‘That’s more than enough. It’s one more fact than I know about you, so I’ll ask you a question.’
‘Sounds fair.’
‘What do you want with Liev Popkov?’
‘What does any woman want with a man?’
She swung her hips lasciviously and pushed the cigar into her mouth, sucking hard on it so that the tip glowed brightly. Lydia looked away. She folded her two skirts, one navy and the other a heavy green wool, and placed them in an orderly pile beside two pairs of rolled-up socks, a pair of scissors, three handkerchiefs, a book and a small cotton drawstring bag.
‘Was your son in the camp?’ she asked without looking up.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’
Something about the way she said it drew Lydia’s glance to her face. It was totally expressionless.
‘He was one of the guards,’ Elena explained in a flat voice. ‘One of the prisoners killed him with a piece of glass. Cut his throat open.’
Lydia’s head filled with the image of blood bursting from the son’s severed flesh, the young man clawing at his throat, eyes glazing. Was Jens there? Did he see it happen? Did he wield the weapon? Because whoever did it would be dead by now. A pain started up in Lydia’s throat. She unfolded and refolded one of the skirts, pulled out a hairbrush from her bag. It wasn’t special to look at, just plain and wooden with a cracked handle, but it had belonged to her mother. She placed it in line with the scissors and drawstring bag.
‘Your son was a guard,’ she whispered, turning her head to one side. She spat on the floor with a sharp little hiss.
The woman nodded, all softness emptied from her eyes. ‘I know, he had it coming.’ She gave a little growl of despair in the back of her throat. ‘God only knows what the bastard did to those men.’
Outside a truck roared past, its headlamps carving through the darkness and flaring briefly into the room.
‘But it must be hard to lose a son,’ Lydia said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not.’
‘No parent would want to lose a child.’
‘Don’t be so sure.’
Lydia concentrated on her canvas bag and removed a pad of writing paper and a pencil. Papa, would you want to lose a child? She started a new row on the quilt and added an unopened bottle of rosewater that her widowed stepfather had presented to her for the journey. Dear Alfred. He was back in England, but if he could see her now he would die of embarrassment. For an Englishman to hold a conversation about the loss of a son with a complete stranger would be tantamount to torture. Unthinkable. But here in Russia things were different. There was a raw edge that Lydia was starting to appreciate because it made doors easier to push open.
‘Elena,’ she said with a sudden smile, ‘let’s drink to your son.’ From the bag she extracted a half bottle of vodka, a small pewter cup upturned over its neck.
Elena’s eyes lit up. She tossed the cigar butt on to the corridor floor and stamped on it. While Lydia unscrewed the cap, her visitor kicked the door shut and plonked herself down on the spare bed with a force that set the springs twanging.
‘Right, little comrade, hand it over.’
Lydia filled the metal cap to the brim, but instead of passing it across to the woman, she took a sip of it herself and proffered the bottle to Elena, who seized it with relish.
‘Za zdorovye,’ Lydia said. ‘Good health.’
Together they drank; Lydia from the cup, Elena from the bottle. The liquid scalded a path to Lydia’s stomach and made her feel instantly sick. She took another sip.
‘Don’t hurt him, Elena.’
‘Who? My son? Too late for that.’
‘No, I mean Liev.’
‘Hah! What are you? His mother?’
‘Da. Yes. His mother, his sister and his nanny all rolled into one.’
Elena laughed and took another swig. ‘He’s a lucky man then.’
Lydia leaned forward. ‘Is he, Elena?’
‘Of course. He’s got you to fuss over him, he’s got your brother to fight with and he’s got me to . . . well, to spice up his life, shall we say?’ She flexed and rolled her shoulders, making her bosom dance. It was expertly done.
‘Comrade Gorshkova,’ Lydia said with a sweet smile, ‘are you by any chance a whore?’
Elena blinked, inhaled noisily, looked affronted for a moment, then threw back her head and laughed so hard her breasts seemed in danger of bursting.
‘Those eyes of yours are sharp as a snake’s, Comrade Ivanova.’ She wiped her eyes on the back of her wrist and tipped another mouthful of vodka down her throat. ‘How did you know? A young creature like you should not be aware of such things.’
