The Russian Concubine

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Excuse me, honourable sir, but it is unwise for you to be here today.’

  It was a small elegant man speaking at his shoulder. He was wearing the saffron robe of a monk, and his shaven head gleamed as if freshly oiled. He smelled strongly of juniper and his smile was as peaceful as a sunflower’s.

  Theo bowed. ‘I am here to speak with the president of the council. At his command.’

  ‘Ah, then you are in safe hands.’

  ‘That is debatable.’

  ‘All things are debatable. But those who have faith in truth and are determined on the path, they will find awakening.’

  ‘Thank you, holy one. I will hold that thought.’

  Qing Qui Guang Chang. Open Hand Square. It was the wrong name for it, Theo decided. The hands that were soon to be in front of him would be closed. In fear.

  The square was cobbled and surrounded by teahouses and shops with vivid red banners waving in the wind. A startling gold-painted elephant’s tusk arched over the doorway of the colourful theatre that dominated one side. Everything was bright and decorated and seemed to sway with movement under the curling eaves of the roofs, flicking up strange carved talismans to the gods. The usual market of caged birds and sacks of spices from the southern provinces was banished today and in its place a small wooden platform, six feet square and two feet high, had been erected in front of the grand theatre entrance. On it stood a large ebony chair. On the chair sat Feng Tu Hong.

  At his side stood Theo.

  Eager faces full of anticipation lined the square, leaving the central area empty. They had trekked in from the fields and over from their offices or kitchens to be entertained, to have their daily drudgery relieved for one brief and dramatic moment. It was the display of power that drew them. It reassured them. In this changing and slippery world, some things remained the same. The good old ways. Theo could see it in their faces, and his heart sickened for them.

  Feng raised one finger. Immediately the far corner of the crowd parted and a long column of grey uniforms and badly polished boots marched into the square. The Kuomintang. They acknowledged the president of the council, then formed an inner square and faced outward into the crowd. Their rifles bristled in their hands. Theo studied their blank young faces because it was preferable to thinking about why they were there, and he focused on one very upright soldier in particular who was having difficulty hiding his sense of pride. He looked all shiny and new, as if he had come fresh from Chiang Kai-shek’s military academy in Whampoa.

  Soldiering was traditionally regarded as a lowly occupation in China, unlike in the West, but Theo had noticed a great change in Chiang Kai-shek’s latest recruits. These had their minds trained and indoctrinated, as well as their bodies, so that they believed in the task they were doing. And they were paid a decent wage for the job. Chiang Kai-shek was no fool. Theo admired him. But he feared that development for China would be slow. Chiang was fundamentally a conservative. He liked things the way they were, despite his posturing and promises of revolution. Yet this young soldier’s face burned with his blind faith in his leader, and that had to be good for China.

  ‘Tiyo Willbee.’

  Reluctantly Theo turned his gaze to Feng. The big man was wearing his presidential ceremonial robes, embroidered blue satin over a quilted gold undertunic that made him look squarer and heavier than ever. A tall and elaborate black hat was perched incongruously on his bull-sized head and reminded Theo of the black cap of a hanging judge.

  ‘Watch for the first man.’

  For a moment Theo did not grasp his meaning, but when a slow drumroll started up and from each corner a monk in saffron robes stepped forward and blew his long pipe in a loud wailing cry that alerted the restless crowd, he realised what Feng was saying. A string of eight prisoners was being led into the centre of the square. Their hands were fastened behind their backs with leather thongs, their shirts stripped from their bodies so that they were naked from the waist up, despite the winter temperatures. Except for one. A woman. She was second in the string and Theo recognised her at once. The plain submissive face that had buried itself in the cat’s mangy fur with such devotion. It was the woman on the boat, the one who had given him Yeewai. In front of her stood the master of the junk, the man who had made too free with his knife blade, and behind them stood six others, all from the same vessel.

  ‘You see?’ Feng demanded.

  ‘I see.’

