The Concubine's Secret (22 page)

He laughed again and it felt good. He’d forgotten how much laughing helps. He turned and wrapped his arms around her naked body as she knelt on the bed, kissing her lips and taking a lingering pleasure in their soft, pliant response. But after a moment she pushed him away, leaving only her hand on his chest.

‘So?’ she demanded.

‘So what?’

‘So how did you get from liaison officer in China to filthy tramp in this backwoods town of Soviet Russia?’

He brushed his lips along the soft angle of her cheekbone and wondered how much of this would be passed on elsewhere, but he couldn’t stop his tongue now.

‘That’s simple. I discovered I had a half-sister.’ He looked deep into Antonina’s dark troubled eyes and didn’t want to lie to her, to add to the shadows that haunted her lovely face. But nevertheless he did. ‘I was sick of the bourgeois life. At the time I was considering returning to Russia for good.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I wanted to be a part of this great undertaking. This sculpting of a whole new nation, this transformation of thought processes to an idealistic instead of materialistic society.’

She eased her slender body out of his arms and lay back on the pillows, her long naked legs stretched out, her gloves stroking them as though they belonged to someone else. There was something unself-consciously sensual about the slow, ritualistic movements.

‘So you came here together,’ she said without looking at him, ‘you and your Lydia, to find this Jens Friis?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s no longer at Trovitsk camp, you know.’

‘Are you certain? Is that what you came to tell Lydia?’

‘Yes.’

‘So where is he now?’

‘Moscow.’

‘Fuck!’

Moscow. Damn the Cossack for being right.

She regarded him solemnly. ‘So now you have the information you wanted. Are you going to leave me?’

‘Antonina,’ he said teasingly, ‘where else am I going to get a bath and a shave? Of course I’m staying.’

She laughed, delighted, and ran a toe all the way up his arm and into his beard.

Her skin tasted of olives. Of warm sunlight on good French burgundy with plump ripe olives. It tasted civilised. It’s what Alexei had missed. He was sick to his soul of greyness and dirt and utilitarian living. He wanted olives.

He kissed Antonina’s throat and felt the flutter of her pulse as his tongue traced the fragile line of her collarbone, heard her excited intake of breath. Like a child when it spies the Christmas tree. His own breath quickened as he ran a hand along the length of her naked thigh, caressed her slender waist where a small blue scar broke the smooth perfection of her skin, and let his fingertips trail softly over her breasts and down into the valley between them. She moaned and murmured something inaudible, shutting her eyes, her lips opening in a smile of secret pleasure. He touched her teeth with his tongue. They tasted of brandy.

‘Is this dangerous?’ he murmured.

‘Of course it is. That’s why you’re here.’

‘And you?’ He kissed each eyelid. ‘Is that why you’re here?’

‘I’m here because…’

A pause, nervy and tense, seemed to take over the room, then reluctantly her eyelashes lifted and he could look into her eyes. They were dark and confused. Slowly they began to fill with tears.

‘Oh Antonina, what are you doing?’

Gently he took her in his arms, rocked her against his chest as he lay back on the pillows and enveloped her shuddering body. He kissed her dark glossy hair and tightened his grip on her. He didn’t know this woman or what was hurting so fiercely inside her. But he did know he didn’t want to let her go. If he were married to someone who routinely sent starving men out to haul wagons like slaves, or dig coal with little more than their bare hands, he too would come looking for ways to ease the pain. He might even wear elbow-length gloves in bed the way she did. Quietly he breathed in her perfume and felt an unexpected connection with Antonina. He rested his head on hers, cradling her to him, feeling the warmth of her body flow into his.

How do any of us know what we will do until we do it?

‘Kolya.’

The blond young truck driver lifted his head from a copy of
Pravda
and regarded Alexei with interest. He had the kind of eyes that would always be interested. In anything.

‘What can I do for you?’ He tossed his newspaper into the cab of his truck and watched as Alexei approached.

Alexei had tracked him to an open concrete yard alongside the road to the foundry. Drivers gathered there with their trucks, waiting in line to make deliveries or to collect a new load from the ironworks, and the queue was sometimes so long that a stall supplying
kvass
had been erected, another selling
chai
and blinis beside it.

