The Concubine's Secret

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘I’ll help you,’ Lydia said urgently, ‘and you help me. Find out from Dmitri where the prison is.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Do more than try.’

  ‘I think he might prefer to tell you himself.’

  ‘I’ve already asked. He said no.’

  ‘And what will you do for me in return?’ Antonina asked it faintly, as if she didn’t expect kindness for its own sake.

  ‘I’ll find Alexei. I promise. And I’ll tell you where he is as soon as I know.’

  They smiled at each other, a little ripple of relief. Neither knew quite why, but they were both aware of an odd connection of sorts. Lydia could feel the bracelet breathing hot against her hip. Yet when Antonina opened her pale leather purse, pulled out a bunch of rouble coins and notes and thrust it into Lydia’s hand, she took it without hesitation.

  After that, she ran. To make up the lost time and to keep ahead of the thoughts that pursued her like a swarm of mosquitoes. She scoured the streets, searched doorways, walked the glossy district of the Arbat and dredged the scruffy areas where drunks were already sprawled in the gutters, wrapped in newspapers and death’s icy shadow.

  ‘Do you know a boy called Edik?’

  She asked every street urchin she found. The dirty ones selling single cigarettes on street corners or bottles of watered-down vodka outside the bars. The cleaner delivery lads running errands for shopkeepers. Even the pretty ones who wore lipstick and paraded their tiny hips behind the Bolshoi. A thousand times: ‘Do you know a boy called Edik?’

  It started to snow. The streets grew darker as the shops closed their doors and rattled their shutters. She no longer knew where she was, her feet hurt and she didn’t know if it was the cold or the holes in her valenki. She should go home. Perhaps Alexei had already returned. Liev would be growling and pacing their poky little room. Probably Elena was scolding him, telling him Lydia was quite capable of looking after herself. Yet instead her feet kept walking and, as the night and the snow descended, she had a sense that Moscow was swallowing her. She spotted another boy across the street pulling something bulky behind him on a length of string. Pale hair and a long dark coat, shoulders iced with snowflakes.

  ‘Edik!’ she shouted.

  The boy turned his head nervously. In the spill of yellow light from a gas streetlamp she realised her mistake. It wasn’t him. He started to run.

  ‘Wait!’

  She raced across the empty street. He would have been too fast for her but whatever he was dragging along slowed him down and she caught him with ease. The something on a string, she discovered, was a plump piglet. It was trussed, front and back legs, its snout tied shut with a filthy rag, and lying on its side on a small ramshackle sledge that was steadily disappearing under a blanket of snow. The animal looked paralysed with fear, its pink eye rolling wildly in its socket. The boy was no more than eight or nine years old and squinted at her with the eyes of a feral creature.

  ‘Where on earth did you get this from?’

  ‘It’s my grandfather’s,’ the boy lied and trotted off again, dragging the sledge over the ruts in the ice, jerking it in fits and starts.

  ‘Wait!’

  Lydia pulled out one of Antonina’s roubles. Instantly the boy became more alert. Even though he had his back to her, he could smell the money.

  ‘I’m searching for—’

  ‘I know. A boy called Edik.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  He gazed at her as if she were stupid. ‘Because you’ve been going round all evening asking for him.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Everybody.’ But the answer didn’t come from the boy; it came from behind her.

  She swung round. A man was standing right at her shoulder, a large looming shadow. How he’d come so close without making a sound, even over the ice, she couldn’t imagine. He must possess the feet of a cat. Though he had heavy burly shoulders, his hair was brown and curly and gave the impression of boyish friendliness. In the dark she couldn’t make out his expression properly but she had the distinct feeling that, unlike his curls, it wasn’t friendly. She backed off a step.

  ‘Dobriy vecher,’ she said. ‘Good evening. I’m looking for Alexei Serov.’

  That was when she saw the tattoo on his forehead.

  ‘You are my son, Alexei.’

  ‘You are my father, Maksim.’

  ‘I hold you to my heart.’

  ‘It is an honour for me.’

