The Concubine's Secret

2

That evening nothing had changed. The same confusing hotel, the same people moaning about the cold when really all they wanted to complain about was the lack of a reliable railway system. All waiting for the same train that never came. Lydia ’s feet ached from standing on a frozen station platform all day, but now she pushed it from her mind. It was time to concentrate.

In the heart of the hotel the bar stank. Stank like a camel pen because there had been a delivery of dung today to burn on the fire. It was a big shambling place, packed with too many vodka-stained eyes and too much greed. Lydia drew a slow breath and watched carefully. She felt the greed throb in the air around her, crawling like a living thing from one man to another, creeping through their mouths and nostrils down into their empty bellies and their crusted lungs. She had to time it right. Just right. Or Liev Popkov’s arm would break.

Money was thrust into hands. Men shouted across the room and spirals of cigarette smoke rose, turning the air as grey and thick as rabbit fur. In one corner a forgotten dog hurled itself forward to the limit of its stubby chain, choking off its bark. Its scrawny ribcage heaved with excitement.

All eyes were focused on the struggle taking place at the centre table. Chairs had been kicked roughly aside. Bodies jostled to find a place close, close enough to see the sweat burst forth and veins rear up like serpents under the skin. Two men were seated opposite each other. Big men. Men who looked as if they chewed the heads off weasels for fun. Their heavy bearded features were contorted with effort and the greasy black eyepatch of one of them had slipped out of place, revealing a sunken, twisted socket the colour of overripe plums. Their massive forearms were locked in battle.

The arm wrestling had been Liev Popkov’s idea. Lydia hated it at first. And yet in a strange insidious kind of way she loved it at the same time. Hate. Love. She shrugged. A hair’s breadth between them.

‘You’re out of your crazy Cossack mind!’ she responded when he came out with the idea. He’d just downed half a tankard of gut-rot vodka.

‘Nyet. No.’

‘What if you lose? We need every rouble of the money we have left.’

‘Hah!’ Popkov shook his big shaggy bear’s head. ‘Look, little Lydia.’ He jerked up the sleeve of his filthy shirt, seized her hand in his paw and placed her fingers on his massive biceps. It didn’t feel like a piece of human anatomy. It felt more like a winter log that had been warming in front of the fire. She had seen him break a man’s face with it.

‘Popkov,’ she whispered, ‘you are a devil.’

‘I know.’ His white teeth flashed at her above the black beard and together they had laughed.

Now she glanced quickly up at the gallery landing above them. It coiled round two sides of the room and led to the corridor of shoeboxes which the hotel chose to call bedrooms. A tall figure was up there, leaning forward, alert and staring down on the scrum beneath him, his arms resting on the banister rail, his thumbs linked as if he couldn’t bear his flesh to touch its grimy surface.

Alexei Serov. Her half-brother.

They shared a father, if it could be called sharing. Which Lydia doubted.

His brown hair was swept back from his face, emphasising the arrogant forehead inherited from his aristocratic Russian mother, the Countess Serova. But his fierce green eyes came straight from the Viking father Lydia could only dimly remember. Jens Friis was their father’s name, a Danish surname neither of them bore. Jens had worked as an engineer until 1917 for the last Tsar of Russia, Nikolas II, and now, more than twelve years later, he was the reason that she and Alexei had spent months travelling with the unruly Popkov in tow, all the way through the mountains of China to this godforsaken dead-and-alive hole in Russia.

A shout dragged her attention back to where it should have been, and her young stomach swooped with a sudden flutter of panic. Popkov was losing. Not just pretend losing. Really losing.

She felt sick. Coins were pouring into the grubby green kerchief on the bar where the bets were held, and all of them were now against Popkov. That was exactly what she and he had planned, but she’d left too late her signal to him to start fighting back. The black hairs on his burly forearm were only a hand’s breadth from the surface of the table as his opponent forced him down, and the bulging muscle started to twitch and shake.

No, Popkov, no.

Damn it, how could she have left it so late? She knew he would see his arm break before he’d allow it to collapse in defeat.

‘God damn you, Popkov,’ she yelled at the top of her lungs, ‘are you some kind of babushka or what? Put a bit of effort into it, will you?’

