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villagers’ notice.
    The church in front of the cemetery was small, nothing grand. A simple building of wood and stone, the walls painted white. There were no gold spires, no bright colours, not even a bell tower.
Nor was there a priest to tend it; he had left more than a year ago when he heard about the fate of other priests. The state had tolerated the Church for a while, but now there was only the advance
of Stalin’s vision. Like the kulak, priests and poets were a threat to the common way of living so they were sought out and they were deported. Some were executed for their beliefs or for the
words they put on paper and the thoughts they had in their heads. Churches were broken and torn down. Bells were cast down from their towers.
    Our priest saw it coming and he ran. No one knew where he’d gone; all we knew was that one day he was simply not here. He told no one of his flight.
    Since then we had kept the church clean and in as good order as we were able, but there are things that can change a man’s faith, mould a man’s faith, and there are other
things that can’t. For me, a building and an effigy were not enough to make up for all that had happened and was happening to this world, and that was even truer as I walked alongside a sled
that carried the bodies of two small children. But I understood the value of ceremony for some people, and I knew the importance of life and of ritual.
    We passed among the broken headstones, and found a spot at the far end of the cemetery, by a crumbling wall, where we could dig.
    ‘One hole,’ I said, using a shovel to move the snow. ‘They can go in together.’
    Viktor took the other shovel, helping to clear the snow, and when we had outlined a big enough plot, we took turns swinging the pick to break the ground, which was hard with cold. And when that
was done, Petro shovelled out the dirt until the hole was deep enough.
    As we worked, the mist dissolved around us and the sun struggled to the edge of the sky, occasionally breaking through the cloud to catch on the icicles that stretched down from the overhang of
the wall. The graveyard was filled with a bleak beauty that was not lost on me.
    It was hard working like that, and after a while we stopped to take off our coats, Viktor nudging me to attract my attention.
    ‘What?’ I asked, glancing up.
    Viktor inclined his head in the direction we’d come from, and I looked across to see someone approaching.
    ‘Dimitri,’ I said under my breath. ‘Shit.’ I jabbed my shovel into the loosened soil and leaned a forearm on the end of its handle to watch him approach.
    ‘What are you up to, Luka?’ he said. ‘I came over to do some repairs on the church and I spot you three skulking round the back. What are you doing?’
    ‘Dimitri,’ I replied and raised a hand to my head in mock salute.
    ‘What are you up to?’ He grinned as he spoke, but there was no humour in him. He thought we were doing something he should know about and he was making it his business to find
out.
    Fate had related Dimitri Petrovich Spektor and me. We were family by marriage because our wives were sisters. My daughter Lara played with Dimitri’s daughter, Dariya, because they were
cousins and of a similar age, but Dimitri and I had never managed any bond of friendship. Dimitri made no attempt to conceal his dislike of me and his opinion that I sullied the family blood. I had
lived in Vyriv for over six years, my wife and children were Ukrainian, and I had fought for the Ukrainian anarchists, yet Dimitri found it hard to see beyond the fact that I was Russian and had
once been a soldier of the Red Army. To him, all Russians were thieves and drunkards, and his brash rudeness was always amplified when he addressed me. He used harsh tones and often spoke quickly,
running his words together, making it more difficult for me to understand him. I spoke good Ukrainian, but it was not my first language.
    Now I sighed and looked at Viktor before