Kate Furnivall - The Concubine’s Secret

‘Right, comrade, fancy a bit of action?’

‘Yes. This town is like a morgue.’ The young driver flashed his teeth.

‘Then meet me tonight. I want to talk business.’

Alexei pushed open the door. The bar was thick with bodies. The air clogged with cigarette smoke which hung in a lifeless pall near the ceiling, where it mingled with fumes from the stove. At least the place was warm, that was something. Alexei stamped his feet to rid them of ice, while outside in the darkness snow was falling in soft flurries.

He elbowed his way through the crush and reached the bar, where he ordered vodka and beer for two. The pretty young Uzbeki girl with the embroidered blouse and the wayward hips served him his drinks and rolled her black eyes at him invitingly, but he shook his head. He scooped up his drinks and made his way over to a table at the back where Kolya was already seated.

‘Dobriy vecher. Good evening,’ he greeted the truck driver.

He placed the vodkas and beers on the stained surface and in return received a grin of gleaming strong teeth and the offer of a smoke. He declined it because, despite the bath and shave, he could still smell Antonina’s perfume on his skin and he liked it there – he wasn’t ready to coat it in nicotine. Leaving her had been hard, dislocating something inside him because he didn’t know when he would see her again.

‘Dobriy vecher, comrade. Spasibo.’ Kolya accepted the drinks and knocked back the vodka with relish. The beer he nursed fondly between his hands. ‘Now, tell me, who is this wretch who stole your money?’

Alexei leaned forward. ‘We have an agreement, you and I.’

‘Da. I get to keep half of everything I get back for you.’

‘Just as long as you remember that.’

‘Don’t worry, comrade, I’m not a thief. Nor are my friends.’ Kolya nodded meaningfully towards a group of men in truckers’ heavy outfits. With a certain look in their eyes, they all had it: the look of a loner. Alexei knew he’d think twice before crossing them. Hopefully Vushnev would as well.

‘So?’ Kolya took a mouthful of his beer. ‘His name?’

‘It’s Mikhail Vushnev, the camp-’

‘I know him. Thin as a weasel and smokes a pipe.’

‘That’s the bastard.’

Kolya slumped back in his chair and drained half his beer. ‘The shit has gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘He came swaggering in here a few weeks back, buying everyone drinks. Said he was off to Odessa to start a new life with his money, so-’

‘With my money,’ Alexei corrected. ‘And it won’t be Odessa. He’ll have the brains to cover his tracks.’

‘The bastard.’

‘No success for either of us, it seems, comrade.’

‘The bastard,’ Kolya repeated mournfully, as if the loss of the money had frozen his thought processes.

Alexei drank the vodka. What the hell else was there to do? Except smash the glass on the table. He sat in silence, stiff and stern, his thoughts crashing into each other.

‘Kolya, where are you heading with your next load?’

‘Novgorod.’

‘When?’

‘Day after tomorrow.’

‘I’ll see you then. At the truck stop. Be there early.’ Alexei threw his last handful of coins on the table. ‘Buy your friends a drink from me.’

He pushed himself to his feet and once outside in the darkness he said the bastard’s name. ‘Mikhail Vushnev.’

He said it only once and spat in the gutter to rid himself of it. He began to walk, slowly at first, letting the snow settle on his skin, then faster, feet skidding on the icy ground. His mind started to clear. Twenty-four hours. Twenty-four precious hours to smell her perfume on his skin, to feel again the gentle weight of her body on his and see the thoughtful brown-eyed gaze that did something to the dark cold places inside him. Up ahead the lights of the Leninsky Hotel shone brightly.

It was the mirror that brought Lydia back to Chang. He was being driven in a large black sedan that smelled of new leather and shone with polished chrome. Seated alone in the back with just the cap of the driver in front of him, a young soldier who knew how to remain silent, Chang glanced up with no real interest at the rearview mirror. He caught sight of a rectangular slice of one of the driver’s black eyes, and a sudden lurch in his chest stole his breath away.

Another car. Another driver. Another city. Another rectangle of a mirror. Yet it was as if she were here right now beside him. Her presence was so strong. He turned his head, expecting to see Lydia’s bright smile, and instead saw nothing but the chaos outside on the busy streets of Canton, rain-soaked rickshaws dodging the bumpers of the heedless cars and vans that clogged the thoroughfares. He lifted a hand, letting it touch the empty air next to him on the seat, curling his fingers through it, feeling for her. He listened intently for her breathing.

