The Concubine's Secret

22

‘Come here, girl. I have a clock for you, a good marble one with-’

‘Nyet, I don’t need a clock.’ Lydia shook her head and backed away from the stall.

She liked street markets. The shouting and the pushing and the manhandling of goods. They reminded her of home. No, she pulled herself up sharply, get it right. What she meant was they reminded her of China, but China was no longer her home. Face it. Her mother was dead, her stepfather had scuttled back to England and Chang An Lo was… was where? Where? Where?

She looked around at the hustle and bustle of the market. At the vegetables spread out next to a jumble of old shoes, at the neat pile of homemade preserves between the books and the bread. She even spotted an ancient microscope, all brass and knobs beside a hank of brightly coloured embroidery silks. The traders were bundled up against the cold, haggling and arguing over kopecks as if they were precious as bars of gold.

Moscow had come as a shock. Not at all what Lydia had expected. The Bolsheviks had made the right move, she decided. They had shifted the capital city of Soviet Russia right away from the decadent bourgeois elegance of Leningrad – the city of her own first five years of childhood. Instead Moscow became the hub. For ever turning. She could almost hear its wheels.

The moment she stepped off the train she fell in love with the place. Alexei had told her that it lacked the grace and beauty of Leningrad, that Moscow was a dirty industrial dump. But he was wrong. What he’d omitted to mention was that the new capital was bursting with infectious energy. There was a kind of spark in its streets. An eagerness. It made the hairs rise on the back of her neck. And hanging over it all was the unmistakable smell of power in the air.

Moscow was the future. No question.

But was it her future? More importantly, was it Papa’s?

‘I’m here, Papa,’ she whispered. ‘I’m back.’

‘I don’t know what you’re looking so damn pleased about.’ Elena was staring with annoyance at Lydia.

‘I was thinking,’ Lydia said as she inspected the shabby room they’d just entered, ‘thank goodness Alexei is not with us. He would hate this place.’

‘I hate this place.’

‘It’ll do us. It’s our first step. Now we’re here, we can start searching properly. Anyway I’ve seen worse,’ Lydia laughed. ‘I’ve actually lived in worse.’

‘More fool you,’ Elena grunted and plonked herself down on a bed. The springs pinged with a metallic screech.

‘The room is small, I admit.’ Lydia started to pace slowly round it, trying to find something positive to say. The air was musty, heavy with the long lost hopes of past occupants. The wallpaper was stained and peeling in places. One of the window panes was cracked and an electric cable stuck out of the wall above one of the beds, ending in a spray of naked wires. It looked to Lydia horribly like a snake with its head cut off.

‘The ceiling’s nice,’ she said. It was high and decorated with elaborate cornices. ‘And the floor. It may be battered but it’s solid parquet.’

Elena rolled her eyes in disgust. ‘Look at the rugs.’

‘So the poloviki are a bit old. But what do you expect in a communalka?’

‘Nichevo,’ Elena groaned. ‘Nothing.’

‘Well, that’s what we’ve got. Nichevo.’

That wasn’t strictly true. They had a roof over their heads. That’s what mattered to Lydia and she wasn’t fussy about what was under that roof. She’d learned the hard way. While living from hand to mouth with her mother in Junchow, the sight of the rent money ready in the blue bowl on the mantelpiece made the difference between eating and not eating, between sleeping and not sleeping, between being warm and being cold. The living quarters they had been allocated here in Moscow were situated in the Sokolniki district. It was one of the smoky industrial sectors, squeezed between a tyre factory that belched out disgusting smells and a small brick building in which a family manufactured dog leads. The house was divided up into numerous apartments, with a courtyard at its centre and a booth at its front which did shoe repairs as well as sharpening knives and scissors. It was run by an Armenian with three gold teeth. Popkov declared he was working for OGPU, the secret police, but Lydia didn’t believe a word of it. Popkov claimed everyone was informing for OGPU. But if that were true it seemed to Lydia that there’d be no one left to inform on. She craned her neck back now and gazed up at the ceiling. It was solid. Yes, prettiness was an extra bonus when you lay in bed. But its solidity was what mattered.

‘Don’t complain, Elena.’

‘I’ll complain if I like.’ She put her hands on her broad hips. ‘You think all three of us, you, me and Popkov, can live in this shoebox without killing each other?’

Lydia swished the dividing curtain across the middle of the room, shutting off Elena and the big bed, creating the illusion of privacy.

‘Don’t fret, Elena,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll plug my ears.’

