‘Questions like how did you become part of the Chinese delegation? ’
‘And what happened on your journey across the Russian steppes?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘Lydia, my love, I can see it in your eyes. That things happened. ’
As their footsteps faltered on a patch of snow, their gaze fixed on each other.
‘And Kuan?’ Lydia asked quietly. ‘Is she part of your delegation? Or part of your life?’
‘And the Soviet officer with the wolf eyes? Is he an element in your nothing much?’
They smiled at each other and let it go. She thought she had remembered everything about him but she was wrong. She had forgotten the way she felt herself change when she was with him, slowing the blood in her veins and the thoughts in her head. She became more like the person she wanted to be.
‘No questions,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Later.’
He kissed her hair. ‘There will be a later.’
They strolled on towards the circus tent, their movements in rhythm with each other, but the fact that he’d felt the need to reassure her there would be a later instantly raised doubts in her mind. Her throat grew tight and she fought back sudden tears. What was going wrong? She was here with Chang An Lo, his arm around her waist, his ribs rising and falling in time with her own, the long muscles of his thigh stretching and shortening next to hers as they walked, and they were speaking in English. This was everything she had longed for day after day, month after month. So . . . what was wrong?
It was the words. They felt like burrs between them, as if their bodies remembered but their tongues had forgotten, no longer able to find the words to share. She leaned her head on his shoulder, her ear on the strong line of his collarbone. Ignore the words. Ignore the questions. Listen to his heartbeat instead.
One side of the tent slapped noisily in the wind as they approached it, harsh as a whipcrack, and a man in a short padded jacket and torn rubber boots came out with a wooden mallet and a handful of iron pegs. He knelt on the ground and started to hammer one of the rope loops into the ice-bound earth.
‘Are there any animals?’ Chang asked in Russian.
‘Round the back.’ The circus man didn’t look up.
‘Spasibo.’
The question surprised Lydia. She didn’t know he had an interest in animals. Back home in China when she showed him her pet rabbit, he’d wanted to eat it. That memory made her smile. They stepped over the guy ropes and followed a well-trodden mud path that skirted the tent and led to a row of wagons at the back. The vehicles were painted in great splashes of colour with designs of circus acts - a lion tamer curling a whip, a ballerina upside down on horseback - and though most of the trucks were closed up, several had their sides pinned back to reveal cages within. A rope fence stretched several feet in front of the bars to deter the public from approaching too close.
Lydia could see why. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘lions.’
In one of the cages lazed two lionesses, their big square heads resting on their front paws, their tawny eyes half closed, their coats shaggy to keep out the cold. An interested group of people had gathered in front but a small boy was trying to drag his father over to the next cage. Lydia glanced at Chang. His attention was also on the next exhibit and his black eyes possessed something that hadn’t been there before, a kind of focusing himself in the moment. She looked across at the cage and behind the bars a massive male tiger was standing with muscles tensed, defiantly glaring with yellow eyes at the spectators. He was utterly magnificent. He snarled silently to reveal fangs that turned Lydia’s stomach. She noticed Chang take a step closer.
‘You are drawn to danger,’ she said.
His body stilled. She saw it. As if he’d slowed his heartbeat at will. He spun round to look at her, turning his back on the wild creature, and reached out to lift a lock of her hair and let it trail through his fingers like flames.
‘I only put my hand in the fire when I have to, my love.’
‘Coming to Moscow,’ she gestured towards the scrubby patch of wasteland where they were standing, and the tired-looking tent, ‘and coming here today, it seems to me that’s putting your head as well as your hand in the flames.’
He shook his head, saying nothing at first, but his black eyes drifted back to the tiger and stayed there. Lydia was jealous of the animal.
‘I came,’ he said softly, ‘because I had to.’
‘Because Mao Tse Tung ordered you to?’
Ignore the words.
His gaze flicked abruptly back to her face. It brushed against her with a touch that was almost physical, over her hair, the planes of her face, the neat curve of her ear, the fullness of her mouth.
