The Concubine's Secret

50

Lydia rang the doorbell this time. She closed her eyes while she waited, to shut herself off from this moment as if it could belong to someone else. She had rattled halfway across Moscow in the trams as the bleached and pungent city air at last grew dark, and a moon as yellow as a melon skimmed up into the evening sky.

She’d watched a lamplighter pedal down the street whistling, with his long wooden pole over his shoulder, stop under a streetlamp and, without dismounting, turn its gas jet on with the tip of his pole. She wished she was him. She’d seen how the conductor on the tram, a woman with tired eyes, had handed out tickets with due attention to each passenger. Lydia had wanted to be her. Or the girl with the baby with the birthmark. Or the couple in the street with their arms looped together.

Anybody but herself.

The door opened. ‘Ah, Lydia. How charming of you to call.’

‘Good evening, Dmitri.’

‘I can’t say I wasn’t expecting you. You see how much faith I have in your word.’

He was wearing a silk maroon robe over black trousers and a smile so courteous that for one thin sliver of time she let it give her hope. He threw back the door and she walked into the hallway. Music was drifting out from one of the rooms and she recognised it at once. Her mother used to play the piece, one of Chopin’s Nocturnes.

‘You’re looking tired, Lydia, distinctly pale. Let me pour you a glass of wine. You’ll feel better.’ He held out his hands to help her off with her coat.

She didn’t move, just stood there in his warm apartment with her hat and coat firmly in place. She tried to find him behind his smile but he was too well hidden.

‘Dmitri, don’t do this.’

His grey eyes widened. ‘My dearest Lydia, you surprise me. We made a deal.’

‘I know.’

‘Your Cossack is back home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not even dead.’

‘No.’

‘So,’ he spread his hands as if confused, ‘what’s the problem?’

‘I don’t want to do this.’

He gave her a slow, sad look and gently removed her hat, so that her flaming hair tumbled over her shoulders.

‘I really don’t think,’ he said softly, ‘that what you want is relevant. We agreed. A bargain is a bargain. I have fulfilled my half of it and now it’s time for yours.’ His voice was sounding different, as though his mouth were dry and his tongue heavy.

‘Dmitri, please. You are a decent man and we can still be friends despite-’

‘Friends! I don’t want to be friends!’

Anger flared for a second and he bared his teeth at her. And then it was gone, smothered by an attentive smile. That was when she knew nothing would change his mind and that was when she started to hate him. She glanced behind her at the door.

His hand closed over her wrist. ‘No, my little Lydia, nyet.’ He spoke soothingly, the way he would to a nervous colt. ‘Don’t think of leaving. And don’t glare at me like that. Such contempt.’ He laughed and the sound of it made her skin crawl. ‘If you try to leave, my dear, I shall have Comrade Popkov rearrested.’ His eyes grew brittle as glass. ‘Understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Now we understand each other, let me take your coat.’

She didn’t move but he carefully unbuttoned it for her and started to slide it from her stiff shoulders.

‘Dmitri,’ she said without looking at him, ‘what is to stop you threatening to arrest Popkov in the future every time you want me to come over here?’

He beamed at her, delighted. ‘Ah, now I see we really do understand each other.’

‘Answer me. What is to stop you?’

‘Nothing. Nichevo. Absolutely nothing.’

The room with the music turned out to be his study. It was intimate, despite the hard lines of the desk and the shelves of leather-bound books. Well chosen for seduction, it seemed to Lydia. Soft lighting, a gramophone playing, the rich colours of an Afghan rug on the floor, a pot of coffee and a bottle of burgundy on a table next to a chaise longue. It was the chaise longue that caught her eyes, with its elegant curves and dense green velvet. Silk cushions of amber and russet, as inviting as a forest floor in springtime.

‘Wine?’ he offered.

‘No.’

‘Do sit down.’

She remained standing.

