“Okay, comrade, drink up. Fancy a bit of action?”
“Yes. This town is like a morgue.” The young driver flashed his teeth.
“Then let’s talk business.”
THERE WAS NO MONEY IN THE LETTER. OF COURSE THERE wasn’t. Concierges were expert at steaming open sealed correspondence. It was a fact as well known in Soviet Russia as the color of the snow after the wind blows in from the factories on the edge of town; everyone was aware of it, took it for granted—except Lydia, it seemed.
The money was gone and he had no way of proving it was ever there. But that was the least of his concerns. He sat alone on an iron bench in the deserted park with its elaborate wrought-iron lampposts and finished off the last of the vodka. He wanted the liquid to burn away the hard lump that had lodged somewhere just below his throat.
My beloved bear.
Thank God for Popkov.
That’s what she’d said.
To hell with the dumb Cossack. That bastard must be so pleased with himself. Just because he’d been a servant on her grandfather’s estate and had now shifted that doglike devotion to Lydia herself, it didn’t give him any right to take over now, whisking her off to Moscow on some wild and dangerous goose chase. Of course Jens Friis wasn’t there. It was just a terrible waste of their time and resources. And the plague of it was—should he remain here in Felanka? Waiting for their inevitable return. Or chase after them and drag them back.
Don’t you care if you hurt me?
I care, my little sister. I care.
IT WAS THE HAIR THAT DID IT FOR HIM. THE WAY IT HUNG IN a dense glossy swathe around her shoulders with a handful of dark waves pinned up into an elaborate coiffure on top of her head. Alexei recognized it immediately, though for a moment he had no recall of who the woman was.
Midafternoon and the day was gray. Iron gray, he told himself with a wry smile, suitable for an iron town. He was making his way down Felanka’s main street, avoiding the grander buildings and the snow heaped in the gutters, heading straight for the more run-down areas where the street traders would have their cheaper wares on display. He was weary. Sore and hungry. He hadn’t eaten for two days, trying to preserve the few roubles that lay secreted in his pocket.
That was when he saw the woman’s hair, and the long silver fur coat that swung as she moved. She was standing at the edge of the curb attempting to cross the busy road at one of the spots where the gutter had been cleared of snow to allow pedestrians passage. As she flicked her head from side to side, watching out for the traffic in both directions, for one fleeting second their eyes met.
His brain was sluggish. Infections and fever had taken their toll, so his reactions were slow. If he’d had something to eat, something to give him the strength to clear his mind, maybe what followed might have worked out differently. The woman stared at him, then abandoned the curb and walked briskly toward him across the frozen pavement, so purposeful in her stride that he knew she wanted something from him.
“Well, you’re certainly a mess, aren’t you?”
This was not exactly the greeting he’d expected. She didn’t smile, just looked him up and down the way she would a homemade dress on a hanger, and that was when he remembered who the dark hair belonged to. The camp commandant’s wife.
“Dobriy den, good afternoon,” Alexei responded. “I’m surprised you recognize me.” He rubbed a hand over his rough beard. “But you,” he said gallantly, “are unforgettable.”
She gave him a look. “Don’t lie. At first you had no recall of who I was.”
“You’re quick,” he smiled, meaning it as a compliment. “I apologize. I’ve been unwell.”
“That’s obvious.”
“But you are looking even more elegant than ever.”
“I’ve just had my hair done. Like it?” She patted the pinned loops and her carmine lips curved, inviting praise.
“It looks delightful.” He gestured vaguely up the street. “Especially here. You add color.” He studied her carefully groomed face with its narrow bones and deep-set eyes that seemed to hide in shadows, “You bring style to the streets of Felanka.”
She laughed, but it was a practiced effort that fooled neither of them. Alexei guessed she was about five years older than himself, probably in her early thirties, but there was something fragile about her that was at odds with her glossy smile and confident walk. He slid a hand into his pocket and prodded the pathetic huddle of roubles.
