The Girl from Junchow

by Kate Furnivall

  The elegant woman smiled. “I found your address in Dmitri’s diary. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not. You’re always welcome.”

  “I’ve come to talk to you, but it seems you’re on your way out.”

  Lydia hesitated. She was in a hurry. But just the sight of this woman, with her long dark hair loose on her shoulders and her fur coat collar turned high up around her small ears like a fortress against the world, made her want to stay.

  “Walk with me,” Lydia said and headed for the door.

  In the street Antonina’s soft gray boots struggled to keep up and Lydia made herself slow down, though it hurt to do so. The sky was a sooty gray, sinking down onto the city roofs, nearly dark now, and even at this hour there were lines outside the butcher’s, women shuffling in sawdust in the hope that more meat might arrive. A scrap of belly pork. A fistful of bones for soup.

  “You’re looking well,” Lydia commented, and steered them across the road, picking a path around a pile of frozen horse dung.

  Antonina smiled again, a small twist of her wide mouth, and flicked her hair from her collar. Lydia wished she wouldn’t do that. Her mother used to use the exact same gesture.

  “You’re the one looking well, Lydia,” Antonina said. “Quite different, in fact. You seem”—she tipped her head to one side and inspected Lydia—“happy.”

  “I like Moscow. It suits me.”

  “Obviously. But take care, Lydia. There are many whisperers.”

  For a moment as they walked step for step alongside each other, their gaze held on each other, and then they looked away and concentrated on avoiding the patches of ice.

  “What have you come for?” Lydia asked eventually when it seemed Antonina was going to trot at her side forever with no explanation.

  “Dmitri tells me things sometimes, you know. Particularly when he’s had a few brandies.”

  “What things?”

  “Things like where your father is.”

  Lydia almost fell flat on her face as she walked straight into a heap of soiled snow.

  “Tell me,” she said, her lips dry.

  “He’s in a prison here in Moscow, a secret prison.”

  More? Please let there be more. “I know that much already, but where?”

  “He’s working on some development project for the military.”

  Not medical experiments. Not a guinea pig.

  “He’s well, apparently.”

  Not injured. Not sick.

  Lydia walked faster. As if she could reach him if she moved quickly enough. But Antonina slowed and she was forced to turn and wait for the pale gray boots to catch up.

  “Don’t rush off,” Antonina complained. “I haven’t finished.”

  Lydia stood still on the sidewalk and faced her. Her cheeks felt stiff. “Where is the prison and why are you telling me this?”

  Antonina’s carefully guarded face softened as she tilted her head apologetically and gripped her gloved hands together. “I’m sorry, Lydia, I don’t know where it is. Dmitri didn’t say.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “No.”

  “Will you ask him?”

  “If you want.”

  “Of course I want.”

  “He’s being very attentive at the moment, so maybe I can try. Look what he gave me.” She slipped back the wide cuff of the silver fox coat and revealed a slender wrist encased in a gray leather glove, so pale it was almost white. Around it was clasped a wide gold bracelet inlaid with amethysts and ivory.

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s obviously very old and very lovely.”

  Antonina inspected it quizzically for a second and then slid it off her wrist and pushed it deep into her coat pocket.

  “I hate it,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I fear it might be a blood gift. That it might have been given to Dmitri by some old tsarist countess as a bribe. To let her husband live. In the camp, I mean. Some old White Russian general with a big white mustache and proud eyes, but too weak to work in the mines or forests anymore.” She turned her head and spat in the gutter. “That’s what I fear.”

  “Antonina, why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because I want you to trust me.”

  “Why on earth would you care whether I trust you?”

  The woman’s gloves started to fret against each other, making a soft fluttering sound. Like birds’ wings. “If I tell you that your father leaves the guarded prison every few days and travels through the streets of Moscow in the back of a truck, taken to work in a less well-guarded place . . . will you trust me then?”

  Lydia put out a hand and gently held the nervous gloves, preventing their movement. “What is it you want, Antonina? Tell me.”

  “I want to know where your brother Alexei is.”

  “He’s gone missing again.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t know where he is.”

  “Chyort!” Antonina’s face was stricken with dismay. “Lydia, you lost him once already. What’s the matter with you? Can’t you keep anyone safe? You seem to lose everyone, even your own father. For heaven’s sake, I . . .” She shook her dark hair so that it swung around her like a cloud of unhappiness and strode on along the sidewalk.

  Lydia wasn’t certain what made her do what she did next. Was it anger? Despair? Guilt? She wasn’t sure. All three churned inside her. Or just that she was stung by Antonina’s rebuke and needed to strike back. Whichever it was, she didn’t care. But when she hurried to catch up with her companion, brushing against her as she touched her arm to turn her around, it was the work of less than a second to slide the bracelet from the fur pocket into her own.

  “I’ll find him,” Lydia told her. The conviction in it sounded genuine even to her own ears.

  A car drove past, wheels hissing, and sprayed them with oily chips of ice, but neither noticed. Lydia’s attention fixed on Antonina, on the dark deep-set eyes with the long lashes and the look of secret despair. In that second Lydia saw an outsider like herself, a woman struggling to find where she was going.

  “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 between them. 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 and 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 l
ittle 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 realized 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 paralyzed 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 around 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 around. 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.

  “Dobroi nochi,” she said. “Good evening.”

  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 honor 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 as 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 around him. It was made of the softest green velvet with exquisite embroidery around the border. Was it bought? Or stolen? As Alexei glanced around 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 gotten 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 they relaxed together 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 duck pond 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 recognize 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 this 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 boat. The older man froze for one fleeting second, but Alexei yanked up his own 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 onto 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 played fiercely and was winning with ease. “What do you want?”

  The door opened tentatively and the shape of Igor 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 . . .”

&nbs
p; 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 realize 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.”

  Forty-two

  THE NOISE. THE HEAT. THE SLAM OF SHEET METAL, the grinding of machinery. The bang and rattle of the overhead hoist chains. 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 the workers’ faces into scarlet sweating masks of fiends, as white-hot sheets of metal were maneuvered 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; mechanization 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 that 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 punched 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.