Kate Furnivall - The Concubine's Secret

A hand touched her knee. For a moment it startled her. With an effort she came back into the room, into the present, and realised it was her brother’s hand she was staring at. Strong fingers, blue veins snaking deep under the skin, a scar on one knuckle, a long crimson scab down the thumb. But dirty nails, grimy skin. Not the hand she remembered.

‘Alexei,’ she smiled at him. ‘I’m sorry if I woke you.’

‘Are you all right?’

She widened her smile. ‘More importantly, are you all right?’

He nodded. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look fine.’

‘I just need something to eat.’

‘You’ve certainly slept a long time.’ She patted his hand and rose to her feet. ‘I’ll go and heat some soup.’

She was aware of his eyes on her as she left the room, but when she returned with a tray of soup, a chunk of black bread and a slice of Malofeyev’s smoked ham, he said little, just a polite ‘Spasibo.’ He sat on the edge of the bed and she let him eat in peace, but when he’d finished she rose from her chair and joined him.

‘Take care,’ he said with a crooked sort of smile, ‘I probably have fleas.’

‘Looking at the state of you, I think they’re more in danger of you than you are of them.’

He smiled and she caught a glimpse of the old Alexei in it.

‘Tell me what happened to you, Alexei. I waited for you in Felanka for weeks but you didn’t come and I thought you’d left me behind. Gone off on your own.’

He frowned. ‘You are my sister, Lydia. How could you think I would do such a thing?’

Guilt, thick and sticky, rose in her chest. She picked up his hand and held it between her own, resting them on her knee. ‘Because I’m stupid,’ she shrugged and was relieved when he smiled. ‘So where did you go?’ she asked.

He took a breath. She waited, watching the tension in the tendons of his neck, and after a long silence he told her. About the attack on him by prison guards in Felanka, the drowning in the black choking waters of the river and then finding himself on a barge.

‘I lost our money, Lydia. Every bloody rouble of it.’

‘Even the ones hidden in your boots?’

‘Even those.’

She forced herself not to react. Willed her hands not to tremble. ‘You should have let me look after half of it, Alexei, you should have trusted me.’

‘I know. You’re right. I’m sorry.’ He shook his head and his hair sent out a smell of something bad. ‘But what good is sorry to us now?’

‘None.’

‘ Lydia, I can’t get that money back but I’m doing everything in my power to make up for…’ He exhaled sharply. It was an angry, disappointed sound that mirrored Lydia ’s own anger and disappointment. ‘For my hubris,’ he finished.

‘Your hubris?’

‘My pride, my arrogance, my blind belief in my invincibility. Look at me. Nothing to be proud of now, is there?’

‘You’re wrong. I am still proud to have you as my brother.’

He threw back his head and barked a noise that unnerved her until she realised it was meant as a laugh. ‘God knows why!’

She studied the gaunt face. The eyes sunken in their sockets, mulberry patches like bruises on his skin. It had changed. Some crucial part of who he was had been stolen, something far more important than the money.

‘Was it so hideous, Alexei? Your journey to Moscow.’

‘ Lydia, you wouldn’t believe what I saw. The suffering and the greed, the anger and the enmity. Brother against brother, father against son, all so convinced they have the right answer. In one village I saw the Komsomols burning a man’s possessions in the street because he couldn’t pay his taxes. His wife threw herself and her baby on the bonfire and had to be dragged off it.’

‘Oh, Alexei.’

‘I understand at last what Communism is about. I know they spout about justice and equality but it’s much more than that. It’s about changing the whole way man is made. Turning us away from being people and making us into a new and improved mass creation that allows for none of the weaknesses inherent in our nature. To do that, the State must become a god and at the same time a monster.’

‘That is a bleak future you see for Russia.’

‘How else can we make this unwieldy and godforsaken country work?’

‘You sound like Chang An Lo.’

For the first time he looked at her hard, a fierce stare that felt as though he was using a shovel to dig around inside her.

‘He’s here?’

‘Yes. He is part of a Chinese Communist delegation to Moscow.’

‘I see.’

He said no more, just those two flat words. But he looked round the room, taking in its stained wallpaper and shabby curtains, and she could see him thinking what a disgusting little room it was.

‘It’s all we can afford,’ she explained. ‘Popkov and Elena are living here with me. We were lucky to get it at all. Rooms are like gold dust in Moscow. It’s not easy, Alexei. Nothing here is easy. It’s the way life is.’

He lowered his chin to his chest. ‘And Jens? What news of him?’

‘Not good. We’ve been searching to find the prison he’s in but people are too frightened. They won’t talk.’

‘I see,’ he said again.

She wondered if he did. She pressed his hand to make him look directly at her, and when he did she wanted to tell him that she was just as frightened as everyone else and she didn’t blame any of them for keeping their mouths firmly shut. She wanted to say that having Chang An Lo here in Moscow made her come alive for the first time in months, but at the same time she was seething with rage at the Soviet watchers for making it so hard for them to be together. She wanted to tell Alexei that having her brother here in her room made her feel safe, even though he was in a worse state than she was. But what about their father? What kind of world was he in? Was he surviving? How in this twisted and secretive city would they ever be able to find him? Tell me how. How? Yet when she looked into Alexei’s eyes, which used to be green but now were the colour of mud, she said none of it.

Instead she smiled at him. ‘I’m so pleased you’re here, as safe and as handsome as ever under all that filth.’

‘ Thank you, Lydia. You know I wouldn’t abandon you to do this alone.’

She felt two hot tears trickle down her cheeks. Alexei brushed a thumb lightly along her cheekbones, wiping the tears away with an affection that she knew she didn’t deserve after all the times she’d sworn at him behind his back.

‘I’m happy,’ he said, ‘to see you happy.’

She was just working out whether he meant it or was just trying to please her, when a heavy fist banged on the door. Twice. They froze, his thumb still on her skin, her fingers still clasping the hand on her knee.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No.’

Quickly she bundled her brother back into bed, pulled the blanket up to his ears and tucked it tightly round him.

‘Don’t move,’ she hissed.

Then she opened the door.

Outside on the landing stood three men. Lydia took one look at them and slammed the door in their faces.

‘Who is it?’ Alexei was struggling up in the bed.

‘It’s bad news.’

‘Police?’

‘No.’

‘Who, Lydia? Tell me.’

She had her back pressed to the door, breathing hard. ‘They look like killers.’

Alexei tumbled out of bed and moved close to the door, listening. The fist slammed on the door again, three bangs this time.

‘Alexei Serov,’ a rough voice called out. ‘Open this fucking door or I’ll kick it down.’

Lydia stared in horror at Alexei. ‘They know you. Who are they?’

Alexei leaned round her, took hold of the doorknob and clicked the door open. ‘My dear sister,’ he said with a smile so crooked it made him look like a stranger, ‘I’d like you to meet my new friends.’