Kate Furnivall - The Concubine’s Secret

His chest tightened. What was she doing, trailing her fingers through the fire? The two Russians stared at her in surprise but she ignored them and smiled at Chang in a way that robbed him of caution.

‘My humble apologies,’ he said, ‘but I do not know your dances.’

‘Then I shall teach you. It’s not hard.’

He bowed. ‘As our intention in coming to Russia is to learn as much as we can of your ways, I thank you and accept with pleasure. ’ The words sneaked out before he could put a chain on them.

At his side Kuan frowned and opened her mouth to say something, but at a look from him shut it again. Under her breath she murmured a few words to Hu Biao who gave a brief nod. Hu Biao would stay close and watch who talked to whom.

Lydia turned with a determined little flounce and walked on to the dance floor. Chang followed.

Her hair smelled of tobacco. As if she’d been breathed on by too many men. Chang felt a twist of jealousy in his gut. Other men in the room were looking at her, and not just because she was breaking unwritten rules by dancing with a Chinese. He could feel their gaze yet she seemed unaware of it. She didn’t pout or preen or toss her head self-consciously, as women so often did when they felt the heat of admiration. She was herself in her green skirt and her plain white blouse.

She floated, weightless as sunlight in his arms as he moved with her in time to the music, fitting herself with ease to his unstructured steps. Neither spoke. If he did, the words would never stop. He let his eyes take their time, let them dwell on each precious part of her face. The delicate balance of its bones, the arch of each eyebrow, the full soft sweep of her lips. The nose that was too long for Chinese taste and the chin too strong. A tiny white scar on the angle of her jaw was new, and a hollow-ness under her cheekbones.

These things he absorbed to join those parts of her already living and breathing inside him. Her hair – which he had touched a thousand times in his dreams – was longer, and he allowed his fingers to trace its fiery ends where his hand lay on her back. A small, recent wound had not yet healed on the skin of her pale hand where it nestled like a bird in his palm. Yet she was still his fox girl, still Lydia.

But there were changes in her. In her eyes. The loss of her mother, of her home, maybe even of himself, had done something to her. There was a sadness at the back of her eyes that hadn’t been there before and he longed to kiss it away. She moved differently as well, more from her hips like a young woman, not like a girl any more. She had grown up. While they had been apart his fox girl had matured at some deeper level that he had not expected, and it grieved him to know he had not been there to keep the bad spirits from stealing her laughter.

He had deserted her – though he’d sworn it was only for as long as it took to fight for the future of China, and for the ideals that were wrapped around his soul. Denying himself. Denying her. Communism had demanded everything of him and he had given it.

But now… now things had changed.

‘I’ve missed you.’

She breathed the words softly. He inhaled them. Did not let them go.

‘I have missed you too, Lydia. Like an eagle misses its wings.’

She didn’t smile as they drifted round the room. It seemed that her smiles were not as easy to find as they used to be in China, but her eyes never left his face.

‘Lydia, my love.’

He felt her tremble. Saw the pulse at the edge of her delicate jaw.

‘Lydia, I am watched every moment. The Soviet wolves circle our delegation day and night, wherever we go, regulating who we speak to and what we see. They will not let our delegation be contaminated.’ His thumb imperceptibly stroked one of her fingers. Her eyes flickered, half closed. ‘If we are seen together you will be seized, taken to the Lubyanka for questioning and not released.’

For the first time during the dance she smiled at him. He wanted to touch her face, to feel her skin.

‘Don’t worry, my love,’ she said, barely above a whisper. ‘I know what you are saying. I won’t put you in danger.’

‘No, Lydia. Don’t put yourself in danger.’

‘I feel safe now. Like this.’ For a moment she let her head tip back with pleasure, the way a cat will when stroked on its throat, and her hair danced free and unfettered. ‘Here with you.’

Their eyes clung to each other.

‘We must stop, my love,’ he told her.

‘I know.’

‘Others are watching.’

‘I know.’

‘Look away.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Then I must.’

‘Don’t.’ She blew a gentle puff of air from her lips to his, more intimate than a kiss. ‘Not yet.’

They were locked together in silence as they danced. With a strange, unfamiliar movement he guided her across the floor, turning her again and again the way he’d seen others turn, so no eyes other than his own could remain on her face for long.

‘Where are you?’ he murmured.

‘In your arms.’

Her eyes were laughing, though her mouth was under control.

‘I meant where are you living?’

‘I know.’

He smiled. To release her would be unthinkable. Unbearable. ‘Your address?’

‘Unit 14, Sidorov Ulitsa 128. In the Sokolniki district.’ She raised one eyebrow at him. ‘Near a tyre factory.’

‘It sounds…’

‘Inviting?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you? Where are you?

‘In the Hotel Triumfal.’

Her lips parted, revealing the soft pink tip of her tongue and her strong white teeth. With the appearance of clumsiness he stepped on her foot, withdrew his hands from her and bowed low.

‘My apologies. I am no good at your dancing. I suggest we return to our comrades.’

She said nothing. Smiled politely. But he saw her swallow, saw the effort it took. As he escorted her back to the table where the Russians and Kuan were waiting, he could hear her breath. Feel it pulling the air from his chest.

The hostel was stiflingly hot. Alexei shifted position. He was stretched out on a narrow bed, blanket kicked to the floor. Uncertain whether to feel good that with his last few kopecks he had managed to secure a bed for the night, however seedy the place, or annoyed that the water pipes slung along the side of the wall were always rattling and boiling hot. And the fleas, thousands of the bastard things. How did such minuscule bloodsuckers possess a bite as big as a rat’s? And the heat was making the bites worse. He sat up.