She saw his teeth flash, his shoulder swell. His fist lifted a fraction, though he never took his one good eye off his opponent’s face.

‘He’s done for!’ someone shouted.

‘Da, I’ll drink well tonight.’ Raucous laughter.

‘Finish the job. You’ve got him-’

Sweat dripped on to the stained table and the dog in the corner barked in time to their rapid heartbeats until someone slapped it down. Lydia elbowed a path through the crush of bodies to stand right behind Popkov, desperately rubbing her own right forearm as if by doing so she could rub fresh life into Popkov’s tearing muscle.

She couldn’t let him lose. Couldn’t.

To hell with the money.

Up on the landing Alexei Serov lit a black cheroot and flipped the dead match down on the drinkers below.

The girl was impossible. Didn’t she realise what she was doing?

He narrowed his eyes against the pall of smoke that clung to his hair and his skin like dead men’s breath. There were probably thirty men down there in the bar, plus a handful of women in dark dreary clothing, heavy grey skirts and brown shawls. That was one of the things he loathed most about this new Stalinist Russia: the dreariness of it. All the towns the same. Depressing grey concrete, grey garb and grey faces, dull eyes that slid away from you to the grey shadows and mouths that stayed firmly shut. He missed the exuberant colours of China, the same way he missed its swooping roof lines and vibrant songbirds.

Lydia was proving harder to deal with than he’d expected. When he sat her down and explained the dangers here, she just laughed that effortless laugh of hers, tossed her flaming hair at him and assured him with eyes wide that she might be only seventeen but she’d lived with danger before and knew how to handle it.

‘But this danger is different,’ he’d explained patiently. ‘It’s everywhere. In the air you breathe, in the khleb you eat and in the pillow that lies under your head at night. This is Josef Stalin’s Russia. It’s 1930. No one is safe.’

‘Davai, davai, davai! Come on, come on, come on!’

The gamblers in the bar were chanting the words, and to Alexei it sounded dismally like the bleating of sheep. The locals had bet their petty kopecks on their own man and now crowded round the pair, who were locked together as intimately as a couple in the throes of sexual frenzy, mouths open and spittle in silver threads between their lips. There was nothing more than a shiver between Popkov’s arm and the table. You couldn’t slide a goddamn knife between them. Alexei felt his heart kick up a pace and that was when Lydia leaned down to the Cossack and whispered something in his ear. She was a small slender figure among the bulk of broad swarthy faces and thick padded waists, but her hair stood out like a fire down there in the dim light as it drew close to the greasy black curls and stayed there.

It took a moment. No more. Then slowly the massive arm began to rise, to force the other arm back, a whisper at a time, until the crowd began to howl its anguish. The local man flared his broad flat nostrils and roared a battle cry, but it did him no good. Popkov’s arm was unstoppable.

What the hell was she saying to him?

A final roar from Popkov and the battle was over, as he drove his opponent’s meaty fist flat on to the surface. The force of the impact made the table screech as if in pain. Alexei pushed himself back from the banister, turned on his heel and set off for his room, but not before he’d seen Lydia dart a glance in his direction. Her wide tawny eyes were ablaze with the light of victory.

Alexei leaned his back casually against the closed door of Lydia’s room and looked around the tiny space. It was no better than a cell. A narrow bed, a wooden chair and a metal hook on the back of the door. That was it. He’d say this for her, she never moaned about the conditions however bad they were.

It was dark outside, a wind rattling a bunch of loose shingles on the roof, and the naked overhead lightbulb flickered every now and again. In Russia, Alexei had learned, you never take anything for granted. You appreciate everything. Because you never know when it will disappear. You may have electricity today, but it could vanish tomorrow. Heating pipes shook and shuddered like trams on Nevsky, one day dispensing a warm fug of heat but lying silent and cold the next. The same with trains. When would the next one arrive? Tomorrow? Next week? Even next month? To travel any distance across this vast and relentless country you had to have the patience of Lenin in his damn mausoleum.

‘Don’t grumble.’

Alexei’s gaze flicked to Lydia. ‘I’m not grumbling. I’m not even speaking.’

‘But I can hear you. Inside your head. Grumbling.’

