The Russian Concubine

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘How do you know?’ she asked urgently. ‘Where is he? Have you seen him? Is he well? Do you . . . ?’

  ‘Slow down, Lydia.’ Her hand was shaking worse than his. ‘If we’re talking about the same person, no, I don’t know his name and I don’t know where he is. But you needn’t worry about him because when I saw him last he was under the protection of Feng Tu Hong, the big boss of the Chinese Council and of the Black Snakes, so he should . . .’

  She swayed. He wasn’t sure if it was shock or relief.

  ‘When?’ she breathed.

  ‘When what?’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Oh, some time back . . . I’m not quite sure when it was exactly. He was talking to Feng Tu Hong. About you.’

  ‘Why me? What did he say?’

  Theo was struck by her need. It reminded him of his own. As if she were bleeding inside.

  ‘Lydia, dear girl, calm down. He asked Feng to tell his Snake brotherhood to leave you alone, though I have no idea what you did to get them so riled up in the first place.’

  ‘What did this Feng say?’

  ‘Well, Feng . . . ,’ he hesitated, somehow unwilling to reveal too much of the sordid truth to this young girl, ‘Feng agreed to do so, to leave you alone, I mean. Simple really.’

  ‘Mr Theo, please don’t treat me as a fool. I know how China works. What was the price?’

  ‘You’re right. He gave some information in return. About the troops arriving from Peking. That’s all.’

  Her skin had gone that awful sickly white of someone suffering from TB. Theo started to worry about her. ‘I think you ought to sit down a minute and . . .’ He put out a hand.

  ‘No.’ She pulled her arm away. ‘I’m fine. Tell me what happened. ’

  ‘Nothing. They let him go. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘So it’s the grey bellies,’ she whispered.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The translation,’ she said quickly. ‘Of my sentences on the paper. You’ll do it? Please.’

  ‘Of course. By tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She hurried out of the gate, fighting against the ceaseless flow of rickshaws, and started to run, her hat flapping behind her in the wind.

  Theo was sitting at his kitchen table. It was old and etched with character, the dark mahogany wood imprinted with the life of some unknown Chinese family. But right now the table held no interest for him. It was what was on the table. He had set the items in a row.

  A pipe, long and slender and made of finest carved ivory with blue metal decorations, was first. Normally he would admire its effortless elegance of line but not today. It wasn’t quite like an ordinary pipe because there was no bowl at the far end, but an inch or so from the tip was a hole on top of the pipe and into the hole was screwed a small metal cup, shaped like a pigeon’s egg, with a tight wooden cap held in place by a brass band. The cap was decorated in ivory with the Chinese character xi for happiness.

  Next to the pipe stood a small white jug. It contained water. Theo was having problems with it. The water kept appearing and disappearing like waves and when it disappeared, the inside of the ceramic jug became transparent instead of solid and he could see right though it to the little brass burner beside it on the table.

  That wasn’t possible.

  The part of Theo’s mind that was still holding on told him he was hallucinating. But his eyes told him otherwise.

  Next to the burner was the dream bringer. It lay inside an ancient malachite box that dated back to the Chin dynasty. He lifted the lid and felt the familiar kick of anticipation at the sight of the black paste. Using a brass spoon he scooped some out, about the size of a pea. His hands shook but he managed to pour a few drops of water from the jug into the spoon with the paste, unaware that he was spilling it all over the table as well, but lighting the wick of the spirit burner was harder. It kept moving. Shifting position. He wrapped one hand tightly around its brass base to stop its antics and finally brought the lighter and wick together.

  Now.

  He held the spoon over the heat. Watched with impatience as the water evaporated and the paste turned to treacle. This was high-quality merchandise, he could tell, made from the poppy pods themselves, the Papaver somniferum, not from the dross of the stems or the leaves. That rubbish gave you nothing more than a mild heat in your blood and a violent desire to vomit. When it was ready he tipped the heated paste with painstaking care into the cup on top of the pipe and fitted the lid over it. He could feel his pulse knocking holes in his wrists.

