The Concubine's Secret (35 page)

‘But you left me,’ she whispered.

He had no answer to that.

Lydia spotted the boy immediately, skulking on the edge of a cluster of residents. The courtyard lay in deep shadow and as she hurried under its archway her eyes took a moment to adjust after the brightness of the street. She had zigzagged her way home across the city, waiting her turn with impatience in the tram queues that snaked through the dying shafts of afternoon sun. The surrounding buildings seemed to lean forward, casting their black shapes possessively over the yard’s cobbles, but she didn’t miss the thin figure of Edik.

What struck her as odd was the sound of music and laughter. It was coming from the heart of the small crowd gathered there, a scratchy plonking sound that made her smile it was so comical. She knew it at once. An organ grinder. The last time she’d seen an organ grinder was as a child in St Petersburg with her hand tucked safely into her father’s, but the memory was hazy and before she could prod it into life, a sudden squawk from what sounded like a parrot caused ripples of laughter in the courtyard. People pressed closer and she saw the boy’s pale hair move in, smooth as buttermilk. A light brush against the man at the back of the crowd, as though eager to get a better view.

Lydia stepped forward, seized a handful of Edik’s filthy jacket sleeve and yanked hard. His feet scrabbled on the ice.

‘Get off my-!’ He swung round, wide-eyed, realised who it was and grinned. ‘
Privet. Hello.’

‘Put it back.’

The grin fell off his face.

‘Put it back,’ she said again.

For a moment there was a wordless battle, then his shoulders slumped. He shuffled back to the man and easily replaced whatever it was he’d stolen. The boy refused to look at Lydia but she took hold of his sleeve again and dragged him back to their doorway.

‘That’s better,’ she said.

‘For you?’

‘No, stupid, for you.’

As they climbed the stairs, neither mentioned that his sleeve had torn and was hanging in tatters between her fingers.

‘Here, give her this.’

Lydia handed a piece of kolbasa sausage to the boy and, though he accepted it, he still wouldn’t look at her. He had sidled into their room and found a spot for himself on the floor, his back propped against the wall where even the ecstatic greeting of Misty, who had been left behind there, didn’t bring a smile to his sallow face. He broke off a chunk of sausage and popped it on the dog’s moist little tongue, then one on his own. Elena was seated in the chair, hands busy with needle and thread, a navy garment of some kind spread on her broad lap.

‘Sausage is too good for that animal,’ she grumbled.

Lydia wasn’t sure whether she meant the boy or the dog.

‘And what are you grinning at?’ Elena aimed the question at Lydia.

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you.’

‘Nothing.’

‘The kind of nothing that puts a smile the width of the moon on your face and a purr in that voice of yours?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Come on, girl, you look like a cat that’s landed in a bucket of cream.’

The boy laughed and stared up at Lydia, suddenly interested. Despite herself Lydia felt her cheeks start to burn.

‘Is it your brother?’ Elena pressed her. ‘Did Alexei turn up today?’

‘No.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘I waited at the Cathedral but-’

‘I mean what
else
happened?’

Lydia looked at the boy. He and the dog were both watching her with bright eyes.

‘Nothing,’ she said and added a convincing shrug. ‘Nothing else, Elena. But today I’m hoping to hear from the Party member I was with at the Metropol reception. His name is Dmitri Malofeyev. I had no idea until I met his wife that he used to be the Commandant at Trovitsk camp where my father was held. It means he knows the right people to ask.’

‘You think he’ll help you?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Why should he?’

‘Because…’ Lydia glanced awkwardly at the boy and back to Elena, ‘I think he likes me.’

Elena tied off her stitch, calmly bit through the thread and asked, ‘What then? When he gives you the information you want. What will you give this important Soviet official in return?’

Silence spread like oil in the room, smooth and thick and cloying. It seeped into Lydia ’s nostrils, making it hard for her to breathe. The only sounds were the little grey dog panting and the churning of the organ outside.