  Maksim Voshchinsky hugged Alexei to his chest and drummed his satisfaction on Alexei’s back with the flat of his hands, so that their meaning vibrated through his ribs.

  ‘You are my son,’ he said again and held Alexei away at arm’s length, studying his young captive with pride. ‘You wear my shirt, you use my bath and my razor, just like a son should.’

  ‘Thank you, Maksim. Spasibo.’

  ‘You look much better now, clean and fresh. A good-looking Russian was hiding under all that shit and stubble.’

  ‘I feel better.’

  ‘Da. That’s good.’

  Alexei helped lower Maksim back into the big black armchair beside the bed and tucked a blanket round him. It was made of the softest green velvet with exquisite embroidery around the border. Was it bought? Or stolen? As Alexei glanced round the bedroom at the stuffed birds in cages, he found himself wondering the same thing. Bought or stolen? Did it matter?

  Oh, fuck these people. Already they’d got inside his head. It matters. Of course it matters. Don’t forget that.

  If this was the price he had to pay, all right, he’d pay it. But don’t be fooled. Don’t be fucking stupid. He had listened to Maksim tell stories all evening, extraordinary tales of his exploits in prisons and camps, refusing to acknowledge the authority of the guards, the beatings he took, the money he won at cards or stole from mattresses. The power he gained within the prisons and now on the streets of Moscow by sheer force of will. He might be ruthless but, damn him, he was a likable man. He made Alexei laugh, as together they relaxed over cigarettes and French brandy.

  But don’t forget. Don’t ever forget. ‘So,’ Alexei said, exhaling a series of smoke rings that spread out like ripples in a duckpond and drifted up into the haze that hovered just below the ceiling. He made it casual. Unimportant almost. ‘You have made me a vor, one of yours. Not a full member of the vory v zakone, the thieves-in-law, I understand that. That will take time, and you say I have more to prove before I can be accepted. But you’ve marked me. Your stamp is on me.’

  ‘It will protect you, Alexei. Keep you safe in this city.’

  ‘I am grateful, father.’

  Maksim beamed at him, wide fleshy cheeks turning pink with pleasure. ‘I had a family once upon a time, two sons. But when a criminal joins the vory v zakone all family must be renounced because the thieves-in-law become a man’s only family.’

  ‘Where are they now, your sons?’

  He shrugged. ‘They used to be in Leningrad, but now . . . who knows? I haven’t seen or heard of them for more than twenty years. I wouldn’t even recognise them now if I passed them in the street, nor they me.’

  Great meaty tears rolled unchecked down his face. Alexei leaned forward.

  ‘I am your new son, pakhan.’ The words scorched his tongue. Yet he repeated them. ‘I am your new son, pakhan.’

  ‘Then pour me another brandy and we’ll drink to it.’

  When he had refilled their glasses, Alexei returned to blowing smoke rings and inspected his new father through half closed eyes. Now he had to ask.

  ‘So Maksim, will you order your vory to help me?’

  ‘Ah, my son, that’s a big request. You are not yet a real member of the brotherhood and they may think you unworthy.’

  ‘I ask you not as a vor, but as a son.’

  A pause grew between them, as green and solid as the rug. It seemed to suck the air from the room.

  ‘You saved my life,’ Maksim stated. But still he didn’t say
yes.

  Alexei reached down into his own tattered boot and drew from it the fine-bladed knife he had taken from Konstantin on the barge. The older man froze for one fleeting second but Alexei yanked up his right sleeve, revealing the pale vulnerable flesh under his forearm. With careful consideration he pressed the point of the blade into his skin and saw blood spurt. In one rapid stroke he sliced down to his wrist and the movement was chased by a ribbon of crimson.

  He looked up at Maksim. ‘Is the answer yes?’

  In the smoke-filled silence that followed, it was as though he could hear Lydia breathing. Then the man opposite him nodded and proffered his arm. Alexei took it and thrust back the sleeve of his robe. As he lifted the knife he asked himself what price was the nod of a criminal? He dragged the blade down the loose hairy flesh of Maksim’s right arm, parting the surface skin cleanly, skimming through the grinning jawbone of a tattooed skull, the sign of a killer. But not deep. He didn’t want to hurt this man.

