by Tom Bradby
“You and your sister?”
“Yes.”
“She was older or younger?”
“Older. Four years. I told you. She looked after me after Mama died.”
“What was her name?”
Natasha hesitated. “It is not important.”
“You had help on the farm?”
“Of course.” She smiled again, gently. “But the workers were happy. Papa was always generous. It was a simple life.”
They had reached the French Club, the Cercle Sportif, and Natasha led him through the wrought-iron gates and across the neatly clipped lawn, past the cedar trees and crafted bushes. Light spray from the fountains settled onto their faces. Field thought this the most elegant building in Shanghai—long and low, with a curved awning in the middle, beneath which a liveried doorman was stamping his feet, as though trying to keep out the cold. He nodded at Natasha as she led Field through the hall to the terrace. They took a table close to the garden and looked down toward the pavilion, now fringed by the dawn light. They were the only customers.
“They open early,” Field said.
“They never close.”
“I thought you said you were not a member.”
“I’m not, but they tolerate me.”
A waiter stood before them, smiling, his white linen coat so starched it looked as if it could walk on its own.
“Café, s’il vous plaît,” she said quietly.
“Moi aussi,” Field added.
“A manger?”
They both shook their heads.
“You speak French?” she asked after the waiter had gone.
“A little.” He leaned forward. “Your father must have fought in the Great War.”
“Do not hold my hand here, Richard.”
“I—”
“It is early, so it is safe, and, whatever you think, I don’t want to live in fear. You have encouraged me. But if we were seen, it would be dangerous.”
Field nodded. He swallowed, his throat dry.
“What I have to do, I do, but he does not control me. He does not own me.”
Field nodded again, not trusting his voice.
“But we must be careful,” she said, her expression a mixture of defiance and fear.
He let the silence stretch between them.
“It must have been hellish. The war, I mean,” Field said.
Natasha smiled again. “Papa sometimes seemed so stiff to others. So formal. But he was just a bear. That’s what we called him.”
“He came home as soon as the war was finished?”
“He was in St. Petersburg with his regiment during the revolution. He escaped home and told people what he had seen, but no one believed him. Everyone thought he was exaggerating. He was frightened and silent and we did not know what to think or do. You know?”
“I understand.”
“When the Bolsheviks arrived, the killings began in Kazan. They rounded up people of consequence—many friends. Landowners, army officers, university teachers—they put them into basements and shot them, or forced them onto barges on the river and blew them up.”
Her face had gone white. “Papa did not want to go, but he knew there was no choice.” Natasha closed her eyes. “So far. You have no idea. No one can ever imagine. By camel, across the Steppes, for months. Huddled up as we crossed Lake Baikal by sledge, the air so cold. No money, no food, no kindness. And after all that he had seen, Papa so . . .” Her voice trailed off, her eyes tight shut.
“You reached Vladivostok?”
“It had fallen to our side, but we knew it could not last. There were so many rumors. We had to force father to leave. We had to convince him it was hopeless and we must flee while we still could.” She shut her eyes again.
The waiter came with two cups and a jug of coffee on a silver tray. As Natasha opened her eyes, Field examined the figure on the bill and pulled some money from his pocket.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “it is expensive.”
“It is no matter. I’m no longer poor.”
“You don’t have to apologize, Richard. I do not—”
“Yes, but—”
“It is not important.”
The coffee was in a silver jug and Field poured it, spilling some on the white linen tablecloth. He handed a cup to her. “Did you leave with Lena? You were friends?”
“We were at school together in Kazan and then St. Petersburg, but I had come home to help on the farm.”
“They say St. Petersburg is beautiful.”
“Of course, it was . . .”
“What kind of girl was Lena?”
She did not answer immediately. “Lena liked to laugh. At school she was very funny. She always tried to make a joke of everything. She was popular, quite forward with boys. Not intimidated, but . . .” Natasha stopped again in midsentence.
“You traveled here together?”
“No.” Her voice was firmer now. “I said people thought Papa was stiff, but he was the kindest man I knew, gentle, and he left for us. He did not want to go, could not imagine a life without Russia, but he could see that there was no future for us—so many friends being killed, so brutal. What could we do? But it was so hard for him to leave. Lena’s father was prouder and more stubborn. He was really a stiff man, inflexible, and he would not leave until the last moment. They had a big house, very beautiful, with gardens that had taken so many years to build and a long lawn that ran along the banks of the river. They were quite rich and the father would not go. Papa went to see him. On our way, after we’d left, we went to the house, but Lena was playing in the woods and Papa would not let us come in. I remember Papa walking out, across the snow, back to the sledge, still in his uniform boots, shaking his head. Lena’s father was standing on the steps of the veranda and I could see all the way down to the frozen river and it was a clear day, blue sky, sharp and beautiful. I saw Lena’s mother in the window, looking out at us. She was so frightened and I felt afraid all over again.”