He removed the gramophone needle from the record, poured out two glasses of wine and paused for a moment with one in each hand while he inspected her, head cocked to one side. He seemed to like what he saw. She wanted to slap the smile off his face. The room was over-hot. Or was it her? The aroma of coffee seemed to clog up her lungs and she felt suddenly sick. I can handle him, she’d boasted to Elena. How naive could she be? She’d stupidly believed she could flutter her eyelids and toss her hair at this man, extract what she wanted from him and escape without having to pay the price. That man eats girls like you for breakfast, Elena had warned. She should have listened to her.

Yet without Dmitri’s help Popkov would still be in prison or, worse, dead. Dmitri had waited with the patience of a spider until she blundered into his web and she had no right to feel surprised when the sticky threads tightened around her.

‘Here, this will calm you down.’ He proffered a glass.

‘Do I need calming?’

Again he inspected her. ‘I rather think you do.’

She took the wine and drank it down in one go. He approached, standing close enough for her to smell the pomade on his hair, and the lines of his face seemed to harden as he bent his head and kissed her lips. She could taste whisky on him. So he’d started without her. She let his lips linger on hers but made no response.

‘ Lydia,’ he murmured, ‘so cold? So stony?’ He ran a hand up her throat and into her hair, then dropped it down to her breast. ‘Loosen up, my sweet angel.’

She stepped back from him, replaced her glass on the table and turned to face him. They had laughed together, danced together, surely he wouldn’t force her. ‘Dmitri, release me from this bargain. I’m begging you.’ She dropped to her knees in front of him. ‘Please.’

He smiled slowly and for a moment she thought he was going to agree, but instead he unbuttoned his flies and reached for her head.

‘You disgust me, comrade,’ she said coldly and rose to her feet. ‘So let’s get it over with.’

With no hesitation she undid her blouse buttons, stepped out of her skirt and removed her underwear. In the time it took for Dmitri to realise she was doing his job for him, Lydia stood stark naked in the study.

His gaze roamed over her body. Her face burned but her eyes remained fixed on his, as if by willpower alone she could force him back from the brink and make this enough. This display for him. She couldn’t believe now that she’d been blind enough to find him attractive. He yanked down his trousers and kicked them away, moving closer to her. He touched the smooth milky skin of her stomach, her thigh, the fiery curls in between. He was breathing hard.

‘Why me, Dmitri? You could have a thousand others who are willing, so why me?’

He started to move slowly around her, trailing his fingers over her buttocks, along her spine, feeling the bone of her hip, the silky cushion of her breast.

‘Because you are a rare creature, Lydia Ivanova.’

‘There are many more beautiful. Including your own wife.’

Still he circled her, again and again as if he were spinning his web. ‘The world is full of ordinary people, Lydia. You are not one of them.’

She drew a breath and said softly, ‘Then don’t crush me. Let me go.’

In answer he reached for her, his hands rough on her shoulders, gripping her hard. ‘Don’t be foolish,’ he whispered, as his lips came down fiercely on hers.

She didn’t fight him. But she remained rigid and unyielding until he abruptly tired of the game, threw off his robe so that he was totally naked and pushed her impatiently on to the chaise longue. He was strong and held her down, but as he pressed himself on top she squirmed her hips away. With no warning he pulled back and slapped her face.

‘No, Dmitri, don’t-’

He slapped her again, harder. She tasted blood on her teeth.

‘Fuck you,’ she yelled.

The hand was coming again. ‘Don’t you-’

The study door crashed open. Dmitri didn’t even look round. ‘Get out, Antonina,’ he growled and smacked Lydia in the mouth.

‘Let her go,’ Antonina said.

Lydia couldn’t see her because Dmitri’s body was blocking everything from view, but she could see his eyes clearly. They were no longer grey and controlled.

‘Piss off, Antonina,’ he shouted. ‘I’m busy.’