‘Comrade,’ he said to the man on the bed right next to him, ‘does it ever get cooler in here?’

The man didn’t look up. He was sitting in just his vest and pants, picking at the hard layers of dead skin on his heels with intense concentration and dirty fingernails. Beside him lay his tattered socks and an open pack of Belomor cigarettes.

‘Nyet,’ he said as he flicked a yellow strip of skin to the floor. ‘It gets hotter at night when all the beds are full.’

‘Full of fleas, you mean.’

The man chuckled. ‘The little fuckers. They drive you insane.’

The room was a dormitory of sorts with ten beds pushed close together, but no other furniture. Any belongings were thrust under the metal bed frame or tucked under the wafer-thin pillow for safe-keeping while you slept.

‘Comrade,’ Alexei said, ‘for four cigarettes I’ll trade you one good sock.’

The man glanced across and grinned. He patted the Belomors. ‘I got them off a tovarishch for minding his horse and cart for an hour.’

Alexei peeled off his own unwashed sock and dangled it in the air at arm’s length. ‘Three cigarettes?’

‘Done.’

‘And a match.’

‘I’m feeling generous. You can have three of them.’

Alexei tossed over the sock. He’d have to find a rag to wrap around his foot or he’d get frostbite outside in the streets. A sock for three cigarettes? Not a good deal, not sensible. But there were times when sense was no more welcome than fleas.

Moscow was greedy. It was a city in a hurry, tearing down old streets, constructing new buildings on a scale that made its inhabitants’ heads spin. It had once relied on the textile industry to maintain its growth, but now factories of all kinds were stealing every spare scrap of space and cramming workers inside their walls in three-shift rotas. It was happening at a rate that some warned would empty the fields of Russia and bring food production to a standstill.

Alexei walked its streets in the dark, smoking the first of his cigarettes. He inhaled slowly, relishing the taste of it. It was his first cigarette for over a month. The stale overheated atmosphere and the fleas at the hostel had eventually driven him out for some clear night air, and despite one cold foot in his galoshes he was enjoying familiarising himself with the city.

Moscow’s street system was made up of a series of concentric circles, at the heart of which crouched the Kremlin like a red spider with a vicious, poisonous bite. The Arbat was the prosperous area where upmarket cafés, well-stocked shops, lice-free cinemas and spacious apartments could fool a person into thinking there was no such thing as rationing or empty shelves or shirts being traded in street markets for half a loaf of bread. Street lights gave the main roads an aura of civilised safety, though the pavements were often narrow and the mounds of ice against the walls so thick that at times Alexei was forced to pick his way along the road instead. But he would turn a corner and find himself in what felt more like a village than a great capital city. In these districts the roads were unpaved and boasted no streetlamps, just old-fashioned buildings with wooden front steps and outhouses.

There were still lights in the windows of one or two of the shabby taverns but his pockets were empty. He breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of the city, listening to the murmur of its heart. Somewhere here was Lydia. Somewhere here was Jens Friis. Now all he had to do was find them.

The man ahead of him stumbled. Alexei was threading his way back towards the Krasnoselskaya district and the fleas, the night air like needles in his lungs it was so cold, when he saw the figure step out of a side street, swaying slightly. A night on the vodka, that was obvious.

The road was unlit here, but a half moon had climbed sluggishly into the sky and was shedding just enough of its liquid gleam for Alexei to make out that the drunk was fat, and that the dingy street was otherwise empty. The packed snow and ice crunched like broken glass under their feet but the man in front seemed unaware of Alexei’s presence behind him. He stumbled again, let out a groan loud enough for Alexei to catch it, and sank to his knees. Oh Christ, drunks were always trouble. And right now Alexei had more than enough of his own already. But he couldn’t leave the poor bastard to freeze to death on the pavement. He covered the distance between them in a few strides.

‘Comrade?’

He rested his hand on the man’s shoulder, steadying the swaying figure, preventing it collapsing face first on to the ice. His fingers sank into a thick damp pelt and he realised the man’s apparent bulk was caused by an immense fur coat, its broad collar rolled up around his ears.

‘Comrade,’ Alexei said again, ‘you need to sleep it off somewhere warm.’

A muttering, slow and incoherent, slid from unresponsive lips.

Mudak! Shit! Alexei was impatient to get this over with. He put his shoulder under the man’s arm and braced himself to take the weight. ‘Come on, on your feet.’

The fur coat’s only response was to lean heavily on Alexei, breathing hard, but the legs underneath didn’t move. His chin lay on his chest, his eyes tight shut.

‘You must move, comrade, or you’ll freeze.’

Still nothing. Every night a dozen drunks froze to death in the gutters of Moscow. The heavy breathing uncoiled like white silk into the air and his hand gripped Alexei’s arm, tightening in spasms. Alexei leaned closer, his face so near that he could smell a sickly odour rising from the fur pelt.

‘What is it, comrade? Are you ill?’

A strange noise squeezed from the man’s throat like the whistle of a small bird. Shit! This wasn’t just a skinful of vodka. That whistle made the hairs stand up on the back of Alexei’s neck. It was the sound death makes when it comes calling. He’d heard it before, that high-pitched warning. He crouched quickly beside the man, his own heart beating like a hammer in his chest, and peered intently at the puffy face. Taking the weight in his arms, Alexei lowered him with care on to the pavement. His head was propped against Alexei’s own knees, to keep it from the icy claws that wrapped around drunks the moment they hit the ground.