Child 44

by Tom Rob Smith

  —No.

  —That is what worries me. It means you genuinely believe these murders were connected rather than the actions of perverts and vagrants and drunks and undesirables. To be blunt, it is madness. I’ve worked with you. I’ve seen how methodical you are. And if the truth be told, I even admired you. Before, that is, you lost your head over your wife. So when I was told of your new adventures it didn’t make sense to me.

  —I had a theory. It was wrong. I don’t know what else I can say.

  —Why would any one man want to kill these children?

  Leo stared at the man opposite him, a man who’d wanted to execute two children for their parents’ association with a vet. He would’ve shot them in the back of the head and thought nothing of it. Yet Vasili had asked this question in earnest.

  Why would anyone want to kill these children?

  He’d murdered on a scale comparable to the man Leo was hunting, perhaps even greater. And yet he scratched his head over the logic of these crimes. Was it that he couldn’t understand why anyone who wanted to kill simply didn’t join the MGB or become a Gulag guard? If that was his point then Leo understood it. There were so many legitimate outlets for brutality and murder, why choose an unofficial one? But that wasn’t his point.

  These children

  Vasili’s confusion came from the fact that these crimes were apparently motiveless. It wasn’t that the murder of children was unfathomable. But what was the gain? What was the angle? There was no official need to kill these children, no notion of it serving a greater good, no material benefit. That was his objection.

  Leo repeated:

  —I had a theory. It was wrong.

  —Perhaps being expelled from Moscow, from a force you’d loyally served for so many years, was a greater shock than we expected. You are a proud man, after all. Your sanity has clearly suffered. That is why I’m going to help you, Leo.

  Vasili stood up, mulling the situation. State Security had been ordered, after Stalin’s death, to cease all use of violence against arrestees. A creature of survival, Vasili had adapted immediately. And yet here was Leo in his grasp. Could Vasili just walk away and leave him to face his sentencing? Was that enough? Would that satisfy him? He turned toward the door, realizing that his urges toward Leo were now as much a danger to himself as they were to Leo. He could feel his usual caution giving way to something personal, something a little like lust. He found it impossible to resist. He gestured for the guard to approach:

  —Bring Doctor Hvostov.

  Even though it was late, Hvostov didn’t feel put out by the abrupt call to work. He was curious as to what could be so important. He shook Vasili’s hand and listened as the situation was summarized, noting that Vasili referred to Leo as a patient not as a prisoner. He understood that this was necessary to guard against the accusation of physical harm. Having heard in brief the patient’s elaborate delusions about a child killer, the doctor ordered the guard to escort Leo to his treatment room. He was excited about picking away at what lay beneath this outlandish notion.

  The room was exactly as Leo remembered it: small and clean, a red leather chair bolted to the white tiled floor, glass cabinets filled with bottles and powders and pills, labeled with neat white stickers and careful, tidy black handwriting, an array of steel surgical instruments, the smell of disinfectant. He was secured to the same chair Anatoly Brodsky had been secured to; his wrists, ankles, and neck were fastened with the same leather straps. Doctor Hvostov filled a syringe with camphor oil. Leo’s shirt was cut away, a vein was found. Nothing needed to be explained. Leo had seen it all before. He opened his mouth, waiting for the rubber gag.

  Vasili stood—trembling with anticipation as he watched the preparations. Hvostov injected Leo with the oil. Seconds passed by; suddenly Leo’s eyes rolled back in his head. His body began to shake. It was the moment Vasili had dreamt of, a moment he’d planned in his head a thousand times. Leo looked ridiculous, weak and pathetic.

  They waited for the more extreme physical reactions to calm down. Hvostov nodded, approving:

  —See what he says.

  Vasili stepped forward and untied the rubber gag. Leo vomited gobs of saliva onto his lap. His head fell forward, slack.

  —As before, ask simple questions to start off with.

  —What is your name?

  Leo’s head rolled from side to side, more saliva dribbled from his mouth.

