The Russian Concubine

by Kate Furnivall

  But his eyes never opened, not a flicker, and his arms and legs lay lifeless, even when she changed the bandages on his hands, and she knew it must hurt horribly on some deeper plane where she couldn’t reach him. But sometimes sounds came from his mouth. Whispers. Low and urgent. She leaned over and put her ear close to his mouth, so close she could feel his faint breath hot on her skin, but she could make no sense of the sounds.

  But once, when she was spreading a grainy yellow salve over his lips with her forefinger, his mouth suddenly opened just a fraction and his lips closed over her finger. It was an extraordinarily intimate act. The tip of her finger in the soft moist folds of his mouth. More intimate even than when she held his penis in her hand and washed it. She felt a surge of exhilaration and hugged it to herself. She rested her own lips on his forehead.

  That moment was enough to carry her through the long night.

  The Chinese medicines were not working.

  Lydia’s throat was closing in a wave of panic. He’d want the Chinese medicines. Not fanqui concoctions, she was certain of that. But when would they start to work? When? As each hour crawled past, his skin burned more. Hot and dry as desert sand. In the cold and lonely darkness, she wrapped both her hands around his forearm, just above the bandages on his wrist and she held on tight.

  She would not let him go.

  Would not.

  Dawn filtered through the curtains and a soft misty light slowly filled the room. It was cold. Lydia was wrapped in her coat and she kept the eiderdown, a pretty peach one that was glossy and new, tucked tight around the still figure on the bed. But she was appalled at her own ignorance. Should she light the gas fire that was in the room attached to one wall? Keep the air warm? And place the rubber hot-water bottle at his feet? Or was that all wrong? Maybe she should open the window to allow the icy air in to cool him from the outside.

  Which?

  She felt cold sweat on her own body and fought back the panic. She was tired, she told herself, too tired. That’s what the Chinese man had said to Mr Theo. The herbalist. He said she looked as if her chi had drained away, and he insisted that she buy a mixture of herbs he concocted for her to drink like tea, but she was far more interested in what he prepared for Chang An Lo. For fever, burns, and infected wounds, she told Mr Theo, that’s what she wanted, and he had translated her needs to the herbalist and then translated to her the instructions for use of the treatment.

  Lydia had felt reassured the moment she walked into the herbalist’s little shop. It smelled wonderful. Its shelves were crammed with glass jars of all shapes and sizes, some blue, some green, some a muddy brown, all full of herbs and leaves and other things Lydia could not even guess at but she had a crazy feeling there might be something like lizards’ hearts or porcupine’s gallbladder and rhino horn. Great ceramic bowls of seeds and dried flowers and sheets of tree bark stood on the floor and scented the shop with enticing aromas. But best of all was the herbalist himself. He positively gleamed with good health, with teeth so white Lydia found she could not look away from them.

  She had handed Alfred’s envelope of money over to Mr Theo for payment. It was more than enough, thank God. Or more accurately, thank Alfred. For this once she did genuinely thank him, a reluctant, grudging kind of thanks that surprised her. But she knew that without him, she wouldn’t have found Chang because she couldn’t have hired Liev.

  Mr Theo said little. Just asked if it was all for that Chinese friend of hers.

  ‘I’d rather not discuss it, if you don’t mind.’

  He shrugged, his tall frame loose and somehow disjointed, but he didn’t seem to mind. She noticed he bought some preparations for himself too and at any other time she’d have been curious, especially after what she’d overheard on the stairs between him and Mr Mason. But her fear for Chang An Lo was all she had room for right now. So she sat. Watched Chang’s face slowly materialise out of the darkness, each moment bringing another detail of it to her hungry gaze, and she was astonished at how familiar it was to her already. As if it were imprinted deep in her brain. The thickness of his eyelashes, the angle of his nose, the exact flare of his nostrils and curve of his ear. She could see them with her eyes shut.

