefer Ha-Bloggadah it is by Jewish law she must do this, but in the case of this tale though it is imposed upon the man it is wholly unjustified. The husband does not want her to go of course, for he loves her with all his heart, and so he persuades her to have one last meal with him, during which he offers her a final choice of gift to take with her.” He paused and stared straight into Ushak’s eyes and he knew that a dawning realisation was awakening within the man he now thought of as the son who had been murdered in the village, and though he pitied what was now becoming inevitable for Ushak he went on at Sasha’s youthful urging. “She gives him so much alcohol he falls into a stupor and she takes him back to her new home with her. When he awakens he is confused and she tells him that it is he who is the greatest gift of all, the most precious thing in the entire wide world for her. He realises what a fool he has been for blindly obeying and they stay together. In our Jewish version God rewards their love with a child,” and as he delivered his final flourish he looked to Katya, who was stroking Beatrice’s dark lustrous hair as she slept, and he smiled, “for it was this very blessing had been lacking with them in the first place and caused the split.”

Sasha clapped his hands in delight at the happy ending to the story, but Ushak did not share his son’s sentiment. He understood the nature of the parable, of course, but what he did not know was how relevant the old man intended it applied to him and Katya. He felt a great weight of sadness as he rose to his feet and went straight off into the night to the river.

162 | P a g e

Katya frowned as she watched him, but Isaac told her gently. “He is fine Katya, he just needs time to think.�

And at the river Ushak stood watching the dark sluggish water sail past and boats out in mid stream under the moon and a tear tumbled and rolled down his cheek as he hawked and spat and cursed himself for a fool.

163 | P a g e

3

They stayed where they were the following two days, once Ushak satisfied himself Isaac truly had no desire to leave them and go and live among his Jewish brethren dwelling in their busy manufacturing quarter in the city of Kamyshin. The old man had laughed when pressed and commented drily “By Hashem I swear to you Ushak me go live with ten thousand Jews? I tell you, put one Yid in an empty room with a glass of water and within ten minutes he will start an argument, get two or more together and oy oy.”

So they remained where they were. Ushak and Sasha made a trek fifteen miles to the north along the river bank to where on their journey south two days earlier they had passed some rugged limestone bluffs, at the foot of which were stands of white Pine. They spent an afternoon extracting resin from the tall standing trees, which was then mixed with charcoal taken from a fire they made at night among rocks and mixed with mud and water from the river so they finished up with a bucket full of gooey sticky liquid. It made for a makeshift caulking mixture with which to seal the warped timbers on the hull of their boat. Nothing of note happened for four days so far as Ushak was aware, except of course he was also unaware his mood and his air of suspicion was creating tension where there should not have been any. Once when they were working at caulking the boat together, father and son, up to their elbows in sticky smelly gunge, Sasha paused and looked out to the river and said, almost in a whisper “Do you think she will be there when we reach Romania papa?” Ushak did not answer immediately. He sighed heavily and replied, “I don’t know Sasha,” and the boy fell silent then and returned to his work and did not mention Dani again.

164 | P a g e

Ushak grew very immensely proud of his son in those days as they meandered their way south at an easy pace down the wide river towards the mighty metropolis of Volgograd.

Sasha had discovered a talent for fishing, and most days in the afternoon when he finished the lessons Katya insisted he and Beatrice sit down with her and work through, he would go off alone with his rod and his line and his bait and fish for their supper. Always it was alone, and that did not surprise Ushak, for Sasha was Roma after all and it was bred into him, even if he did not know it. Unless something drastic happened he would be destined for a life of wandering; it was imbued into the blood that flowed through his veins and the marrow in his bones; he would not be able to resist it; as the years piled upon him there would always be a desire to see what lies beyond the next hill, what lay around the next bend in the river, where that road led. What did surprise Ushak was how quickly the boy was growing away from his little sister, and it saddened him to see it. He would always adore her of course, but his independence and desire to be alone meant that often when he went off Beatrice would stand looking after him crying and wailing loudly until either Katya or Isaac distracted her, most often with a captured butterfly or worm, and on one occasion a small dog which wandered to their camp from a nearby farm. Ushak did not blame his son for he understood instinctively all that was happening was that Sasha was becoming Ushak.

And then they reached Kamyshin, which was actually situated mainly along the banks of the tributary waterway the Kamyshinka River. It was a city famous for its sawmills and windmills and was a centre of the watermelon trade. Its wharves and jetties were fringed by long stretches of sandy beaches on both sides which also made the place attractive to folk seeking a respite from the cares of the world, though that was in better times. Ushak insisted they did not stop for he feared large urban centres in the uncertain times which

165 | P a g e

held still to the land. He considered remaining on the eastern side of the river away from the city for a few weeks. There were many large dachas and estates there and he was sure they would find work and earn coin with which to pay for portage for the boat, for he knew that close by Kamyshin to the west lay the Ilovlya River, a tributary of the Don. But he discarded the idea, much to the disappointment of the others. Kamyshin he did not know, he explained to them, Volgograd he did know.

So after three days spent on a rocky island lying half a mile offshore, with the lights of Kamyshin shining tantalisingly not far away at night under a Hunter’s Moon, Ushak led them onward. The boat still leaked, and now Isaac did complain bitterly about getting wet, glowering at the two amateur shipwrights Ushak and Sasha, but that was more because he had secretly hoped they might visit the city, even if for a short time, and he would see the famous Jewish quarter and he would see for himself the cobblers shops and goldsmiths at work and the watermelon sheds.

And as is the way with these intricacies of human society, whether it be a small group or an empire, the salad days came abruptly to an end with a crash that shook them all, even the little girl Beatrice. For Katya and Ushak the days of joy had begun that snowy day months earlier when first she walked down the ice bound track from the village to his little cabin nestling just inside the deep forest. Now they were destined to end beneath an overhang of rocky bluffs by the side of a gurgling river so ancient it had been old when Mammoths walked the earth.

Most nights when the children were asleep and Isaac was dozing by the fire Ushak and Katya sneaked off for some much needed privacy. They would go to a quiet place by the river out of sight of all others and there they would spread his old fur coat on the ground 166 | P a g e

and under the moon and stars they would make love, expressing their joy in one another as only lovers do. Except that in the previous few days the moments before and the moments after they were locked together in passion had contained a tension which both felt but did not speak of. That night when the bubble burst the hard-nosed stubborn Ushak decided enough was enough. He sat up while she lay on her side facing away from him, the smooth sleek curve from shoulder to hip acute and glistening with sweat and all woman. He took his tobacco pouch from his trouser pocket and rolled himself a cigarette and lit it and went to the bank of the river, where he stood smoking and pouting petulantly in frustration as he gazed out across the shimmering waves flecked with moon dust and starlight. At length, annoyed, as much with himself as anything else, he flicked the cigarette out on to the water, where it was extinguished in a flash of red sparks, and turned to confront her.

“Alright Katya, that is it. Enough is enough I say.”

She sat up and half turned, drew in a deep draught of night air which made her small breasts swell, pushed back the annoying strand of hair which fell again across her face, and pulled her knees up to her chin. She was calm, too calm he thought, and she answered him almost casually. “If you have something to say Ushak, just say it.”

“There is something wrong. I know it. Isaac ...”

“Isaac!” She spluttered. “Gods Ushak! If I had anything to say I would tell you straight. I would not go to Isaac first, as much as I do Iove him.”

He went to her then and sat down and pulled her close. He kissed her face and whispered in her ear. “I feel it my dove, as a blade piercing my heart. Tell me ... please ... what is it?” She burst into tears and great sobs wracked her body as he kept a tight grip on her and kissed 167 | P a g e

her shoulder and stroked her hair. After a minute the sobs subsided into little sniffles. He whispered again in her ear, softly, gently, coaxing her “It does not matter what it is Katya, you can tell me.”

She pulled back from him and gazed intently into his eyes, honest hazel coloured pools absent of guile. At length, while he waited patiently for what must come, she asked in a small voice, “Promise me you won’t be angry.”

He smiled. “I promise.”

“I have felt it ever since we left the village,” she told him earnestly, “and the further south we go the more it grows within me. I can’t help myself my love, I’ve tried. Believe me I have, so hard ...”

“Hush Katya,” he soothed her, keeping her enfolded in his arms, her head resting against his chest where she could hear the rhythmic beat of his heart, “just tell me.”

She sucked in a great draught of cool night air. Insects whirred and a bat crunched through leaves high in a tree. She sighed. “I have a son in Bialystok.”

“I know that.”

“Yes, but what you don’t know is how I so very much long to see him, to hold him, to know him.”

“But ...”

“I know what you are going to say Ushak; that I don’t know him, that since he was whisked away from me when he emerged between my legs he is a stranger. Yes, it is true, but I don’t

168 | P a g e

know, some ancient instinct? Something primordial perhaps? I have been feeling this urge you see, and the further I go from him the more I feel I am abandoning him.”

Ushak thought about this carefully, then after a moment he said in a very low voice, “You should have said something when we were still a thousand miles north.”

“Yes, I should have,” she agreed, “but I didn’t want to spoil things for you.” She laughed lightly. “You are the Captain of our ship my darling, our leader, our guide, our protector. You know everything.”

“And yet it seems I know nothing,” he retorted bitterly. He snorted. “Even old Isaac recognised there was something amiss with you.”

She playfully bit his shoulder and he winced. “Ushak, you and I have been blinded with our love,” she said with a sigh. “You haven’t even noticed the change in Sasha.”

“Oh yes I have,” he answered firmly.

She laughed. “I’m not only speaking of how he is growing. Don’t you see it? He is worried about going back to Romania.”

He looked down at his feet. “What do you want to do Katya?” he sighed and asked her in a subdued tone. “You want to leave us and go off to Bialystok and search for some child you don’t know and have never met? Is that it?”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly, “maybe.”

“What about Sasha and Beatrice? Bea would be lost without you?”

169 | P a g e

“I love those children Ushak, God knows but I do, and that little girl is the joy I find in the world, in the flowers in the meadow, in the river, in the air, but I can’t help how I feel.”

“Bialystok is more than two thousand miles north,” he told her.

“I know.”

“So you will leave us then?”

She grasped his hands in her and replied eagerly, “No, no my love, we can all go.” There was hope in her voice as she looked into his eyes and squeezed his hands and told him in a rush.

“I have been planning, hoping I could find the right time to ask you, praying you would agree.” She jumped up suddenly and pulled her dress on and told him, a grin on her face, “wait there, I will be right back. I have a surprise for you.”

She dashed off then back to their little camp, where Isaac had fallen asleep before the bonfire and the children snored gently. She placed two more logs on the fire to keep it going and went to her coat and extracted a roll of bank notes from the inside pocket. She looked up at the stars and the moon and whispered “thank you Lord” before retracing her steps and returning to a puzzled Ushak, who was still sitting where she had left him.

She knelt before him with her hands clasped together, a grin on her face, love radiant on her eyes. He shook his head and told her, “If we go north it is a long journey Katya and even by river it is long. When we leave the Volga, as we must, Bonra will no longer be our mother and we will have still a thousand mile to travel.”

She unfolded her hands and there in her palms was a quantity of coin and paper money. She laughed. “I earned this and was keeping it for us. Maybe there is enough for a train.” His

170 | P a g e

features darkened as he stared down at the money. “Where did you get this?” he whispered darkly. “From the soldiers,” she answered with wide eyed innocence.

He stood abruptly and strode to the riverbank. An image of Dani standing above their bed in the bedroom in their little house in Cluj came unbidden into his mind, and he saw again her laughing as she clutched notes in her hand and held them up and mocked him. “Do your long hours scratching in muddy fields yield a crop like this Ushak the gypsy?” And her laughter haunted him. He felt faint and had a sudden urge to vomit. She came behind him, slowly, warily, and placed a hand on his shoulder. He spun around suddenly filled with fury, and without thinking he spat in her face and swept his hand forward knocking the money from her grasp and sending the notes and coins across the grass. She put a hand to her face as he yelled at her “You fucking whore!” The shock of his sudden outburst struck her dumb and she could not speak or respond. “What!” he roared. “Did the Siberians pay you by the session when you were on your back with your legs open? Or was it a fucking job lot Katya?”

She could only stand trembling with tears tumbling down her cheeks as he emitted from his mouth a feral snarl and spun around on his heel and strode purposefully away from her.

And then before she could stop him he fled away into the night, scrabbling up a rocky bluff and disappearing among trees. She screamed after him “Ushak! Ushak! Come back!” but it was no use, he was gone, and she sank to her knees on the grass as an owl hooted and the deep river ran on beside her and she wept.

People fear to know what is really inside them, they fear their own reality, the place deep deep within where feelings are born and sometimes where they die. Katya knew love was a great and glorious thing, but she knew also that love can hurt and that feelings often disturbed the mind, and as a child growing up under the tutelage of a mother who was a 171 | P a g e

pharmacist and understood drugs and medicines she was taught that pain was a terrible thing and was dangerous. Yet, she puzzled then, how can it be? How do you deal with love if you are afraid to feel? It was a dilemma born from memories of her childhood, and yet now as she sat on the river bank watching the sluggish water slip by and dawn’s lights crease the horizon above the distant shore it was all too painfully real. She had done nothing wrong, but doing nothing wrong does not guarantee you are right. She remembered one day in their hibiscus scented garden after Bajun the family cat had died, her father had told her and her brother Peter, in that so gentle way he had: “It is painful children, I know, but you must carry this pain for it will help you remember her and endure. This feeling is a part of you, carry it with pride, and do not let it put you in the dark place. Never do that. If you do it will be a betrayal of all it means to be alive. Instead rejoice that you had known her and let grief pass as it will.”

And she was enduring great pain, for she had suddenly been forced to confront the reality that Ushak, though the most wonderful of men, though naturally gifted and instinctively clever, though capable of the deepest love and self sacrifice, he was after all was said and done just a man.

The children knew instinctively something was wrong, as children do at these times, but they had no idea what it could be, and in the morning when they asked where their father was Isaac told them he had gone off to a local village to look for work. Katya made breakfast, they ate in silence, and after Sasha kissed her on the cheek and gave her a hug, which made her wonder if instinctively he sensed more than he would ever let on, he went stolidly off on his customary fishing trip. Beatrice planted herself on Katya’s lap and began to fire off questions about almost everything, and even though she was worried sick, when 172 | P a g e

Isaac mouthed “I will go and find him” Katya smiled, and, with her gentle heart weighing heavy as a lead balloon, she let him go.

Ushak’s tears were still wet on his face. He shivered in the light breeze, and where he sat staring without seeing across the wide expanse of the river to the east, the dawn was rising.

He sniffed the air and looked at the dew drops formed on grass and leaf and he knew it would rain that day. It was rain, he reflected sourly, to match his mood perfectly. It was a mood of despair in which the pain was so acute he felt he might at any moment bleed from it out of every orifice. He recalled to mind something his mother told him once many long years ago when he was still a child, or perhaps he had read it somewhere when they had put him in prison and he turned to books for solace, it might even have been the Irish priest Cullinan he and the children met on the road near Odessa when he brought them from Romania. He couldn’t remember any more where he heard it. It didn’t matter, he reflected as he mouthed the words aloud, “One word frees us from all the weight and pain of life: that word is love,” for it was the words that were important.

He said the word again, “love,” but he did not feel freed from the pain of what had happened between him and Katya in that split second less than half a day earlier. It was all it took for that certain something to snap inside his brain so that reason left him and animal reaction replaced it. He was certain he was in the right, and he reassured himself in his conviction by telling himself she had no other way of making such money except by selling her body to the soldiers at the monastery. Still, there was something nagging at him, gnawing into the back of his brain. If she had whored herself out he would have nothing more to do with her of course, and he would not allow her anywhere near the children, but as the memory of the events of the previous night crystallised in his mind he regretted he 173 | P a g e

had not stayed and simply asked her for an explanation. There might be one not involving her selling herself. He was sure there wouldn’t be, but he should have asked anyway. And then he remembered the explosive act of violence in which he dashed the money from her hand and spat on her, and regret and pain caused bile to rise into his throat like sulphurous volcanic lava and he covered his face with his hands and wept like a newborn baby.

Isaac trudged disconsolately along a track beside a meadow fringed by trees. The sun was behind him, but it was still early, barely a half hour after the dawn, and he found it cold.

Dew clung everywhere and sparkled like tiny pearls floating on an iridescent sea. In the distance he could see farmhouses and on the horizon chimneys spewed smoke into the air.

The plumes of smoke would be rising up from sawmills and factories he supposed, and the sight raised his spirits a little and gave hope perhaps the worst of the famine was behind the country. He prayed it was so.

He had never been what he would describe as a pious man, but he did think of himself as a good Jew. He made the journey from the village to worship at the synagogue in Zhigulevsk as often as he could manage it, one year even going there five times. He had even taken a ferry and crossed the river to Togliatti once when Issie was still a small boy, and they had prayed together in the famous house of worship with its marble pillars and its ornately decorated arched ceiling. And that was when it hit him, as a bolt of lightning strikes an old tree and splits the trunk in pieces; memories of Issie came unwanted to him. The agony and regret he felt at his betrayal and rejection of his son he had carried for many long years, even before the brute Grigorivich murdered him, and so the pain of it was dulled. Not lessened, but dulled. It was not Issie’s fault his mother died bringing him into the world, and it was not his fault his father turned away from him, yet even though he did not mean it to 174 | P a g e

be so, and it was not consciously done, Isaac blamed his son for taking from him the wife he adored.

He knew it was the way of the world all father’s disappoint their children, and as he walked beneath the swaying trees whose leaves seemed to be singing to him as they shook and rustled, a snatch from a mitzvot in Leviticus when God spoke to Moses entered his head: “Speak to all the community of the Children of Israel, and say to them - You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. A man shall revere his mother and his father and observe my Sabbaths; I am Adonai your God.” And he almost wept as a lump came into his throat, but he fought it back as he whispered to himself. “Ah me Issie Rabinowitz, but you were a good son. May Hashem hold you close in his eternal embrace.” It had been true, the son had loved the father and had shown it, the father had loved the son and had not known how to show it. He sighed deeply.

He reached the edge of the line of trees and gazed out to where a mile distant north east of where he stood a small rocky hillock rose two hundred feet beside a copse. He knew was where he would find Ushak. Birds sang in the trees, somewhere far off an angry dog barked, the leaves rustled on the branches as breeze sighed. His back ached and his right leg hurt and so he decided to sit for a while on a fallen log.

Katya had let the fire die. Ushak would be annoyed about that when he returned to their camp, if he returned, which she could not be certain of, or be certain she wanted him to. His anger had frightened her and his reaction to her showing him the money betrayed something within him she had never seen before and was unprepared for. She loved him

175 | P a g e

deeply and unconditionally, and she felt sure he loved her back, but the previous night’s events made her question whether his love was unconditional.

She sat on the riverbank among swaying poppies and meadow viper. Her back was leaning against a willow whose branches draped down to almost touch the water in places. As the leaves swayed in what was becoming a stiffening breeze she espied out on the river on small islets or in the air above crested Grebe, Egrets, Heron, and Spoon bill. She recognised all the species from when she had been a child and her father would take her and her brother out on long walks from the city into the surrounding countryside. He would take them in his small carriage and the horses hooves would clack on the cobbled streets as they made their way through the suburbs to the country. She remembered the horse smell and the smells of disinfectant and dry dusty leather and polished wood. It was what she associated with that carriage and the memory of it almost made her gasp aloud and she wondered fleetingly what on earth she was doing in that place far from her home. Then the little girl on her lap dragged her back to reality as she tugged on a strand of her hair and exclaimed “Look Vasilisya! Look!” and when she looked she saw coming into land mere feet from where they sat a magnificent white Swan with wings extended and orange feet flapping at the surface of the water.

Isaac stood at the base of the hillock. It was not high but it was steep, like a swollen boil ready to burst rising up from the land, and the prospect of climbing up it he found daunting.

He cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted. “Ushak” Ushak! Are you there?” No answer came and he cursed and then apologised to God, and shouted again, this time louder and more forcefully: “Ushak! I know you are there!”

After a long moment Ushak’s voice echoed back. “What do you want Isaac?”

176 | P a g e

The old man guffawed with laughter. “What do you mean what do I want? You fool! Come down!”

After an even longer moment an echo floated down from above that made Isaac curse again. “You come up here you want to speak to me!”

Ushak waited patiently as the old man struggled up the hill behind him. His mood lightened a little as he heard his curses floating on the air mingling with the cries of the birds soaring about high above. When Isaac did make the summit he flopped down beside Ushak. He turned his head very deliberately, face flushed with the climb and his limbs aching, and glared, but Ushak pretended not to notice as he stared toward the distant river and said stiffly “I don’t want to hear a word about her.”

“Oh, you don’t?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Nothing about Katya?”

“Nothing at all,” Ushak declared firmly, jaw set, face a mask grim and determined in countenance.

“Well you will have to come back sometime,” Isaac persisted. “You have two children remember. Children who ...”

“I know that!” Ushak snapped. “You think me an idiot?”

Isaac smiled at the question and answered equably, “Yes, I do.”

177 | P a g e

Ushak felt his anger bubble again and he jumped to his feet and jabbed a finger, pointing, accusing. “Instead of concerning yourself with my children, why didn’t you worry about your own when he was still alive?”

Isaac felt tears well immediately in his eyes and a cold fury threatened to overwhelm him. In that single moment if he had the wherewithal and the means he would have killed the younger man. Instead he controlled his anger and struggled up to his feet and confronted Ushak. “Alev ha-sholem,” he said, and then when he realised he had inadvertently spoken in Hebrew he added for Ushak, “May he rest in peace.” Ushak gazed into the old man’s eyes and he saw what spasms of agony he had caused him and he felt guilty and wretched. Isaac noticed as Ushak’s whole body seemed to sag and the hurt and anger fled from him and he whispered words of comfort, “We both wronged him Ushak, you in those days before his end and me the whole of his life. What is done cannot now be undone and it is a burden we must both live with,” he pointed a finger up and managed a weak smile, “but Hashem sees all things and He sees the repentant heart and He forgives.” Ushak pulled the old man close and they embraced for what seemed a long time, but which was only really a moment, then they sat down side by side. He understood, only God forgives, and so when we forgive, as human beings, we are imbued with the spirit of the Almighty.

For a while they didn’t speak. They looked out across the verdant countryside of meadows and woods that tumbled to the Volga. Even where they sat the rushing water of the great rivers heart could clearly be heard above the sound of the birds and small animals who had avoided being hunted and trapped during the height of the famine. On the river a steamer sounded its horn sounding like a fart and they laughed as what seemed a myriad of birds rose into the air from trees and bushes screeching and protesting.

