Katya and Josef rode down the middle of the road. Other horses tied to posts or in stables whinnied at their arrival, but the partisan horses - like Josef - were determined to remain quiet and surly. Wagons leaned on empty traces in the street; there were no machines, no tractors or cars. All these would have been requisitioned by one army or another long ago.
Katya noted curtains eased back in several windows, lit eyes watched them wandering the village. No one greeted them, no one was even outside the houses. In the far distance, over the northern horizon, the booms of the battle coated the clopping of their hooves.
The Germans had been here, that was clear in the earth. Tracked vehicles had left gouges on the lone dirt road, and in the fields, crops were crushed. But no sign of the occupiers showed in Stepnoe tonight.
‘I’ll go get Plokhoi,’ Josef growled at Katya. ‘You wait here.’
With that he pivoted his horse into the dark and galloped. Katya eased forward in the saddle, stopped. A door opened in a nearby house.
An old woman stepped out from a yellow interior. She came right up to Anna and stroked the horse’s brow with fingers like dried twigs.
‘You are with the partisans,’ the woman said.
‘Yes, mother.’
‘Please leave us alone.’ She said this to the horse, as though she knew beseeching Katya to be useless.
‘It’s not my decision.’
‘We have only a few men here. They are old, too, but we need them to work the fields. If they don’t we will starve.’
The woman did not lift her face to Katya. This was the way of the Russian peasant, beaten and badly used by Tsar and Soviet alike. The war had brutalized this little worthless village as profoundly as it stalked the battlefields twenty miles to the north. These people were killed, too.
Katya carried some dried meat and crackers in her pockets. ‘Are you hungry?’
At this the old mamushka lifted her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I think I shall be tomorrow.’
Other doors opened. Villagers edged into the street, the little houses contained a surprising number of people, perhaps a hundred, two-thirds of them were women. The men wore cloth caps and dark jackets, even on a warm summer night, the women came in white blowzy dresses and decorative aprons. There were no bare pates, all heads were under hats and scarves, these peasants covered themselves to go outside, even in front of their own homes to beg a stranger. Every face was wrinkled, every eye a sad witness.
They clustered around Katya. Anna held still. Katya, high in her saddle, felt like another plague sent down among these people, come to skim away the last of their vitality. She looked the gathering crowd over and knew right off which ones Plokhoi would take, that one and that one, those two look like brothers, yes, and there; there might be twenty or more who looked strong enough to mount the final few horses left to this village and ride off with the partisans to fight. And what would be left? She looked down at the first old woman to come outside, the bold one, still caressing Anna’s soft muzzle.
The village people said no more to Katya than ‘Please,’ and ‘We can’t.’ She had nothing to say in response. She sat in their midst for the minutes until Plokhoi rode into the street. In ones and twos they worked their way to her boots in the stirrups, some stroked her leg, others the horse. None looked up at her. Anna heard the pounding of the many coming hooves before the old folks. She stamped a foot once and the people stepped back.
Plokhoi and his partisans rode into town looking like a band of brigands. They advanced tightly packed, their dark horses rubbing shoulders, the riders grimy and slouched in the saddles. There was little military bearing to them, even though many of the men had been soldiers before they joined Colonel Bad and his cell. The villagers edged back to the side of their dirt road.
The mounted cadre stopped. Katya and Anna stood between the two crowds. She backed her horse out of the way.
Plokhoi’s mount strode forward. He spoke, a black voice on this pallid night.
‘Where is your starosta?’
A snowy-bearded old man stepped forward. This was the village elder. Even he was straight-backed and strong; the times in this land were harsh and they formed hard men to live in them.
‘Here, sir.’ The peasant took off his hat and would not look up at Plokhoi.
‘You know who we are?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. You will send ten of your able-bodied men to come with us.’
The elder’s hands worked his hat in a circle, turning it by the rim.
‘Please, sir. Please.’
Plokhoi’s horse shifted under him, an impatient movement from the animal. His voice matched the horse’s gesture.
‘Please what?’
‘Sir. I am sorry. This we cannot do.’
Plokhoi’s horse moved out of the pack of dark partisans. The animal came close to the starosta and tossed his head. The old man made no move to back away, but the turning of his hat quickened.
‘Please?’ Plokhoi repeated from high above the peasant.
The elder clutched his hat now, stopping his hands. He spoke but could not raise his head to answer, as if Plokhoi’s boot were on it.
‘Sir. The Germans. They’ve…’ and the old man quit.
‘They’ve what?’ Plokhoi demanded over the elder’s bowed head to the rest of the village. ‘The Germans have what? Have they been such good masters to you in the two years they’ve occupied your land that you won’t rise against them now?’
Plokhoi slung his legs down from the saddle. He walked away from the horse, leaving it untethered, and the animal stood still. He strode to the middle ground between the villagers and the mounted partisans. He lifted both arms.
‘We greeted the Germans, didn’t we all? We met them with bread and salt. They were supposed to be our liberators from Stalin and his henchmen, they were the ones to set us free from the tyranny of the Communists. Hitler couldn’t be worse than Stalin, we said. We were all hopeful.’
Plokhoi lowered his hands. He nodded to the people.
‘I was, I know. I hated Stalin. I saw the steppe fill with the graves of starved women and children, next to wheat fields that should have fed them. I watched comrades be jailed, exiled, or shot for raising their voices against the repressions. So I was first in line when the Germans came. I waved my arms in the air.’
He walked past the starosta to an old woman. Flesh hung from her face, in the quarter light of the night Katya could see her hunger. Her neighbors stepped away from her now that the partisan came close.
Plokhoi reached for her hand. ‘How many of your men have the Nazis taken, mother?’
The woman lowered her chin, but with his free hand, Plokhoi lifted her face to his.
‘How many, mother?’
‘Half.’
‘Half your men.’
‘Yes.’