The Girl from Junchow

by Kate Furnivall

  Alexei leaned forward. “We have an agreement, you and I.”

  “Da. I get to keep half of everything I get back for you.”

  “Just as long as you remember that.”

  “Don’t worry, comrade, I’m not a thief. Nor are my friends.”

  Niko nodded meaningfully toward a group of men in truckers’ heavy outfits and with a certain look in their eyes; they all had it. The look of a loner. Alexei knew he’d think twice before crossing them. Hopefully Vushnev would as well.

  “So?” Niko took a mouthful of his beer. “His name?”

  “It’s Mikhail Vushnev, the camp—”

  “I know him. Thin as a weasel and smokes a pipe.”

  “That’s the bastard.”

  Niko slumped back in his chair and drained half his beer. “The shit has gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “He came swaggering in here a few weeks back, buying everyone drinks. Said he was off to Odessa to start a new life with his money, so . . .”

  “With my money,” Alexei corrected. “And it won’t be Odessa. He’ll have the brains to cover his tracks.”

  “The bastard.”

  “No success for either of us, it seems, comrade.”

  “The bastard,” Niko repeated mournfully, as if the loss of the money had frozen something in his thought processes.

  Alexei drank the vodka. What the hell else was there to do? Except smash the glass on the table. He sat in silence, stiff and stern, his thoughts crashing into each other.

  “Niko, where are you heading with your next load?”

  “Novgorod.”

  “When?”

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “I’ll see you then. At the truck stop. Be there early.” Alexei threw his last handful of coins on the table. “Buy your friends a drink from me.”

  He pushed himself to his feet, and once outside in the darkness he said the bastard’s name.

  “Mikhail Vushnev.”

  He said it only once and spat in the gutter to rid himself of it. He began to walk, slowly at first, letting the snow settle on his skin, then faster, feet skidding in the snow. His mind started to clear. Twenty-four hours. Twenty-four precious hours to smell her perfume on his skin, to feel again the gentle weight of her body on his and see the thoughtful brown-eyed gaze that did something to the dark cold places inside him. Up ahead the lights of the Leninsky Hotel shone brightly.

  Twenty-one

  IT WAS THE MIRROR THAT BROUGHT LYDIA BACK to Chang. He was being driven in a large black sedan that smelled of new leather and shone with polished chrome. Seated alone in the back with just the cap of the driver in front of him, a young soldier who knew how to remain silent, Chang glanced up with no real interest at the rearview mirror. He caught sight of a rectangular slice of one of the driver’s black eyes, and a sudden lurch in his chest stole his breath away.

  Another car. Another driver. Another city. Another rectangle of a mirror. Yet it was as if she were here right now beside him. Her presence was so strong. He turned his head, expecting to see Lydia’s bright smile, and instead saw nothing but the chaos outside on the busy streets of Canton, rain-soaked rickshaws dodging the bumpers of the heedless cars and vans that clogged the thoroughfares. He lifted a hand, letting it touch the empty air next to him on the bench seat, curling his fingers through it, feeling for her. He listened intently for her breathing.

  Slowly his hand drifted down to the seat till it was resting, palm down, on the leather. It was maroon and the thought that slipped into his head was that it wouldn’t show the blood from his hands. He blinked, startled. Where had that come from? His hands were long healed where the two fingers had been removed.

  Did it come from her? From Lydia? Was she in need of his hands? The thought caught at his throat.

  Each morning and each night he prayed with bowed head to the gods to keep her safe. He offered them bargains, his safety for hers; he made them promises that were extravagant and ever more costly, every one of which he swore to honor if only Lydia was returned to him unhurt, unharmed, undamaged. He vowed eternal devotion to the shrines and burned candles in the temples, as well as incense and paper images of fearsome dragons. He slaughtered a bullock. To give her strength. All this despite his Communist ideals that dismissed such beliefs as a fool’s superstition. All this to keep her safe. To keep her safe he would even give up his fox girl and spend eternity in tears.