178 | P a g e

“You know, my son,” Isaac said then, “the village was never so bad as it became in the time you lived there with Sasha and Bea.” Ushak frowned at that, he had never known it any other way than it was and as it became during the famine. Isaac patted him on the shoulder and said, “Indulge an old man.” Ushak shrugged his shoulders and took out his tobacco pouch and commenced to roll a cigarette as Isaac explained. “We had paddocks full of animals, cattle, sheep, goats, and a sty at the back of every house with pigs rolling in mud.”

He laughed. “Janek was kept busy I can tell you. And the fields, well, they were bursting at the seams with everything good to eat. The village had more people then, and the Count and his family took a real interest ...”

“What’s your point Isaac?” Ushak asked wearily with an exaggerated yawn.

“Yes, alright, you want to know my point. My point is simply that things change Ushak, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst. It is how we cope with the change that is what counts.” He leaned a hand on Ushak’s shoulder and pushed himself to his feet with some effort. He looked down on Ushak and almost sneered, “That wonderful girl my son has given her all to you and the children. Everything. She holds nothing back. I know the truth of the money she has, but I shan’t tell you. You must ask her for yourself. I will tell you this though, her body and soul belong to you, and if she had done anything wrong it would be for you, and only a damn fool would sit here sulking on his arse on damp grass getting piles.”

“What do you suggest then?” Ushak said laconically.

179 | P a g e

Isaac turned away and set of back down the hill, throwing over his shoulder. “Go back to the camp and beg for forgiveness, but before you do get down on your knees and pray she does forgive you.�

And then he was gone. And then it started to rain.

180 | P a g e

4

It did not stop raining for two days. Tension built. Ushak could not rationalise it, of course, for he was a pragmatist, so he could not work out that in allowing himself to remember what had really happened between him and Dani he was magnifying the bad and minimising the good and bringing to his present what belonged more properly in the past. Memories haunted him and he did not know how to go to this girl he loved so very much and beg forgiveness. Neither did Katya know what she must do to approach him, for she was young and in the young ideals and insults loom large as mountain chains. So they tip toed around one another as the family sought shelter under their canvas from the water cascading down from the dark clouds, and old Isaac watched them and could almost weep for their obvious pain.

When it did stop raining and they were preparing to leave Ushak seemed finally to come to his senses. The river was swollen and high and running fast, the current sweeping along debris of wooden spars, leaves, logs, and flotsam clearly originated from the waterfront at Kamyshin and the dozens of small villages and hamlets along the banks of the Kamyshinka tributary. While the others sat about a sputtering bonfire Ushak had made and dried socks and boots in front of it, and Beatrice sat in Katya’s lap munching contentedly on strawberries her surrogate mother had gathered in the fields in the pre dawn, reasoning the farmer would not mind as the storm had all but destroyed the crop anyway, he stood by the side of the river and stared intently into the south.

181 | P a g e

At length, when the sun was high in the sky and blazing down rapidly drying the land in a shimmering heat haze, he seemed to arrive at a decision. He took Katya aside and they walked a little way away from the others, shoulders close but not touching, neither looking at the other, and not speaking. They found a small sheltered area beside a stand of white Poplar trees and there they stopped to talk. He was awkward and did not know how to begin, so he found himself somewhat inanely pointing to where grassy plats stretched toward some floating reed islands fringed with mace reed. “We call them plaur in the Romanian tongue,” he said absently.

“What are you talking about?” she asked him, perplexed and irritated he could not simply say what was in his mind.”

“I’m talking about the reeds, on the river, the little islands there, plaur.”

“Interesting,” she said with a sneer.

He felt foolish then and was frustrated. He noticed suddenly two pygmy Cormorants sitting on a nest on one of the little islands and an ermine which darted along the muddy riverbank, turning its head furtively in their direction, tiny black eyes glistening, until it vanished down a hole. Ah how simple their small lives, he thought to himself with a heavy sigh, and how much to be desired, to live with base instinct alone and be untroubled by feelings.

“Do you have something to say to me Ushak?” She said coldly, cutting across his musing. He turned to her sharply, causing to raise within her a feeling of, not fear exactly, but apprehension, and anticipation, and he blurted out suddenly in a rush: “There is portage to be had at Kamyshin. Men who will put the boat on wagons and carry it overland to the River 182 | P a g e

Ivlovlya and we have a run then to the Don. If we follow that river north to Voronezh there is a road we can follow that runs west through Belarus straight to the Polish border and Bialystok. We could ...”

She stopped him, her tone of voice calm, serene almost. “What are you saying?”

He could not meet her eyes. He answered in a small voice. “I am saying we could come with you to find your son.”

She thought about this proposition Ushak was making, but not actually putting to her in so many words. In her heart she loved the man, and worshipped the children, especially little Bea, who would be anyone’s favourite. A small shiver ran down her spine when she recalled fleetingly how Drapajlo and Grigorivich and the rest had wanted to send the little girl to a neighbouring village to be killed and eaten. Yet she was now wary of him also, not his intentions, which she did not doubt were as they appeared, honest and well meant, but his propensity to sudden anger and his apparent inability to understand when he had done wrong and simply say the word ‘sorry’. She did not think she could go on with him unless he did, but neither did she want to make the long arduous journey into the North West alone, and neither did she want to leave the children and Isaac, or Ushak truth to tell. She stood in a quandary, hesitant and uncertain.

“That’s if you wanted,” he added sheepishly.

“Smolensk is nearer,” she said almost absently, as though she was telling herself this, “where my parents live and where I was born.”

“We can go there too,” he told her, and added foolishly with a sneer and needless emphasis, “that is if you don’t mind spending some of that money you earned.” Instantly he regretted 183 | P a g e

saying it as her body stiffened and her features darkened and what was within was betrayed in her eyes, a mixture of disappointment and anger.”

She swept past him, saying as she went, “I will pay whatever is needed, don’t worry about that, and I will pay you too for your time if I must.”

When she had gone out of sight he went to one of the trees and punched the trunk hard enough with his clenched fist to draw blood and he cursed himself for a fool. “Damn you Ushak! Damn you to Hell! Idiot! Idiot!”

She had paused beside a willow to see if he would follow after her and was hidden by dense foliage of vine and leaves. She watched as he punched the tree and cursed himself and rested his forehead against the bark and she whispered to herself, almost as an entreaty, “Oh you great buffoon Ushak, is it really so hard simply to say I am sorry?”

And apparently it was, for in the fortnight that followed, while they waited for their portage in a small ramshackle boarding house on a street near the waterfront in Kamyshin, which had only just opened again as the famine seemed to be receding and supplies were reaching the city from south and west, Ushak and Katya kept their distance from one another. He would take to going out early in the morning and wandering streets filled with anticipation and recent memories, and Katya spent the days taking the excited children sightseeing to museums, whose magnificent buildings awed and delighted them, the city zoo, and parks, and she would buy them sweet things they had never tasted before, and she did not say anything but they rarely asked what their father was doing. Isaac visited the Jewish quarter in the old city, worshipped at the fire blackened synagogue which had been the target of an arson attack at the height of the famine, and played chess with old men on the pavement

184 | P a g e

outside cafes bereft of anything to sell. The old couple who owned the boarding house complained bitterly they had no food to provide the evening meal. That did not matter for between the three of them, Ushak, Katya, and Isaac they always managed to come up with food for the day, which they always shared with the cantankerous old couple, who Isaac tended to view with deep suspicion, declaring privately they looked too well fed for famine victims. But of course, the further south and the nearer the Russian oblasts were to ports having access to Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey across the Black Sea, the less harshly did the famine bite. At any rate they did not allow thoughts of such things to spoil their time in the city.

So for them all the two weeks passed all too swiftly by and they again found themselves in the old boat on a river, this time it was the narrow short stretch of the Ilovyla which tumbles into the Don, and this time they were heading North against the flow away from Romania.

On their second night, Ushak sat at the tiller enjoying the full moon that bathed the dark water and shore with a spectral light, no longer with Katya’s head resting in his lap. Isaac rose from the sleep he had been feigning and came to sit beside him. He looked to where the children were snuggled up into Katya, at the far end of the boat, all three peacefully sleeping under blankets of coats. He smiled warmly.

“It gives a body a warm cosy glow to see them thus does it not Ushak?”

“If you say so Isaac,” Ushak snorted in reply.

Isaac laughed. “Is it so hard to speak with you nowadays then Ushak?”

Ushak relented and smiled. “No father, of course it isn’t.”

“We have not seen very much of you these two weeks.”

185 | P a g e

“You mean Katya hasn’t seen much of me, don’t you?”

“Well, yes, I suppose, and the children.” Isaac punched him playfully on the arm and told him. “You are a sour puss Ushak. A proud stubborn man, but I tell you, no, more, I warn you, the place of heartbreak and loneliness is full up with proud stubborn men. It does not need one more to send himself down there.” Then he added. “You don’t know to make it right do you?”

“She told you then? I thought she might.”

Isaac heaved a deep sigh. “It was the Colonel gave her the money Ushak. That Muscovite aristocrat Lobanov,” Ushak raised his eyebrows at that and Isaac continued and explained.

“Rostovsky family, very noble birth line; probably went over to the Bolsheviks after the October revolution to save what was left of his clan, if any have survived.”

“How do you know this?” Ushak asked warily, suspecting the old man would stoop to any ploy to have things as they were.

“We played a few rounds of chess him and me, before he was summoned to Moscow.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Yes, well, son, there’s a lot you don’t know.”

They were silent then for a long time as Ushak worked the tiller and the boat moved north under the silvery moonlight, gliding sluggishly through the water. A light spattering of rain fell and Isaac shivered and moved into the bottom of the boat and pulled the canvas about him. “Old bones,” he muttered laconically, then with the rain making rivulets down Ushak’s face which might even have been mingling with tears, he smiled and told him gently “The 186 | P a g e

soldiers liked her Ushak. Siberian peasants far from home fighting a war they couldn’t understand, she might have seemed as a sister to them, or a daughter. They were grateful to her for her cooking and cleaning and mending clothes and they would give her a few kopeks here and there, but I doubt very much she ever went down on her back for them.”

The old man pulled the canvas over his head and was soon snoring beneath it, leaving Ushak to his thoughts. He knew he could not make any comparison between Dani and Katya; the truth of it was, and it was only in the previous few weeks he had been able to admit it to himself and confront the reality over his dreams and wishful thinking, Dani had been what the American’s would call a ‘good time girl’. She had never raised Sasha as he was growing up; not really, it had been Ushak who had accepted the task willingly where she was full of resentment. He would go out in the morning and labour all day in the fields for a few Leu. It was paper money with the face of the great national hero Cuza emblazoned on the pink coloured notes, whereas Dani would leave at night when he returned home and sing in music halls and at concert venues and most often she would not come home until the early hours of the morning. She would bring with her the higher value newer issue currency bearing the heads of King Ferdinand and Queen Mary, who was a niece of Queen Victoria of England. And Ushak never realised how much she came to resent him and despise him and how she would dance the night away with this suitor or that one just to avoid coming home to him and Sasha. Then he was five years old she paid for the child to attend a school in Cluj and a woman to feed him breakfast and take him and then meet him in the afternoon. That way she became a person who lived by night where Ushak and Sasha were people who lived by day, and so as months turned into years the father and son became strangers to the wife and mother, until the crises came with her pregnancy with Beatrice. He did not see how she

187 | P a g e

could have become pregnant to him as they had not had sex for months, except the odd occasion, but she insisted during one furious argument the ‘thing’ she was carrying in her belly was gypsy spawned and so he accepted it. He did not question her again, and when Beatrice came he never regretted his acceptance for one second or doubted she was his.

So as he sat there at the tiller guiding the boat into the north away from his past no comparison was possible between the two women he had known in his life. Katya was loving and loyal, generous spirited and gentle, but yet cold cruel images flooded his mind of possibilities his rational self told him were impossible with her, of dark cellars and yellow candle light and drunken soldiers and his Katya, and officers tents, and laughter and mocking, and harsh Siberian voices, and money changing hands. He could not shake such images, and though Isaac had explained she only ever earned a few almost worthless kopeks from the rough soldiers, yet what she possessed in a roll of roubles represented a small fortune in those days. He could not comprehend any logical reason for why Major Lobanov would have sought out a young girl he barely knew and give her all his money, so it was imagination which took precedence over reality with him and he remained, despite himself, and despite his most fervent desire to go to her and take her in his arms and beg her forgiveness and kiss her sweet face, aloof and sulking.

July was hot and the temperature on the wide Don reached ninety degrees celcius, and in the boat Bea spent long hours asleep or dangling her hands and feet in the water while Katya held her to keep her from falling in. Isaac stayed as much as he could under the shade of the canvas at the height of the day, Sasha would strip to his shorts, as would Ushak, and he spent hours fishing, occasionally, but not often, catching something, an eel or two, bream, and once a snapping pike which frightened the life out of Katya and Beatrice as it 188 | P a g e

thrashed about in the bottom of the boat. They all laughed uproariously when it wiggled its slimy way under the canvas and Isaac almost jumped out of his skin and went overboard.

At night they would, as they had done every night since leaving the village, make a camp on one side of the river or the other away from villages and towns, farms, homesteads, or dachas, though the farther north they went the brighter and more densely clustered the lights shone in the darkness. They would make their fire, Katya would cook, they would eat and then they would settle down to sleep. She no longer sang and Ushak no longer told his tales and only Isaac, once his prayers were said and his devotions made, would try to lighten the mood of dampness which lay between the two surly lovers with apocryphal stories taken from the Talmud.

Ushak and Sasha took the sun well in those days and their skin became bronzed and both looked fit and toned and tanned, but the fair skinned Katya’s shoulders burned, as did Beatrice’s face. When Isaac pointed this out to the otherwise oblivious Ushak he pulled the boat into a small willow sheltered cove and he and Sasha, who was rapidly leaving childhood behind him, dragged it out of the water and he announced they would be staying there for the night. Katya pointed out it was only midday, but Ushak merely grunted and said he and Sasha would go and find some medicine to soothe and heal burnt skin. He took the cavalry sabre and he and Sasha went off among the trees while Katya sighed heavily and exchanged a look with Isaac while Beatrice slumped down on the grass and said “We having supper now mama?” Katya laughed, and regarded the little girl fondly and marvelled at her capacity to adapt to any situation, and told her with mock sternness “I will fill that little belly when we have made a fire solnyshko”

189 | P a g e

And as he set to his accustomed task of finding wood to build the fire Isaac marvelled at them both, and despite the gulf that remained between Ushak and Katya he silently gave thanks to God he had agreed to go with them on that terrible night when they had fled the village.

As Ushak searched along the riverbank, bending often to examine carefully various plants and flowers, spreading reeds and fronds to look within where they clustered, while the sun high overheard blazed down, the curious Sasha asked his father what he was so assiduously seeking for. “Aloe,” Ushak replied distractedly. A sudden thought struck him then and he straightened and turned to face his son, a frown on his face, aware he had neglected to give Sasha the most basic instruction in herb lore his own mother had drilled into him by the time he was his age. Sasha grinned sheepishly and said “What is it papa?”

Ushak shook his head and simply explained what they were looking for, almost by rote: “What we look for Sasha is a plant called Aloe. It comes in many forms and although it is native to Africa and Arabia it is also to be found here in Russia in places by riversides. It was probably brought by the Mongols many hundreds of years ago. If we find it I will split open the leaves and extract the juice and this will heal Katya and Bea’s sunburn.”

“I can help find it papa,” Sasha said enthusiastically. “What does it look like?”

Ushak grinned and ruffled the boy’s unruly tangle of hair with a hand. Whilst in Kamyshin he had taken advantage of an open barbers shop and had his hair shorn almost to the scalp, but Sasha had resolutely refused to have his cut, declaring seriously that like Samson in one of the stories Isaac told them, if he lost his hair he would most probably never catch another fish. So it remained shoulder length, and every day, much to his and Beatrice’s annoyance,

190 | P a g e

Katya would go through it with a comb and examine their scalps in minute detail to ensure there were no nits ready to turn into lice. She would wash all their hair in the river three times weekly using a soap Ushak made from a preparation of wood ash, horse chestnut and the saponins extracted from bracken, and so they remained clean and lice free when otherwise if left to the two men they would most likely not have been.

“The plant we search for has a flower like a tube and it is orange, or pink and red. It will grow in a little cluster near the ground.”

It was not long before the sharp eyed Sasha located what his father was looking for, and when Ushak had cut enough of the plant for his purpose he sat down on the bank of the river and took off his boots and dangled his feet in the water. He was joined by Sasha and the two sat side by side, enjoying the sun’s warmth and the cool of the ponderously flowing river. At length Sasha asked his father an obvious question: “Will you teach me about plants and herbs papa?”

Ushak gazed out across the water. Not far off, close in by the bank, ducks bobbed up and down like toys in a hot bath, and in the distance under a shimmering heat haze he could clearly see people at work in fields to the west. He smiled and answered his son without turning his head. “One day Sasha we will go home to Romania and I will teach you everything you need to learn to be a good Roma. I promise you I will.” The boy leaned in close to his father, who put his arm about his shoulder and continued to speak, almost with a hint of nostalgia in his tone of voice. “I will teach you what my mother and uncles taught me; I will teach you about horses, and what plant is safe to eat and what is not, and I will teach you to mend a broken wheel on a caravan, and how to tell from the sky and the smell

191 | P a g e

of the air what weather is coming next. When we go home I will work and when we have enough money saved I will buy a caravan and a good work horse ...”

“Two horse’s papa,” Sasha cut in enthusiastically. “One for pulling the wagon and one for riding.”

Ushak laughed. “A whole herd if you want Sasha. And then we will explore the Carpathian Mountains, where the peaks are high and always topped with snow and the valleys are deep and green and the rivers roar, and we will cross the wide steppes of Hungary and chase after horizons that can never be caught.”

“You will show me all that?” Sasha asked in wide eyed innocent wonder at the prospect.

Ushak smiled at his son and squeezed his shoulders gently and kissed the top of his head. “I will show you all the world my darling son, and it will be you and me and Beatrice, just as it always has been.”

“And Katya and Isaac,” Sasha added swiftly. “We must not forget them papa.”

Ushak’s face darkened a little but he hid it from Sasha as he stood up. He felt a little ashamed at the thought which had fleetingly invaded his brain when his son said this, for he and the children had themselves known the pain of being shunned and isolated as outsiders, but he could not help but think ‘no Sasha, they are not Roma’. He said instead, “Yes, Katya and Isaac too, if they want.” Sasha beamed with delight and joined his father and they returned to where a camp had been set out by Katya to find fish grilling above the fire and berries and nuts in a wooden bowl and big mushrooms skewered on the end of twigs waiting to be roasted.

192 | P a g e

They ate in silence late in the afternoon and then Ushak prepared an ointment made from the juice he extracted from the Aloe leaves, which he smeared on the sleeping Beatrice’s face. Katya sat on the edge of the riverbank on a fallen log and allowed him to spread the soothing ointment on her burning livid red shoulders.

“It may sting a bit,” he told her.

“There are a lot of things in life sting Ushak,” she retorted blithely.

He ignored the jibe as he gently smoothed the ointment on her skin, extending the moment of intimacy as long as he could, wishing he could say something to her that would make things right between them, willing himself not to. She sat facing across the water and watched as the sun started to fade beneath the western horizon, savouring the feel of his strong fingers making small rotations across her shoulders and neck, and suppressing the sensations of sensuality which arose from the depths of her soul.

Isaac and Sasha were deep in conversation, heads close, almost forehead touching forehead, as the old man was attempting to teach the boy how to play chess, which was difficult without actually having a board and pieces before them. Ushak sniffed the air and said “I think it’s going to get hotter.” No one answered him or appeared to be paying attention, but he went on anyway, voicing what was in his mind. “The flow of the river is north to south and we are making slow progress. I think we should leave it, sell the boat if we can and go on foot. The river Voronezh splits from the Don not far north and if we follow that then we should make Stary Oskol within the week. Kursk is only seventy or so miles then and the Ukraine border at Bilopilya another ten. The chief porter in Kamyshin showed me a map. I think I can guide us there from memory. What do you think?”

193 | P a g e

Katya stood up abruptly. She did not answer but simply pulled the straps of her old dress about her shoulders and strode to where Beatrice was curled up in a ball on the canvas and she lay down beside her, pulling the little girl close. He looked forlornly after her, but she had her back to him, and before he went off alone for a walk as the stars began to wink in the night sky and the flames of the fire cast dancing shadows, he caught Isaac’s eye and the old man shook his head ruefully.

194 | P a g e

5

They followed Ushak’s lead of course, although the journey took longer than he anticipated and it was not until the end of July when the little party reached a village not far from the town of Stary Oskol, where they sold the boat to a friendly farmer. The man, who was not much older than Ushak himself, sternly advised them to avoid the town as it had been bombed to rubble during the civil war and was still lawless. They ate a meal with the farmer and his family and spent the night in a barn. The farmer’s name was Ivan and while both families slept soundly he and Ushak walked out to an old gazebo that held within its mildewed timbers memories of happier times, and there the two men sat and smoked and drank rough vodka distilled from potatoes.

The moon was half obscured by clouds but the night was balmy and heady with the scent of oleaster redolent on the perfumed air. Ivan said “You have journeyed far then my friend.”

“Farther than you would ever believe Ivan,” Ushak replied with a half smile, and though he did not mention anything of the rift between him and Katya, he related for him the story of their journey from the village. When he was done Ivan whistled and marvelled at their survival.

“I met an army doctor making his way home to Lithuania from down the Crimea a few weeks ago. I don’t know what army he was from, but he had the most horrible tale to tell of the war and the famine. He reckoned twenty million were dead. Can you believe that?” Ivan blew smoke rings and shook his head sagely as he repeated with emphasis: “Twenty million.”

195 | P a g e

“I can believe it,” Ushak said. He took a long swig of the fiery liquid and grimaced as he spoke. “Everywhere is devastated and hunger has done terrible things to folk.”

“I know,” Ivan said. He held up a hand to stop Ushak adding what he knew would be coming next. “We were lucky. My wife has a bit of the gypsy in her too and whatever she could find we ate, and those boys of mine are sturdy lads so nobody bothered with us too much.” He chuckled. “You know, and maybe you do, rat stew is not so bad once you get used to it.”

“Makes a body wonder where God has been in all this,” Ushak commented drily.

“Pah! God? Don’t speak to me of him Ushak.” Ivan hawked and spat. “The godrot priests were first to pull up their cassocks and flee away to Moscow or else west into Ukraine.

Though I doubt they fared any better in that shithole than they would have here among their own kind.”

“That doesn’t make it God’s fault Ivan.” Ushak told him in a gentle voice. “Priests are only men when all is said and done.”

Ivan squinted and smiled as he looked at Ushak and told him. “You are a strange one Ushak, for a gypsy I mean.”

Ushak laughed and retorted “And you are a strange one, for a Russian. To take in a gypsy and his family, what would your neighbours think of you doing that?”

