The Jewel of St Petersburg (73 page)

“No, no, no!” she screamed. “She is a Danish child. She is not a Russian.”

“She
is
Russian,” the officer insisted and drew his revolver. “She fights like a Russian.” Casually he placed the gun barrel at the center of the child’s forehead.

The child froze. Only her eyes betrayed her fear. Her little mouth was clamped shut.

“Don’t kill her, I beg you,” Valentina pleaded. “Please don’t kill her. I’ll do ... anything ... anything. If you let her live.”

A deep groan issued from the crumpled figure of her husband at her feet.

“Please,” she begged softly. She undid the top button of her coat, not taking her eyes from the officer’s face. “Anything.”

The Bolshevik commander reached out a hand and touched her hair, her cheek, her mouth. She held her breath. Willing him to want her. And for a fleeting moment she knew she had him. But when he glanced around at his watching men, all of them lusting for her, hoping their turn would be next, he shook his head.

“No. You are not worth it. Not even for soft kisses from your beautiful lips. No. It would cause too much trouble among my troops.” He shrugged. “A shame.” His finger tightened on the trigger.

“Let me buy her,” Valentina said quickly.

When he turned his head to stare at her with a frown that brought his heavy eyebrows together, she said again, “Let me buy her. And my husband.”

He laughed. The soldiers echoed the harsh sound of it. “With what?”

“With these.” Valentina thrust two fingers down her throat and bent over as a gush of warm bile swept up from her empty stomach. In the center of the yellow smear of liquid that spread out on the snow’s crust lay two tiny cotton packages, each no bigger than a hazelnut. At a gesture from the officer, a bearded soldier scooped them up and handed them to him. They sat, dirty and damp, in the middle of his black glove.

Valentina stepped closer. “Diamonds,” she said proudly.

He scraped off the cotton wraps, eagerness in every movement, until what looked like two nuggets of sparkling ice gleamed up at him.

Valentina saw the greed in his face. “One to buy my daughter. The other for my husband.”

“I can take them anyway. You have already lost them.”

“I know.”

Suddenly he smiled. “Very well. We shall deal. Because I have the diamonds and because you are beautiful, you shall keep the brat.” Lydia was thrust into Valentina’s arms and clung to her as if she would climb right inside her body.

“And my husband,” Valentina insisted.

“Your husband we keep.”

“No, no. Please God, I ...”

But the horses came in force then. A solid wall of them that drove the women and old men back to the train.

Lydia screamed in Valentina’s arms, “Papa, Papa ... ,” and tears flowed down her thin cheeks as she watched his body being dragged away.

V
ALENTINA COULD FIND NO TEARS. ONLY THE FROZEN emptiness within her, as bleak and lifeless as the wilderness that swept past outside. She sat on the foul-smelling floor of the cattle truck with her back against the slatted wall. Night was seeping in and the air was so cold it hurt to breathe, but she didn’t notice. Her head hung low and her eyes saw nothing. Around her the sound of grief filled the vacant spaces. The boy with dirty blond hair was gone, as well as the man who had been so certain the White Russian army had arrived to feed them. Women wept for the loss of their husbands and the theft of their sons and daughters, and stared with naked envy at the one child on the train.

Valentina had wrapped her coat tightly around Lydia and herself, but could feel her daughter shivering.

“Mama,” the girl whispered, “is Papa coming back?”

“No.”

It was the twentieth time she had asked the same question, as if by continually repeating it she could make the answer change. In the gloom Valentina felt the little body shudder.

So she took her daughter’s cold face between her hands and said fiercely, “But we will survive, you and I. Survival is everything.”