  Theo knew what was coming. He’d seen it before but it never grew easier to watch. The prisoners were made to kneel by the captain in the grey uniform and then kowtow to the president.

  Feng sat stone-faced.

  When a big man with a long curved sword stepped out into the middle of the square with slow dignity, the crowd roared its approval. He whirled the sword once around his head in a display of speed and skill and the action triggered two of the prisoners, no more than boys, to cry and plead for mercy. Theo wanted to shout to them that it was a waste of their last precious breaths. The sword rose and fell in turn on three necks. Gasps of awe flowed from the onlookers as the lifeblood spurted out. Suddenly a young woman rushed from the packed crowd of dark heads and hurled herself at Feng Tu Hong’s slippered feet. She clutched them and kissed his ankles with a passion.

  ‘Get rid of the bitch,’ Feng shouted, kicking out at her.

  A soldier reached down and lifted her to her feet by her hair, so that they saw her face. It was beautiful but twisted with despair. She screamed, and the woman prisoner raised her forehead from the cobbles.

  ‘Ying, my beloved daughter,’ she cried out and received a rifle butt in her throat.

  ‘Please,’ the young woman sobbed, ‘great and honourable president, do not kill my parents, please, whatever you want of me, please, I am yours. I beg you, great one . . .’

  The soldier started to drag her away.

  ‘Wait.’ Feng lifted the staff of ancient ivory that lay on his lap. He pointed it at the Kuomintang captain.

  The officer approached the platform in a stiff-legged march that did not attempt to disguise his hostility toward the president.

  ‘Throw the old witch that is among the prisoners back in her cell for ten days, and then release her.’

  He flicked a hand in the direction of the young woman, and one of the attendants behind his chair led her away. She was mute now. Trembling. The captain bowed and snapped out an order. His face was stern with dislike. The female prisoner was escorted out of the square.

  Theo leaned toward Feng Tu Hong. ‘If I offer good dollars for them all, would you do the same for the rest of the prisoners?’

  Feng burst out laughing, showing his three gold teeth, and slapped his broad knee. ‘You can beg, Willbee. That would amuse me. I might even pretend to consider it. But the answer would be no. There is only one price that would buy their lives.’

  ‘What price?’

  ‘My daughter.’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘You are fanqui. You shake with the dream sickness. You caused the death of seven men today, so you will not sleep tonight, I think.’

  ‘No, Feng Tu Hong, you are mistaken. I will sleep like a babe in its mother’s arms because around me will be the arms of Li Mei and the breast at my lips will be the sweet breast of your daughter.’

  ‘May the dragon bats devour your flesh this night, you foul-mouthed offspring of a demon’s whore.’

  ‘Listen to me, Feng. The only reason I came to the square today was to make clear to you that nothing will make me give her up. Nothing, I tell you. Li Mei will never return to your house. She is mine to care for.’

  ‘She is your whore and she brings pissing shame on the name of her ancestors.’

  ‘She changed her name from Feng to her mother’s name of Li because it is you with your evil trade who inflicts black shame on her. She asks how she can keep her feet on the Right Path when each day she must atone for the knowledge that her father is destroying men’s lives with the dream smoke and his greedy violence.�
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  ‘The opium is Foreign Mud. It was you and your kind who first brought it to our shores. You taught us how to do business. And now the shipments continue every night without the guidance of Mason’s information about the movements of the patrol boats. They hunt down our night sails. So it is because of you that more men will be caught and more men will die. One by one in this Open Hand Square.’

  ‘No, Feng. Their blood is on your hands. Not mine.’

  ‘Wah, Tiyo Willbee, you can save them.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Go out with the night sails again.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I swear their cries in the afterlife will haunt your dreams in the prison cell.’

  ‘Does that mean you have spoken with that bastard Mason?’

  ‘Ah, indeed I have had that honour. It grieves me that because I will not deal with him alone, he intends to speak to your Sir Edward and deliver him your worthless neck. Tell me, Tiyo Willbee, who will care for your Chinese whore then?’