Ivan sighed and pulled up the vodka bottle and topped up his companions goblet. “You know I cheated you on the price for the boat?” he said casually.

196 | P a g e

“I know you did.” Ushak replied, and then added with a wink. “But I lied to you when I said I had it caulked in a yard in Kamyshin. The damn thing will probably sink and drown you first time you go on the river.”

They chortled with laughter then and an owl hooted and bats flitted about above their heads as they set to getting merrily drunk together.

It was with sadness they set off down the road to the west the next morning. Ivan and his wife and their three robust florid faced sons stood in the dusty road and waved them off.

The kindly farmer and his family would have had them stay longer, but Ushak was conscious the year would begin to turn sooner than they expected. Which was often the way of it in times like that, and anyway, Katya was growing more and more homesick the further north they went.

Ushak had fashioned a harness out of the canvas and most of their belongings were stuffed inside it, so that in leaving the river behind, where they had for many months found a home on the water and a sense of safety, they did not have to give up too many of the small comforts they had grown accustomed to. He carried it on one shoulder with the weight on his back and the fearsome looking cavalry sabre, which Ivan’s sons and Sasha had played with, fastened to it. Isaac had a bag made from a sack the farmer’s wife had given to him and this was on his back with smaller items inside it, the weight just about as much as he could comfortably bear, and Sasha carried his fishing gear and a smaller bag containing flint and wooden mugs and rough made platters. That left the two girls, and they really were one, as the closest mother and daughter ever could be. Beatrice would walk with Katya and whenever the plucky child grew tired of simply plodding along the dry dusty tracks, or as she tended to do inevitably darting here and there in pursuit of butterflies, Katya would take her 197 | P a g e

on her back and carry her. After two days on the road the little girl even learned how to position herself so that she could sleep while being borne along. It would make Katya chuckle inside when she heard her heavy little snores reverberating in her ear, and often, absently, she would turn her head and kiss her burden and Ushak and Isaac noticed the love shining in her eyes. It should have been enough to bring Ushak to his senses but it was not.

It would take something more than that, Isaac realised, though he could not ever have prepared himself for what it was that did it.

At the end of the first week in August of that year they crossed the border from Russia into the Ukraine two miles north of the town of Bilopilya. It was a small mean town not wanted by the Ukrainians, in whose territory it lay, or the Russians whose invading armies periodically passed through it on the road to Kiev. When they were still in Russia, camped at the side of a small stream marking the frontier, Ushak went off on his own. He sat alone beside a broken oak and surveyed a country he had never before visited not fifteen feet away across water almost stagnant and weed choked. Flies and midges swarmed and buzzed in the humid air but Ushak seemed not to notice them as he sat among flowers whose petals were a riot of colour, red, purple, orange, blue and white, and that was where Isaac found him.

The old man was annoyed. “Katya and the children are waiting Ushak,” he told him stiffly.

“Are we going on, or not?” Ushak turned to him blank eyed almost, and Isaac perceived there was some memory tugging at him and troubling him so he did not press. He merely said in a low voice, “The afternoon is waning anyway. Katya and I will make a camp back there beside those trees.” “Yes,” Ushak agreed distractedly, “do that. Make camp for the night.”

198 | P a g e

And Isaac’s instincts did not betray him. Ushak was haunted by a memory; it was not bad, or horrible in the way some memories can be, magnified with the passing of years, and it was not good or pleasant, it was not even neutral. It was what accompanied the memory that troubled him so much and it was the reason he paused while still in Russia. Isaac understood and so he and Katya fussed over the children as they cooked a meal and they left the troubled man alone.

Ushak lay back on the grass, heedless of the biting midges and the flying ants, and he let his mind drift until he was there again, in the time when he was a gypsy youth young and untamed. It was a time in late spring one year when his father had stayed with the family for three solid months, the only time, or at least the only such occasion Ushak could recall. It had been a special delight for the boy as the father had taken the young Ushak with him and together on horseback they had ridden across the entire breadth of Moldova to the Ukrainian border at Soroca. They camped together on a riverbank where only a short stretch of water separated the two countries, as it did then at Bilopilya. His father had trapped a hare and they cooked it on a fire and while he ate Ushak pointed and said, “I have never been to Ukrainia father. Mother took us up to Galicia the year before last. That was very fine. They know horse flesh the lads there.”

Ushak’s father had shook his head disapprovingly at this, the mutton chop whiskers on his face standing stiff and glistening ginger like a lions mane in the glow from the fire. “And you are never likely to see Ukraine, except from a distance, if I have anything to say about it boy,” he declared gruffly.

As the young will question such bald statements which give no information, Ushak questioned his father, first making a statement of his own. “We cannot be hated 199 | P a g e

everywhere we go father. There must be some place in the world God has made for our people. Tomorrow why do we not go see what is beyond those hills over yonder? What is wrong with the country anyhow?”

His father took his pipe from his pocket and lit it and leaned back against a tree trunk and smoked as he looked across the small river to the east. “They are a cruel people Ushak,” he said lazily. “It is bred into them. Hard and cruel they are.”

“But you are a soldier father, and you have the Jaeger rifle, and I am big and strong now and can stand beside you in a fight. There is no boy in Cluj can stand against me.”

Ushak’s father had let out one of his great belly laughs then and boomed “I am sure that must be so, for the Magistrate told me, and lamented of you, as I passed through the town on my way to find the family.”

“Well then?”

“No son,” his father said lazily as he blew smoke rings across the surface of the water, “it is not a good country.”

And then Ushak understood his father’s natural desire to protect his son, to shield him from the pitiless cruelty of the world he had already experienced and understood from the age of six. “So they hate gypsies too do they?” Ushak had asked, and did not wait for the obvious answer as he stood up and walked to the water’s edge and looked to where darkness was limning the line of distant hills and smoke was rising from innumerable chimneys from small farms and the houses in villages. “Where is the justice if God has made us to be despised even more than the Jew? If God so hates us then I shall hate God back ten times over.”

200 | P a g e

This petulant statement brought Ushak’s father to his feet quickly and behind his son, with a speed that belied his age and bulk, and he delivered him a sudden sharp smack with his open palm on the back of his head. Ushak was propelled forward and went into the cold water up to his knees and with a hand on his head, which smarted, he had turned accusing eyes on his father. The old soldier shook his head and sighed deeply, and with instant regret consuming him he pulled his son from the water and hugged him close and whispered in his ear urgently. “You must never say anything like that again boy, or think it. The Lord is all we have.” Ushak whispered back that he was sorry, and his father told him as he went back to sitting by the tree and smoking. “I too am sorry Ushak, but it is not me you must apologise to, it is Him.” He pointed up to where stars were beginning to wink in the darkening sky.

“Tell Him when next you say your prayers.”

While Ushak tugged off his wet boots to dry them before the fire, where they steamed, he had looked up, and as often happened, on those rare occasions when he spent time with him, he saw his father regard him with the deepest affection and that familiar half smile playing on his lips. “What?” He asked, as he found himself, as ever, forgetting the chastisement and smiling along with the older man.

“Take off your trousers and dry them also.” Ushak’s father’s response left, as it so often did, questions unanswered, for he was a man filled with regrets and he knew too well answers led to more questions. He regretted the decision to leave his family and enlist in the imperial Austrian army, even though he did so in the hope he could get for them a better life. He regretted he had never been there for his son as he grew up. He regretted he lacked the courage to simply admit he preferred to be away from his family, although his love for them was real and unquestioned. And he regretted his handsome, sturdy, tousle haired son 201 | P a g e

had been forced to grow up too soon and much too fast. He had managed another smile and a sigh and a glance up at the first quarter moon, but he had known his son would not be so easily deflected as the young feed off the wisdom of the old as a tick on a bull feeds off the beast’s blood.

Ushak persisted. “No father, you have set the caravan in motion now.”

His father had laughed loudly, the sound reverberating, loving that stubborn streak in the boy he had inherited from his capable strong willed mother. He stood and stamped a booted foot for effect. “This Ushak is Moldova. Over there beyond this river,” he pointed, emphasising with his pipe, “and it is not a hundred feet, that is Ukraine. What they might tolerate there they tolerate only because they themselves are not tolerated. And it is because they cannot understand that such hatred is born of fear they have become inured to brutality.” Ushak remembered clearly how his father bent down then and plucked a tuft of grass from the ground and held it up. “Do you think this different from that growing over there?” Ushak had shaken his head at this question and his father threw the grass leaves out on to the surface of the water, where they slid away on the current. He reached up above his head and snapped a twig from a branch and regarded it thoughtfully. “The molecules in this are ordered no different to any you will find growing over there, and yet ...” The old man had moved to the river bank and had his back to his son as he looked to the east and spoke ponderously, as though the words dredged up for him some deep and pain filled memory of his own. “They have no right to hate and fear us. The Russians have no right to hate them, and neither of them has any right to hate the Jew. But they do.”

“As the Jews hate us father,” Ushak chipped in eagerly.

202 | P a g e

“Aye son, as the Jews hate us.” He sat down again and chuckled as somewhere an owl hooted and dogs barked. “But it is not so bad, for back there in the West they hate all Slav’s, none more so than the Hapsburg on his throne in Vienna.”

Behind where they sat together near the fire the horses stirred against their tethers and Ushak’s head spun round in alarm. His father had reassured him in that so calm way he had, drawling lazily. “We will take turns on watch, keep the fire going, and the rifle will deal with any wolf tries to sneak a bite.”

Ushak always beamed a huge grin on hearing his father say that. It made him feel grown up and manly that he would carry the powerful weapon, even though he had learned how to shoot from the age of eight. He also found great joy in the man’s honest homespun wisdom, and to listen to him and learn was a delight the young Ushak appreciated but did not understand. Though he knew his father would soon enough leave and go off and again become the majestic Jaeger resplendent in his imperial uniform when he left his family, and Ushak hated the thought of it, yet he knew that in his heart and soul he always remained Roma. So he always paid careful attention to every word that fell from his lips and cherished the too brief occasions when the opportunity was presented.

“Remember this son when you speak to the Almighty tonight. It does not matter what bricks and mortar surround a man when he bends the knee to pray,” his father continued as he tapped the embers out from his pipe against the tree trunk and pulled the blanket out from his satchel, “or what the men in their ridiculous costumes have to say about it, priest, orthodox or otherwise, rabbi, or Imam, there is only one God.”

203 | P a g e

“But what about divination father? Mama said among the Roma we have our own way.”

Ushak asked in wide eyed innocence.

His father laughed at this. “Your mother was the wisest and most beautiful of all women when I met her, and I would not advise you do not heed her when she speaks, but she knows divination is for the Gadjo only, and even then it is only to part fool from coin. When I married her it was in the church of Saint Michael in Cluj,” he gave a little wink of his left eye and Ushak grinned, “and she made her vows as any good Catholic.” He wrapped the blanket about his body and tossed the rifle to his son, muttering before turning over and farting impressively and with a deep sigh of satisfaction. “You are on first watch. Wake me when you feel you cannot keep your eyes open any longer.”

Ushak stirred in a deep slumber and muttered. “I am sorry father, I fell asleep. I did not see it until it leapt. I am sorry, so sorry ...”

A voice cut across his dream, intruding, bringing him up from a time that seemed so long ago and to belong to someone else’s life: “Ushak! Ushak! Waken up!” He opened his eyes suddenly, reaching for the cavalry sabre at his side, rising swiftly to his feet as his fingers closed about the hilt. He was still elsewhere as he let out a roar and raised it, poised to strike, until a shriek of sheer terror brought him fully back into the living world. He was panting as he saw Katya standing before him with her hands raised instinctively to cover her head as poor defence against the heavy blade she felt certain would be about to crash down on her skull. He lowered the sabre and whispered, “I’m sorry Katya.” She eyed him coldly for a moment, then spun away to walk back to where Isaac and the children waited, saying over her shoulder “There is something you should see.”

204 | P a g e

He stood leaning on the blade for a moment where the sharp end was buried in the grass.

He choked back a tear and whispered to himself. “Damn you father.” And as he walked to the camp, following behind Katya, he reflected bitterly how only four months after he and his father had made their ride across Moldova the news came that he was dead. It was less than two years later his mother and his sisters and uncles were murdered in the attack on their camp. He shook the unwelcome memories from his mind, although he was powerless to prevent his inner voice from screaming at his father’s shade “You should have been there!”

When he reached the camp the children ran to him, although Katya took them aside and urged them to be quiet. The first thing he noticed was they had extinguished the fire that had been made. He opened his mouth to say something but Isaac flapped his hands and hissed in a low voice for him to be quiet. The old man led him down a slope to some bushes, which he parted a little and with his free hand he pointed.

Ushak looked to where about three hundred yards away on the other side of a small lake among a stand of trees smoke was rising from what looked like several fires. Bright colours could be discerned among leaves and between tree trunks and the sounds of voices carried on the still air was clear. Ushak studied the sight for a moment only and then inclined his head and looked at Isaac and grinned. “They are my people,” he informed him as he set off pushing through the screening bushes.

“You aren’t going down there surely?” Isaac hissed urgently. “Ushak!”

Ushak waved an arm nonchalantly and replied. “Stay here with Katya and the children. I will be back for you.”

205 | P a g e

“You don’t know who it is!” Isaac persisted.

Ushak laughed and called back at the top of his voice, deliberately. “They are my people you old goat! And you will not find safer hands and more genial folk anywhere in all this wide world!”

But the suspicious worldly wise Isaac was not so certain and he was not reassured. As he rejoined Katya and the children at the top of the hill he muttered a small prayer to himself.

“O’Lord Adonai, if ever you heed your servant’s prayers, I beg you do so now. Protect us from the attention of good men.”

206 | P a g e

6

They were a Roma band who had struggled to survive in the two years of war and famine in which they had been caught up, like so many more countless millions dwelling in that vast swathe of land encompassing many countries from the Baltic Sea in the North to the Black Sea in the south. It was not only Mother Russia which had suffered and the one thing that brought such terror to the heart and soul of people was the indiscriminate nature of it; the rich starved to death as the poor; the strong died from bayonet thrust and bullet as did the weak; the young sickened and died as readily as the old. But the five families of the Dnepr Roma had survived and it gladdened Ushak’s broken heart to see it so.

They welcomed Isaac and Katya and the children with open arms, with gifts of bread and salt and watery wine for the adults and honeyed fruit for Sasha and Beatrice. The band comprised fourteen adult males, nine women, and four children. Katya asked if there were no younger children of Beatrice’s age, or old people like Isaac, and the inference she gave was clear enough. The bands leader, a man ages with Ushak, a tough one eyed pot bellied bear of a man called Kalo, which means ‘dark one’ in Roma, assured them the old and many of the youngest children had succumbed to famine. He stated resolutely that he would not tolerate even a suggestion of consuming the flesh of his own, as so many others had in their desperation. He plucked lice from his matted grey streaked beard and informed them through his gap toothed mouth “I would tear out the throat of any who made such suggestion, even my own son.” At that he summoned a surly sullen lad to his side. He was about sixteen years old, six and a half feet tall and broad shouldered, and the absolute apple of his father’s eye. As Kalo wrapped a great arm about his son’s shoulders and said “Is that 207 | P a g e

not so Bors my boy?” he grinned lasciviously. “It is so papa,” the boy affirmed with no great enthusiasm. But Isaac remained unconvinced and he pulled a face. Ushak noticed and flashed him a warning look and shook his head.

Kalo informed them that this very evening they intended to celebrate Beltane, even though they were two months late for the traditional Roma festival. When Ushak pointed this out, Kalo’s fat wife retorted in her shrill voice “What does that matter? We had no food two months ago, and anyhow,” she let out a belly laugh that had Isaac and Katya cringe inside and walk away, “when is a gypsy ever need excuse to celebrate?”

So it was that evening the entire group sat around a blazing bonfire whose flames reached ten feet into the night sky and sent showers of sparks sputtering and flying. They ate roast wild boar, fish, and fruit and potatoes and beets and drank a rough wine and vodka from Kiev, while the children raced here and there chasing one another and shrieking with laughter. Two raven haired dark eyed beauties danced and twirled around the fire, the flames highlighting the colours in their carefully preserved costumes, while musicians played a balalaika and a violin and the audience would click wooden spoons as though they were castanets, and a young flame haired young man introduced as Tomas played a cimbalom, while an older man called Andre banged on an old drum The dancing girls paid particular attention to the newcomer Ushak, weaving in and out about him and fluttering long eyelashes and smiling seductively. He grinned at them like a lovelorn boy, and Isaac noticed with a gleam in his eye and a smile the furious Katya cast furtive angry glances in Ushak’s direction and spitting daggers at girls she considered potential rivals. At that moment she had still not forgiven him and they were effectively estranged, but she would not allow another to possess him as she had. She knew instinctively, as a woman does, that she could 208 | P a g e

no more control her man than stop the flow of lava from a volcano by blowing on it, and that jealousy destroyed love. She knew it, but yet she could not help herself. When she looked at him then, with a big smile on his silly face and his back ramrod straight like one of the old Tsar’s Guardsmen, and his head bobbing slightly to the beat of the music, he was more desirable to her than ever he had been. Disgusted she stood abruptly. Isaac looked up at her, a frown on his face, but Ushak was oblivious as he seemed hypnotised by the dancers. “It’s late,” she announced, raising her voice to be heard above the din, “I am going to fetch the children and settle down for the night.” Isaac smiled and nodded his head.

She had drunk some of the wine and being unaccustomed to alcohol it had gone straight to her head. When she bent to retrieve her coat the bundle of notes tumbled out from her pocket on to the grass. No one saw except Isaac and Kalo’s fat wife seated away from him beside a woman who was clearly her friend. As Isaac retrieved the notes and stuffed them back into Katya’s pocket he noticed at once the lascivious, almost leering, eyes of the woman on them. As Katya went off calling for the children he watched as the woman rose from where she was sitting and went directly to her husband. He saw her whisper into his ear and point over to where he sat beside Ushak, and he could imagine easily enough what poison she was pouring into Kalo’s ear. After a moment the gypsy leader nodded his head and smiled a secret smile. The woman returned to her original position beside her friend and looked across at Isaac, and when she caught his eye she gave him a small smile that spoke of treachery and murder.

That night was pregnant with menace and Isaac could almost have groaned aloud and screamed and shook Ushak to warn him, but he did not think he would be believe if he told him they were all in mortal danger. Ushak was among his own people and Ushak would not 209 | P a g e

listen. The best he could do was to try to stay awake for as long as possible and keep watch.

He lay close to Katya where she had the children snuggled into her under blankets beside a wagon wheel. The night was very dark, with puffy grey clouds obscuring the moon, and the silence now the party was ended, unnatural and bereft of the normal sounds of small animals and birds, was pervasive. He fretted, he worried, and his fear increased in geometrically astronomical leaps when two men came half carrying a comatose Ushak. They laid him down on the ground and one of the men threw a blanket haphazard over him. They seemed not to notice Isaac where he lay with eyes half open. One of the men spat unkindly “alte kaker!” and his companion hissed at him as they went off into the night around the swiftly dwindling fire. “Fool! You heard the chief, don’t make them uncomfortable.” Isaac understood what alte kaker meant of course, ‘old fart’, for the language was Yiddish.

He sat up and rubbed his tired eyes and suddenly Ushak’s voice came to him in a whisper, clear as if he had never witnessed him having to be carried unconscious to bed.

“I know Isaac, the whole fucking nest of them are frauds.”

“But how did you ...”

“I learned a long time ago how to marshal my drink and give an impression only of what they intended.”

“So you know what is afoot then?”

Ushak laughed lightly, but did not stir from beneath the blanket as he spoke. “No, I do not.

What I know is this my old friend, I know my own people and most of these are not. They are a mish mash. Kalo and his wife and son probably are, for I can see Zinga in them, although they are a long way from Hungary. The rest, Tomas, Andre, the two brothers, the 210 | P a g e

woman Maria?” he snorted derisively. “Poles, Latvians, Russians, Ukrainians, and God alone knows what else.”

“And at least one Jew,” Isaac added.

“That fool Kalo did not think I would be able to tell the difference. What kind of a damn gypsy does he suppose me to be anyway?”

Then Isaac explained to him in urgent hushed whispers what happened when Katya let the money fall from her pocket, and how Kalo’s wife had seen and then gone to her husband and clearly she had told him. It was sufficient explanation for Ushak to understand why they had kept him drinking so late and swapping unlikely tales. He represented their only deterrent to striking immediately to rob Katya of her money. Better to do so in the pre light of dawn, when the whole camp would be sleeping and the drunken Ushak unable to intervene.

But Ushak was not drunk and Ushak would not allow that to happen. They would have to kill him before he would allow them to hurt the things most precious to him, but he was not to know that earlier in the evening in their plotting that was precisely the outcome they intended.

He told Isaac to waken Katya and the children quickly and quietly, to be gentle and to ensure that there was no noise to raise the alarm. He packed as much as he could into their makeshift bags and hefted everything on his own back, burdening himself but leaving one arm free to wield the sabre he now held ready. Katya understood when Isaac whispered into her ear and Sasha also understood when she did the same for him, although an unreasoning terror gripped him. She smiled at him and kissed his forehead and said in a very low voice, 211 | P a g e

“It will be alright Sasha. Your papa will let nothing bad happen to us.” And when she said it she believed it implicitly, and because she said it so too did the young boy.

An exhausted Beatrice did not waken, thankfully, and the little girls head rested comfortably on to Katya’s shoulder snuggled into the curved part where neck reaches torso. They slipped away as dawn began to streak the eastern horizon with a grey tinge, going between two wagons and down a track that led to a dense wood a half mile on the road to Bilopliya. They went quietly and quickly, and as they walked Ushak spoke to give reassurance.

“They have no horses to run us down, and there are no dogs of the four footed variety to raise alarm. They ate their animals during the famine.”

“Who are they?” Isaac asked breathlessly, hating the fact he had missed out on sleep and was now moving at a pace his old legs screamed in protest at, but relieved to be away from Kalo’s camp nonetheless.

“Brigands, cast outs, highway robbers, does it matter?”

“Will they come after us papa?” Sasha asked nervously as he glanced back to where the camp lay out of sight and the dawn rose with streamers of orange fire lancing across the sky.

Ushak did not answer all at once. He waited till they were almost at the trees, where he knew they would have a chance of hiding. “They are desperate Sasha, and these are desperate times.”

“Yes papa!” Sasha almost screamed back at his father. “But will they?”

Ushak paused. He regarded his son and a thought unworthy of him flitted into his mind as he told himself ‘He is not yet grown tall as he imagined he had’, but he did not say it. Instead 212 | P a g e

he answered truthfully, understanding the intelligent boy would sniff out a lie and resent him for it. “I do not know Sasha. We may be lucky.”

