The Child Thief Read Online Free PDF Page B

my brother.’
    ‘Unless he’s Red Army.’
    ‘We have to give him the benefit of the doubt. We have to let him speak for himself and then we can decide what he has and hasn’t done.’
    Natalia folded her hands in her lap, pushing them between her knees. ‘And if he’s running from something?’ she asked. ‘Someone shot him, so they might be following him.
What if he brings the communists?’
    ‘They’ll come eventually; we both know that.’
    ‘Later rather than sooner is the way I’d like it. What do you think they’ll do when they come here? They’ll take everything we have. Force us onto a collective if
we’re lucky or send my children away to Siberia if I’m not. Take my husband out in the night and I’ll never see him again.’
    I stared into the fire. ‘We should think about leaving,’ I said. ‘Soon. There are ways into Poland.’
    ‘We’ve talked about this. The borders are closed and we don’t have papers.’
    ‘We’ll find somewhere if we go across country – stay away from the roads.’
    ‘We can’t take Lara across country in this weather. No, all we can do is stay here, and when they come do whatever they ask of us. If we do that, we can stay together.’
    ‘I’m not so sure they’d allow it.’
    We sat for a long time without speaking, both of us lost in our thoughts. We watched the fire weaken in the hearth, and I threw on another piece of wood when Natalia went to bed. And while she
drew the blankets against the cold, I stayed in my chair, watching the stranger.
    I barely closed my eyes all night. My whole being was alert to the sounds of the house, my ears strained for a rattling at the locked door. I considered Natalia’s concern that someone
might have followed the stranger – that he might have been running from something – and I knew that when the activists first came, they always came at night. To take the men away.

5
    It was still dark, but I guessed it was between four and five because I was roused from an ill doze by the lilt of a lonely blackbird’s song. It continued to sing,
oblivious to my troubles, and I looked at the man still lying in front of the fire. The flames were long since dead and the room was cold, but the man was well covered.
    I stood and rubbed my eyes. I arched my back, feeling the stiffness working out of my muscles.
    The man had hardly moved. He was in more or less the same position he’d been in last night, his thin frame tucked beneath a pile of blankets and sheets. I could hear him breathing –
a slow, heavy sound. Laboured and shallow breaths, each one accompanied by the rasping wheeze of a dying man. I waited, listening to the awkward drawing in of air, the weak exhalation, then I went
through to the bedroom.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ Natalia whispered.
    ‘Nothing. Go back to sleep.’
    ‘I haven’t slept all night.’
    ‘I’m going to take Viktor up to the cemetery,’ I said. ‘Bury those children. You can take care of the animals?’
    ‘I can manage.’
    ‘Take Petro and Lara with you.’ They would make Natalia’s job easier and it would mean they were out of the house. I wanted to show our guest some care and hospitality, but I
didn’t want to put my family at risk by leaving them alone with him.
    Natalia pushed back the bedclothes and swung her legs out. Beside her, Lara stirred. In the other bed, Viktor and Petro, men now, not boys, too big to have to sleep together. Perhaps, when times
were better, they could have their own places.
    I shook Viktor awake. ‘Come on. I need your help.’
    ‘Is he still alive?’ Natalia asked.
    ‘Still alive.’ I nodded. ‘Still asleep. He must be exhausted. I wonder how far he’s come. What he’s been through.’
    ‘Or what he’s done .’
    ‘We’ll wake him when I come back. Give him something hot to eat, find out who he is. Then we’ll know what he’s done.’
    ‘Will we?’
    I looked at my wife.
    ‘If he’s done something to those children, do you really