Abruptly Lydia felt his whole body give a sudden jerk, as though her flailing knee had caught his groin. Only when he slumped down on her with a groan, clutching the back of his head, did it occur to her that Antonina had hit him with something. His full weight was crushing her. She could barely breathe so grabbed a fistful of his red hair and yanked up his head, freeing her airways. His eyes were black with rage and she could feel the heat of it scorch her face. A fine thread of red was trickling from his ear down to her lips and she spat it back at him. Over his shoulder she could now make out Antonina, wide-eyed as a deer, a huge studded Bible clutched in her hands.

‘You stupid fucking bitch,’ Dmitri roared at her and dragged himself off the chaise longue, one hand still gripping his head.

Antonina backed off fast.

Lydia leapt to her feet and seized his arm from behind. He turned, swinging a fist at her, but she was too quick and he missed.

‘Dmitri, don’t-’

‘Shut your mouth.’

‘Leave your wife alone.’

But he lunged for Antonina once more and this time his fist connected with the side of her head. The crack of it was loud in the room and she went sprawling backwards on to the desk. Her fingers released the Bible and her mouth hung open in a scream that produced no sound.

‘I’m going to teach you, you stupid faithless bitch.’

He hit her again full in the face, just as Lydia slammed a punch into his kidneys. He grunted with pain, cursing, but seized Antonina’s slender neck, squeezing it brutally between his strong hands. Lydia hooked an arm around his throat to twist him off, but she was too late. In panic Antonina lifted a dagger-shaped paperknife from beside her head and rammed it with all her strength into her husband. It slid neatly up to the hilt between his ribs.

A high-pitched whistle issued from his throat before he keeled over sideways, one hand clawing at the silver cross that was sticking out of his chest. He slumped to the floor. Antonina leapt to her feet, her face a mask of blood, and stared down in horror at her husband’s inert figure. Her fingernails started to claw fiercely at her arm.

Lydia worked fast. First she felt for a pulse, but knew before she even pressed her fingers to Dmitri’s neck that she’d find none – she had seen dead eyes before. She sat Antonina down, a cloth for her face in one hand and a wine glass full of brandy in the other. She removed the knife from Dmitri’s ribs, washed it thoroughly and replaced it on the desk, then rolled his body up in the Afghan rug before the blood spread further. Only then did she think to put her clothes back on.

She took a seat beside Antonina on the chaise longue and wrapped her arms around the trembling woman, holding her tight, rocking her, murmuring soft sounds of comfort. She kept pouring brandy into Antonina’s glass until finally it took its toll and the tremors ceased, the limbs hanging loose as her dark hair. The woman’s head lolled on Lydia ’s shoulder and silent tears streamed down her cheeks.

‘I didn’t mean to kill him.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ll go to prison,’ she whispered.

‘Maybe not.’

‘Yes, I will. The Soviet police will condemn me.’

‘Is that what you intend to do? Go to the police?’

‘Oh Lydia, I’ve just killed my husband. What else am I meant to do?’

Lydia stroked the damp hair away from Antonina’s face. ‘There is an alternative.’

The wretched dark eyes, sunk deep in their sockets, turned to her and Lydia thought about what Elena had said. This woman was damaged enough. And now this.

‘Tell me, Lydia. What do you mean?’

‘We can go to the police right now and describe what happened and, after months of prison cells and questioning and a trial if you’re lucky, you would end up a prisoner doing hard labour in a coal mine in Siberia.’ She wiped away Antonina’s tears with her sleeve. ‘It wouldn’t be pleasant.’

‘Or what?’ the woman sobbed.

‘Or,’ Lydia hesitated, ‘we can bury him. And get on with our lives.’

Antonina looked aghast. ‘Where? In one of the parks? Alexander Gardens maybe? You’re crazy.’

‘No. Think about it. Dmitri is dead.’ She felt a brief wave of nausea and disbelief. Dmitri Malofeyev dead. The words frightened her. ‘Nothing we can do will bring your husband back. If you go to prison it won’t help him where he is now. And I am witness to the fact that it was self defence. I saw him trying to kill you.’