Then the sounds of many harsh voices echoing on the clear cool morning air came to them from the direction of the camp, and Sasha’s question was answered. Beatrice woke and shifted in Katya’s grasp and moaned. “Do they have guns?” Katya asked plaintively. “Do we know if they have guns?” Ushak spat at her as he led the way into the trees. “They have an ancient ball firing musket from the Crimea War, but what does that matter? They are fourteen and I am one.”

“The odds are not in our favour,” Isaac muttered disconsolately, then cursed as a branch swung against his face and stung him. Katya soothed the grumbling Beatrice, and Sasha announced loudly, “No papa, it is fourteen against two.” Ushak did not smile at this show of bravado from his son, as normally he would, and neither did he respond. He believed he had the measure of the man Kalo and he knew he would not rest until they were all dead and he and his band of thieves had their hands on whatever of value they could plunder from the bodies of their victims. He swallowed back bitter bile and could not shake from him a terrible fear for his son’s wellbeing, more so than for himself or the others, and so he set a pace among the trees he knew Katya with the weight of Beatrice and Isaac with the weight of years could not sustain. He used the sabre to hack away bushes and hanging branches, chopping till sweat ran down his face and his back and chest, making him uncomfortable.

Soon enough when he paused, too soon, and he turned his head and looked back, Katya and Isaac had fallen behind.

He could not shout at them to urge them on, and neither could he rebuke them, because both in their different ways were cruelly burdened. Instead he turned his eyes to his son and 213 | P a g e

ordered him, “Go ahead Sasha, see if there is anywhere we can hide.” The boy nodded his head and bounded away into the dense foliage.

Ushak waited till they caught up and then prodded them to go forward as gently as he could, but Beatrice was crying and Katya was struggling with her and Isaac’s legs were beginning to cramp. They were tangled amongst the undergrowth when Kalo’s voice echoed harsh and guttural among the trees: “Where are you taking them Ushak? There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.”

Ushak foolishly allowed his dismay to show in his eyes and Beatrice cried that she was hungry and Isaac slumped against a tree. Katya closed her eyes and mouthed a prayer to herself silently. It had been a long time since she had spoken with God, not since the days when her heavenly vision had led to her rape in the Bishop’s palace in Bialystok and her disillusionment with all religious faith, and she was not certain He would heed her now. She admired Ushak for the manner in which he stolidly maintained his Catholic faith, Isaac too, but then, she often reflected, neither of them had ever set foot across the threshold of that convent in Poland. She opened her eyes and met Ushak’s gaze. He smiled sardonically and told her stiffly “I hope your prayer works Katya,” as Kalo continued to call to them, taunting, mocking.

“Run and hide little ferrets! Find a muddy hole and hide! It will do you no good, my hounds will sniff you out.” He laughed, and from all around in the trees, appearing to come from every side of the huddled little party, so that Ushak feared they were surrounded, came the sounds of hoots and jeers and laughter. Then, Kalo was suddenly serious. “Give us the

214 | P a g e

money and the woman and the little girl and you and the Jew can go on with your son. It is a good offer Ushak, the best one you will get this side of a gypsy bargain.”

Ushak called back. “You will get only the sharp edge of the cavalry sabre you so admired, Kalo you treacherous bastard!”

That made the men in the trees laugh and howl like dogs and Kalo jeered and called “The hounds have the scent of what lies between your woman’s legs Ushak! They are coming!”

Ushak could hear them now, crashing among the undergrowth and banging sticks and staves of wood against tree trunks to cause panic. He did not know what to do, except to lead them on farther into the dense woodland, but then Sasha burst through tangled thorns which had opened a cut on his face and torn his clothing where he been snagged. He was breathless and he leaned one hand on his father’s shoulder and pointed back in the direction to the west from whence he had come. “There is a clear space beside a small stream ahead of us papa,” he said breathlessly, “and a hill with an old ruined building on top.”

It wasn’t much, but it offered hope, however slight. The prospect of a defensive position and survival loomed large in his mind, even if it turned out to be improbable, and so he gave Sasha a smile of encouragement and a nod of the head that had the young boy beam with pride as he turned back in the direction he had come from and said “This way.” Ushak was filled with pride at the way his son had assumed responsibility and now led the way as Isaac and Katya with Beatrice in her arms followed on behind him. The laughter and taunts were closer now and he knew that if they had remained where they were it would be but scant minutes before they were discovered. “We ... e ... e...re coming for you!” a voice resounded

215 | P a g e

menacingly nearby, not more than twenty feet away Ushak guessed. He hefted the sabre in his hand even though there was no space for him to wield it among the bushes and hoary tree trunks. It was more for reassurance than anything else as he set off after Sasha and the rest of his little family, blundering through the undergrowth as from all around him the sound of crashing and snapping branches and twigs warned him they were closing in.

Despite the burden of his load of three heavy bags and the sabre, Ushak caught up with the others as they clambered up the steep slope to the low hill, on top of which a tumble of ruined fungus clinging grey stonework lay among stubby bushes. The hillock was small, less than fifty feet probably, but the trees on the reverse side of the slope did not come all the way to the peak, so as Ushak stumbled across the twenty foot wide open space beside the small stream his eye took all in and he considered the place defensible. And as he climbed the hill he heaved a sigh and muttered a prayer of thanks to God. They settled the weepy Beatrice down among the rubble and the foliage and Ushak told Katya and Isaac, “We must make a small fire and feed Bea. Can you do that for me Katy?”

His use of the familiar with her name brought a smile to her face and he smiled back at her, and Isaac smiled also because it was a breakthrough, perhaps the beginning of a thaw in their relationship. Sasha noticed also and he clapped his father on the back and whooped “We beat them papa!”

Ushak smiled at his son, a sign of encouragement for the frightened boy, and Katya and Isaac also, but he knew this was anything but the truth. He pointed to the rear of the hill, where some of the fallen bricks had piled up. “Find a heavy branch Sasha and keep watch that none of them climb up behind us.”

216 | P a g e

Sasha grinned and declared firmly, “If they do papa I will rain bricks down on their heads.”

Ushak sighed deeply and took up the sabre as he gazed to where Sasha had now positioned himself with his back to him at the edge of the hillock facing west. “This must have been some kind of watchtower once,” Isaac commented. The sound of the old man’s voice broke the spell for Ushak and he grunted almost inaudibly. “Yes. It would have guarded the valley against invaders from the east.” Isaac chuckled. “And now even as a ruin it proves our salvation.” Ushak smiled wryly at this and went to Beatrice and knelt and kissed the little girl on the forehead.

“I hungry papa,” Beatrice said with a little sniffle.

Katya pulled her close, cradling her against her breast. Ushak looked into her eyes. This time she smiled for him, and after a moment reassured him. “We will make a fire and I will look after her Ushak.” He stood and turned and without another word went striding off down the hill.

He stood defiant and resolute at the foot of the slope. He had a good field of vision around three sides of the clearing, which was bare of trees because in times past they would have been cleared to allow defenders in their little fortification atop the hill room to fight and rain down missiles on to any attackers. To his right the small brackish stream would offer some barrier to an attack coming from that direction, so he turned his body slightly to his left to face what may emerge from the tree line to his front and that side. Any fear he felt was not for his own welfare but that of his family hiding up on the hill. He was aware of how easily death could come for him without any of their pursuers even showing themselves.

The old musket they had could do the damage well enough while the firer stayed out of

217 | P a g e

sight among the trees. The lead ball it fired weighed ten ounces and when it struck the human body it would shatter bones and rip tissues. The range of the weapon was only fifty to seventy five yards, but the distance from the base of the hill to the tree line was a scant thirty yards. Thus as he stood rocklike and waited the anticipation of a sudden death his brain would scarcely register, he cursed himself the fool for failing to recognise he had not led them to a friendly gypsy band but instead into the midst of a nest of cut throats.

But when the attack came it did not come from the depth of the forest in a discharge of acrid smoke and flame but from the direction he did not expect and thought himself safe.

The giant son of one eyed Kalo burst out from among the dense tangled undergrowth to Ushaks right beyond the stream. He let out a wild feral scream and had poised in his hand a massive club studded with sharp nails. Ushak spun as Bors easily vaulted the stream, coming over a matted knot of three foot high ferns, out of which two alarmed geese rose into the air squawking and flapping their wings madly. He had no time to bring up the sabre, but could only swing it in a wild curve at waist height, but it was enough, for the wild eyed young man could not check his forward motion and he literally ran straight on to it. The heavy blade penetrated his right side, cutting through his liver, and slewed on into his belly spilling his entrails. He had ignored his father’s command to wait for the signal to attack, and now he paid for his impatience as he screamed out in agony and dropped his club and his fingers grasped frantically at his bloody belly in a fruitless effort to keep his entrails in place. He stood rooted for a few seconds that seemed an eternity and then he fell sobbing and moaning to the grass, where big bluebottles almost at once swarmed about him.

It was a victory, but it was not one which Ushak was allowed the leisure of time to crow over. Almost immediately on seeing Bors fall, an enraged Benjamin, the big Jew who had 218 | P a g e

helped carry Ushak to bed the previous night when they thought him drunk, came out from the trees on the opposite side of the clearing and, knife in hand, sprinted to battle. A voice whose owner was unseen from behind him yelled “Benjy wait!” and Ushak spun on is heel, the sabre with blood dripping from its blade in his hand. Again there was no time for him to raise the deadly blade as his attacker was on him too quickly and he was borne to the ground. Ushak was beneath Benjamin as the bigger man pinned him beneath his weight. His right arm was crushed beneath the Jew’s knee and his left wrist was gripped like a vice within the fingers of Benjamin’s right hand. The knife was raised to deliver a death blow to Ushak’s throat and he looked up into the Jew’s mad bulging eyes and saw the malevolent grin of triumph that twisted his mouth and bared his rotted green stained teeth. Spittle dribbled on to Ushak’s face and he snarled defiance as he waited his inevitable death, but it was a death which did not come. With a great roar of fury Sasha came down the hill at speed, almost tripping, and threw himself against Benjamin, sending him spinning away to fall on the grass. Before Ushak could react to this intervening event which had saved his life his son acted first. He seized up the fallen sabre and while Benjamin was on his knees rising the boy stabbed it down two handed straight through his back and out his belly, so that when he fell dead, eyes staring and uncomprehending, it was with the blade jutting obscenely up from his body.

Ushak heard a cry from somewhere and Katya’s voice shrieking “Sasha! Sasha!” and Isaac’s voice adding a bellowed warning: “Ushak! Look out!” He heard his son whoop with triumph and fleetingly he recalled a moment from long ago in his past, when he had stepped into a makeshift boxing ring in a pig sty slippery with shit and won his first prize fight against a big arrogant Albanian and experienced just such a sensation himself. Then he heard a boom like

219 | P a g e

the discharge of a cannon and he raised his head and looked to where the musician of the previous evening, Tomas, stood with the smoking musket at his shoulder. He screamed “Sasha!” and was rising to his feet as the heavy lead Minnie ball tore into the boy’s back and blew a great blood and gore spattered hole in his chest as it emerged. He knew his son was dead before his body crumpled forward, spun in the air, and landed with a splash half in the stream. He did not wait as Sasha’s legs continued to twitch in death and Katya and Isaac screamed and Beatrice cried hysterically in a shrill echo that rent the air asunder. He tugged the sabre from the Jew’s body and set off at the run for his son’s killer.

Tomas had the musket between his legs and was reloading, intent on finishing the job, as Ushak, without a sound, sabre raised high, ran at him across the grass. From behind the musketeer, hesitant, shocked by the spectacle of grisly death they had witnessed, only slightly emerging from the illusory protection of the trees, Kalo and the only three of his followers who had stayed with him stood watching. Time seemed to stand still then; Tomas primed the barrel with black powder from an ornately carved wooden powder horn, Ushak’s booted feet pounded on the dry dusty earth, Tomas let the horn on a string draped about his neck fall to his side and took a ball from a bag similarly hanging from his other hip. A bird trilled high in a tree top, the sun blazed down and sent shadows across the place of death, Katya screamed, Kalo bellowed, all was a backdrop to the drama as Tomas rammed home the ball, pulled back the cocking hammer and raised the musket. His finger was beginning to squeeze on the trigger and he braced his shoulder for the impact of the kick that would follow when the powder ignited and sent the ball up the barrel. Ushak knew Tomas was quick and practised with the weapon, but he was fired with the knowledge that Sasha was gone and he had but this one chance to save himself and his family. His legs propelled him

220 | P a g e

across the dividing space at a speed he had never before matched, not even when he was a young man. In one fluid movement he swept the sabre up and knocked the musket aside as Tomas fired, sending the lethal lead ball harmlessly up into the sky. A plume of smoke surrounded the man’s head as Ushak swept the blade down and with a prodigious blow split his head from the crown to the jaw line, breaking the bones of the face and sending teeth and blood and gore flying. As the body crumpled in a heap he pulled the blade free and, spattered with blood and bits of brain himself, on his face and his chest, and having the appearance of a demon from the pit of Hades, he stood facing Kalo and his men.

The bandit leader was ashen faced and there was fear in his eyes as Ushak muttered with cold barely suppressed fury. “You will let fall your knives where you stand, you fucking sewer trash, or before the Lord himself I swear you will follow him into the fires of Hell.”

They looked to their leader and he nodded his head and the knives fell. Then Kalo stepped forward as his three companions hung back, the sight of the carnage in the valley beneath the hill not for the faint hearted, the knowledge it had been the business of but a few short minutes work appalling to the men. The bandit chief looked into Ushak’s eyes, where there was an implacable fire burning, and he pointed to where his stricken son lay moaning still in agony. “Let us carry away poor Bors I beg you.” He knew his son would not survive one night with such a terrible wound in his belly, but his father’s instinct would not allow him to abandon him where he lay, even if the terrifying Ushak fell upon him in his rage. “I am pleading with you Ushak, as one father to another.”

“One father to another?” Ushak snarled, and he pointed to where Sasha lay at the stream, “as you cared about my fucking boy?”

221 | P a g e

Kalo lowered his gaze and his head fell to his chest. He mumbled, “I am sorry Ushak, I am thinking only of his mother. This will kill her.”

Bors groaned loudly as a spasm of pain lanced across his stomach and blood spurted on to the grass, and Ushak, whose humanity was everything and even overbore his desire for vengeance, closed his eyes for a moment and whispered very low, “Lord, I know this is what you would have me do.” He opened his eyes and regarded the wretched Kalo and the terror struck men at his back, and then he turned his head and looked up to where Katya stood beside Isaac at the top of the hill. He waved an arm and said “Take him and go.” And he shouted when they hesitated. “Take him I say! Now, or never!”

He kept the sabre raised and ready as they went forward and collected the stricken Bors and carried him away. Kalo was last to go. He turned and would have said something, but Ushak merely glared and so he thought better of it and instead he walked slowly away after his men. Before he entered the forest Ushak called out to him, a warning. “Do not come back Kalo. These who lie here will feed the wolves. Come back and you and any foolish enough to follow you will join them.” Kalo did not turn and he did not look back and he did not respond. He vanished into the dense darkness beneath the trees, and when he was sure they were gone Ushak lowered the blood spattered blade he held in his hand and turned and shambled slowly to where brave Sasha was lying slain.

222 | P a g e

7

There was no consoling him, no comfort to be offered adequate to compensate for the loss of Sasha. It was a feeling infinitely worse and harder to bear than what he had experienced when his mother and sisters and laughing uncles were taken, and it was all the harder to endure because it was tinged with guilt. It was guilt stirred with a spoon made from the bitter memory of that last time when his father had mounted his grey gelding and gone riding down the forested valley into the west. Ushak had watched him go, and before he was finally out of sight without looking back he remembered how mama had voiced her fear of what she termed “the political climate” and “winds of change”. But papa said it made no difference, he must go back to his barrack. She yelled at him in front of everyone, telling him his service was done, his time was up, he need not go and only did so because he wanted to and not because he had to. He told her by way of retort that she was wrong, they would be alright; he had had words with the Magistrate in Cluj. And then there were the what if’s that all humanity must live with and endure. What if he had not gone? Would he have been killed if he had stayed? Would he have been able to protect them? Should Ushak have led his family so foolishly into Kalo’s camp? What if’s.

The brackish still green slimed water in the stagnant stream stank. Black crows hovered and called, wanting to come down to the bodies to feast but somehow afraid to do so with the despairing man there. Ushak paid them no heed. He held Sasha in his arms. The dead boy’s face was ashen white but there was no sign on his feature’s of the trauma that had robbed him of life. He seemed as if in a slumber and dreaming, except he did not breathe and he did

223 | P a g e

not move. Ushak had removed his jacket and placed it where the gaping wound in Sasha’s chest jutted through his torn shirt, not wanting to see the terrible damage. His eyes were shut and his life force had gone somewhere else, but that did not assuage Ushak’s enduring love and his great heart was as close to breaking as was possible.

The sun began to sink and darkness and shadows crept out from the deep woods. The nature of the finite now came to be understood by him, where before his carefree spirit had been one that simply endured and went on without giving life any great thought, regardless of what obstacle was put in his way. Grief and guilt were not his exclusive preserve of course, and he understood this, but neither were they to be ignored. A part of his soul had been lopped off, cut away, hacked at by some malevolent and unseen force of the Universe that determined when the sands ran out for this person or that person, and there was not a thing that could be done to protect against it. Wolves howled, and he knew somewhere there was a pack living in the forest whose wet black noses would scent blood and death.

The leaves on the trees rustled as a wind blew up, and raindrops fell from the heavens, teeming down in sheets. A fork of lightning streaked across a leaden grey sky as a clap of thunder bellowed, and Ushak looked up and allowed his tears to mingle with the rainwater that flowed down across his face.

Twilight was scarcely noticed. Night fell. Still he sat, not turning his head to look where behind him on the hill the warm and welcoming glow from a fire burned, or noticing when animals moved in the trees or birds flapped above his head. It was chilly but he did not notice it. Darkness had become his friend.

Beatrice fell asleep before the sputtering fire where the remnants of the meal she had hardly touched, which was unusual for her, still sat on a wooden platter. She had been 224 | P a g e

terrified as the fight in the valley at the foot of the hill raged earlier in the afternoon. An innate sense had told her something awful had happened, even though Katya had shielded her from seeing, and her sobs, which had begun as they fled before the pursuing bandits earlier that day and persisted into the afternoon, subsided. She simply sat and would not eat, until, mercifully, at length she went to sleep. Katya and Isaac sat shoulder to shoulder together beside her under an overhang created by an old bit of wall above which bricks and foliage jutted out. They were both morose and lost in their own thoughts, and this continued for an hour or more. Then, fed up with the situation as it had developed, and feeling frustrated, Katya jumped to her feet and announced, “I am going down there.”

Isaac stood also, wheezing and complaining of aching limbs as he did. “It is not wise. The man scarce recognised me when I went to him.”

“It’s not healthy Isaac, him sitting down there like that.”

“I know, but ...”

“I should at least take him some supper,” she suggested obstinately.

“He will not have it, and neither will he welcome you.”

A wolf howled somewhere. The moon emerged from behind a bank of clouds momentarily and illuminated the base of the hill, where they could clearly see from their vantage point the dark shape that was Ushak sitting by the small stream cradling his dead son in his arms.

The two dead bandits lay also where they had fallen, black humps on the moonlit grass, unrecognisable as what had only hours earlier been thinking, breathing, living human beings. She shook her head and muttered disconsolately, almost as though to herself: “Does he think himself alone in his love for Sasha? Are we not to share the grief?”

225 | P a g e

Isaac came behind her and placed his hands on her thin shoulders as small sobs wracked her body. He whispered in her ear, softly, soothing her. “It is no comfort I know, but my faith teaches there is an afterlife, even more so than any other. Death is not to be mourned above life Katya. He is shomarem for a while.” She turned to him, her eyes red from crying.

He smiled. “Olam ha ba.” She did not know what it meant, but she took comfort in Isaac and she managed a smile back for him. He pulled her close and they embraced, standing together on the dark hill. “Each of us is a single letter in the Torah scroll,” he said, as the rain fell away to a light drizzle and the clouds cleared and the almost full moon shone down bright and pale, “Our lives forever intertwined. If we do not forget him he will be with us still.” And then they both wept and stayed close, finding comfort in one another where otherwise there would be none.

In the night hours, and especially just before dawn, Wolves had prowled the margins beneath the shadows of the trees and slunk on their bellies under low lying bushes, but as though in a sign of respect they made no move to come closer. On top of the hillock among the rubble Katya made breakfast and she and Isaac and Beatrice ate and waited. Beatrice wanted to go off and find a ladybird, but Katya knew that really she wanted to go and find her father, for she was fretting and was not herself, so she took her down the reverse side of the slope and in among the trees there. The little girl brightened up when a sparrow hawk soared high overheard in the sky on the warming air, and she darted here and there between trunks hoary with vine and mulch growth trying to keep sight of it between the branches and leaves. Katya let her run and did not mind following on behind her. She knew eventually Ushak would come back from the dark realm in which he walked, and it was better for Beatrice to be Beatrice, at least until then.

226 | P a g e

It was only a few minutes they were in the forest, but it seemed longer. Katya laughed as the little girl came upon a squirrel which ran before her up a tree trunk on to a branch, where the furry tailed creature stopped and looked down at them with black beady eyes.

Beatrice was trying without any success to entice it down, clucking with her mouth and holding up her chubby hand pretending there was something good to eat in it. Then a shriek rent the still morning air and Katya groaned and shouted for Beatrice to follow her as she sprinted for the hill. When she reached the top she stopped abruptly, breathless and red cheeked, to find Sasha’s corpse in a heap by the side of the fire and Ushak pinning Isaac against the wall with one hand grasping the old man’s collar and the other bunched into a fist raised and ready to strike. She yelled out “Ushak!”

Realisation of what he had been about to do came to him quickly when he heard the shout and Ushak immediately let Isaac go and stepped back. The old man rubbed his throat and turned his eyes on Katya and spat angrily and with a voice full of resentment. “I only suggested we find a place to bury Sasha here, that’s all.” Ushak, tears flooding his eyes, suddenly could not take any more, and he pulled his sabre from its makeshift scabbard on his back and dropped it from his unresisting fingers and went of stumbling down the slope.

Katya went immediately to Isaac and placed a hand on his shoulder and told him. “Keep Bea here when she comes up. Don’t let her see Sasha.” The old man nodded his head, but asked her also, “Do you go after him?”

She shivered as she glanced down at the dried blood on the blade of the sword lying on the dewy grass and without answering she set off after Ushak. Isaac called after her. “Be careful Katya, he is not himself.”

227 | P a g e

She caught up with Ushak a hundred yards or so into the forest. He was sitting on a soft carpet of lush green moss with his back against the wide strong trunk of an Oak and his knees pulled up to his chin. He was sobbing lightly, and she could only imagine what anguish must be consuming him, for though her grief was great also and had created a hollow place within her, right in the very core of her being, yet she knew it would never match his.

