The old man said nothing at all. Outwardly he seemed calm, though Andrei knew that this only masked a seething rage within.
‘Good,’ Stanislaus said cheerfully. ‘That’s all settled then.’ Now he glanced at the other Jew. ‘There’s just one other matter. It seems you owe Yankel here for your liquor. He says you haven’t paid him in two years. Give me the bill, Yankel. Ah, yes.’ He handed it down to Ostap, who took it glumly, glanced at it, and looked distressed.
‘The Jew is lying,’ he said firmly, but Andrei knew from the tone of his voice that his father was not certain of his ground.
Mordecai was a stranger, but Andrei knew Yankel well enough. He was a fat, rather cheerful fellow who operated the liquor store in Russka. Almost everyone in the area owed him money, but though he charged interest for it, he was not unduly harsh. He had two children – a girl and a little boy – and as Andrei considered his father’s formidable intake of vodka, he suspected that Yankel’s claim was perfectly justified.
‘Well, are you going to pay it?’ the Pole demanded.
‘I am not,’ Ostap replied.
‘As you please. Yankel,’ he went on, ‘go to the stable there and pick out the best horse you see. That should do it.’
Yankel hesitated a moment. He had been tempted to go to the Pole after twelve months of trying to get Ostap to pay what he owed, but now he was starting to regret it. He had no wish to make the Cossack his sworn enemy.
‘Get on with it,’ Stanislaus ordered peremptorily, and Yankel, with a look of embarrassment, went off. A few minutes later he returned with a horse that was by no means the Cossack’s best.
‘Is that it?’ Stanislaus asked.
‘It will do, your High Nobility.’
The Pole shrugged.
‘Goodbye,’ he said carelessly, and with that he was off, the two Jews following behind.
For some time no one spoke. Then Andrei turned to his father.
‘I ride south tomorrow,’ he said quietly.
Ostap nodded. Even Andrei’s mother did not complain. There was nothing to lose any more.
‘When I come back with our brothers,’ Andrei remarked with cold fury, ‘we shall kill every Pole and Jew in the Ukraine. Then the farm will be ours.’
‘Good idea,’ Ostap replied.
There was one thing left to do that night, but Andrei waited until he could hear his father’s snores in the yard before he slipped out of the house.
Cautiously he crossed the yard. Old Ostap liked to sleep outside in the summer; he would wrap himself in a blanket and lie in front of the porch, gazing up at the stars and humming quietly to himself until he fell asleep. It reminded him of the years past when he slept in the open on campaign.
‘I give each star a name, you know,’ he once told Andrei. ‘Each one’s an old comrade and I choose the star that seems to suit their character best. So I look up at the Plough and I say to myself: “Yes, there’s old Taras; and there’s my friend Shilo!” God knows how many Tatars his strong arm killed. They flayed him alive when they caught him, you know.’ He sighed. ‘I see their faces, up there in the night sky. And then I fall asleep.’ Each year, when summer was over, the old man would stay out a few nights longer than he should, wrapping himself in a sheepskin instead of a blanket, and downing God knows how many tots of vodka to keep out the cold. After a week or so of this he’d stagger in grumbling that his bones ached, and then give it up.
The night was still warm now, however. His snores were comfortable.
Softly Andrei made his way along the path. There was a half moon, low on the horizon, that gave the forest an agreeable sheen. He was so full of youth, his heart was dancing so lightly that, scarcely thinking about it, he began to run, gathering new energy and joy with every step he took. In the darkness, it almost seemed to Andrei that he was flying along the starlit path.
He passed the still pond where, the children said, rusalki dwelt. A few minutes later he was emerging on to the edge of the village’s big field. He was at Russka.
Nothing had changed. True, the little stone church from the days of Monomakh had been burned down by the Mongols; and later, the village had lain deserted for two hundred years. And yet nothing had changed. For in this land, every wooden house, sooner or later, was lost to fire or age. Settlements, like the fields around them, had their seed time and harvest: it was as if Russka had been left fallow for a time and was now under cultivation once more. And how else should the place look, but a group of huts on one side of the stream, and a little fort with a palisade around it on the other? There was a wooden church, with a little tower, inside the fort. In the Ukrainian manner, it was arranged as a simple Greek cross with a cupola over the centre and smaller cupolas over its eastern and western ends and over the two transepts. In the tower was a single bell.
Andrei did not need to cross the river. Instead, he crept stealthily up to a large wooden hut at the edge of the hamlet.
A watchdog cocked its head at his approach, but scenting him came forward, wagging its tail and whimpering softly until Andrei quieted it.
The building had an upper storey; in the end wall, a single window looked out under the eaves, with carved shutters and a little balcony in front of it. The shutters were open, to let in the night air.
Carefully, but easily, Andrei climbed up and sat astride the balcony, before tapping gently on the window frame.
‘Anna.’
Silence.
‘Anna, I’m coming in.’
This time there was a faint sound from within. A pale form appeared in the shadows of the room. There was a soft laugh.
‘So what do you want, my young brave, calling on a girl at night?’ The low voice laughed again. ‘Be off or I’ll set the dogs on you.’
Andrei chuckled.
‘They won’t do anything.’
‘I could call my father.’
‘You could. But you won’t.’ He started to swing his leg over the window frame, but she moved forward quickly, caught his ankle, and pushed it out again.
‘No you don’t.’
Now he could see her, and it made him catch his breath. Anna was the daughter of a Cossack like his father but her mother was from the faraway Caucasus – the villagers called her the Circassian – and the result of this union was a girl unlike any other in the region. She was almost as tall as he was, slim, with dark brown hair, a pale creamy skin, and a head held so high that she seemed to stare at the world as proudly as a young warrior. Indeed, her bold eyebrows, straight, strong nose and firm chin might almost have been those of a handsome youth; but a slight upturning at the end of the nose, and the wonderful, full lips, both proud yet always, it seemed, about to open into a warm kiss, undercut any masculinity in her other features and made her, for Andrei and many others, tantalizingly desirable.
She was sixteen and unmarried.
‘Nor will I be, until I see a man I like,’ she had announced to her parents and the village in half-mocking defiance.
In the manner of the Cossack girls, she lived a free and easy life with the young men of the village. Some of them might even steal a kiss – though if they tried to go too far they would find her more than a match for them and like as not be sent sprawling.
But since Andrei had returned from the seminary a few months before, there had been a subtle change in her manner towards him.