“Comrade,” he smiled, “let me have the pleasure of buying you a drink.”
“I’M LOOKING FOR THE GIRL YOU WERE WITH IN SELYANSK.”
“She’s gone,” Alexei said.
“So it seems.”
“Why the interest in her?”
“She asked me for something. This is the third time I’ve tried to trace her but she appears to have”—she twiddled her fingers in the air as if tracing a puff of smoke—“vanished.”
“I’m her brother. You can tell me and I’ll pass it on when we—”
“So she’s not your lover?”
“Nyet.”
The question irritated him. As did the place they were in, the Leninsky Hotel. It was lavish beyond his expectations and certainly beyond his means. It wasn’t exactly designed for the use of the working proletariat either. A spacious hotel lounge with high corniced ceilings and comfortable silk brocade sofas that would not have been out of place in the Leningrad of his youth. Gold-framed mirrors lined the walls, reflecting light into every corner, and Alexei was shocked to catch sight of his own appearance. He looked terrible, even worse than he’d feared. The hotel manager would not have even let him up the front steps if it had not been for Antonina at his side.
“Don’t fuss, Vladimir,” she had beamed, dismissing the startled manager with a wave of her hand. “Bring us tea . . . and two brandies,” she ordered, and breezed into the salon.
Alexei was acutely aware of his filthy homespun clothes and his unkempt appearance. He inspected his black fingernails with disgust. Why had she brought him here? He looked around. In one corner a lone pipe smoker was bent over a stack of manila folders, and down one side of the room a handful of well-dressed women were sipping chai and staring with open curiosity at Alexei. Antonina waved to them but nothing more. At the far end beside a small dance floor an elderly man with an impressive walrus mustache was playing a grand piano, utterly wrapped up in his own world, producing sad unfamiliar tunes that drifted through the air with a melancholy that suited Alexei’s mood.
“Relax.” She sipped her brandy, eyes serious.
“Do you bring men here often?”
She frowned. “Of course not. Don’t be insulting. But I have an account here for when I’m in town. I would remind you that my husband is an important figure in these parts.” She gave him a slow smile and indicated her brandy glass. “So don’t worry about these. Would you like me to order you a cigar with it?”
“No. But thank you.”
They were sitting opposite each other, a low mahogany coffee table between them, and he enjoyed observing her. It was a long time since he’d been alone with a woman. Lydia didn’t count. She was his sister and anyway, just a girl. He found himself wanting to reach out and touch the silkiness of this woman’s dress, slate blue and close fitting at the hips. It revealed very little, with its long sleeves and high neckline, and would have looked demure if it had not been so artfully cut that it emphasized the slenderness of her body and the full curves of her breasts. The only thing he didn’t like was that she kept her gloves on, beautiful pearl-gray doeskin, because he liked to see hands. They told a lot about a person.
He leaned forward and raised his brandy to her. “To fortunate meetings,” he smiled.
“I’ll drink to that.”
He tasted the golden liquid, remembering other brandies on elegant terraces and in other civilized smoking rooms. Now look at him. In secondhand clothes. He snorted with a sudden sense of the absurdity of it.
“What are you laug
hing at?” she asked.
“At the strangeness of life. You never know what—or who—is coming next.”
She smiled, and for the first time her eyes became less guarded. “Isn’t that what puts the spice into it?”
“No, not for me. I prefer to be prepared, and for that you need information.”
“Ah! I see. You want something from me.”
He sat back and gave a low laugh. “Just like you want something from me.”
She didn’t react, except to sharpen her deep-set gaze.
Abruptly Alexei emptied his glass and stood up. “Come,” he said, holding out his hand, “dance with me.”
Her eyes widened with surprise and flicked to his filthy clothes.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t contaminate you.”
They both knew that the word contaminate was a Soviet word. Subversives contaminate the proletariat. Dissidents contaminate their families and friends. For one moment he thought she would refuse, but he was mistaken. She was clearly a person who liked a challenge. With a brief glance in the direction of the other women in the salon, she rose to her feet and accepted his hand. Her gloved fingers were warm in his as he led her onto the dance floor and took her into his arms. The pianist looked up, surprised, and immediately struck up a waltz.