‘Three hundred, three hundred and twenty, three hundred and forty… four hundred, four hundred and ten…’

‘Little Lydia, you can go on counting it all night but it’s not going to change.’ Popkov was leaning against the windowsill, his intimidating bulk in a long black coat, its collar up round his ears. He was watching her empty out her moneybelt on to her bed.

‘Four hundred and ten roubles,’ Lydia said flatly. ‘It’s not enough.’

‘It will have to be. It’s all we’ve got.’

‘The residence permits and ration cards cost us far too much.’

‘We had no choice.’

‘I know. You said.’

‘It’s what they charge. On the black market. I tried, Lydia, but…’

‘It’s not your fault.’

She shuffled the remaining notes together, patting them, chivvying them, as if she could persuade them to increase in number. It was why they’d given up even the cheapest hotels and moved into one of the crowded communal apartments in a rundown street, but they were lucky to get it. She and Elena had queued for days outside the Housing Committee office in the freezing wind and were only allocated the room when the man in front of them dropped to his knees with a heart attack the moment he was told he could have the room. Now each rouble that passed through Lydia’s fingers seemed to burn a hole in her stomach, and no amount of the black doughy khleb could fill it. She shivered, wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and picked at her chin. Her lips were dry.

‘What’s the matter?’ Popkov asked. Behind him the sky was shifting its choice of grey, slipping into the colourless shade that came just before sunset. Pigeons began to settle on the roofs. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked a second time when she didn’t respond.

‘Nothing.’

‘It doesn’t look like nothing.’

‘Well, it is. But thanks for asking.’

He growled, an indistinct rumble in his chest. She made herself concentrate on the room, on its four square walls. They were still here. They were going nowhere. She could rely on that. The three-storey house overlooking a central courtyard had once been smart but some years earlier had been taken over by a housing committee, which had carved the living space up into small chunks and allocated a few square feet of it to each person. Enough for a bed and, if you were lucky, a chair and a cupboard. Lydia wasn’t lucky. She had a bed but Popkov got the chair.

Washing and cooking facilities were communal at the end of the landing, and the rota system was supervised with hawkish efficiency by a Housing Manager named Comrade Kelensky. He prowled around in an ill-fitting suit with an air of reproach. Lydia had already been in trouble for not cleaning the communal stairs thoroughly enough. She’d scrubbed them twice, as instructed, but as soon as her back was turned a bored little child from downstairs bounced a muddy ball on them. Kelensky made Lydia perform the task again. While she did it, Popkov had sat himself down at the top of the steep flight of stairs like a dark-eyed St Peter at the gates, elbows on his knees, humming chastushki, peasant songs, to himself and munching sunflower seeds from his pocket. She wasn’t sure if he was guarding her from others or from herself.

She packed the roubles neatly back into the moneybelt and zipped it up. It was stained with sweat and rubbed thin in places.

‘Your brother should have had the sense to divide the funds equally between you,’ Liev grumbled.

‘He didn’t trust me enough.’

The window rattled as a sudden gust of wind fingered the broken pane, and the daylight outside took another step towards the solid shadows of a winter’s afternoon. Silence drifted into the room. Lydia buckled the belt firmly around her waist once more, tucked her legs under her on the bed and pulled the quilt over her shoulders. She watched the big man take out his battered old tin of tobacco and roll himself a smoke with the smooth ease of long practice. His thick fingers dwarfed the cigarette he stuck between his lips.

‘It’s a waste of time,’ he growled. ‘Waiting outside the church each day.’

‘Don’t, Liev.’

‘I mean it, Lydia. He’s not coming.’

‘He will.’

‘I don’t want…’ He stopped.

‘Don’t want what?’

‘I don’t want to see you hurt. Again.’ He lit the cigarette, took a drag on it and inspected its glowing tip so that he didn’t have to look at her.

Lydia swallowed awkwardly, both touched and angry at the same time. Damn him for doubting Alexei.

‘Liev, Alexei will come, I know he will. Tomorrow or the day after or the day after that, but one day soon I’ll walk up the steps to the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer and he’ll be waiting there for-’

‘No. He’s gone. Good riddance to the bastard.’

‘Don’t, Liev,’ she said again.

He jerked his bull frame away from the windowsill and seemed to fill the small room. Elena had gone out on some mission of her own but still the place felt overcrowded, its drab walls pressing in on them. Lydia unzipped her moneybelt, pulled out one of the notes and threw it on the bed in front of the Cossack.

