The Girl from Junchow

by Kate Furnivall

  “Dmitri, why are you doing this? Helping me, I mean. Bringing me such lavish gifts when you barely know me and certainly owe me nothing. You know as well as I do that just one of those cans of caviar would buy you any girl of your choice here in Moscow.” She studied his face. Saw it soften and heard a sigh start to escape before it was cut off.

  “Ah, Lydia, I’m not here to buy you.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  He observed her thoughtfully. “Because one day I want you to look at me just the way you looked at your Chinese friend at the Metropol the other evening.”

  Something hot flared in Lydia’s chest. “We danced, that’s all. Rather badly.”

  “No. That wasn’t all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know exactly what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t. Anyway, Dmitri, you seem to be forgetting that you have a beautiful wife at home.”

  “Ah yes, my Antonina. But you’re wrong, Lydia, not for one second do I ever forget my beautiful wife.” There was a sadness, gray and soft as a shadow in his voice. “In fact, it was she who suggested that as I couldn’t help you in any other way, I should come over with these gifts.”

  “How convenient.”

  He smiled politely.

  Lydia tried to ignore the elegance that hung on him as effortlessly as his leather coat and the fiery red hair that triggered all sorts of memories of her father. They ran like ripples under her skin. For some reason she couldn’t understand, when she was in the presence of this man, her life in China seemed oddly opaque and far away. That annoyed her more than she cared to admit.

  “Comrade,” she said with an abrupt change of tone, “thank you for your generosity, but I cannot accept these gifts.” Yet her hand was treacherous. It hovered there, touching the bulges of the brown paper bag with the same caress it used to fondle Misty’s ears. She snatched it away.

  “I’m trying to help you, Lydia. Remember that.”

  “In which case, tell me, Dmitri, please, which street is prison 1908 on.”

  “Oh, Lydia, I would if I knew.”

  “Maybe you don’t want to know.”

  “Maybe.”

  If she was going to find her father, she needed him, needed his knowledge and contacts and familiarity with the prison system. It unnerved her to think that someone on the next rung above him on the Soviet ladder was stamping on his fingers.

  “Who knows you’re here?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer the question but picked up the tea that was growing cold on the sill beside him, sipped it with a quiet delicacy as if lost in his thoughts, and replaced it. Only then did he focus on Lydia, and immediately she could see a change in him. His gaze was fixed and fierce and reminded her that he’d very recently been the commandant of a prison camp.

  “Lydia, listen to me. Soviet Russia is still just a child. It is growing and learning. Every day we are drawing closer to our goal of a just and well-balanced society where equality is so taken for granted that we will be astonished at what our fathers and grandfathers were stupid enough to put up with.”

  She didn’t react, didn’t look away. The pulse in her wrist was racing, and the dying light from the window behind him seemed to be setting fire to his hair.

  “And the prison camps?” she asked. “Is that how you teach this growing child of Soviet Russia to behave?”

  He nodded.

  “Through fear?” she demanded. “Through informers?”

  “Yes.” He rose from the sill, a slow casual movement that nevertheless made Lydia watchful. He’d grown taller and suddenly darker as he stepped away from the window. “The people of Russia have to be taught to rethink themselves.”

  He came closer.

  Her heart thumped. “Jens Friis is not even a Soviet citizen,” she pointed out. “He’s Danish. What good can teaching him to rethink possibly achieve?”

  “As an example to others. It demonstrates that no one is safe if they indulge in anti-Soviet activities. No one, Lydia. Not one single person is more important than the Soviet State. Not me.” He paused, his words suddenly soft. “And not you.”

  She tried to slow her breathing but couldn’t. Abruptly he seized both her wrists and shook her hard. Wordlessly she fought to break free, but his fingers held her with ease, so she ceased her struggles.

  “Let me go,” she hissed at him.

  “You see, Lydia,” he said calmly, “how fear changes people. Look at yourself now, wide-eyed with fear, a little lion cub eager to claw my throat out. But when I release you, you will have learned something. You will have learned to fear what I might do—to you, to your friends, to Jens Friis, even to that damn Chinese lover of yours—and it will hold you in check. That’s how Stalin’s penal system works.”