‘Why would I be grumbling, Lydia? Tell me why.’

She pushed back her hair, lifted her head and gave him a sharp glance. She had a way of doing that which was always catching him off guard, making him feel she could see inside his head. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, the thin quilt pulled round her shoulders and a square of green material between her knees. Her busy fingers were counting out her winnings into small piles.

‘Because you’re angry with me about the arm wrestling for some reason.’ Lydia studied the money thoughtfully. ‘It does no harm, Alexei. It’s not as if I’m stealing.’

He refused to accept the bait. Her thieving activities of the past, snatching wallets and watches the way a fox snatches chickens, were not something he cared to discuss right now.

‘No,’ he said, ‘but you took something from them downstairs and they won’t thank you for it.’

Lydia shrugged her thin shoulders and returned to her miniature coin towers. ‘I took their money because they lost.’

‘Not the money.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Their pride. You took away their pride, then you rubbed their noses in it by emptying their pockets.’

Her eyes remained firmly on the money. ‘It was fairly won.’

‘Fairly won,’ he echoed. ‘Fairly won.’ He shook his head angrily but kept his voice low, his words deliberately measured. ‘That is not the point, Lydia.’

She twirled one of the coins between her fingers and flashed him another quick glance. ‘So what is your point?’

‘They won’t forget you.’

A shimmer of a smile touched her full lips. ‘So?’

‘So when anyone comes asking questions, the people here will take pleasure in recalling every detail about you. Not just the colour of your hair or how many vodkas you fed into Popkov or your name or your age or the names of your companions. No, Lydia. They’ll remember carefully the numbers on your passport and on your travel permit and even what train ticket is hidden away in your bodybelt.’

Her eyes widened and a blush started to creep up her cheek. ‘Why would anyone bother to remember all that? And who would come asking?’ Suddenly her tawny eyes were nervous. ‘Who, Alexei?’

He pushed his shoulders away from the door and only one half-pace took him to the bed where he sat down next to her. The mattress was bullet-hard and the three piles of coins tottered slightly in her lap.

She treated him to a surprised smile but her gaze was wary. ‘What?’

He leaned close, so close he could hear the whisper-soft clicking of her teeth behind the smooth curve of her cheek. ‘First of all, keep your voice down. The walls are paper-thin. That’s not just to save money on materials, they’re designed to be like that.’ His voice was the faintest trickle in her ear. ‘So everyone can eavesdrop on everybody else. A neighbour can report a muttered complaint about the cost of bread or about the incompetence of the rail system.’

She gave him that direct look again and rolled her eyes so dramatically he almost laughed out loud, but stifled it with a frown instead.

‘Damn it, listen to me, Lydia.’

She took his hand, scooped up one of the piles in her lap and dribbled twenty coins on to his palm.

‘I don’t want your money,’ he objected.

But she gently wrapped his fingers round the little heap, one by one.

‘Keep it,’ she whispered. ‘One day you may need it.’

Then she turned her face to him and kissed his cheek. Her lips felt feather-soft and warm on his skin. His throat tightened. It was the first time such an intimate gesture had passed between them. They’d known each other for eighteen months now, much of it unaware of the fact that they were brother and sister, and he’d even seen her stark naked that terrible day in the woods outside Junchow. But a kiss. No, never that.

He stood up awkwardly and flexed his legs. The room was suddenly claustrophobic, and silent except for the vibration of a woman snoring next door.

‘Lydia, I’m just trying to protect you.’

‘I know.’

‘Then why do you make everything so…?’

‘Difficult?’

‘Yes. So damn difficult. As if you prefer it that way.’

She shrugged and he studied her for a long moment, the mane of fiery hair that she refused to cut, the delicate heart-shaped face with candle-pale skin and the firm chin. She was seventeen years old, that’s all. He needed to make her understand, but he knew she had long ago learned to be stubborn, learned to be strong enough and difficult enough to deal with the hardships of her life. He knew that. Something in him wanted to reach out to her, to bridge the gap between them and touch her, to pat her shoulder or her undisciplined hair, to reassure her. But he was certain she wouldn’t welcome it, would regard it as pity.

Instead he said gently, ‘We have to work together, Lydia.’