Antonina lifted her head and stared at Lydia, her eyes purple smudges on her bruised face. ‘You’re serious?’

Lydia nodded.

‘Oh you’re crazy. Haven’t you learned yet? This is Soviet Russia. There’s no escape. We’re all caught in the Communist net, for good or for bad. I’ve committed a serious crime and will have to-’

‘Don’t give up. Not yet. You helped me. Now let me help you.’

With a sad twist of her lips, Antonina touched Lydia ’s hand. ‘That’s why he wanted you so much. For that light inside you. He knew you were just using him, but he couldn’t stay away.’

Lydia shuddered. She looked at the rolled up rug and mourned for the loss of the man Dmitri Malofeyev might have been.

‘Antonina,’ she said, ‘do you own a car?’

Chang An Lo knew she was there the moment he stepped into the room, even though she had not lit the lamp. In the darkness he could sense her. No sound, no movement, just the feel of her there. Of her mind, of her thoughts, of herself.

‘ Lydia,’ he breathed.

Without lighting the lamp he crossed the bare boards. She was standing in a corner with a stillness and patience that told him she’d been there for a long time, and he cursed that he’d been delayed by an official dinner that had seemed endless. He had not told her yet that the delegation’s time here was soon to end. She curled her arms around his neck and he inhaled the familiar scent of her, knew again the sense of completeness that only his fox girl could give him. He held her, but not so close as to crush the thoughts that hovered round her like fireflies in the dark. He gave them space to fly.

‘What is it, my love?’

‘Do I damage you?’

He felt the evil night spirits flit past his head, rustling in the darkness, trying to burrow into her thoughts. He brushed a hand through the air to disperse them and she leaned her head back to study his face.

‘Do I?’

‘No, Lydia, you don’t damage me. You make me whole. Who has been pouring such vile oil in your ear?’

‘Elena.’

‘Tell Elena that-’

‘Popkov was shot and almost killed today. Because he was helping me.’

Chang’s breath stilled.

‘And,’ she whispered the words as if they were fragile, ‘Dmitri Malofeyev died tonight because of me. Now I’m asking for your help and it frightens me.’

He released his hold on her and lit the gas lamp. In the shadowy light the lines of her mouth were tense and there was a bruise on her face. But in her amber eyes there was something new, as if this day had changed her, and he recognised it at once. It was what he had seen in a soldier’s eyes after battle, a self reliance, an independence of mind, and it chilled his heart. Nevertheless he smiled tenderly at her and opened his arms to welcome whatever it was she wanted of him.

‘Ask me,’ he said.

So Wolf Eyes was dead. Chang felt not a scrap of sorrow for his greedy soul, and when he looked at the wife he saw no depth of sorrow in her bruised eyes either, despite her tears. But it unsettled him to see the concern on Lydia ’s face when he unrolled the carpet to remove the Russian’s watch and wedding ring. The ring was too tight to slide off the flesh, so Chang used his knife to whittle the finger to the bone.

‘Is that necessary?’ she asked.

‘Yes. There must be nothing on him that will identify the body.’

She nodded, tugging uncomfortably at her hair. He looked away because he couldn’t bear to see her do that for this man who had hit her face. He rolled up the rug once more and sent the wife for the car, while Lydia scrubbed the floor to remove the stains.

‘ Lydia, his own people will come looking for him.’

She was still on her knees. ‘I know.’

‘How will the wife explain away his disappearance?’

‘She’s going to inform them tomorrow that he has travelled to visit his sick uncle in Kazan. He really does have an uncle there, so when she tells them he was taken ill suddenly they will believe her. It will at least buy her time to decide what to do next.’

He didn’t point out that they might check the travel permits issued. Let her take one step at a time.

‘Good,’ he murmured and crouched down beside her. He placed one hand over hers on the floor. ‘Why do you care for this woman? Why not let her go to prison? She is nothing to you.’