  He smiled, an uneven twist of his mouth that offered no threat, just a warning. She stared straight into his gray eyes. With a cautious nod of his head, he uncurled his fingers. She didn’t move. With no hesitation he leaned forward and kissed her mouth, hard and hungry, and his hand touched her breast. She took a step backward, away from him, and he didn’t stop her.

  “Fear,” he said, “is something you have to learn how to use. Remember that, Lydia.” He gave her a playful tilt of his head, the easy charm back in place. “I meant you no harm. I just wanted you to know.”

  She was too angry to speak. But her eyes never left his.

  “You can slap my face if it would make you feel any better,” he offered with a light laugh.

  She turned her face rigidly to one side, no longer able to look at him. Without another word he walked out, shutting the door quietly behind him. She started to shake. Anger raged inside her, hot and painful, burning her throat. She hurried to the window and watched the tall figure of Dmitri Malofeyev stride through the gloom of the courtyard, his back toward her and one hand raised in farewell. Without even turning around, he’d known she’d be there, watching.

  As he disappeared under the archway she sank her forehead against the glass and tried to freeze out the thoughts in her head. But not the anger. She needed that. Because it was not anger at Dmitri Malofeyev, it was at herself. She groaned long and loud and thumped her forehead against the pane as if she could force the images from inside her skull. The feel of his lips. The spicy scent of his cologne. The hot flutter of his breath on her face. His fingers gentle on her breast.

  Where did it come from, this treacherous pleasure she’d felt? She hated him. But worse, she hated herself.

  THE BATHROOM WAS COLD, SO COLD LYDIA COULD SEE HER breath. A naked lightbulb hung from the ceiling like a dull yellow eye and a finger of damp was creeping down one wall blistering the paint, as if something were living under it. It wasn’t Lydia’s evening for a bath, the use of which was on a strict rotation, so she stood on her towel to keep her feet warm and stripped off her clothes.

  Her skirt. Her cardigan. Her blouse. Her undergarments. She dropped them in a haphazard pile on the floor and stood naked in front of the washbasin. Her eyes meticulously avoided the small square of mirror above it because she couldn’t bear to see up close what betrayal looked like. What color it was. What shape it took. What holes it chiseled in a person’s face. She ran the cold water and started to wash herself.

  At the end of ten minutes her skin was sore and she was shivering, but her hands finally stilled. She’d realized it wasn’t the dirt on the outside that mattered, it was the dirt on the inside, and she didn’t know how to get at it.

  Thirty-seven

  THE BATHROOM WAS WARM. THE HOTEL TRIUMFAL looked after its privileged guests well, and Chang An Lo heard Biao’s intake of breath when he walked in and set eyes on the gold taps and the chrome and marble fittings. Biao’s own accommodation in the hotel was somewhat humbler, down on the second floor, a small room above a noisy bar. Chang shut the door behind them and turned on both taps in the washbasin and then in the bath. Water flooded out in a rush,
spurting around the shining porcelain, gurgling down the plug holes, filling the small space with the sound of swirling and splashing and water pipes juddering.

  “Now, my friend, let us talk,” Chang said in an undertone.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Half the time I think the listeners are asleep.”

  Biao still looked wary. His long arms moved restlessly at his side like bamboo leaves in the wind, his dark eyes roaming the tiled walls. Chang was thankful that he’d brought this young companion with him to Russia, and not just because it removed him from the battlefields of China and allowed his father to sleep at night. Biao was the shield at his back. He needed him.

  “Don’t disturb your thoughts with concern about the listeners, my brother,” Chang said. He brought his lips close to Biao’s ear. “In this waterfall they are deaf anyway. But when Kuan said words that were ill-chosen yesterday, neither she nor I were questioned about them, so I am certain the bearded ones find our Mandarin words as hard and unruly on the ear as we find their Russian ones.”

  Biao nodded.