There was another long silence. “But they left?” Field asked. “In the end.”
“Only just in time. They were warned by a friend from Kazan that a mob was coming, and we later heard that the Bolsheviks burned the house down an hour after they had gone. But they left in such a hurry, and the father would not believe it would be for long. He did not want to escape, just hide for a few days, he thought, because the White Army was coming. And it was true: the Whites were close and the city was freed by General Kappel a week later. We knew about this and asked Papa, but he wouldn’t turn back. He understood. He did not want to go, could not bear to leave, but he understood. It was finished. He knew that it was all finished and our life was gone forever.
“Lena’s family lost everything. They came back to the house, but there was nothing left. The Bolsheviks had stolen so much and burned, and they had attacked some of the servants who tried to defend the house. Lena and her family were left with nothing, and then they had to go. The journey was even harder for them. Her father . . . he killed himself on the Steppes. Her mother died also on the journey, and the brothers turned back. She had to fend for herself and her sister. She was a brave woman.”
“And it—”
“When she got here—a long time after us—she was different, as though a light had gone out, do you understand?”
Field nodded.
“She was never the same. There was no laughter.” Natasha stared at him. Field wasn’t sure what she expected him to say.
“I won’t be like that, Richard. I won’t lie down and die.”
“Lena believed she could escape.”
Natasha sighed. “The last few weeks, she was more like her old self, just a little. It is hard to say what I mean, because there was so much we did not—could not—talk about. The past—you think it binds us, but it’s not like that. It seems black, do you see? It all seems black. What we have lost—it is so terrible, and the present so bleak, that we can never talk about it. Sometimes with others, if they
had lived in Moscow or somewhere else, then it is possible to discuss the past or talk about the revolution. But not to Lena, because we had known each other too well.”
“Because there is no escape?”
“Of course. But Lena believed. And—”
“You think it was a mistake?”
Natasha didn’t answer. She was staring out of the window.
“Your father died in Russia?”
For a split second he saw the uncertainty in her eyes as she turned to face him and tried to recall what she had previously said. He wished immediately that he had not spoken. “On the ship,” she said.
“You buried him at sea.”
“No, in Harbin.”
Field wanted to ask if she ever went up to see the grave but thought it a subject best left alone.
She smiled at him. “You are a good listener.”
He shrugged.
“Few men know how to listen.” She paused. “It is strange. Once, I would have been your equal. Now, if you took me to one of your clubs, you would be thrown out in disgrace.”
“I’m not a member of any clubs.”
“No, but—”
“And I doubt I was ever your equal.”
Natasha did not respond.
“I don’t think running hosiery stores matches up to being a tsarist officer.”
“I told you, Richard, there is no shame in being poor.”
“There is when it matters more than life itself to be rich.” Field shook his head. “My father sank so deep into debt that his only escape was to blow his brains out.”
“But you admired him.”
“No.”
“But you loved—”
“I hated him. Hated what he did to my mother, to us, to himself.” Field stared at his hands, trying to contain his anger.
“How can this be so?”
“If your relationship with your father was different, then you can count yourself fortunate in that, at least. Mine was incapable of valuing what he had, or of not overvaluing what doesn’t matter, and the result was that he carried his anger within him. You say your father was soft; well, mine was hard. He would come home from work and the atmosphere in the house changed, as though someone had flicked a switch. We had to be quiet or we would be beaten, my sister and I. If we didn’t put our toys away, we were beaten. If he caught us talking after our lights had been put out, then we would be beaten. I say we, but it was usually me, and all the time, my mother did nothing.”
Field realized he’d said more than he’d intended but now could not stop himself. “She would never say a single word. She would come in and soothe us, put her hand on my brow as I was crying and say that she was sorry, and the more she did that, the more I hated her, too.” Field was staring at her. “You don’t want to hear this.”
“I do.” Her face was white. She put her hand on his and he tried to withdraw it, but she gripped it fiercely. “No.”
“You said—”
“I don’t care.”
Field ripped his hand free and glanced around the empty room. He bent his head. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” He lit a cigarette, his hand shaking. He leaned back.
“They’re your family, Richard.”
“It’s extraordinary how anger can sustain you. My whole life, until I came here, was like a shirt that didn’t fit. I didn’t come here to escape, I came here to begin again—to forget, to discard everything that had gone before.” He looked at her. “You cannot go back. I don’t want to. We’re a perfect match.”
Field sighed. “He always used to say, ‘Don’t be fortune’s fool, Richard. Whatever you do, don’t be fortune’s fool.’ ”
Thirty-seven
Ten minutes after leaving the French Club, she led him through a pair of wrought-iron gates and down a stone path that ran along the edge of an enormous, well-tended garden. It was so peaceful here that they could have been miles from the city. The house was tall, with a dark roof and narrow windows, and covered in ivy.
