The Concubine's Secret

31

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.

Inside the voluminous coat the man was at least as warm as it was possible to be on a cold Moscow night, but in the semi-darkness the skin of his face looked greyer than the pavement under him. He had a fleshy face, full heavy lips and a thick moustache that was neatly trimmed to curl down either side of his mouth. About fifty years old, Alexei guessed, but right now looked more like a hundred and fifty. The ice was turning Alexei’s legs numb already and must have been doing something similar to this man’s, but there was no one in the street to shout to. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave him and fetch help himself – something about that grip on his arm, the sense of need in it.

Think clearly. What was going on here? A heart attack? A stroke? A fit of some kind?

He checked the man’s mouth. The jaw was rigid but the tongue hadn’t rolled back, though the skin of his face was cold and clammy to touch. Oh Christ, don’t die on me. He quickly unfastened the man’s coat and rummaged through his jacket pockets. Cigar case, wallet, keys, handkerchief, a clip of papers and – what he’d been searching for – a small pill box. It was round and warm from contact with its owner’s body. He flipped it open to reveal a clutch of white tablets. Damn it, they could be anything. Headache pills or indigestion remedies? He tipped one on to the palm of his hand and closed the box.

‘Comrade.’ He spoke loudly, as though the man were deaf. ‘Comrade, are these tablets what you need?’

The man made no response, just lay like a log against Alexei’s knees, eyes closed, breath silent. Still the grip, weaker now, on Alexei’s sleeve – it was all that indicated he was alive. Alexei put a hand to the man’s jaw. Thank God it had gone slack. Gently he opened the thick lips and pushed a tablet under his tongue. The throat spasmed.

‘Come on, don’t give up on me yet.’

Then he found himself doing something he didn’t expect. In the bitter cold on this dismal street, hunched on the pavement in the dark, he wrapped his arms around this stranger and held him close. As if his own arms were stronger than death’s. He rested his cheek on the fur, felt its warmth seep into his own flesh and listened to the short gasps as the man struggled to draw in air. He twinned his own breathing to match it, willing the heart to keep beating. And he waited.

‘Friend?’

The word was a whisper. Barely that.

‘So you’re not dead yet,’ Alexei smiled.

‘Not yet.’

‘Can you move?’

‘Soon.’

‘Then we’ll wait.’

A murmur.

‘What did you say? I couldn’t hear.’ Alexei leaned closer, his ear by the man’s lips.

‘Tablets.’

‘I gave you one earlier. From your pill box.’

The heavy head nodded faintly. ‘Spasibo.’

‘Is it your heart?’

‘Da.’

‘You need to get out of the cold. When you’re ready I’ll get you on your feet.’

‘Soon.’ His voice faded in and out. ‘Not yet.’

‘I am in the Kalinin Hostel but it’s too far away for you to walk. What you need is a hospital – and fast.’

‘Nyet.’

The hand on his sleeve tightened, the fingers agitated.

‘Don’t worry, my friend,’ Alexei said. ‘Calm down. We’ll sit here together like this as long as you want, waiting for the morning sun to shine and melt our bones.’

The man smiled, just a slight twitch in the corners of his mouth, but still a smile. For the first time Alexei believed he might live. He felt the body relax, heard the breathing quieten, and was just considering whether it would be wise to ease himself away, so that he could bang on a door further up the street where there was light in an upstairs window, when he heard the sound of a car engine. It was travelling slowly along the road; so slowly, in fact, that the driver must be very nervous of ice.

‘Comrade, a car is coming. I’ll stop it and-’

‘Don’t let me go, friend.’

‘I’ll be gone only a moment, I promise.’

‘If you let go of me, I’ll slide into the pit.’

‘What pit?’

‘That black hole. There at my feet.’

‘Friend, there’s no hole.’

‘I can see it.’

‘Nyet. Look at me.’

The man turned his head. His eyes were just slits in his fleshy face.

‘There’s no hole,’ Alexei repeated.

The fingers squeezed. ‘Swear it.’

‘I swear it.’

The engine stopped. Alexei looked up. At the opposite kerb not one but two old black cars with long bonnets had pulled up. The doors slammed. Six men leapt out and raced across the road towards them. Without a word Alexei tightened one arm around his new comrade, ready to haul him to his feet whether he wanted to or not, while his other hand slid under the man’s coat to the holster that lay next to his chest, removing the gun. Quietly he released the safety catch and braced himself.

‘Pakhan!’

A young man approached and saw the gun. From nowhere a snub-nosed revolver materialised in his own fist. He had thick black hair and the same moustache as the older man.

‘Pakhan!’ he shouted again. He stopped less than two metres away.

‘Anatoly,’ the sick man murmured and, releasing his grip on Alexei, he stretched out his hand. ‘Don’t, Anatoly. This man helped me.’

‘Your friend collapsed here in the street.’ Alexei lowered the gun.

Men dressed in black swarmed around them, lean figures each with eyes that did not invite familiarity. Between them they lifted the man and had him stowed inside one of the cars before Alexei could even bid him goodbye. He stood on the packed ice in the gutter and watched the cars slide away into the night like sharks. He felt the loss. It took him by surprise.

‘Get well, tovarishch,’ Alexei said as he pushed the gun into his waistband and set off back to the fleas.