‘She reminds me of someone,’ she said softly. ‘Someone equally damaged, equally in need of help.’

‘Your mother?’

She shrugged. ‘Anyway,’ she added with a change of tone, ‘I’ve been through Dmitri’s desk and found a box of his official stamps. We can use them on any forms we need.’ She looked at him. ‘They’ll be useful when we need to leave.’

‘I always said you were my fox.’ He lifted a lock of her red hair and let it trail through his fingers. ‘Rummaging in bins and drawers, making use of whatever you can find. Sharp teeth, sharp mind and dark holes to run to.’

For a long moment her stare fixed on him. ‘I love you, Chang An Lo,’ she said simply.

It was only later, after he’d carried the rug through the darkness to the boot of the car and was driving all three of them through the black streets of Moscow, that he had time to think again about the someone Lydia had spoken of. The someone who was damaged and in need of help. For the first time it occurred to him that she wasn’t talking about her mother. She was talking about herself.

The woman was nervy in the forest. Chang could hear her breath next to him, shallow and ragged. She jumped as shadows swayed towards her in the moonlight and picked her footing as delicately as a deer. When an owl screeched above her head, she froze. The sophisticated creature with the scarlet lips who had smiled so indifferently at him in the salon of the Hotel Metropol was now out of place, away from the chandeliers and the cigars. She tucked herself close to his elbow, uttering small gasps and murmurs. But on his other side Lydia moved in sure-footed silence, padding over the snow-covered ruts beneath the black arc of pine trees, her eyes wide and watchful, her face lifting at intervals as though scenting the night air with the caution of a fox.

The body was heavy. It lay across his shoulder still shrouded in the rug, weighing down his step and causing him to stumble over unseen branches. The woman tried to help, seizing his arm or holding on to a piece of fabric but all she did was drag at him and twist him further off balance. Lydia did not touch the bulk of Wolf Eyes and even in the darkness he could sense her distaste. That satisfied him. That she didn’t wish to touch this man.

‘Here will do.’ Lydia said it quickly, eager to rid Chang of the burden.

But the wife spoke up, her voice brittle in the icy silence of the forest. ‘Not here, not yet, it’s not deep enough in.’

‘Antonina,’ Lydia said so softly the wind almost stole her words, ‘we are far from the road. No one will come here.’

With the wife’s help Chang laid the body on the ground and she immediately crouched down beside it, her hand resting on the rug as if reluctant to release ownership of its contents. No one spoke. Chang flexed his shoulders to ease the muscles of his back and looked around. This was as good a place as any. The moon’s pale light barely filtered through the spread of branches, but where it did it transformed the snow-packed ground into a harsh blue sea and the trees into silver sentinels. He took the shovel Lydia had carried and started to dig.

He worked to a steady rhythm but once through the snow it was like trying to dig into rock: the earth was frozen solid. He could feel his tendons tearing but didn’t stop. This was not the first time he had buried a body in a forest or carried a fallen comrade from a battlefield; wherever he turned, in whatever country, death seemed to stalk him. And sadness seemed to rise out of the earth as he dug, with the stink of death on every shovel of soil. It crouched there and he breathed it in till his lungs ached.

‘Enough,’ Lydia murmured.

He looked up, surprised. He had almost forgotten that he was not alone. She was standing off to one side among the trees, watching his movements, her face in shadow, hidden from him.

‘Enough,’ she said again. ‘No more.’

Was it the grave she meant? Or was it death itself she was speaking of?

The wife was still crouched on her knees by the rug, her head bowed, her hair a curtain across her face. In the darkness she looked as though she had settled for ever on the forest floor and he wondered if she felt she was the one who should be lying in the rug, the one who should remain alone in the cold earth. He threw down the shovel and reached for the rug, but at that moment a sudden blundering noise in the forest startled the woman and she leapt to her feet, eyes wide and drained of colour by the moonlight.

‘A moose,’ he said and heard her gasp of relief.