The woman who opened the door was small and rotund, perhaps about fifty—though it was hard to tell—her graying hair held back by a red peasant scarf. Without saying a word, she took Natasha in her arms and hugged her hard and long.
“This is Richard,” she said quietly. The woman smiled at him, her face flushed. He stepped forward to offer his hand, but she took him, too, into her arms, with such vigor he thought his ribs would crack. She stepped back into the kitchen. “Ivan,” she shouted.
There was a grunt from within.
“Look who has come to see us.” Her English was heavily accented.
Ivan was thin and angular, with a hook nose and a chin thick with stubble. “Natasha,” he said, transformed by her presence and repeating his wife’s greeting, suddenly boyish in the way he walked and smiled. He offered his hand stiffly to Field as they were introduced and gave him the stern look of a prospective father-in-law.
“Come, come,” the woman said. She took his arm and led him to a large table in the middle of the darkened kitchen. Ivan glanced anxiously at the clock on the wall. “There is time,” his wife scolded him. “It is Natasha.” She looked at Field and smiled.
Field smiled back.
“I wish to know all about you. Some tea?”
“Tea, yes, that would be wonderful.”
“All.”
“There’s not much to tell . . .”
“You are shy. Natasha has never . . .” She looked at Natasha, whose face burned red.
“You are from a good family?”
“Katya . . .”
“You have a good education?”
“His uncle is the municipal secretary,” Natasha said. Katya looked at her husband and garbled at him in Russian. They both nodded with satisfaction and Field knew that he’d passed some kind of test.
He eased himself back in his chair and caught sight of a picture on the shelf behind them. It was a recent formal photograph of Natasha, taken with the clock of the Customs House in the background. She was standing next to, and had her arms around, a young boy of five or six. They looked happy.
She followed his eyes, then stood suddenly and moved in front of the picture so as to block his view. “We really should go,” she said, her head bowed. Field saw the shock in the old couple’s faces as they realized their mistake, the easy familiarity of a moment ago evaporating in an instant.
He stood, mumbled a good-bye, and slipped through the house before following her retreat back down the stone path.
“I must be mad.” She turned to him once they’d reached the street, a new determination in the set of her chin. “For me, it is—”
“He’s your son.”
“No.” She shook her head forcefully.
“For God’s sake.”
“On my mother’s life, I swear it.” She stared at him. “I made a mistake,” she said. “I started to dream again.”
“I don’t think you understand . . .”
“It is you who do not understand.” Her expression darkened. “Why will you not believe me when I say that I am not free to love you? What I have done I had no right to do.”
He stepped toward her.
“No,” she said firmly. “Go now. I have some things I need to tell them.”
Field took a step back, but still hesitated.
“Good-bye, Richard,” she said, and went back inside, shutting the wrought-iron gate behind her.
Field watched her go, willing her to look around, but she did not.
Thirty-eight
Field set about the record books in the Immigration Department with renewed energy, burying himself in his work, frustration and anger driving him until lack of sleep began to overtake him.
The sweat settled on his brow and it was as much as he could do not to lower his head onto the book in front of him.
He took numerous cigarette breaks and, all through them, Pendelby plowed on, never seeming to lose concentration, until he stood and announced he would be breaking f
or lunch. Field was suddenly alone in the room, listening to Pendelby’s retreating footsteps on the stairs.
He leaned back in his seat, wiped his brow again, and cursed the heat silently. He stood and walked along the corridor and down the stairs to the back of the immigration counter, where he asked the woman politely if he might be able to borrow a telephone. She took him through to her office.
Field called Yang and asked if he had any messages. There was one from Caprisi, asking him to ring back. Field stared at the phone, then picked up the receiver and asked the operator if she would again put him through. The taste of betrayal was in his mouth. He thought himself a fool to have trusted anyone here.
“Caprisi, it’s Field.”
“Polar bear.”
There was an awkward silence.
“You called me,” Field said.
“Yes, where are you?”
Field hesitated. “The Immigration Department.”
“Hunting for addresses?”
“Yes.”
“Well, keep hunting. Macleod has called it off; the door-to-door boys were being tailed.”
“By whom?”
“The French.”
Field could hear the sound of his own breathing.
“Still there, polar bear?”
“Yes.”
“You’re very quiet again.”
“Am I?”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Call me when you get back to the office.”
“Sure.”
“And polar bear . . .”
“Yes.”
“Be careful with that woman.”
“Which woman?”
“You know who I’m talking about.”
Field felt his anger flaring.
“You were around there last night, so don’t kid me you don’t know who I’m talking about.”
Field could feel his heart beating hard in his chest. “How do you know?”
“I have my sources.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s funny how they always seem to know what we’re doing.”
There was another silence.