  Chang spoke quickly. “There is a way out through the bathroom window, across the roofs. I need you to go out into Moscow unobserved. You must go now, before it is time for the dinner they have planned for us tonight.”

  Biao nodded again, black eyes bright. “The bearded ones have wits as slow as a worm. It will be no problem.”

  “Thank you, my friend. Xie xie.”

  For a moment they listened to the water.

  “Is this for the fanqui girl?” Biao asked at last. “The one you danced with.”

  Chang was surprised that Biao would question him, but he nodded. His young companion rearranged his face, sucking in the walls of his cheeks.

  “Comrade Chang,” he muttered, “I offer my humble opinion that it is not wise to take such risks for a Foreign Devil, a fanqui. She is clearly not worth . . .”

  Chang stiffened, a lengthening of his muscles, no more. But it was enough.

  Biao bowed his head low. “Forgive my worthless tongue. It does not know when to be silent.”

  “It was always so,” Chang laughed. “You have not changed.”

  “Of course it is my pleasure to perform whatever task will be of assistance to the friend of my heart.”

  “Thank you, Hu Biao.”

  “It’s just that I . . .” He stopped, his head still bowed, so that the tendons at the back of his strong neck were pulled taut.

  “What is it?” Chang asked.

  “My tongue has no ears to listen or to learn.”

  “Finish what you wish to say.”

  Hu Biao lifted his eyes, and with their upturned tips and hooded lids they reminded Chang sharply of his father, Hu Tai-wai, the man to whom he owed so much, the man who was his father in all but name. He felt a rush of affection for his young companion.

  “Spit out the words, Biao, or I shall be tempted to push my fist down your throat and drag them out myself, the way your mother pulls pups from a bitch.”

  He laughed and saw Biao take a breath, followed by a faint shiver of relief, and for the first time it occurred to Chang that his childhood friend viewed him with fear as much as with love. That saddened him. Had the war turned him into someone he no longer recognized? Had he left the best of himself on the killing fields of China?

  “Biao, let me listen to your words of advice.”

  “The gods have taken good care of you, Chang An Lo. Don’t tempt them to forsake you because you have swapped their attention for that of a long-nosed Foreign Devil.”

  “I have promised them much already. I have sworn it in the proud name of my ancestors.”

  “No, my comrade. The gods are fickle. Stay with your own kind. Come back to China and marry my sister, Si-qi. You know how much she loves you.”

  Chang smiled. “The beautiful Si-qi already has my worthless heart and that of many others too. I will always love her sweet face and her wise mind.”

  “Then marry her.”

  “I can’t.”

  “It’s what my father and mother would wish with their dying breaths.”

  “Ah, Biao, that is cruel. You know I can refuse them nothing.”

  For a long time the two men looked into each other’s eyes with only the sound of the running water between them. It was Hu Biao who finally looked away.

  “What is it you need, Chang An Lo?”

  “I need a room.”

  EDIK RETURNED LATE IN THE EVENING LOOKING PLEASED WITH himself, puffing out his bony chest, and Lydia gave him a hug before he could object. He handed over a note in a hurry as though he had somewhere else to be, and then he and the pup disappeared.

  The note contained an address and a street map of how to find it. The map was drawn by hand and she imagined Chang sitting in his hotel room, carefully sketching the lines for her so that she’d make no mistake. There was no Dearest Lydia and no signature on it. Nothing that could be traced to them.

  Just four brief words at the bottom. You are my life.

  LYDIA WAITED UNTIL SHE HEARD THE SNORES OF LIEV AND Elena, thickened by Malofeyev’s bottle of vodka, and only then did she slide out of bed.

  The room was black, the window blacker. Outside, the night sky had disappeared, no moon, no stars, just an emptiness that looked as if it had swallowed the city. Quickly Lydia pulled a bundle from under her bed and dressed herself in several layers of Elena’s sweaters and skirts, one squeezed on top of the other, until she was fat and bulky. Only then was she satisfied.

