The Girl from Junchow

by Kate Furnivall

  “Tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  She didn’t turn on the light in the room but threw off the wet blanket and knew she wouldn’t sleep.

  “So you’re back.”

  Lydia froze. “You’re up early, Elena.”

  “And you’re up late.”

  “I was restless. I went for a walk.”

  They were both talking in whispers, and Lydia realized with relief that Liev must be still asleep. She could just make out Elena’s bulk in the chair. How long had she been sitting like that?

  “You went for a walk?”

  “Yes.”

  Elena gave a low laugh. “Maleeshka, little one, it’s me you’re talking to, not the Cossack. I am a whore and I know the smell of men and the smell of sex. You stink of both.”

  The night hid the flush that rose to Lydia’s cheeks. She started to undress, to peel off the clothes that belonged to Elena, unconsciously smelling them, searching for Chang.

  “Elena, it’s kind of you to sit up for me but you don’t need to worry so much. I can take care of myself.”

  “Can you?”

  “Yes.”

  Elena gave a little snort. “Come here, maleeshka.”

  Lydia tugged her nightdress down over her head, went over to the chair, and knelt down beside it, so that their heads were close. In the unlit room eyes were just dark holes in paler moons. Elena’s hand found Lydia’s shoulder.

  “Leave him, Lydia. Let the Chinese go.”

  It hurt. Even the thought of it hurt.

  “Why do you say such a thing, Elena?”

  “Because he’s no good for you. No, don’t look away, listen to what I’m saying. Why would a Chinese Communist be so interested in a little Russian chit of a girl?”

  Lydia wanted to shout, Because he loves me, of course, but the question made her nervous. It was one she had asked herself a thousand times.

  “Why do you think, Elena?” she asked softly.

  “He wants to get between your sheets, that goes without saying, a Western girl notch on his bedpost.”

  “Don’t.”

  “But that isn’t the main reason, is it?”

  “No.” Now she would hear the words she wanted: It’s because he loves you.

  “It’s because he’s using you, girl. Simple as that.”

  “Using me?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “That’s for you to find out. You’re not stupid. Maybe the Chinese have ordered him to find out through your friendship with that Russian officer what is going on behind the smiles at the Kremlin. Who knows?”

  “No, you’re wrong. Wrong, I tell you.” She couldn’t swallow.

  “Hush, maleeshka. You’ll wake Liev.” Suddenly her hand touched Lydia’s cheek, a brief caress in the dark room. “What is it? Is he keeping secrets from you, little one? Can you trust him?”

  Lydia pulled away angrily, remembering the shadows behind Chang’s words. “More to the point, can I trust you?”

  “Hah, a good question. But think about this, girl. What future is there in it for him? Or for you?”

  “Elena,” she said, flat and firm, so that Elena would know. “I trust him. I trust him with my life.”

  “More fool you, girl.” She leaned closer, her nightclothes musty. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”

  “I won’t be. Not by him.”

  A silence trickled into the room, a small stream of it between them, and they both waited to see who would be first to cross it.

  “Picture this,” Elena whispered in a rush. “That your Soviet admirer, this Malofeyev, knows about you and your Chinese friend. And that is why he brought you just food today instead of the information you want on Jens Friis. He is jealous. He doesn’t like you being with another man and so will not be as obliging as he might. It seems you can’t have both, little one. Your Chinese or your father. You must choose.”

  Lydia rose from her knees. She uttered no sound, but curled up on her bed and pulled the damp blanket over her head. The ache inside her throat was strangling her. She thrust Elena’s words away into somewhere dark and unreachable, and instead she flooded her mind with the hours spent in the room with the crucifix on the wall, holding those moments up to the light. Polishing them. Making them shine.

  Thirty-nine

  JENS FOUND HIS MIND DISTRACTED. THE NIGHTMARES visited more often. They broke his routine, chipped his night’s sleep into pieces. He was restless, pacing the workroom for hours on end, aware that the work he had so relished over the past months had turned sour in his mouth as it came closer to completion.