  Very gently while she sat in the chair she laid her head on the pillow next to his, her forehead resting against his hot cheekbone. Making a connection. She closed her eyes and asked herself why it was she cared so much, so much it hurt, but she couldn’t come up with an answer.

  ‘Tell me the symptoms.’

  ‘Fever. A really high fever. Unconsciousness. Infected wounds and burns.’

  ‘Overall health? I mean is the patient in good condition otherwise or one of the undernourished mass of the Chinese population of Junchow? It makes a big difference, you know.’ Mrs Yeoman was twisting her thick white hair into a bun at the back of her head and sticking clips in it. Lydia had never seen her hair loose before, it was like liquid snow, but then she had never come calling this early before.

  ‘He’s very weak. And thin. Very thin.’

  ‘I’ll happily come and tend to him, you know, if he needs medical help. So tell me where . . .’

  ‘No. Thanks, Mrs Yeoman, but no. He won’t accept European help.’

  ‘But he will accept yours?’

  ‘No. I’m just giving the medicines to his family.’

  ‘Lydia, my dear, it does my heart good to see you so concerned for the poor people of this country. We are all God’s children, yet so many Westerners treat the Chinese worse than dogs. It’s shameful to see, especially when they . . .’

  ‘Please, Mrs Yeoman. I need to hurry.’

  ‘Forgive me, dear, you know how I prattle on. Here’s the list for the chemist. Mr Hatton in Glebe Street is very good, always open with the lark, and he will give you first-class advice if you mention my name.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m sorry to disturb you so early.’

  ‘Don’t fret, child. Be good while your mother is away, won’t you? Don’t do anything she wouldn’t like.’

  ‘No, of course not. I’m going to write an essay on Paradise Lost down at the library today.’

  ‘That’s my girl. Your mother should be proud of you.’

  ‘Ah, little sparrow, what you do back so soon? That stepfather throw you out already?’

  ‘Mrs Zarya, hello. I just came over for some information from Mrs Yeoman.’

  ‘Hah! And you rush off not even to say dobroiye utro to your favourite teacher of Russian. Nyet, nyet. I have baked fresh pirozhki and you must taste.’

  ‘Spasibo, thank you. Another time. I promise. Must dash now. Sorry. Prastitye menya.’

  ‘Little sparrow, I want you come to party, a bal, with me. Big Russian party.’

  At any other time she’d have jumped at the chance, but right now it was just an unwelcome intrusion.

  ‘I’m too busy at the moment but thank you anyway.’

  ‘Busy? Busy? Blin! What is this too busy? You must see how your people throw grand party. Everyone there, so . . .’

  ‘I must leave now. Sorry. Enjoy the party.’

  ‘Is at Countess Serova’s villa.’

  That raised her interest. At the Serov villa. She’d like to see how grandly Russian aristocracy lived.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Da. Next week.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Good. You come.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  He was still breathing.

  She had a tight pain in her chest each time she left him, even for a few minutes to fetch water or throw away soiled bandages, which she first wrapped in newspaper and buried at the bottom of the dustbin outside the back door, always keeping an eye out for Wai. The cook lived with his silent wife in a low extension to one side of the house and was more than happy not to bother her, except to present an evening meal of soup, chicken, and trifle in the dining room. It was the same food every day and she knew he was taking advantage of her inexperience but she didn’t care.
She hardly touched it anyway. Just ate the trifle and took the soup upstairs to spoon a few drops of it into Chang An Lo’s mouth.

  He always swallowed. She watched nervously each time. Afraid he might not. But the knot of his Adam’s apple rose and fell and she licked her own lips with relief.

  Sometimes she sang to him. Or read to him by the hour. About Pip, poor Pip the outsider, so ambitious with his Great Expectations, yet so full of pain and shame. She knew exactly how he felt.

  ‘Is all this too alien for you, Chang An Lo, this world of Dickens and London society? It’s a million miles away from both of us, isn’t it?’

  So she swapped over to Rikki Tikki Tavi in India and told him he must laugh when the mongoose gobbles up the big snake’s eggs.