  She couldn’t fit into her own coat anymore but didn’t want to take Elena’s, as it might be recognized by prying eyes. So instead she took her own blanket and folded it around herself like a long shawl pulled up over her hair and cheeks, padding them out. On top of it she tied a scarf, knotted under her chin. Now she would be unrecognizable in the dark. It made her feel, just for the moment, free from herself. Holding her breath, she opened the door and slipped out of the room. No one would know her.

  Not even Chang An Lo.

  SHE SCUTTLED ALONG THE STREET, HEAD DOWN AGAINST THE wind. Most houses were shrouded in darkness, so she could concentrate on where she was going rather than on her fear of being stopped and questioned. It was an uneven dirt road with a cemetery on one side and rows of wooden buildings propping each other up on the other. A strong odor of damp earth and pigs combined with wood smoke to make it smell like a Chinese village, and she tried to smile at the memory but couldn’t. Her palms were moist and clammy inside her gloves despite the cold, and the skin at the nape of her neck prickled as though spiders were trapped under the blanket. Her pace slowed and stuttered to a halt. What was the matter with her?

  Why so nervous? Why the reluctant feet?

  She closed her eyes. The heavy night air weighed down on her, yet as she stood there, breathing fast, she felt the truth rise to the surface of her mind. She was frightened. Frightened they would be polite to each other.

  HOW LONG SHE STOOD LIKE THAT SHE DIDN’T KNOW. THE sound of footsteps in the street roused her, and for one moment she thought Chang An Lo had come to find her. But then she saw the flashlight bobbing a yellow path toward her over the snow. No, not Chang An Lo, he wouldn’t use a flashlight. She was just about to cross the road to avoid the newcomer when the beam of light swung up into her face, blinding her. She lifted a hand to shield her eyes and heard running feet, and then suddenly she was slammed against a wall, her head rebounding off something hard. Hands tore off her blanket and scrabbled roughly at her clothes. Only the numerous layers of Elena’s bulky garments saved her from her attacker’s intruding fingers. She lashed out with her fist at his head and heard him yelp. His skull hurt her knuckles.

  “Get off me,” she screamed.

  “Shut up, suka, bitch.”

  “Go to hell, you bastard.” She kicked out hard and found his shinbone.

  A hand struck her across her mouth, flat and hard. She tasted blood. A mouth stinking of beer closed on hers. She kicked out again but cou
ldn’t breathe. His arm was pressed down on her windpipe, the weight of his body pinning her to the wall. She tried to scream. Felt her brain screech to a halt.

  And suddenly it was over. With no sound her attacker released her as if he’d had enough of the fight and sat down on a pile of snow. He seemed exhausted. She dragged air into her starved throat.

  “Bastard!” she gasped, and thumped his back where he sat.

  Slowly, almost thoughtfully, he toppled over onto his face and lay sprawled across the snow beside the torch, his neck at an odd angle. Only then did she see the other figure, a face of hollows and shadows, a ghost risen from the churchyard opposite.

  “Chang An Lo,” she breathed.

  “Come.”

  He gripped her wrist and led her away from the broken figure on the ground, striding ahead of her along the dark road so that she had to hurry to keep up. She glanced behind her, but the body hadn’t moved. The night seemed to gather into something thick and solid. When they reached a paneled door on the street, he withdrew a key and inserted it into the lock. The door opened with a whine from its hinge and then they were inside. The hallway was in total blackness but she could hear his breathing. She was sure he could hear hers, labored and uneven.

  He moved with no hesitation, as though he could see in the darkness, and drew her with him up a flight of stairs to a door on the first landing. He opened it, guided her into the room, and closed it behind them.

  “Wait here,” he whispered, placing her against a wall.

  He disappeared and a moment later a match flared. His face leapt out of the night. He was lighting a gas lamp that hung from the ceiling, adjusting the slender chains that regulated the flow. She heard it hiss into life and an amber glow nudged into the room. She released her breath. The place was small with a bed, an armchair, and a bedside table. Surprisingly, a crucifix hung on the wall. But this space was all they needed.