  41

  It was snowing. Large downy flakes that tumbled out of a hard white sky and made the pavement slippery. Lydia hurried. Not because of the snow, but because of Chang An Lo. She hated leaving him alone in the house.

  ‘Can you fix it?’ she asked in the dressmaker’s salon.

  Madame Camellia held up the green dress and eyed its sad and mangled state with the tenderness of a mother for her forlorn child. ‘I will do what I can, Miss Ivanova.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The chemist in Glebe Street was next, with the row of tall blue and red and amber flagons in its window. More bandages, boric acid, and iodoform. By the time she came out of Mr Hatton’s shop the street was white and the cars crawled past gingerly with layers of snow on their roofs. Lydia was aware of the flakes soft on her cheek and blinked when they caught on her eyelashes as she hurried down Wellington Street to the little kiosk on the corner. Over the counter she bought a cardboard cupful of hot rice noodles and bai cai all wrapped up in a brown paper bag. Head down, she sped home.

  ‘Lydia Ivanova.’

  She lifted her head warily. The corner of Ebury Avenue where she now lived came into view, and leaning against one of the big plane trees was the bulky figure of Liev Popkov.

  ‘Liev,’ she shouted with delight and broke into a run toward him.

  He stood there as solid as the trunk behind him, opened his arms, and folded her into a big hug. It was like being swallowed by a woolly mammoth.

  ‘Thank you, Liev, spasibo, thank you,’ she whispered into his chest.

  Her cheek was pressed hard against his overcoat, the same one that had sheltered Chang from the rain that day at the quayside, and it felt cold and wet and stiff, but she didn’t care. She was so happy to see the big Russian again. Still clutching her bag of hot food, she wrapped her arms around him as far as they would go and squeezed tight. Suddenly from nowhere a great rush of emotion erupted inside her. Everything she’d been keeping a hold on broke loose and she was shivering uncontrollably. It turned her bones to water and her legs would have collapsed if Liev Popkov had not been pinning her to his chest.

  He growled, soft and comforting, while the snow swirled silently around them.

  As abruptly as it came, it was gone. Her bones came back. She hugged him tighter, then stepped away and offered him a shaky smile.

  ‘Luchshye?’ he asked. Better?

  ‘Gorazdo luchshye. Much better.’

  ‘Good.’

  And that was all they said about it.

  ‘Will you come in and meet Chang An Lo? He would like to . . . to thank you too.’ Her tongue struggled with the Russian words.

  ‘Not dead yet then?’

  ‘No. He’s alive. Poydiom. Come.’

  She tugged at his arm, but he did not move.

  ‘No, Lydia Ivanova. I care nothing for your Chinese.’

  ‘Then why did you help him?’

  He shrugged his great shoulders. ‘For you.’ He lifted from his pocket a bundle of banknotes and thrust them into her coat pocket. She knew it would be the two hundred dollars.

  ‘No, Liev. It’s yours.’

  ‘I do not seek payment.’

  ‘But you helped me so much. I don’t understand. Why risk your life searching the docks?’

  His black beard twitched as he pushed out his chin. ‘Because you are the granddaughter of General Nicholai Sergei Ivanov.’ He raised his huge right paw to the brim of his fur cap and saluted.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It is my honour to serve you.’

  ‘Wait a minute. Are you saying you knew my grandfather?’

  Before he could reply, the sound of an explosion ripped through the air, a loud whoosh of solid noise that made Lydia’s ribs rattle. In the heart of the town a column of black smoke rose up over the snow-covered roofs and merged with the heavy clouds.

  ‘Bomb,’ Liev Popkov said instantly. ‘Bomba. Go home. Quickly. Bistra.’

  ‘Wait.’

  But he was gone, his long lumbering stride carrying him away down the street. Lydia turned and ran to her house.

  Chang expected her to come in looking frightened, but she didn’t.

  ‘Your friend Alexei Serov spoke true,’ he said. ‘The bombs have started.’

