‘So I’ve been having a drink.’
‘Correction. Drinks.’
‘Of course. If it hadn’t been more than one, I would have learned nothing. Just listen to me, will you, for a change?’
Alexei sat back in his chair, avoiding the Cossack’s fumes. ‘All right. Go on. Where were you?’
‘I was in a brothel.’
‘Oh shit. Don’t tell me you’ve got the clap.’
‘Just shut up. I wasn’t there to touch any of the girls, I was on the look out for a guard from the camp. They’d be desperate, see? I reckoned the place would be crawling with them.’
Alexei took a drag on his cigarette to hide his surprise. The Cossack wasn’t as dumb as he looked.
‘And did you find one?’
‘You bet I did. Almost as big as me, he was, and none of the girls wanted him, you could tell.’ He lowered his voice and dropped to a disconcertingly confidential tone. ‘Sometimes these girls are too small, you see, for our—’
‘Enough, spasibo.’
Popkov scratched at his eye patch and resumed his tale. ‘The man was staggering about the room, knocking into everything and everyone in sight. The madam was yelling, “Someone take this fucking guard back to his camp. Get him out of here!” So I did.’
Alexei offered the Cossack one of his cigarettes and lit it for him. It was a small gesture. ‘All right, so what then?’
‘He’s a big guy, like I said. Kept collapsing in the street, so I had to—’
‘Pick him up. Being such a gentlemanly character.’
‘Let me finish, will you?’ Popkov scowled at Alexei. ‘At least I didn’t sit around playing cards all night, losing good roubles to—’
‘The trouble with you, my friend, is that you don’t have a strategic mind.’
The single black eye glared at him through the smoke. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that the loss of a few roubles was necessary to discover . . .’ Alexei paused, making the big man wait, ‘that there are going to be heavy troop movements through Felanka in the next few weeks. That means trains. Frequent trains coming and going, a constant stream of new faces creating confusion.’ He leaned forward, elbows on the filthy table, gaze intent on Popkov. ‘If we can finish our business quickly, we can be out of here sooner than I expected. But,’ he hesitated, finding the next words hard, ‘I need you to watch out for Lydia.’
‘I always watch out for Lydia Ivanova.’
‘I think she might try to ride one of the trains back to Selyansk.’ The thought of his sister on one of those troop trains packed with soldiers, travelling on her own, turned his stomach.
The Cossack stabbed out his cigarette in a spill of beer. It hissed as he lumbered to his feet with a sudden urgency. ‘Let’s get moving.’
The night was starless, the cold air a slap in the face. Fresh snow lay soft underfoot. Alexei followed the Cossack down a narrow back street where there were no lights, just a dreary row of warehouses whose doors rattled like dead men’s bones in the buffeting of the wind. The smell of something burning caught at Alexei’s nostrils and grew stronger when Popkov took a turn into an open yard. Flames were leaping from inside a metal container drum which stood in front of a small stone store shed. Popkov headed straight for it.
‘What have you done to him?’ Alexei asked with foreboding.
Popkov’s chuckle told more than Alexei cared to know.
The big ox kicked open the door. The shifting glow of the flames leapt inside and curled up on a pale, dead-looking face. It belonged to an extremely large male, stretched out on his back with a chain looped several times round his neck. Each end of the long chain was hooked to one of the metal shelf brackets that lined the walls. The man couldn’t move his head more than a fraction either way. It was no wonder his eyes were closed. Could he breathe?
Alexei asked coldly, ‘Popkov, did you have to? What was wrong with bringing him to the bar and asking him questions over a few more vodkas? Tell me, you ox brain, what was wrong with that as an option?’
The Cossack looked taken aback. He held both hands out like plates to the warmth of the flames and shrugged mildly. ‘He might not have wanted to give us the answers. This way is . . . surer.’
That was probably true. But it was not the point.
With a snort of disgust Alexei stepped into the storehouse and unhooked the chain from the wall. A faint choke like a dog’s cough issued from the man on the floor. At least the poor devil was still alive. With no apparent damage other than a telltale swelling on his jaw, he rolled over on his side, muttered something incomprehensible and started to snore.