‘Let me buy you a drink,’ Alexei offered and gestured to the stalls.

Kolya grinned. ‘I’d prefer vodka.’

‘So would I.’ Alexei pulled a bottle from his pocket. He took a swig from it himself and handed it across to Kolya, who did the same.

The day was dull, the cold not so intense as a month ago and snow was shovelled into oily mounds round the edge of the yard. For a moment Alexei held his breath, considering the risk he was about to take. He had to judge his man well. He was in no doubt that OGPU secret police had informers in every corner of Felanka. When a handsome bird suddenly rose from somewhere downriver, a Siberian crane spreading its black-tipped wings and circling effortlessly above the truck yard like an extra pair of eyes, Alexei laughed out loud. He turned to Kolya and slapped him on the back.

‘Right, comrade, fancy a bit of action?’

‘Yes. This town is like a morgue.’ The young driver flashed his teeth.

‘Then meet me tonight. I want to talk business.’

Alexei pushed open the door. The bar was thick with bodies. The air clogged with cigarette smoke which hung in a lifeless pall near the ceiling, where it mingled with fumes from the stove. At least the place was warm, that was something. Alexei stamped his feet to rid them of ice, while outside in the darkness snow was falling in soft flurries.

He elbowed his way through the crush and reached the bar, where he ordered vodka and beer for two. The pretty young Uzbeki girl with the embroidered blouse and the wayward hips served him his drinks and rolled her black eyes at him invitingly, but he shook his head. He scooped up his drinks and made his way over to a table at the back where Kolya was already seated.

‘
Dobriy vecher
. Good evening,’ he greeted the truck driver.

He placed the vodkas and beers on the stained surface and in return received a grin of gleaming strong teeth and the offer of a smoke. He declined it because, despite the bath and shave, he could still smell Antonina’s perfume on his skin and he liked it there – he wasn’t ready to coat it in nicotine. Leaving her had been hard, dislocating something inside him because he didn’t know when he would see her again.

‘
Dobriy vecher
, comrade.
Spasibo
.’ Kolya accepted the drinks and knocked back the vodka with relish. The beer he nursed fondly between his hands. ‘Now, tell me, who is this wretch who stole your money?’

Alexei leaned forward. ‘We have an agreement, you and I.’

‘
Da
. I get to keep half of everything I get back for you.’

‘Just as long as you remember that.’

‘Don’t worry, comrade, I’m not a thief. Nor are my friends.’ Kolya nodded meaningfully towards a group of men in truckers’ heavy outfits. With a certain look in their eyes, they all had it: the look of a loner. Alexei knew he’d think twice before crossing them. Hopefully Vushnev would as well.

‘So?’ Kolya took a mouthful of his beer. ‘His name?’

‘It’s Mikhail Vushnev, the camp-’

‘I know him. Thin as a weasel and smokes a pipe.’

‘That’s the bastard.’

Kolya slumped back in his chair and drained half his beer. ‘The shit has gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘He came swaggering in here a few weeks back, buying everyone drinks. Said he was off to Odessa to start a new life with his money, so-’

‘With
my
money,’ Alexei corrected. ‘And it won’t be Odessa. He’ll have the brains to cover his tracks.’

‘The bastard.’

‘No success for either of us, it seems, comrade.’

‘The bastard,’ Kolya repeated mournfully, as if the loss of the money had frozen his thought processes.

Alexei drank the vodka. What the hell else was there to do? Except smash the glass on the table. He sat in silence, stiff and stern, his thoughts crashing into each other.

‘Kolya, where are you heading with your next load?’

‘Novgorod.’

‘When?’

‘Day after tomorrow.’

‘I’ll see you then. At the truck stop. Be there early.’ Alexei threw his last handful of coins on the table. ‘Buy your friends a drink from me.’

He pushed himself to his feet and once outside in the darkness he said the bastard’s name. ‘Mikhail Vushnev.’