  ‘You see, snakes, even Black Snakes, can be killed, Chang.’

  And she hummed a Russian folk song to him, Ya vstretil vas, as she bathed his forehead and arms from an enamel bowl into which she had stirred a teaspoon with a few drops of camphor oil. To promote sweating, Mr Hatton had said. A counterirritant to fever. And when she’d finished, she laid her forehead on the quilt that covered him and allowed herself a tiny shiver of fear.

  Please, Chang An Lo. Please.

  The sounds of the temple. They came to Chang An Lo like the voice of the gods. Through the mists of incense. The tinkle of the small brass bells and the low murmur of incantations.

  A river of sound. It drew him. Up from the black mud at the bottom. He felt his face break free from the slime, foul and poisonous slime that was devouring him. It had filled his mouth and his eyes, seeped into the coils of his mind until the wind of life could not reach there anymore and he knew he would soon be looking into the face of Yang Wang Yeh, the final judge of human souls.

  He floated.

  Swept up on the sound, drifting higher, drawn by the current of it toward the light.

  At last he saw her and his heart started to beat once more. She was smiling at him. Her beautiful face. He murmured her name. Kuan Yin. Again. Kuan Yin. The goddess who understood pain. He remembered with a clear rush of cool blood to his brain that when her father tried to burn her to death, she had put out the fire with her bare hands. Pain. Hands. China’s sweet and holy goddess of mercy, Kuan Yin, my pain is nothing to yours.

  A bird settled on his chest. It was small and light but covered with coppery feathers. They glowed so bright they burned the slime from his eyes. From his ears. He could hear the bird sing. Just one sound. Over and over, it twirled inside his head.

  ‘Please.’

  37

  She would not let him see her face.

  ‘Li Mei, don’t. Please.’

  But she hid her face in the pillow. Her shame was far worse than her pain.

  ‘My sweetest love,’ Theo murmured, ‘let me bathe your swollen cheeks and kiss the black bruises away from your eyes.’

  She curled up tight, away from him.

  Theo bent over the bed and kissed the back of her head, breathing in the sandalwood scent of her raven’s-wing hair. ‘Forgive me, my love. I shall leave you in peace. Here are some medicines from the herbalist; the one in the black pot is for the pain, the other for the damaged skin.’

  He waited, torn between a fierce desire to sweep her into his arms and the knowledge that more than anything she wanted to hide the evidence of her disgrace from him.

  ‘Li Mei?’

  Silence.

  ‘Li Mei, listen to me. You must never return to your father. Whatever happens. We both know he would beat you into the ground and make a slave of you, so you must stay away from him. And from that turd-sucking brother of yours, Po Chu. Promise me that.’

  Nothing.

  He reached out and rested a hand on the slender curve of her hip. ‘In exchange I promise to have nothing more to do with the dream smoke.’

  Still no answer. But her shoulders started to shake. She was crying.

  That night Theo didn’t go to bed. Nor did he keep the appointment on the river. He went down to the empty schoolrooms, to the large carved oak chair that stood at the end of the hall, and then he summoned one of the yard boys to come with ropes. The nine-year-old boy was unhappy to do as Theo ordered, but in the end he obeyed because if he lost his job his mother and father and four sisters would starve.

  Theo sat there all night.

  No one to hear his moans and his cries except the yellow-eyed cat. Most of the time she just sat and watched him but once jumped up on his lap with a loud yowl. His wrists were bound to the wooden arms, where carvings of tigers grinned up at him, mocking his torment, and his ankles tied to the chair’s stout legs.

  When a faint red glow finally came up over the horizon, Theo knew he was looking into the eyes of the devil himself.

  38

  Exhaustion finally claimed her. Lydia woke with a start to find herself still in the chair but sprawled forward on the bed, her weight pinning down one side of Chang. She jumped off in alarm. His hand, she mustn’t crush his hand.