  ‘Now,’ said Alexei. He wiped the blade on his thigh, took hold of Maksim’s heavy arm and pressed it against his own where it was dripping on to his lap. Flesh to flesh. Life to life.

  ‘Now,’ he said again, ‘now, father, we are blood.’

  A respectful knock on the bedroom door made Maksim swear.

  ‘Yob tvoyu mat! Fuck you!’ He and Alexei were playing cards. Maksim was a fierce competitor and was winning with ease. ‘What do you want?’

  The door opened tentatively and Igor’s shape filled the narrow gap. The short young man looked nervous.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, pakhan, but Nikolai is here. He wishes to speak with you.’

  ‘Doesn’t he know I’m fucking sick?’ Voshchinsky bellowed. Spittle flecked his lips and he flicked an irritated tongue over them. ‘Tell him to go away.’

  ‘Pakhan, I . . .’

  The door was shunted fully open from the other side, but it wasn’t Nikolai who stood there in the doorway to report to his boss. It was a beautiful thin girl with large passionate eyes and skin like fine ivory. It took Alexei the blink of an eye to realise it was Lydia. How the hell had she found him? A grubby urchin with a shock of pale hair hovered behind her. Her ugly hat was clutched in her hand and her fiery mane shone bright as a new coin in the dim room full of dead things. She ignored everyone else, just focused on her brother.

  ‘Alexei,’ she said firmly and held out a slender hand to him. ‘I’ve come to take you home.’

  42

  The noise. The heat. The slam of sheet metal, the grinding of machinery. The bang and rattle of the overhead hoist chains. It all crashed into Chang’s mind. Like the gods stamping their feet in anger, blasting their fiery breath into his skull till it was scorched to a cinder.

  How could any man work in this?

  The gaping mouth of the blast furnace blistered the skin and turned workers’ faces into the scarlet sweating masks of fiends, as white-hot sheets of metal were manoeuvred into position. Tongs and drills and steam hammers beat out a deafening roar inside the steel factory, an infernal sound that Chang knew was needed all over China if his country was ever to progress. Stalin was turning Russia into a powerful force in the world. This surge of industrial development was what China cried out for; mechanisation was the future. But was Mao Tse Tung the leader to enforce it? He was still at war and still absorbed in his own private pleasures. So it meant China must wait, and if there was one thing the people of China excelled at, it was patience. Their day would come. But until then, they knew how to wait. It was their strength.

  The delegation moved on through the factory behind their Russian guide. Chang could see his compatriots were overawed by the scale of its metal production. As they were meant to be. They stood in a group and watched a man operate a hole punch, a massive steam-driven fist that slammed down and knocked out a wide circle in sheet after sheet of steel. What its purpose might be, Chang had no idea, and the sound of it was too deafening to allow him to ask. The Russian worker, aware of being watched, kept his eyes lowered submissively and his hands in constant motion. Over and over the same movement, the same pull of a lever, turn of a winch, rattle of a sheet of steel on rollers, then bang and on to the next.

  The delegation moved on but Chang remained. Watching and waiting for the moment the man would look up. Because Chang knew he would, eventually he would be unable to resist. Then Chang would see what a Russian worker was made of. It was the same in China, the peasant mentality, hiding all behind submissive down-turned eyes. It angered Chang, their refusal to lift the head and stand out in a crowd. It was one of the things he’d loved from the start about Lydia, that willingness to look the world straight in the eye. He smiled at the image in his head and touched a finger to his throat, laying it on the exact spot where her lips had touched.

  That was the moment the metal worker chose to raise his eyes. It looked to Chang a very Russian face with its broad cheekbones, long nose, jaw hidden in a fringe of beard. But the eyes told him everything he needed to know. Pale grey and exhausted, the steam-hammer pounding its reflection in them from dawn to dusk. These were not the eyes of the contented proletariat they had been led to believe worked in these factories.

