The Russian Concubine

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Do you know,’ he asked in a gentle tone not meant to anger her, ‘that women and children are still sold as slaves? That absent landlords rob the peasants of the food on their tables and the crops in their fields? That villages are stripped of men, seized by the army, leaving the weak and the old to starve in the streets? Do you know these things?’

  She looked at him, but her face gave nothing away tonight.

  ‘China is not going to change,’ she said. ‘It’s too big and too old. I’ve learned at school how emperors have ruled as gods for thousands of years. You can’t . . .’

  ‘We can.’ He felt the heat rising in his chest when he thought of what must yet be done. He wanted her to know it. ‘We can make people free, free to think, free to work for an equal wage. Free to own land. The workers of China are treated worse than pigs. They are stamped into the dung like beetles. But the rich eat from gold plates and study in the scrolls of Confucius how to be a Virtuous Man.’ He spat on the ground. ‘Let the Virtuous Man try a day on his hands and knees in the fields. See which matters more to him then, a perfect word in one of Po Chu-i’s poems or a bowl of rice in his belly.’ He picked up a piece of broken brick at his side and crushed it against the wall. ‘Let him eat his poem.’

  ‘But Chang An Lo, you have eaten poems.’ She spoke quietly, but he could hear the impatience under her words. ‘You are an educated person and know it is the only way forward. You said yourself you came from a wealthy family with tutors and . . .’

  ‘That was before my eyes were opened. I saw my family riding on the broken backs of slaves and I was ashamed. Education must be for all. For women as well as men. Not just the rich. It opens the mind to the future, as well as the past.’

  He thought of Kuan with her degree in law, so fierce in her determination to open the minds of the workers that she was prepared to work sixteen hours a day on a filthy factory floor where ten employees died each week from machine accidents and exhaustion. This fox girl knew nothing of any of this. She was one of the privileged greedy fanqui who had taken great bites out of his country with their warships and their well-oiled rifles. What was he doing with her? To ask her to change the patterns of her mind would be like asking a tiger to give up its stripes.

  He stood up. He would leave her to her scattered coins and her thieving ways. One day she would be caught, one day she would grow careless, however closely he guarded her steps.

  ‘You’re going?’

  ‘Yes.’ He bowed to her, low and respectful, and felt something split in his chest.

  ‘Don’t go.’

  He shut his ears and turned his back on her.

  ‘Then say good-bye to me.’ Her voice seemed to grow emptier, as if she knew he would not return this time, and a small noise escaped from her throat. She held out her hand as the foreigners did.

  He walked over to where she sat on the concrete, bent down to take her small hand in his, and as his face came closer to hers, he smelled the rain on her hair. He breathed it in and inhaled it deep into his lungs until the scent of her seemed to fill his mind, the way the river mists fill the night sky. Her hand lay in his and he could not make his fingers release it. The moon stepped back behind a cloud, so that her face was hidden from him but her skin felt warm against his own.

  ‘And the foreigners?’ Her voice was barely a whisper in the darkness. ‘Tell me, Chang An Lo, what do the Communists aim to do to the fanqui?’

  ‘Death to the fanqui,’ he said, but he did not wish for her death any more than he wished for his own.

  ‘Then I must put my faith in Chiang Kai-shek,’ she said.

  She was smiling; he could hear it in her voice though he could not see it with his eyes, but he did not want her to say such words, not even in jest. He felt a fleck of anger land on his tongue like ash.

  ‘The Communists will one day win, Lydia Ivanova, I warn you of that. You Westerners do not see that Chiang Kai-shek is an old tyrant under a new name.’ He spat again to the ground as the devil’s name passed his lips. ‘He has a lust for nothing but power. He proclaimed that he will lead our country to freedom, but he lies. And the Kuomintang Central Committee is a dog that jumps when he cracks the whip. He will destroy China. He strangles at birth all signs of change, yet the foreigners feed him with dollars to make him grow wise, the way an emperor feeds his pet tiger with songbirds to make him sing.’

  His hand was gripping her fingers too hard and he could feel her bones fighting each other, but she gave no sign.

