The Girl from Junchow

by Kate Furnivall

  Lydia’s cheek flushed. She should leave. She was getting nowhere. She looked around at the vast domed entrance hall with its acres of marble flooring, designed to intimidate. Fat marble pillars were draped with blood red flags and slogans that read, TOGETHER WE SHALL FIGHT. TOGETHER WE SHALL WIN THE VICTORY.

  Fight. Win. Victory. Communism seemed immersed in a constant exhausting battle. Even within itself. Footsteps clicked back and forth across the polished floor as clerks and neatly dressed secretaries scurried like worker ants to and from their offices, arms heaped with brown faceless files, and Lydia felt horribly out of place.

  She gripped the front edge of the desk to keep her feet exactly where they were. She didn’t trust them not to turn and run.

  “Pozhalusta, please,” she urged politely.

  He sighed, twitched at his tie, and raised bored eyes to hers.

  “His name is Chang An Lo,” she said. “He is a member of the Chinese Communist Party, an important member of—”

  “So you said.”

  “I want you to contact the Chinese Communist’s Party’s headquarters in Shanghai and leave a message with them for him.”

  “That’s not my job.”

  “Then whose job is it?”

  “Not mine.”

  “Please, it’s important. I must contact him and . . .”

  A blast of cold air swirled in from the street, nipping at bare skin with icy pincers. The man behind the desk shed his air of indifference and jumped to his feet faster than a buck rabbit, startling Lydia. She turned and stared.

  A man in his midthirties was just tossing his leather overcoat to the attendant at the door, and they were both laughing at something he’d said. Then he strode across the marble floor, his heels echoing with life in the empty dead air, his beautifully tailored suit rippling elegantly as he moved. The thing about him that struck Lydia immediately was his hair. It was thick, springy, and neatly trimmed, but it was an even more fiery shade than her own. As he approached the desk she looked away. One glance at the intense gray eyes with their coppery lashes told her this was a man who would not be easily fooled by her tales. Or by her papers.

  Without obvious hurry, she started to back away.

  “Comrade Chairman Malofeyev,” the desk man said with a respectful nod of his head and a tug at the sleeves of his own ill-fitting jacket. He was standing to stiff attention, chin in the air, clearly an ex-military man, and his face had lost every trace of its earlier bored disdain. In its place emerged an obsequiousness that took Lydia by surprise and made her rethink leaving. For this one brief moment, the desk man was vulnerable.

  “Dobroye utro, Boris.” The man in the immaculate suit spoke in an easy affable tone. “Good morning.” But his gaze wandered over Lydia as he asked, “Is the commissioner free yet?”

  “No, sir. He asked me to apologize. He has been summoned to the Kremlin.”

  The newcomer raised one eyebrow. “Has he indeed?”

  “Da. He asked me to reschedule a meeting tomorrow for you, Comrade Chairman.”

  A flicker of something that might have been annoyance passed across Chairman Malofeyev’s face. It was a distinctive face, too long to be handsome, but it possessed an energy that made it noticeable, and there was unmistakable humor in the tilt of the mouth. Lydia felt uneasy under the scrutiny of the gray eyes, so that when he waved a hand indifferently and said, “What’s the point? He may not even still be here tomorrow,” for a moment she had no idea who he was talking about. Then it dawned. The commissioner, the faceless apparatchik summoned so abruptly to the Kremlin.

  “I wish to put in a request also,” she said rapidly, “for a meeting with the commissioner tomorrow.”

  Both men stared at her in surprise. She felt as though she’d grown two heads.

  Boris, the desk man, narrowed his eyes and tapped his pen ferociously. “What is your business with the commissioner?” he demanded.

  “I told you, I want to—”

  “The commissioner does not deal with requests such as yours.” He glanced at Malofeyev, a furtive sideways dance of his eyes that showed Lydia he was nervous.

  “But if you’re not willing to make the inquiries I’ve asked for,” she said, “I have to apply elsewhere.”

  Instantly a form appeared on the desk. “Name?” he demanded.