She went straight to him and sat by his side. He did not look at her and he did not speak, so it was left to her. “Let me come in there where you weep Ushak,” she said gently. “Let me be with you and take your hand.” She took his big hand in her little one as she spoke and he did not resist. “I cannot match your grief, or understand it, but I can share your sorrow.”

He turned his head and looked at her with eyes red rimmed and sore looking. His voice was caught in a choke he thought might snap his neck, as he told her in a low tone. “I will not put him in the ground here. I will not. I will bury my Sasha in consecrated ground, so that on the day of Judgement our Lord will know he was righteous. He will ...”

“There is a village west of Bilopilya where there is a church,” she interrupted him. “I saw it from the ridge while yet we moved north.”

He sniffed and regarded her with wonder. “After all I have done, or not done, the way I have been, you would follow me there to give Sasha proper burial?”

She smiled. “Of course I will my love. Where would I not follow you?”

He reached for her then and leant in to her and their mouths met in that so natural way only lovers know. She moaned slightly and a deep sense of contentment washed her over her as relief washed over him. His hands went around her back and she responded and reached for the body of the man she had ached for these weeks past, as he had ached for her, and for 228 | P a g e

that moment all hurts were forgotten as they sank to the soft earth beneath dappled sunlight and made love.

They returned to the hill in the early afternoon and Isaac beamed at them as they climbed up the slope hand in hand. “What are you grinning at you old fool?” Ushak growled as he went past him to where Sasha lay covered with the canvas that served now as a bag and their coats. Beatrice was playing near the bottom of the slope on the west facing side, knotting together some daisies and singing to herself. Ushak’s pain would never diminish, but at least then he had it under control, and he stood for a moment gazing down the slope to his surviving child. Katya said, “Isaac and I will get ready to move.” Ushak did not answer.

Beatrice sensed his presence and turned her head and grinned up at her father. He smiled at her. He did not know what words he would say as he went down the hill to her, but he knew he would have to tell her something and his heart almost broke asunder when the happy little soul stood and turned and placed the tiara of flowers she had made on her head.

Katya and Isaac understood, and by the time Ushak came back up the hill with a silent wide eyed Beatrice in his arms they had packed up everything and Sasha was wrapped in the coats with string tied around. They covered his head with a shawl Katya had carefully preserved through her time in the village and since. It had once belonged to her great grandmother and now the cream coloured lace hid from Beatrice sight of the cold dead face of her brother. Ushak told them he did not want to risk a further night in that place. Kalo and his thugs might rediscover their courage once they had laid Bors to rest, for he felt certain the youngster would not survive the wound he had inflicted on him. Or the women might even goad their men into seeking vengeance. Either way he did not want to linger in that place where his son had lost his life.

229 | P a g e

Isaac shouldered the burden of a bulkier than usual bag full of what they would need on the road. Katya too was bearing more than her usual load in addition to Beatrice when she grew tired. Ushak had Sasha in his arms, and he noticed every now and again the little girl’s eyes were drawn to the burden he carried, and Katya noticed also and when it happened the two adults would exchange a look of concern. As the day waned and they were away from the wood moving north along a dry road some two miles west of Bilopilya, Beatrice stopped abruptly and stood stock still and would not go farther. Katya put down her load and knelt before the little girl and asked her gently, “What is it my little dove?”

At first Beatrice would not answer, but then birds in the sky caught her attention for a moment and she leaned forward and without warning kissed Katya on the forehead and whispered, as though it was a great secret. “Sasha goes to Heaven.” “Yes little darling,” Katya answered her with a smile as she put her arms about her. “Sasha is in Heaven.”

Isaac came close to Ushak. There were tears in his eyes. “It is not too far,” Ushak told him.

Katya looked up at him and he added for her, “I will take Bea on my back.”

It was evening when they reached the outskirts of the village and the light was fading. The place was little more than a ramshackle collection of wooden hovels, but the church was a brick built building on one level with a cupola that once would have been brightly painted but then had lost all vestige of former glory. They were relieved they had reached their goal before night fell. Isaac’s feet ached and Katya had taken his bag and carried a double load, while even Ushak was struggling with the weight of Sasha in his arms, the canvas bag on one shoulder, the sabre dangling from it, and Beatrice on the other shoulder. Beside a small wall which encircled the cemetery with its rows of crosses and occasional granite tombstone, he

230 | P a g e

called a halt. Isaac slumped against the wall and Katya set down her burden and took Beatrice from Ushak’s arms. The little girl fell asleep at once.

Ushak intended to lead them through the gap in the wall where there would once have been a gate and up the path to the church, but the ancient heavy wooden door to the church opened abruptly and out from the gloomy interior emerged a wild eyed mad looking priest with a stocky red haired youth at his side brandishing an ancient blunderbuss. The priest was about seventy years old, scrawny and with a scabrous bald scalp, and clothes that looked as if they had never been washed or off his back in many months. He spluttered and spittle flew from his mouth as he pointed and demanded: “Who are you? What do you want here?”

Katya groaned. “Not again.” Ushak whispered reassurance. “It will be alright.” The mad priest demanded again. “I asked you a question, what do you want?”

Ushak stepped forward so that he was in the gap in the wall. He still had Sasha in his arms.

The red haired youth levelled the wide barrelled blunderbuss at him. Ushak smiled, but not with any humour. He said, in a low and menacing tone of voice, “If you fire that sonny you had best pray I am killed right off, else I will be on you in a second and I will snap your neck.”

He turned his eyes on the priest. “Same goes for you.”

The priest gulped, aware these were no ignorant peasant villagers. “These are dangerous times. It does not always pay to be over friendly.”

Ushak held up Sasha. “I only want my son to have a decent Christian burial.”

231 | P a g e

“How’d he get it?” The red haired youth said with a half smile on his face. Ushak turned angry eyes on him and the priest elbowed him and barked. “Go back inside Ivan.” The youth glared and the priest pushed him and snarled. “Do as I say you fucking lumbering oaf!”

The priest turned back to Ushak, and this time there was a gentler look to him. Ushak said, in a low voice. “Please.” The priest came close and reached a skeletally bony hand and pulled the shawl back a little from Sasha’s face. He gazed down for a moment and then replaced the covering. “Your son?” Ushak nodded his head. The priest sighed. “Ah, so many have died in these last years, so very many.” “We ask for nothing,” Ushak said, pleading almost, “just to put my boy to rest decent.”

In the doorway leading into the church a young woman appeared beside the youth Ivan. She could not have been more than nineteen years old and she was skinny and filthy also, with matted hair and hollow eyes. Once she might have been beautiful, but father war and mother famine leave scars on the victims that do not heal. She called to the priest and pointed. “There is space enough in the graveyard father. Let him bury his son.” Ushak looked at the cemetery, now with sombre moonlit shadows falling over the mounds of wild unkempt grass untended for a long time. The priest bit his lip. He explained how it had been, speaking quickly as though retelling a tale from some fiction. “The village has been raided five times by soldiers from Russia and our own Ukrainian forces, not to mention bandit bands that have come through. There was even a gang of thugs from Bilopilya once. But this was not the worst of it, no, not even slightly; the worst was when the food ran out and game was no longer to be found in the forests. Then they turned to eating ...”

“We know what they ate!” Isaac said sharply, his memory of the fate that had overtaken Issie a memory he had no desire to dredge up from the place inside to which he had 232 | P a g e

banished it. He regarded the priest with deep distaste and added bitterly and with deliberate obfuscation. “Those among your flock who have surrendered themselves to Abaddon I mean.”

A smile creased the priest’s thin lips and he sneered back. “The Jew has it right. This is a place which belongs to Satan now.”

“But you and those two survive.” Ushak stated flatly.

“Yes,” the priest said with a deep sigh, “we do, if it can be called survival. Ivan has protected us these many months and he has fought of all who would seek to do us harm. Five he has killed with the old gun and two he bashed in their skulls with a six feet high brass candelabra.” He chuckled without humour. “They would even have put poor Natasha in the pot only a month past if they could.”

“A month you say?” Katya said, exchanging a glance with Isaac. “But we have seen game in the forest as we came through from the south. Squirrels, rabbits, even deer, and there are birds in the sky and fish in the rivers.”

Ivan called from the doorway, chuckling as he spoke, “Once the taste for human flesh takes hold the hunger is not easily turned aside. There are no more than a dozen left alive in the village and last Friday they murdered a policeman sent from Vorozhba who came to see what was left.”

Katya averted her eyes and looked down at the child sleeping peacefully in her arms and Isaac said “Ugh!” and even Ushak shuddered.

233 | P a g e

“You need have no fear lady,” the girl Natasha added, speaking directly to the frightened Katya standing a little way up the road in the gloom, “they do not come anywhere near us.”

Ivan laughed and raised the blunderbuss. “They don’t dare.”

“You may bury your son if it is why you come here,” the priest said as he began to turn away, adding over his shoulder, “and then I advise you go, and go quickly.”

Isaac stared down to where the houses of the village stood dark and menacing and bereft of lights. He thought he caught a movement near one of the corners, but could not be sure.

Ushak called to the priest before he rejoined Ivan and Natasha at the doorway. “Will you say the words for him Father?”

The priest turned slowly. He regarded Ushak and in his eyes was a mixture of pity and pain.

“I cannot my son. My faith was robbed and taken from me on the day Timoshenko came here with his son and tried to burn us out.” The memory of that night almost a year previously made him shiver with revulsion, and Ushak realised the horror he and his little family had lived through was no unique experience. “I cannot say the words for you,” the priest said sadly. “I can no longer bring myself to believe in a God who demands irrationality and allows such abominable suffering.” Ushak made to speak but the priest vanished inside the sulphurous yellow interior of his church calling out one last final time before Ivan closed the door at his back: “Ivan will watch over you till you leave. If you want words let the Jew say them. His bastard sitting up there in the clouds is the same bastard as yours.”

They did not try again and did not ask to speak to the priest. Ushak found a spade lying discarded among some tangled undergrowth and he cleared a space close to an old Elm and dug a grave. The soft earth yielded easily, as though waiting to welcome Sasha, and then he

234 | P a g e

lowered the body down into the dark pit. The girl Natasha asked if she could hold the sleeping Beatrice, whispering how beautiful the little girl was as she slept, but Katya would not release her hold on her. They stood about the grave, Katya and Natasha on one side, Isaac on the opposite side, and Ushak at the end beneath the spread limbs and shading leaves of the tree. Ivan stood at the gate by the road with the blunderbuss at the ready in case any should appear from the direction of the village.

An owl hooted and bats flitted about the ornate carved cornices on the church; the night was still and the moon full. They would have made a grisly sight for an onlooker, standing as they were on the elevated section of the graveyard Ushak had selected for the burial site.

He sighed and with a voice querulous with emotion told his dead son, “As far as I can tell Sasha you face east so that on the day of Judgement when the Almighty summons you it will be good in His eyes.” He looked then to Isaac and after a moment the old man intoned the Jewish Yizkor, the memorial prayer for those departed.

“May God remember the soul of our son Sasha, who was born of Ushak and Dani, and was beloved of his sister Beatrice, for he has been taken to thy supernal world, and we pledge ourselves to good deeds and worthy thought in mourning for his departing. In this merit may his soul be bound up in the bond of life with the souls of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebeccas, Rachel, and Leah, and with all those other righteous men and women who dwell in Gan Eden; and let us say Amen.”

They repeated ‘amen’ together and Katya wept. Ushak said “thank you Isaac, it was beautiful. He would have liked that.”

235 | P a g e

Tears came to Isaac’s eyes also as he remembered the boy he was teaching to play chess and his promise to him that one day they would play on a real board with real chess pieces.

He nodded his head and muttered “he will find his way to God in death as he did in life Ushak. I am sure of it.”

They lingered for a while before Ushak put the earth back into the hole, covering Sasha. He wanted to make a cross from a branch of the tree but Ivan told him firmly he must not do that. “They will come at night and dig him up if you do,” he warned. “Ivan and I will stay here tonight and guard him to make sure they do not,” Natasha added.

Isaac turned his head to look again at the dark seemingly deserted village some three hundred paces away down the road. “Surely not,” he said.

Natasha was joined by Ivan beneath the tree. “I had a child when first I fled here,” she told them. “We put my baby ...”

“Enough!” Katya hissed. Ushak went to her and placed an arm about her shoulders. Beatrice stirred and Ushak asked. “She is not too heavy for you?” Katya smiled weakly and shook her head. Ivan and Natasha sat together shoulder to shoulder with their back to the tree trunk, intending a night vigil by the fresh grave with its mound of dark loamy soil. “You had best be gone from here,” Ivan said coldly. “You have buried your son and need linger no longer.”

Ushak regarded the youth with distaste, but nothing further was said. They silently gathered their possessions together, and with Katya leading and Ushak bringing up the rear they walked into the night and the north and left Sasha in the care of a murderer and a whore.

236 | P a g e

8

North of Bilopilya among fertile fields and low lying waterways and canals was nestled the small town of Klimovka, some three and a half miles from where they had crossed the border into the Ukraine. It lay close to the Kursk oblast of Russia south of Smolensk. This was where they went the day after they buried Sasha, for there was a railway station there and Katya had given up on the idea of going immediately to Bialystok in Poland to seek for her child. Isaac too was exhausted and as near to illness and collapse as it was possible for a man of his age to be without actually collapsing. Little Beatrice was confused without her brother and kept asking where he was, or else she would state with conviction “Sasha with the angels,” or in wide eyed innocence, “Sasha in Heaven,” and it broke the heart when she did. So the stubborn Ushak relented with Katya and agreed that she could use her money to buy train tickets for them to journey that way to Smolensk rather than walk. Besides, the heart sick Ushak wanted to be out of the Ukraine as soon as possible.

They sat on hard seats in the third class carriage. Isaac could not stand the smell and Katya was apprehensive, aware that within hours she would be again in the city in which she had grown up but which she had not seen for more than five years. So much had happened in her life, much of which would have soured a less gentle soul to the world, from her terror fraught journey into Poland and the cruelty of the nuns, to the village and the trauma of war and famine, and then latterly their journey, first down the wide Volga and then the long walk to the ill fated meeting with Kalo and his brigands. Beatrice alternated between bouts of excitement in which she would walk the length of the crowded smoke filled carriage, to

237 | P a g e

be fussed over by adults and children alike, to periods in which she clambered up on to Katya’s lap to sleep. Ushak sat and stared out the window at the passing of flat rolling farming country which passed seamlessly without any border security from the black soil of the Ukraine to the brown lime rich soil of Russia. Day passed into night, and except for accepting a bowl of soup from Isaac’s hand and a cigarette from a friendly Cossack, he ignored the banter passing back and forth between their fellow passengers, and the accordion player who played and sang a song of sudden death and lulled most into sleep.

Forty miles from Smolensk the train pulled into a siding in the middle of nowhere and a guard came down the carriages announcing this was where they must wait until dawn rose.

They could not be behind the timetable, he told them in his loud authoritarian soldier like voice, and neither could they be ahead of it, not in the new Russia, by which, Isaac had muttered sourly, he must mean Bolshevik Russia. Katya angrily hushed him to silence, warning him that as things were now as they were it would not be wise to make such a comment. Ushak ignored them as he kept his face to the window. When Katya tried to speak to him he pretended to be fast asleep and snoring. She knew better, but she did not press him for an explanation as to what was troubling him, and so she settled down with the other passengers to try to sleep in a train carriage too hot and stinking of unwashed humanity.

Ushak woke just as dawn’s light was filtering into the carriage through the steamed up windows. Someone somewhere farted loudly and a puppy held by a sleeping child mewled.

He regarded it and it stared back at him with dark baleful eyes that stood out from its golden fur. He considered ruefully how fortunate the fragile little creature was to be living and breathing. It had probably been born as the famine came to its end and order began to 238 | P a g e

return. He looked at Beatrice also, curled up and snoring gently on Katya’s lap, and a shudder went down his spine as he reflected how fortunate also was his little girl to be still in the world. If the Red Army soldiers had not ambushed and slaughtered the White forces that had captured him and forced him to act as their guide then he would now be dead. He would be dead and Grigorivich and Osipenko would have taken Beatrice and traded her to be killed and eaten, Sasha too. Isaac Rabinowitz would most likely not have survived on his own in the village and Grigorivich would have would have made good on his threat and taken Katya. She told Ushak not long after they had fled that if it had happened she would have killed herself. And now here they were on a train not far from the great northern city of Smolensk waiting to go forward into a future he had not anticipated and could not have envisaged for them.

He eased his way out from the row of seats which his family occupied and made his way among the snores and the stretched out legs to the outside. He jumped down on to track side gravel and sucked in a great draught of cool clean air. It was not cold but it was not so hot as inside the carriage, and certainly not as hot as it would become later in the day. A sea of milky white low lying mist blanketed the fields that stretched on every side, hiding the world from his sight, and the rich smell of fresh turned soil and manure hung heavy. He breathed it in for a moment, before the sharp sound of a deep voice from behind him made him jump. “What are you doing off the train comrade?�

He turned and came face to face with the guard. He was a big man probably ten years older than Ushak, but he still looked fit and powerful with muscles that made his size too short

239 | P a g e

uniform jacket bulge. “I asked you a question,” the guard said deliberately slowly with a hint of menace in the tone of his voice and his stance.

Ushak took in the measure of the man and noticed he had a hand resting on the stubby but heavy looking wooden baton hanging from his polished leather belt. The steel in the grey eyes, the bristling handlebar moustache, the tensed shoulders, it all spoke of unwillingness to compromise and an inflexibility to surrender any authority. Ushak smiled affably. “It stinks in there sir,” he said and pointed up at the carriage, where passengers were stirring from sleep here and there and rubbing clear circles on the steamed up windows. “I did not think it would do any harm and I am sorry if I cause offence.”

The guard relaxed then and moved his hand from his baton and his shoulders sagged a little.

“It’s these fucking commies who have taken charge!” He spat bitterly by way of explanation as he moved to Ushak’s side and looked up at the sun rising up in the east above the mist and a line of distant indistinct trees. “Every day, every damn day we have new regulations and fresh operating instructions come down from Moscow. You would think the Kremlin might have better things to be about than break my balls.”

“Is it that bad then?” Ushak asked in wide eyed innocence.

“That bad!” the guard retorted with a chuckle. “Wait till you get to Smolensk then you will see how bad it is. The Peoples Commissariat of Communications has made the city a central hub for what is left of our network,” he hawked and spat, “though there is precious little enough rolling stock left to pull the carriages. The old girl up front was brought out of the yards where she had been scheduled to be broke up only a month ago.” He chuckled again and took a wad of black tobacco from his pocket and broke off a piece and offered it to

240 | P a g e

Ushak, who declined. He shoved the tobacco in the side of his mouth, hawked and spat again and added. “What drags us into Smolensk at less than half speed is the cannibal of four engines besides the old Kutuzov.”

“A baby’s teething problems?” Ushak ventured. This made the guard laugh and Ushak laughed also. He suggested, “It is no small thing I imagine to overthrow a royal house and fight a war to win a country, and Russia is no small country.”

“Aye, well, that is true of course,” the guard agreed, then added caustically, with a boom to his voice and a crack like a bullet fired, “and it would be a fine thing indeed if the misguided bastards knew how to run it!”

The engine five carriages away at the front end of the train rumbled into life as it was started up and a voice split the air through the thinning early morning mist. “Comrade Baranov sir! Five minutes!”

The guard jerked a thumb and ordered “back on the train now comrade, if you please.”

Ushak sucked in a final draught of cool air and climbed back on board, leaving the acerbic guard to stride up the line at the side of the carriages and return to his duties.

This time, when Ushak returned to the carriage and sat down, it was next to Katya and he took her hand in his. She smiled and squeezed as Beatrice clambered from her accustomed place on her surrogate mother’s lap on to her father’s. With his free hand he pulled the little girl close and when he looked across to Isaac the old man smiled warmly and Ushak returned his smile, and in that moment for the four of them all seemed right with the world.

When they arrived at Smolensk, just as noon was bringing a sweltering heat haze settling across the city, the train slowed to a crawl, and Ushak informed everyone loudly, to still 241 | P a g e

their complaining, as if he was in the know, it must be because of regulations. Isaac threw up his eyes and snorted “you will be carrying a party card next,� but Ushak ignored his remark. He knew the old man feared the new Godless society which had been established by the fanatical disciples of Marx and Engels, and an instinct told him that if poor Issie had lived neither son nor father would have remained within the borders of Bolshevik Russia.

But what Ushak did not know was that even then as they sat on the train tens of thousands of Jews and gypsies, Tartars and Armenians, Balts and Bashkirs, Chechens and Turks, were fleeing the country, taking with them skills and expertise that could not easily be replaced in the short term.

The train rumbled over the old railway bridge that spanned the confluence of the Smolnya and Dniepr Rivers, where the old walled part of the city, like Rome, spans seven hills and where there are small tributaries and valley dotted with pine trees. Streets crisscross over brooks, ridges and hills, merging to where there is a vertical drop of ninety metres above the rushing waters of the Dniepr. Here the city divides into two distinct districts, the Zadneprove to the north and the centre to the south. Katya explained to Ushak and Isaac her family home was in the Zadneprove, which was where the well off lived. Her eyes glowed with excitement when she spoke of how spacious it was and how the apartments not occupied by the Semyonovich family were only ever rented out to the very best element of Smolensk society, professional people, aristocrats, and the occasional diplomat and his family.

She did not notice as they chugged into the vast cavernous glass roofed station how the steel and ironworks she boasted of, and the pine resin processing factories, and the textile mills which once had been the lifeblood of the great city, had chimney stacks from out of which no smoke billowed. Ushak and Isaac noticed, but they said nothing as she continued 242 | P a g e

speaking of parks and museums and art galleries, the world famous diamond cutting shops, and all those many things that made her childhood precious to her. They noticed too the crowds of dull eyed people on the station, many wearing little more than rags, carrying battered suitcases, or, in most cases, possessions gathered in bundles made of sheets and blankets. It was an exodus of humanity seeking to escape the place, not get to it They huddled together on platforms waiting for trains, which in many instances simply would not arrive or if they did would be days late. The crowd was noisy, but it was a dull noise matched by the mad insistent cooing of hundreds of pigeons massed along the girders on the roof supporting glass panels, most of which were cracked or broken or else were so dulled by dirt and bird droppings the sky could scarcely be seen. They were marshalled by peasant soldiers with untidy uniforms and dirty weapons, this flotsam of humanity, and the unsympathetic officials were disinterested if they were leaving, only if they were arriving.

When the family’s turn came and they reached the end of a long queue and they were questioned by an official seated at a desk by the exit to the station, it was Katya who answered his enquiry as to their purpose in Smolensk: “My name is Ekaterina Semyonovich.

This is my family.” She indicated Ushak and Isaac and Beatrice, who was standing holding tight to her father’s hand. “We are going to my father’s house on Shkadov Street.”