  ‘It will never happen,’ he finished.

  ‘But the Communists are cold killers,’ she said without withdrawing her hand. ‘They cut out their enemies’ tongues and pour kerosene down their throats. They bring China’s new industries to a halt with their strikes and sabotage. That’s what Mr Parker told me tonight. So why did you give them my necklace money?’

  ‘For guns. Your Mr Parker is twisting the tail of truth.’

  ‘No, he’s a journalist.’ She shook her head and he felt a trickle of spray from her wet hair. It flicked on his cheek and set his skin alive. ‘He must know what’s going on, that’s his job,’ she insisted. ‘And he believes Chiang Kai-shek will be the saviour of China.’

  ‘He is wrong. Your journalist must be deaf and blind.’

  ‘And he says the foreigners are China’s only hope for the future if this country is to come out of the Dark Ages and modernise.’

  Chang dropped her hand. A surge of anger at the arrogance of the Foreign Devils rose in his throat and he cursed them for their greed and for their ignorance and for their vengeful god who would devour all others. Her golden eyes stared at him in confusion. She didn’t understand and would never understand. What was he doing? He stepped back quickly, leaving her Mr Parker’s lies in her lap, but his fingers did not listen to his head and felt as empty as a river without fish.

  ‘Did he not tell you, Lydia Ivanova, that the foreigners are cutting off China’s limbs? They demand reparation payments for past rebellions. They cripple our economy and strip us naked.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor that the foreigners rub China’s bleeding face in the pig dung by their rule of extraterritorial rights in the cities they stole from us? With these rights the fanqui ignores the laws of China and makes up his own to please himself.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor that he wrapped his fist around our customs office and controls our imports. His warships swarm in our seas and our rivers like wasps in a crate of mangoes.’

  ‘No, Chang An Lo. No, he did not.’ For the first time she seemed to gather fire into her words. ‘But this he did say, that until the people of China break free from their addiction to opium, they will never be anything but a weak feudal nation, always subservient to some kind of overlord’s whim.’

  Chang laughed, loud and harsh, the sound raking across the broken walls.

  She said nothing, just stared at him, shadows stealing her face from his eyes. Some night creature flitted silently over their heads, but neither looked up.

  ‘That’s something else your Parker forgot to tell you.’ His voice was so low she had to lean forward to hear, and again he breathed in the scent of her damp hair.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That it was the British who first brought opium to China.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘It’s true. Ask your journalist man. They brought it in their ships from India. Traded the black paste for our silks and our teas and spices. They brought death to China, not only with their guns. As surely as they brought their God to trample on ours.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘There is much you don’t know.’ He heard the sorrow in his own voice.

  In the long silence that followed, he knew he should leave. This girl was not good for him. She would twist his thoughts with a fanqui’s cunning and bring him dishonour. Yet how could he walk away without tearing the stitching from his soul?

  ‘Tell me, Chang An Lo,’ she said just as the headl
amps of a car swept into their brick shell, revealing the tight grip of her fingers on a coin she must have picked up from the floor, ‘tell me what I don’t know.’

  So he knelt down in front of her and started to talk.

  That night Yuesheng came to Chang in a dream. The bullet that had smashed through his ribs and torn into his heart was no longer there, but the open hole remained and his face was well fed in the way Chang remembered from before the bad times.

  ‘Greetings, brother of my heart,’ Yuesheng said through lips that didn’t move. He was dressed in a fine gown with a round embroidered cap on his head and a hooded hunting hawk on his arm.

  ‘You do me great honour to come to me before your bones are even in the earth. I mourn the loss of my friend and pray you are at peace now.’

  ‘Yes, I walk with my ancestors in fields thick with corn.’

  ‘That pleases me.’

  ‘But my tongue is sour with acid words and I cannot eat or drink till I have emptied them from my mouth.’

  ‘I wish to hear the words.’

  ‘Your ears will burn.’

  ‘Let them burn.’