  This was for show. She was convinced that as soon as the smart suit was gone from the hall, the form would be in the wastebasket before she could say spasibo.

  “What is it you want?” Comrade Malofeyev inquired with interest. “What makes a pretty young girl like you so earnest?”

  She looked around at him, and it wasn’t hard to find a smile for this man with his easy charm who was obviously in some position of authority and who was the first one to show even a glimmer of interest in her problem.

  “It’s not important,” the desk man said quickly.

  “It’s important to me,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “Comrade Malofeyev,” the desk man intervened, “this girl has been pestering this office for weeks, wasting my time, over some petty concern she has about—”

  “It’s not a petty concern,” Lydia said quietly, her eyes on Malofeyev’s face. “It’s important.”

  “Ignore her, Comrade Chairman, she’s not worth—”

  Malofeyev silenced the desk man with an abrupt gesture of his hand.

  “Comrade Malofeyev,” Lydia said, twirling her hat between her cold fingers, “I am a good Soviet citizen and I have an important message to pass on to a member of the Chinese Communist Party. I am trying to reach him through this International Liaison Office, but—”

  “Him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now why am I not surprised by that?”

  She felt her cheeks burn as he gave her a slow speculative smile. Abruptly he turned back to the desk man.

  “Telephone,” he said, and held out a hand.

  The man reached behind to where a heavy black telephone hung on the wall. He detached the mouthpiece, reluctance making his movements slow, and Malofeyev walked around to it, requested a number from the operator, spoke briskly for a moment, then hung up.

  “It seems my contact is out to lunch.” He flipped open the gold watch case that nestled in the pocket of his trim waistcoat and raised one eyebrow. “A little early perhaps, not yet noon, but”—he looked at Lydia—“I have left a message for him to call my office this afternoon. So don’t worry, good Soviet citizen, we shall find your Chinese Communist Party member for you if he’s findable.”

  For the first time in all her achingly slow dealings with the impenetrable wall of Russian bureaucracy, here was a man who saw the possible, not the impossible. He made things happen. She wanted to throw her arms around his neck and squeeze the breath out of him with gratitude.

  “Thank you.”

  But something of what she was feeling must have shown on her face because he took her elbow in the palm of his hand and steered her effortlessly back across the marble expanse toward the main door.

  “Luncheon now, I think. Then back to my office this afternoon to continue the hunt.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  He laughed, a rich warm sound like one of China’s bronze bells. It struck her ears with the same clear ring because it held no fear. In Soviet Russia that was a rare and precious thing.

  “My good Soviet citizen,” he said with a mocking smile, “a lovely scarecrow like you must be always hungry. Of course you need lunch.”

  Lydia allowed herself to be guided through the doors and on to the street, trying to work out whether she’d just been insulted. It didn’t matter. The one thing she was sure of was that she wasn’t going to let this man out of her sight. It meant missing her noon vigil at the cathedral, but in her heart she knew Alexei wouldn’t be there, any more than he was yesterday or the day before or all the days before that. At the curb a chauffeur-driven car was waiting, long, black, and purring, and as she climbed into its l
eather interior she glanced over her shoulder to where Elena was still standing stiffly on the sidewalk. Her eyes were angry.

  Twenty-five

  A SAD-EYED PEASANT STARED DOWN AT LYDIA from the wall of the restaurant with dark accusing eyes. The strange, almost strangled face made her nervous. A waiter with a courteous smile and garlic breath pulled out her chair for her and shook out her napkin onto her lap, making her jump. Chairman Malofeyev noticed it and gave her a moment to settle herself while he busied himself with the wine menu.

  Lydia had expected a hotel dining room, one of the big impressive but impersonal places like the Hotel Metropol where she’d watched the elite Soviet officials strutting through its doors with chests puffed out like the pigeons that used to whirr overhead in Junchow. But no. She got that wrong.

