The Russian Concubine

by Kate Furnivall

  This room was Feng Tu Hong’s boast to the world, as well as his warning. For on each side of the doorway stood two reminders of what he had come from. One was a suit of armour. It was made of thousands of overlapping metal and leather scales, like the skin of a lizard, and its gauntlet grasped a sharpened spear that could rip your heart out. On the other side stood a bear. It was a black Asian bear with a white slash on its chest, rearing up on its hind legs, its jaws gaping to tear your throat to shreds. It was dead. Stuffed and posed. But a reminder nonetheless.

  Theo nodded his understanding. At that moment a young girl, no more than twelve or thirteen, came into the room carrying a silver tray.

  ‘Ah, Kwailin brings us tea,’ Feng said, then sat back in silence and gazed at the girl as she served each of them with a tiny cup of green tea and a fragrant sweetmeat. She moved gracefully even though her limbs were plump and small, her eyes heavy-lidded as if she spent her days lying in bed eating apricots and sugared dates. Theo knew at once that she was Feng’s new concubine.

  He drank his tea. But it did not wash away the sour taste in his mouth.

  ‘Feng Tu Hong,’ he said, ‘time slides away with the tide.’

  Instantly Feng waved the girl away. She slipped Theo a shy smile as she left, and he wondered if she would be whipped for it later.

  ‘So, Englishman, what is this business of yours?’

  ‘I am meeting with a man of importance, a great mandarin in the International Settlement, who wants to trade with you.’

  ‘What does he trade, this mandarin?’

  ‘Information.’

  Feng’s narrow eyes sharpened. Theo felt his own breath come faster.

  ‘Information in return for what?’ Feng demanded.

  ‘In exchange he wants a percentage.’

  ‘No percentage. A straight fee.’

  ‘Feng Tu Hong, you do not bargain with this man.’

  Feng balled his fists and slammed them together. ‘I am the one who decides the trade.’

  ‘But he is the one who has the knowledge to sweep away the foreign gunboats from your tail.’

  Feng fixed Theo with his black stare and for a long moment neither spoke.

  ‘One percent,’ Feng offered finally.

  ‘You insult me. And you insult my mandarin.’

  ‘Two percent.’

  ‘Ten percent.’

  ‘Wah!’ roared Feng. ‘He thinks he can rob me.’

  ‘Eight percent of each shipment.’

  ‘What’s in it for you?’

  ‘My handling fee is two percent on top.’

  Feng leaned forward, his heavy dark jaw thrust out hungrily, reminding Theo of the Asian bear. ‘Five percent for the mandarin. One percent for you.’

  Theo was careful to show no pleasure. ‘Done.’

  ‘He said yes?’ Li Mei asked.

  ‘He said yes. And he didn’t kill me.’

  It was meant as a joke but Li Mei turned her head away, swinging her curtain of silken hair between them, and wouldn’t look at him.

  ‘My love,’ Theo whispered, ‘I am safe.’

  ‘So far.’ She stared out at the fog that was crawling up from the river, blanking out the street lamps and swallowing the stars. ‘Did you see my cousins?’ she asked softly. ‘Or my brother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Your cousins were playing mah-jongg in the pavilion.’

  ‘Did they look well?’ She turned to him at last, her dark eyes shining with an eagerness she could not hide. ‘Did they laugh and smile and look happy?’

  Theo wound an arm around her slender waist and brushed her hair with his lips. Just the scent of her tightened his loins. ‘Yes, my sweet, they looked very lovely, with combs of silver in their hair and cheongsams of jade and saffron, pearls in their ears and smiles on their faces. Carefree as birds in springtime. Yes, they looked happy.’

  His words pleased her. She lifted his fingers to her lips and kissed their tips one by one.

  ‘And Po Chu?’

  ‘We spoke. Neither he nor I were pleased to see each other.’

  ‘I knew it would be so.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘And my father? Did you give him my message?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  This time Theo did not lie. He pulled her closer to him. ‘He said, “I no longer have a daughter called Mei. She is dead to me.”’

  Li Mei pushed her face against Theo’s chest, so hard that he was frightened she couldn’t breathe, but he said nothing, just held her trembling body in his arms.