  ‘You are Chinese, Chang An Lo. You come from the great and ancient city of Peking. Do not dishonour the spirit of your parents and bring shame on your venerable family name. She is fanqui. She is evil. Each fanqui brings death and sorrow to our people and yet she is bewitching your eyes. You must see clear and straight in this time of danger. Death is coming. It must be hers, not yours.’

  Suddenly, with a wet gushing sound, the hole in Yuesheng’s body was filled with boiling black blood that smelled like burned brick, and a high-pitched noise issued from him. It was the sound of a weasel screaming.

  18

  Theo stood on the bank and swore. The river lay flat as if it had just been ironed and the moonlight stretched long fingers over its surface, ruining all his hopes. The boat wouldn’t come. Not on a night like this.

  It was one o’clock in the morning and he had been waiting among the reeds for more than an hour. The earlier rain and heavy clouds had provided the perfect cover, a black soulless night with only the solitary light of an occasional flimsy fishing sampan burning holes in the darkness. But no boat came. Not then. Not now. His eyes were tired of peering into nothingness. He tried to distract himself with thoughts about what was taking place just a mile upriver in Junchow’s harbour. Coastal patrol boats cruised in and out throughout the night, and once he heard the crack of gunfire. It gave him a quick pump of adrenaline.

  He was hidden under the drooping boughs of a weeping willow that trailed its leaves in the water among the reeds, and he worried that he was too invisible. What if they couldn’t find him? Damn it, life was always choked with what ifs.

  What if he’d said no? No to Mason. No to Feng Tu Hong. What if . . . ?

  ‘Master come?’

  The faint whisper made him jump, but he didn’t hesitate. He accepted the offered hand from the tiny wizened man in the rowboat and climbed in. It was a risk, but Theo was too deeply in to turn back now. In silence, except for the faintest sigh of oars through water, they travelled farther downriver, hugging the bank and seeking out the shadows of the trees. He wasn’t sure what distance they rowed or how long it took, for every now and again the little Chinese river-jack shot the boat deep into the reeds and hung in there until whatever danger it was that startled him had passed.

  Theo didn’t speak. Noise carried over water in the still night air and he had no wish for a sudden bullet in the brain, so he sat immobile, one hand on each side of the rickety craft, and waited. With the moonlight camped possessively on the centre of the river, he didn’t see how they could possibly make the planned rendezvous, but this was the first run and he didn’t want it to go wrong. He could taste the anticipation like a shot of brandy in his stomach and however much he tried to feel disgusted, he couldn’t manage it. Too much rested on tonight. He trailed one hand in the water to cool his impatience.

  And suddenly it loomed right there in front of him, the curved sweep of a large junk with the long pole to steer at the stern and black sails half furled. It lay in deep shadow in the mouth of an unexpected creek, invisible until you could reach out and touch it. Theo tossed a coin to the Chinese river-jack and leaped aboard.

  ‘Look, Englishman.’ The master of the junk spoke Mandarin but with a strange guttural accent Theo could barely understand. ‘Watch.’

  He grinned at Theo, a wide predatory grin with sharp pointed teeth, then scooped up two fried prawns on the tip of his dagger, flicked them up into the air in a high arc, and caught them both in the cavern that was his mouth.

  He offered Theo the knife. ‘Now you.’

  The man was wearing a padded jacket, as if the night were cold, and stank like a water buffalo. Theo separated out two good fat prawns from the pile in the wooden dish in front of him, balanced them on the blade of the knife, and tossed them into the air. One fell neatly into his mouth, but the second hit his cheek and skidded onto the floor. Instantly a grey shape darted out from a coil of rope, devoured the prawn, and slunk back to its rope bed. It was a cat. Theo stared. It was a rare sight these days. He assumed it must live permanently on the boat because if it set foot on dry land, it would be skinned and eaten before its paws were even dirty.

  His host roared with laughter, unpleasant and insulting, then slammed a fist on the low table between them and emptied the contents of his horn beaker down his throat. Theo did the same. It was an evil-tasting liquid that had the bite of a snake, but he felt it squeeze the life out of his nerves, so he downed a second beaker and grinned back at the junk master.