Alexei didn’t hold her too close but close enough. He could inhale her musky perfume and see the way she had tried to cover the dark shadows under her eyes with makeup.
“You smell,” she said, smiling.
“I apologize,” he laughed.
“That’s all right. I like it actually. You . . .”
“Hush,” he murmured and drew her a fraction closer, his hand light on her back, aware of the delicate curve of each rib under his fingers. “Just dance.”
Twenty
“ALEXEI, WHY ARE YOU CHASING ACROSS RUSSIA like a madman?” Antonina rubbed her cheek against his shoulder where she lay among the pillows. “What on earth drives you to this idiocy?”
Alexei sat up and cursed that his movement was still hampered by his wounds. He swung his legs off the bed and perched on the edge, feet brushing over satin sheets that lay tangled on the floor. His back was turned to her. After a moment he heard a rustle and felt the bed stir behind him, as gently her gloved fingers started to trail down his naked back from his neck to his buttocks. Soft and insistent.
“Tell me, Alexei.”
Her lips found the exact spot between his shoulder blades where a nerve throbbed unrelentingly. He tipped his head back, resting it against hers, and immediately she wrapped her arms around him, her bare breasts tight against his spine, her hands cradling the scar on his side. For a while there was nothing but silence and the tick of their heartbeats.
“I was born and brought up in Leningrad, though I still think of it as St. Petersburg,” he said. “The person I believed to be my father was part of the government there, always at the beck and call of the duma or the tsar. I hardly ever saw him.” He paused before adding thoughtfully, “I certainly never knew what kind of man he was.”
One of her fingers, so oddly erotic in its doeskin sheath when the rest of her was naked, reached out and found the scar on his thigh, which it started to circle gently. Watching the movement made him feel dizzy.
“My mother,” he continued, “led an extremely social life, constant balls and soirées, and I had a tutor for my lessons. No other children. Just adults.”
“A lonely life for a little boy.”
“Except there was one man. I knew him as Uncle Jens. Every week he came and showed me what a boy’s childhood should be.”
“You’re smiling,” she laughed, though she couldn’t see his face. “I like this Uncle Jens already.” She brushed her hair like velvet against his skin, and he felt his loins stir once more.
“My mother took me to live in China when I was twelve.” He made no mention of the Bolsheviks. “But as soon as she heard my father had died in the civil war, she married a French industrialist.”
“Don’t tell me you went to live in Paris. I am green with envy. All those dresses.”
“No, you frivolous creature,” he laughed. “We stayed in China. There’s a large Russian community there, and as soon as I was old enough I became part of the liaison advisory delegation because I could speak both Russian and Chinese.”
She tugged a strand of his greasy hair and teased him. “So there’s an intelligent brain lying somewhere under all this good Russian dirt.”
He laughed again and it felt good. He’d forgotten how much laughing helps. He turned and wrapped his arms around her naked body as she knelt on the bed, kissing her lips and taking a lingering pleasure in the soft pliant response of them. But after a moment she pushed him away, leaving only her hand on his chest.
“So?” she demanded.
“So what?”
“So how did you get from liaison officer in China to filthy tramp in this backwoods town of Soviet Russia?”
He brushed his lips along the soft angle of her cheekbone and wondered how much of this would be passed on elsewhere, but he couldn’t stop his tongue now.
“That’s simple. I discovered I had a half-sister.” He looked deep into Antonina’s dark troubled eyes and didn’t want to lie to her, to add to the shadows that haunted her lovely face. But nevertheless he did. “I was sick of the bourgeois life. At the time I was considering returning to Russia for good.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to be a part of this great undertaking that is occurring here. This sculpting of a whole new nation, this transformation of thought processes to an idealistic instead of materialistic society.”