  Not like when he first came to this unit. Then it had been a dream come true. This was work, real work, the kind of engineering he had been bred to. It was what he’d craved, the way a drowning man craves air. He used to wake up each morning convinced that he had finally died, slumped over his shovel on the icy wastes of the labor camp, and been transported up to heaven. Ahead of him stretched a day of handling pens and papers and brass calipers instead of skin freezing to axes and shovels and his guts weeping with hunger. Even now every day he opened his eyes and couldn’t believe his good fortune.

  The prison camp had been bad. That’s as far as he ever allowed his mind to go, no further. Twelve years of bad, but now it had ended. He didn’t let it into his head any more, not into his conscious mind anyway. But he didn’t pretend to himself. He knew it was in there somewhere, hiding deep in the darkest coils of his brain, where it only slithered out at night. So he had dreams. Nightmares. So what? He shrugged them off as a minor inconvenience. If people regarded a few unpleasant dreams as bad, they hadn’t been in a camp.

  Since he’d learned of his daughter’s search for him, thoughts of Valentina and Lydia were distracting him, stirring up emotions he had long ago forgotten how to handle. Especially as now there was Olga. He ceased his pacing. Here in this safe and cozy haven he had rediscovered things. Things he valued. Work. Warmth. Food. And love? Yes, even that. A kind of love, very different from what he’d known before but still love. He’d thought it had vanished from his heart forever, but it had sneaked in through hairline cracks in the shell he’d constructed around himself. He smiled because he knew now from Olga, a scientist, that a smile sent certain chemicals racing to the brain, chemicals that magically make you feel better. And God knows, he needed to feel better. She’d taught him that the more you smile, the more you want to smile. So he practiced it each day, and the muscles around his mouth that had grown stiff and gritty with disuse started to soften and come to life.

  Olga had taught him much. Not just as a chemist but as a person; she taught him to become a member of the human race again, and it pained him that there was nothing he could do in return to fill the black agony inside her that was caused by her daughter being left behind in the lead mine.

  “I pray each night, Jens,” she’d told him one day when they were working together on realigning a gas cylinder, “that my Valerya will be killed in a cave-in. They happen often, tons of rock collapsing with a roar like a train in a tunnel. Whoosh and it’s over. It would be quick. But then I hate myself. What kind of mother would wish such a thing on her daughter?”

  He’d brushed her hand for a brief moment. “One who loves her.”

  Her tear had dropped on the blueprint in front of them and before one of the sharp-eyed watchers noticed it, he had swept it aside, smudging the ink. The tiny drop of salty fluid had felt warm and intimate on his skin and he hadn’t wiped it away, instead letting it dry on his skin. At first his and Olga’s paths crossed only rarely, though they inevitably saw each other in the exercise courtyard each morning and evening during the enforced parade of prisoners for half an hour in rain, wind, or snow. But as the project progressed they worked together more often, sometimes three or four times a month, and now that the visits to the hangars were occurring every few days, he found himself doing something he hadn’t done for many years: anticipating.

  I
n the camps he’d lived from moment to moment because it was the only way to survive. Never think about tomorrow and all the other tomorrows. Never. It was a cardinal rule. But now he found himself taking that risk, looking at the future from behind laced fingers. It was so new to him. He thought he’d forgotten how. To anticipate something, anything, took a ridiculous amount of courage. Just to look forward to something as small as a meeting with a friend in a black truck felt good.

  But now his distracted mind had run away from him. It was anticipating all on its own and it made him nervous.

  SO WHEN THE DOOR TO HIS WORKROOM SWUNG OPEN WITH a bang as it slammed into the wall behind, it came as a relief.

  “Ah, Comrade Babitsky, do join me.”

  The guard walked over to the table, his boots squeaking on the linoleum floor. He placed a roll of engineering drawings on it, treating them with respect. He was a large lumbering man, good-looking with thick fair hair, but he had the faintly bemused look in his eyes of someone who is not quite sure where he’s going. He’d joined the team of guards only recently, and Jens was interested to see that he had not yet managed to overcome his awe at such a gathering of impressive brains.

