The Concubine's Secret

9

Lydia stayed in her room just as she’d promised. She didn’t want to but she did. It wasn’t because she’d given her word – yes, Alexei was right about that: in the past she’d never let something as trivial as a promise cramp her activities – but because Alexei didn’t believe she would. She was determined to prove him wrong.

The room was lugubrious and chilly, but clean. Two narrow single beds were squashed into the small space, but so far no one else had come to claim the second one. With luck it would remain empty. A mirror in an ornate metal frame hung on one wall but Lydia was careful to avoid it this time. Still wearing her hat and coat she paced up and down, fretting at her thoughts the way she’d fretted at the hat earlier.

She tried to concentrate on Alexei, to picture him donning his coat ready for the evening sortie, staring into his own ornate mirror with that look of eagerness, almost wantonness, that sprang into his eyes whenever there was some action in prospect. He always tried to hide it, of course, and she’d seen him disguise it with a yawn or an indifferent flick of his hand through his thick brown hair, as if bored by the world around him. But she knew. She recognised it for what it was.

She paced faster and kicked her foot against the bed frame to drive a jolt of pain up her leg. Anything to keep her thoughts away from Jens Friis. Instead she crammed images of the Commandant’s wife into her brain, of her slender mistreated arms and the graceful swing of the fur coat as she turned her back and walked away along the railway platform.

Walked away. How can you do that? How can you walk away?

A rush of rage swept through Lydia. She wasn’t sure where it came from but it had nothing to do with Antonina. She felt it burn her cheeks and scour her stomach, her fingers seizing one of her coat buttons and twisting so hard it came off. That felt better. She clung to it, trying to sweep away the misery that had driven a spike right through her from the moment she had laid eyes on the prisoners in the Work Zone. The men hauling the wagon over icy boulder-strewn ground, no better than animals. No, worse than animals because animals don’t die of shame. Even from so far away she’d felt it, that shame, and tasted the acid of it in her mouth. And then one of the men had fallen and not risen.

Papa, I need to find you. Please, please, Papa, don’t let it be you crumpled inside that heap of rags.

And suddenly the rage was gone and all she had left were the tears on her cold cheeks.

A knock on the door made Lydia look up. She’d removed her coat and hat and was kneeling beside her bed, engrossed in removing every single item from her canvas bag.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Vkhodite.’

The door opened and she expected it to be another overnight resident come to claim the spare bed, but she was wrong. It was Popkov’s friend, the big woman with the straight straw hair, the one from the train, the one with the tongue that asked too many questions. What did he say her name was? Irina? No, Elena, that was it.

‘Dobriy vecher, comrade,’ Lydia said politely. ‘Good evening.’

‘Dobriy vecher. I thought you might be bored here on your own.’

‘No, I’m busy.’

‘So I see.’

The woman didn’t attempt to enter the small room. Instead she leaned a hefty shoulder against the doorframe and continued to smoke the stub of a cigar, balancing it delicately between her fingers. Lydia paused in arranging her possessions neatly on the quilt and studied her visitor.

‘I’m sorry about your son.’

The woman’s face folded into a scowl. ‘Liev talks too much.’

‘Da. He’s a real blabbermouth,’ Lydia said with a straight face.

The woman blinked, then smiled. The aroma of the cigar drifted across the room. ‘Don’t worry, he’s told me nothing that need give you sleepless nights. Just that you’ve travelled from China and are searching for someone.’

‘That’s more than enough. It’s one more fact than I know about you, so I’ll ask you a question.’

‘Sounds fair.’

‘What do you want with Liev Popkov?’

‘What does any woman want with a man?’

She swung her hips lasciviously and pushed the cigar into her mouth, sucking hard on it so that the tip glowed brightly. Lydia looked away. She folded her two skirts, one navy and the other a heavy green wool, and placed them in an orderly pile beside two pairs of rolled-up socks, a pair of scissors, three handkerchiefs, a book and a small cotton drawstring bag.

‘Was your son in the camp?’ she asked without looking up.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’

Something about the way she said it drew Lydia’s glance to her face. It was totally expressionless.

‘He was one of the guards,’ Elena explained in a flat voice. ‘One of the prisoners killed him with a piece of glass. Cut his throat open.’