  It was dark and cold and her mind felt thick as treacle. She stood up, stripped off the clothes she had been wearing for the last forty-eight hours, pulled over her head one of the two new embroidered nightdresses that lay in her otherwise empty chest of drawers, and lifted the sheet.

  She slid into the bed. Instantly all desire for sleep vanished. She lay on her side, curving her body to fit beside his, aware of his nakedness and the thin cotton of her nightdress between them. She let her arm rest across his waist and her cheek lie against his shoulder, so that she could smell the cooling camphor on his skin. She breathed it in.

  ‘Chang An Lo,’ she whispered, just to hear his name.

  She closed her eyes and experienced a warm bubbling sensation in her chest. Happiness? Was this what happiness felt like?

  She dreamed bad dreams.

  Her mother was fixing a metal collar around Chang’s neck. He was naked and Valentina was dragging him on the end of a heavy chain through great drifts of snow. It was in the heart of a forest with wild winds and the howling of wolves, the sky red and bleeding onto the white snow beneath, like scarlet rain. There was a man on a great horse. A green greatcoat. A rifle. Bullets flying through the air, slamming into the pine trees, into her mother’s legs. She screamed. And one bullet tore into Chang’s bare chest. Another lodged between two of Lydia’s own ribs. She felt no pain but couldn’t breathe; she was gasping for air, filling up with ice in her lungs. She tried to shout but no sound came out, she couldn’t breathe . . .

  She shuddered awake.

  The room was full of daylight, sweet and normal daylight that steadied her racing pulse. She turned her head and gasped aloud.

  Chang’s black eyes were staring right at her, no more than a hand’s breadth from her own.

  ‘Hello.’ His voice was a whisper.

  ‘Hello.’ She smiled at him, a wide welcoming grin. ‘You’re back.’

  For a long moment he studied her face, then nodded very faintly and murmured something too low for her to catch. Abruptly she became acutely aware of her leg draped over his, of her arm warm against his skin and her hip tight next to his, and suddenly she was embarrassed. She blushed fiercely and slid out of the bed. When she was on the floor she turned to face him and gave a formal little bow, hands together, a brief lowering of her head.

  ‘I am pleased to see you awake, Chang An Lo.’

  His lips moved, life returning to them, but no words came out.

  ‘I would like to give you medicine and food,’ she said softly. ‘You need to eat.’

  Again he gave the faint nod, and closed his eyes. But she knew he was not asleep. She felt in a panic. But a totally different kind of panic from before. She told herself it was a kind of fluttery on-the-surface panic because she feared she may have offended Chang An Lo with the forwardness of her actions, made him disgusted with her alley-cat ways, and that he would not want her to nurse him or feed him or even touch his body, that body she knew so well now. But all of this was nothing
like the deep-down panic of before when she thought he would die, that he would leave her with just his bones and none of himself, that she would never see again the way his black eyes . . .

  Stop it. Stop it.

  He was awake. That meant everything. Awake.

  ‘I’ll fetch some hot water,’ she said and scuttled downstairs.

  Her touch was like sunlight to him. It warmed his skin. Inside, Chang felt cold and empty, like a reptile after a night of frost, and it was the touch of her fingers that brought life flowing back to his limbs. He started to feel again.

  With feeling came pain.

  He fought to centre his mind. To use the pain as a source of energy. He focused on her fingers as she peeled back the bandages. They were not beautiful. The nails were square where they should have been oval and her thumbs were oddly long, but her hands moved with a confidence that was beautiful. He watched. They would heal him, those hands.

  But when he saw his own mutilated hands, the pain broke free from his grip on it and exploded in his head. It blew him apart. He tumbled in pieces back down into the slime.

  He opened his eyes.

  ‘Lydia.’

  She didn’t look up from where she was bent over a metal bowl stirring something strongly scented inside it. A thin wintry ray of sunlight from the window trickled over her hair and down one side of her face, so that she seemed to shine.

  ‘Lydia.’

  Still she ignored him.