“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 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 gray 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 more about 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 labor camp himself.”
Elena sat very still, hands in her lap. She said nothing, but her colorless 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 her mouth until her fleshy chin sat cradled in her palm. The action seemed to bring her back to life, and she stabbed her 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 and 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 in the middle of the floor and placed her hands on her ample hips, glancing around 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 in the direction of the door, and as she passed she did an unexpected thing. 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.
“Maleeshka, 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 came from 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 were 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 gray 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 a 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. That reassured Lydia. She wasn’t sure why she cared so much, but she did.
She wanted to be alone with her thoughts. They were hammering on her skull to be let out. I’ll find a way. That’s what Chang had said as they parted: I’ll find a way, and she believed him. If Chang An Lo promised he would find a way for them to be together—really be together, rather than the few snatched kisses of today—then he would. It was as simple as that.
She shivered, not that she was cold, quite the reverse in fact. The blood in her veins was hot and in a hurry, but her body wouldn’t keep still. It was restless. Her skin felt hungry. It wanted his touch the way it used to long for the balm of ice on a hot summer’s day in Junchow market. It wanted to be beside him. To see his face. To watch his slow smile spread up into his eyes. She’d thought the kisses today would be enough, but they weren’t. She was greedy. She wanted more.
She dropped her head against the windowpane and sighed. She’d been in a state of waiting for so long, she had forgotten how exhilarating it was to live in the here and now. To have what you want. To want what you have.
“Chang An Lo,” she whispered, as if he could hear her.
She touched the glass where her breath had clouded it and wrote his name in the mist. She smiled and studied the flow of the letters intently as if it could magically conjure up Chang himself, her heart banging on her ribs. As she stared at it, her own reflection took shape around it, merging the two, and she shifted focus to examine its features. What did he see when he looked at it? The hair, the eyes, the facial bones, all seemed the same to her. But is that what he saw? The girl he’d fallen in love with back in China? Or someone else?
And Kuan? There like a spider at his side with every step he took, a living breathing invitation in each hotel room he stayed in. No, not that. Don’t think like that.
Send me the boy. That’s what he’d said. She turned away from the window and noticed it was almost dark in the room.
“YOU EAT TOO FAST. THE PAIR OF YOU.”
Lydia was seated in the chair. The boy was still on the floor, stuffing bread into his mouth, and beside him the dog had its muzzle in a bowl of kasha, neither coming up for air. She’d heated Edik some soup and warmed the porridge for Misty, then prodded the sleeping boy in the ribs and plonked the bowls in front of them. Edik had gone from deep sleep to eating in less than a blink of an eye. He held the bowl close to his chest, hunched over it, guarding it as he swallowed, and the sight had disturbed Lydia.
“Edik,” she asked, “what happened to your
parents?”
He gulped down two more mouthfuls of soup. “Shot.” He crammed in more bread.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Four years ago.”
“Why?”
She waited again. Didn’t push.
“They read a book,” he said between mouthfuls. “A book that was banned because it was anti-Soviet.”
“What book?”
“Can’t remember.”
She left it at that. His hair hung in a pale limp curtain around his face as he started to lick the bowl.
“Have you lived on the streets ever since?”
“Da.”
“That’s tough.”
“It’s not so bad. Winter is hardest.”
“Thieving is dangerous.”
He lifted his head for the first time and his muddy blue eyes brightened. “I’m good at it. One of the best.”
I’m good at it. She’d said the same words herself not so long ago. Her stomach knotted when she thought of the risks.
“Where do you sell the stuff you steal?”
“I don’t.” He gave her a scornful look as though she were stupid. “The vory does.”
“Who is the vory?”
He rolled his eyes in his head in exaggerated disgust, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and gave it to the dog to lick.
“There’s this man,” he explained as slowly as if talking to a simpleton, “he runs a gang of us street kids. We steal and hand it over to him. He pays us.” The boy thought about what he’d just said and scowled. He made as if to spit on the floor, but stopped himself just in time. “Not much though, the bastard. Just a few measly kopecks. Some of the other vory bastards pay better, but I got to take what I can get.”
Lydia leaned forward. “Are there many boys like you on the streets of Moscow?”
“Yeah. Thousands.”
“And are they all run in gangs by vory men?”
“Most of them.”
“Who are these vory?”
“Criminals, of course.” He grinned and ruffled the pup’s ears. “Like me.”
“Edik, what you’re doing is dangerous.”
“And what you’re doing isn’t?” He laughed, an open childish laugh that made her smile.
She wanted to go over and wrap an arm around his skinny shoulders, to give this tough young kid the kind of hug his small frame was crying out for, but she didn’t. She had a feeling he would bite her again if she did. She scraped her hair back from her forehead as if she could scrape from her mind the doubts about what she was about to ask.
“Edik.”
“Yeah?”
She reached into her pocket, pulled out a ten-rouble note, and waved it in the air. His eyes followed the white note hungrily, the way Misty’s followed a biscuit.
“Here,” she said, screwed it up into a ball, and tossed it to him.
It was in his pocket before she could blink.
He grinned. “What now?”
“I need you to go to the Hotel Triumfal again and watch out for the same Chinese man. He will pass you a note for me.”
“Is that all? For all this money?”
“Take care, Edik.”
He jumped to his feet, grabbing his new coat under one arm and his dog under the other. “The trouble with you, Lydia”—this time his smile was shy and yet it leapt the gap between them effortlessly—“you’re too easy to please.”
She laughed and felt the guilt shift a fraction under her ribs. “Don’t—”
A sharp knock on the door silenced her.
