She took his hand in her own. His touch, rough and hard, had become an anchor, tethering her to this ugly life. He gripped her hand in return. They did not stop at any other houses.
As they walked on, the sun rose higher in the sky, warming them even more. Katya inhaled the smell of spring. The smell of the damp earth coming to life used to fill her with joy. It smelled of hope. It smelled of life. This year, it also smelled of rotting flesh.
The bodies of those who had died in the fields, in the streets, in their homes, had been frozen all winter, hidden beneath the heavy cloak of snow that covered the land. Now, under the warm spring sun, the corpses had finally begun their return to dust. So many bodies decaying all at once released a sickly sweet, noxious odor that filled Katya’s nose and wormed throughout her body until she thought she would never smell anything else again.
As they neared the collective headquarters, the smell worsened. Dead bodies lined the road and spotted the fields in various states of decomposition.
“Look.” Kolya stared out over a collective field. “They died in the field while they were digging for old rotten potatoes. Just fell, right there, and nobody moved them.”
Katya pulled the wraps closer around Halya to shield her from the smell and shuddered.
Like she suspected, no food waited for them at the collective headquarters, so they turned around and trudged back through the dead bodies scattered around the village. Their outing today had brought nothing but the devastating realization that most of their fellow villagers hadn’t survived.
Stalin must be proud. The activists and his OGPU had done their jobs well.
The next day, Kolya burst into the house as if the whole village was after him.
“I have meat,” he gasped, slamming the door behind him.
“Did they give out food at the collective?” Katya asked, a tremor of hope wavering in her voice. They hadn’t eaten any meat since the rat he had caught right after Denys died. “The snares have been empty for some time. Or did you catch a fish?”
“No, I have horse meat.”
“How?” Katya sat up, but Halya barely moved on the bed next to her. “They guard those horses so strictly on the farm.”
“They do. And once they are dead, they’re stacked in the pits, and covered in carbolic acid, so they are inedible.” He pulled two cloth-wrapped parcels out of the top of each boot and set them on the table. “I got to the horse before that.”
He unrolled the packages and inside, long strips of meat lay coiled in a mass, cut down and rolled narrow enough to wrap around Kolya’s ankles inside his boot. Katya’s stomach growled at the sight.
“I can’t believe we’ll be eating real meat.” Katya pulled herself up and made her way to the frying pan, her legs stinging with pain, then glanced out of the window. “It’s dark already, so the smoke won’t be noticed much. I’ll fry it up now.”
Kolya seemed jubilant and, despite his deep affection for horses, showed no sign of despair at the idea of eating parts of the animal. With little grain or hay, they were starving like everyone else. And, just like everyone else, Kolya couldn’t help them. The state thought the wave of the future lay with tractor farming, so they didn’t give the horses the respect or care they deserved.
Katya lit a small fire in the pich, her movements clumsy and heavy. The last of the dry wood they had wouldn’t create a lot of smoke, but she wanted the fire to be as short-lived as possible. The activists had taken to searching out any homes with smoke coming from their chimneys and raiding them. Nowadays, any sign of life from the villagers was a personal affront to them, and they took great care to eradicate it.
“How did you get this?” Katya asked.
He paused as he watched her throw the sliced meat into the frying pan. Licking his lips and averting his eyes, he continued. “I’m the only one at the stables now, so the guards rarely bother to check me. When the horse first died, I didn’t report it. I let it sit a bit, so the blood would congeal. Later in the day, I went back and used a knife from the barn to cut out its tongue. It’s quick and easy. Now that we have a tractor at the collective, I can haul the carcasses to the pit myself. No one else gets close enough to the horse to notice the missing tongue.”
The smell of frying meat filled the air, and it took all of her self-control to not rip the meat from the pan and eat it half-cooked. For a few minutes, they sat in silence, savoring the scent. Finally, Katya looked back at Kolya. “Our salvation may lie with the death of these poor horses. Are there many left?”