  But now today it was as though she were suddenly here. With him. On the maroon leather. And his heart for one fleeting moment flew back to that other day when she sat beside him in a car, and he had looked up at the rearview mirror to seek out the eyes of the driver. To learn whether he had stepped into a trap.

  Her hands had curled around Chang’s, cradling his bandages to her breast as she might cradle an infant, and despite the raging fever that made his eyes dull as pond water and his brain as sickly as a rabid dog’s, he knew he would remember this moment. For a brief second she’d rested her cheek on his shoulder and her hair had crept like flames over his shirt front. Just to look at her was enough, at her pale cheek and her clear amber eyes. It drew him back from the edge.

  She seemed fragile. Frightened. Yet she’d pulled him forcibly into Theo Willoughby’s car on the snowy streets of Junchow, whisking him from under the nose of the police just when the Nationalist authorities believed they had captured him at last. She’d looped her arm around his shoulders, holding him upright on the seat, and the last thing he wanted was to topple over in her teacher’s car. She would lose face.

  “Thank you, sir,” Lydia said politely to the man driving. “Thanks for giving us a ride.”

  The schoolmaster glanced quickly in the mirror, his gaze seeking Chang. Even in his sick state Chang knew the signs. The yellowish skin around the mouth. The eyes not quite in this world. This Englishman was smoking the pipe of dreams at night and could not be trusted.

  “So what have we here?” Willoughby had asked with more curiosity than Chang cared for.

  “This is my friend, Chang An Lo.”

  “Ah! The young rebel I’ve heard about.”

  “He’s a Communist fighting for justice.”

  “It’s a fine line, Lydia.”

  “Not to me.”

  After a moment Willoughby said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For you.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “You are crossing a divide that is too wide for your young legs.”

  “Just help us. Please.”

  “How? He looks almost dead.”

  “Take us somewhere where the soldiers will not come.”

  “Where, Lydia? A hospital?”

  “No, they’ll find him there. Your school.”

  The teacher had snorted as if he’d swallowed a frog.

  Lydia had turned to Chang and with her touch as gentle as a moth’s wing, she’d taken his face in her hands and he’d breathed her sweet strong breath into his lungs.

  “Don’t die on me, my love,” she’d whispered. He could feel her trembling.

  He was not far from taking the path to join his ancestors, he knew that. He could hear their voices rustling in his ear. One slip of his foot and he’d slide into . . . His eyes closed, their lids like lead coins, but instantly her lips brushed each eye.

  “Open,” she murmured.

  They opened and her eyes were no more than a finger’s width from his own, pinning him to life. Not allowing him to leave this world.

  “Chang An Lo, what color is love?”

  He wanted to speak, but there were no words inside his head.

  “He’s gone,” the schoolmaster said.

  “No,” she hissed, and she squeezed the bones of his skull between her palms. “Tell me, tell me.”

  “It’s too late, Lydia,” the teacher insisted, though his voice was not unkind. “You can see he’s gone.”

  She ignored him, listening to nothing but Chang’s breath sighing from his
lungs. “It’s the color of my eyes,” she whispered, “of my lips, of my skin. It’s the color of my life. Don’t you dare leave me, my love.”

  He didn’t leave her. Not then.

  Twenty-two

  “COME HERE, GIRL. I HAVE A CLOCK FOR YOU, A good marble one with—”

  “Nyet, I don’t need a clock.” Lydia shook her head and backed away from the stall.

  She liked street markets. The shouting and the pushing and the manhandling of goods. They reminded her of home. No, she pulled herself up sharply, get it right. What she meant was they reminded her of China, but China was no longer her home. Face it. Her mother was dead, her stepfather had scuttled back to England, and Chang An Lo was . . . was where? Where? Where?

  She looked around at the hustle and bustle of the market. At the vegetables spread out next to a jumble of old shoes, at the neat pile of homemade preserves between the books and the bread. She even spotted an ancient microscope, all brass and knobs beside a hank of brightly colored embroidery silks. The traders were bundled up against the cold while haggling and arguing over kopecks as if they were as precious as bars of gold.