IT WAS DMITRI MALOFEYEV. HE WAS STANDING IN THE DOORWAY of the shabby room in his elegantly tailored leather coat, a white silk scarf at his neck. In one hand he carried a large brown paper bag, in the other a bunch of flowers that looked to Lydia as if they might be lilies. Where the hell he’d got them in the middle of winter, she couldn’t imagine.
“Hello, Lydia.”
“Comrade Malofeyev, this is a surprise.”
“May I come in?”
“Of course.”
But she hesitated. To let this man with his shiny shoes and polished white teeth into her home was like inviting a crocodile into her bed.
She smiled at him, matching him tooth for tooth. “Come in.”
He walked in, his male presence filling every corner of the drab room. “So this is where you hide.”
Hide? Why did he use that word?
“It’s where I live, yes. How did you find me?”
“Not hard.”
“No, I bet it wasn’t. For a member of the Party elite, nothing comes hard.” She said it with a smile.
He returned the smile and with a gallant bow presented her with the flowers. As she accepted them she bent her head to inhale their fragrance and realized they were made of silk. Stupidly, she felt cheated.
“Thank you.”
Her guest looked around the room with interest. His gaze settled on Edik and registered surprise. Whatever he’d gleaned from the concierge’s tittle-tattle, a boy and a dog were clearly not part of the picture. He nodded a greeting of sorts, then reached into the paper bag under his arm, pulled out a pack of biscuits, and tossed it across the room to him.
“Here, young man,” he said, “take this. And get out.”
It was said so politely that it was impossible to judge how serious he was.
The boy didn’t put out a hand to the biscuits. He just let them spin through the air and fall to the floor with a crunch. He didn’t even give Malofeyev the courtesy of looking at him. Instead he focused on Lydia.
“Do you want me to stay?” he muttered.
She loved him for it, and at that moment he seemed to become part of her family. As Chang had said, you don’t need the bond of blood.
“No,” she answered and gave him a grateful smile. “You can go. I believe you have an errand to run.”
Edik put down the dog, shrugged into the coat that was far too big for his slight frame, and, without a glance at the visitor, slouched out the door. The dog snatched up the biscuits between its tiny teeth and trotted after him.
SHE MADE HIM TEA. IT WAS THE LEAST SHE COULD DO. ON HER bed was spread an array of food the likes of which she hadn’t set eyes on since she’d entered Russia. Not even in the shops did they have such riches. Tins of glossy caviar from the Caspian Sea. Almond biscuits and ginger cake. Bars of Swiss chocolate and silvered boxes of glacé fruits from Paris. A leg of smoked ham that made the room smell wonderful, and numerous kinds of fat spicy sausage. She had laid it all out on the bed with care, the way a woman would lay out her gowns and stand back to admire them. When she lifted out from the bottom of the bag a bottle of vodka and a metal case of five fat cigars, she had looked at Malofeyev and raised one eyebrow.
“You think I’m a secret smoker?” she laughed, then hesitated and added a little stiffly, “Or are these meant for your own use?”
“No.” He was sitting on the windowsill, legs crossed, swinging one foot and watching her. “They’re for you to use. As trade for whatever else you need. Kerosene perhaps.”
“Ah.” Lydia placed the cigars between a jar of Greek olives and a packet of roast coffee, patted them affectionately like long-lost children, and imagined what a guard might be persuaded to do in exchange for such a gift. “Spasibo.” She smiled, not sure whether it was at him or at the food, and tried not to feel bought. Her feet wouldn’t move away from the bed, and she was frightened that if she looked away it might all disappear in a puff of smoke.
“You’re welcome, Lydia.”
She waited for more words, but none came.
“Comrade Malofeyev, what do I owe you for this?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry”—he smiled at her—“there’s no price tag.”
She picked up the olives, succulent and tangy, and recalled how her mother would have slit her own throat for such a jar.
“No price tag on the food?” She made herself replace the olives. “Or on the information I asked for?”
&n
bsp; “Not much success there, I’m afraid.”
A small silence tumbled into the ragged gap between them, but he didn’t seem to notice it. It made her uncomfortable.
“You’ve not found where Jens Friis is?” she asked at last.
“No.”
Another silence. He swung his leg carelessly, and she wanted to seize it and wrap it around his neck.
“But I thought . . . ,” she started. The words trailed off. What was the point of them?
“So did I.”
“Is that why you brought the food? In place of any information.”
Abruptly the leg stilled its movement. “Lydia, I am no longer involved with prisons or labor camps.”
“Do you remember him at Trovitsk camp? Jens Friis. Tall and red-haired.”
“Of course not. There were hundreds of prisoners there, and I had little to do with them myself. I was just there to ensure that the work norms were fulfilled and the timber shipped south. I didn’t sit and hold a prisoner’s hand and tell him bedtime stories, if that’s what you mean.”
She stared at him.
He didn’t smile, just looked back at her, a patient expression on his face. It goaded her further.
“But I told you,” she said. “I gave you the exact number of the prison that he’s supposed to be held in—number 1908. Surely you can find out from your contacts where it is in Moscow.” She shifted impatiently from one foot to the other. “Even if you can’t find out whether he’s in there.”
“Lydia, my dear girl, I would if I could, I promise you. But you must understand, some secrets are secret even from me.” His forehead was furrowed, and she wasn’t sure whether it was concern or annoyance. “I’m sorry I can’t help you more.” As an afterthought, he added, “I wish I could.”
Lydia stooped and picked up the large brown paper bag on the floor. One by one she started to place the food items back inside it. Malofeyev made no comment.
“I don’t believe you,” she said quietly, her back to him.
She left the cigars till last, then positioned them neatly on the top. They made her think of Alexei and how he would have enjoyed them. She turned to face Malofeyev.
The Girl from Junchow Page 28