  15

  Chang An Lo travelled by night. It was safer. His foot still pained him, and in the mountains his progress was slow. His return journey took too long. They almost caught him.

  He heard their breath. The sigh of their horses. The patter of the rain on their goatskin capes. He stilled his heart and lay facedown in the mud, their hooves only inches from his head, but the darkness saved him. He gave thanks to Ch’ang O, goddess of the moon, for turning her face away that night. After that he stole a mule from an unguarded barn in a village at the bottom of the valley, but he left a cupful of silver in its place.

  It was just after dawn, when the wind off the great northern plain was driving the yellow loess dust into his nostrils and under his tongue, that the sprawl of houses that made up Junchow came into sight. From this distance Junchow looked disjointed. The Oriental jumbled alongside the Western, the soaring rooftops of the old town next to the solid blocks and straight lines of the International Settlement. Chang tried not to think of her in there or of what she must be thinking of him. Instead he tried to spit on the barren earth, but the dust had robbed his mouth of moisture, so instead he muttered, ‘A thousand curses on the fanqui invaders. China will soon piss on the Foreign Devils.’

  Yet despite all his curses and his hatred of them, one Foreign Devil had invaded him and he didn’t want to drive her out any more than he would drive out his own soul. As he crouched in the depths of a spinney, his shadow merging with the trees, he ached for her, though he knew he was risking more than he had the right to lose.

  Above him the red streaks in the sky looked like blood being spilled.

  The water was cold. He was a strong swimmer, but the river currents were fierce and wrapped around his legs like tentacles, so he had to kick hard to be free of them. The foot that the fox girl had sewn up served him well, and he thanked the gods for her steady hands. The river meant that he avoided the sentries and the many eyes that watched the roads into Junchow. He had waited until dark. The sampans and junks that skittered downstream with black sails and no bow lights swept past him to their furtive assignations, and above him the clouds stole the stars from the sky. The river kept its secrets.

  When he reached the far bank, he stood silent and motionless beside the rotting hull of an upturned boat, listening for sounds in the darkness, looking for shifting patterns of shadows. He was back in Junchow, near her once more. He felt his spirits lift, and after some time spent with only the rustle of rats for company, he slipped away, up into the town.

  ‘Ai! My eyes are glad to see you.’ The young man with the long scar down one side of his face greeted Chang with a rush of relief. ‘To have you back, alive and still cursing, my friend, it means I shall sleep tonight. Here, drink this, you look as if you need it.’

  The light flickered as the torch flames hissed and spat like live creatures on the wall.

  ‘Yuesheng, I thank you. They came close, this time, the grey scorpions of Chiang Kai-shek. Someone had whispered in their ear.’ Chang drank the small glass of rice wine in one swallow and felt it burn life back into his chilled bones. He helped himself to another.

  ‘Whoever it was will have his tongue cut out.’

  They were in a cellar. The stone walls dripped with water and were covered in vivid-coloured lichen, but it was large and the sounds of the printing press were deadened by the thick walls and the heavy
ceiling. Above them stood a textile factory where machines rattled all day, but only the foreman knew of the machine under his workers’ feet. He was a trade union man, a Communist, a fighter for the cause, and he supplied oil and ink and buckets of raw rice wine to the nighttime activists. Since the Kuomintang Nationalists had swept into power and Chiang Kai-shek swore to wipe the Communist threat off the face of China, each breath was a danger, each pamphlet an invitation to the executioner’s sword. Half a dozen determined young faces clustered around the presses, half a dozen young lives on a thread.

  Yuesheng pulled a strip of dried fish from his bag and handed it to Chang. ‘Eat, my friend. You will need your strength.’

  Chang ate, his first food in more than three days. ‘The latest posters are good, the ones demanding new laws on child labour,’ he said. ‘I saw several on my way here, one even on the council chamber’s door.’

  ‘Yes.’ Yuesheng laughed. ‘That one was Kuan’s doing.’

  At the mention of her name a slender young woman glanced up from where she was stacking pamphlets into sacks and gave Chang a nod.

