The Concubine's Secret

by Kate Furnivall

  Abruptly she shifted her gaze from the blackness outside to her own reflection in the glass. She grimaced. The hat was truly hideous, a brown wool thing with a wide peak that made her look like a baboon. She was glad Chang An Lo wasn’t here to see her in it. She sighed and could hear her fears crackle like biscuit crumbs in her breath. She was seventeen; he was nineteen, nearly twenty. Would a man wait indefinitely? She didn’t know. He loved her passionately, she was certain of that but . . . A dull flush of colour rose to her cheeks at her own naivety. How long could a man be without a woman? A month? A year? Ten years?

  She knew she’d wait a lifetime for him if she had to. Is that what her father had done? Waited year after year in a labour camp for her mother to come?

  Suddenly Lydia yanked off the hat and tossed her head so that the tumble of copper waves leapt into life and framed her face, rippling over her shoulders. It gave her a look of wildness that satisfied something in her. A lioness, someone had once called her. She dragged her fingernails down the glass, ripping tracks through the film of mist that her breath had painted on it, sharpening her claws.

  It was just before dawn. Lydia was watching the light shift from the intense darkness that cloaked northern Russia, black as the coal that was hauled up from its depths, to a pale translucent grey. Trees began to emerge like icy skeletons. The world was becoming real again.

  She headed up the gloomy corridor towards the tiny washroom at the end. A queue of three passengers had already formed outside it. Russians, she’d noticed, were good at queuing, unlike the Chinese. As she leaned against the wooden panelling and felt the constant turn of the wheels echo through her bones, her thoughts centred on the woman back there in the carriage, the one who’d asked where she came from. She made Lydia nervous.

  Suddenly there came the sound of quick light footsteps hurrying towards the washroom. Lydia had shuffled her way up to second place in the line. Not that she was in a rush to use the squashed little facility, but she wanted to delay her return to the carriage. The footsteps stopped. Lydia looked behind her and was astonished to see a queue of four women and a child - when had they arrived? - all waiting patiently, clearly rural workers with headscarves and shawls and big-knuckled hands that laboured hard in the potato fields. Their faces were uncommunicative, their thoughts private. The child, a small boy in a cap, was nibbling at his thumb and making little mouse noises to himself. Behind him stood the new arrival. Lydia felt a jolt of surprise, though she shouldn’t have. It was Antonina, the wife of the camp Commandant, and she was wrapped up warm in the silver fur coat.

  ‘Dobroye utro, comrades,’ the newcomer said brightly. ‘Good morning to you.’ She nodded at Lydia.

  The women stared at her the way they would at a gaudy magpie. One muttered, ‘Dobroye utro,’ then looked at the floor. The others remained silent. The child touched a grubby hand to her coat and she stepped away from it. She was wearing the white cotton gloves and started to rub them together awkwardly, fingers curling round each other.

  ‘Comrades,’ she said, but her brightness was cracking at the edges, ‘I’m desperate.’ She gave them a smile that reached nowhere near her eyes. ‘Do you think I could—?’

  The line turned on her.

  ‘Nyet.’

  ‘Wait your turn.’

  ‘My boy needs to go but he doesn’t complain. You should know better.’

  Antonina’s deep-set eyes blinked. Her mouth looked fragile. She shook her head and as one hand started to scratch the back of the other, a tiny thread of crimson appeared on the white cotton.

  ‘Comrade Antonina,’ Lydia said pleasantly, as she stepped out of the queue, ‘you can take my place.’

  The child’s mother gave her a quick look of disapproval.

  ‘Comrade,’ she said, her tone quiet and reasonable, ‘we no longer have to let worthless parasites, like this woman in her bourgeois finery, steal our rights from us. She is clearly not a worker. Just look at her.’

  Everyone stared at the pale pampered face, at the ruby earrings nestling in the dark hair and at the luxurious fur coat.

  ‘It’s obvious she is—’

  Lydia interrupted. ‘Please, comrade. Pozhalusta. This is not harming you. I’m giving her my place in the queue, so—’

  ‘Young girl,’ the child’s mother said with interest, ‘what is your name?’