  —What is your name?

  No reply.

  —What is your name?

  Leo’s lips moved. He said something but Vasili couldn’t hear. He moved closer:

  —What is your name?

  His eyes seemed to focus—he looked straight ahead and said:

  —Pavel.

  SAME DAY

  What is your name?

  Pavel

  Opening his eyes, he saw that he was standing ankle deep in snow, in the middle of a forest, a bright moon above him. His jacket was made of coarse grain sacks, stitched together with care, as though made of the finest leather. He lifted one foot out of the snow. He wasn’t wearing shoes. Instead, wrapped around each foot were rags and a strip of rubber, tied together with string. And his hands were the hands of a child.

  Feeling a tug on his jacket, he turned around. Standing behind him was a young boy dressed in the same kind of coarse sacks. On his feet were the same kind of strips of rubber and rags tied together. The boy was squinting. Snot ran down from his nose. What was his name? Clumsy and devoted and silly—his name was Andrei.

  Behind him a scrawny black-and-white cat began to screech, struggling in the snow, tormented by some unseen force. It was being pulled into the forest. There was string around the cat’s paw. Someone was tugging the string, dragging it across the snow. Pavel ran after it. But the cat, still struggling, was being pulled faster and faster. Pavel increased his pace. Looking back, he saw that Andrei, unable to keep up, was being left behind.

  Suddenly he came to a stop. Standing in front of him, holding the end of the string, was Stepan, his father, not as a young man but as an elderly man, the man he’d said good-bye to in Moscow. Stepan picked up the cat, snapped its neck, and dropped it into a large grain sack. Pavel walked up to him:

  —Father?

  —I’m not your father.

  Stepan raised a thick branch, ready to bring it crashing down against his head.

  Opening his eyes, Pavel found himself inside the grain sack, his head caked in blood, his mouth as dry as ash. He was being carried, bouncing against a grown man’s back. His head hurt so much he felt sick. There was something underneath him. He reached down, touching the dead cat. Exhausted, he closed his eyes.

  Feeling the heat of a fire, he awoke. He was no longer in a sack; he’d been emptied onto the mud floor of a farmhouse. Stepan—now a young man, the man in the woods, gaunt and fierce—was sitting beside the fire holding the body of a young boy. Beside him was Anna: she was young again too. The boy in Stepan’s arms was part human, part ghost, part skeleton—his skin was loose, his bones protruding, his eyes enormous. Stepan and Anna were crying. Anna stroked the dead boy’s hair and finally Stepan whispered the boy’s name:

  —Leo.

  This dead boy had been Leo Stepanovich.

  Finally Anna turned around, her eyes red, and asked:

  —What is your name?

  He didn’t reply. He didn’t know his name.

  —Where do you live?

  Yet again he didn’t know.

  —What is your father’s name?

  His mind was blank.

  —Could you find your way home?

  He didn’t know where home was. Anna continued:

  —Do you understand why you are here?

  He shook his head:

  —You were to die, so that he might live. Do you understand?

  He did not. She said:

  —But our son cannot be saved. He died while my husband was hunting. Since he is dead, you’re free to go.

  Free to go
where? He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know where he’d come from. He didn’t know anything about himself. His mind was empty.

  Anna stood up, walking toward him, offering her hand. He struggled to his feet, weak and dizzy. How long had he been in that sack? How far had he been carried? It had felt like days. If he didn’t eat soon he’d die. She gave him a cup of warm water. The first sip made him feel sick, but the second was better. She took him outside where they sat, wrapped up together under several blankets. Exhausted, he fell asleep against her shoulder. When he awoke, Stepan had come outside.

  —It’s ready.

  Entering the farmhouse, the boy’s body was gone. On the fire was a large pot, a bubbling stew. Guided by Anna, he sat down close to the heat, accepting the bowl which Stepan filled to the brim. He stared down at the steaming broth: crushed acorns floated on the surface alongside bright white knuckles and strips of flesh. Stepan and Anna watched him. Stepan said:

  —You were to die, so that our son might live. Since he has died, you can live.

