The Russian Concubine Part 36

It was over before it began. The men vanished. A splash of blood started to freeze on the cobbles. Liev slipped the knife back into his belt and, without releasing her wrist, plodded on down through the crowded hutong hutong as if nothing had happened. as if nothing had happened.

'What,' Lydia demanded in English, 'was that about? Did you really have to use that knife?'

He halted, stared at her with his one good eye, shrugged, and moved on.

She tried again. In Russian this time.

'O chyon vi rugalyis?'

'He wanted to buy you.'

'Buy me?'

'Da.'

She said no more. Knew she was shaking. d.a.m.n the b.l.o.o.d.y bear. She hated him to know she was frightened. She tried to s.n.a.t.c.h her wrist away, but it was like trying to pull a rivet out of one of the metal ships with your bare fingers. It just didn't happen.

'I didn't know you speak Mandarin,' she said.

'He offered good money,' he said and uttered a deep growling sound that it took her a moment to recognise as a laugh.

'd.a.m.n you,' she said in English.

The growl went on and on.

'In here,' she said to shut him up.

It was a kabak. kabak. A bar. A bar.

She knew it was a mistake the moment she was inside. Twenty pairs of eyes turned. Stared at them as if a snake had crawled through the door. The air hung solid and lifeless under the low ceiling and was full of odours Lydia did not recognise. A stove in one corner coughed out heat and fumes.

She stared back at the men. Her eyes roamed their faces and their clothes, all grey as ash, and the crazed enamel tables where they sat hunched over some colourless rotgut liquid. The grimy bamboo counter had a chained monkey at one end and the man behind it had no ears. He wore a soiled rag around the top of his head and held another in his hand. He was wiping a gla.s.s with it. Without taking his eyes off Liev Popkov for one second, he reached under the counter and brought up a rifle. He thumbed back the hammer with the ease of long practice and pointed the business end straight at Lydia's chest. She felt her ribs contract. The rifle looked ancient, probably a relic from the Boxer Rebellion. But that didn't mean it didn't shoot straight.

n.o.body spoke.

Liev nodded. Moving slowly he pulled her behind him and backed out of the bar.

'He wasn't there,' she said outside. She was relieved to see her breath coiling in icy vapour from her mouth, in and out, her ribs still working.

Liev nodded again. 'There are many bars.'

They went into ten bars that evening. Scattered over different areas of the harbour. No more rifles were pushed in their faces, but no smiles either. Eyes regarded them with the same loathing and mouths muttered curses and spat hatred on the floor.

Word was spreading. About the giant bear who broke men's faces and the flame-haired girl. When they entered a bar and stood inside the door for no more than two minutes, heads raised because they'd heard of this strange pair who haunted the dockland. Lydia could see it on their faces, as clearly as she could see the desire to slit their fanqui fanqui throats. Each time she peered through the gloom of some narrow stinking room and heard the silence slide over the tables as drinkers turned to stare, she did not expect to find the one face she sought, the one with the intense and thoughtful eyes that had always observed her so closely and the nose that flared when he was amused though his mouth was slow to smile. She didn't expect to see it. But still she hoped. throats. Each time she peered through the gloom of some narrow stinking room and heard the silence slide over the tables as drinkers turned to stare, she did not expect to find the one face she sought, the one with the intense and thoughtful eyes that had always observed her so closely and the nose that flared when he was amused though his mouth was slow to smile. She didn't expect to see it. But still she hoped.

In one of the bars a short barrel of a man with oiled hair came and placed himself nervously in front of them. He said something in Chinese.

Liev Popkov fixed his eye on the questioner but grunted to Lydia in Russian. 'He says, who are you looking for?'

'Tell him the name is not for his ears. Tell him to say to all his . . . ,' she hunted for the Russian word, ' . . . pyanitsam pyanitsam . . . customers that the girl with red hair was in his bar. She searches for someone.' . . . customers that the girl with red hair was in his bar. She searches for someone.'

Liev frowned at her.

'Tell him,' she said.

He told him.

Outside in the street once more, the big man took root, indifferent to the snow flurries that were burrowing into his black beard, and put a hand on her shoulder. It felt like a truck had landed on it.

'Why don't you tell his name?'

'Because it is too dangerous for him, slishkom opasno. slishkom opasno.'

'A Communist?'

'A person.'

'How will you find him if you will not say his name?'

'I am here. People talk. He will hear.'

'And he will know it is you?'

'Yes. He'll know.'

Lydia lay in bed fully clothed. Shivering. She couldn't get the dockland ice out of her bones. They felt as if they were cracking open, and even though she tucked her fingers under her armpits the chill air still managed to spike needles through them. Her old eiderdown was wrapped around her, tight as a coc.o.o.n, with every sc.r.a.p of clothing she possessed draped on top, but still she was cold. The old black stove spluttered. Not that it was short of kerosene. Not now they had Alfred. But the meagre heat coaxed from it was no threat to the breath of the Chinese winter that climbed in through the window each night.

The door to the attic banged open.

'Blin! Sorry, darling, I didn't mean to wake you.' Sorry, darling, I didn't mean to wake you.'

Lydia heard the church clock strike two.

'I wasn't asleep.'

'I'll just light a candle. Go to sleep now.'