  Instead he took her somewhere that showed exquisite taste, somewhere small and intimate. Immaculate stark white table linen, not stiff or starchy, underlined the sense of elegance without formality. Lydia had never seen anywhere quite like it before and wasn’t sure what to make of it. It was modern. Strange and disturbing paintings lined the walls, vivid and demanding, swirls and spikes of color that made no sense, or bold stylized portrayals of peasants and factory workers. The chairs were of odd proportions, long backed, the wood painted an unforgiving black, the seats bright scarlet, and the carpet almost too dizzying to step on. Geometric shapes in red, black, and white zigzagged across its surface, so that it seemed to Lydia as though she were seated in the middle of a bonfire.

  She felt ignorant. Acutely aware that this was a different world she had entered, one where her footing was unsure. The opportunities for making a fool of herself were immense.

  “DO YOU LIKE THEM?” HER HOST ASKED, INDICATING THE ART-WORKS on the wall.

  “They’re different,” she responded guardedly.

  He looked at her with amusement, leaning forward, elbows on the table. “But do you like them?”

  She stared around her thoughtfully. “I like that one.” She pointed to one of the baffling explosions of color that she was sure represented something but she couldn’t quite work out what. It possessed an energy that appealed to her.

  He nodded approvingly. “It’s a copy of a Kandinsky. One of my favorites.”

  “But I don’t like that one over in the corner.”

  “The Malevich. Why not?”

  “It’s depressing. A plain black canvas, all life sucked out of it. What’s it about? It”—the longer she gazed at the painting the more it made her want to cry—“it hurts. I could do better myself.”

  “Do you paint?”

  “No.”

  “Do you write?”

  “No.”

  She could feel the ground growing slippery under her feet.

  He leaned back in his chair and studied her. “You have an artistic look about you. I like that.”

  Chyort! He was making assumptions. She knew absolutely nothing about art. She’d read a bit but that didn’t make her a writer. But her mother had been a pianist, so maybe . . .

  “I play the piano,” she lied modestly.

  He was smiling, pleased with himself rather than with her. “I knew I was right. You are a bohemian at heart.”

  She watched his eyes skim over her thoughtfully. What? she wanted to shout. What are you seeing?

  “So,” he said smoothly, “let’s start with names. I am Dmitri Malofeyev. I live in Moscow and sit on committees and commissions, hence the Chairman title. I like horse riding and occasional gambling. What about you?”

  “Lydia Ivanova.”

  He inclined his head in a chivalrous little bow that revealed the bone-white line of the parting through the dense waves of his red hair. The skin of his face and hands was winter pale and lightly freckled. “My pleasure, Comrade Ivanova.”

  “I am from Vladivostok.”

  “Ah, an interesting place.”

  She sat dry mouthed. Vladivostok was thousands of miles from Moscow, as far as you could possibly go without falling into the China Sea. Please, please, let him know absolutely nothing about it.

  “That explains,” he said lightly, “your interest in the Chinese Communist Party, just over the border from Russia. Except I’d heard they are active in the south of the country rather than the north.”

  “They’re . . . expanding all the time.”

  “Ah, good. I’m glad to hear it. So tell me, young comrade, what you are doing here in Moscow?”

  “I . . .”

  A waiter, tall and thin in black shirt and narrow trousers that made his legs look like sticks, hovered at Malofeyev’s shoulder with the bottle of wine he’d ordered, and the moment’s delay gave Lydia time to snatch at an answer. As the dark red liquid spilled into her glass and around her the muted meeting of cutlery and bone china hummed softly, politely, throughout the restaurant, she took a wary pace forward. Balanced precariously on the first stepping-stone across a fast-flowing river.

  “I’ve heard things,” she said. “About Moscow. I wanted to see them for myself.”

  She saw interest flare in the gray eyes. She lowered her gaze to the napkin on her lap as though reluctant to say more. Unseen, she wiped her moist palms on the white material.

  “What kind of things?” His tone was serious, the laughter gone.