Lydia’s head filled with the image of blood bursting from the son’s severed flesh, the young man clawing at his throat, eyes glazing. Was Jens there? Did he see it happen? Did he wield the weapon? Because whoever did it would be dead by now. A pain started up in Lydia’s throat. She unfolded and refolded one of the skirts, pulled out a hairbrush from her bag. It wasn’t special to look at, just plain and wooden with a cracked handle, but it had belonged to her mother. She placed it in line with the scissors and drawstring bag.

‘Your son was a guard,’ she whispered, turning her head to one side. She spat on the floor with a sharp little hiss.

The woman nodded, all softness emptied from her eyes. ‘I know, he had it coming.’ She gave a little growl of despair in the back of her throat. ‘God only knows what the bastard did to those men.’

Outside a truck roared past, its headlamps carving through the darkness and flaring briefly into the room.

‘But it must be hard to lose a son,’ Lydia said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m not.’

‘No parent would want to lose a child.’

‘Don’t be so sure.’

Lydia concentrated on her canvas bag and removed a pad of writing paper and a pencil. Papa, would you want to lose a child? She started a new row on the quilt and added an unopened bottle of rosewater that her widowed stepfather had presented to her for the journey. Dear Alfred. He was back in England, but if he could see her now he would die of embarrassment. For an Englishman to hold a conversation about the loss of a son with a complete stranger would be tantamount to torture. Unthinkable. But here in Russia things were different. There was a raw edge that Lydia was starting to appreciate because it made doors easier to push open.

‘Elena,’ she said with a sudden smile, ‘let’s drink to your son.’ From the bag she extracted a half bottle of vodka, a small pewter cup upturned over its neck.

Elena’s eyes lit up. She tossed the cigar butt on to the corridor floor and stamped on it. While Lydia unscrewed the cap, her visitor kicked the door shut and plonked herself down on the spare bed with a force that set the springs twanging.

‘Right, little comrade, hand it over.’

Lydia filled the metal cap to the brim, but instead of passing it across to the woman, she took a sip of it herself and proffered the bottle to Elena, who seized it with relish.

‘Za zdorovye,’ Lydia said. ‘Good health.’

Together they drank; Lydia from the cup, Elena from the bottle. The liquid scalded a path to Lydia’s stomach and made her feel instantly sick. She took another sip.

‘Don’t hurt him, Elena.’

‘Who? My son? Too late for that.’

‘No, I mean Liev.’

‘Hah! What are you? His mother?’

‘Da. Yes. His mother, his sister and his nanny all rolled into one.’

Elena laughed and took another swig. ‘He’s a lucky man then.’

Lydia leaned forward. ‘Is he, Elena?’

‘Of course. He’s got you to fuss over him, he’s got your brother to fight with and he’s got me to… well, to spice up his life, shall we say?’ She flexed and rolled her shoulders, making her bosom dance. It was expertly done.

‘Comrade Gorshkova,’ Lydia said with a sweet smile, ‘are you by any chance a whore?’

Elena blinked, inhaled noisily, looked affronted for a moment, then threw back her head and laughed so hard her breasts seemed in danger of bursting.

‘Those eyes of yours are sharp as a snake’s, Comrade Ivanova.’ She wiped her eyes on the back of her wrist and tipped another mouthful of vodka down her throat. ‘How did you know? A young creature like you should not be aware of such things.’

‘It’s the way you look at men. As if they’re… useable. Tools instead of people. I’ve seen the same look in the eyes of the painted ladies in Junchow.’

‘So you think I’m using your Cossack?’

‘Da. And I wonder what for.’

‘Well, this time you’re wrong, little comrade. My whoring days are just about over.’ She leaned back against the wooden bed-head, swinging her legs up on to the quilt. ‘Hardly surprising, is it? Look at me now.’

They both caught her reflection in the mirror, the thighs broad as pillows under her skirt, the stomach billowing in soft folds and the blue knots of varicose veins beneath her stockings. They studied her body as if it belonged to someone else. Lydia had never been invited to take part in such an intimate scrutiny before and found it appealing in an uncomfortable sort of way.

‘Some men,’ Lydia said, ‘like big women.’ She was far from certain whether this was true but offered it anyway.

‘Chyort! You are far too young to know what men like.’