‘Podnimaisa! Get up!’ Alexei barked. He backed it up with a prod of his boot.
This produced a grunt. He bent down and hauled the man to his feet and they staggered out of the shed into the night air. Its icy blast instantly froze the alcohol in their blood and the big guard shuddered but sobered up enough to stand alone, listing precariously towards the heat inside the drum. He was younger than Alexei had first thought, with a clean-shaven, good looking face, early thirties probably.
‘Now,’ Alexei said. The sooner this was over the better. ‘I need to ask you a few questions.’
‘Piss off.’
The guard started out with an odd sort of flat-footed gait towards the yard entrance. It was like watching a duck on ice. Popkov stepped away from the fire and tapped him on the back, except that one of Popkov’s taps was like anybody else’s full-bodied thumps. The man went sprawling to the snow-covered ground, face down, arms and legs splayed, and before he could even think about what had happened to him, Popkov was sitting astride his back. He yanked off the guard’s hat, tossed it into the fire and seized a handful of thick fair hair in his fist. He wrenched the man’s head back and waited for Alexei to begin.
The Cossack was efficient, Alexei had to give him that, but this was a way of doing business that disgusted him.
‘What’s your name?’ Alexei demanded.
A dry croak issued from the guard’s tortured throat.
‘Ox brain,’ Alexei snapped, ‘let the man speak.’
The grip on the hair loosened a touch, so that the guard could swallow.
‘Your name?’
‘Babitsky.’ A hoarse whisper.
‘Well, Babitsky, it’s quite simple. I want to know whether a certain person is a prisoner in the Trovitsk labour camp.’
Babitsky grunted.
‘So if I give you a name, you will tell me whether he’s—’
‘Nyet.’
Without hesitation Popkov bounced the guard’s face on the ground. Up and down. Just once. But it came up with a nose covered in blood.
‘For fuck’s sake, stop that!’ Alexei exploded. ‘Babitsky, just answer my question and then you can go.’
The man moaned and spat out blood. ‘I only know the prisoners by numbers. Not names.’
Fuck.
‘So who would have the list of names?’
‘The office.’
‘Who works in the office? A name this time.’
The man’s eyes were growing hazy and he was having trouble breathing. With a mountain crushing his lungs, it was hardly surprising.
‘Get off him,’ Alexei commanded.
For a moment their eyes met and Alexei prepared to deliver that punch he’d been promising himself all evening. But Popkov wasn’t stupid. He gave a flash of teeth, released the hair in his fist and raised himself up on his knees so that he was still astride the guard but no longer resting his weight on him.
Babitsky dragged in air and said in a rush, ‘The camp office is run by Mikhail Vushnev. He knows them all.’
‘Where will I find this Vushnev when he comes into town? Where does he drink?’
‘The bar . . .’ He spat more blood on to the snow. ‘Down by the tyre factory. It’s a dump but it’s always got some fuckable girls serving the beer.’
Alexei removed a handkerchief from his coat pocket, wiped the man’s bleeding face and rose to his
feet, thankful to be at a distance from him. He dropped the scarlet cloth into the fire. He wished he could drop the whole of tonight into the flames as easily.
‘OK, let him go.’
For once Popkov did as he was told.
The man staggered to his feet, cursing. Alexei took out a packet of cigarettes, shook out two, lit them both and handed one to Babitsky. He watched the man’s blood drip on to the cigarette.
‘Fuck you,’ Babitsky groaned, drawing smoke into his lungs.
‘Fuck the lot of you. I’m off tomorrow out of this freezing shit hole.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘What’s that to you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I’ve been posted to Moscow.’ His split lips curled in a bitter smile. ‘So fuck you and your questions.’
Alexei turned away. He’d seen enough. He had a name: Mikhail Vushnev. That’s where he’d start. Without the damn Cossack this time.
