The Russian Concubine

36

His face. It was all brittle cheekbones. Skin stretched so tight it looked as if it would split. White as the pillow. Dirty purple hollows around his eyes. But it was his mouth that upset Lydia most. Before, when he leaped into her life that first day in the alleyway or later in the burned-out house when he talked of why only the Communists could drag China out of the tyranny of its feudal past, his mouth had been full and curved and brimming with vital energy. Not just energy, she thought, but a kind of inner power. A certainty. That was gone. His lips, more than any other part of him, looked dead.

Quickly she reached out and touched him. Warm. Alive. Not dead.

But too warm. Hot. Too hot.

He was lying in her bed. Again she squeezed out the cloth in the bowl of cool water. It smelled funny. That was the Chinese herbs. To soothe a fever, that’s what Mr Theo said they were for, to cool the blood. Tenderly she bathed Chang An Lo’s brow, his temples, his throat, and even the black stubble on his bony scalp. She felt a sense of achievement to see it clear of lice and all the other things that had been crawling around up there, and it pleased her to stroke it. Reassured her.

She sat on a chair beside the bed all day. As the light from the window changed from grey to greyer, she listened to the rain dripping outside. Sudden gusts of it against the glass panes. The colours drained from the room as it grew darker and still she kept bathing his limbs, his chest, and his sharp pelvic bones till she knew his body almost as completely as she knew her own. The texture of his skin and the shape of his toenails. She anointed the infected wounds with strange Chinese unguents, changed bandages, and dripped restorative herbal teas through his cracked lips. All the time talking to him. She talked and she talked. Once she even managed to laugh as she fought to drench his ears with sounds of life and happiness, to give back to him the lost energy.

But his eyes never opened, not a flicker, and his arms and legs lay lifeless, even when she changed the bandages on his hands, and she knew it must hurt horribly on some deeper plane where she couldn’t reach him. But sometimes sounds came from his mouth. Whispers. Low and urgent. She leaned over and put her ear close to his mouth, so close she could feel his faint breath hot on her skin, but she could make no sense of the sounds.

But once, when she was spreading a grainy yellow salve over his lips with her forefinger, his mouth suddenly opened just a fraction and his lips closed over her finger. It was an extraordinarily intimate act. The tip of her finger in the soft moist folds of his mouth. More intimate even than when she held his penis in her hand and washed it. She felt a surge of exhilaration and hugged it to herself. She rested her own lips on his forehead.

That moment was enough to carry her through the long night.

The Chinese medicines were not working.

Lydia’s throat was closing in a wave of panic. He’d want the Chinese medicines. Not fanqui concoctions, she was certain of that. But when would they start to work? When? As each hour crawled past, his skin burned more. Hot and dry as desert sand. In the cold and lonely darkness, she wrapped both her hands around his forearm, just above the bandages on his wrist and she held on tight.

She would not let him go.

Would not.

Dawn filtered through the curtains and a soft misty light slowly filled the room. It was cold. Lydia was wrapped in her coat and she kept the eiderdown, a pretty peach one that was glossy and new, tucked tight around the still figure on the bed. But she was appalled at her own ignorance. Should she light the gas fire that was in the room attached to one wall? Keep the air warm? And place the rubber hot-water bottle at his feet? Or was that all wrong? Maybe she should open the window to allow the icy air in to cool him from the outside.

Which?

She felt cold sweat on her own body and fought back the panic. She was tired, she told herself, too tired. That’s what the Chinese man had said to Mr Theo. The herbalist. He said she looked as if her chi had drained away, and he insisted that she buy a mixture of herbs he concocted for her to drink like tea, but she was far more interested in what he prepared for Chang An Lo. For fever, burns, and infected wounds, she told Mr Theo, that’s what she wanted, and he had translated her needs to the herbalist and then translated to her the instructions for use of the treatment.

Lydia had felt reassured the moment she walked into the herbalist’s little shop. It smelled wonderful. Its shelves were crammed with glass jars of all shapes and sizes, some blue, some green, some a muddy brown, all full of herbs and leaves and other things Lydia could not even guess at but she had a crazy feeling there might be something like lizards’ hearts or porcupine’s gallbladder and rhino horn. Great ceramic bowls of seeds and dried flowers and sheets of tree bark stood on the floor and scented the shop with enticing aromas. But best of all was the herbalist himself. He positively gleamed with good health, with teeth so white Lydia found she could not look away from them.

She had handed Alfred’s envelope of money over to Mr Theo for payment. It was more than enough, thank God. Or more accurately, thank Alfred. For this once she did genuinely thank him, a reluctant, grudging kind of thanks that surprised her. But she knew that without him, she wouldn’t have found Chang because she couldn’t have hired Liev.

Mr Theo said little. Just asked if it was all for that Chinese friend of hers.

‘I’d rather not discuss it, if you don’t mind.’

He shrugged, his tall frame loose and somehow disjointed, but he didn’t seem to mind. She noticed he bought some preparations for himself too and at any other time she’d have been curious, especially after what she’d overheard on the stairs between him and Mr Mason. But her fear for Chang An Lo was all she had room for right now. So she sat. Watched Chang’s face slowly materialise out of the darkness, each moment bringing another detail of it to her hungry gaze, and she was astonished at how familiar it was to her already. As if it were imprinted deep in her brain. The thickness of his eyelashes, the angle of his nose, the exact flare of his nostrils and curve of his ear. She could see them with her eyes shut.