  “Who is it from this time, Comrade Babitsky?”

  “Unit four.”

  “Ah, the squabblers.”

  “Prisoner Elkin and Prisoner Titov. They’re not speaking to each other.”

  Jens rested his elbows on his desk and chewed on the end of his pen. It gave him such intense pleasure to hold a pen after all those years without that he was reluctant to put it down even for a moment. He’d even been known to sleep with one wrapped up in his tight fist, a talisman against the nightmares.

  “You have to understand,” he said, “that scientists and engineers like to argue. It’s how they sharpen their minds.”

  “Then Prisoner Elkin and Prisoner Titov should have bloody sharp minds.”

  Jens laughed. “They do.”

  He remembered in the camp, the starvation of the mind. Starvation of the body he’d learned to live with, but a blank nothing in the mind was a form of death. Twelve long years of dying.

  “Tell me, Babitsky, are you married?”

  “I was,” the guard said gruffly.

  “What happened?”

  “The usual. She got her tail tied up with my neighbor, a metalworker from Omsk, and left.”

  “Any children?”

  His big face grew soft and he chuckled. “My son, Georgi. He’s five.”

  “Do you still see him?”

  “Da. Once a month I take the train to Leningrad. That’s where my boy is living. It’s better now I’m here in Moscow. When I was stationed in Siberia I only saw him at Easter time.”

  Siberia. Jens studied his guard and was astonished at the way he could look at this man without anger. Maybe that was a necessary part of the process, the way of returning to the human race. It was ironic. Babitsky didn’t recognize him. Now that Jens was well fed and clean shaven and wore a pair of rimless spectacles for close work, the guard didn’t remember him. But Jens remembered Babitsky, oh yes, he remembered him well. In Trovitsk camp Babitsky wasn’t nearly so polite. He possessed a liking for jabbing his rifle butt between fragile shoulder blades.

  “Friis.” Babitsky leaned closer. “I like the way you don’t look at me like I’m some piece of shit on the bottom of your boot, the way some of the scientists here do.”

  Jens looked at him, startled.

  Babitsky lowered his voice to a whisper. “I heard something the other day, something I thought you might want to know.”

  “What’s that?” Jens slid the end of the pen into his mouth.

  “They’re thinking of bringing in a new team to finish this project. I don’t know what the fuck it is that you do, but someone up the ladder obviously does know and thinks you all aren’t doing the job you were brought here for. So you’re out.”

  “No.”

  “Oh yes, so just watch your step.”

  Jens froze. His face hurt where his teeth were clamped like a vise around the pen. “Who said?”

  “Colonel Tursenov.”

  “No,” Jens said again. “He can’t do that.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Friis. Of course he can.”

  “But it’s our design, it’s the result of all this team’s hard work, our careful calculations and efforts, our successes and, yes, our errors too. He can’t take it away, it’s”—his voice was growing agitated but he was unable to stop it—“it’s my project.”

  The words were out. He couldn’t take them back.

  Babitsky gave him a look that placed them firmly back in the roles of guard and prisoner. “Friis, whatever the hell it is you and the team do here, sure as fuck it isn’t yours. It’s the Soviet State’s project. It’s Stalin’s project. So don’t think just because you’re using your brain that you have suddenly got any rights here. You don’t. You’re still a nobody, a nonperson. A prisoner. Don’t ever forget that.”

  The big guard walked out of the workroom and slammed the door behind him with relish. The key grated as it turned in the lock.

  Forty

  LYDIA LEFT THE HOUSE EARLY WHILE LIEV AND Elena still slept. She wanted time to herself, needed room to breathe, space to think about Chang. But she could no more think straight than she could walk straight on the city’s sidewalks, which were still thick with mounds of ice at this hour. She was not thinking of him, but being him. There was no other word for it. Being a part of him, as he was a part of her. Already she missed the physical weight of him and the feel of his skin next to hers. Her feet moved faster, stretching her stride.