  They were offering their own flesh and blood. They were offering their son. He raised the broth to his nose. He hadn’t eaten for so long he began to salivate, instinct took over and he reached in.

  Stepan explained:

  —Tomorrow we begin our journey to Moscow. We cannot survive here any longer. I have an uncle in the city, he could help us. This was to be our last meal before our journey. This meal was to get us to the city. You can come with us. Or you can stay here and try and find your own way home.

  Should he stay here, with no idea of his identity, no idea of where he was? What if he never remembered? What if nothing came back to him? Who would look after him? What would he do? Or should he go with these people? They had food. They had a plan, a way to survive.

  —I want to come with you.

  —You’re sure?

  —Yes.

  —My name is Stepan. My wife’s name is Anna. What is your name?

  He couldn’t remember any names. Except for one, the name he’d heard earlier. Could he say that name? Would they be angry with him?

  —My name is Leo.

  11 JULY

  RAISA WAS SHUNTED FORWARD toward a line of tables, each manned by two officers, one seated and checking a stack of documentation while the other frisked the prisoner. No distinctions were made between men and women: they were all searched together, side by side, in the same rough fashion. There was no way of knowing which table held your particular documentation. Raisa was pushed to one table, waved to another. She’d been processed so quickly that her paperwork hadn’t caught up. Something of an irritation, she was taken aside by the guard accompanying her, the only prisoner with her own escort, bypassing this initial part of the process. These missing papers contained the statement of her crime and her sentence. All around prisoners listened blankly as they were told they were guilty of AKA, KRRD, PSh, SVPsh, KRM, SOE, or SVE, indecipherable codes which determined the rest of their lives. Sentences were thrown out with professional indifference:

  Five years! Ten years! Twenty-five years!

  But she had to excuse these guards their callousness—they were overworked, they had so many people to deal with, so many prisoners to process. As they called out the sentences she observed the same reaction from almost every prisoner: disbelief. Was any of this real? It felt dreamlike, as though they’d been plucked out of the real world and thrown inside an entirely new world where no one was sure of the rules. What laws governed this place? What did people eat? Were they allowed to wash? What did they wear? Did they have any rights? They were newborn with no one to protect them and no one to teach them the rules.

  Guided out of the processing room onto the station platform, her arm held by the guard, Raisa didn’t board the train. Instead, she waited as all the other prisoners were loaded onto the row of carriages, converted cattle cars used to transport prisoners to the Gulags. The platform, though part of Kazan station, had been constructed so as to be hidden from the view of regular passengers. When Raisa had been moved from the basement of the Lubyanka to the station she’d been transported in a black truck with the words FRUIT & VEGETABLES painted across it. She understood this was no cruel joke on the part of the State but part of the attempt to conceal the scale of arrests. Was there a person alive who didn’t know someone who’d been arrested? And yet the pretence of secrecy was zealously maintained, an elaborate charade fooling no one.

  At a guess there were several thousand prisoners on the platform. They were being forced into carriages in such a way that it seemed as if the guards were trying to break some record, hundreds being beaten into spaces which, at a glance, should take no more than thirty or forty. But she’d already forgotten—the rules of the old world no longer applied. This was the new world with new rules, and space for thirty was space for three hundred. People didn’t need air between them. Space was a precious commodity in the new world, one that couldn’t be wasted. The logistics of moving people were no different from the logistics of moving grain; pack it in and expect to lose five percent.

  Among these people—people of all ages, some in fine tailored clothes, most in tattered rags—there was no sign of her husband. As a matter of routine families were broken up in the Gulags, sent to opposite sides of the country. The system took pride in breaking bonds and ties. The only relationship which mattered was a person’s relationship with the State. Raisa had taught that lesson to her students. Presuming that Leo would be sent to another camp, she was surprised when her guard stopped her on the platform, ordering her to wait. She’d been made to wait on a platform before, when they’d been banished to Voualsk. This was a particular trait of Vasili, who seemed to delight in witnessing as much of their humiliation as possible. It wasn’t enough that they suffer. He wanted a ringside seat.