Very gently while she sat in the chair she laid her head on the pillow next to his, her forehead resting against his hot cheekbone. Making a connection. She closed her eyes and asked herself why it was she cared so much, so much it hurt, but she couldn’t come up with an answer.

‘Tell me the symptoms.’

‘Fever. A really high fever. Unconsciousness. Infected wounds and burns.’

‘Overall health? I mean is the patient in good condition otherwise or one of the undernourished mass of the Chinese population of Junchow? It makes a big difference, you know.’ Mrs Yeoman was twisting her thick white hair into a bun at the back of her head and sticking clips in it. Lydia had never seen her hair loose before, it was like liquid snow, but then she had never come calling this early before.

‘He’s very weak. And thin. Very thin.’

‘I’ll happily come and tend to him, you know, if he needs medical help. So tell me where…’

‘No. Thanks, Mrs Yeoman, but no. He won’t accept European help.’

‘But he will accept yours?’

‘No. I’m just giving the medicines to his family.’

‘Lydia, my dear, it does my heart good to see you so concerned for the poor people of this country. We are all God’s children, yet so many Westerners treat the Chinese worse than dogs. It’s shameful to see, especially when they…’

‘Please, Mrs Yeoman. I need to hurry.’

‘Forgive me, dear, you know how I prattle on. Here’s the list for the chemist. Mr Hatton in Glebe Street is very good, always open with the lark, and he will give you first-class advice if you mention my name.’

‘Thank you. I’m sorry to disturb you so early.’

‘Don’t fret, child. Be good while your mother is away, won’t you? Don’t do anything she wouldn’t like.’

‘No, of course not. I’m going to write an essay on Paradise Lost down at the library today.’

‘That’s my girl. Your mother should be proud of you.’

‘Ah, little sparrow, what you do back so soon? That stepfather throw you out already?’

‘Mrs Zarya, hello. I just came over for some information from Mrs Yeoman.’

‘Hah! And you rush off not even to say dobroiye utro to your favourite teacher of Russian. Nyet, nyet. I have baked fresh pirozhki and you must taste.’

‘Spasibo, thank you. Another time. I promise. Must dash now. Sorry. Prastitye menya.’

‘Little sparrow, I want you come to party, a bal, with me. Big Russian party.’

At any other time she’d have jumped at the chance, but right now it was just an unwelcome intrusion.

‘I’m too busy at the moment but thank you anyway.’

‘Busy? Busy? Blin! What is this too busy? You must see how your people throw grand party. Everyone there, so…’

‘I must leave now. Sorry. Enjoy the party.’

‘Is at Countess Serova’s villa.’

That raised her interest. At the Serov villa. She’d like to see how grandly Russian aristocracy lived.

‘Really?’

‘Da. Next week.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Good. You come.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

He was still breathing.

She had a tight pain in her chest each time she left him, even for a few minutes to fetch water or throw away soiled bandages, which she first wrapped in newspaper and buried at the bottom of the dustbin outside the back door, always keeping an eye out for Wai. The cook lived with his silent wife in a low extension to one side of the house and was more than happy not to bother her, except to present an evening meal of soup, chicken, and trifle in the dining room. It was the same food every day and she knew he was taking advantage of her inexperience but she didn’t care. She hardly touched it anyway. Just ate the trifle and took the soup upstairs to spoon a few drops of it into Chang An Lo’s mouth.

He always swallowed. She watched nervously each time. Afraid he might not. But the knot of his Adam’s apple rose and fell and she licked her own lips with relief.

Sometimes she sang to him. Or read to him by the hour. About Pip, poor Pip the outsider, so ambitious with his Great Expectations, yet so full of pain and shame. She knew exactly how he felt.

‘Is all this too alien for you, Chang An Lo, this world of Dickens and London society? It’s a million miles away from both of us, isn’t it?’

So she swapped over to Rikki Tikki Tavi in India and told him he must laugh when the mongoose gobbles up the big snake’s eggs.

‘You see, snakes, even Black Snakes, can be killed, Chang.’

And she hummed a Russian folk song to him, Ya vstretil vas, as she bathed his forehead and arms from an enamel bowl into which she had stirred a teaspoon with a few drops of camphor oil. To promote sweating, Mr Hatton had said. A counterirritant to fever. And when she’d finished, she laid her forehead on the quilt that covered him and allowed herself a tiny shiver of fear.

Please, Chang An Lo. Please.

The sounds of the temple. They came to Chang An Lo like the voice of the gods. Through the mists of incense. The tinkle of the small brass bells and the low murmur of incantations.

A river of sound. It drew him. Up from the black mud at the bottom. He felt his face break free from the slime, foul and poisonous slime that was devouring him. It had filled his mouth and his eyes, seeped into the coils of his mind until the wind of life could not reach there anymore and he knew he would soon be looking into the face of Yang Wang Yeh, the final judge of human souls.

He floated.

Swept up on the sound, drifting higher, drawn by the current of it toward the light.

At last he saw her and his heart started to beat once more. She was smiling at him. Her beautiful face. He murmured her name. Kuan Yin. Again. Kuan Yin. The goddess who understood pain. He remembered with a clear rush of cool blood to his brain that when her father tried to burn her to death, she had put out the fire with her bare hands. Pain. Hands. China’s sweet and holy goddess of mercy, Kuan Yin, my pain is nothing to yours.

A bird settled on his chest. It was small and light but covered with coppery feathers. They glowed so bright they burned the slime from his eyes. From his ears. He could hear the bird sing. Just one sound. Over and over, it twirled inside his head.

‘Please.’