  He took a long draw on the pipe. His lungs filled with the pungent vapour, held it down deep inside, and his head started to uncoil, to flatten out all the pain into one long thin line that he could cut and let go. It was like a warm summer wind flowing through his veins, swirling out from the core of his body and into his limbs, cooling and soothing. Soft and sweet and relaxing. He took two more pulls on the pipe, breathed it deep into his mind and felt a smile of joy spread unbidden to his lips as he started to soar.

  Dimly he was aware of Li Mei in the room. She floated toward him, her oval face more perfect than ever as she leaned close and placed a kiss on his lips. She tasted of moonlight. He could feel her behind him, fingers gently massaging the back of his neck.

  ‘I relax you, Tiyo,’ he heard her whisper. ‘You do not need that black death.’

  Then her hair tickled his cheek as she bent over him and her hot tears dropped onto his skin and felt like warm kisses.

  ‘Li Mei, I love you with all my heart, my beloved,’ he murmured, his eyes closing.

  Her arms wrapped around him, hard and urgent, squeezing the breath from him. Very faintly he heard her voice, as if from a long way in the distance.

  ‘Tiyo, oh my Tiyo, my father has you in his grip. Can’t you see? It is his way of seeking revenge on you for leading me away into the fanqui world. You promised me, my Tiyo. That you would never let him lure you into the dragon’s mouth. Tiyo, my love, Tiyo.’

  Somewhere far, far away Theo heard her scream his name. Dark dreams. Demon dark. Spiked with fire.

  They swirled in Chang An Lo’s head. So fierce and so relentless that he didn’t know if he was awake or asleep. He was floating in blackness. Spinning. Spiralling upward. Then sinking and plunging into the thick slime at the bottom. It sucked at his skin and tried to slide into his mouth. The stench of it was suffocating.

  He gasped for air and suddenly he was floating again with clean fresh air filling his lungs and pure cold water soothing his tongue, washing away the filth. His eyes could make out fireflies. Dancing in the darkness that wrapped itself around him as cold as a shroud. He could see them, pinpricks of fire. Moving and swaying. And he could smell the burning.

  Scorched meat. Burnt flesh. Just as when he’d cooked the bullfrog on the fire for Lydia. Except this time it was his flesh. He remembered how her hair hung down as she reached for the skewered creature. Hair brighter than the flames.

  He could feel her fox-spirit with him now, blunting the fine edge of pain that sliced into his bones and into his sinews with each breath. He could see her tongue, soft and pink, and feel her fingers moist on his raw skin. At times he heard screams and his brain didn’t know if they were his or hers. But she was with him. So bright she filled his mind.

  29

  There were more cars on the streets. Or maybe it was just that Lydia was noticing more. In more colours too, it seemed. So Alfred said anyway. He often talked cars, about motors with names like Lanchester and Bean, and it irritated her the way her mother always looked impressed. Once Valentina had even asked what a torque tube was, which had left Lydia open-mouthed. She stood on the pavement outside Tuson’s Tearoom, shuffling from foot to foot in an effort to keep from freezing and started counting the maroon ones that drove past.

  ‘Hello, young lady. Punctual, I see. Good show.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Parker.’

  They hadn’t yet worked out a way of gre
eting each other. A kiss was too intimate - far too intimate - and a handshake too formal. Usually he gave her a little pat on the arm and she nodded a lot. It sort of got them through the awkward moment.

  ‘Let’s go in then,’ he said, bustling up to the teashop door. ‘It’s devilishly nippy out here.’

  He was swathed in a woollen muffler and a heavy tweed overcoat, and as he held open the door for her she saw him glance at her own coat and she felt acutely conscious of the thinness and smallness of it and of her lack of gloves. But she liked the way the coconut mat went ding when she stepped on it, announcing her arrival.

  ‘Now, Lydia, what is this about?’

  She was biting into her tarte au citron. Its sourness rasped her tongue. Parker’s toffee-brown eyes were looking at her closely from behind his round metal spectacles and there was a sharpness to them, an appraising awareness that wasn’t there when he was around Valentina. Lydia’s stomach gave a little lurch and she put down the tart. This could be harder than she thought.