‘It’s the way you look at men. As if they’re . . . useable. Tools instead of people. I’ve seen the same look in the eyes of the painted ladies in Junchow.’
‘So you think I’m using your Cossack?’
‘Da. And I wonder what for.’
‘Well, this time you’re wrong, little comrade. My whoring days are just about over.’ She leaned back against the wooden bed-head, swinging her legs up on to the quilt. ‘Hardly surprising, is it? Look at me now.’
They both caught her reflection in the mirror, the thighs broad as pillows under her skirt, the stomach billowing in soft folds and the blue knots of varicose veins beneath her stockings. They studied her body as if it belonged to someone else. Lydia had never been invited to take part in such an intimate scrutiny before and found it appealing in an uncomfortable sort of way.
‘Some men,’ Lydia said, ‘like big women.’ She was far from certain whether this was true but offered it anyway.
‘Chyort! You are far too young to know what men like.’
Lydia ducked away from the pale eyes and cursed the steady flow of colour rising up her neck to her face. She hoped the woman would think it was the drink.
‘Hah! I see.’ Beaming with anticipation, Elena linked her hands behind her head, which made her bosom rise alarmingly. ‘So who is he?’
‘Who is who?’
‘The one who sends flames into your cheeks and makes your eyes melt like butter in sunlight. Just the thought of him and your bones turn soft.’
‘There’s no one. You’re mistaken.’
‘Am I?’
‘Da.’ For a moment their eyes were fixed in a mildly hostile stare, then Lydia turned once more to her belongings on the bed and lifted the hairbrush. ‘There’s no one,’ she said again.
She could hear the woman drinking more vodka, the swish of the liquid in the bottle, but it was followed by the sound of the cap being screwed firmly back in place. That surprised her. For a while neither spoke and Lydia began to hope she might leave.
‘I gave him away.’ Elena was speaking with her eyes shut, her lashes long and thick on her cheeks. They were much darker than her hair. ‘Then I let them take him. What kind of mother does that?’
‘You mean your son, the one in the camp. What was his name?’
‘Daniil.’
‘That’s a nice name.’
Elena smiled, her eyes still closed, and Lydia was certain she was picturing him.
‘Was he handsome?’
‘You young girls, you’re all the same, always wanting your perfect man to be tall, dark and handsome.’
An image of Chang An Lo sprang into Lydia’s mind and her mouth went dry.
‘I’m forty-two,’ Elena said. ‘I was sixteen when I had Daniil, already a year in the brothel. They let me keep him for four weeks but then . . .’ She opened her eyes abruptly. ‘He was better off with a proper family.’
‘Did he know?’
‘About me, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, of course not. But,’ Elena’s pale eyes brightened, ‘I found out where he was living and I watched him grow up. Hung around outside his school and later saw him parade through town, first as a Young Pioneer and later as one of Stalin’s Komsomol.’
Lydia reached across the gap between the beds and touched the woman’s hand, just a brief brush of skin. ‘You must have been proud of him then.’
‘Yes, I was. But not now. I want to forget him now.’
‘Can parents ever forget their children?’
‘Oh yes. You have to get on with your own life. What are children anyway? Just an encumbrance.’
‘I thought that . . .’ Lydia stopped. She knocked back the remainder of her drink and asked instead, ‘Does Liev know?’
‘Know what?’
‘About your . . . occupation?’
The woman smiled and this time it possessed a warmth that made Lydia realise why men might like her.
‘Of course not,’ Elena scoffed.
‘So why tell me?’
‘Why indeed? I must be a fool.’
‘You may be many things but I think a fool is not one of them.’
Elena laughed and sat up, eyeing the array of possessions on the bed. Her inspection made Lydia suddenly aware of how meagre they must look.
‘So what book are you reading?’ Elena asked.
‘The poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. Do you know them?’
‘No.’
‘Would you like to borrow it?’ Lydia picked up the book, which was soft and battered from all the travelling, and offered it to her visitor.
