The Girl from Junchow

by Kate Furnivall

  ELENA WAS IN A BAD MOOD WHEN POPKOV CAME HOME WITH a nasty gash on his cheek and one leg of his trousers slashed up to the knee. A bruise the color of split damsons had hatched along the length of his shin. He slunk into the room, making low rumbling noises, and collapsed facedown on his bed, inert.

  Lydia leapt past the dividing curtain and perched on the edge of the quilt, gently patting his back.

  “Liev,” she murmured, “are you all right?”

  No answer. Just the rumbling sound seeping out of him. Elena rose from where she was sewing in the chair and came over to examine him. A quick firm finger to the pulse below his ear and a slap on the back of his head.

  “He’s drunk,” she grumbled. “Drunk and bested in a fight. Stupid fool. If he’s going to fight a gang of dolts, I’ve told him again and again, make sure it’s a number he can flatten.” She slapped him again, on his buttocks this time, and returned her bulk to the chair, where she scowled at the needle in her hand and jabbed it into the fabric as though it were into somebody’s eyes.

  Lydia waited for peace to settle, then fetched a bowl of cold water and bathed Liev’s cheek as best she could without moving him. The white enamel bowl turned pink. Did he need stitches? She wasn’t sure. The gash was deep. It reminded her of when she’d sewn up Chang’s foot by the river in Junchow, and suddenly the ache for him that was always there inside her hit so sharply that her hand shook and she spilled crimson liquid over Liev’s broad back.

  “You trying to drown me, girl?”

  The water flowed downhill to his neck and under his ear.

  “Yes, but I’m not doing a very good job of it.”

  “Men bigger than you have failed.”

  “Don’t talk. It makes it bleed worse.”

  “Shit!”

  Lydia held a cloth pressed hard to his cheek and sat beside him without moving as time trickled past in silence. The rumbling had drifted off somewhere until it was no more than a cat’s purr. But his breathing was labored. When abruptly all noise ceased, Lydia leaned close, heart thumping, listening hard. She prodded him in the ribs. Nothing happened. She jabbed an elbow into the ridge of his neck and only breathed again when he jerked back into life. He slammed a hand out at her in a reflex action that nearly knocked her head off, and the rumbling started up again at a lower volume.

  “Feel like talking?” she whispered. Afraid he’d die in his sleep.

  “Hah!”

  “I bet the others are in worse shape. The ones who did this to you.”

  “Hah!”

  “What was the fight about?”

  “The bastard motherfuckers.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They were waiting outside.”

  “Outside where?”

  “Outside that place of yours.”

  Her heart stopped. She leaned down. Whispered in his ear. “The one on Raikov Ulitsa?”

  “Da.”

  Suddenly she was cold. Teeth chattering.

  “How did they know? Chang and I are so careful. We double back again and again, so no one can follow.”

  “Hah!”

  “How many of them?”

  “Chetyre. Four.”

  “But now they’ll inform on us and . . .”

  “Nyet.” He twisted his head around and the black eye patch was wrenched upward, revealing the deformed empty socket. “Nyet, little Lydia, they’re dead.” A crooked grimace stretched his cheek and set the blood oozing once more. “So smile,” he growled, “because you and me, Lydia, we’re alive.”

  She rested her cheek on his, the stink of him warm and familiar, the feel of his shoulder like a sun-baked rock next to hers.

  “The trouble with you, Liev Popkov, is that you’re just too nice to people. Try being tougher next time.”

  He chuckled, his rib cage rattling like iron bars. “I need a drink.”

  Lydia sat up. “I’m going out to buy you the biggest bloody bottle of vodka in the whole of Moscow.”

  He grinned at her. One of his teeth was missing.

  “Elena,” Lydia said, “get over here, please. Keep him warm. Watch him while I’m gone.”

  The woman put down her needle and gave Lydia a long look. In that single moment Lydia felt Elena take a step back from her, as clearly as if she’d picked up the scissors on her lap and snipped at the thread that held them together. Their friendship had suddenly come unraveled in some way, and yet Lydia couldn’t be angry. She knew it was her own fault. She trailed danger around with her the way other girls trailed ribbons. She watched sadly as the woman left her chair and clambered fully dressed onto the bed, where she wrapped herself around the big man, one arm tight around his neck, almost throttling him. Within seconds he was snoring.