  “No, Elena, you’re wrong,” she whispered as she walked. “I trust Chang with my life ten times over.”

  “Talking to yourself ?”

  It was Edik. He’d sneaked up on her as she crossed the street and fell into step beside her. He carried his usual pack on his chest, and the little dog’s domed head rose out of it with golden eyes as round and watchful as an owl’s.

  “Do you need me to take another message?” he asked.

  “No, not today. Thanks anyway.”

  He looked disappointed. “So where are you going?”

  “To stand in line for bread.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Of course.”

  She wasn’t sure whether it was her company he wanted or the bread. Either was fine with her. They walked together past a row of shops, enjoying the bright morning sunshine despite the snow thick on the ground. She noticed he was up on his toes again, bouncing with energy, eyes darting everywhere. It was, she decided, his eyes that betrayed him. He had thief ’s eyes. She must warn him of that, but not now.

  “Are you warmer in your new coat?” she asked.

  He grinned. “It’s all right.”

  “You must thank Elena.”

  “If I thank her nicely, do you think she’ll boil me some more pelmeni? And cook a sausage for Misty?” He winked one of his blue eyes slyly at her. “I needn’t bother with thanks if she won’t.”

  Lydia laughed, putting an arm across his thin shoulders as they walked down the street, and to her surprise he didn’t shrug it off.

  ALEXEI FELT THE SUNLIGHT SETTLE ON HIS SKIN. HE WAS standing on the steps of the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer and relished this moment of stillness. The last twenty-four hours had been anything but still. Hell, his head felt heavy from last night. Too much wine and too many cigarettes. He closed his eyes. Minutes passed. He thought about Jens Friis and offered up a small prayer to the God he didn’t believe in. Let him be alive. On the steps of God’s glorious house, surely he would listen if he was in there.

  “Hello, Alexei. So you got here at last.”

  He didn’t bother opening his eyes. He was sure the voice was coming from inside his own head, but it was so real he smiled and conjured up the teasing stare that would go with the words.

  “Alexei?”

  A hand touched his arm. Dimly something jarred. He realize
d he was falling asleep standing up, like a lazy old horse, and he opened his eyes with an effort. She was here, right in front of him, her hand on his arm holding him upright, and it occurred to him that she was swaying. Or was it him?

  “Alexei,” she said softly, and kissed his cheek.

  HE FELT THE WARMTH OF HER SMALL ARM TUCK THROUGH HIS, and she led him onto a tram. It was crowded, full of bodies wrapped in fufaikas and headscarves and battered old cloth caps, but Lydia pushed her way to a seat for him and sat him down in it. She stood over him, hanging onto a strap, and he had the odd sensation that she was guarding him.

  The windows had steamed up, boxing him in, so he had little idea of where they were heading. Each time the doors clanked open he caught a glimpse of streets he didn’t know as people piled on and off, but he was more disconcerted by the care with which Lydia was keeping anyone from jostling against him and the frequent glances she directed at him. They were so attentive, full of a gentleness he’d not seen in his sister before. Where had that come from? Where were the sparks and the fire and the impatience? Her concern worried him. Did he really look that bad? Did he need to be treated like a sick kitten?

  “Time to get off, Alexei.”

  “Right,” he said, but continued to sit there.

  She didn’t yell or shout or tell him he was a lazy bastard, which is what he half expected. Instead she bent down, smiled into his eyes as she positioned her arms under his armpits, and straightened up, scooping him up with her. He was embarrassed. He had a feeling he probably smelled.

  “I didn’t sleep at all last night,” he explained.

  “And how many days ago did you last eat?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It made him sound stupid. She held his hand and led him off the tram. The air outside was crisp and bright and it startled him.

  “Alexei,” Lydia said, “how did you get in such a mess?”

  “I’m not sure. I got lost.”

  “Well, let’s see if we can find our way home, brother. Without getting separated this time.”