He said it only once and spat in the gutter to rid himself of it. He began to walk, slowly at first, letting the snow settle on his skin, then faster, feet skidding on the icy ground. His mind started to clear. Twenty-four hours. Twenty-four precious hours to smell her perfume on his skin, to feel again the gentle weight of her body on his and see the thoughtful brown-eyed gaze that did something to the dark cold places inside him. Up ahead the lights of the Leninsky Hotel shone brightly.

It was the mirror that brought Lydia back to Chang. He was being driven in a large black sedan that smelled of new leather and shone with polished chrome. Seated alone in the back with just the cap of the driver in front of him, a young soldier who knew how to remain silent, Chang glanced up with no real interest at the rearview mirror. He caught sight of a rectangular slice of one of the driver’s black eyes, and a sudden lurch in his chest stole his breath away.

Another car. Another driver. Another city. Another rectangle of a mirror. Yet it was as if she were here right now beside him. Her presence was so strong. He turned his head, expecting to see Lydia’s bright smile, and instead saw nothing but the chaos outside on the busy streets of Canton, rain-soaked rickshaws dodging the bumpers of the heedless cars and vans that clogged the thoroughfares. He lifted a hand, letting it touch the empty air next to him on the seat, curling his fingers through it, feeling for her. He listened intently for her breathing.

Slowly his hand drifted down till it was resting, palm down, on the leather. It was maroon and the thought that slipped into his head was that it wouldn’t show the blood from his hands. He blinked, startled. Where had that come from? His hands were long healed where the two fingers had been removed.

Did it come from her? From Lydia? Was she in need of his hands? The thought caught at his throat.

Each morning and each night he prayed with bowed head to the gods to keep her safe. He offered them bargains, his safety for hers, he made them promises that were extravagant and ever more costly, every one of which he swore to honour if only Lydia was returned to him unhurt, unharmed, undamaged. He vowed eternal devotion to the shrines and burnt candles in the temples, as well as incense and paper images of fearsome dragons. He slaughtered a bullock. To give her strength. All this despite his Communist ideals that dismissed such beliefs as a fool’s superstition. All this to keep her safe. To keep her safe he would even give her up, his fox girl, and spend eternity in tears.

But now today it was as though she were suddenly here. With him, on the maroon leather. And his heart for one fleeting moment flew back to that other day when she sat beside him in a car, and he had looked up at the rearview mirror to seek out the eyes of the driver. To learn whether he had stepped into a trap.

Her hands had curled around Chang’s, cradling his bandages to her breast as she might cradle an infant, and despite the raging fever that made his eyes dull as pond water and his brain as sickly as a rabid dog’s, he knew he would remember this moment. For a brief minute she’d rested her cheek on his shoulder and her hair had crept like flames over his shirt front. Just to look at her was enough, at her pale cheek and her clear amber eyes. It drew him back from the edge.

She seemed fragile. Frightened. Yet she’d pulled him forcibly into Theo Willoughby’s car on the snowy streets of Junchow, whisking him from under the nose of the police just when the Nationalist authorities believed they had captured him at last. She’d looped her arm around his shoulders, holding him upright, and the last thing he wanted was to topple over in her teacher’s car. She would lose face.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Lydia said politely to the man driving. ‘Thanks for giving us a ride.’

The schoolmaster glanced quickly in the mirror, his gaze seeking Chang. Even in his sick state Chang knew the signs. The yellowish skin around the mouth. The eyes not quite in this world. This Englishman was smoking the pipe of dreams at night and could not be trusted.

‘So what have we here?’ Willoughby had asked with more curiosity than Chang cared for.

‘This is my friend, Chang An Lo.’

‘Ah! The young rebel I’ve heard about.’

‘He’s a Communist fighting for justice.’

‘It’s a fine line, Lydia.’

‘Not to me.’

After a moment Willoughby said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’

‘For you.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘You are crossing a divide that is too wide for your young legs.’

‘Just help us. Please.’

‘How? He looks almost dead.’

‘Take us somewhere where the soldiers will not come.’

‘Where, Lydia? A hospital?’

‘No, they’ll find him there. Your school.’