The Girl from Junchow Read online

  “No, Lydia, we were much too far away. You couldn’t possibly see that. It’s wishful thinking. Anyway it may not be red anymore.”

  They looked at each other, then walked in silence, the street growing narrower, the neighborhood rougher. The well-built brick homes gave way to shapeless wooden houses that were looking tired and shabby. A honey-colored mongrel in a doorway whined at them as they passed.

  Wishful thinking.

  I wish. I think. Oh yes, Papa, Alexei is right. I wish for you and I think of you . . . and I am frightened for you. My blood runs cold when I picture you, a green-eyed Viking, condemned to exist underground in one of the mines.

  “The man who built this town was a visionary,” Alexei interrupted her thoughts. He had turned away, so she could see only his profile with its high forehead and straight uncompromising nose, but his mouth was curved into a line of approval.

  “What do you mean?” She had no interest in the town.

  “His name was Leonid Ventov.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I did my research. When preparing for battle, you reconnoiter the land.”

  Lydia loved him for that, the way he kept them safe. She squeezed his arm. “Tell me about this Leonid Ventov of yours.”

  “He was an industrialist from Odessa at the end of the last century. He grew fat and rich on what he discovered lay under this cold black soil, huge deposits of coal and iron ore, but he was a fiercely religious man. So instead of just stripping the land bare and leaving it raped and useless, he built this town of Felanka as a beautifully designed thank-you to his God. He tried to persuade others of the growing breed of wealthy industrialists to do the same throughout Russia, but . . .” His voice trailed away.

  Lydia felt his attention focus abruptly elsewhere. She glanced ahead as they emerged from the shadow of a row of houses and saw what it was that had drawn his interest. Ahead of them at the edge of town stretched a flat dull landscape, deserted except for one wide rutted road that ran straight to the iron foundry about a kilometer away. The brick building was hunched and forbidding, as if waiting for night to fall, when it would stalk closer to the town under cover of darkness. Its stacks stretched upward, like fingers raking the crimson sky, and belched a thick black smoke that today was swept away from the town by the east wind. But still the air tasted sour and stung the nostrils.

  Lydia examined it with interest. “So this is where we’ll bring him?”

  “Da. As soon as we’ve got Jens out of the camp, we’ll need to hide him. What better place than in a foundry, where blackened faces and constantly changing shifts are the norm? Among that vast throng of metal workers, he would pass unnoticed, but first . . .”

  “. . . we have to find a worker willing to take him in there.”

  “Exactly. That’s what your Cossack and I will start work on tonight.”

  “Alexei?”

  Their footsteps slowed and finally halted on the edge of the frozen landscape that ranged for miles in every direction. Only the foundry itself was built in a sunken hollow, as though its creator had endeavored to keep it as much out of sight as possible, its ugliness an affront to the splendor of his God. Now, with religion nothing more than a dirty word, just something the Politburo wiped its Communist boots on, the factories and foundries of Russia had become the new churches.

  “Alexei?” Lydia said again, her finger tapping his arm insistently.

  He nodded to indicate he was listening, but his eyes still scrutinized the approach road to the foundry. Somewhere unseen, the sound of a truck starting up drifted to their ears.

  “I’ve thought of an idea,” she said.

  She felt his arm stiffen. He looked at her quickly.

  “What idea?”

  “I need to help. At the moment it’s just you and Popkov sniffing out a guard and a foundry worker who will take a bribe, while I sit twiddling my thumbs, just waiting for you to—”

  “For God’s sake, Lydia, what do you expect? If you start putting your face about and asking questions, you’ll throw us all in danger.” He tightened his grip on her hand. “Don’t!” he said. His green eyes probed hers intently. “Whatever it is, don’t! Do you hear me? Don’t!”

  There was a long silence between them, broken only by the truck engine approaching. Lydia was the first who looked away, not because she was nervous of him but because she didn’t want him to see how angry she was. She tried to remove her hand from his arm, but he refused to release it. The sky was losing its color, and the first wings of darkness were gliding in from the west.

  “Let’s go back,” Lydia said.

  They turned and retraced their steps along the narrow streets in silence.

  THE TRUCK OVERTOOK THEM. IT WAS EMPTY AND BOUNCING along at speed, kicking up dust and trailing a foul odor in its wake, but just ahead a handcart had tumbled onto its side in the middle of the road, spewing out cabbages that rolled into the gutter like loose heads. The truck sounded its horn, then juddered to a halt. As Lydia and Alexei approached, the blond young driver of the truck wound down his window, leaned out, and treated Lydia to an inviting smile that displayed perfect teeth under the sparse beginnings of a mustache. He was wearing a navy woolen cap pulled down at an angle over one eye, giving him the air of an adventurer.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he called, “ti takaya krasivaya.”

  Lydia felt Alexei bristle, but nevertheless she looked up into the cab of the truck and gave the driver an answering smile. “Dobriy den,” she responded. “Good afternoon.”

