The Girl from Junchow Read online

  The fat man opposite joined in the merriment. “Your friend is right.” He held up his own cards in a fan and waved them to and fro, as if waving Alexei’s chances good-bye.

  “Game’s not over yet,” Alexei responded with irritation.

  He was about to toss another few roubles onto the pile in the center when he received a nudge in his side that was so violent his fingers jerked open and he let go of his hand. The cards slid across the dirty tabletop and four of them tumbled to the floor, three face up.

  “What the hell . . . ?” Alexei reached for the fallen cards. But it was too late. The fat man had moved fast despite his paunch and had already scooped them up.

  “A seven, nine, and ten, that’s no winning hand.” The man grinned and dipped his heavy mustache into his glass of beer. “Now give up, like your fine friend said.” His eyes shone gray and greedy.

  Alexei threw up his hands in surrender, letting his opponent sweep up the roubles and pocket them. He looked up at Popkov. “You crazy drunken idiot. You’ve bloody lost me . . .” But then he saw the look in Popkov’s eyes. “Okay, okay. Game’s over.” Alexei rose from his chair and gave a mock salute to his card partner. “It’s not my night, it seems.”

  But the fat man wasn’t listening. He was already trying to ensnare another player from the group huddled around the bar. Alexei reluctantly obeyed Popkov’s hand on his shoulder and allowed himself to be propelled toward the back of the room, where there was a spare table. They both sat down. Alexei thought about the lost roubles and sighed, but he lit himself a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and looked across at Popkov.

  “You’re not as drunk as you appear, are you?”

  Popkov’s face broke into a sly smile. “I never am. You should know that by now.”

  “So what’s the great hurry that you have to break up my game?”

  “I think the game I’ve been playing may be worth far more to you.”

  “So?”

  “So I’ve been having a drink.”

  “Correction. Drinks.”

  “Of course. If it hadn’t been more than one, I would have learned nothing. Just listen to me, will you, for a change?”

  Alexei sat back in his chair, avoiding the Cossack’s fumes. “All right. Go on. Where were you?”

  “I was in a brothel.”

  “Oh shit. Don’t tell me you’ve got the clap.”

  “Just shut up. I wasn’t there to touch any of the girls, I was on the lookout for a guard from the camp. They’d be desperate, see? I reckoned the place would be crawling with them.”

  Alexei took a drag on his cigarette to hide his surprise. The Cossack wasn’t as dumb as he looked.

  “And did you find one?”

  “You bet I did. Almost as big as me, he is, and none of the girls wanted him, you could tell.” He lowered his voice and dropped into a disconcertingly confidential tone. “Sometimes these girls are too small, you see, for our—”

  “Enough, spasibo.”

  Popkov scratched at his eye patch and resumed his tale. “The man was staggering about the room, knocking into everything and everyone in sight. The madam was yelling, ‘Someone take this fucking guard back to his camp. Get him out of here!’ So I did.”

  Alexei offered the Cossack one of his cigarettes and lit it for him. It was a small gesture. “Okay, so what then?”

  “He’s a big guy, like I said. Kept collapsing in the street, so I had to—”

  “—pick him up. Being such a gentlemanly character.”

  “Let me finish, will you?” Popkov scowled at Alexei. “At least I didn’t sit around playing cards all night, losing good roubles to—”

  “The trouble with you, my friend, is that you don’t have a strategic mind.”

  The single black eye glared at him through the smoke. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that the loss of a few roubles was necessary to discover . . .” Alexei paused, making the big man wait. “. . . that there are going to be heavy troop movements through Felanka in the next few weeks. That means trains. Frequent trains coming and going, a constant stream of new faces creating confusion.” He leaned forward, elbows on the filthy table, gaze intent on Popkov. “If we can finish our business quickly, we can be out of here sooner than I expected. But”—he hesitated, finding the next words hard—“I need you to watch out for Lydia.”

  “I always watch out for Lydia Ivanova.”

  “I think she might try to ride one of the trains back to Selyansk.” The thought of his sister on one of those troop trains packed with soldiers, traveling on her own, turned his stomach.