  For a second their gaze fixed on each other and gradually Chang felt the heat. Not from the furnace this time, but coming from the worker himself. It was the kind of heat that was pinpoint sharp. Like a blade that has rested in flames. Chang recognised it at once. It was hate.

  ‘Kuan.’

  She stopped and waited for him. Chang moved closer as they crossed the factory yard. The snow had turned to rain but it was the kind of rain that was like ice picks in the face. They were due to be taken to a meeting now and he would have no other moment for his words to curl in private into her ear. She didn’t ask what he wanted but inspected him, eyes black and bright. He could see the fire in them despite the gloom.

  ‘The factory was impressive,’ he said.

  ‘Did you see the number of people employed there?’

  ‘Yes. Communism in action. It works. Here in Stalin’s Russia we see how Lenin’s ideas function as a practical reality. They are forging a successful future for this country. It is what China weeps for, that same strong hand.’

  ‘A father’s firm hand.’

  ‘But one that will caress as well as rebuke. One that will give as well as take.’

  ‘Chang An Lo,’ Kuan said in her usual quiet way, but Chang could hear the unease in her voice, ‘I am concerned.’

  ‘Concerned for China?’

  ‘No, concerned for you, my comrade.’

  ‘There is no need for concern.’

  ‘I think maybe there is.’

  In her thick padded blue coat, with her short black hair framing a wide-boned face, she could have been a rice grower’s daughter from any stretch of rural China, one of millions like her condemned to a life of servitude on a tenant plot of land or in the family home. But her eyes told a different story. They were thoughtful and intelligent. She possessed a university degree in law and a mind that could recognise problems and decide how to deal with them effectively. Chang had no intention of being one of those problems.

  ‘Kuan,’ he said, ‘do not let yourself be distracted from what we have come here to achieve. Focus your attention. Our leader, Mao Tse Tung, needs us to be sharp. We have come to Moscow to learn.’

  ‘You are right, of course.’ She brushed the rain from her face. ‘It is what we are all concentrating on. Each of us in the delegation writes a report late into the night.’ She looked at him speculatively. ‘But I am not certain that you are as dedicated as usual to the affairs of Communism. As if your thoughts are elsewhere.’

  The soles of Chang’s feet felt as though he’d just slipped on ice. ‘That is not the case, comrade. I have been focusing on how we can take greater advantage of the opportunities here and I think it is time we put in a request to inspect something different. Something more . . . challenging.’

  He smiled at her, observing t
he suspicion slip away from her mouth as her eyes widened with anticipation.

  ‘What do you have in mind, Comrade Chang?’

  He walked forward through the rain and she moved quickly to his side. People are like the fish in the Peiho River, he reminded himself. All you need to do is dangle the right bait.

  ‘Show me your tattoo.’

  ‘It’s of no interest, Lydia.’

  ‘It is to me.’

  She was determined to see what they’d done to him, so that she’d know. Know what she owed him. He was seated on the edge of her bed, smarter now, cleaner in his new white shirt and smelling of an unfamiliar cologne. But more like the old Alexei she remembered, legs crossed at the ankles in a pose of indifference. It was a relief to see him back in his old skin, but at the same time he was different. Something had changed. She could sense it in his eyes and in the softer angle of his neck, and she didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. She watched as he started to unbutton his shirt. Behind her Popkov and Elena stood stiff and silent. She could feel their disapproval as sharply as she could feel the hole in her shoe. Alexei’s fingers worked fast and she could detect no hint of the shame she was certain he must feel.

  ‘There,’ he said and flung back his shirt.

  She felt sick. It was larger than she’d expected. A cathedral covering the whole expanse of his skin. It seemed to crush the bones of his chest, its one elegant onion dome tattooed just under where his collar bones met.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

  Lydia heard a grunt behind her but ignored it.

  Alexei raised one eyebrow at her. ‘Its beauty or lack of it is not the point.’

  ‘So what is the point?’

  ‘I’m marked as one of their own. For life.’

  ‘Oh Alexei, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  She gave him a smile. ‘You won’t be able to go swimming so often, that’s all.’

  ‘I never did like getting wet and cold anyway.’ He smiled back at her and it made her want to cry.