  As Lydia pulled on her coat, Elena tucked her face into his greasy black hair and muttered, “One of these days, Lydia Ivanova, you’ll be the death of him.”

  Forty-seven

  EDIK WAS OUT STALKING. LYDIASPOTTED HIS PREY immediately, a man carrying parcels. He had just emerged from a tobacconist’s store where smoking pipes of all shapes and sizes were displayed in the window, and he was far too preoccupied with relighting the fat cigar he was rolling between his equally fat lips to notice the skinny bag of bones tagging along behind him.

  Lydia touched the boy’s shoulder. “Bite me and I’ll keep Misty’s chunk of kolbasa sausage for myself.”

  Edik stopped and narrowed his eyes at her. “Piss off, I’m working.”

  “Don’t let me stop you.”

  He regarded her with suspicion, recalling the time she’d made him replace his spoils in the pocket he’d stolen it from. With a shrug he darted forward, tucking in behind two women busy discussing the merits of their hats. Lydia admired the way he glided up to people and hovered briefly at their elbows, close enough so that he looked to others as though he might be with them, but not close enough to alarm them. Lone youths were always suspect.

  “Mind if I tag along?” she asked.

  “You’ll get me spotted.”

  “No, I won’t. I’ll give you cover.”

  He thought for two seconds, saw the sense of it, and let her come alongside.

  “I have a job for you,” she murmured under her breath.

  “Another letter?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  The speed of the no rattled her. “I thought . . .”

  “No. No more letters.”

  “Is this about wanting more money? Because . . .”

  His blue eyes skimmed her face scornfully. “Of course not. I just can’t do it anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t. That’s all.”

  “Frightened of the prison?”

  He didn’t even deign to answer that one. They had worked their way nearer to the man with the cigar and the parcels, and Edik was up on his toes, hands loose at his sides, ready.

  “I’ll get you a good snatch,” Lydia promised, “if you’ll deliver one more letter.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Watch me.”

  Lydia moved in close. She swung to one side of the man, the boy to the other. As if hurrying past the unsuspecting mark, she banged her hip on his bundle of parcels, winced, stumbled, and clutched at him for support. Instantly the man was all solicitude. She smiled her most charming smile, thanked him, and moved on rapidly. By the time Edik caught up with her in the next side street, he was laughing.

  “You’re good. For a girl.”

  “You’re not bad yourself. For a kid. What did you get?”

  He held out a heavy silver cigar case inlaid with diagonal stripes of jet. “It’ll do, I suppose.” He said it in an offhand manner, but both knew it was a valuable snatch. “You?”

  She hoisted a calfskin wallet from her pocket. It felt well stocked. She tossed it to him.

  “Mine?”

  “I promised, didn’t I?” she said. “Now the letter.” On her palm lay the square metal folder. She proffered it to him.


  “No.” The sallow cheeks flushed a dull pink and made him look very young.

  “Edik! What the . . .?” And that was when it dawned on her. Chyort! She should have seen it coming. “It’s the vory v zakone, isn’t it? They’ve ordered you to stop.”

  He nodded. Angry and ashamed.

  Then something else clicked into place in her head. “Misty? Where’s Misty?”

  He looked away. Wouldn’t let her see his face. His fingers were counting out the rouble notes in the wallet, but his whole body drooped with an inner misery that seeped out at the mention of the pup’s name.

  “They’ve got her, haven’t they?” Lydia exclaimed. “The vory have taken your dog to make sure you obey.”

  Edik stuffed the wallet into his oversized pocket. “Bastards,” he whispered.

  “Bastards,” Lydia echoed.

  But she knew it was Alexei. Controlling her the only way he knew how.

  “Bastard,” she said again and squeezed the boy’s arm. “I’ll get her back for you, don’t worry.”

  Edik kicked out at a mound of ice that shattered in the sunshine, creating a thousand shimmering rainbows. “I’ll kill them if they hurt her.”

