A Boy in Winter Read online

  Once the snow melts, word can be sent to her mother that she is safe, Yasia knows this. But word spreading about the boys makes her frightened, because all is still to be discussed and decided.

  It is enough to make Yasia stop the boys from going outside.

  —

  As soon as the tracks are clear enough, the priest comes to the village, pulled in an ox cart, stiff and upright, his robes on under his travelling blankets. Yasia sees his arrival as he passes the windows; it has her standing, sudden and shocked, spilling the small boy’s milk across the table.

  The elder is there to receive him at the meeting of the tracks. Yasia watches their solemn handshake, she hears their salutation—and then how her uncle is called out to join them, his boots already tied, as if he has been waiting for this.

  The three men stand with their heads bent together in earnest talking; it is a back and forth—between the priest and Uncle first, and then the priest and the elder—and Yasia thinks that now it is all over; the elder has heard all he needs and has reached his verdict. The boys will be sent off, not welcome here either.

  But then Uncle calls to her to take off her apron.

  “Dress the boys, child. Bring the brothers with you.”

  —

  In the end, it comes unasked. In the reeds, by the still-frozen riverside the following morning.

  Out on the ice, Uncle bends tentative with his axe, chipping and chipping at the thaw, while Yasia stands with the two boys at the shoreline, in amongst the small throng gathered there.

  Whole families have turned out, the first time so many from the marshlands have gathered together since the snows came; the old cocooned in blankets, the youngest wrapped tight in swaddling clothes. The sons are scrubbed, all the young daughters’ hair is plaited, elaborate around their temples; and Yasia stands upright among them, hands clasped with the two brothers either side of her.

  The young one watches everything, dark eyes alert as the people sing and murmur; the older one’s face is harder to read, although Yasia tries as the priest calls for quiet.

  Then Uncle’s boots scuff the frozen surface around the dark hole he has opened. He dips the pail and lifts out the waters, and they are passed hand to hand until they reach the shoreline.

  The priest blesses them and raises them to the morning light, and then they are poured, cold and clear, on the brothers’ foreheads.

  The young one turns to Yasia first, in puzzlement, and then he lifts his face to the skies, and he laughs out loud in his surprise.

  The villagers turn to him; nodding to Yasia, they return his smiles, some even his laughter. And all the while the priest keeps on his blessing, pouring the water on the handful of village children born under Stalin, and on the newest village baby, born in the frosts, held tight now in her mother’s arms. Yasia watches to one side, the low spring morning light in her eyes as she takes it all in: the baby’s cries, the priest’s wide palms and his murmured intoning; the older one’s solemn face, just as wet as his younger brother’s smiling one.

  The sunlight plays on the water, sun and shadow passing across the older boy’s features, and it is as hard to know what he is thinking.

  But then, back at the elder’s house, the boys’ birth dates and names are scratched into the priest’s ledger, and onto the sheaves of village papers; and on the bench outside the window, they sit close beside one another, Yasia and the older one. The small one lies across them, half on her lap, half on his, and it is almost warm then, with the sun on their faces and their backs against the stone wall. Each with their own thoughts, no need for talking. Of all that is no longer. Or can’t be made right again. Of times to come, that can’t be guessed at yet.

  In this quiet meanwhile, in the room behind them, sand is scattered on the ink to dry it, and then all the men present shake hands on their agreement: the older one is Yevhen, and the young one is Mirek; Yasia will teach him until it falls from his tongue.

  So if anyone should come asking, the two of them are marsh boys.

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks to Dr. Beate Meyer at the Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden in Hamburg, who pointed me in the direction of this story when I was writing another entirely; and to Dr. Beate Kosmala at the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung in Berlin, whose essay on Willi Ahrem, a Haupttruppführer in the Organisation Todt, inspired this book.

  Ahrem’s experiences inspired Otto Pohl’s, but Pohl is a character of my own invention; any personal similarity with Ahrem, or any other person of the time, is unintentional.

  I am indebted to many other historians and scholars whose work has informed my own. Key among them, for this novel, have been Karel Berkhoff and Wendy Lower.

  Artem Koslov kindly provided the translations of the Ukrainian dialogue; he and his family also advised on names for my Ukrainian characters.

  Any errors in this novel are my own.

  I am grateful to my agents Toby Eady and Veronique Baxter for unstinting support, and to all at the David Higham Agency. To my editors: Lennie Goodings for her impeccable judgement, and Dan Frank for always setting the bar high. To the staff at Goldsmiths Library, the British Library and the Imperial War Museum photo archive.

  Thank you to Carl Holland for listening while I thought out loud. To Courttia Newland for strengthening my resolve. To Matt Griffiths for asking. (See? I did it.) And above all to Michael.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Rachel Seiffert’s first novel, The Dark Room, was short-listed for the Booker Prize, won the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Prize, and was the basis for the acclaimed motion picture Lore. She was one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003; in 2004, Field Study, her collection of short stories, received an award from PEN International. Her second novel, Afterwards, and her third, The Walk Home, were both long-listed for the Orange/Bailey’s Prize for Fiction, and in 2011 she received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Seiffert’s books have been published in eighteen languages. She lives in London with her family.

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