‘Go buy yourself a drink, Liev. That filthy temper of yours is-’

‘Why are you so fucked up by Alexei’s disappearance?’ he demanded. ‘You and he were always at each other like cat and dog. The man is an arrogant prick. We’re better off without him.’

Lydia threw off the quilt and leapt to her feet, a tiny figure next to his bulk. She thumped a fist on his granite chest.

‘You stupid Cossack,’ she shouted at him. ‘Take that back.’

‘Nyet.’

‘Take it back.’

‘Nyet.’

They glared at each other.

‘He’s my brother. Can’t you see? Are you so blind with your one eye? Alexei means everything to me. He’s all the family I’ve got until we find my father. Don’t ever say I’m better off without him, you ignorant peasant.’

‘Chyort, little Lydia,’ Popkov said. ‘He’s not worth-’

‘He is to me.’ She was struggling for breath. ‘I owe him. Everything.’

‘Don’t talk rot, girl. You owe that bastard nothing. He’s deserted you now the going is tough, and before that all he ever did every step of the way was complain.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘Hah! Tell me how.’

A long sigh crept out of Lydia’s lungs and she slumped down on the edge of the rumpled bed, her arms snaking tightly around her thin body. Her hair fell forward, shielding her face.

‘Don’t you remember?’ she murmured through the fiery curtain. ‘How he issued the order that saved Chang An Lo’s life when he was in the hands of the Nationalists. That was the reason Alexei had to flee Junchow. The Nationalists wanted revenge on him. He gave up everything to help me. To save Chang An Lo for me.’

Popkov uttered one of his dismissive grunts. ‘He’s still a bastard.’

Lydia raised her head, realised this was a battle she could not win, and dug up a lopsided smile for him. ‘Maybe you’re right, you old bear. I’m sorry I shouted. He is a bastard – in more ways than one.’

Liev laughed with such a boom the window pane fell out.

Rooms were scarce. Peasants were flocking into the city. Lydia had been astonished by their numbers and they all wanted rooms. She had watched them wandering the streets, up and down the Krasnoselskaya, a blanket under one arm, a pair of boots or a sack of tools slung over their shoulder, anything that they could sell or barter in exchange for food. She’d learned to recognise them. It wasn’t just their homespun clothes and their big-knuckled hands, but the bewilderment in their eyes. Is that what hers were like too? Uncertain. Nervous. Rolling loose in her head.

‘Why did they leave their villages?’ she asked Elena as they waited in line with their ration cards.

‘Why do you think? They’re starving out there in the communal farms and they’ve heard there are jobs to be had here.’

‘It must be true because there are factories going up all around us. It’s part of Stalin’s Five Year Plan.’

‘Exactly.’ The woman lowered her voice. ‘But they’re peasants, for God’s sake, they don’t know the first thing about operating machinery. If they can press the on and off buttons, they’re doing well.’

‘Aren’t they trained?’

‘If you call losing a finger training, yes. When they’ve lost one, they don’t make the same mistake again.’

‘How do you know all this?’

Sometimes it astonished Lydia how much this woman knew. Lydia had heard little about her life except that she’d had a child and fallen into whoring.

‘It’s the one bloody thing I’m any good at,’ Elena had chuckled one night when they passed a prostitute parading the street. She’d slapped Lydia on the back with relish. ‘Don’t get any ideas. No one would want a skinny runt like you.’

‘That’s not true,’ Lydia had retorted.

Elena had slid her gaze over her companion’s bony hips and small breasts and snorted disparagingly. Lydia’s cheeks had burned.

As they shuffled forward on the pavement outside the bakery, ice seeping up through the thin soles of their boots, Lydia pointed across the street.

‘Look,’ she said.

In the doorway of a boarded-up shop, a small makeshift cardboard shelter had been thrown together, drooping sideways like a bird with a damaged wing. A pair of feet wrapped in rags stuck out one end. But they remained immobile for too long. Was the man asleep? Dead? Injured? Or just sliding down the crack in his dreams?

‘Leave it,’ Elena said and placed a restraining hand on Lydia’s arm. ‘It’s dangerous.’

‘Elena, I remember what it’s like to be so hungry you’d eat your own toes.’ She shook off the hand. ‘Communism is supposed to make society fairer. For everyone.’

Elena brushed the straw wisps of hair off her face with irritation, tucking them into her hat as if tidying her thoughts. ‘This world isn’t fair, don’t you know that yet? Look around you.’