  The Cossack stabbed out his cigarette in one of the spills of beer on the tabletop. It hissed as he lumbered to his feet with a sudden urgency. “Let’s get moving.”

  Together they wove a path to the door. “It’s not Selyansk she’ll be aiming to get to,” Popkov muttered as he yanked it open.

  THE NIGHT WAS STARLESS, THE WIND A SLAP IN THE FACE. FRESH snow lay soft underfoot. Alexei followed the Cossack down a narrow back street where there were no lights, just a dreary row of warehouses whose doors rattled like dead men’s bones in the buffeting of the wind. The smell of something burning caught at Alexei’s nostrils and grew stronger when Popkov took a turn into an open yard. Flames were leaping from inside a metal container drum that stood in front of a small stone storage shed. Popkov headed straight for it.

  “What have you done to him?” Alexei asked with foreboding.

  Popkov’s chuckle told more than Alexei cared to know.

  The big ox kicked open the door. The shifting glow of the flames leapt inside and curled up on a pale face that looked dead. It was attached to an extremely large male body stretched out on its back on the floor with a chain looped several times around its neck. Each end of the long chain was hooked onto one of the metal shelf brackets that lined the walls on both sides of the shed. The man couldn’t move his head more than a fraction either way. It was no wonder his eyes were closed. Could he breathe?

  Alexei asked coldly, “Popkov, did you have to? What was wrong with bringing him to the bar and asking him questions over a few more vodkas? Tell me, you ox-brain, what was wrong with that as an option?”

  The Cossack looked taken aback. He held both hands out like plates to the warmth of the flames and shrugged mildly. “He might not have wanted to give us the answers. This way is . . . surer.”

  That was probably true. But it was not the point.

  With a snort of disgust Alexei stepped into the storehouse and unhooked one end of the chain from the wall. A faint choke like a dog’s cough issued from the man on the floor. At least the poor devil was still alive. With no apparent damage other than a telltale swelling on his jaw, he rolled over on his side, muttered something incomprehensible, and started to snore.

  “Podnimaisa! Get up!” Alexei barked. He backed it up with a prod of his boot.

  This produced a grunt. He bent down and hauled the man to his feet, and they staggered out of the shed into the night air. Its icy blast instantly froze the alcohol in their blood and the big guard shuddered but sobered up enough to stand alone, listing precariously toward the heat inside the drum. He was younger than Alexei had at first thought, a clean-shaven, good-looking face, early thirties probably.

  “Now,” Alexei said. The sooner this was over the better. “I need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Piss off.”

  The guard started out with an odd sort of flat-footed gait toward the yard entrance. It was like watching a duck on ice. Popkov stepped away from the fire and tapped him on the back, except that one of Popkov’s taps was like anybody else’s full-bodied thumps. The man went sprawling to the snow-covered ground, facedown, arms and legs splayed, and before he could even think about what had happened to him, Popkov was sitting astride his back. He yanked off the guard’s hat, tossed it into the fire, and seized a handful of thick fair hair in his fist. He wrenched the man’s head back and waited for Alexei to begin.

  The Coss
ack was efficient, Alexei had to give him that, but this was a way of doing business that disgusted him.

  “What’s your name?” Alexei demanded.

  A dry croak issued from the guard’s tortured throat.

  “Ox-brain,” Alexei snapped, “let the man speak.”

  The grip on the hair loosened a touch, so that the guard could swallow.

  “Your name?”

  “Babitsky.” A hoarse whisper.

  “Well, Babitsky, it’s quite simple. I want to know whether a certain person is a prisoner in the Trovitsk labor camp.”

  Babitsky grunted.

  “So if I give you a name, you will tell me whether he’s—”

  “Nyet.”

  Without hesitation Popkov bounced the guard’s face on the ground. Up and down. Just once. But it came up with a nose covered in blood.

  “For fuck’s sake, stop that!” Alexei exploded. “Babitsky, just answer my question and then you can go.”