Elena closed her eyes and sighed. ‘I’m too tired.’
It occurred to Lydia that maybe Elena, like many women in Russia, had never learned to read. ‘As you’re tired,’ she said, ‘would you like me to read some of it to you?’
‘Da,’ the woman smiled. ‘I would like that. Your Russian is excellent.’
Lydia opened the book and started to read.
Sounds came to her in the room. Of breathing. Of a cat yowling. The ticking of water pipes. The rumble of cartwheels. Sounds that told Lydia she was alive, even if sometimes she wasn’t sure. Silently, so as not to wake the sleeping woman on the next bed, she repacked her travelling bag. Each evening it was the same: the unpacking, the tidying, the repacking, and when it was finished she patted the bag like a sleepy old dog.
‘There. All done,’ she said softly.
Then she lay down on her own bed and curled up tight round the bag, as if its neatness could keep the chaos inside her at bay. She pressed her cheek against its canvas side, inhaled its smell of soot and cigarettes.
Alexei didn’t want her with him. Popkov would be consumed by this woman. Her father might not even remember her. And Chang An Lo was two thousand miles away. She crushed her cheek harder against the rough material, wrapping both arms around the bag so fiercely she could feel the handle dig grooves in her skin. She tightened her grip even more. Her life was in splinters but she was determined to hold it together.
10
Chang An Lo had not expected to see blood, not here, not now.
Alone with his own thoughts, he had been taking pleasure in the long ride through the jungled mountains of Jinggang. His horse, a small and attentive mare, picked its way with skill along the rough tracks up towards the town of Zhandu. The air was heavy and humid, thick with insects and the sound of whirring wings, the temperature rising with each mile south. He brushed aside the thick undergrowth that stank of decay and rode at a gentle pace that satisfied both his horse and himself. Neither was in any hurry. Underfoot the trail was treacherous, as muddy and slippery as a monkey’s arse, so that time and again a hoof skidded from under them.
‘Calm your spirit, little one,’ he murmured to the horse.
He laid a hand on her muscular neck and clicked his tongue at her. Only once had he needed to dismount and lead her off the track, down into the dense vegetation of a steep hollow shrouded in mist. She had made no sound but stood silently at his side, ears laid back, his grip steady on her mane while a troop of riders passed by. They might be Red Army soldiers but Chang took no chances. This was bandit country.
It was on the dirt road just outside the mountain stronghold of Zhandu that he reined his horse to a halt. A fork-shaped wooden frame had been driven into the ground at the side of the road and a man lashed to it with rawhide thongs. He was naked above the waist and his head hung down, eyes closed as if he had dozed off, bored by the enforced inactivity and the unrelenting glare of the sun. But Chang knew he wasn’t asleep. Flies had settled in a black iridescent crust that moved like a spill of oil over the man’s chest.
How long he’d hung there as a warning to other Red Army deserters before he died was impossible to tell, but the three wounds in his chest where sharp-pointed suo-biao had been thrust in must have put a welcome end to his agonies.
Chang breathed deeply to still the rising tide of anger, and commended the worthless soldier’s spirit to his ancestors. Up here in the mountains the gods were close, almost visible in the mists, their voices echoing in the bamboo forests. When a man’s time came, this was a good place to die. He bowed his head to the dead soldier, picked up the reins and heeled the young mare onward into the town.
The main street of Zhandu was cobbled and busy. Along it rolled a cart laden with boulders among which scuttled lizards, shiny yellow like leaves. As Chang rode past, the stink of the two oxen hauling it drew clouds of flies to their moist muzzles, while the rumble of the wooden wheels sounded like thunder in his ears. He had grown too accustomed to silence.
The small town had been carved out of the mountain’s rock face and its people fought a daily battle with the jungle for possession of the surrounding land. Precious crops of rice and papaya tumbled over terraces in splashes of vivid green, in sharp contrast to the more sombre hues of the jungle that encircled them. Its hot breath scorched their young shoots.