  “Want a lift?”

  She let the question hang in the air and felt both men alert to her answer. Alexei still held her hand on his arm but made no attempt to speak, looking deliberately straight ahead at the cart being manhandled out of the way.

  “Nyet. But thanks anyway.” She gave the driver a slow sideways glance and heard him laugh delightedly.

  He leaned down in his cab and brought up something small in his hand, which he tossed out the window to her. It arced between them, spiraling and twisting, until Lydia snatched it out of the air with her free hand. It was just a metal disk, no bigger than a coin but polished to perfection, with the name Niko engraved on it. The driver waved to her and drove on over the cabbages, leaving them with a belch of exhaust fumes and a long blast on his horn.

  “I bet he keeps one of those in his truck for every girl he passes,” Alexei muttered, and it amused Lydia to see that he was irritated by the little gift. She twirled the flat disk between her fingers, and the last rays of sunlight turned it to fire.

  “It’s an omen,” she laughed, and swept off her ugly hat, letting her hair leap free.

  She had learned about omens from Chang An Lo, how the gods sent them as a sign. Westerners had lost the skill of recognizing them, but Chang had taught her how to feel for them with her fox spirit.

  “Lydia, there’s no such thing as—”

  “Of course there is.” She spun the gleaming disk. “See the fire in it. It matches me. Don’t you see, it means I’m meant to be here. The omen burns so bright, it shows we’re destined for success.”

  Alexei had stopped in the middle of the street and was staring at her, disbelief written all over his face. But she didn’t miss the laughter in his eyes.

  “Now,” she said, “shall I tell you my idea?”

  “THE ANSWER IS STILL NO.”

  Lydia stood alone in her bedroom in the hostel, her limbs too stiff and unyielding to let her curl up on the bed and seek refuge in sleep. It was as if they took orders now from Alexei instead of from herself. She heard his words still rattling round inside her skull with a persistence that drove her to fret at the hat in her hands, pulling threads out of it when really what she wanted to do was pull threads out of Alexei.

  The answer is still no.

  That’s what he’d said, over and over again. “I will not allow you to go wandering off on your own. The answer is no.”

  Her plan was straightforward, simple really. Wh
ile he and Popkov spent the next few days or weeks—however long it took—combing through the detritus of the back streets, prodding and poking at it to find the weak points, she would return to the railway station and endeavor to buy a ticket for herself on a train going back the way they’d come, in the direction of Selyansk.

  “Why?” he’d asked, eyes narrowed. “What would be the point of that?”

  “To travel past the prison camp’s Work Zone again.”

  He exhaled sharply through his teeth, a low whistling sound she’d noticed he made only when caught off guard by a sudden strong emotion. It should have warned her.

  “You see,” she rushed on, “I might be able to find a way to pass a message into the camp. Now we know that these trains carry prisoners in transit as well, I might find a way of contacting one and”—she slowed the words to make him listen; she knew her brother hated disorder—“he might seek out Papa . . . Jens Friis . . . and tell him he might—”

  “That’s a lot of mights.”

  She felt a dull flush rise up her cheeks. “You and Popkov might not have success in bribing officials who might just chuck you both straight into the prison camp instead, leaving me stranded here on my own. That,” she’d said, snatching her hand away from his arm, “might happen. And then what?”

  They were standing still in the narrow street outside a house where the shutters hung on broken hinges and the roof was patched unevenly. Darkness was beginning to roll down the center of the road with long strange-shaped shadows, and a straggle of horse-drawn carts was trundling along behind them.

  “Lydia.” He did not attempt to retrieve her hand. “We must all three of us take care. Listen to me. I cannot do my task here properly if all the time I am looking over my shoulder, worried about what antics you’re getting up to.”

  “Antics?”

  “Call them what you will, but can’t you see that I have to be the one who asks the questions to—”

  “Why? Because you are a man?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not right.”

  “Right or wrong doesn’t come into it, Lydia. It’s the way it is. You are ranimaya just because you are a woman and—”

  “What does ranimaya mean?” She hated asking.

  “It means vulnerable.”

  “Well I think maybe the Communists have got it right.”

  He studied her face with such concentration that she almost turned away.

  “And what exactly,” he asked, “do you mean by that?”

  “That Communists give women greater equality, they recognize them as . . .”

  A tiny child, impossible to tell whether girl or boy, with a mop of greasy curls and mucus encrusted under its nose abruptly materialized at Lydia’s knee. Round brown eyes stared up at her with the moist hopefulness of a puppy’s, but when she smiled at the child it tottered backward and stuck a filthy thumb into its mouth.

  “We’re becoming a spectacle,” Alexei murmured.

