Tom Bradby - The Master Of Rain

“Lena’s family lost everything. They came back to the house, but there was nothing left. The Bolsheviks had stolen so much and burned, and they had attacked some of the servants who tried to defend the house. Lena and her family were left with nothing, and then they had to go. The journey was even harder for them. Her father… he killed himself on the Steppes. Her mother died also on the journey, and the brothers turned back. She had to fend for herself and her sister. She was a brave woman.”

“And it-”

“When she got here-a long time after us-she was different, as though a light had gone out, do you understand?”

Field nodded.

“She was never the same. There was no laughter.” Natasha stared at him. Field wasn’t sure what she expected him to say.

“I won’t be like that, Richard. I won’t lie down and die.”

“Lena believed she could escape.”

Natasha sighed. “The last few weeks, she was more like her old self, just a little. It is hard to say what I mean, because there was so much we did not-could not-talk about. The past-you think it binds us, but it’s not like that. It seems black, do you see? It all seems black. What we have lost-it is so terrible, and the present so bleak, that we can never talk about it. Sometimes with others, if they had lived in Moscow or somewhere else, then it is possible to discuss the past or talk about the revolution. But not to Lena, because we had known each other too well.”

“Because there is no escape?”

“Of course. But Lena believed. And-”

“You think it was a mistake?”

Natasha didn’t answer. She was staring out of the window.

“Your father died in Russia?”

For a split second he saw the uncertainty in her eyes as she turned to face him and tried to recall what she had previously said. He wished immediately that he had not spoken. “On the ship,” she said.

“You buried him at sea.”

“No, in Harbin.”

Field wanted to ask if she ever went up to see the grave but thought it a subject best left alone.

She smiled at him. “You are a good listener.”

He shrugged.

“Few men know how to listen.” She paused. “It is strange. Once, I would have been your equal. Now, if you took me to one of your clubs, you would be thrown out in disgrace.”

“I’m not a member of any clubs.”

“No, but-”

“And I doubt I was ever your equal.”

Natasha did not respond.

“I don’t think running hosiery stores matches up to being a tsarist officer.”

“I told you, Richard, there is no shame in being poor.”

“There is when it matters more than life itself to be rich.” Field shook his head. “My father sank so deep into debt that his only escape was to blow his brains out.”

“But you admired him.”

“No.”

“But you loved-”

“I hated him. Hated what he did to my mother, to us, to himself.” Field stared at his hands, trying to contain his anger.

“How can this be so?”

“If your relationship with your father was different, then you can count yourself fortunate in that, at least. Mine was incapable of valuing what he had, or of not overvaluing what doesn’t matter, and the result was that he carried his anger within him. You say your father was soft; well, mine was hard. He would come home from work and the atmosphere in the house changed, as though someone had flicked a switch. We had to be quiet or we would be beaten, my sister and I. If we didn’t put our toys away, we were beaten. If he caught us talking after our lights had been put out, then we would be beaten. I say we, but it was usually me, and all the time, my mother did nothing.”

Field realized he’d said more than he’d intended but now could not stop himself. “She would never say a single word. She would come in and soothe us, put her hand on my brow as I was crying and say that she was sorry, and the more she did that, the more I hated her, too.” Field was staring at her. “You don’t want to hear this.”

“I do.” Her face was white. She put her hand on his and he tried to withdraw it, but she gripped it fiercely. “No.”

“You said-”

“I don’t care.”

Field ripped his hand free and glanced around the empty room. He bent his head. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” He lit a cigarette, his hand shaking. He leaned back.

“They’re your family, Richard.”

“It’s extraordinary how anger can sustain you. My whole life, until I came here, was like a shirt that didn’t fit. I didn’t come here to escape, I came here to begin again-to forget, to discard everything that had gone before.” He looked at her. “You cannot go back. I don’t want to. We’re a perfect match.”

Field sighed. “He always used to say, ‘Don’t be fortune’s fool, Richard. Whatever you do, don’t be fortune’s fool.’ ”

Ten minutes after leaving the French Club, she led him through a pair of wrought-iron gates and down a stone path that ran along the edge of an enormous, well-tended garden. It was so peaceful here that they could have been miles from the city. The house was tall, with a dark roof and narrow windows, and covered in ivy.

The woman who opened the door was small and rotund, perhaps about fifty-though it was hard to tell-her graying hair held back by a red peasant scarf. Without saying a word, she took Natasha in her arms and hugged her hard and long.

“This is Richard,” she said quietly. The woman smiled at him, her face flushed. He stepped forward to offer his hand, but she took him, too, into her arms, with such vigor he thought his ribs would crack. She stepped back into the kitchen. “Ivan,” she shouted.

There was a grunt from within.

“Look who has come to see us.” Her English was heavily accented.

Ivan was thin and angular, with a hook nose and a chin thick with stubble. “Natasha,” he said, transformed by her presence and repeating his wife’s greeting, suddenly boyish in the way he walked and smiled. He offered his hand stiffly to Field as they were introduced and gave him the stern look of a prospective father-in-law.

“Come, come,” the woman said. She took his arm and led him to a large table in the middle of the darkened kitchen. Ivan glanced anxiously at the clock on the wall. “There is time,” his wife scolded him. “It is Natasha.” She looked at Field and smiled.

Field smiled back.

“I wish to know all about you. Some tea?”

“Tea, yes, that would be wonderful.”

“All.”

“There’s not much to tell…”

“You are shy. Natasha has never…” She looked at Natasha, whose face burned red.

“You are from a good family?”

“Katya…”

“You have a good education?”

“His uncle is the municipal secretary,” Natasha said. Katya looked at her husband and garbled at him in Russian. They both nodded with satisfaction and Field knew that he’d passed some kind of test.

He eased himself back in his chair and caught sight of a picture on the shelf behind them. It was a recent formal photograph of Natasha, taken with the clock of the Customs House in the background. She was standing next to, and had her arms around, a young boy of five or six. They looked happy.

She followed his eyes, then stood suddenly and moved in front of the picture so as to block his view. “We really should go,” she said, her head bowed. Field saw the shock in the old couple’s faces as they realized their mistake, the easy familiarity of a moment ago evaporating in an instant.

He stood, mumbled a good-bye, and slipped through the house before following her retreat back down the stone path.

“I must be mad.” She turned to him once they’d reached the street, a new determination in the set of her chin. “For me, it is-”