Valentina had gone out with Alfred to a party. She'd been drinking. Lydia could tell by her footsteps. There was the flick of a lighter, a faint glow in the darkness, the noise of a chair dragged across the floor, then silence. Lydia knew what her mother was doing. Sitting in front of the stove. Smoking. She could smell it. And drinking. She knew it. Though Valentina could open a bottle and pour a gla.s.s of vodka without a single sound. Still, she knew it.

'Mama, I saw something bad today.'

'How bad?'

'I saw a dead baby. Naked. It was lying in a gutter and a rat was biting off its lips.'

'Ach! Don't, sweetheart. Don't let such things into your head. This G.o.d-cursed country is too full of them.'

'I can't forget it.'

'Come here, little one.'

Lydia slid out of bed, still wrapped in her eiderdown, and pushed aside the curtain wall. Her mother was hunched in front of the stove, cigarette in one hand, gla.s.s in the other. She was wearing a new fur coat, the dense colour of honey, and her cheeks were flushed.

'Here, this will make you forget.' She held out the gla.s.s to Lydia.

Lydia took it. Never before had she done so. But now . . . now she needed . . . needed something. To help her hold on to the belief that somewhere out there Chang was safe. Her head was drowning. Great suffocating pools of blackness had opened inside it. Faces. They floated to the slimy surface, faces and faces and more faces, Chang's eyes so wide and watchful and so eager to make her understand, and then came a dead baby with no lips, a Chinese jaw smashed to a pulp, Mr Theo's huge echoing pupils, and all the street faces full of hatred and spite and venom.

She drank the vodka.

A kick in the gut. Then warmth. It seeped up into her chest and made her cough. She drank again. Slower this time. The black pools were turning grey. She sipped again. It tasted foul. How could anyone like this stuff?

Her mother watched her but said nothing.

Lydia sat down on the floor in front of the stove and Valentina stroked her head.

'Better?'

'Mmm.'

Valentina took back the empty gla.s.s and refilled it for herself. 'Do you like my coat?'

'No.'

Valentina laughed and ruffled the beautiful soft fur. 'I do.' Lydia leaned her head back, rested it on her mother's knee, and closed her eyes.

'Mama, don't marry him.'

Slowly and gently Valentina continued to stroke her daughter's hair. 'We need him, dochenka dochenka,' she murmured. 'In this world when you need something, you have to ask a man. That's the way it is.'

'No. Look at us. We've survived all these years without a man. Between us we managed. A woman can . . .'

'That's balderdash, to use one of Alfred's words.' Valentina laughed again, but this time there was no humour in it. 'It was always through men that I got my concert bookings, never women. Women don't like me. They see me as a threat. C'est la vie. C'est la vie.'

But Lydia heard the loneliness in the words.

'It is not balderdash, Mama. It's true. We can manage.'

'Dochenka, don't make me mad at your stupidity. Look at yourself. When it's a rabbit you want, you get it out of Antoine. For a hutch or money, it's Alfred. Oh yes, don't look so surprised. He told me you came to him for a few dollars.'

'It was for . . . things.'

'Don't worry, I'm not prying. In fact Alfred was quite touched by it because you asked him instead of going out and stealing it.'

'That man is easily pleased.'

'He said he believed it was a sign of your growing maturity. And of a better sense of morality.'

'Did he really say that?'

'Yes.'

'But, Mama, I ask women for help too. Like Mrs Zarya and Mrs Yeoman, and even Anthea Mason showed me how to bake a cake. You taught me how to dance. And Countess Serova taught me to walk taller.'

Valentina s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away from Lydia's head. 'What?'

'She told me to hold my . . .'

'What in the name of all that's holy has it got to do with that witch of a woman?' Valentina threw the vodka down her throat. 'How dare she? How dare . . . ?'

'Mama.' Lydia twisted around to look at her mother, but her face was swathed in deep shadow from the single candle on the table behind her. Only her eyes glittered. 'Don't get upset, Mama. She's not important.'

Valentina drew hard on her cigarette, a bright pinp.r.i.c.k of fire, and exhaled fiercely as if she were spitting poison.

Lydia rubbed her cheek against the fur-covered knee. 'She can't hurt you.'

Valentina was silent, then stabbed out her cigarette, lit another, and refilled her gla.s.s. Lydia felt her own head swirling gently with a pleasant drowsy slowness that made her eyelids too heavy to raise. Behind them Chang's smile floated in mist.

'Where do you go these days, Lydochka? After school, I mean.'

'I go to Polly's house. We're working together on a project for school. I told you.'

'I know you did.' She drank more of the vodka. 'That doesn't mean it's the truth.'

Lydia almost told her then. Everything. About Chang and his crazy leaps and his foot and his fierce beliefs and the way his mouth curved into a perfect . . . The drink had loosened her tongue and words were longing to pour out, to tell someone. Someone.

'Mama, what did your parents say when you married a foreigner? '

To her horror she felt her mother's knee start to tremble beneath her cheek and when she looked up, tears were rolling down her mother's face. Lydia gently stroked the knee, over and over, the fur almost as soft as Sun Yat-sen's under her fingers.

'They disowned me.'

'Oh, Mama.'

'They had the eldest son of a fine Russian family from Moscow all lined up for me. But instead Jens Friis and I eloped and they cursed us. Disowned me.' She brushed the tears from her face with the back of the hand that held the cigarette, only just avoiding setting fire to her hair.

'You loved each other, that's all that matters.'

'No, durochka durochka, you little fool. It's not enough. You need more.'

'But you were happy together, you were, you've always said so.'