  Lydia’s mouth went dry. ‘My name doesn’t matter. It is no concern of—’

  The woman pulled a small blue notepad from her pocket. Attached to it by a rubber band was a pencil.

  ‘Your name?’ she repeated.

  The Commandant’s wife said abruptly, ‘Enough of that, comrades. ’ She half turned her head, raising a gloved hand, and immediately one of her uniformed travelling companions appeared like a shadow at her side. He said nothing. He didn’t need to. The women stared at the floor. Lydia didn’t wait for more. She squeezed past his bulk and headed back towards her compartment, but as she approached it she saw the second of the woman’s uniformed guardians blocking her path.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said politely.

  He didn’t move. Just rested his hand on the gun holster at his hip. He was tall with fine Slavic features and a high colour to his cheeks. His dark eyes were amused.

  ‘Tell me, girl,’ he asked, standing too close and scanning her coat, her shoes, her ugly hat, ‘what is your interest in our Comrade Commandant’s wife?’

  Lydia shrugged. ‘She’s nothing to me.’

  ‘I’m here to make sure it stays that way.’

  ‘That’s your business, comrade. Not mine.’

  His eyes were no longer amused, but after a long stare he stood aside to let her pass. His uniform smelled stale, as though it had been slept in too many times. She felt his eyes bore into the back of her head as she scurried on down the corridor.

  By mid-morning it was raining hard, a grey sleeting downpour that rattled like buckshot against the windows. Without warning as they were crossing a wide flat plain, the train started to slow with disconcerting jerks, the brakes shrieking and clouds of steam swirling alongside. Outside, the world blurred.

  A small station with wooden roof-boards and rusting iron railings slowly slid into view, and Lydia felt her pulse quicken the moment she caught sight of the sign. Trovitsk. This was the station for Trovitsk labour camp. No one was allowed off the train here under the eagle eyes of the armed soldiers, unless in possession of an official pass. Nevertheless Lydia rose from her seat.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Alexei. I’m just stretching my—’

  ‘You can’t get off here.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s raining. She’ll be in a hurry.’

  Lydia glanced down at her brother, at his intelligent green eyes. He knew. It dawned on her that he knew what she was going to do.

  Lydia stood on the top step of the train carriage. The heavy door hung open but she knew better than to attempt to descend to the platform below. The rain gusted into her face as she leaned against the doorframe, looking out with an unhurried gaze and wishing she smoked. Leaning and smoking went together, they made a person appear unthreatening. And more than anything right now she wanted to appear unthreatening.

  Three soldiers were busy offloading a string of men from the baggage wagon at the far end of the train. Lydia watched them. The men were prisoners. She could see it in their hunched shoulders and tight pale faces, in the way they moved, as if expecting a blow. Some wore coats, several in suits, collars turned up against the rain; one in nothing more than shirt sleeves. All were bare-headed.

  She made herself study them carefully, refusing to look away however much she wanted to. It felt too intimate. There was a nakedness about the hunched figures, their fear and degradation too huge and too exposed for everyone to see. It sickened her stomach.

  Papa, is this what it’s like for you? This kind of humiliation?

  It was hard to keep her mouth closed, to jam the words inside
. She could tell by their clothes and their air of bewilderment that these men must be new prisoners. It showed in their nervous glances at the guards, even in the way one of them looked for a brief moment at Lydia herself. The shame in the eyes. One man with a small bundle wrapped in a scarf under his arm managed an odd little smile at Lydia, fighting to pretend this was all a hideous mistake. That they’d been snatched from warm beds for . . . what? The dropping of an unwary word, the voicing of a wrong thought?

  Using rifles like cattle prods, the three soldiers were herding them into a long line that stumbled towards the station entrance. At the very back a small plump man started sobbing in a loud outpouring of grief. To Lydia it sounded more like a sick animal than a human being.

  ‘Get back inside.’

  It was a guard patrolling the platform. He jabbed at the open carriage door to slam it shut.

  ‘Comrade soldat.’ Lydia smiled at him and pulled off her hat, letting her hair fall loose. He was young. He smiled back.