  ‘You heard it?’

  ‘The whole of Junchow heard it.’

  She had hurried into the room with an energy he envied, and instead of carrying fear in her face she brought with her a positive rush of chi. She glowed with it. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes sparkled. She was focused.

  ‘Lydia,’ he said with a smile, ‘you make the room vibrate. More than the bomb.’

  She looked at him on the pillow, uncertain for a moment, and then laughed, tossing her flame hair at him. ‘For us it’s good. As long as the Black Snakes are at war with each other, they’ll leave us alone.’

  ‘A world lies outside this room, Lydia. You cannot ignore it.’

  ‘Today I can.’ She grinned at him. ‘Here, eat this.’

  He dreamed. And always the dreams were of fire. Sometimes the fire was in her hair, bright and flickering, but other times it was in his blood, burning him up. The fire of pain and the fire of hatred. Together they consumed him.

  ‘Chang An Lo.’

  He opened his eyes. Instinctively he flinched. A hand was coming at his face. But it was only a damp cloth that touched his skin, cool and fragrant. Not a hissing red poker.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Her voice was low. ‘You were having another nightmare.’

  His heart was hammering. Sickness rose in his stomach but he fought it down. He knew he had already lost all face in front of this girl, he was so weak and helpless, his dignity gone, but he refused to vomit noodles over her bed and watch her clean them up.

  ‘Here.’

  A cup brushed his lips. He sipped. Tasted the bitterness of Chinese herbs. They calmed him. The fires and sickness receded. He sipped again and knew the time had come.

  ‘Lydia.’

  ‘Hush, don’t talk. You need rest. I’ll read aloud again if you like.’

  ‘The tales of Shere Khan are strong. But you must read of Mulan. She is famous in Chinese legend. You would like her, she’s a lot like you.’

  ‘Poor and skinny, you mean.’ But she smiled.

  ‘No. A risk taker. And brave.’

  She blushed and hid her pink cheeks behind a fall of hair. ‘You are mocking me, Chang An Lo. Be careful what you say or I might drop this cup of what smells like shark’s gallbladder or something equally noisome all over you.’

  He gazed up at her, at the challenge in her eyes, at the exquisite roundness of them and their colour of warm honey. How could she possibly think he was mocking her?

  ‘Lydia, I must walk.’

  He walked. Though he would barely call it walking. His weight was all borne by the fox girl, not by his own worthless legs, which crumbled the moment he asked them to do anything more than stand there. They felt as weak and unstable as the
noodles in his belly. He was ashamed of them.

  But she made it easy for him. First she brought in one of the long striped shirts that belonged to the new husband of her mother, and though it was too large for his fleshless body, it reached down over his thighs and gave him a sense of decency. It smelled of lavender, which surprised him, but she told him many people kept sachets of lavender in their wardrobe. Second she lit the second bar of the gas fire, so that the air grew warmer and his muscles less stiff. And lastly she slipped an arm around his waist as he pushed himself off the bed, and drew him to her, close against her own body, as naturally as if they were two halves of the same whole.

  With his arm across her shoulders he dragged his feet into motion. Together they shuffled toward the door and back again, over to the window and back again, past the fire and back again. Walk. Foot. Move. Heel. Toe. Turn. Lift. Progress was unbearably slow. His head was spinning in a grey spiral and at times he lost his vision, seeing nothing but blackness in front of him, but he kept walking.

  ‘Enough.’ Lydia spoke firmly. ‘Or you’ll kill yourself.’

  ‘My muscles are weak, Lydia. I must give them strength.’ His voice was barely a whisper.

  ‘What is the point of my healing your body, if you then make yourself ill again?’

  ‘I cannot stop. Time is short.’

  ‘You must. Stop now, please. And we’ll do some more after you’ve had an hour’s rest.’

  ‘You’ll wake me?’

  ‘I promise.’

  He collapsed onto the bed and instantly slid down into a tunnel of fire.