‘I came,’ he said again, ‘because I had to.’
She didn’t ask for more.
Instead she looped her fingers around his. ‘How did you know I was in Moscow?’
‘I didn’t. I knew you were in Russia. That was enough.’
‘Russia is a big country, Chang An Lo,’ she laughed. ‘I could have been anywhere.’
‘But you weren’t. You were here in Moscow, just as I am here.’
‘Yes.’
She felt his hand tighten on hers. ‘The gods look after those they love.’
She smiled. ‘Well, they’ve certainly looked after me.’ She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘So what did you promise them in exchange?’
‘Hah! My Lydia,’ he smiled, ‘you know me too well. You are right. I did in fact promise them the earth.’
They both laughed. The separate sounds of it rolled between them, hers light and teasing, his low but full of pleasure, merging into one single breath that hung in the air. They relaxed. She felt some of the tension, the uncertainty that lay like a shadow at their feet, fade to a shapeless blur and into its place slid a brighter shade of something else. It might have been the sunlight, bright and sparkling. But to Lydia it felt like something solid. It felt like happiness.
They walked out of the circus field and back through the street market, arm in arm like any normal couple, eating the apples she had bought.
‘Now please tell me, Lydia,’ Chang asked, ‘have you discovered news of your father?’
‘We said no questions.’
‘I know.’
He felt her shiver, just a flicker through the fingers that lay curled on his arm. Nothing more. But he waited patiently.
‘We travelled to the prison camp,’ she said in a low voice, ‘the one near Felanka where he’d been held, but—’
‘We?’
‘Yes, Liev Popkov came with me, the Cossack.’ She glanced up at him with that little twist of amusement on her lips that always tugged at something deep in him. ‘You remember him, I’m sure.’
‘Of course. Is he here in Moscow?’
‘Yes. He and a woman friend of his are sharing a room with me.’ She laughed. ‘All very cosy.’
He studied her. Listening to the words behind her words. ‘Soviet Russia,’ he said, ‘has its own problems. Please give my greetings to Comrade Popkov. I hope his back is still as broad and as strong as the Peiho River.’
She laughed again. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Liev is as strong as ever.’
Chang had only met the big Cossack once, though met was hardly the right word. In China Popkov had hauled Chang’s sick body through the streets of Junchow for Lydia to nurse back to health. The memory was still a dark stain, filling him with a sense of shame. That he had needed another man’s legs to carry him to safety.
‘But my father was no longer in that camp,’ Lydia continued. ‘He’s been moved to Moscow. Alexei and I parted company in Felanka.’
‘Alexei Serov?’
‘My brother,’ she pointed out quickly and bit into her apple.
He knew he’d spoken too fast.
‘Alexei Serov, is he here?’
‘He came with me to Russia to help in the search.’ She stepped deliberately on a pristine patch of snow and left a cle
ar footprint in it, as if she would stamp her imprint on the world. ‘Jens Friis is his father as well as mine, remember.’
She let her hair swing forward, concealing the side of her face, and he wanted to lift it aside, to see the sadness behind it. What was it she felt for her father? Instead he stopped walking. He stood still, one hand holding hers, and immediately she turned towards him, her lips parted in a small breath of surprise. He drew her to him. In a tired backstreet in this faceless city he centred them both on a sunlit patch of dirt and encircled her fragile waist easily with one arm. He drew her so close that she was pressed hard against him, their bodies moulding to each other, her breasts under her coat firm against his chest. She didn’t resist in any way, though people in the street stared for a moment; she just took to herself the shape of him as if it belonged to her.
He tapped a finger on the pale centre of her forehead. ‘My dearest love,’ he murmured. ‘In here,’ he tapped again, ‘you are alone. In here we are all alone. You cannot force into your head a father you do not know and a brother who, until recently, you weren’t aware existed. Or into your heart. A family is more than just blood, it is also made of those you trust. In China I have people who are my family, even though we share no bond of blood.’
He saw her throat constrict, the delicate bones rise and fall, and his heart grieved for her.