  Lydia slipped the metal folder into her pocket next to where the cigar man’s gold watch was ticking discreetly, and she started to run, slipping and sliding on the snow.

  “KUAN.”

  The Chinese girl looked surprised at first, then nervous. She was coming down the wide steps of the Hotel Triumfal and hadn’t noticed the slight figure in the shadows across the road. It was her habit to walk in the park opposite the hotel before it grew dark. She hesitated.

  “Kuan,” Lydia called again.

  She was thankful when the Chinese girl moved toward her. She didn’t want to have to chase her up the steps of the hotel. The blue coat and the bulky hat with the ugly gray rabbit fur trimming made Kuan satisfyingly shapeless, not a figure of allure for her fellow delegates. Nevertheless, Lydia’s palms were sweating. There was something about the Chinese girl’s smooth face, something you wouldn’t want to cross. Determination was chiseled into its features, commitment luminous in the eyes. Chang would admire it.

  Kuan placed her small palms together and bowed politely over them. Lydia ignored the courtesy.

  “Kuan,” she said, her voice bordering on rude. “Will you please tell Chang An Lo that my aunt is ill, so I must leave.” It was the wording they had agreed on should she ever need to warn him to stay away.

  The girl studied her, black eyes carefully featureless. Lydia wondered how much Russian she understood.

  “You will tell him?” Lydia prompted.

  “Da.”

  “Thank you.”

  They stood there in the twilight, their shadows merging on the scrubby grass, and Lydia stepped to one side to separate them. The naked silhouettes of the trees jabbed fingers at them in the wind.

  “Kuan, why did you betray Chang to the Soviet police? You told them about the room on Raikov Ulitsa, didn’t you?”

  The black eyes revealed nothing. “I do not know the meaning of the word betray.”

  “It’s what you do to your enemies. Not to your friends.”

  “Comrade Chang is my friend.”

  “Then treat him like one.”

  The blank eyes suddenly came alive, the stolid body unexpectedly fluid and mobile as it swung to face Lydia. “Leave him in peace, fanqui.”

  Lydia knew the word, she’d heard it a thousand times in Junchow. Fanqui. It meant Foreign Devil.

  But Kuan hadn’t finished. “You have no need of him,” she said. “There are many Russian men you can take instead. Choose your Soviet officer, the one with the fox-colored hair. One of your own. But leave Chang An Lo alone.” She was close enough for Lydia to see the faint tremble in the corner of her eyelid. “Give him back to China,” Kuan hissed.

  JENS WOKE WITH A SENSE OF SHARP HUNGER. NOT IN HIS stomach. It was centered somewhere in his brain, gnawing its way along the coils, devouring parts of him. He tried desperately to recall what he’d been dreaming about, but it had drifted out of reach already, leaving him with just the hunger and a waft of perfume more real in his nostrils than the dank odor of the basement cell.

  Today would bring another letter.

  Jens rolled onto his front to avoid the constant light of the dim overhead bulb and buried his face in the grubby pillow, so thin he could feel the bed slats through it. Today another letter. From his daughter.

  That one word—daughter. Dochka. It altered him. Changed his perception and made a different person of him. It made it harder to bear what he had done and what he was still doing on the project. He groaned into the flimsy pillow. He wanted to sit Lydia down in front of him and explain. Don’t judge harshly, maleeshka. A man on his own with no one and nothing in an inhuman wasteland is one thing. He hardens like the shell of a walnut and over time the soft kernel inside slowly shrivels and dies. But a man with a daughter is quite another.

  A man with a daughter has a hold on the future.

  “PRISONER FRIIS, DO YOU AGREE WITH PRISONER ELKIN? THAT everything is ready?”

  “Yes, Comrade Colonel.”

  “You surprise me.”

  “We have worked hard, Comrade Colonel.”

  They were in Colonel Tursenov’s office, strung out in a nervous line. The chief scientists and engineers on the project stood uneasily in front of his leather-topped desk, eyes fixed on the faded Turkish carpet under their feet. When spoken to directly, their gaze crept up to Tursenov’s collar with its red flashes. No higher.