  “How Stalin is transforming the hearts and minds of Muscovites. Building wonderful new communal housing where everything is shared, even the clothing and the children.” She raised her eyes and let regret sneak into her words. “In Vladivostok the people are not so ready for change. Despite the new factories and jobs that Communism is providing, they cling to their old bourgeois ways.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes.” She noticed that her hands were fidgeting with her cutlery. She stilled them. “I want to be a part of the activist movement. I want to be in the forefront with the Constructivists and the Kinoks who are bringing a whole new kind of cinema and music and design to the people.”

  Thank you, dear Alexei, for pushing so many books into my hands for me to learn about the new modern Russia. We must be prepared, you said.

  “You see, I was right when I said you were artistic.” He raised one sandy eyebrow. “But you are remarkably well informed for someone from the backwoods of Vladivostok.”

  “I read a lot.”

  “Obviously. So tell me, what is it you want to see?”

  “I want to see Eisenstein’s films—like October. It’s wonderful that he uses nonprofessional actors, real people. It’s all genuinely about the young proletariat, about their rising up against the capitalist order.”

  She could hear her voice growing excited.

  He nodded. “I admit the cinema is a vital weapon in educating people. To train their minds to grasp socialist concepts.” He paused, pulled at his long earlobe. “What else?”

  For a moment her mind cast about blankly, and all she could focus on was that this man was her one path to Chang An Lo. Don’t slip.

  “What else?” he asked again.

  She thought carefully. “I want to see Tatlin’s designs and go to the Kolonny Zal Doma Soyuzov to listen to Shostakovich’s music. Did you know he even included the sound of factory whistles in his Second Symphony?”

  Her mother had hated that. Vulgar, she’d called it.

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “And,” she lowered her voice until it was almost secretive, “there’s talk of an underground railway system to be built beneath Moscow itself.”

  He didn’t speak. Just stared at her solemnly across the table. Had she overdone it? Was she about to plunge into the churning river’s depths?

  “Work,” he said at last. “You don’t mention work at all.”

  “Ah, of course I want to work.”

  “What kind of work?”

  What kind? Which should she choose? A teacher? A librarian? Even a mythical pianist?

  She picked up her glass of wine and swirled it around the glass, aware of the irony of
it. “A factory worker, of course. I am applying for a job in the AMO automobile plant.”

  “I know the manager there, Likhachev. A good Party member, though sometimes his words run faster than his brain. He’s on the MGK with me, the Moscow City Committee. I could put in a word for you.”

  Despite the wine, her tongue felt dry.

  “Spasibo,” she said. “But I would rather find a job through my own efforts.”

  He smiled and raised his glass. “To success.”

  “Da.” She breathed again. “To success.”

  THE MEAL WAS GOOD. SHE EXPECTED NO LESS. BUT SHE BARELY tasted it, scarcely recalled what she was putting in her mouth. She encouraged him to talk about himself. At first he was guarded, letting slip no more than that he lived in the Arbat near the Praga restaurant and had only recently returned to Moscow after two years away from the capital posted out to Siberia, overseeing something completely different.

  “What made you want to leave Moscow in the first place?” she asked.

  Malofeyev ran a hand through his hair, momentarily uncomfortable, and suddenly looked younger than his thirty-something years. “I was overseeing an import scheme of factory machinery that went badly wrong.” He narrowed his gaze, focusing on the Malevich painting on the wall, and some of its blackness seemed to seep into his gray eyes, turning them to soot. “Someone had to pay for the mistake. That person happened to be me, even though . . .” He stopped himself, refusing to complain.

  Lydia shifted the subject. “But you’re back now. Anyway you probably benefited from what you learned about life outside Moscow.”

  He pushed aside his coffee cup. “How positive you are. For one so young. But you’re right.” He drew a silver cigarette case from his jacket, and Lydia eyed it with the professional interest of an ex-pickpocket. Mutely he offered her a cigarette, but she shook her head. He lit one for himself, exhaling an elaborate coil of smoke toward the Malevich painting as if trying to prove something to it. “It’s remarkable,” he said, “what’s going on out there in Siberia. Have you seen it?”