But she didn’t look at him, didn’t answer.

Just a faint murmur escaped her lips and it struck him as a wretched and lonely sound. Alexei saw her eyes unfocused and her lips moving silently. She’d gone. Sometimes she did that. When things became too much she would disappear, leave him and float away into her own private world, somewhere in her head that brought her… what? Joy? Comfort? Escape from this dingy room and this dingy life?

Alexei’s back stiffened. He could guess where she’d gone. And with whom. Abruptly he opened the door to leave.

‘I’ll see you at the station tomorrow,’ he said in a brisk voice.

No reply.

He walked out and shut the door with a sharp click behind him.

Alexei stepped out into the gloomy corridor and stopped dead. Right in front of Lydia’s door loomed Liev Popkov, that crazy Cossack of hers. Alexei himself was tall and unused to looking up at people, but Popkov was considerably taller and as broadchested and bad-tempered as a water buffalo. Popkov didn’t back off. He was rooted to the scuffed floorboards, deliberately in Alexei’s way, huge arms folded across his chest so that he seemed to swell with every breath. He was chewing something vile that turned his teeth the colour of old leather.

‘Get out of my way,’ Alexei said quietly.

‘Leave her alone.’

Alexei gave him a long cool stare. ‘Leave who alone?’ ‘She’s young.’

‘She’s dangerous because she’s impetuous. She has to learn.’

‘Not from you.’

‘You let her take a risk tonight in that bar.’

‘Nyet. You are the danger. You, not her. You, with all your fancy talk and your aristocratic stiff neck. I tell you, each day that dawns in this land, you are the risk to us, not-’

‘You’re a brainless fool, Popkov.’

‘I’m here to protect her.’

‘You?’ Alexei dragged out the single word and gave the Cossack a slow, insulting smile.

‘Da.’ Popkov’s black curls were as unruly as his temper and sprang over the ragged scar that sliced across his forehead into the eyepatch. ‘Da.’ Popkov spat it out more vehemently, his breath escaping in a foul-smelling hiss. ‘Frighten her,’ he growled, ‘and I will rip your fucking balls off.’

Alexei’s eyes narrowed. He spoke softly. ‘Touch me and I’ll snap your windpipe before you even open your ignorant mouth to cry for help. Now tell me what she said to you.’

‘What?’

‘Tell me, ox brain, what she said to you when you were arm wrestling. What words, when you were dead in the water, did she whisper in your ear that made you find the strength to win?’

‘You’ll never know.’

Alexei dropped his voice to little more than a whisper. ‘Did she promise to fuck you, is that it?’

The big man bellowed.

A door slammed open. The sound of it cracking against a wall reverberated down the grey corridor, jerking both men’s attention off each other and on to the woman standing in the doorway next to Lydia’s. With hands planted firmly on her hips and feet wide apart, she was apparently unaware that her striped cotton nightshirt was unbuttoned to the waist, allowing an intimate, if partial, glimpse of the curves of her abundant breasts.

‘Shut up, you braying donkeys!’ she yelled at them. ‘I’m trying to sleep here and all I get is two oafs banging their heads together.’

Alexei took in her broad flat feet with toenails that seemed structured out of moose-horn, the loose hang of her stomach under the nightshirt, her tangled hair that might once have been a luxuriant brown but now had the colour and texture of last year’s hay bales. With an effort he kept his gaze firmly away from her breasts.

He gave a small stiff bow of his head. ‘My apologies.’

‘Piss on your apologies, comrade,’ she snapped. ‘Just let me get some sleep.’

Alexei glanced across at Popkov and nearly burst out laughing. The big bearded ox was standing there with his mouth gaping wide open, his one good eye focused without the slightest embarrassment on the pale half-moons on display. Little grunting noises escaped from his throat.

The woman was having none of it. Her dark eyebrows shot up and she darted forward, jabbing the Cossack in the stomach with a thick finger, not once but three times. Instantly Popkov recoiled, lurched back against the opposite wall as though prodded with a rifle butt, and Alexei took the opportunity to stride off down the corridor without another word. He needed some peace. Some quiet. Needed to think. Dear merciful God, protect me from the insanity of these peasants.