  ‘Mr Parker,’ she said with careful courtesy, ‘I asked if we could meet today because,’ she took a deep breath, ‘I would like to borrow some money from you.’

  ‘My dear girl,’ he laughed lightly, dabbing the crumbs of his éclair from his lips with a napkin, ‘I am delighted you feel you can come to me with such a request, just like a . . .’ He stopped there, cleared his throat, and buffed his spectacles on his spotless handkerchief.

  Like a what? A daughter. That’s what. He’d wanted to say the word but backed off at the last second. She smiled across the table at him and already he was pulling out his wallet, the one she’d stolen. Without his spectacles he looked almost attractive, though nowhere near as handsome as Antoine, and he drove a lumpy sedan, an Armstrong Siddeley, not a skittish little sports-car, but she pushed all that out of her mind. The money. Concentrate on the money.

  He was leaning toward her in a confidential manner, chuck-ling. ‘What is it for? A little something for yourself? Or maybe your mother? You can tell me.’

  ‘It’s for a friend.’

  ‘Ah, a birthday gift perhaps.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Perfectly understandable. So how much would you like? Twenty dollars enough?’

  ‘Two hundred dollars.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Two hundred dollars.’

  He said nothing, but his bushy eyebrows drew together and his mouth tightened into a negative line. He looked as if she had insulted him.

  ‘Please, Mr Parker. Please. I need it for my friend.’

  He picked up his cup, sipped his tea, and shifted his gaze away from her to the window, to the crowds bustling past with bags from Churston Department Store or Llewellyn’s Haberdashery, fur collars pulled up around their ears. She had a feeling he wished he were out there with them. When he turned back to her, she knew his answer before he spoke.

  ‘I am sorry, Lydia. But the answer to your request is no. I can’t give you that kind of money. Not unless I know who it is going to and why.’

  ‘Please say yes.’ Her voice was soft and her hand crept halfway toward him, leaving a track on the white tablecloth.

  He shook his head.

  ‘It’s important to me,’ she urged.

  ‘Look, Lydia, why can’t you just tell me who this friend is and what the money is needed for?’

  ‘Because it’s . . .’ She was going to say dangerous, but knew that would send him and his wallet skidding out the door. ‘It’s a secret,’ she said instead.

  ‘Then I can’t help you.’

  ‘I could lie to you, tell you some story.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

  ‘I’m being honest. I’ve come openly to you, the man who is soon to marry my mother, asking for your help.’ She swallowed every remaining scrap of her pride and added, ‘As your daughter. ’

  For a split second she thought she had him. Something like delight flickered in his brown eyes, but then he was gone again.

  ‘No, absolutely not. You must understand, Lydia, that it would be my duty to refuse to hand out that kind of money to any daughter of mine unless I knew the reason for it. Money has to be earned, you know, and I work hard as a journalist to do so, therefore I . . .’

  ‘Then I’ll earn it.’

  He sighed and glanced out the window again as if seeking escape. At the next table two women in feathered hats laughed shrilly when a waitress brought them buttered crumpets, and Parker began polishing his spectacles yet again. Lydia realised it was a sign of stress.

  ‘How,’ he asked unhappily, ‘could you possibly earn it?’

  ‘I could help out at the newspaper. I can fetch and carry and make tea and . . .’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘No. We have plenty of people to do all those things already and anyway, your mother would be furious with me if I distracted you from your educational studies.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her. I can get her to . . .’

  ‘No. That’s final.’

  They stared at each other. Neither willing to look away.

  ‘There’s another way,’ Lydia said. ‘For me to earn two hundred dollars.’

  Something in the way she said it made him instantly wary. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, so that his jacket sleeves puckered and crumpled.

  ‘Let’s leave it there. Why don’t we just finish our cakes and talk about . . . ,’ he searched for a subject, ‘ . . . Christmas or the wedding.’ He gave her an encouraging smile. ‘Agreed?’

  She returned his smile and withdrew her hand. ‘Certainly. The wedding is set for January, isn’t it?’