  Moscow had come as a shock. Not at all what Lydia had expected. The Bolsheviks had made the right move, she decided. They had shifted the capital city of Soviet Russia right away from the decadent bourgeois elegance of Leningrad—the city of her own first five years of childhood. Instead Moscow became the hub. Forever turning. She could almost hear its wheels.

  The moment she stepped off the train, she fell in love with the place. Alexei had told her that it lacked the grace and beauty of Leningrad, that Moscow was a dirty industrial dump. But he was wrong. What he’d omitted to mention was that the new capital was bursting with infectious energy. There was a kind of spark in its streets. An eagerness. It made the hairs rise on the back of her neck. And hanging over it all was the unmistakable smell of power in the air.

  Moscow was the future. No question.

  But was it her future? More importantly, was it Papa’s?

  “I’m here, Papa,” she whispered. “I’m back.”

  “I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING SO DAMN PLEASED about.” Elena was staring with annoyance at Lydia.

  “I was thinking,” Lydia said as she inspected the shabby room they’d just entered, “thank goodness Alexei is not with us. He would hate this place.”

  “I hate this place.”

  “It’ll do us. It’s our first step. Now we’re here, we can start searching properly. Anyway I’ve seen worse,” Lydia laughed. “I’ve actually lived in worse.”

  “More fool you,” Elena grunted and plonked herself down on a bed. The springs pinged with a metallic screech.

  “The room is small, I admit.” Lydia started to pace slowly around it, trying to find something positive to say. The air was musty, heavy with the long-lost hopes of past occupants. The wallpaper was stained and peeling in places. One of the windowpanes was cracked and an electric cable stuck out of the wall above one of the beds, ending in a spray of naked wires. It looked to Lydia horribly like a snake with its head cut off.

  “The ceiling’s nice,” she said. It was high and decorated with elaborate cornices. “And the floor. It may be battered but it’s solid parquet.”

  Elena rolled her eyes in disgust. “Look at the rugs.”

  “Okay, so the poloviki are a bit old. But what do you expect in a communalka?”

  “Neechevo,” Elena groaned. “Nothing.”

  “Well, that’s what we’ve got. Neechevo.”

  That wasn’t strictly true. They had a roof over their heads. That’s what mattered to Lydia and she wasn’t fussy about what was under that roof. She’d learned the hard way. While living from hand to mouth with her mother in Junchow, the sight of the rent money ready in the blue bowl on the mantelpiece made the difference between eating and not eating, between sleeping and not sleeping, between being warm and being cold. She craned her neck back now and gazed up at the ceiling. It was solid. Yes, its prettiness was an extra bonus when you lay in bed. But its solidity was what mattered.

  “Don’t complain, Elena.”

  “I’ll complain if I like.” She put her hands on her broad hips. “You think all three of us, you, me, and Popkov, can live in this shoebox without killing each other?”

  Lydia swished the dividing curtain across the middle of the room, shutting off Elena and the big bed, creating the illusion of privacy.

  “Don’t fret, Elena,” she laughed. “I’ll wear earplugs.”

  “THREE HUNDRED, THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY, THREE hundred and forty . . . four hundred, four hundred and ten.”

  “Little Lydia, you can go on counting it all night, but it’s not going to change.” Popkov was leaning against the windowsill, his intimidating bulk in a long black coat, its collar up around his ears. He was watching her empty out her money belt onto her bed.

  “Four hundred and ten roubles,” Lydia said flatly. “It’s not enough.”

  “It will have to be. It’s all we’ve got.”

  “The residence permits and ration cards cost us far too much.”

  “We had no choice.”

  “I know. You said.”