‘I am your family,’ he promised her softly.
A sound came from her lips, a low wordless utterance that spilled from somewhere deep within her. Her eyes darkened till they were the colour of winter rain and she leaned forward, nestling her head in the hollow of his neck. He stroked her hair, smelled its familiar fragrance, its strands alive under his fingers.
‘But you left me,’ she whispered.
He had no answer to that.
36
Lydia spotted the boy immediately, skulking on the edge of a cluster of residents. The courtyard lay in deep shadow and as she hurried under its archway her eyes took a moment to adjust after the brightness of the street. She had zigzagged her way home across the city, waiting her turn with impatience in the tram queues that snaked through the dying shafts of afternoon sun. The surrounding buildings seemed to lean forward, casting their black shapes possessively over the yard’s cobbles, but she didn’t miss the thin figure of Edik.
What struck her as odd was the sound of music and laughter. It was coming from the heart of the small crowd gathered there, a scratchy plonking sound that made her smile it was so comical. She knew it at once. An organ grinder. The last time she’d seen an organ grinder was as a child in St Petersburg with her hand tucked safely into her father’s, but the memory was hazy and before she could prod it into life, a sudden squawk from what sounded like a parrot caused ripples of laughter in the courtyard. People pressed closer and she saw the boy’s pale hair move in, smooth as buttermilk. A light brush against the man at the back of the crowd, as though eager to get a better view.
Lydia stepped forward, seized a handful of Edik’s filthy jacket sleeve and yanked hard. His feet scrabbled on the ice.
‘Get off my—!’ He swung round, wide-eyed, realised who it was and grinned. ‘Privet. Hello.’
‘Put it back.’
The grin fell off his face.
‘Put it back,’ she said again.
For a moment there was a wordless battle, then his shoulders slumped. He shuffled back to the man and easily replaced whatever it was he’d stolen. The boy refused to look at Lydia but she took hold of his sleeve again and dragged him back to their doorway.
‘That’s better,’ she said.
‘For you?’
‘No, stupid, for you.’
As they climbed the stairs, neither mentioned that his sleeve had torn and was hanging in tatters between her fingers.
‘Here, give her this.’
Lydia handed a piece of kolbasa sausage to the boy and, though he accepted it, he still wouldn’t look at her. He had sidled into their room and found a spot for himself on the floor, his back propped against the wall where even the ecstatic greeting of Misty, who had been left behind there, didn’t bring a smile to his sallow face. He broke off a chunk of sausage and popped it on the dog’s moist little tongue, then one on his own. Elena was seated in the chair, hands busy with needle and thread, a navy garment of some kind spread on her broad lap.
‘Sausage is too good for that animal,’ she grumbled.
Lydia wasn’t sure whether she meant the boy or the dog.
‘And what are you grinning at?’ Elena aimed the question at Lydia.
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’
‘Nothing.’
‘The kind of nothing that puts a smile the width of the moon on your face and a purr in that voice of yours?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Come on, girl, you look like a cat that’s landed in a bucket of cream.’
The boy laughed and stared up at Lydia, suddenly interested. Despite herself Lydia felt her cheeks start to burn.
‘Is it your brother?’ Elena pressed her. ‘Did Alexei turn up today?’
‘No.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I waited at the Cathedral but—’
‘I mean what else happened?’
Lydia looked at the boy. He and the dog were both watching her with bright eyes.
‘Nothing,’ she said and added a convincing shrug. ‘Nothing else, Elena. But today I’m hoping to hear from the Party member I was with at the Metropol reception. His name is Dmitri Malofeyev. I had no idea until I met his wife that he used to be the Commandant at Trovitsk camp where my father was held. It means he knows the right people to ask.’
‘You think he’ll help you?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Why should he?’
‘Because . . .’ Lydia glanced awkwardly at the boy and back to Elena, ‘I think he likes me.’
Elena tied off her stitch, calmly bit through the thread and asked, ‘What then? When he gives you the information you want. What will you give this important Soviet official in return?’