  ‘My lungs aren’t good,’ she said, ‘and there’s always smoke in my compartment. I need some clean air.’ She inhaled noisily to emphasise the point and felt the sleet nip at the back of her throat. It made her cough.

  ‘Well shut the door and open its window instead.’ His tone was friendly.

  At that moment she spotted an elegant figure descending the steps further along the train. It was Antonina. She ducked her head against the rain that glistened on her furs like a shower of diamonds. Behind her the two uniformed companions were wrestling her luggage off the train, but Alexei had been wrong about her. She didn’t hurry. She took her time. She smoothed her soft grey leather gloves over her fingers, adjusted the angle of her hat, then with expressionless eyes she studied the wretched line of prisoners. She murmured something to one of the uniforms and instantly a small black umbrella was produced for her. She accepted it but held it too high above her head, indifferent to the sleet streaming in under it.

  Lydia took a deep breath. She had a few brief seconds, a minute at most. No longer, before the train moved on. The soldier had his hand on the door, ready to slam it shut.

  ‘Antonina!’ she called.

  The pair of deep-set eyes turned towards her, narrowed against the rain, and she gave a faint nod of recognition.

  The soldier started to shut the carriage door. ‘Move back there.’

  Lydia didn’t move. ‘Antonina,’ she called again.

  With neat unhurried steps, the dove-grey boots crossed the wet platform and Antonina stood in front of her, appearing small from Lydia’s view high up on the steps of the train. The soldier moved away instantly with a smart salute. Clearly he knew who this woman was. In her furs and her carmine lipstick she looked much less approachable than in her burgundy dressing gown.

  Lydia tried a friendly smile but the only response was a distant little grimace.

  ‘Before you even ask, young comrade,’ the woman said briskly, ‘the answer is no.’

  ‘The answer to what?’

  ‘To your question.’

  ‘I haven’t asked a question.’

  ‘But you were going to.’

  Lydia said nothing.

  ‘Weren’t you?’ Antonina tipped back her umbrella and gave Lydia a long scrutiny, her beautifully groomed eyebrows arching into a mocking curve. ‘Yes, I can see you were.’

  Her manner rattled Lydia. It was dismissive, it made her feel clumsy and childish. She wasn’t sure of her footing any more. There was something so sleek and slippery about this woman today that Lydia could feel herself sliding off with nothing to hold on to.

  ‘I just wanted to say goodbye,’ she murmured.

  ‘Do svidania, comrade.’

  ‘And . . . .’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And yes, . . . you are right. I want to ask something.’

  ‘Everyone always wants to ask me for something.’ Her dark gaze slid off to where the prisoners on the platform had bunched up, awaiting further orders. Their hair was plastered to their heads by the incessant rain and the man who had been sobbing noisily was quiet now, his face in his hands, his shoulders trembling.

  Lydia looked away this time. It was too much.

  ‘Everyone,’ Antonina continued in a voice that sounded amused, though her eyes were sad and serious, ‘wants me to convey a parcel, to pass on a message, to beg my husband, the Commandant, for this or that for their loved one.’

  Lydia shifted uneasily on the steps. ‘Mistakes are sometimes made,’ she said. ‘Not everyone is guilty.’

  The woman gave a short hard laugh. ‘The OGPU decisions are always right.’

  Time was running out.

  Lydia said quickly, ‘I am searching for someone.’

  ‘Isn’t everybody?’

  ‘His name is Jens Friis. He was captured in 1917 but he shouldn’t be in a Russian prison at all because he’s Danish. I just need to know if he’s here in this camp. That’s all. Nothing more. To hear that . . .’

  The woman’s eyes turned to her, smooth and cold as black ice, but the palms of her pale leather gloves were fretting against each other fiercely. She noticed the way Lydia glanced at them and for the first time she smiled, a small, angry smile, but still a smile.

  ‘Is this man your lover?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what is he to you?’

  ‘Please, Antonina? Pozhalusta?’ Lydia said in a rush and climbed down one step in her eagerness. The guard nearby was moving closer. ‘All I need is just one word from you.’