The houses were single storey, constructed of wood and bamboo with grey clay tiles on the roofs, a bustling, jostling jumble of them clustered around the cobbled streets. A clutch of rickshaws trundled past Chang, the pullers sweating under their wide coolie hats and glancing with interest at the stranger on the horse. Chang ignored them. It was always the same when he entered a new town, or tasted a dish that was unfamiliar to him; that sharp tug under his ribs, as if someone were trying to pull out his liver. He knew what it was.
It’s you, my love, my fox girl. You. Your small fist inside me, giving me no peace.
Anything new, he felt the need to show her. To let her see the elements of China she didn’t know. To watch her tawny eyes widen, her fanqui nose wrinkle up in delight at the sight of the wild, sweeping curves of the roof lines, at the carvings of gods leering out from the beams, the fretwork painted a gaudy scarlet and gold. Everything in the south of China was brighter, more elaborate, fiercer than anywhere else, and he longed to see it through her eyes.
Abruptly he sat straighter in the saddle and surprised his horse with a sudden jab of heel. His loose black tunic clung to his back with sweat and he pushed the images of her out of his mind, closed his eyes to her full warm lips. Such desire weakened him. But he could not stop her laughter, like the song of a river, flowing into his head and making his heart float.
Chang dismounted at the stone water trough. He tossed a coin to one of the bristle-haired street urchins to hold the reins and watch over his horse. He doused his head under the water pump, hitched his saddlebag over one shoulder and moved away down the street.
A barber was wielding his razor with grinning delight over the jaw of a customer on a stool outside his shop, and next to him a storyteller’s booth was keeping them both entertained with tales of a rat king. Chang liked this town. The feel of it was . . . settling. He imagined staying here. His fears that it would be in turmoil were groundless; it was clearly more robust than he’d expected. He walked with a smooth, easy stride, not disturbing the hum of workers and traders that ebbed and flowed around him. He had learned that the way you walk can make you visible or invisible, whichever you chose.
Today he was invisible.
‘Your fingers grow as clumsy as an old woman’s, my friend.’
The shoemaker was middl
e-aged. He was working in the shade on a bamboo seat outside his shop, engrossed in sewing a long strip of leather with exquisitely intricate stitches. His fingers were figuring in fine detail a scene of a snake coiled round a monkey and, at the end of the strip, a lion waited patiently with open jaws. The shoemaker looked up from under his wide-brimmed hat woven from bamboo leaves, and for no more than a second his sharp black eyes were taken by surprise. They gleamed with pleasure as he peered at the figure against the sun, but then his long-boned face drooped into a frown.
‘Chang An Lo, you piece of dog meat, where have you been all this time? And to what does this worthless town owe the honour of a visit from one of our leader’s trusted servants?’
‘It is not this worthless dungheap of a place I come to see. It is you, Hu Tai-wai, I need to speak with.’ In a movement as silky and silent as a cat’s, he crouched down on a patch of dirt next to the shoemaker and lifted the tail of the leather strip, running it through his fingers. ‘I hope I find my good friend in fine health.’
The needle resumed its work. ‘I am well.’
‘And your family too? The honourable Yi-ling and the beautiful Si-qi?’
The lines of the man’s face softened. ‘My wife will be overjoyed to welcome you to our humble house. She has not seen you for two years and berates me that you stay away so long. She blames me.’
Chang laughed softly. ‘A wife blames a husband for everything, from a plague of rats in the paddies to the loss of an elegantly painted fingernail while cooking his meal.’
Hu Tai-wai grinned and treated Chang to a long, affectionate inspection, taking in the state of his clothes and the stillness of his eyes. ‘And what do you know of wives, my friend?’
‘Nothing, thank the gods.’
But his voice must have betrayed him because the shoemaker didn’t laugh. For a while neither spoke but the silence lay comfortably between them while they observed the needle flying in and out of the leather as if it had a life of its own. A woman with pox scars shuffled past in the street, a yoke balanced across her drooping shoulders, cutting into her flesh. In each of the two buckets that dangled from it squirmed a black piglet, both squealing as piercingly as if someone had stepped on the toes of the gods. The heat and the noise lay heavy on Chang, and he leaned back against the wall behind him.
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