12
Lydia lay back on her bed and thought about the bargain she had struck with Alexei. She had promised to stay in her room in exchange for keeping Popkov at his side tonight, but would he stick to his word? Her nerves were tight and her eyelids burned. That was the trouble with making deals with people, you never knew whether they’d let you down. She stared up at the ceiling, at a damp patch on it that had oozed into the shape of a giraffe, probably a few leaky pipes up there. Like leaky tongues, they couldn’t be trusted.
Your Russian is excellent. Elena’s words drifted back to her and brought with them similar words she had once said to Chang herself. She murmured them now: ‘Your English is excellent.’ It had been summertime and the Chinese sky was huge that day, a bright peacock-blue sheet of silk shimmering above them. She smiled at the memory and let her mind spiral down into it as readily as a bee spirals down into the sweet overpowering scent of an orchid. She didn’t struggle against it. Not this time. Day after day here in this cold Russian landscape she was fighting to mould a future, but this time, just for tonight, she allowed herself the sweet fluid pleasure of slipping back into the past.
Chang An Lo had led her down a dirt track to Lizard Creek, a small wooded inlet to the east of the town of Junchow. The morning sun lazed on the surface of the water and the birch trees offered dappled shade to the flat grey rocks.
‘I am honoured that you think my English acceptable,’ Chang had replied politely.
Her heart had been racing. It was a risk, coming here alone with a young man she scarcely knew, and to make matters even worse he was Chinese and a Communist. Her mother would tie her to the bedpost if she knew. But already their lives, his and hers, had become entwined in a way she barely understood. She could feel the hooks like tiny little darts sinking into the soft and tender parts of her body, into her stomach and the thin white flesh of her thighs. Tugging at the strong beat of her heart. His stillness was as elegant as his movements, in a black V-necked tunic and loose trousers. Horrible rubber shoes on his feet. Earlier he had waited for her outside the English church where she had greeted him very formally, hands together and eyes on the ground, bowing to him.
‘I wish to thank you. You saved me in the alleyway and I am grateful. I owe you thanks.’
He did not move, not a muscle shifted in his face or body but something changed somewhere deep inside him, as if a closed place had opened. The warmth that flowed from him took her by surprise.
‘No,’ he said, eyes fixed intently on her. ‘You do not owe me your thanks.’ He came one step closer, so close she could see tiny secret flecks of purple in his eyes. ‘The people traffickers would have cut your throat when they were done with you. You owe me your life.’
‘My life is my own. It belongs to no one but me.’
‘And I owe you mine. Without you I would be dead. That foreign devil policeman’s bullet would be in my head now and I would be with my ancestors, if you had not come out of the night and stopped him.’ He bowed very low. ‘I owe you my life.’
‘Then we’re even.’ She’d laughed, uncertain how serious this was meant to be. ‘A life for a life.’
Now at the creek she noticed the way he squatted down on a patch of grass at the edge of the water, keeping his distance from her, and she wondered if he was being careful not to alarm her. Or was it because he couldn’t bear to be near a foreign devil, yet another fanqui? She was lazing on a slab of rock, stretching out her bare ankles in the sun, ducking her face under the brim of her straw hat. It was battered and her dress was old. They embarrassed her. She stared at a small brown bird attempting to extract a juicy grub from a fallen branch and hoped Chang An Lo wouldn’t look at her.
‘I had an English tutor for many years in Peking,’ he continued. ‘He taught me well.’
She peered at him from under the shade of her hat and was shocked to see him unwinding a blood-soaked cloth from his foot. Oh God, the guard dog that attacked him last night when he came to help her at the Ulysses Club. Its teeth must have done far more damage than she’d realised. She felt a wave of nausea at the sight of his skin hanging in scarlet strips from the bone. A physical pain in her chest. How could he walk on a foot in that state?
He glanced up and caught her staring open-mouthed at his wound. Her gaze rose and for a long moment their eyes met and held. He looked away. She watched in silence as he placed his foot in the swirling flow of the river and rubbed it with his fingers, so that clots of blood drifted to the surface, making the water speckled with brown spots like a fish’s back. Quickly she rose and knelt on the grass beside him. In her hand lay the needle and thread he had asked her to fetch for him. Now she understood why.