‘Elena,’ she spoke quickly, as if the words would do less harm all squashed together, ‘I have no choice. I can’t just sit here any more. Don’t you see? Liev goes out night after night searching for a slip from someone’s tongue, or a loose piece of grumbling from a cook or a guard who’s had one vodka too many. He’s trying.
Chyort
, I know he’s trying – to find out the whereabouts of this secret prison, number 1908. He’s asking dangerous questions in bars and taverns throughout Moscow. And it frightens me, Elena. It frightens me so much I-’ She stopped. Took a deep breath and forced the words to slow down. ‘I’m frightened that one night the stupid Cossack will ask the wrong person the wrong question and end up in a labour camp himself.’

Elena sat very still, hands in her lap. She said nothing but her colourless eyes forgot to blink and her mouth grew slack.

‘That fear haunts me, Elena. Every time the big bear goes out. Like now. Where is he? What is he doing? Who is he talking with? What bloody rifle barrel is he staring into?’ She looked down at her fingers knotted together and asked in a whisper, ‘How much should a person risk for love?’

Elena lifted a hand and ran it down her face, over her eyes and mouth until her fleshy chin sat cradled in her palm. The action seemed to bring her back to life and she stabbed the needle into the reel of thread with a shake of her head. ‘It’s his choice. No one is making him do it.’

‘But I want him to stop. Now. It’s too dangerous. But he won’t, I know he won’t.’

‘And this Soviet official, your Dmitri Malofeyev. Is he not dangerous? ’

‘I can handle him.’

Elena burst out laughing, a girlish sound that made the puppy bark. She rose heavily to her feet, shook out the garment she’d been stitching, revealing it to be an old but thick wool coat which she tossed carelessly to the boy.

‘Here, Edik. Shut your ears, wear this and get out of here, you and that fleabag of yours.’ She hesitated for a second and placed her hands on her ample hips, glancing round the room with a sudden tension that made the veins of her neck stand out. ‘I have enough to take care of here, I don’t need more.’

She walked over to the door and as she passed, an unexpected thing happened. She ran a hand down Lydia ’s hair, something she’d never done before. Her touch took Lydia by surprise and was far gentler than she would ever have imagined.

‘
Malishka
, little one,’ Elena said softly, ‘that man eats girls like you for breakfast.’

Then she took down her coat from the hook behind the door and pulled on her galoshes, ran a comb through her dead-straw hair, wound a scarf around her head and left.

The boy stared at the door as it closed behind her. A sound came from him, a subdued kind of whimper that at first Lydia thought was the dog.

‘She doesn’t like me,’ he said.

Lydia went over and knelt on the hard floor in front of him, stroking the puppy’s fur as if it were a part of the boy. ‘Don’t be foolish. If she didn’t like you, why would she go to all the trouble of finding and patching up a coat for you?’

‘I don’t know.’

She ruffled his milk-white hair and let Misty lick her wrist. Reluctantly the boy dragged his gaze from the door, as though finally accepting that Elena wasn’t coming back for a while, and turned to look at Lydia.

After a moment he said, ‘I still don’t think she likes me.’

‘I think the trouble is that she likes you too much.’

The bones of his face seemed to hunch together, as if that thought was too hard to squeeze in between them. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Edik,’ Lydia said gently, ‘I think you remind her of her dead son.’

The organ grinder had ceased his music and the room felt empty without it. The light was growing smoky, as grey as Misty’s coat. Edik had fallen asleep curled up on the floor with his dog, and though the puppy was awake it lay still, one yellow eye on Lydia. When she stood up and moved over to the window to watch the square patch of sky above the courtyard turn from blue to lilac before it merged with the roofs, the puppy gave a low growl in the back of its throat. Although no more than a skinful of wobbly bones and milk teeth, already it was guarding its master.

That reassured Lydia. She wasn’t sure why she cared so much, but she did.

She wanted to be alone with her thoughts. They were hammering on her skull to be let out.
I’ll find a way
. That’s what Chang had said as they parted,
I’ll find a way
, and she believed him. If Chang An Lo promised he would find a way for them to be together – really be together, rather than the few snatched kisses of today – then he would. It was as simple as that.