The official scratched the bum fluff on his chin and laughed, and so too did the two bored soldiers who flanked him either side. The official whistled. “Shkadov Street eh? Fancy.”

“It is,” Katya said haughtily, “very fancy.”

The official looked up at her from beneath bushy eyebrows, a hint of amusement alive in his eyes and a small smile creasing his thin lips. “You have not been home since the

243 | P a g e

Revolution?” He fingered acne scars beneath his ear and added for emphasis. “Comrade ... ah ... Semyonovich.” She nodded her head and he muttered “you will need a pass” as he held out his hand palm upward. Katya was reaching into her pocket for money, but Ushak stopped her, and when the bureaucrat looked up at him and noticed the great sword lying across the canvas bag on his broad back his eyes widened. He glanced up at the soldiers either side but they were studiously ignoring him, thinking probably that Ushak was a cavalryman returned from the wars. The official cursed inwardly. He grinned at Katya and grunted, “Ah well, if you are going home,” and took up a heavy stamp and banged it down hard on a piece of yellowed paper which he then handed up to Katya. Immediately he dismissed her from his mind as he looked beyond to the next in line and informed her officiously, “Pass for the Zadneprove. Lose it and you will be arrested. Stay north of the river comrades. The pass is only valid there.”

Then, with Ushak and Isaac thoroughly bemused that they had required a pass to walk freely in a Russian city but did not need one to enter the country from the Ukraine, they walked out on to the streets of Smolensk. But of course they were not to know that even as they did so a renegade general named Deniken, who was destined for historical infamy, was adding that troubled country as a province of the new Soviet empire.

Katya led them to a place she knew at the side of an old square lined by trees and statues. It was a pavement cafe she had visited many times with her parents, but though the tables and chairs were there still inside the perimeter of a low wall, the cafe was closed and the windows boarded up. She was still excited and nothing seemed to be dampening her spirits now that she was home, and taking a giggling Beatrice in her arms, the little girl infected by

244 | P a g e

her enthusiasm, she told them to wait and she would go and fetch her auntie and uncle, who lived nearby.

When they were alone Isaac turned to Ushak and grinned. “Good to see her like this.”

Ushak shrugged his shoulders non committally and sighed. “I fear our Katya in for a disappointment.”

“Me too, this city is obviously not what it once was, but still, all the same, it is good.”

“After my mother and sisters were murdered ...”

Isaac interrupted him. “You don’t speak of it Ushak.”

Ushak smiled. “No.” He fished up his last roll up cigarette and lit it and puffed out smoke and coughed harshly. He looked up into an impossibly blue sky and his memory then was not of his mother but of Sasha. Isaac smiled encouragement. “I was going to say I went back to Cluj,” Ushak explained, “after they let me out of prison. I don’t know what I was expecting to find. Nothing, and everything, I suppose. I don’t know.” He sighed deeply and smiled without humour. “I think Katya will find the same.”

A lorry belching fumes rolled past them on the cobbles, heading off down a side street, leaving hanging blue smoke at waist height. It was the first motorised vehicle either had seen since Kamyshin, and whilst that was no great surprise what was a surprise was that it was the only one they had seen on what should otherwise have been the busy streets of Smolensk. Since they had left the station two hours earlier that was the only vehicle and it was not loaded with produce or with anything useful to the life of the city, it was filled with soldiers.

245 | P a g e

“Maybe I should go find a synagogue and you a chapel and we should pray,” Isaac suggested.

Ushak snorted contemptuously. “Pray to what Isaac? A thing so cold and so cruel it would take a son from you and a son from me?”

“God did not rob us of our sons Ushak,” Isaac replied in a soft voice. “We did that for ourselves.” He added gently. “We did not mean to, but we did it all the same.”

Ushak turned his eyes on the old man and the anger that flooded into him on hearing those words was as much directed towards himself as his companion, for he knew that Isaac was only speaking the truth. Nevertheless it was not something he could admit. “I never did anything less than my best for Sasha,” he spat bitterly. “I raised that boy alone, me, Ushak. I was father and mother.”

“You expected too much of him Ushak, as I did with my Issie. Children can make us proud.

They can restore to us the life the years rob us of, but they can never be us.”

Ushak lowered his head. He knew that what Isaac was saying was true. The raw pain of losing Sasha would never go away, it might diminish but it would always be with him, but what hurt him then more than anything was the knowledge that he had raised his son to embrace his values instead of encouraging him to discover his own. Thus he could no more have prevented Sasha from coming down from the comparative safety of the hillock when Kalo and his thugs attacked than he could command the sun not to rise, or the rain not to fall. He smiled a sardonic smile and muttered “I wish I had known you Isaac Rabinowitz as I knew your son.”

“And what of God Ushak?”

246 | P a g e

Ushak laughed. “I doubt any of us will ever know Him as we should.”

Katya returned with Beatrice. She sat on the wall. She looked troubled. After a moment she told them: “My uncle and auntie and cousin Andre are not there. The people living in their house now me they have gone away. They wouldn’t say any more ... just ... they have gone away. They slammed the door in my face.”

Ushak believed he had a good idea of what had happened to Katya’s relatives but he did not say anything. Isaac had a suspicion also. He stood and smiled at her and said, “Why don’t we go to your home Katya? It is hot and the afternoon will get hotter.”

Katya’s enthusiasm of earlier waned and was replaced by fear for her parent’s welfare. As they passed along streets she had played in as a little girl they were as alien to her then as was possible. She saw no one she recognised and once familiar shops and houses seemed, illogically she reflected, less so now. Businesses had changed ownership and some had even closed or else offered different wares, if they offered anything for sale at all. The people they encountered along the way were dull eyed and subdued; there were too many soldiers in uniform carrying rifles with bayonet’s attached, sometimes lounging against a wall or in doorways, sometimes standing in groups outside official buildings where sandbags were stacked against walls to the first floor windows; a car or a truck would chug by and grey faces would look out at them. Twice they were stopped by officers and asked for their pass.

The second time the officer stopping them took in Ushak and the sabre on his back, and his squad of soldiers seemed tense, so that he reflected the war must have been even more terrible than they had imagined. “Horse soldier hah?” the officer asked as he scanned the pass Katya handed to him. Ushak nodded his head and as the officer returned the pass he

247 | P a g e

added, “Good to be home then I imagine, and in one piece.” Ushak muttered a response as they went on up the old cobbled street: “Yes comrade, good to be home.”

When they arrived in Shkadov Street, where Katya’s home was situated and where she had spent her childhood, Ushak and Isaac could sense her fear. What had once been a fine tree lined boulevard lined with expensive apartment buildings was then a rubbish and old cart strewn street taken over by peasantry. Cats and stray dogs foraged here and there among the piles of household rubbish overflowed from bins and beggars lay on the sidewalk or sat on the pavements under trees. Overhead washing hung from lines stretched between branches on the trees. Women lounged in doorways drinking vodka and gossiping and laughing while urchins ran here and there in groups playing. Men played pitch and toss in groups, smoking strong Turkish tobacco that filled the air with cloying blue smoke, kneeling to flick a coin and try to land it closest to a wall. They were loud, they were brash, they were not the class of people who would have been tolerated there only five years earlier, but they were the lords of that place then.

When they reached number sixteen, which was the property in which Katya had been raised as a child, she could scarcely recognise the building. Some windows were boarded over with planks of wood while those that were not were filthy, caked with grime and bird droppings.

Some were broken and many had cracks running along them. Political slogans had been daubed in lime wash across the walls and from a second floor window a flag hung. It was red emblazoned in yellow with the hammer and sickle slogan of the Communist Party and it hung listless. The air was hot and big bluebottles buzzed here and there. Katya was home, but it was not the home she remembered or expected to find waiting for her.

248 | P a g e

She set Beatrice down beside Isaac and the old man put a protective arm about her shoulders. A big bearded man lounging in the doorway grinned, displaying his rotted teeth, and bellowed into the gloom of the hallway. “Hey Boris! Fuck me, but I think your girlfriend is returned!”

The sound of heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs and after a minute a young man of about Katya’s age emerged on to the top step beside the bearded man. He was short of stature, almost bald with scabs on his pate where it showed through between thin strands of reddish hair, bespectacled, and thin, with small hands Ushak thought effeminate. He was pulling on a brown jacket on one sleeve of which was a red armband. When he caught sight of Katya he grinned hugely and bounded down the two steps and seized hold of her hugging her close and proclaiming loudly “Katya Semyonovich! Katya! You have come home!” People nearby stopped what they were doing and stood to watch. “Boris,” Katya asked warily, while he still had his hands about her waist, “what is going on?” Where are my mama and papa?”

“Ah, then you have not caught up with the times then wherever you have wandered,” Boris said slyly. He sighed hugely, exaggerating it. “This building was home to your people and five other families, an old widow and a renegade Count we have shot. Now it houses thirty families, one hundred and two loyal citizens.”

“You killed old Alexis Pajari?” Katya asked with a mixture of horror and puzzlement in her tone. “He wasn’t even Russian. He was a Finn.”

“He was a fucking traitor is what he was!” Boris retorted fiercely. He glanced back at the bearded man in the doorway, then turned back to Katya and smiled and squeezed his hands

249 | P a g e

gently on her waist and announced loudly for all who could hear. “This is Katya Semyonovich, my girlfriend returned to us.”

She pulled his hands from her waist and said between gritted teeth, “I am not your girlfriend Boris! I have never been your girlfriend. We played together as children and that is all we ever were to one another.”

He regarded her carefully and smirked. The bearded man smirked also. He leaned forward and whispered, “Times change and you must change with them. What is a memory but what we choose to make it?”

“Where are my parents Boris? What have you done with them?” She demanded.

He smirked again and told her in a weary tone of voice. “Comrade, your parents, as good servants of the state, signed over this building to the local party.” He sneered. “We have done nothing with them. You will find your mother at her shop in Lavoshkina.”

“Her hair is a bit greyer these days,” the bearded man said with a low chuckle.

Katya was in shock and was powerless to prevent Boris from returning to her and putting his arms about her and pulling her close to him. He whispered lasciviously in her ear. “Be sensible Katya, it is all about survival now.” He glanced back to the bearded man and continued to speak. “Alexander there can tell you, a special friend means food in your belly and comfort.”

Ushak moved quickly then and without warning. Isaac knew he would act and he stepped back a little taking Beatrice with him. He pulled Boris’s hands from about Katya’s waist and shoved him away so hard the younger man’s glasses flew from his nose and landed on the

250 | P a g e

pavement and he fell back sprawling on the steps. The bearded man Alexander pulled a wooden baton from his jacket pocket and bellowed “Lads! Lads!” but allowed prudence to master loyalty to the fallen man as Ushak tugged the sabre from behind his back.

A gang of rough looking thugs poured down the stairs in response to Alexander’s cries and a furious Boris seized up his spectacles and perched them back on the bridge of his nose and stood. Some of the men in the street were moving in behind the little group and it might have gone badly for Ushak then had a military staff car not come gliding up the cobbled boulevard. It slewed to halt in front of the apartment block as some twenty or so men stood confronting Ushak ready to attack with a variety of weapons in their hand There was a driver and a sergeant in the front seats of the open topped German made Daimler and in the back an officer Ushak and Isaac and Katya recognised at once. Isaac beamed a smile at him and said with relief “Captain Orlov. Is it really you?”

The Captain returned the smile and told him “Major Orlov now Isaac.” He looked and took in the situation at once. “Your people are elsewhere Katya?” She nodded her head and replied.

“We will go and find my mother. She has a chemists shop in Lavoshkina.”

Ushak kept the sabre levelled and his eyes ranged across the faces of the men ready to attack. He mouthed to Boris, who gulped, “You will be first to die you weasel.” The tense moment was broken when Orlov called to Ushak. “Come my gypsy friend. Bring your family and we will drive you to Katya’s mother.” He raised a pistol from beneath the door as his sergeant brought up a machine gun in support and brandished it menacingly. Katya with Isaac and Beatrice seized the opportunity and hurried into the big car, but Ushak hesitated, afraid to turn and expose his back. Orlov grinned amiably at Boris and Alexander and kept

251 | P a g e

his pistol levelled, and asked them “Do you wish for me to declare this an illegal assembly comrades’?”

Boris flashed Orlov a look of surly contempt and Ushak and Katya looks of pure venom before he turned and went back inside the apartment building which had once belonged to the Semyonovich family. It was a signal for the thugs to disperse, although they too regarded Ushak with hatred before they left.

When Ushak was in the car and seated beside Katya Orlov told the driver where to go and they set off. Beatrice clambered on to the Major’s lap and he chuckled and asked her “Do you remember me then little one?” Beatrice looked puzzled with a frown on her face. “Ah well, it is a long time ago now for a little girl.” He kissed her on the crown of her head and regarded Ushak with amusement. The sabre was still in Ushak’s hand and between his legs on the floor was the canvas bag. “You have carried the sword all the way from Saratov I see?”

“Saratov!” Isaac snorted. “We have come to Smolensk only after a little detour via Kamyshin, which is but a stone’s throw from Volgograd, and yes he has carried it every step of the way.”

“For which we have been very grateful,” Katya added swiftly.

Orlov noticed then the absence of Sasha. He frowned at this. “Where is Sasha?” Katya’s eyes filled with tears that threatened to brim over, and Isaac was powerless to prevent his, while Ushak looked down at the floor. Orlov understood. “I am so sorry,” he whispered. Beatrice, innocent as ever, gave a little jump on the officer’s knee and cried out “Sasha up in the sky with the angels silly!”

252 | P a g e

It silenced them for the remainder of the brief fifteen minute journey that brought them to the narrow street in a commercial district in which was situated Katya’s mother’s chemist shop.

When they pulled up to the pavement it was beside a line of people waiting to enter the shop, which was already crowded. Katya noticed the big front window was dirty and behind the glass the shelves were empty. It was almost four in the afternoon and the day so far for her had been marked by frustration and confusion. Orlov noticed and he tapped her knee with a perfectly manicured finger and raised his eyebrows when she turned her head and looked at him. “Things have changed,” he told her gently, “Katya, you must understand ...”

On hearing her referred to as Katya Beatrice reached up and grabbed Orlov’s face between her two small hands and told him firmly, in a manner that would brook no argument, “Her name not Katya, her name Vasilisya, or mama.” They laughed, the tension dissipated, and the sergeant sitting in the front turned his head to smile and look fondly at the little girl. “I had a daughter just like her,” he said with a deep sigh of regret.

An instinct only a mother possesses brought Madame Semyonovich out from her shop. She pushed through the crowd gathered in the often fruitless hope there was some medicine to buy or in an equal hope the pharmacist might accept a few kopecs to treat some wound or ailment they had brought. One old woman in the line with a filthy bloodstained bandage on one leg even held a skinny half dead chicken in her hands.

Katya did not even wait for the sergeant to open the car door for her. She tumbled out on to the street and she and her mother came together to embrace in a joy filled tearful reunion.

Katya kept repeating over and over as her mother hugged and kissed her “Mama, mama,”

253 | P a g e

and her mother, who was a tall handsome woman still even at forty five years whispered into her daughter’s hair “Katya, oh my darling Katya.”

When finally they did break apart, but still holding tight to one another, Katya made the introductions. When she came to Beatrice Madame Semyonovich held out a hand and the little girl took it and smiled back at the imposing grey haired matriarch who said in a soft tone, “So this is little Beatrice.” When it came to Ushak her voice hardened and her eyes narrowed. “And this is Ushak.” Isaac blurted out “You know of us Madam?” Orlov laughed and explained how he had sought out Katya’s mother and father after he had been posted to Smolensk earlier in the year. “And we would not have survived without Major Orlov’s kindness,” Madame Semyonovich added.

Someone in the line grumbled he had waited two hours already and others took up the complaint. Madame Semyonovich said to Katya “Bring them all inside Katya, we can speak there.” She returned to the door and stood and assured people they would be seen. Orlov stopped Ushak as Katya with Beatrice on her hip and Isaac, carrying two bags, entered the shop past the throng at the door. “Let us have a drink together and speak of days in Saratov,” he said to a doubtful looking Ushak. He laughed. “I will have you back with your Katya in two hours.” Ushak still looked doubtful, and when Katya returned to the doorway and her mother’s side Orlov called to her. “I rob you of your man for two hours only Katya Semyonovich. I promise I will bring him back in one piece, well, at least the piece that matters.”

Katya grinned and waved a hand and as the car’s engine was gunned to life and they prepared to leave Ushak said glumly, “I expect tomorrow we will be off again to Bialystok to

254 | P a g e

look for her son.” Orlov laughed and asked in a booming voice: “Why on earth would you do that?”

And as the car went off up the cobbled street Ushak looked back to where a small florid faced boy pushed through the crowd and stood clutching Madame Semyonovich’s voluminous black skirts.

255 | P a g e

9

Orlov took Ushak to a drinking club he frequented near the river. They were joined by the sergeant, an acerbic thirty year old veteran by the name of Mikhail who was utterly loyal to his officer and devoted to him. In the cellar where the smoke hung heavy and the new Bolshevik elite and their women, many of whom were peasant whores and war widows, drank themselves into a nightly stupor, the music was loud and the atmosphere vulgar as a Messalina orgy. Rough vodka was drunk glass on glass with expensive imported wine and French brandy plundered from the cellars of the vanished bourgeoisie. Most of the soldiers and party officials could not tell the difference between the effects to be had from the variety of drink, and that was not the only change in the party society of the city. When Ushak expressed surprise that a Major would socialise with a sergeant both soldiers laughed loudly and Orlov boomed genially. “Welcome to the new Russia my gypsy brother!”

Ushak drank brandy and smoked Turkish cigarettes and coughed loudly but did not care.

They were an improvement on the roll up’s he had grown accustomed to smoking for almost five years, even though the tobacco was strong and stung his throat. The sergeant gave him five packs of twenty and told him not to ask where they came from. The music was loud, the atmosphere exciting. Ushak wondered why he had been brought there. Orlov seemed to be saying everything, and nothing, telling him how the city had been selected for what he termed with a sardonic chuckle ‘Bolshevisation’. The sergeant, who was on the way to making himself merrily drunk, declaimed loudly how the bourgeoisie and anyone with half a brain had been packed off to camps in Siberia, “to fucking work for a fucking living for a change!” he bellowed to roars of approval from those seated at tables nearby. He added 256 | P a g e

in a low voice however, “and now it is these peasant bastards who occupy the palaces and shit in university classrooms, wiping their arses with pages ripped out from our most sacred texts.”

“You have come to the wrong place at the wrong time Ushak,” Orlov said, suddenly serious.

“I have brought you here to tell you, to warn you, take your family and her child and go, soon as.”

Puzzled, Ushak asked him in wide eyed innocence, “Whose child do you speak of?”

“Katya’s child of course. Peter, he lives with his baboushka in the back room of the shop.”

Orlov shook his head and smiled and poured more brandy and marvelled at Ushak’s bewilderment as he explained. “At Saratov we all took a shine to you and your little family, especially Katya.” He noticed the dark scowl that crossed Ushak’s features and he added swiftly. “Not like that you blithering idiot Ushak.” Ushak subsided then, a frown creased his forehead, and after a moment he smiled as Orlov continued apace. “The men were conscripts dragged from Siberian villages you understand. They were a people still living in the tenth century where they came from and they were homesick and lost. Most were old enough to be her father, or at least an older brother. She worked hard in everything she did, and it warmed our hearts just to look at her. The Colonel, Lobanov, loved her. She reminded him of his niece. He was a good man, but unfortunately ...” He sighed deeply at a memory, then explained. “The Colonel had been at the house in Ekaterinburg when the Tsar and the royal family were executed. When the unit was disbanded and the boy’s sent home and he was ordered to report to the Lubyanka in Moscow, well, he understood. He understood what was happening, he was an aristo, and an aristo with knowledge of what happened in that dirty cellar.”

257 | P a g e

“He knew they would kill him?” Orlov nodded his head and drained his drink. “And still he went to Moscow?” Again Orlov nodded his head. “To be executed?” Orlov poured yet more brandy, and noticing the bottle was empty he called loudly to a waitress “Bring more! Hey, girl, more fucking brandy!” He turned watery eyes on Ushak and told him without rancour, “You are an innocent abroad Ushak, a fucking innocent abroad. Of course the Colonel went to be shot against a wall. Why would he not? He had a brother and two nieces he believed living in exile somewhere far to the east beyond the Ural’s, and a wife they told him was in a camp up north on the Karelian. Hah! What will a man not endure for love of family, eh?”

“I would have thought they would give him and all those who participated in the execution a medal for what they did for their new Russia, not shoot them dead.”

Orlov and the sergeant laughed. “A medal?” The sergeant spluttered. “A fucking medal you say?” The sergeant turned and looked to his officer amazed anyone would suggest such a thing. Orlov shook his head and heaved a deep sigh and explained. “They are telling the world publicly Tsar Nicholas and his family boarded a British warship in Murmansk and sailed off into the Arctic sunshine.” Orlov wagged a finger and then tapped it against the side of his nose and added in a hushed whisper. “That, my friend, is what you will believe if you know what is good for you.” He waved a hand expansively. “It is what every single soul in here believes, and since it is the official Kremlin line it must be true.”

“And he just gave away his money to Katya without expecting anything back?”

Orlov understood then, though of course he did not know anything of the rift it had created between Ushak and Katya. “Oh Ushak, Ushak,” he said, “of course he did. The Colonel was a

258 | P a g e

man of honour and respect. He would no more think of taking an advantage over your girl than would I.” Ushak suddenly felt himself to be a great fool, remembering how he had treated Katya on the riverbank the night she showed him the money and his cold and sulky behaviour towards her for weeks. He almost groaned aloud as he said, partly to himself, “That’s why he gave her all his money.”

Orlov shrugged his shoulders. “What use was it to him then? Better, he told me, the living have benefit of it rather than the dead.” The surly waitress brought another bottle, which she slammed down on the table, making the flame on the candle wedged into a wine bottle sputter. He pulled the cork from the neck and poured and as a memory came to him he grinned and said loudly, “and oh how that dead man drank that night! We sat among the men singing and swapping stories of hairy legged Ket women and for a while we forgot who we had become and remembered who we had been before October in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventeen.” He fell silent then and a gloomy stillness descended and fell between them. After a moment he raised his glass and his companions raised theirs also; he said, “NaZdorovie boys, to them gone on before us down the dark road,” and in saying it he remembered his Colonel, and Ushak said “NaZdorovie” also and he remembered Sasha and Issie, and the sergeant said “NaZdorovie” and he remembered his wife and daughter and her sisters. They emptied their glasses.

“When I was posted here to Smolensk I resolved to find Katya’s family home,” Orlov blurted out suddenly, clearly the worse for drink then. “I don’t know why, maybe I thought you guys might be there. I don’t know. Anyway, I found her mother and father. They had lost their

259 | P a g e

property, and I mean all of it, and their local political commissar wanted to pack them off to a gulag.”