Silence spread like oil in the room, smooth and thick and cloying. It seeped into Lydia’s nostrils, making it hard for her to breathe. The only sounds were the little grey dog panting and the churning of the organ outside.
‘Elena,’ she spoke quickly, as if the words would do less harm all squashed together, ‘I have no choice. I can’t just sit here any more. Don’t you see? Liev goes out night after night searching for a slip from someone’s tongue, or a loose piece of grumbling from a cook or a guard who’s had one vodka too many. He’s trying. Chyort, I know he’s trying - to find out the whereabouts of this secret prison, number 1908. He’s asking dangerous questions in bars and taverns throughout Moscow. And it frightens me, Elena. It frightens me so much I—’ She stopped. Took a deep breath and forced the words to slow down. ‘I’m frightened that one night the stupid Cossack will ask the wrong person the wrong question and end up in a labour camp himself.’
Elena sat very still, hands in her lap. She said nothing but her colourless eyes forgot to blink and her mouth grew slack.
‘That fear haunts me, Elena. Every time the big bear goes out. Like now. Where is he? What is he doing? Who is he talking with? What bloody rifle barrel is he staring into?’ She looked down at her fingers knotted together and asked in a whisper, ‘How much should a person risk for love?’
Elena lifted a hand and ran it down her face, over her eyes and mouth until her fleshy chin sat cradled in her palm. The action seemed to bring her back to life and she stabbed the needle into the reel of thread with a shake of her head. ‘It’s his choice. No one is making him do it.’
‘But I want him to stop. Now. It’s too dangerous. But he won’t, I know he won’t.’
‘And this Soviet official, your Dmitri Malofeyev. Is he not dangerous? ’
‘I can handle him.’
Elena burst out laughing, a girlish sound that made the puppy bark.
She rose heavily to her feet, shook out the garment she’d been stitching, revealing it to be an old but thick wool coat which she tossed carelessly to the boy.
‘Here, Edik. Shut your ears, wear this and get out of here, you and that fleabag of yours.’ She hesitated for a second and placed her hands on her ample hips, glancing round the room with a sudden tension that made the veins of her neck stand out. ‘I have enough to take care of here, I don’t need more.’
She walked over to the door and as she passed, an unexpected thing happened. She ran a hand down Lydia’s hair, something she’d never done before. Her touch took Lydia by surprise and was far gentler than she would ever have imagined.
‘Malishka, little one,’ Elena said softly, ‘that man eats girls like you for breakfast.’
Then she took down her coat from the hook behind the door and pulled on her galoshes, ran a comb through her dead-straw hair, wound a scarf around her head and left.
The boy stared at the door as it closed behind her. A sound came from him, a subdued kind of whimper that at first Lydia thought was the dog.
‘She doesn’t like me,’ he said.
Lydia went over and knelt on the hard floor in front of him, stroking the puppy’s fur as if it were a part of the boy. ‘Don’t be foolish. If she didn’t like you, why would she go to all the trouble of finding and patching up a coat for you?’
‘I don’t know.’
She ruffled his milk-white hair and let Misty lick her wrist. Reluctantly the boy dragged his gaze from the door, as though finally accepting that Elena wasn’t coming back for a while, and turned to look at Lydia.
After a moment he said, ‘I still don’t think she likes me.’
‘I think the trouble is that she likes you too much.’
The bones of his face seemed to hunch together, as if that thought was too hard to squeeze in between them. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘Edik,’ Lydia said gently, ‘I think you remind her of her dead son.’
The organ grinder had ceased his music and the room felt empty without it. The light was growing smoky, as grey as Misty’s coat. Edik had fallen asleep curled up on the floor with his dog, and though the puppy was awake it lay still, one yellow eye on Lydia. When she stood up and moved over to the window to watch the square patch of sky above the courtyard turn from blue to lilac before it merged with the roofs, the puppy gave a low growl in the back of its throat. Although no more than a skinful of wobbly bones and milk teeth, already it was guarding its master.
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