  The man moaned and spat out blood. “I only know the prisoners by numbers. Not names.”

  Fuck.

  “So who would have the list of names?”

  “The office.”

  “Who works in the office? A name this time.”

  The man’s eyes were growing hazy and he was having trouble breathing. With a mountain crushing his lungs, it was hardly surprising.

  “Get off him,” he said to Popkov.

  For a moment their eyes met, and Alexei prepared to deliver that punch he’d been promising himself all evening. But Popkov wasn’t stupid. He gave a flash of teeth, released the hair in his fist, and raised himself up on his knees so that he was still astride the guard but no longer resting his weight on him.

  Babitsky dragged in air and said in a rush, “The camp office is run by Mikhail Vushnev. He knows them all.”

  “Where will I find this Vushnev when he comes into town? Where does he drink?”

  “The bar”—he spat more blood onto the snow—“down by the tire factory. It’s a dump but it’s always got some fuckable girls serving the beer.”

  Alexei removed a handkerchief from his coat pocket, wiped the man’s bleeding face, and rose to his feet, thankful to be at a distance from him. He dropped the scarlet cloth into the fire. He wished he could drop the whole of tonight into the flames as easily.

  “Okay, let him go.”

  For once Popkov did as he was told.

  The man staggered to his feet, cursing. Alexei took out a packet of cigarettes, shook out two, lit them both, and handed one to Babitsky. He watched the man’s blood drip onto the cigarette.

  “Fuck you,” Babitsky groaned, drawing smoke into his lungs. “Fuck the lot of you. I’m off tomorrow out of this freezing shit hole.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “What’s that to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’ve been posted to Moscow.” His split lips curled in a bitter smile. “So fuck you and your questions.”

  Alexei turned away. He’d seen enough. He had a name: Mikhail Vushnev. That’s where he’d start. Without the damn Cossack this time.

  Twelve

  LYDIA LAY BACK ON HER BED AND THOUGHT about the bargain she had struck with Alexei. She had promised to stay in her room in exchange for keeping Popkov at his side tonight, but would he stick to his word? Her nerves were tight and her eyelids burned. That was the trouble with making deals with people; you never knew whether they’d let you down. She stared up at the ceiling, at a damp patch on it that had oozed into the shape of a giraffe, probably a few leaky pipes up there. Like leaky tongues, they couldn’t be trusted.

  Your Russian is excellent. Elena’s words drifted back into her head and brought with them similar words she had once said to Chang herself. She murmured them now. Your English is excellent. It had been summertime and the Chinese sky was huge that day, a bright peacock-blue sheet of silk shimmering above them. She smiled at the memory and let her mind spiral down into it as readily as a bee spirals down into the sweet overpowering scent of an orchid. She didn’t struggle against it. Not this time. Day after day here in this cold Russian landscape she was fighting to mold a future, but this time, just for tonight, she allowed herself the sweet fluid pleasure of slipping back into the past.

  Chang An Lo had led her down a dirt track to Lizard Creek, a small wooded inlet to the west of the town of Junchow. The morning sun lazed on the surface of the water and the birch trees offered dappled shade to the flat gray rocks.

  “I am honored that you think my English acceptable,” Chang had replied politely.

  Her heart had been racing. It was a risk, coming here alone with a young man she scarcely knew, and to make matters even worse he was Chinese and a Communist. Her mother would tie her to the bedpost if she knew. But already their lives, his and hers, had become entwined in a way she barely understood. She could feel the hooks like tiny little darts sinking into the soft and tender parts of her body, into her stomach and the thin white flesh of her thighs. Tugging at the strong beat of her heart. His stillness was as elegant as his movements in his black V-necked tunic and loose trousers. Horrible rubber shoes on his feet. Earlier he had waited for her outside the English church where she had greeted him very formally, hands together and eyes on the ground, bowing to him.

  “I wish to thank you. You saved me in the alleyway and I am grateful. I owe you thanks.”

  He did not move, not a muscle shifted in his face or body, but something changed somewhere deep inside him, as if a closed place had opened. The warmth that flowed from him took her by surprise.