  He nodded and his eyes grew bright at the thought. ‘Yes, and I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as your mother and I are.’

  She picked up a sugar cube from the bowl and started to suck one corner of it. Parker didn’t look pleased, but he passed no comment.

  ‘It seems to me,’ she said gently, ‘that the start of a marriage is an important time. You have to learn about each other, don’t you, and get used to living together. Accept the other person’s little habits and, well, foibles.’

  ‘There’s some truth in that,’ he said carefully.

  ‘So it seems to me,’ she took a tiny bite out of the sugar and crunched it between her teeth, ‘that having a ready-made daughter around could make the situation twice as . . . hard.’

  He sat up straight, both hands flat on the table. His expression was stern. ‘What are you implying here, Lydia?’

  ‘Just that it would be extremely helpful to you if that daughter promised to do exactly as you told her. No arguments. No disobedience for, shall we say, the first three months of your new and, I’m sure, wonderful, married life?’

  He closed his eyes. She could see his jaw clicking and unclicking. When he opened his eyes again they did not look as happy as she’d hoped.

  ‘That is extortion, young lady.’

  ‘No. It’s a bargain.’

  ‘And if I don’t agree to this bargain?’

  She shrugged and bit another piece off the cube.

  ‘Are you threatening me, Lydia?’

  ‘No. No, of course I’m not.’ She leaned forward and the words tumbled out. ‘All I’m doing is asking you to give me a chance, a fair chance to earn two hundred dollars. That’s all.’

  He shook his head, and the sugar tasted like ash in her mouth.

  ‘You are a devious child, Lydia Ivanova, but this kind of unholy behaviour must cease once your mother and I are married and you become Lydia Parker. I know your poor mother would be appalled at your duplicity.’ Suddenly he rapped the table hard three times with his silver cake fork. ‘Three months. With not a word or a look out of place from you. I have your word on it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He opened his wallet.

  In a dimly lit yard marked out with a circle of straw bales, the dog that looked like a wolf was having its throat torn
out. Inch by inch. Strips of fur and flesh flew across the circle. Gobbets of blood spewed out into the eager faces of the men who edged too close, as the pale dog, the one that looked like a ghost, shook its snarling head from side to side and dragged more of the soft gullet into its jaws. One ear was hanging by a thread. Its shoulder was ripped open and dangling down in a loose scarlet flap, but its grip on the wolf-dog’s throat was a death grip and the crowd roared its approval.

  Lydia took one look at the savagery taking place inside the circle of straw, one glance at the bloodlust in the eyes of the men, and then she walked over to the wall and was quietly sick. She wiped her mouth. She’d come this far and now was not the time to back out. For five days she had scoured the Russian Quarter of Junchow, walked its mean streets after school each day, seeking out Liev Popkov. The bear man. The one with the eye patch and the boots. Five days of rain and wind.

  ‘Vi nye znayetye gdye ya mogu naitee Liev Popkov?’ she asked again and again. ‘Do you know where I can find a man called Liev Popkov?’

  They had looked at her with suspicion and narrowed northern eyes. Anyone asking questions meant trouble. ‘Nyet,’ they shrugged. ‘No.’

  Until tonight. She had plucked up the courage to walk into one of the dark and dingy bars, a kabak, that stank of black tobacco and unwashed male bodies. Hers was the only female face, but she stood her ground and finally on payment of a half dollar a toothless old goat told her to try the dog yard behind the stable.

  Dog yard. More like death yard.

  It was where the men gathered on a Friday night to get their thrills, raw and unadulterated. Dog fighting. It put fire in their bellies and in their veins, wiping out the degradation of a week of hard, miserable labour. Here they bet on who would live and who would die, knowing that a win meant a good night’s vodka and maybe a girl as well if their luck held.

  Liev Popkov was there. Lydia spotted him easily. Towering above the tight huddle of onlookers whose breath drifted in the icy air like incense around the dark yard. A lantern on the wall behind Popkov threw his broad shadow across the circle and onto the warring dogs. She couldn’t see his face clearly but his great body looked motionless and lazy, and when he did shift position it was like the slow lumbering movement of a bear.