  ‘Tell me, Kuan, how do you always manage to find the most insulting places to stick your posters, right under Feng Tu Hong’s nose?’ Chang called above the clattering noise of the press. ‘Do you fly with the night spirits, unseen by human eye?’

  Kuan walked over. She was wearing the loose blue jacket and trousers of a peasant farmer, though she had recently graduated from Peking University with a degree in law. She had serious black eyes. She did not believe in the soft smiles that most Junchow women offered to the world. When her parents threw her out of the family home because she humiliated them by cutting her hair short and taking a job in a factory, it only sharpened her desire to fight for women, so that they would no longer be owned like dogs by fathers or by husbands, to be kicked at will. She possessed the fearlessness of the fox girl but inside her there was no flame, no light that burned so bright it lit up a room, no heat so fierce that lizards scurried to be near her.

  Where was Lydia now? Cursing him, he had no doubt. The image of her fox eyes, narrowed and waiting for him full of fury, sent a laugh through him and Kuan mistook his pleasure. She gave Chang one of her rare smiles.

  ‘That camel-faced chairman of the council, Feng Tu Hong, deserves such special treatment,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me. What is new while I’ve been gone?’

  The smile faded. ‘Yesterday he ordered a purge of the metal-workers in the iron foundry, those who were asking for safer conditions at the furnaces.’

  ‘Twelve were beheaded in the yard. As a warning to others,’ Yuesheng spat out and ran a hand down the sword scar on his own face. It seemed to pulsate and darken.

  A surge of rage tore through Chang. He closed his eyes and focused his mind. Now was not the time. This moment was surrounded by fire. He needed control, with danger so close.

  ‘Feng Tu Hong’s time will come,’ he said quietly. ‘I promise you that. And this will bring it faster.’ He pulled a piece of paper from a leather pouch that hung from his neck.

  Yuesheng snatched it up, read it through, and nodded with satisfaction. ‘It’s a promissory note,’ he announced to the others. ‘For rifles, Winchesters. A hundred of them.’

  Six faces found smiles and one young man punched an ink-stained fist into the air in salute.

  ‘You have done well,’ Yuesheng said, pride in his voice.

  Chang was pleased. He and Yuesheng were almost brothers in their friendship. It was the rock on which they stood. He placed a hand on Yuesheng’s shoulder and their eyes met in understanding. Each breath was one they earned.

  ‘The news from the south is good,’ Chang told him.

  ‘Mao Tse-tung? Is our leader still evading the grey bellies’ snares?’

  ‘He narrowly escaped capture last month. But his military camp in Jiangxi is expanding every day, where they come like bees to a hive from all over the country. Some with no more than a hoe in their hand and belief in their heart. The time is coming closer when Chiang Kai-shek will discover that his treachery and betrayal of our country have signed his own death warrant.’

  ‘Is it true there was another skirmish near Canton last week?’ Kuan asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Chang said. ‘A train full of Kuomintang troops was blown up and . . .’

  A loud crash drowned out his voice and the sound of the press as the metal door burst open at the top of the stairs and a boy hurled himself into the cellar, eyes huge with panic.

  ‘They’re here,’ he screamed. ‘The troops are . . .’

  A shot cracked through the cellar and the boy collapsed facedown on the earthen floor, a bright red stain etched on the back of his jacket.

  Instantly the cellar was full of movement. Each knew what to do. Yuesheng had prepared for this moment. Torches were doused. In the darkness enemy boots pounded down the stairs, voices raised, commands thrown at shadows, and two more shots made the walls sing. But in the far corner a ladder was ready. Well-oiled bolts slid back. A hatch was thrown open. But the square of night sky was paler, leaving the figures silhouetted against the opening as they started to slip through it one by one.

  Standing last at the base of the ladder beside Yuesheng, Chang saw the dim outline of a soldier approach from the stairs, and with a lightning kick he tore the man’s jaw from its socket and heard a high whinny of pain. In a flash Chang had seized his rifle and was sending a blast of bullets screaming around the cellar.

  ‘Go,’ he shouted at Yuesheng.

  ‘No. You leave first.’

  Chang touched his friend’s arm. ‘Go.’