  ‘I will ask Feng Tu Hong for your worthless ears on a plate as payment for tonight’s work if you do not show me respect,’ he said in Mandarin and watched the man’s narrow eyes grow dull with fear.

  Theo stuck the knife point into the table and left it swaying there. A hooded oil lamp that was slung from a hook just above their heads sent the crucifix shadow of the dagger sliding into Theo’s lap. He reminded himself he didn’t believe in omens.

  ‘How long before we meet up with the ship?’ he asked.

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘When does the tide turn?’

  ‘Soon.’

  Theo shrugged. ‘The moon is high now. The river’s secrets are there for all to view.’

  ‘So, Englishman, that means tonight we will learn whether your word is worth its weight in silver taels.’

  ‘And if it’s not?’

  The man leaned forward and plucked out the knife. ‘If your word is worth no more than a hutong whore’s promises, then this blade will make a journey of its own.’ He laughed again, his breath ripe in Theo’s face. ‘From here,’ he jabbed the blade toward Theo’s left ear, ‘to there.’ It came to rest under Theo’s right ear.

  ‘There will be no patrol tonight. I have it on good authority.’

  ‘May your tongue not lie, Englishman. Or neither of us will be alive to watch the sky grow pale.’ He drank another beaker of rotgut, rose heavily from his stump of a seat, and went out on deck in silence.

  Except there was no silence here. The vessel creaked and flexed and groaned softly at every touch of a wave as it made good progress downriver. Theo could smell the salt water of the Gulf of Chihli and feel its clean breath sweeping away the stench of rotting fish and kerosene that filled the rattan hut in which he was sitting. The hut had a low curved roof, and the woven material was infested with insects that dropped at intervals into his hair or into the dish of fried prawns. He spied a fat millipede crawling on his shirt, picked it off with disgust, and dropped it in his host’s beaker.

  ‘You eat more?’ It was the master’s woman. She was small and timid, her eyes never rising to his.

  ‘Thank you, but no. The sea turns my stomach into a mewling brat that cannot keep down good food. Maybe later, when this is over.’

  She nodded but didn’t leave. Theo wondered why. She stood there, plump and greasy in a shapeless tunic,
her black hair pulled back from her face and twined up into a loose coil, and she stared in silence at the cat. Theo waited, but no more words came from her. He tried to think what she might want. Food? Unlikely. She cooked fish and rice in a cauldron under another rattan shelter at the stern where, by the look of her, she fed herself well. She would never sit down to eat with the men because the act of eating was regarded by Chinese as ugly in a woman, so it was something she did in private, like pissing in a pot.

  No, this was not about food.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked gently. He saw her swallow hard as if she had a fish bone in her throat. ‘Are you fearful that the guns will come tonight? Because I have promised that they will not attack us while we . . .’

  She was shaking her head and her stubby fingers were twisting the amber beads round her neck into a tight knot. ‘No. Only the gods know what will be tonight.’

  ‘Then what is troubling you?’

  A shout sounded on deck and feet raced past the hut. Quickly she turned to Theo. For the first time her small black eyes flicked up to his and he was shocked by the distress in them.

  ‘It’s Yeewai,’ she said. ‘It’s not safe for her here among these men. They are brutal. Please take her to the International Settlement where she will be safe. Please, I beg you, master.’ She came so close to him he could smell the grease in her hair and held out a fist to him. When she opened it, four gold sovereigns lay on her palm. ‘Take this. To care for her. Please. It is all I have.’

  She glanced nervously in the direction of the opening to the hut, frightened her man would return, and Theo’s eyes followed hers. He was expecting to see a young girl-child standing there, and already he was shaking his head in refusal.

  ‘Please.’ She took his hand and thrust the gold into it, then turned and seized the cat. She crushed the animal’s battered old face against her own and Theo heard a brief harsh sound issue from the creature’s mouth that he assumed was meant to be a purr, before she threw it into a bamboo box and twisted a length of twine around to hold down the lid. She thrust the box into Theo’s arms.