Kate Furnivall - The Concubine's Secret

Edik put down the dog, shrugged into the coat that was far too big for his slight frame and, without a glance at the visitor, slouched out of the door. The dog snatched up the biscuits between its tiny teeth and trotted after him.

She made him tea. It was the least she could do. On her bed was spread an array of food the likes of which she hadn’t set eyes on since she’d entered Russia. Not even in the shops did they have such riches. Tins of glossy caviar from the Caspian Sea. Almond biscuits and ginger cake. Bars of Swiss chocolate and silvered boxes of glacé fruits from Paris. A leg of smoked ham that made the room smell wonderful, and numerous kinds of fat spicy sausage. She had laid it all out on the bed with care, the way a woman would lay out her gowns and stand back to admire them. When she lifted out from the bottom of the bag a bottle of vodka and a metal case of five fat cigars, she had looked at Malofeyev and raised one eyebrow.

‘You think I’m a secret smoker?’ She laughed, then hesitated and added a little stiffly, ‘Or are these meant for your own use?’

‘No.’ He was sitting on the window sill, legs crossed, swinging one foot and watching her. ‘They’re for you to use. As trade for whatever else you need. Kerosene perhaps.’

‘Ah.’ Lydia placed the cigars between a jar of Greek olives and a packet of roast coffee, patted them affectionately like long-lost children and imagined what a guard might be persuaded to do in exchange for such a gift. ‘ Spasibo. ’ She smiled, not sure whether it was at him or at the food, and tried not to feel bought. Her feet wouldn’t move from the bed and she was frightened that if she looked away it might all disappear in a puff of smoke.

‘You’re welcome, Lydia.’

She waited for more words but none came.

‘Comrade Malofeyev, what do I owe you for this?’

‘Nothing. Don’t worry,’ he smiled at her, ‘there’s no price tag.’

She picked up the olives, succulent and tangy, and recalled how her mother would have slit her own throat for such a jar.

‘No price tag on the food?’ She made herself replace the olives. ‘Or on the information I asked for?’

‘Not much success there, I’m afraid.’

A small silence tumbled into the ragged gap between them but he didn’t seem to notice it. It made her uncomfortable.

‘You’ve not found where Jens Friis is?’ she asked at last.

‘No.’

Another silence. He swung his leg carelessly and she wanted to seize it and wrap it round his neck.

‘But I thought…’ she started. The words tailed off. What was the point of them?

‘So did I.’

‘Is that why you brought the food? In place of any information?’

Abruptly the leg stilled its movement. ‘ Lydia, I am no longer involved with prisons or labour camps.’

‘Do you remember him at Trovitsk camp? Jens Friis. Tall and red-haired.’

‘Of course not. There were hundreds of prisoners there and I had little to do with them myself. I was just there to ensure the work norms were fulfilled and the timber shipped south. I didn’t sit and hold a prisoner’s hand and tell him bedtime stories, if that’s what you mean.’

She stared at him.

He didn’t smile, just looked back at her, a patient expression on his face. It goaded her further.

‘But I told you,’ she said. ‘I gave you the exact number of the prison that he’s supposed to be held in – number 1908. Surely you can find out from your contacts where it is in Moscow.’ She shifted impatiently from one foot to the other. ‘Even if you can’t find out whether he’s in there.’

‘ Lydia, my dear girl, I would if I could, I promise you. But you must understand, some secrets are secret even from me.’ His forehead was furrowed and she wasn’t sure whether it was concern or annoyance. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you more.’ As an afterthought he added, ‘I wish I could.’

Lydia stooped and picked up the large brown paper bag on the floor. One by one she started to place the food items back inside it. Malofeyev made no comment.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said quietly, her back to him.

She left the cigars till last, then positioned them neatly on top. They made her think of Alexei and how he would have enjoyed them. She turned to face Malofeyev.

‘Dmitri, why are you doing this? Helping me, I mean. Bringing me such lavish gifts when you barely know me and certainly owe me nothing. You know as well as I do that just one of those cans of caviar would buy you any girl of your choice here in Moscow.’ She studied his face. Saw it soften and heard a sigh start to escape before it was cut off.

‘Ah Lydia, I’m not here to buy you.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Then why are you here?’

He observed her thoughtfully. ‘Because one day I want you to look at me just the way you looked at your Chinese friend at the Metropol the other evening.’

Something hot flared in Lydia ’s chest. ‘We danced, that’s all. Rather badly.’

‘No. That wasn’t all.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know exactly what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t. Anyway, Dmitri, you seem to be forgetting that you have a beautiful wife at home.’

‘Ah yes, my Antonina. But you’re wrong, Lydia, not for one second do I ever forget my beautiful wife.’ There was a sadness, grey and soft as a shadow in his voice. ‘In fact it was she who suggested that, as I couldn’t help you in any other way, I should come over with these gifts.’

‘How convenient.’

He smiled politely.

Lydia tried to ignore the elegance that hung on him as effortlessly as his leather coat, and the fiery red hair that triggered all sorts of memories of her father. They ran like ripples under her skin. For some reason she couldn’t understand, when she was in the presence of this man her life in China seemed oddly opaque and far away. That annoyed her more than she cared to admit.

‘Comrade,’ she said with an abrupt change of tone, ‘thank you for your generosity but I cannot accept these gifts.’ Yet her hand was treacherous. It hovered there, touching the bulges of the brown paper bag with the same caress it used to fondle Misty’s ears. She snatched it away.

‘I’m trying to help you, Lydia. Remember that.’

‘In which case tell me, Dmitri, please, which street prison 1908 is in.’

‘Oh Lydia, I would if I knew.’

‘Maybe you don’t want to know.’

‘Maybe.’

If she was going to find her father she needed Malofeyev, needed his knowledge and contacts and familiarity with the prison system. It unnerved her to think that someone a rung above him on the Soviet ladder was stamping on his fingers.

‘Who knows you’re here?’ she asked.

He didn’t answer the question but picked up the tea that was growing cold on the sill beside him, sipped it with a quiet delicacy as if lost in his thoughts and replaced it. Only then did he focus on Lydia and immediately she could see a change in him. His gaze was fixed and fierce and reminded her that he’d very recently been the Commandant of a prison camp.

‘ Lydia, listen to me. Soviet Russia is still just a child. It is growing and learning. Every day we are drawing closer to our goal: a just and well-balanced society where equality is so taken for granted that we will be astonished at what our fathers and grandfathers were stupid enough to put up with.’

She didn’t react, didn’t look away. The pulse in her wrist was racing and the dying light from the window behind him seemed to be setting fire to his hair.

‘And the prison camps?’ she asked. ‘Is that how you teach this growing child of Soviet Russia to behave?’

He nodded.

‘Through fear?’ she demanded. ‘Through informers?’