Slowly his hand drifted down till it was resting, palm down, on the leather. It was maroon and the thought that slipped into his head was that it wouldn’t show the blood from his hands. He blinked, startled. Where had that come from? His hands were long healed where the two fingers had been removed.

Did it come from her? From Lydia? Was she in need of his hands? The thought caught at his throat.

Each morning and each night he prayed with bowed head to the gods to keep her safe. He offered them bargains, his safety for hers, he made them promises that were extravagant and ever more costly, every one of which he swore to honour if only Lydia was returned to him unhurt, unharmed, undamaged. He vowed eternal devotion to the shrines and burnt candles in the temples, as well as incense and paper images of fearsome dragons. He slaughtered a bullock. To give her strength. All this despite his Communist ideals that dismissed such beliefs as a fool’s superstition. All this to keep her safe. To keep her safe he would even give her up, his fox girl, and spend eternity in tears.

But now today it was as though she were suddenly here. With him, on the maroon leather. And his heart for one fleeting moment flew back to that other day when she sat beside him in a car, and he had looked up at the rearview mirror to seek out the eyes of the driver. To learn whether he had stepped into a trap.

Her hands had curled around Chang’s, cradling his bandages to her breast as she might cradle an infant, and despite the raging fever that made his eyes dull as pond water and his brain as sickly as a rabid dog’s, he knew he would remember this moment. For a brief minute she’d rested her cheek on his shoulder and her hair had crept like flames over his shirt front. Just to look at her was enough, at her pale cheek and her clear amber eyes. It drew him back from the edge.

She seemed fragile. Frightened. Yet she’d pulled him forcibly into Theo Willoughby’s car on the snowy streets of Junchow, whisking him from under the nose of the police just when the Nationalist authorities believed they had captured him at last. She’d looped her arm around his shoulders, holding him upright, and the last thing he wanted was to topple over in her teacher’s car. She would lose face.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Lydia said politely to the man driving. ‘Thanks for giving us a ride.’

The schoolmaster glanced quickly in the mirror, his gaze seeking Chang. Even in his sick state Chang knew the signs. The yellowish skin around the mouth. The eyes not quite in this world. This Englishman was smoking the pipe of dreams at night and could not be trusted.

‘So what have we here?’ Willoughby had asked with more curiosity than Chang cared for.

‘This is my friend, Chang An Lo.’

‘Ah! The young rebel I’ve heard about.’

‘He’s a Communist fighting for justice.’

‘It’s a fine line, Lydia.’

‘Not to me.’

After a moment Willoughby said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’

‘For you.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘You are crossing a divide that is too wide for your young legs.’

‘Just help us. Please.’

‘How? He looks almost dead.’

‘Take us somewhere where the soldiers will not come.’

‘Where, Lydia? A hospital?’

‘No, they’ll find him there. Your school.’

The teacher had snorted as if he’d swallowed a frog.

Lydia had turned to Chang and with her touch as gentle as a moth’s wing, she’d taken his face in her hands and he’d breathed her sweet strong breath into his lungs.

‘Don’t die on me, my love,’ she’d whispered. He could feel her trembling.

He was not far from taking the path to join his ancestors, he knew that. He could hear their voices rustling in his ear. One slip of his foot and he’d slide into… His eyes closed, their lids like lead coins, but instantly her lips brushed each eye.

‘Open,’ she murmured.

They opened and her eyes were no more than a finger’s width from his own, pinning him to life. Not allowing him to leave this world.

‘Chang An Lo, what colour is love?’

He wanted to speak but there were no words.

‘He’s gone,’ the schoolmaster said.

‘No,’ she hissed, and she squeezed the bones of his skull between her palms. ‘Tell me, tell me.’

‘It’s too late, Lydia,’ the teacher insisted, though his voice was not unkind. ‘You can see he’s gone.’

She ignored him, listening to nothing but Chang’s breath sighing from his lungs. ‘It’s the colour of my eyes,’ she whispered, ‘of my lips, of my skin. It’s the colour of my life. Don’t you dare leave me, my love.’

He didn’t leave her. Not then.

‘Come here, girl. I have a clock for you, a good marble one with-’

‘Nyet, I don’t need a clock.’ Lydia shook her head and backed away from the stall.

She liked street markets. The shouting and the pushing and the manhandling of goods. They reminded her of home. No, she pulled herself up sharply, get it right. What she meant was they reminded her of China, but China was no longer her home. Face it. Her mother was dead, her stepfather had scuttled back to England and Chang An Lo was… was where? Where? Where?