She eased her slender body out of his arms and lay back on the pillows, her long naked legs stretched out, her gloves stroking them as though they belonged to someone else. There was something unself-consciously sensual about the slow ritualistic movements.
“So you came here together,” she said without looking at him, “you and your Lydia, to find this Jens Friis?”
“Yes.”
“He’s no longer at Trovitsk camp, you know.”
“Are you certain? Is that what you came to tell Lydia?”
“Yes.”
“So where is he now?”
“Moscow.”
“Fuck!”
Moscow. Damn the Cossack for being right.
She regarded him solemnly. “So now you have the information you wanted. Are you going to leave me?”
“Antonina,” he said teasingly, “where else am I going to get a bath and a shave? Of course I’m staying.”
She laughed, delighted, and ran a toe all the way up his arm and into his beard.
HER SKIN TASTED OF OLIVES. OF WARM SUNLIGHT ON GOOD French burgundy with plump ripe olives. It tasted civilized. It’s what Alexei had missed. He was sick to his soul of grayness and dirt and utilitarian living. He wanted olives.
He kissed Antonina’s throat and felt the flutter of her pulse as his tongue traced the fragile line of her collarbone, heard her excited intake of breath. Like a child when it spies the Christmas tree. His own breath quickened as he ran a hand along the length of her naked thigh, caressed her slender waist where a small blue scar broke the smooth perfection of her skin, and let his fingertips trail softly over her breasts and down into the valley between them. She moaned and murmured something inaudible, shutting her eyes, her lips opening in a smile of secret pleasure. He touched her teeth with his tongue. They tasted of brandy.
“Is this dangerous?” he murmured.
“Of course it is. That’s why you’re here.”
“And you?” He kissed each eyelid. “Is that why you’re here?”
“I’m here because . . .”
A pause, nervy and tense, seemed to take over the room, and then reluctantly her eyelashes lifted and he could look into her eyes. They were dark and confused. Slowly they began to fill with tears.
“Oh, Antonina, what are you doing?”
Gently he took h
er in his arms, rocked her against his chest as he lay back on the pillows and enveloped her shuddering body in his arms. He kissed her dark glossy hair and tightened his grip on her. He didn’t know this woman or what was hurting so fiercely inside her. But he did know he didn’t want to let her go. If he were married to someone who routinely sent starving men out to haul wagons like slaves or dig coal with little more than their bare hands, he too would come looking for ways to ease the pain. He might even wear elbow-length gloves in bed the way she did. Quietly he breathed in her perfume and felt an unexpected connection with Antonina. He rested his head on hers, cradling her to him, feeling the warmth of her body flow into his.
How do any of us know what we will do until we do it?
ALEXEI PUSHED OPEN THE DOOR. THE BAR WAS THICK WITH bodies. The air clogged with cigarette smoke that hung in a lifeless pall near the ceiling, where it mingled with fumes from the stove. At least the place was warm. That was something. Alexei stamped his feet to rid them of ice, while outside in the darkness snow was falling in soft flurries.
He elbowed his way through the crush and reached the bar, where he ordered vodka and beer for two. The pretty young Uzbeki girl with the embroidered blouse and the wayward hips served him his drinks and rolled her black eyes at him invitingly, but he shook his head. He scooped up his drinks and made his way over to a table at the back where Niko was already seated.
“Dobriy vecher. Good evening,” he greeted the truck driver.
He placed the vodkas and beers on the stained surface, and in return Alexei received a grin of gleaming strong teeth and the offer of a smoke. He declined it because despite the bath and shave, he could still smell Antonina’s perfume on his skin and he liked it there. He wasn’t ready to coat it in nicotine. Leaving her had been hard, dislocating something inside him because he didn’t know when he would see her again.
“Dobriy vecher, comrade. Spasibo.” Niko accepted the drinks and knocked back the vodka with relish. The beer he nursed fondly between his hands. “Now, tell me, who is this wretch who stole your money?”
The Girl from Junchow Page 17