“Fucking animals!” the sergeant hissed in a low voice. “Political commissars! What the fuck does that mean anyhow?”

“Shush you idiot!” Orlov almost spluttered. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed.

“And the boy?” Ushak asked, recalling the face of the child he had seen earlier clinging to Katya’s mother. “What about him?”

“Oh he’s Katya’s kid alright,” Orlov answered with a dry chuckle. “Wasn’t it me and the sergeant here drove Madame Semyonovich all the way to Poland to fetch him? The godrot nun’s had fostered the poor mite with a nasty old bastard of a farmer and his wife the other side of Bialystok.”

“Strong old bird that Madame Semyonovich,” the sergeant chimed in. “Wouldn’t leave any grand child of hers to rot in a Polski field. Strong woman.” He jabbed a finger for emphasis.

“Strong fucking woman! Like my old baboushka.”

“So I procured papers for the family to stay here in the city. City council got her listed as a doctor. Essential worker and her family.”

But by that time Ushak had stopped listening to them. Guilt flooded him, penetrating to the core of his being, to his very soul. He had blamed Katya for something she had never done and was not capable of, and he had treated her so badly, and now he knew instinctively and with a dread certainty he had lost her. As imperfect as life in the city would be and as changed as it was for her, she was home among people she loved and who loved her and

260 | P a g e

she had found the child she had yearned for these many months past, perhaps years even.

He felt nausea invade the pit of his stomach and he stood abruptly and lurched off, weaving among the tables. The sergeant, thinking he needed to piss, called after him “It is at the far end by the stage Ushak!” and chuckled.

Ushak felt like he wanted to vomit. The bitter taste of bile filled his throat. He lurched into an alcove, leaning a hand against a wall for support. A rough looking brute of a man was rutting in a corner with a girl lying on a table. She looked much too young and wore a torn ball gown a size too big for her. The man’s rhythmic thrusts between her legs did not cease as he turned cold dead eyes on Ushak and growled menacingly “what you looking at? Go on and fuck off!”

Orlov tugged Ushak by the arm and pulled him out from the alcove away from the couple.

He thought that alcohol had proven too much and so, supporting him, he led him away to the stairs that led up to the street and the waiting staff car. The sergeant, who had been found by an Estonian whore he favoured, remained in the club as Orlov and Ushak sat together in the back of the car as it headed north through deserted city streets towards Madame Semyonovich’s chemist shop.

Katya sat with her mother beside an old wooden table that once had been in the shed in the garden behind the apartment block in Shkadov Street. They drank tea. Her father was asleep in a small bunk in the hallways that led to the small rear yard and the outside toilet.

Isaac and Beatrice and her son Peter slept in the only bed, which was in a corner of the room. An old thin mattress had been laid on the floor behind the counter in the shop, and that was where Katya and Ushak would sleep. Madame Semyonovich did not wholly

261 | P a g e

approve, but Katya had assured her mother that she and the grim faced Roma shared a love that was deep and had endured.

Her mother had told her they had named the little boy after her dead brother Peter, and Katya said that was a perfect choice of name for him. They cried together at the memory of the carefree laughing boy they had known, and then Katya demanded her mother tell her everything; of how Orlov had come to their rescue when the Bolshevik’s wanted to imprison them in a forced labour camp merely because they were educated and owned property and had some money in the bank and washed every day. The Major had been a godsend, she said, especially in bringing news of a wayward daughter. It was he who had used his connections to find Peter, and it was he who had driven them to Bialystok to fetch him, and it was he who procured for them the little black market items that ensured their survival beyond what meagre fare could be had with the ration coupons which were issued only after a day long wait at the post office. She spoke of how every day she would treat the sick who came in droves and queued for hours, and how Katya’s father, once a celebrated city lawyer, would work as her assistant, cleaning wounds and sores and changing bandages.

Katya wondered why Peter was not receiving lessons from his grandfather and her mother scoffed at that suggestion. “They took your uncle and your auntie and your cousins last year, just before Christmas. They were put on a train that had only cattle wagons with six hundred others.” A bitter look passed across her features. “There was no Major Orlov then.”

She shook her head and a faraway look came in her eyes. “No, Katya, better for him he is ignorant and happy than clever and dead.”

Katya did not agree, but she did not say anything more on the subject, for it was her turn to tell her tale. As she spoke she noticed her mother, who she thought had aged terribly, 262 | P a g e

brightened up considerably, as though the relating of the adventures her daughter had lived through was some epic fiction from the pen of Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky or Pushkin. She shook her head and grimaced and muttered “ugh! That is horrible!” when Katya told her about the cannibals in the village and how Ushak fought a mighty battle with the giant Grigorivich to save all their lives. Her eyes widened with descriptions of mighty rivers, rushing rapids, nights spent outside under canvas, and places she had only read about in books, and both women wept and held on to one another as Katya spoke of the death of Sasha and of how they buried him in the cemetery near the village of flesh eaters in the Ukraine.

When they were both done Madame Semyonovich made more tea. The oil lamp was burning low and casting a dim yellow glow and Katya wished Ushak would return. Her mother sensed this in her daughter and as she sipped from the bone china cup, one of a set she had managed to salvage from her plundered former home, she smiled over the rim.

“You love this man, I understand that.”

“With all my heart and soul,” Katya agreed.

“And that little girl,” Madame Semyonovich nodded her head in the direction of the sleeping Beatrice. “She calls you mama and thinks of you as such.”

Katya laughed. “And Vasilisiya.”

“Which was what you called me when you were not so much older than her.”

They both laughed, their joy at this simple proximity knowing no bounds. “There is much to love mama, and with Isaac,” Katya told her mother.

263 | P a g e

“And you love Peter, even if you only just met him. You see how he took to you at once?

And Beatrice, and even the old Jew. He went to him and sat on his lap, and Peter doesn’t do that with everyone.”

“He is a wonderful little boy mama and a credit to you and papa.”

Her mother chuckled. “He wears your father out mind. Papa is not so young as he once was and the troubles have taken their toll.”

“I am not that silly little girl who imagined she had visions of God and the Archangel Michael mama. I am a woman now and I have experienced more of the world than most will.”

“I can see that Katya,” her mother said gently, “which is why I want you all to stay here with us. I want us to be a family. Smolensk has gone through the worst of times and the winter of war and famine is behind us. It can only get better now the Bolshevik’s power is unchallenged.”

Katya was not so certain of that, and looking into her mother’s eyes she was not certain she herself believed it, but she smiled anyway and said, hiding her uncertainty, “Yes mama, we will stay. I will speak to Ushak.”

They heard the car pulling up outside, the roar of the big engine in the German manufactured vejicl distinctive. Madame Semyonovich smiled at her daughter and said, “If I know Major Orlov your Ushak will be in no fit state to discuss anything. It is late and I need to be in bed beside your father.” She laughed. “Your son wakens before dawn and I tell you he is like the dawn chorus in springtime, when he is awake we all know of it.”

264 | P a g e

Katya laughed also. She kissed her mother and watched as she went out into the back to the small crib she would share with her husband, and as she sat back down to wait for Ushak it almost cracked her heart in two to see what cruel fate a revolution dreamed up by men long dead could visit on such good people.

Outside in the car Ushak was glad to be back at the shop. He had enjoyed the drink and Orlov and the sergeant’s company and the cigarettes were rare luxury, but he had not enjoyed the club. Somehow the atmosphere did not seem real, as though it was a parody of what a certain sort of people would imagine such a place to be, almost a simulation.

He thanked Orlov and opened the door, but the Major reached out a hand and placed it on hs arm and made him pause. “I like you Ushak, I like your family.”

Ushak smiled and frowned at the same time. “We like you too Major Orlov. You were always kind to Katya and the children when we were at the monastery in Saratov. You all were.”

“This city is not a place you can remain in Ushak. I would not describe what goes on as ethnic cleansing exactly, but ...”

“I am a gypsy.”

“Yes, you are, and that fellow you tangled with earlier, he is the son of the Political Commissar. He carries the power of life and death and quite literally gets away with murder.”

Ushak frowned deeply. “Boris? He seemed just a weak fool.” He stepped on to the pavement and closed the car door.

265 | P a g e

Orlov smiled wanly. “Boris Utkin. He will come after you Ushak.” And then as the driver gunned the engine and the car pulled away Orlov added, “Leave the city Ushak. Take your family and go.”

Ushak stayed on the pavement beneath sputtering gas flamed street lamp and watched the car until it turned a corner and was gone. He did not entirely know what to make of Orlov’s warning. He knew that what he might experience in the city as a Roma would only be a magnification of what he had lived through in four years in the village, and he did not fear that, but there was more than merely a warning behind what Orlov had said. He was tired and he had drunk too much and he would put it from his thoughts at least until tomorrow.

And so as he went up the steps into the shop he did not notice in the shadows of a tenement building a little way up the street on the opposite side of the road the thin ferret faced young man Boris Utkin watching him intently with malice in his eyes.

266 | P a g e

10

The child Peter woke early, as Madame Semyonovich predicted, and went wandering to the front shop where Ushak and Katya lay entwined under a blanket on the mattress on the floor. Ushak opened his eyes to find the little boy snuggled in beside him clutching in his hand a toy solider made of metal on which the paint had peeled and was all but gone. The soldier’s rifle was pointed at Ushak’s nose and the child made shooting noises. Snot ran out from his nose as he was a little boy who seemed permanently to have a cold or suffer from hayfever and allergies. His large blue eyes, mirrors of his mother’s, blinked as the man did not seem to be reacting to being shot repeatedly or to being ordered to ‘surrender’. Ushak’s head throbbed and the memory of the drinking club, the smoke, the noise, the alcohol, and the music, seemed even less pleasant than it had when he experienced it, and he groaned and rolled over and put an arm about Katya’s waist. She laughed and reached over him to her son and said, “Come on Peter. You can capture mama.” The little boy giggled and cuddled into her. She wiped his nose with a sleeve and held him close, relishing the feel of his body against her’s, marvelling that they were actually together like that, for the truth was she had never really believed it would be so, even when they came off the train at the city railway station.

After a moment she said, “Are you awake my love?” He groaned and grumbled. “Between you and that boy how could I not be?” She grinned and sat up and pulled Peter on to her lap, where he sat shooting with his toy soldier gun and singing softly a folk song of old Smolensk his grandmother taught him but whose words he joyfully mangled.

267 | P a g e

She regarded Ushak for a moment and her eyes were full of love for him. He was two thousand miles from where he wanted to be and in coming north for her Sasha had been killed, and yet he never once had he mentioned anything that might be even slightly construed as laying blame at her door. She knew he would find it difficult at first to accept Peter, for no male child could ever replace for him the laughing, curious Sasha, but she felt confident that in time he would and that if she asked he would do anything for her, and so she said. “Do you think we might stay in Smolensk Ushak and make our home here?”

He sat up beside her, their shoulders touching, and the words spoken by Major Orlov the previous night returned to him, clear as when they were first spoken. “Boris Utkin. He will come after you Ushak. Leave the city Ushak. Take your family and go.” And the manner in which Orlov spoke, warning, threatening even, meant it was no simple question for him to answer. He looked at Katya and told her. “Orlov does not think we should stay. I think he is frightened something will happen.”

She sighed and ruffled her son’s tousled fair haired head. “He looks so much like his uncle.”

“Your brother Peter?”

“Yes. I wasn’t here when he was killed, but I can imagine how it would have affected mama and papa.” She gave a dry little sardonic snigger Ushak found charming and girlish every time she did it, but then just as abruptly her features darkened. “It was bad enough for them when the madness took me and I ran away to that convent in Poland.”

“You’re so sure your visions were madness?” he asked her entirely serious.

“Well of course they were, complete insanity,” she answered him just as earnestly. “Ushak, for you God up there in Heaven is as real as little Peter here sitting on my lap.” The child 268 | P a g e

looked up on hearing his name spoken and grinned. “For me it is something which destroyed all that might have been.”

“And me and Beatrice and Isaac, and Sasha when he was with us, are we what ought not to have been?” He asked her petulantly.

“No Ushak, of course not, all I am saying is that for you God is one thing and for me something else. I love you with all my heart and little Bea is as much of me as this little one is, but I am also glad to be back here with my mama and papa. They need me Ushak, they need us. Papa is a shade only of what he was. Oh my darling, if only you had known him then.”

Ushak felt immediately torn in two. They had not been in the city a day and already they had made a mortal enemy he sensed was more dangerous than Grigorivich or Kalo or anything they had faced and overcome. He said, “This Boris Utkin ...”

“Boris Utkin!” She pluttered and laughed and Peter laughed too. “His papa was my papa’s clerk and he was a snotty faced little swine who followed me everywhere I went like a moon calf when we were at school.” She sneered. “Boris Utkin indeed.”

“Times have changed in Russia Katya. His father is a Political Commissar.”

The house was stirring and Peter wandered off calling for grandmother. Ktya stood and stretched. “I don’t know what that is Ushak, and neither do you.”

He looked up at her. “Does that mean if I go you will stay?”

“Does it mean if I stay you will go?” she retorted.

269 | P a g e

Ushak shook his head and heaved a great sigh and Katya spun on her heel and walked away, saying over her shoulder “Mama makes wonderful porridge Ushak,” and added tartly, “when you are ready.”

He lay back on the mattress and pondered the fresh dilemma which life had tossed up before him. He had so wanted nothing more from his life than to take his son on to the steppes and into the mountains, to teach Sasha the way of the horse, herblore, and the thousand and one things beside that made his people unique above all others on Earth. That hope was gone now of course and Sasha was lying cold and dead in a cemetery that belonged to a church whose priest had lost his faith and where the parishioners had fallen into the worst darkness to be imagined. What else did he have he reasoned, but this family of which he was the undoubted patriarch. What else did he want? What else was there?

He stood and made his way down the dark passage to the back room, but he did not enter at once. He stood in the shadows and watched them. Madame Semyonovich sat with Beatrice on her lap, feeding the hungry little girl with porridge from a bowl. Peter stood at her knee with his bowl in his hand spooning porridge into his mouth and smearing it on his chin. The little boy was clearly jealous of the attention Katya’s mother was lavishing on his new rival for her attention and Madame Semyonovich was clearly very enamoured of Beatrice. Katya stood by a sink looking in a mirror and carefully combing her long fair hair.

He noticed it had grown and she had washed it and it was lustrous and shining. She hummed a tune and Ushak smiled, and then his attention was taken by the two men seated opposite one at the table engaged in a game of chess. He smiled again. Isaac was holding forth.

270 | P a g e

“Sasha was beginning to love the game. I think he would have become a great player once we had a board. But sheesh! What is there not love about it, hah papa Semyonovich?”

“There is the romance of it Isaac,” Katya’s father agreed. “Kings and Queens and Knights and romance and great battles waiting to be fought. Oh yes, there is something fanciful about the old girl indeed, just like my dear wife there.”

The two chess players sipped their tea and laughed as they contemplated the pieces on the board, and Ushak took in the homely scene and choked back a tear. The only thing missing for him was Sasha, and in that moment he knew that it would only be on the road he might be able to assuage the almost unbearable pain of that loss. He leaned his back against the wall and closed his eyes. Madame Semyonovich noticed him then. She grinned broadly.

“Come in Ushak. Don’t be shy. Look, there is porridge and black bread and tea.”

Ushak entered and went to the table and sat. He could not face the food but the tea was welcome. Beatrice wriggled of Madame Semyonovich’s lap and went straight to him and her place was taken at once by Peter. Papa Semyonovich regarded him, appraising him, while pretending not to. A glance for Ushak was enough to tell him Katya’s father was a broken man, one aged by a lost daughter and a slain son and by the destruction of the social order and all he had known and enjoyed in life. Ushak smiled at Isaac. “So you have found someone to play with then after all?”

Isaac suddenly experienced a great well of pain enter his very soul and tears welled in his eyes. The words were not intended to hurt, but Sasha had been uppermost in the old mans thoughts as he played the game, and it was in truth the only reason he had agreed to play.

He stood and pushed back his chair and with a hand half covering his face he stumbled away 271 | P a g e

out of the back door into the yard outside. Ushak looked to Katya. “What have I said?” Katya turned and flashed him a look that if read would have declaimed, think before speaking. “Oh Ushak, he has not been able to get over Sasha.”

“None of us have gotten over Sasha,” Ushak responded bitterly, “but we have to go on.”

Beatrice added between mouthfuls of porridge. “Sasha in Heaven with the angels.” Katya rounded the table and took the little girl from Ushak’s arms and sat down. “You had better go and speak to him,” she told him.

He found Isaac sitting alone on a water butt by the privy. Ushak took out one of his Turkish cigarettes and lit it, blowing a cloud of acrid blue smoke that had the old man flap a hand and pull a face. “And I thought pipe tobacco was strong.”

It was hot, even though it was not yet eight in the morning, and flies, attracted by the pungent smell rising from the toilet they were unable to do anything about, buzzed. Ushak reflected briefly how different the aromas would be if they were out in the country somewhere on the road as they had been for many months, rather than in the middle of a great city. “I’m sorry Isaac,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t think.” He chuckled. “My mother said it was never my strong point.”

“Oh it is alright Ushak, it’s not you, it’s me,” Isaac reassured him, and added earnestly. “I just can’t get the events of that day out of my head. If I had just kept hold of him when we were up on the hill. If I had gone down to help you myself.”

“Then you would be dead instead of him,” Ushak said flatly.

“Better me than him.”

272 | P a g e

“No Isaac, Sasha loved you and if you had been killed and he stayed on the hill he would never have forgiven himself, not ever. He would be still in the world, sure, but it would be as a walking corpse.”

Isaac sighed. “Yes, that was the thing about Sasha, he had a depth of love rare in most people, and he let you feel you were loved. It didn’t matter if it was bringing a fish we could eat or just chatting, he made you feel special.”

Ushak finished his cigarette and crushed it underfoot. He looked up into the blue sky and said abruptly, needing advice from the old man but not actually asking for it, “Major Orlov thinks we should leave the city, and soon.”

“I do too. I played many games of chess with papa Semyonovich last night, and we drank sherry.” He grinned without humour. “If I told you what he told me you would scarce believe it. Thousands of priests have been murdered and in a field not half a mile from this city Bishop Makarov and fourteen of his people were executed. Anyone with breeding, anyone with money, anyone who kneels to pray, anyone who thinks an honest day of labour should be rewarded according to ability, anyone ...”

“Katya’s mother wants us to stay. Katya told me this morning.

“She only survives because she trained as a doctor before she became a pharmacist. She tends the sick because they have murdered most of the doctors or driven them out or else imprisoned them.” He snorted. “God has fled this place Ushak and Jews and Gypsys will not survive, and because we are with them they will not either.”

Ushak pondered this and when he looked up at the sky somehow it did not seem so blue and the birds that flew above seemed to him dark and unfriendly. He muttered, musing.

273 | P a g e

“The monks at the monastery outside Saratov were so kind to us. I wonder what happened to them after we left.”

“The same thing that will happen to us if we don’t act soon. We must not only leave this city son, we must leave this hellish country altogether.”

Ushak nodded his head and left him and returned inside. The children were playing together with Peter’s small army of toy soldiers. Katya had an expectant look on her face and a smile for him. He looked from her to first her father, who smiled weakly, as though he sensed the dilemma Ushak struggled with, and then to her mother, who did not smile and understood it only too well. He placed a hand on each of Katya’s shoulders and kissed her and smiled. “I must go and see Major Orlov Katya.” She understood. Her mother stood up and smiled then and said easily. “Come then and I will point the way for you.”

She looped an arm through his and led him down the passageway and out to the front of the shop. When she threw the door open there were already people beginning to queue for her attention. She ignored them as she walked Ushak to the end of the street, where she pointed north. “You will find Major Orlov at the Tsentralnaya Hotel. It has been turned into a military barracks.”

“Thank you Madame,” Ushak said formally. She stopped him as he started to cross the small tree lined square that led to a network of streets opposite running north. “Gypsy,” Ushak turned his head and looked into her eyes where hard implacable steel was fixed on him, “do not think that I will let you take my Katya away from me again. You and the Jew may do as you wish, but she is staying here where she belongs.”

274 | P a g e

Ushak tried to reassure her. “Madame, I will only do what is best for my family, if that means staying here it is what I will do, if it means go that is what I will do.”

“Your family?” madame Semyonovich sneered. “Your family are dirty vermin bitten travellers, beggars, thieves and swindlers. Oh we know well enough round here what the gypsy is. It is not a life my daughter will live. I will slice open your throat while you sleep before I let you take her.”

Ushak was taken aback by this, but he did not react. He merely turned on his heel, saying “Good day to you Madame,” as he walked briskly away.

As he entered a street opposite, which was much as all the other streets, with people loitering and washing flapping overhead and children playing and mangy dogs barking, he did not notice the two men following him at a discreet distance.

Orlov was not at the hotel, which once had been a place of spleandour frequented by aristocracy, wealthy visitors from foreign lands, and the upper echelons of Smolensk society.

When Ushak visited it was a place partially destroyed by artillery fire and the walls were pock marked by bullet holes and fronted by sandbags and innumerable military vehicles. He was refused entry to the barracks of course, and without a pass he stood in danger of immediate arrest for being within the large lawned public square one side of which the hotel occupied. Soldiers had in fact detained him when he was spotted by the sergeant, who informed him Major Orlov was summoned to the city Kremlin, the largest in Russia, to discuss a special order which had come down from Moscow. The sergeant took him into the park and there he informed Ushak quickly of the danger he and his family were in.

275 | P a g e

“Letts, Georgians, Jews, and your lot of course,” the sergeant said, there’s going to be a sweep right across the city.”

“But its madness,” Ushak protested weakly. “They can’t just go on locking everyone up.

Sooner or later, even if it is a revolution, it has to stop.” He turned his eyes on his companion and asked him plaintively. “Doesn’t it sergeant?”

The sergeant laughed at that. “Does it Ushak? No my friend,” he pointed to where squads of soldiers lounged about a line of trucks, “I don’t think it does.” He took two cigarettes from a packet and handed one to Ushak and they spoke while the bluff old soldier explained.

“Trotsky is a Jew, our secret police chief Dzherzinsky is a Pole, and Uncle Joe Stalin is a Georgian. They are insiders now, so, naturally, they hate all outsiders” He stood up and sighed and looked down at Ushak, who looked back with baleful eyes filled with hope, but of course the sergeant could offer him nothing. “Take your family and go Ushak,” he said with a heavy sigh, “and go quickly. You see the trucks over there and the squads? They will start rolling tonight at midnight.”

Ushak wandered away down the street leaving the barracks and the squads behind. The sergeant watched him go and felt a sense of abject pity for what he knew would be a plight for the man. To stay or to go, that would be what lay at the heart of the dilemma, according to Orlov, and the sergeant could imagine it. Madame Semyonovich had treated him a month earlier for a bout of syphilis and he knew how formidable the woman was. And then he noticed some dark figures sneak through the shadows at the side of the street behind Ushak. He frowned, puzzled at first but then realising what was afoot.