  “No,” he said, eyes fixed intently on her. “You do not owe me your thanks.” He came one step closer, so close she could see tiny secret flecks of purple in his eyes. “The people-traffickers would have cut your throat when they were done with you. You owe me your life.”

  “My life is my own. It belongs to no one but me.”

  “And I owe you mine. Without you I would be dead. That Foreign Devil policeman’s bullet would be in my head now and I would be with my ancestors, if you had not come out of the night and stopped him.” He bowed very low. “I owe you my life.”

  “Then we’re even.” She’d laughed, uncertain how serious this was meant to be. “A life for a life.”

  Now at the creek she noticed the way he squatted down on a patch of grass at the edge of the water, keeping his distance from her, and she wondered if he was being careful not to alarm her. Or was it because he couldn’t bear to be near a Foreign Devil, yet another fanqui . She was lazing on a slab of rock, stretching out her bare ankles in the sun, ducking her face under the brim of her straw hat. Her hat was battered and her dress was old. They embarrassed her. She stared at a small brown bird attempting to extract a juicy grub from a fallen branch and hoped Chang An Lo wouldn’t look at her.

  “I had an English tutor for many years in Peking,” he continued. “He taught me well.”

  She peeked at him from under the shade of her hat and was shocked to see him unwinding a blood-soaked cloth from his foot. Oh God, the guard dog last night. Its teeth must have done far more damage than she’d realized. She felt a wave of nausea at the sight of his skin hanging in scarlet strips from the bone. A physical pain in her chest. How could he walk on a foot in that state?

  He glanced up and caught her staring open-mouthed at his wound. Her gaze rose to his face, and for a long moment their eyes met and held. He looked away. She watched in silence as he placed his foot in the swirling flow of the river and rubbed it with his fingers, so that clots of blood drifted to the surface, making the water speckled with brown spots like a fish’s back. Quickly she rose and knelt on the grass beside him. In her hand lay the needle and thread he had asked her to fetch for him. Now she understood why.

  “You’ll need these,” she said and held them out.

  But as he reached for them, she made a decision and lifted them away from him. “Would it help,” she asked, “if I did it?”

  A spark of somethi
ng she couldn’t decipher leapt into his eyes. Their blackness seemed to be consumed by something bright and untouchable. She swallowed. Appalled at what she’d just offered.

  The first time she pushed the needle in she expected him to cry out, but he didn’t. She darted a look of concern at his face. To her amazement he seemed to be staring at her hair and smiling, his black eyes full of secret thoughts. After that she just kept sewing. In fact she became bolder, concentrating more on making the work neater than on whether it hurt, aware of the scars it would leave. All the time she rinsed away the blood with her handkerchief so that she could see what she was doing, and carefully avoided thinking about the white glimpses of the delicate bones underneath.

  When it was over, she pulled off her underskirt, used Chang’s knife to cut it into strips, and bound up his foot. It looked clumsy but it was the best she could do. Chyort! She was no better at bandaging than she was at sewing. Without even asking, she cut his shoe open and tied it on the underside of the bandage with two more strips of cloth.

  “There,” she said when she’d finished. “That’s better.”

  “Thank you.”

  Chang gave her a deep bow as he sat on the grass, and she had the feeling he didn’t want her to see his face. Why? What was it that he was holding back from her?

  “Don’t thank me. If we go around saving each other’s lives, then that makes us responsible for each other. Don’t you think?” She laughed lightly.

  She heard him inhale sharply. Had her words annoyed him? Had she presumed too much? She felt suddenly out of her depth, uncertain where to place her foot in these unfathomable and unfamiliar Chinese waters she had entered. She scrambled to her feet, kicked off her sandals, and waded into the shallows. The creek rippled against her legs, cooling her skin, and she splashed water over the hem of her dress to remove the blood from it. His blood. Entwined in the fibers of her clothes. She stared at it, touched one of the smears with the tip of her finger, and stopped rinsing it away into the river.