She shivered, not that she was cold, quite the reverse in fact. The blood in her veins was hot and in a hurry, but her body wouldn’t keep still. It was restless. Her skin felt hungry. It wanted his touch the way it used to long for the balm of ice on a hot summer’s day in Junchow market. It wanted to be beside him. To see his face. To watch his slow smile spread up into his eyes. She’d thought the kisses today would be enough but they weren’t. She was greedy. She wanted more.

She dropped her head against the window pane and sighed. She’d been in a state of waiting for so long, she had forgotten how exhilarating it was to live in the here and now. To have what you want. To want what you have.

‘Chang An Lo,’ she whispered, as if he could hear her.

She touched the glass where her breath had clouded it and wrote his name in the mist. She smiled and studied the flow of letters intently, as if it could magically conjure up Chang himself, her heart banging on her ribs. As she stared at it, her own reflection took shape around it, merging the two, and she shifted focus to examine its features. What did he see when he looked at it? The hair, the eyes, the cheekbones, all seemed the same to her. But was that what he saw? The girl he’d fallen in love with back in China? Or someone else?

And Kuan? There like a spider at his side with every step he took, a living breathing invitation in each hotel room he stayed in. No, not that. Don’t think like that.

Send me the boy. That’s what he’d said. She turned away from the window and noticed it was almost dark in the room.

‘You eat too fast. The pair of you.’

Lydia was seated in the chair. The boy was still on the floor, stuffing bread into his mouth, and beside him the dog had its muzzle in a bowl of
kasha
, neither coming up for air. She’d heated Edik some soup and warmed the porridge for Misty, then prodded the sleeping boy in the ribs and plonked the bowls in front of them. Edik had gone from deep sleep to eating in less than a blink of an eye. He held the bowl close to his chest, hunched over it, guarding it as he swallowed, and the sight had disturbed Lydia.

‘Edik,’ she asked, ‘what happened to your parents?’

He gulped down two more mouthfuls of soup. ‘Shot.’ He crammed in more bread.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Four years ago.’

‘Why?’

She waited again. Didn’t push.

‘They read a book,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘A book that was banned because it was anti-Soviet.

‘What book?’

‘Can’t remember.’

She left it at that. His hair hung in a pale limp curtain round his face as he started to lick the bowl.

‘Have you lived on the streets ever since?’

‘
Da.’

‘That’s tough.’

‘It’s not so bad. Winter is hardest.’

‘Thieving is dangerous.’

He lifted his head for the first time and his muddy blue eyes brightened. ‘I’m good at it. One of the best.’

I’m good at it. She’d said the same words herself not so long ago. Her stomach knotted when she thought of the risks.

‘Where do you sell the stuff you steal?’

‘I don’t.’ He gave her a scornful look as though she were stupid. ‘The
vory do.’

‘Who are the
vory?’

He rolled his eyes in exaggerated disgust, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and gave it to the dog to lick.

‘There’s this man,’ he explained slowly, as if talking to a simpleton. ‘He runs a gang of us street kids. We steal and hand it over to him. He pays us.’ The boy thought about what he’d just said and scowled. He made as if to spit on the floor but stopped himself just in time. ‘Not much though, the bastard. Just a few measly kopecks. Some of the other vory bastards pay better, but I got to take what I can get.’

Lydia leaned forward. ‘Are there many boys like you on the streets of Moscow?’

‘Yeah. Thousands.’

‘And are they all run in gangs by vory men?’

‘Most of them.’

‘Who are these
vory?’

‘Criminals, of course.’ He grinned and ruffled the pup’s ears. ‘Like me.’

‘Edik, what you’re doing is dangerous.’

‘And what you’re doing isn’t?’ He laughed, an open childish laugh that made her smile.

She wanted to go over and wrap an arm round his skinny shoulders, to give this tough young kid the kind of hug his small frame was crying out for, but she didn’t. She had a feeling he would bite her again if she did. She scraped her hair back from her forehead as if she could scrape from her mind the doubts about what she was about to ask.

‘Edik.’

‘Yeah?’

She reached into her pocket, pulled out a ten-rouble note and waved it in the air. His eyes followed the white note hungrily, the way Misty’s followed a biscuit.