With respect for the dead, even if it was Wolf Eyes, he rolled the rug carefully to the edge of the grave, but when he started to remove the body from its folds, the wife stepped forward.

‘Let me,’ she said.

He moved back while she unwrapped her husband’s corpse with slow, hesitant movements and slid it into the shallow grave as gently as if it were a sleeping child.

‘Goodnight, Dmitri,’ she whispered softly. ‘May God bring peace to your soul.’ Silver tears were flowing down her cheeks.

Chang bowed his head and commended the Russian’s spirit to his ancestors, but when he looked round for Lydia she was standing stiffly beside a tree, arms folded tightly across her chest. She didn’t move, just stared at the black trench he’d dug. What was she seeing? The terrible waste of death? Or the similar hole that had swallowed her mother only months earlier? He breathed slowly, calming the race of his blood as it burned through his veins. Or did she foresee her father’s end, as her fears stared straight into the eyes of death? Out here in the forest, life was fragile. Its thread a fine silver filament in the moonlight.

He picked up the shovel and started to cover the body of Dmitri Malofeyev with black Russian soil. He did not mention that wolves would claw open the grave before dawn marked it with the light of day.

They washed each other. Chang loved the touch of her hands on his skin and the sight of her flaming mane spilling over her naked shoulder blades. Together they soaped away the dregs of the day’s dirt, from their minds and from their bodies, and afterwards they made love. They didn’t hurry, exploring and caressing each other, teasing tender places and tasting the curve of a neck, the hollow at the top of a thigh, the arch of a foot, the hardness of a nipple.

It was as though they were discovering each other all over again, at the end of a day that had changed something between them. He relearnt the exact sound of her moan when he was inside her and the way she whimpered when he slowed to long, rhythmic strokes, her fingers digging at his back as if they would scoop out his heart. When finally he lay with his cheek flat on her stomach, sweat salty on his tongue, he must have fallen asleep because he woke suddenly and sensed that Lydia had moved. She was kneeling beside him on the bed, moonlight painting her hair silver. Lying across her palms was his knife. She had removed it from his boot.

‘It was you, wasn’t it, Chang An Lo?’

He felt a rush of blood through his veins, but he lay totally still.

‘What was me?’

‘In the forest.’

‘Of course it was. We were there together. I helped you bury your-’

‘No.’ She turned the blade over and over in her hand, the way she was turning over her thoughts, touching a finger to the unicorn carved into the ivory handle. ‘You know what I mean.’

Her hair hung round her face, shrouding it in secretive shadows.

‘Yes, Lydia, I know what you mean.’

‘In the forest with the soldiers. Four of them dead.’

He listened to her breathing. It was fast and shallow.

‘I could not bear to let you die,’ he answered.

‘So it wasn’t Maksim Voshchinsky watching our backs?’

‘No.’

‘How did you know where I was?’

‘It wasn’t hard, you are part of my heart. How could I not know where it was beating?’

But she would not be put off. ‘Tell me how.’

‘You mentioned to me that you were going out in Voshchinsky’s car. It was not hard to guess where you would be heading.’

‘So you knew? Already knew where the complex was that my father works in?’

‘I have a companion who is as capable of tracking trucks as any Muscovite vor.’

‘Kuan?’

‘No. A good friend of my heart named Biao.’ He removed the knife from her grasp and placed it to one side. ‘You must take care, my love. Beware of betrayal. Too many people know what you are doing.’

‘Except my father.’ He heard her pause and release a long, low sigh. ‘Jens Friis doesn’t know.’

With an abrupt movement Chang sat up and brushed Lydia ’s hair from her face. Her pupils were huge as she looked at him, her mouth alive. Firmly she pressed him back on the bed and moved on top of his body, her hands flat on his chest.

‘My love,’ she murmured, ‘how do I thank you for my life?’

‘By keeping it safe.’

As her hips started to move, he yearned to take her away from Moscow. From her father, from her brother, from the woman with the dead husband. From herself.