  She saw Vasili coming toward her, leading an older man with a stooped back. Less than five meters away she recognized this man as her husband. She stared at Leo, bewildered at his transformation. He was frail, aged by ten years. What had they done to him? When Vasili let go of him he seemed ready to fall over. Raisa propped him up, staring into his eyes. He recognized her. She placed her hand on his face, feeling his brow:

  —Leo?

  It took him an effort to reply, his mouth shaking as he tried to pronounce the word:

  —Raisa.

  She turned to Vasili, who was watching all of it. She was angry that there were tears in her eyes. He’d want that. She wiped them away. But they wouldn’t stop.

  Vasili couldn’t help feeling disappointed. It wasn’t that he didn’t have exactly what he’d always wanted. He did, and more. Somehow he’d expected his triumph—and this was the crowning moment of it—to be sweeter. Addressing Raisa, he said:

  —It’s usual for husbands and wives to be separated. But I thought you might like to take this journey together, a small act of my generosity.

  Of course, he meant the words ironically, viciously, but they stuck in his throat and gave him no satisfaction. He was curiously aware of his actions as pathetic. It was the absence of any real opposition. This man who’d been his target for so long was now weak, beaten and broken. Instead of feeling stronger, triumphant, he felt as if some part of him had been damaged. He cut short the speech he’d planned and stared at Leo. What was this feeling? Was it a kind of affection for this man? The idea was ridiculous: he hated him.

  Raisa had seen that look before in Vasili. His hatred wasn’t professional; it was an obsession, a fixation, as if unrequited love had grown awful, twisted into something ugly. Though she felt no pity for him, she supposed that once upon a time there might have been something human inside of him. He gestured at the guard, who shoved them toward the train.

  Raisa helped Leo up into the carriage. They were the last prisoners to be loaded in. The door slid shut after them. In the gloom she could feel hundreds of eyes staring at them.

  Vasili stood on the platform, his hands behind his back.

  —Have arran
gements been made?

  The guard nodded:

  —Neither of them will reach their destination alive.

  ONE HUNDRED KILOMETERS EAST OF MOSCOW

  12 JULY

  RAISA AND LEO CROUCHED at the back of the carriage, a position they’d occupied since boarding the previous day. As the last prisoners on, they’d been forced to make do with the only space left. The most coveted positions, the rough wood benches which ran along the walls at three different heights, had all been taken. On these benches, which were little more than thirty centimeters wide, there were up to three people lying side by side, pressed together as close as if they were having sex. But there was nothing sexual about this terrified intimacy. The only space Leo and Raisa had found was near a hole the size of a fist cut out of the floorboards—the toilet for the entire carriage. There was no division, no partition, no option but to defecate, urinate in full view. Leo and Raisa were less than a foot from the hole.

  Initially, in this stinking darkness, Raisa had felt uncontrollably angry. The degradation wasn’t only unjust, appalling, it was bizarre—willfully malicious. If they were going to these camps to work, why were they being transported as if they were intended for execution? She’d stopped herself from pursuing this line of thought: they wouldn’t survive like this, fired up with indignation. She had to adapt. She kept reminding herself:

  New world, new rules.

  She couldn’t compare her situation to the past. Prisoners had no entitlements and should have no expectations.

  Even without a watch or a view of the world outside, Raisa knew it must be past midday. The steel roof was being cooked by the sun, the weather collaborating with the guards, inflicting a steady punishment, radiating an unrelenting heat on the hundreds of bodies. The train moved with such sluggishness that no breeze came through the small slits in the timber walls. What little breeze there might have been was soaked up by the prisoners lucky enough to sit on the benches.