The Folveshch

6. The Folveshch

I didn't dare return to the cottage after that, and I did not allow Aleksy to either. I broke it to him some hours later in my home that I'd found his father dead, and that my elder cousin Pyotr would be in touch with the grave keeper in the days to come. On his knees he bawled for a long time in the middle of our kitchen, still buried head to toe in his ill-fitting outdoor clothing. He was a pathetic, sorry sight, and I almost even bent down and hugged him.

I had to assume Viktor had died of starvation and dehydration, despite his son's best efforts and enduring belief of his eventual recovery. Perhaps the rest of my brief visit had been my mind playing tricks; after all, the flickering firelight often does summon phantom figures that are never truly there. How do dead men walk? I don't need to remind you that they don't, and I damn well know it too. Pyotr assured me he was dead, confirming beyond doubt that his heart had ceased beating weeks ago.

"So that's why he didn't speak to me?" Aleksy asked me after he'd wiped away the last of his tears. "H-He couldn't."

"He couldn't for a while, Aleksy," I told him, keeping to a gentle tenor. "Pyotr says he's been dead at least a month."

"You're wrong," he fired. He shook his head, long fringe swaying across his dirty brow. "He spoke to you only last week; he told you to say thanks to your mama for the loaf, remember? He said he'd fix your cart for a smile. He asked for help carrying the logs. I remember."

My mother appeared at the far side of the room and mouthed one word: don't. Don't what? Tell him that it was his imagination all along? My own father had not spoken a word since the day we found him collapsed on all fours on Slava's Hill, screaming at the sky. A long time alone in silence would have only wreaked havoc on Aleksy's psyche, testing his capability to endure such loneliness. God knows I'd experienced it for myself in the kabina, and so I heeded my mother and smiled.

"I remember."

Aleksy did not need the truth.

You may be pleased to know that the poor boy finally lived as part of my family from then on, having no other kin to turn to. In a lot of ways he filled the gap Rusya had left nine years ago – by coincidence they would be roughly the same age, too – but I knew Aleksy would never be his replacement.

Less welcome, though, was that Aleksy became a lost lamb and followed me about whenever he physically could. He would sit at my side and watch me read the newspaper in Papa's chair; he'd watch me eat, brew coffee, hang my laundry by the stove. He'd tag along when I visited my new sweetheart, Marina, lacking any regard for our need of personal space or intimacy ... Needless to say my love-life all but dried up while Aleksy kept interrupting it, unrelentingly curious of us both. He would even accompany me to the outhouse and sit drawing faces in the snow until I'd finished.

Still, I valued the solitude of my dreams ... for a while, at least. In the dead of night Aleksy made a habit of creeping to the foot of my bed, watching me for a while, and deciding to top-and-tail until I arose in the morning. And yet I never said a word to him about it. His constant presence was harmless at first, though perhaps a little unnerving between you and me, but I couldn't find the heart to tell him I needed some privacy. How could I? The boy needed to be close to me while he dealt with whatever manner of grief he was going through, and if it meant I'd acquired a second shadow, so be it.

Surely not even Aleksy could follow me around forever.

It was when he tailed me around work, at the construction site of Darakyev's revolutionary machine factory, that he became any kind of problem. Since Darakyev's labour force had embraced the new working calendar, I'd buckle down day after day on the site, hardening my palms and straining my young back for little return. Each work day Aleksy would sit no more than five metres away from me at any given time, tossing tools from hand to hand to cure his boredom. His idleness seldom bothered me, but that was not the case for everyone.

"Alyovich. A word," my contractor grumbled one morning as I picked up my quota of tools. He approached with unwelcome haste and pulled me aside from my coworkers. "You find your pup a new home," he said, nodding in Aleksy's direction. "No idea what you think you're doing bringing a kid to a construction site."

"Of course, Mr Shchurov."

"Kid could get hurt, or burnt, or I don't care what. You think that'd look good on me if I let this place turn into a fucking nursery?"

"No, Mr Shchurov," I said, and my shoulders sagged a little. "He'll be gone by tomorrow."

He jabbed a finger at my chest. "Today, Alyovich. Get him out of my sight within the hour or I'll see you off too."

My contractor left the way he came and, out of earshot, I offered him my suggestion of where he should stick his job. I doubled back on myself, still snarling under my breath, and snatched Aleksy up by his trouser braces.

"What're you doing?" he snapped.

"Giving you some work to do," I replied, and released him. "This arrangement isn't working out, Aleksy."

"What do you mean? I'm not doing anything wrong, am I?"

"Old dough-face doesn't like you being here, that's all. I've been thinking ... Perhaps it's about time you stepped up to your father's mark."

He pulled a face. "You mean to say you want me cutting up bits of wood?"

"Da. Surely you picked up something from him."

As I found out the following day, Aleksy Viktorovich Malenhov knew almost nothing about carpentry at all. If the state of the foot stool I'd tasked him to build was anything to go by, poor Viktor's trade would die a miserable death alongside him.

But not all was lost. My mother, who now spent four hours a day out of the house volunteering at the kabina, offered to take the teen off my hands until I could find an occupation more suited for him.

Finding him a place in our community would be a difficult task, as I'd found that Aleksy's damaged psyche produced a curious trait: He did not communicate with anyone outside of my presence. And that, I thought, didn't matter where the men of the kabina were involved. They would not judge him for his oddities: his strange gait, his long, blank-eyed stares, or the way he had heated conversations with himself sometimes.

I'd even hoped that with a little extra guidance he might have made a good carer. In theory he could help my mother wash the men and feed them, like he had done for his father for years, and it wouldn't matter if Aleksy did something ... weird.

But how could I have been so senseless?

By the time the snows hurried in and stripped the valley of any remaining greenery, catatonic polio survivor Iakov Yakunin had no eyes.

And, according to Irina Soldatova, she found Aleksy in the yard ...

Eating them.