Tom Bradby - The Master Of Rain

“Stop.”

“You want to know-you must know.” She wiped her eyes again as she sat. “You must know the end of the story, because it is the story of Natasha. She was Papa’s favorite daughter. She would never, never be dancing for money-with anyone who wanted her. General Medvedev would never believe this. It was absolutely impossible. Perhaps Natalya… he loved her, of course, she was his firstborn, but perhaps… the death of Mama… she had been the most affected. Perhaps she was weak, too easily influenced. But Natasha? She was a daughter to adore, to be proud of. One day, he dreamed, she would marry an officer of the regiment. Or perhaps another landowner in Kazan, so that she could be close to home. His heart is so soft that it melts for her. Always. And even here in Shanghai, she is supporting him, looking after him as he gets older.” She shook her head. “No. Not Natasha. Please, Lord, if you have any mercy, then not Natasha. It could not be. Not with any man who wants to grab her breasts for money. It is not possible. A whore and a tea dancer, his two darling girls, keeping him alive by selling themselves.” There were tears in her eyes now. “But it was true. It was all true. Everything his friend had said. He saw it with his own eyes. So Papa put on his uniform. A general again in the tsar’s army, with everything in its proper place. The crops were almost ready to be harvested. A few weeks in St. Petersburg for the winter. Perhaps he would take us along. We could stay at the Rivoski on Nevsky Prospekt and he would take us shopping. There would be balls and dinners and perhaps we would even find a husband, Natalya and I. We would be so excited.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“But we are not in Kazan anymore, Richard, we are in Shanghai.” She looked up at him. She was starting to cry. “He put the cold barrel of his army revolver in his mouth, and then he pulled the trigger. Gone. With Mama. To a better, better world. Shanghai killed him. And we did.”

The fight went out of her. Her shoulders sagged and she wept, her body racked with pain.

Field took a step toward her. “No,” she said firmly, raising a hand. “I haven’t deceived you, Richard.”

Field didn’t answer.

“If you love me, then you must leave.” Her face softened. “If you love me as you say, then please go now and don’t come back.”

“I cannot.”

She looked at him, tears flooding her eyes. “He killed himself three years ago. I have mourned him every single day since.”

He nodded. “When I saw that photograph of you all together, I envied you.” He knelt beside her chair. “All I wanted, all I ever wanted, was for my father to say just once, ‘I love you, Richard. I love you, my boy. Well done. You played really well, you tried really hard, you did your best.’ Just once. Just once. Your father loved you, Natasha. I saw it in his eyes. I hear it in your voice. However it ended, you did what you had to do. You had no choice, but my father… Just once, that was all I wanted, just once, and even if he couldn’t bring himself to say it, at least to have felt it, to have shown it. A hand on the shoulder, my hair ruffled. It’s so meaningless unless you don’t have it, and then it’s the most important thing in the world.” Field thought he was going to cry himself. “My anger is because he blew his brains out as well and I never had the chance to say all the things I wanted to.”

She stared at the floor.

“Please go now,” she said quietly.

“I won’t go.”

“You don’t understand, do you? This is what I did to my father, Richard. And this is what I will do to you. It is what I am.”

“No, you don’t understand. Everything has changed for me now. It’s like I woke up and the world is a different place and everything has moved and the view is so bleak in one direction, and so filled with possibility in the other, and without you-without you, there’s nothing.”

“There’s already nothing. You can’t change anything.” Her voice caught. “You… you must accept that.”

“Who was the boy, Natasha?”

She shook her head. “It is not important. He was not mine.”

“I won’t give up.”

She looked at him and he could not tell what he saw in her eyes: sorrow, or anger, or fear. They were windows to a lost soul. “Richard, I have taken risks to be with you that I had no right to take.”

“I cannot accept that there is not a way to escape, and I will go on until I can make you believe that we can find one.”

She sighed, her head bent. Then she turned to him, her expression that of a woman he didn’t know. “Very well,” she said. “I will tell you the truth.”

Field felt his breath quicken.

“Why do you think I go down to Lu’s?”

“Don’t do this.”

“I do it because I’m a whore. I don’t like him touching me, Richard, no, I don’t like that, it’s not like it is with you. But what can you give me? I had a home. I had a family, but where are they now? I have no one. No one. So I go down to Rue Wagner and I take off my clothes for him-”

“Stop it.”

“You don’t want to hear it?”

“You’re lying to me again.”

“I’m telling you, Richard, what you need to hear. You’ve pushed me, and now you will hear it. You were a momentary escape. A handsome boy, naive, a little foolish, perhaps brave. But the reality does not change. So I go down there because I like to live here. Look around you. How else could a Russian girl afford all of this? Do you understand? This is what I want.”

“This is not the truth.”

Her face was a mask. “What is wrong with you?”

“I know what is true. I know it here.” He touched his chest.

“You know it, so it must be true?” She shook her head, incredulous. “Do I have to spell it out to you? Do you want me to tell you that I enjoy the power? You saw me in the nightclub, you know how it is.”

“I saw fear in your eyes, not power.”

“Do you want me to tell you that I enjoy him touching me, watching the power I wield over him? Do you want to see the lust in his eyes, the things he dreams of doing to me?”

“Enough.”

“Do you want to know that I enjoy it when he reaches out with his fingers-”

“Enough.” Field lunged forward, grabbed her arms, and shook her. He got to his feet, raised his hand, fist clenched.

She looked up at him, her lip curled. “Go on, Richard, hit me. Isn’t that what you want-to hurt me? Isn’t that it? Go on, be a man.”

Field turned and left, slamming the door. His feet pounded on the stairs as he tried to stamp out the image of Lu’s stubby fingers running slowly along the length of her body, caressing the soft skin of her breast, moving inexorably toward the patch of dark hair at the top of her thighs.

He ran out into the warm, fetid air of the street and bent over as he tried to catch his breath. A thick fog had descended and a tram rattled past, ahead of him, unseen.

Field straightened, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and forced himself away.

He took ten paces and then turned, convincing himself for a moment that this was just a test, that she must be following him.

The doorway was half-hidden by the gloom, but he could see that there was no one there.

Number 73 Avenue Joffre was an ugly three-story building, close to the border with the Chinese city, built with deliberate disregard for the attractiveness of most of the buildings in the Concession. Field felt barely under control-unwanted, uncontrollable images of Lu and Natasha together still tearing through his mind.

It had been another long, sleepless night. For much of it, he had walked through the darkened streets.