276 | P a g e

He did not see them coming. There was an old truck that slewed to a stop in the street in front of him barring his passage and five thugs with wooden clubs that followed behind him, moving fast to cut off his escape. Somehow a street which had been full of people and children only seconds earlier was now empty except for Ushak, now surrounded by Boris Utak and eleven of his followers. All wore red armbands like their chief. They grinned at him and hooted and Boris said easily, mocking his intended victim, “No big fancy sword with you today then you gypsy bastard?” Another man called “This one won’t be in need of a lift anywhere tonight,” and his comrades laughed, and in that moment Ushak knew they intended to murder him right there on the street in plain sight of everyone. He turned his head slightly as they began to close on him in a circle. They were enjoying themselves, baiting him as a nasty child will tormenting an insect, making the moment last, eyeing one another for who would be first to strike at the doomed man.

He noticed a tenement building where he could see down the gloomy passageway to the rear yard where the wall was partially demolished, and suddenly and without any warning he ran full tilt for it. He kept his head down as he burst between two of his would be attackers, but still took a blow to the side of the head on his ear which burst it and sent blod spraying against a window as he sprinted down the passageway for the rear yard. They gave chase, squeezing down the passage behind, cursing as one fell and two others got stuck.

Ushak vaulted the wall and ran for his life. Behind him Boris bellowed “Get the fucker!” But not one of the pursuers could catch the fleet footed Ushak and his escape might have been assured had not the man Alexander not raised a pistol and fired a shot which although it hardly caught his shoulder was enough to send him spinning to the ground. He was rising when they fell on him. He tried to protect himself and put up a defence but he was one and 277 | P a g e

they many and they beat him down with boot, fist, and wooden clubs, until he was a bloody mess and one eye had popped out and hung usless on his cheekbone. He groaned and looked up through his good eye at where the men were standing around and Alexander was handing the pistol to Boris. The barrel looked huge, the hole from which would spew out his death, a black portal. Alexander grinned and fingered his beard and a lascivious leer was on his face and Boris said through gritted teeth “This is what happens to Roma shit in Smolensk, and tonight when the boys go out I shall go to Kardymovsky and have my little Katya.” He was about to pull the trigger when a whistle sounded shrill and loud. The thugs froze. Alexander cursed. “That will be that fucking Orlov again!”

The opportunity would not again present itself as Boris hesitated and the men pulled back a little, eyes turned to look across the waste ground on which they stood. Ushak pulled himself to his feet and at a crouch stumbled to his left into a thicket of trees and bushes until he burst free and fell himself turn and spiral through space.

Boris and Alexander stood on the lip of the fifty foot high rock and shale cliff that fell almost sheer to the white foamed river below. They could see the body of the fallen man lying half in and half out of the water. After a moment Boris grunted and grinned and punched Alexander on the shoulder and handed back the pistol. “That’s done for the bastard,” he hissed. “No man could survive that.” And then he laughed.

278 | P a g e

11

Katya stood at the door and looked out at the street. She was fretful and scared. Ushak had been gone all day. Isaac had walked up to the hotel which was now a barracks in the afternoon and was told Ushak had been there but left hours earlier. Only Katya’s mother seemed unconcerned about where he might or might not be. She came outside as night was falling and the street lamps were being lit and told Katya with a small sneer, “Don’t be surprised my dear if your gypsy has gone off. I shan’t.”

“Why is that mama, is it because you imagined something better for your Katya?” Katya responded tartly, then added defiantly in a tone of voice her mother had never before experienced with her, “There is no better man than Ushak, not anywhere, and if any ill has befallen him and you have willed it I will never forgive you mama. You will be as dead to me as I was to you when I went off to that convent, or when you tried to pack me off to baboushka.”

Madame Semyonovich reached a hand out to her daughter but Katya shook her off and snarled as she walked to the end of the street: “I warn you mama. He is my man and I am his.”

After a moment her mother returned into the interior of the shop where she bumped into Isaac, who had a concerned look on his face and was ringing his hands. He was about to ask a question but she brushed past him with tears pouring from her eyes. “Why did you people come here?” she spat bitterly. “We were happy till yesterday!”

279 | P a g e

At nine o’clock two soldiers arrived at the shop from the barracks, sent by Major Orlov to ensure no harm befell the family when the round up’s commenced at midnight. Katya was grateful for their presence but she would not budge from her vigil outside on the pavement.

It was growing chilly and her father came outside and brought her a shawl, which she wrapped about her thin shoulders. They stood together and after a minute the old man said with a chuckle, “This is how I felt about your mama when I first knew her, and in all the years my feelings for her have never changed.” Katya turned wan eyes on her father and he gave her a little smile. “I am sure Ushak will return my little dove, and when he does you must take Isaac and Beatrice and Peter and go far from here.” She frowned and he explained, gently. “Your mother does not understand Katya. This is not the Smolensk of the Romanov’s. It has soured her and if you let her she will seek to live her life through you.”

“I don’t think she likes my Ushak.”

Her father laughed. “I’m not sure she likes me any more.” His laughter died abruptly and he pointed. “Besides, I don’t think that little swine will leave you alone if you do stay.”

She looked across the street to where a cocky arrogant looking Boris Utak leaned against a wall flanked by his giant henchman Alexander and another thug. They watched impassively, making no move, threatening or otherwise, and their silent presence brought a shiver to Katya’s spine. She whispered low, “If he comes near me I will tear out his throat with my teeth, I swear I will.”

“His father is Political Commissar Katya,” her father informed her darkly. “He is the most powerful man in Smolensk Oblast and that makes that weasel untouchable.”

280 | P a g e

When Katya looked again Boris was alone and his men had gone into the night. He followed them but not before tipping his hat and grinning at her, as though she knew a secret she did not. She turned to her father and e put an arm about her and reassured her. “The soliders will keep us safe. It is not the first time the Major has done this.”

The dogs smelled him first. They were big shaggy wolfhounds liberated from an estate some ten miles from the city, and their keen noses could scent a rotting mouse from a mile. They surrounded the man at the waters edge and nipped at his wet clothing and snarled and barked as they sniffed and snuffled at him.

Three men followed them and when they reached the man one of them knelt and turned him over. His face was almost unrecognisable as such, covered in blood and bruised and with the left eye out of the socket. The kneeling man bent his head to press against the chest and raised himself up after a moment and looked at his companions. One asked “Does he live Aleksander?” The man Aleksander nodded his head and stood. “For how long I don’t know. Let’s get him up to the cave.” They carried him along the riverbank half a mile to where a track led up to a cave ten feet above the water.

A big fire was burning in the cave and it was warm, though one wall had water streaming down it, which gathered in a pool that then ran off in a rivulet to the cave entrance. There was furniture in the cave and a leather sheet that served the entrance as a shield against the weather and a blind for the fire.

They laid him on a bed and stripped him of his clothing till he was naked and then they carefully washed his body. He was a mass of bruises and had cuts on his face and his hands and neck. Ushak moaned as the man Aleksander donned a pair of steel rimmed spectacles

281 | P a g e

and examined him as the flames in the fire licked and spat. His companions, Bogdan, a young man of about twenty, an idealist who would not conform to the new communist ideal, and Vitaly, a grizzled old street thief condemned by the city council, peered over his shoulder as he informed them in a businesslike manner. “Shot in the shoulder, at least two broken ribs on the right side, elbow on the right arm shattered, and he will lose the eye, and God alone knows how much bruising. I doubt the poor fellow will survive.”

“Then why don’t we put him back where we found him?” Vitaly hissed urgently. “Somebody prettied him up like that, and if we are caught with him we will get worse.”

Aleksander turned his gentle eyes on his companion and placed a thin once well manicured hand on his shoulder. “Vitaly, Vitaly, do you recall when I found you lying in that field with the soldier’s bayonet still in your stomach?”

“That’s unfair Aleksander,” Vitaly said in a low voice. “That was different. I had a chance of survival.”

Aleksander smiled again and turned to the younger man, who smiled also, but ruefully. “He might be right,” the young man said, but without conviction. “You are Aleksander Blok, and all your months of running and hiding will mean nothing if they catch you now.”

Aleksander crossed to the fire and the dogs joined him, rubbing against his legs before curling up at his feet. He looked down into the flames and muttered abstractedly. “I am a poet, and poetry’s bullets do not kill the soldiers of the revolution.” Then he turned and ordered. “Bogdan, go and fetch Madame Semyonovich. We will save this one if we can.”

282 | P a g e

Bogdan nodded his head and left the cave while Aleksander turned back to his contemplation of the fames and poems not yet written and Vitaly covered the trembling delirious grieviously wounded Ushak with a blanket.

She worked solidly for two hours, wrapping Ushak’s torso with bandages and applying cream and poultices to the bruises. He had a gash on the back of his neck and she folded the skin together and put in eight stitches. It was ugly to look at, but she assured the watching men at least it would not kill him. Four more stitches went into the bullet hole where it had entered his back and four more where it had exited in his shoulder. She splinted a broken finger on his left hand and bandaged his elbow and arm where the bones had been smashed by a club and she pulled two teeth from the back of his mouth. But it was the eye that caused her most concern. She tried to gently ease it back into the socket to save at least the cosmetic aspect, but it would not take and the only remaining option was to cut it out and cauterize the wound with a flaming brand from the fire. The stricken Ushak had borne everything else with stoic passivity, even if he had been delirious, but the knife and the fire was too much even for him and as Katya’s mother worked he fell into merciful oblivion.

When it was done and he was asleep under a blanket Bogden brought her a tot of brandy, which she accepted with gratitude. Aleksander regarded her as she took a seat by her patient, and though wearly she placed a hand to his forehead and fought back her tears and bit her lip and whispered. “I am sorry Ushak. I am so sorry my beloved son of the road.” She looked up and Aleksander smiled an recited from one of his poems. “By the doors of the silent abode, I was crying, while pressing the brace ... At the end of the passage remote, someone echoed me, hiding his face.”

283 | P a g e

She smiled back at him and stood and finished her drink. “I can never tell Aleksander if you are being romantic or unnecessarily gloomy,” she said as she pulled on her coat.

“It is a poet’s privilege Madame Semyonivich to be enigmatic, or perhaps it is a duty.”

She packed her things in her bag and set a small phial of medicine on a wine table that, somehow, managed to look entirely at home in the cave, as though the draughty gouge in the rocky clifface was a Parisian drawing room. She pointed to the bottle. “Opium, he will need it when he wakens.”

Before she could leave with her escort Bogdan, Aleksander stopped her. “You know this man Madame?”

She did not turn around as Bogdan lifted the leather screen. She merely muttered non commitally, almost casually, “No, not really.”

Major Orlov’s car slewed to a halt by the side of the bank of trees that fringed the cliff that fell down to the rushing waters of the Smolnya. The moon was out, not full, but bright and gibbuous. Bats flitted in and out of the branches of the trees and an old tomcat squealed raucously in some backyard. The lights showing through the windows in the tenement buildings were yellow and sulphurous. A violin played somewhere and a woman sang.

Orlov jumped from the car with a flashlight in his hand. He was followed by the sergeant.

The driver stayed where he was, but he had a machine pistol in his hand which he kept trained on the wall that ran the length of the tenement block and its rows of doors.

“You are sure he came this way?” Orlov demanded.

284 | P a g e

“Couldn’t have gone anywhere else,” the sergeant answered. “I managed to prise out of a child he ran out here.”

Orlov looked about at the waste ground and the discarded mounds of rubbish. His flashlight fell on a mangy dog and its eyes sparkled for a moment and it snarled and growled before thinking better of it and running off with its tail between its legs. He pushed through a tangle of bushes beneath the trees and almost plunged down into the ravine, only the sergeant’s hand on his Sam Browne belt stopping him and pulling him back to safety.

The flashlight beam played across the foaming surface of the water below and the rocks shone and glistened wet. The sergeant whistled. “Dear God, you don’t think ...”

“It’s rumoured there are dissidents down there, living in the caves,” Orlov muttered thoughtfully. “You think that’s true sergeant?”

“I don’t know sir. You think ...”

I don’t know. Ushak’s a survivor.”

At that moment a shot rang out and a woman screamed. Orlov and the sergeant turned and ran along the clifftop for a few yards before turning sharply and plunging in among the bushes and the darkness of the trees.

Bogdan was dead. The bullt that had ripped into his head had literally splattered his brains and Madame Semyonovich was covered in gore. She was on her knees with the giant Alexander gripping her wrist and twisting and making her cry out again in agony. Boris Utkin, his eyes mad looking, was pointing the pistol at her head.

285 | P a g e

“I fucking knew when we followed you were going to the gypsy. He’s alive isn’t he?” Boris said with a chuckle that was almost a cackle.

She looked at Bogdan’s body lying with the limbs splayed grotesquely and half the head missing and her eyes were wide with horror. “You killed that boy!” She spat. “You killed him!”

“He was a fucking dissident you stupid cow! An anti revolutionary! What else would you have me do?”

She spat at him again. “You animal Utkin! I will tell your father what you have done!”

He laughed and stepped in close to her and with his free hand he punched her in the face, splitting her lip. She fell against Alexander’s thigh and screamed in pain and Boris pointed the gun with fingers trembling with fury and shouted. “You take me to the gypsy bitch! You take me to him or I will blow your fucking head off too and leave you here for the dogs! Tell me where he fucking is!”

Orlov came out from the gloom of the trees and fired his pistol on the run. The shot took the giant Alexander in the throat and spun him around and propelled him backwards. He was dead before he hit the ground and as Orlov roared in fury and ran on, switching his aim as he did, Boris forgot his friend and brought his pistol to train on the onrushing officer. He fired and the shot struck Orlov in the upper abdomen and felled him like a tree in a forest under a loggers axe. He grinned and was walking forward to finish the job when the sergeant stepped out from behind a bush and without warning or pause shot him in the chest in his turn. The gun fell from Boris’s fingers and he sank to his knees, clutching the

286 | P a g e

place where blood spurted. He looked with eyes that would not allow comprehension as the sergeant walked slowly towards him, pistol in his hand and raised and a smile on his face Madame Semyonovich stood up and dabbed at her bloodied lip with a handkerchief. She saw what was going to happen and she yelled plaintively. “No sergeant! You can’t!”

But the sergeant was beyond caring what might happen next. He stood before Boris and kicked the fallen gun away from him. He almost smirked as he told the kneeling man, “Now you know what it feels like you skinny little bastard to know what it feels like to be helpless and wait for death. Now you know how the Patriarch and his priests felt.”

Boris lips twisted into a snarl and he said with a grunt, “I can pay you. I have money.”

The sergeant took a step back and put the cold barrel of the pstol against Boris head.

Madame Semyonovich looked on with horror. Tears rolled down Boris face and he snarled low, “My father will see you in Hell for this you ...”

The sergeant fired the gun and Boris died in a spray of blood and gore. “Yes, and I will buy you a drink when I get there,” the sergeant said.

They knelt by Major Orlov and Madame Semyonovich tried to undo his tunic, but he stopped her with a firm hand and a smile that was more grimace than anything else. He was going to die and he knew it, and she knew it also and so did the sergeant.

“Does Ushak live?” Orlov managed with a gasp. She nodded her head and told him, “He is badly injured, but I think he is tough and will make it.” “Thank God!” Orlov said. He grasped the sergeant’s hand and gripped tightly and he spoke earnestly and quickly: “Take the car.

Go tonight. Get them out of here, all of them. No one will bother you during the round up.”

287 | P a g e

Tears welled in the sergeant’s eyes. “I can take you to Madame Semyonovich’s shop sir. She can ...”

“No!” Orlov squeezed tightly and his back arched. “The bullet has torn my liver. She knows.

Ask her.” The sergeant looked to Madame Semyonovich and she nodded her head. Orlov went on, anxious to get everything out before the darkness descended across his wits. “Go south into Ukraine. Avoid Kiev, but get them out of here.” He smiled as the tears filled his sergeant’s eyes. “Do it for me sergeant.”

The sergeant stood and pulled Madame Semyonovich to her feet. He led the way towards where the car waited in the darkness, and as they walked, after a moment a loud bang split the night and they knew that Major Orlov was dead.

288 | P a g e

12 Katya’s mother and father would not go with them when they fled away from Smolensk in the dawn light of that late summer day. Her father gave her the mother he had hidden from the Bolshevik looters and carefully preserved. He kissed her and wished her and Ushak and Isaac and the children long life and happiness, but her mother refused to see her and she refused to say goodbye. It was sad, but, she reasoned stoically, it was what perhaps fate had decreed for her on that day and her mother parted for the first time nearly six years earlier.

The sergeant drove and Isaac sat in front beside him with Peter on his lap while Katya sat with Beatrice in the back and Ushak asleep and with his head in her lap. He took them as far as Dnepropetrovsk and they stayed in the city for eight months, spending Christmas together in a rented house and seeing in the New Year of nineteen twenty three, while Ushak spent long hours in bed recovering from his terrible injuries. And then one day while the snow was thick on the ground and the rooftops heavy with the stuff, the sergeant was gone. He left a note that read simply: The only true fools in life are a danger to themselves and others. They are those who never find any silence inside. They just laugh at their own inner poorness and dance and wiggle to Hell’s bells and discordant melodies. I can find no silence inside, and so I leave. May God keep and preserve you all.

Your friend, The Sergeant

289 | P a g e

Katya wept and the children were upset because he had promised to take them sledding.

Isaac understood, as he understood so much, and he said, “The man had nothing left, with his family gone and Major and the army snatched from him.”

“He had us,” Katya said bitterly. “Didn’t he?”

Isaac smiled at that and sat down before the fire and warmed his old limbs and smoked a pipe and there was a twinkle in his eye when he answered her. “No Katya, we have us, the children have us and we have them, and Beatrice has Peter and Peter has Beatrice. You do not simply and comfortably step into that.”

And it was true. The two children had become close as any brother and sister could be, and when he had watched them together playing it had brought back memories for the sergeant that were painful. He told Ushak one night when they sat together, “When I see Bea and Peter together, or when I listen to Isaac snoring before the fire and look at you and lovely Katya, I am reminded souls can dance. But I am reminded too what depth of pain there is in remembering such things as once were mine, and I know some feet weren’t made for dancing.”

It was sad, and Ushak had spent two days out looking for him, but it was no use, he had gone.

In February, when Ushak felt up to it, they caught the train for Izmayil and the following month crossed into Romania. Ushak sold the cavalry sword to a metalworker in the city. It was no longer of any use to him. He was all but crippled in his right arm and kept it mostly in a sling and he wore a patch over his ruined eye socket, but he was alive. They bought a gypsy caravan and two horses and took the road to Ploiesti first. The city lay north of the 290 | P a g e

capital Bucharest and it was where Dani’s family home lay. Ushak did not want to see her exactly, and he marvelled at Katya’s tolerance in agreeing to go there, but he did feel she had a right to know about Sasha, even if she might prove uncaring. But there was no news to be had of her and so they moved north through the Fagaras Mountains and across Transylvania to Cluj Napoca, where Ushak had been born.

Ushak found work with a farmer, though he was limited in what he could do, and Katya went to work in a tavern serving food and drink to travellers on their way south. Cluj was growing and its strategic location affording it access to Timosaora in the west, Bucharest to the south, and the Danube Delta to the east was increasing its prosperity year on year.

Then, in June, when they were living in a house only two streets from the one he had shared with Dani and where Sasha and Beatrice had been born, more than a year after they had left the village Isaac discovered Ushak had not been at work for nearly two months. The old man bumped into the farmer quite by accident and the man had enquired if Ushak intended to return for the harvest. Isaac confronted Ushak, and when he did he was met by tears.

They sat together on the edge of a meadow near a small brook. “Do you remember when we sat and talked together on the hill after I ran away from Katya?” Ushak asked with a chuckle. “You remember ...”

Isaac interrupted him. He was irritated. “Are you not happy with us Ushak?”

“Of course I am Isaac. What man could ask for more than Katya?”

“We have money saved,” Isaac told him stolidly, “and we will not starve. Beatrice and Peter attend a school where they are loved, and Katya is happy.” He chuckled lightly. “I have even found an old Bulgar who can play chess.”

291 | P a g e

Ushak took the old man’s hand and sighed. “There are some wounds do not heal Isaac, some hurts that never go away.”

“You mean Sasha?”

Ushak smiled forlornly. “Would it was only dear Sasha. No, no it is more than that. I should have never left this place and the life I am meant for.”

“What of Beatrice?” Isaac asked.

“She is loved by Katya and loves her in return, and I cannot give them any longer what I would and what my heart desires. I must go Isaac.”

Isaac got up then and left him alone in the meadow. He went to Katya and told her what Ushak said, and though she was distraught at first when she gave the matter some thought she understood. His pain was beyond limit and it had been with him since he was a boy. She knew the freedom he craved and which was bred into the marrow of his bones came at a price. Often the price was too high, but yet it had to be paid. It was agreed he would take the caravan and the horses and leave the following month and return in October.

Isaac stayed at home with the children and Ushak and Katya travelled to Oradea on the Hungarian border, where they knew she could catch a train back to Cluj. It was afternoon when they climbed down from the buckboard ad stood together looking out across a sea of grass.

She could not persuade him, but yet she felt she must say something, or perhaps, she mused briefly, she would take his good hand and place it to her belly and let him feel the

292 | P a g e

new life growing there, but then she thought better of that idea. “Where will you go my love they will not hate you just for being you?” she asked him.

He smiled. “I will go where the geese and the ghost do not fight for worm or soul.”

“A mythical place Ushak,” she snorted.

“Four months is not a long time my darling,” he told her, but she said nothing in answer and only put her arms about him and they clung together for a long time until both their hearts felt as if they might explode in their chests. Then they kissed deep as thought that one kiss was all the world would ever know of Ushak and Katya, and then they stood together shoulder to shoulder, as they had from the moment they had met, and looked to the west out across the vast Hungarian steppe where the grasses swayed gently in a transparent breeze. The geese formed their squadrons as their calls sent them flying for long remembered places. Nothing moved out towards a horizon of shimmering green and gold, and Ushak’s spirit longed to go beyond and reach out for other horizons that could never be touched.

He kissed her again and pressed his face against her hair and inhaled her scent and whispered in her ear, “look after Bea for me my love,” and then without another word he clambered up on to the caravan and flicked the reins across the horse’s broad backs. As the brightly coloured wagon lurched forward over the grass he did not look back, and though his heart ached he knew in that moment with certainty which way the wind blew.

As Katya watched him go away from her into the sunset, with her tears wet upon her face, and though she was certain she would never see him again, she was comforted for she knew also that finally Ushak the gypsy was at peace.

293 | P a g e

THE END

294 | P a g e

295 | P a g e

296 | P a g e

297 | P a g e