Lydia ducked away from the pale eyes and cursed the steady flow of colour rising up her neck to her face. She hoped the woman would think it was the drink.

‘Hah! I see.’ Beaming with anticipation, Elena linked her hands behind her head, which made her bosom rise alarmingly. ‘So who is he?’

‘Who is who?’

‘The one who sends flames into your cheeks and makes your eyes melt like butter in sunlight. Just the thought of him and your bones turn soft.’

‘There’s no one. You’re mistaken.’

‘Am I?’

‘Da.’ For a moment their eyes were fixed in a mildly hostile stare, then Lydia turned once more to her belongings on the bed and lifted the hairbrush. ‘There’s no one,’ she said again.

She could hear the woman drinking more vodka, the swish of the liquid in the bottle, but it was followed by the sound of the cap being screwed firmly back in place. That surprised her. For a while neither spoke and Lydia began to hope she might leave.

‘I gave him away.’ Elena was speaking with her eyes shut, her lashes long and thick on her cheeks. They were much darker than her hair. ‘Then I let them take him. What kind of mother does that?’

‘You mean your son, the one in the camp. What was his name?’

‘Daniil.’

‘That’s a nice name.’

Elena smiled, her eyes still closed, and Lydia was certain she was picturing him.

‘Was he handsome?’

‘You young girls, you’re all the same, always wanting your perfect man to be tall, dark and handsome.’

An image of Chang An Lo sprang into Lydia’s mind and her mouth went dry.

‘I’m forty-two,’ Elena said. ‘I was sixteen when I had Daniil, already a year in the brothel. They let me keep him for four weeks but then…’ She opened her eyes abruptly. ‘He was better off with a proper family.’

‘Did he know?’

‘About me, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, of course not. But,’ Elena’s pale eyes brightened, ‘I found out where he was living and I watched him grow up. Hung around outside his school and later saw him parade through town, first as a Young Pioneer and later as one of Stalin’s Komsomol.’

Lydia reached across the gap between the beds and touched the woman’s hand, just a brief brush of skin. ‘You must have been proud of him then.’

‘Yes, I was. But not now. I want to forget him now.’

‘Can parents ever forget their children?’

‘Oh yes. You have to get on with your own life. What are children anyway? Just an encumbrance.’

‘I thought that…’ Lydia stopped. She knocked back the remainder of her drink and asked instead, ‘Does Liev know?’

‘Know what?’

‘About your… occupation?’

The woman smiled and this time it possessed a warmth that made Lydia realise why men might like her.

‘Of course not,’ Elena scoffed.

‘So why tell me?’

‘Why indeed? I must be a fool.’

‘You may be many things but I think a fool is not one of them.’

Elena laughed and sat up, eyeing the array of possessions on the bed. Her inspection made Lydia suddenly aware of how meagre they must look.

‘So what book are you reading?’ Elena asked.

‘The poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. Do you know them?’

‘No.’

‘Would you like to borrow it?’ Lydia picked up the book, which was soft and battered from all the travelling, and offered it to her visitor.

Elena closed her eyes and sighed. ‘I’m too tired.’

It occurred to Lydia that maybe Elena, like many women in Russia, had never learned to read. ‘As you’re tired,’ she said, ‘would you like me to read some of it to you?’

‘Da,’ the woman smiled. ‘I would like that. Your Russian is excellent.’

Lydia opened the book and started to read.

Sounds came to her in the room. Of breathing. Of a cat yowling. The ticking of water pipes. The rumble of cartwheels. Sounds that told Lydia she was alive, even if sometimes she wasn’t sure. Silently, so as not to wake the sleeping woman on the next bed, she repacked her travelling bag. Each evening it was the same: the unpacking, the tidying, the repacking, and when it was finished she patted the bag like a sleepy old dog.

‘There. All done,’ she said softly.

Then she lay down on her own bed and curled up tight round the bag, as if its neatness could keep the chaos inside her at bay. She pressed her cheek against its canvas side, inhaled its smell of soot and cigarettes.

Alexei didn’t want her with him. Popkov would be consumed by this woman. Her father might not even remember her. And Chang An Lo was two thousand miles away. She crushed her cheek harder against the rough material, wrapping both arms around the bag so fiercely she could feel the handle dig grooves in her skin. She tightened her grip even more. Her life was in splinters but she was determined to hold it together.