Lydia looked. At the women waiting hours in the queue for a few grams of heavy black bread and at the feet in the cardboard shell. But Elena hadn’t finished.

‘The trouble with you, girl, is that you think you can construct a new world for yourself with a father and a brother of your own, all wrapped up cosily together in a fair society. And you’re frightened that it will come crashing down around your ears and then you’ll be left with nothing and no one.’

‘No.’ Lydia gazed directly at her. ‘No, you’re wrong.’

The lines of the older woman’s face grew gentle. ‘Don’t look so desperate. I know what it’s like to have nothing and no one. It’s not so bad.’ She smiled, a sad little upward twist of her lips. ‘When you get used to it. Because then you’ve got nothing to lose.’

‘But I still have…’ Lydia felt something delicate tremble inside her chest. ‘Everything to lose.’

She pulled away from Elena and launched herself across the road towards the cardboard shelter.

The doorway smelled and Lydia almost turned away. Old newspapers were piled in a sodden yellow heap behind the cardboard and a mess of something slimy lay in the corner. As if someone had been sick and left it there to freeze. She knew Elena was right when she said this was dangerous. She wasn’t a Muscovite and didn’t know this city’s ways. Nervously she prodded the foot with her own.

‘Are you all right?’

Instantly the foot withdrew. It wasn’t a corpse. That was something.

‘Do you need help?’

The cardboard shifted. In the street people hurried past, heads averted. Wary, Lydia bent over to peer inside the shelter.

‘Hello?’

‘Fuck off.’

‘Are you all right?’

She rested a hand on the cardboard and it was wet and soft, and as cold as a dead man’s cheek. She wiped her hand fiercely on her coat. She was tempted to turn and cross the road, back to her place in the queue where Elena was waiting, still glaring at her.

‘Hello?’ she said again and tapped the front flap of the cardboard, which was acting as a door. It immediately caved in.

A pair of blue eyes stared back at her. For a fleeting second neither reacted, each of them in shock at the unexpected confrontation. The eyes moved before she did, as the figure threw itself out of the back of the shelter and hunched like a cornered rat against the brickwork at the rear of the doorway’s arch.

‘I’m not here to frighten you,’ Lydia said quickly.

No response. Just feral eyes and skin stretched so tight over bones it looked ready to split. Lydia realised with relief it was only a boy, around twelve years old. Despite the icy temperatures, sweat trickled down his neck. She smiled to show she meant him no harm.

‘I thought you might need help.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘You don’t look… well.’

‘So what?’

‘So I came across to-’

‘Fuck off.’

His rudeness was starting to annoy her. ‘Shut up, will you? I’m offering help.’

‘Why?’

Suspicion was mutual. The dismal doorway was thick with it.

‘Because… well, just that I remember.’

His hair was a strange colour. Milk-white. As if he’d been shocked almost to death by his life. His face and hands were black with grime and he reminded her of an old-fashioned chimney sweep’s boy, though on his chin a small round patch of skin shone pink. She took a step backwards, unwilling to unsettle him further, and almost slipped on the ice. His expression didn’t change.

‘Remember what?’ His breathing was laboured.

‘It doesn’t matter. Are you ill?’

‘What’s it to you?’

Lydia almost gave up, but not quite. ‘Here,’ she said.

She reached into her coat pocket and tossed him a coin. His quick eyes, heavy-lidded and sunken in his skull, darted along the coin’s arc through the murky gloom and he snatched it from the air with a speed that turned Lydia’s heart over. She remembered. Having that level of need.

‘Eat something,’ she said.

He bit the coin. She grinned.

‘Some khleb, I mean.’

Abruptly he crouched down to the ground and she saw a rip all the way down the back of his ragged jacket, as if someone had tried to grab him and he’d torn away. His attention was no longer on her but on the sodden heap of cardboard that had collapsed when he rolled out of it.

‘Misty,’ he whispered.

A tremor shook the pile. Then a blur of movement as something leapt out, something disturbingly like a rat. Lydia shot back on to the pavement, crashing into a pedestrian who was passing. He dropped his umbrella and swore at her clumsiness.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said and swung round to look again at the boy.

In his arms curled a puppy, its fur a smoky grey. The creature seemed to be made of nothing but brown eyes, long silky ears and bony ribs so fragile they looked as if they would snap at a touch. It was licking the boy’s chin with frantic joy but before Lydia could even smile, the boy and dog were gone, a faint ripple in the crowd.