‘You’ll need these,’ she said and held them out.
But as he reached for them, she made a decision and lifted them away from him. ‘Would it help,’ she asked, ‘if I did it?’
A spark she couldn’t decipher leapt into his eyes. Their blackness seemed to be consumed by something bright and untouchable. She swallowed, appalled at what she’d just offered.
The first time she pushed the needle in she expected him to cry out, but he didn’t. She darted a look of concern at his face. To her amazement he seemed to be staring at her hair and smiling, his black eyes full of secret thoughts. After that she just kept sewing. In fact she became bolder, concentrating more on making the work neater than on whether it hurt, aware of the scars it would leave. All the time she rinsed away the blood with her handkerchief so that she could see what she was doing, and carefully avoided thinking about the white glimpses of delicate bone underneath.
When it was over she pulled off her underskirt, used Chang’s knife to cut it into strips and bound up his foot. It looked clumsy but it was the best she could do. Chyort! She was no better at bandaging than she was at sewing. Without even asking she cut his shoe open and tied it on the underside of the bandage with two more strips of cloth.
‘There,’ she said when she’d finished. ‘That’s better.’
‘Thank you.’
Chang gave her a deep bow as he sat on the grass and she had the feeling he didn’t want her to see his face. Why? What was it that he was holding back from her?
‘Don’t thank me. If we go around saving each other’s lives, then that makes us responsible for each other. Don’t you think?’ She laughed lightly.
She heard him inhale sharply. Had her words annoyed him? Had she presumed too much? She felt suddenly out of her depth, uncertain where to place her foot in these unfathomable and unfamiliar Chinese waters. She scrambled to her feet, kicked off her sandals and waded into the shallows. The creek rippled against her legs, cooling her skin, and she splashed water over the hem of her dress to remove the blood from it. His blood. Entwined in the fibres of her clothes. She stared at it, touched one of the smears with the tip of her finger and stopped rinsing it away into the river.
‘Lydia Ivanova.’
It was the first time he’d spoken her name. On his tongue it sounded different. Less Russian. More . . .
‘Lydia Ivanova,’ he said again, his voice quiet as the breeze through the grass, ‘what is it that is such trouble to you?’
She felt a tremor. She didn’t know if it was in her own blood or in the water, but in that bright sunlit moment she knew she’d got it wrong. He could see right through her, her thoughts as transparent to him as the water droplets that trailed behind her hand. That intake of breath she’d heard wasn’t annoyance. It was because he knew, as she knew, that they were responsible for each other now. As she looked across at Chang An Lo where he was resting on his elbows, watching her with his black gaze, their eyes fixed on each other and she was aware of something tangible forming between them. A kind of thread, shimmering through the air. It was as elusive as a ripple in the river, yet as strong as one of the steel cables that held the new bridge over the Peiho.
‘Tell me, Lydia, what lies so heavy on your heart?’
She released the hem of her dress and as it floated around her legs, she was again acutely aware of how shabby it was. She made her decision.
‘Chang An Lo,’ she said, ‘I need your help.’
‘I stole a necklace from a man’s coat pocket last night.’ She was back on her rock, perched like one of the orange lizards, head up and limbs tense, ready to flee. ‘In the Ulysses Club.’
The Ulysses Club was the haunt of the British colonials in the International Settlement in Junchow, a place that was absurdly grand and stuffy - and utterly desirable to Lydia. Try living in a drab airless attic, she had once scolded her friend Polly, and then see if the Ulysses Club holds any charm for you.
‘That’s why the police arrived at the club last night,’ she explained to Chang. ‘The loss was discovered before I could get out. So I had to hide the necklace.’ She was talking too fast. She made herself slow down. ‘I had to leave without it after we’d all been questioned and searched.’
She kept darting glances at Chang but his face remained smooth and unshocked. That was something, at least. Never before had she admitted any of her thefts to anyone, and they had been nowhere near the value of this necklace. She was nervous.
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