  “It’s what they charge. On the black market. I tried, Lydia, but . . .”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  She shuffled the remaining notes together, patting them, chivvying them, as if she could persuade them to increase in number. It was why they’d given up even the cheapest hotels and moved into one of the crowded communal apartments on a run-down street, but they were lucky to get it. She and Elena had stood in line for days outside the Housing Committee office in the freezing wind and were allocated the room only when the man in front of them dropped to his knees with a heart attack the moment he was told he could have the room. Now each rouble that passed through Lydia’s fingers seemed to burn a hole in her stomach, and no amount of the black doughy khleb could fill it. She shivered, wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, and picked at her chin. Her lips were dry.

  “What’s the matter?” Popkov asked. Behind him the sky was shifting its choice of gray, slipping into the colorless shade that came just before sunset. Pigeons began to settle on the roofs. “What’s the matter?” he asked a second time when she didn’t respond.

  “Nothing.”

  “It doesn’t look like nothing.”

  “Well, it is. But thanks for asking.”

  He growled, an indistinct rumble in his chest. She made herself concentrate on the room, on its four square walls. They were still here. They were going nowhere. She could rely on that. The three-story house overlooking a central courtyard had once been smart, but some years earlier had been taken over by a housing committee that had carved the living space up into small chunks and allocated a few square feet of it to each person. Enough for a bed and, if you were lucky, a chair and a cupboard. Lydia wasn’t lucky. She had a bed but Popkov got the chair.

  Washing and cooking facilities were communal at the end of the landing, and the rotation system was supervised with hawk ish efficiency by a housing manager named Comrade Kelensky. He prowled around with an ill-fitting suit and an air of reproach. Lydia had already been in trouble for not cleaning the communal stairs thoroughly enough. She’d scrubbed them twice, as instructed, but as soon as her back was turned a bored little child from downstairs bounced a muddy ball on them. Kelensky made Lydia perform the task again. While she did it, Popkov had sat himself down on the top step of the steep flight of stairs like a dark-eyed St. Peter at the gates, elbows on his knees, humming chastushki, peasant songs, to himself and munching sunflower seeds from his pocket. She wasn’t sure if he was guarding her from others or from herself.

  She packed the roubles neatly back into the money belt and zipped it up. It was stained with sweat and rubbed thin in places.

  “Your brother should have had the sense to divide the funds equally between you,” Liev grumbled.

  “He didn’t trust me enough.”

&n
bsp; The window rattled as a sudden gust of wind fingered the broken pane and the daylight outside took another step toward the solid shadows of a winter’s afternoon. Silence drifted into the room. Lydia buckled the belt firmly around her waist once more, tucked her legs under her on the bed, and pulled the quilt over her shoulders. She watched the big man take out his battered old tin of tobacco and roll himself a smoke with the smooth ease of long practice. His thick fingers dwarfed the cigarette he stuck between his lips.

  “It’s a waste of time,” he growled. “Waiting outside the church each day.”

  “Don’t, Liev.”

  “I mean it, Lydia. He’s not coming.”

  “He will.”

  “I don’t want . . .” He stopped.

  “Don’t want what?”

  “I don’t want to see you hurt. Again.” He lit the cigarette, took a drag on it, and inspected its glowing tip so that he didn’t have to look at her.

  Lydia swallowed awkwardly, both touched and angry at the same time. Damn him for doubting Alexei.

  “Liev, Alexei will come, I know he will. Tomorrow or the day after or the day after that, but one day soon I’ll walk up the steps to the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer and he’ll be waiting there for—”

  “No. He’s gone. Good riddance to the bastard.”

  “Don’t, Liev,” she said again.

  He jerked his bull frame away from the windowsill and seemed to fill the small room. Elena had gone out on some mission of her own, but still the place felt overcrowded, its drab walls pressing in on them. Lydia unzipped her money belt, pulled out one of the notes, and threw it on the bed in front of the Cossack.

  “Go buy yourself a drink, Liev. That filthy temper of yours is—”

  “Why are you so fucked up by Alexei’s disappearance?” he demanded. “You and he were always at each other like cat and dog. The man is an arrogant prick. We’re better off without him.”

  Lydia threw off the quilt and leapt to her feet, a tiny figure next to his bulk. She thumped a fist on his granite chest.