  Yuesheng delayed no longer and sped up the ladder. Chang fired once more and felt a Kuomintang bullet whistle through his hair in reply, and then he leaped up the rungs right on Yuesheng’s heels. Bullets tore into the hatch opening from below and suddenly Chang felt a dead weight crash down on him. It was as if his own heart had been torn out.

  He seized Yuesheng’s body on his shoulder, sprang through the hatch, and raced away into the darkness.

  16

  ‘More wine, Lydia?’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Parker.’

  ‘Do you think she should, Alfred? She’s only sixteen.’

  ‘Oh, Mama, I’m grown up now.’

  ‘Not as grown up as you think, darling.’

  Alfred Parker smiled indulgently, his spectacles sparkling at Lydia in the candlelight. ‘I think just this once. Tonight is special, after all.’

  ‘Special?’ Valentina raised an elegant eyebrow. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Because this is our first meal together like this. The first of many, I trust, when I am honoured to be in the company of two such beautiful women.’ He lifted his glass briefly to Lydia and then to Valentina.

  Valentina lowered her eyes for a moment, ran a finger slowly down the pale skin of her throat as if considering the suggestion, and then flashed her gaze up to his face. Like springing a trap, Lydia thought as she watched with interest the effect it had on Alfred Parker. He turned quite pink with pleasure. Her mother’s sensuous dark eyes and parted lips were churning up his brain and robbing him of far more than Lydia had ever tried to take from him.

  ‘Garçon,’ he called. ‘Another bottle of Burgundy, please.’

  They were in a restaurant in the French Quarter and Lydia had ordered steak au poivre. The French maitre d’ had bowed to her as if she were someone important, someone who could afford a meal like this. In a restaurant like this. She was wearing the dress, of course, her apricot one from the concert, and she made a point of looking around the room at the other diners as indifferently as if she did this every day.

  No one could guess this was a series of firsts. First time in a restaurant. First time eating steak. First time drinking wine.

  ‘Trust you to choose something fiery, darling,’ Valentina had laughed.

  Lydia watched Parker closely, copied his table etiquette when it came to the startling array of silver cutlery on the stiff
white tablecloth, and noticed the way he dabbed genteelly at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. She’d been surprised when her mother told her Alfred had invited her to join them for supper. Another first. No other man friend had ever included Lydia in their arrangements, and it sent alarm bells clanging through her head, but her desire to eat in a restaurant outweighed her instinct to keep as far away from Mr Parker as possible.

  ‘Very well,’ she’d said to her mother, ‘I’ll come. But only if he doesn’t lecture me.’

  ‘He won’t lecture you.’ She took Lydia’s chin in her hand and gave it an urgent little shake. ‘But be good. Be nice. Sugar and spice, even if it kills you. This is important to me, darling.’

  ‘But what about Antoine?’

  ‘Bugger Antoine.’

  Everything had gone well so far. Only one little slipup. It happened when Parker kindly offered her one of his snails to taste and she had said without thinking, ‘No, thanks. I’ve eaten enough snails to last me a lifetime.’

  Valentina had glared at Lydia. A sharp kick under the table.

  ‘Really?’ Parker looked surprised.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Lydia said quickly, ‘at my friend Polly’s house. Her mother is mad about them.’

  ‘I don’t blame her. Smothered in garlic and butter?’

  ‘Mmm, delicious.’ She laughed wickedly. ‘Aren’t they, Mama?’

  Valentina rolled her eyes to the ceiling. She didn’t want to be reminded of the times they’d spent scrabbling around in the rain, rooting snails out from under bushes and off back lawns at night. Even the occasional worm or frog. The stink of them all in the cooking pot.

  Lydia turned a sugar-and-spice smile on Alfred Parker. ‘Mama tells me you are a newspaperman, Mr Parker. That must be very interesting.’

  She heard her mother’s little sigh of approval.

  ‘A journalist, yes, on the Daily Herald. This is a very disturbed period in China’s history but a very crucial one, with Chiang Kai-shek at last bringing some kind of sanity and order to this unhappy country, thank God. So yes, it is extremely interesting work.’ He beamed at her.