  “I expect to be impressed,” the colonel said. “There will be guests, high-level military observers. So no mistakes. You understand me?”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  Tursenov strutted along the line, his spectacles glinting with satisfaction. “I have selected the location for a full test.”

  “A full test?” Elkin exclaimed. “I thought . . .” He looked suddenly pale.

  “What you thought, prisoner, is irrelevant.” Tursenov turned his head and scrutinized Jens. “A full test,” he snapped. “No mistake of any kind.”

  Jens stared straight at him, right to the back of the hard gray eyes, and what he saw there wasn’t satisfaction. It was fear. Failure was not an option for a man like Tursenov because failure would mean a sentence of twenty years in a prison labor camp, and long before the first year was up he’d be torn limb from limb when the guards’ backs were turned. Jens had seen it happen. Had heard the screams.

  “No mistakes,” Jens assured him.

  “Good.”

  “May I ask the location of the test?”

  “This will amuse you, Prisoner Friis. It is to be in Surkov camp.”

  “But Colonel, there are hundreds of prisoners there.”

  “So?”

  “You can’t kill all—”

  “It’s not me doing the killing, Prisoner Friis. It’s you.”

  “But there’s no need to.”

  “Of course there is, Prisoner Friis. We need to ascertain how low the planes must fly and the exact concentration of the gas. The test will be conducted at Surkov camp. The decision is made.”

  Surkov camp. A flash of memories arced through Jens’s head, jolting it on his shoulders. Barbed wire tied around his wrists, beatings with an iron pipe till it buckled, solitary confinement in a cell smaller than a coffin, a robin fluttering bright as a ruby on his finger until a guard broke both the bird and his finger with his rifle butt.

  “It’s the place where you started your life as a prisoner, I believe.”

  “Started my death as a prisoner,” Jens corrected.

  Tursenov laughed. “That’s good. I like that.” The laughter trickled away as he studied Jens’s face. “Well now, it looks like you’ll be starting the death of other prisoners too. But I wouldn’t let that worry you. You’re alive, aren’t you? You’ve survived.”

  “Yes, Comrade Colonel. I have survived.”

  THE LIGHT IN
THE COURTYARD WAS YELLOW. IT TUMBLED through the darkness and spilled like oil onto the figures hunched in the cold morning air. Today it seemed to Jens that it made everyone look sick, but maybe that was because they all felt sick after yesterday’s meeting with Tursenov.

  A full test. At Surkov camp. Dear God, he hadn’t expected that. There were people he knew there, men he’d eaten with, worked with, prisoners who had cared for him when he was sick.

  He walked, limbs stiff and heavy, around the circle behind the compound’s metal fence, pleased not to talk, not to think. His gaze was fixed on the massive iron gate, his ears tuned for the screech of its hinges, and he didn’t even notice that Olga was limping. He didn’t see her distress because he was too blinded by his own.

  “GET OUT HERE, YOU BIG OAF!”

  The baker was throwing open the back of the cart but the horse was jittery, tossing its head from side to side, picking up each feathery foot in turn, and all the time Jens watched out of the corner of his eye for the boy. Why wasn’t the thin figure there? He should be grabbing the reins.

  “Keep moving,” a guard yelled.

  It was Babitsky, his temper fraying at the edges this morning because he had woken with a thumping cold and the last thing he wanted was to be stuck on exercise duty. Jens moved his feet. He hadn’t even realized they’d stopped. Other prisoners muttered impatiently, their combined breath a white fog in the compound, so it took a moment before he could glance again at the cart, a quick glimpse over his shoulder as he followed the trail of footprints that stirred up the ice underfoot.

  What he saw slammed into his mind. Either his eyes or his brain surely had got it wrong. It had to be a mistake. He looked away, concentrating on keeping his limbs functioning, and three seconds later when he again turned his head, he was convinced the scene would be rearranged.

  It wasn’t.

  He had to clamp his teeth viciously on his tongue to stop himself shouting out. His mind froze. He rounded the bottom of the exercise circle, unaware that he had speeded up until he crashed into the man in front.