  The train suddenly shuddered beneath her and heaved a great sigh, sending steam billowing down the platform. For one startling moment, the Commandant’s wife was enveloped in a cloud that obscured everything but her two hands in their ceaseless motion. When the steam cleared, Antonina had turned her back on Lydia, her long fur coat swaying as if the skins were still alive.

  ‘Nyet, Lydia.’ She started to walk away, calling over her shoulder, ‘My answer is no.’

  The soldier closed the door and the train began to move. Quickly Lydia opened the window and leaned out. ‘I’ll be in the hostel in Felanka,’ she shouted after the retreating woman. ‘You can leave a message for me there.’

  Slowly the figures on the platform grew smaller. Lydia continued to stare at where they had been, long after the rain swallowed them.

  7

  ‘Yob tvoyu mat!’ Liev Popkov swore suddenly and pushed his huge fist towards the window. ‘Look at that. It’s the stinking hell-hole.’

  Alexei saw Lydia elbow him hard in the ribs to silence him, but it was too late. Every head in the carriage turned to stare at what he’d indicated and a young woman with a baby asleep in her arms started to weep silently. It was the camp. Trovitsk labour camp. It couldn’t be anything else, though from this distance it looked harmless enough, more like four dog kennels rising above the flat winter horizon. Those must be the tips of the watchtowers, but the rest of the camp was lost in a faint blur, secretive and secluded, too far away to make out anything of the communal huts or barbed wire fences.

  ‘God help the bastards,’ Alexei muttered.

  The big woman opposite grimaced. ‘He hasn’t done much of a job of it so far.’

  Lydia looked round at them both and frowned. Her tawny eyes were huge. A straggle of hair had crept out from under her hat and lay like a lick of flame on the collar of her coat. ‘The Soviet State is looking after those people,’ she said in a curt voice. ‘It does what is best. For all of us.’

  Oh Lydia. But Alexei made a show of nodding agreement. ‘Da, we must never forget what we owe the State.’

  ‘As if we could,’ the big woman chuckled, and the chuckle grew until it was a loose rollicking laugh that shook her abundant bosom and sounded too loud in the tight confines of the carriage. Alexei eyed her with increasing caution.

  At the other end of the carriage a man with a pipe and a bushy Stalin moustache banged his hand flat on his knee. ‘Those prisoners are here for good reason. Don’t l
et’s forget that, comrade. ’

  Alexei let his eyes stray again to the window and a small shock ran through him. The landscape was monotonously flat, a naked terrain that betrayed the scars and stumps where a forest had once stood, but way off to one side, along the edge of a stand of pine trees which had somehow escaped the axe, eight men were bent double, hauling a wagon. It was stacked high with bare tree trunks and the men were yoked to it by chains. Beyond them, so small and colourless they were scarcely visible against the icy wasteland, other figures scuttled like ants across the Work Zone.

  ‘Yes,’ Alexei murmured, not taking his eyes off them. ‘That’s why they’re here. It’s the raw materials we need.’

  ‘For industry?’ the woman asked.

  He nodded. ‘For Stalin’s great Five Year Plan.’

  ‘So what is it the prisoners do all the way up here?’

  Still he watched them. Saw a man fall. ‘Mining. This region is rich in ore and coal.’

  An uncomfortable silence descended, while the passengers pictured the prisoners, black-faced somewhere deep under the train’s wheels, swinging picks at a brutal coal seam, lungs filling up with heavy choking dust.

  ‘And timber,’ Alexei added softly.

  Dear God, let Jens Friis be good with a saw.

  ‘This place is too tidy for us,’ Liev Popkov growled under his breath. ‘Too clean.’

  For once the ox brain was right. The town of Felanka was not what Alexei had been expecting and not what he wanted. They were walking down the main street, Gorky Ulitsa, with Lydia tucked safely between them, taking a careful look at their surroundings. Where were the usual rows of ugly concrete apartment blocks? Most of the towns up here in the north were sprawling, indifferent places that had sprung into being to accommodate the recent enforced migration of Russia’s dissidents into these sparsely populated areas. No one would notice an extra few travellers in one of those. But this was different. This town felt loved.