  He released a long exasperated sigh that annoyed Lydia and glanced farther along the street to where a man was propped against a windowsill and smoking a pipe. His eyes, behind a pair of spectacles bound together with black tape on the bridge of his nose, were observing them with quiet interest. Alexei took hold of Lydia’s upper arm and tried to propel her forward, but she refused to move. She pulled away from him and squatted down on the sidewalk in front of the child. From her pocket she extracted a coin, took the grubby hand that wasn’t otherwise occupied into her own, and wrapped the little fingers around the rouble. They felt as cold and slippery as tiny fish.

  “For something to eat,” she smiled gently.

  The child said nothing. But the thumb in the mouth suddenly popped out and ran down Lydia’s hair past the side of her jaw and onto her neck. It was repeated twice. She wondered if the child expected the strands to be hot like fire. With no sound the curly creature turned and waddled with surprising speed toward an open door three houses away. Lydia rose to her feet and rejoined her brother. Side by side but no longer touching, she and Alexei continued up the street at a brisk pace.

  “If you hand out money to every filthy urchin we stumble over in the streets,” he muttered, “we’ll have none left for ourselves.”

  For a long while they walked on in stiff silence, but just when they passed the park once more, where the wind was still chasing its tail and pursuing the sheets of newspaper, Lydia suddenly snapped, “The trouble with you, Alexei, is that you’ve never been poor.”

  AT THE HOSTEL THEY PARTED WITH FEW WORDS. IT WAS ONE of the new buildings, deprived of any iron scrollwork, faceless and totally forgettable. They were springing up throughout the town to house the expanding workforce, but it was clean and anonymous, which suited them both.

  In the entrance hall someone had hung a large mirror, flecked with black age spots like the back of an old man’s hand, and in it Lydia caught sight of the refection of Alexei and herself. It took her by surprise, the image of the two of them. They both looked so . . . she struggled for the word, then abandoned thinking in Russian and settled for so inappropriate. With a jolt she realized they didn’t blend in at all. Alexei was taller than she’d realized, and though his heavy coat was right in every respect and the way his gloves were patched on two fingers was perfect—she suspected he’d purposely torn and then sewn them up himself—nothing else about him fitted in with the dreary little entrance hall. Everything here was plain and utilitarian, whereas Alexei was elaborate and elegant even when clothed in a drab overcoat. He was like that wrought ironwork outside, carefully crafted and irresistible to the eye.

  The thought bothered her. For the first time she wondered if Liev Popkov was right. Alexei could be a danger to them because people noticed him. Yet tonight he was venturing out among the town’s lowlifes to start asking questions, and she wanted to tell him not to do it. Don’t. You might get hurt.

  “Alexei,” she said in a low voice, “make certain you keep Popkov close by you tonight.”

  He raised one eyebrow at her. That was all.

  “You might need him,” she insisted.

  But he took no notice, and she knew he was still angry with her about her plan to return to Trovitsk camp on her own. He was just too damn arrogant to let his little sister tell him what to do. Well, to hell with him. Let him get himself strung up by his thumbs for all she cared. She looked away and once again bumped into her own reflection in the mottled mirror. She swore under her breath.

  “Chyort!”

  The girl inside the mirror wasn’t her. Surely it wasn’t. That girl looked utterly dejected, her heart-shaped face thin and nervous. Her eyes were watchful and her hair far too colorful for her own good. Lydia quickly yanked her stupid hat from her pocket, pulled it on her head even though they were now indoors, and jammed her hair up under it with sharp little jabs that scraped her ears.

  “Alexei,” she said, and found him observing her with that cool scrutiny he was so fond of, “if you keep Popkov at your side this evening, I promise I’ll stay shut in my room and not put a foot outside the door until you’re back.”

  Would he thank her? Would he appreciate that for once she was offering him peace of mind?

  His slow infuriating smile crept up on one side of his mouth, and for a split second she was foolish enough to think he was going to laugh and accept her offer. Instead the green of his eyes turned a chilly mistrustful grayish shade that reminded her of the Peiho River in Junchow, which could catch you out in the blink of an eye just when you thought it was looking warm and inviting.

  “Lydia,” he said, so softly no one else would have been able to detect the carefully controlled anger, “you’re lying to me.”

  She spun on her heel and stalked off down the stubby brown corridor that led to the stairs, her boots clicking on the floorboards. He made her so mad she wanted to spit.

  Nine

  LYDIA STAYED IN HER ROOM JUST AS SHE’D promised. She didn’t want to but she did. It wasn’t because she�
��d given her word—yes, Alexei was right about that: in the past she’d never let something as trivial as a promise cramp her activities—but because Alexei didn’t believe she would. She was determined to prove him wrong.

  The room was lugubrious and chilly, but clean. Two narrow single beds were squashed into the small space, but so far no one else had come to claim the second bed. With luck it would remain empty. A mirror in an ornate metal frame hung on one wall but Lydia was careful to avoid it this time. Still wearing her hat and coat, she paced up and down the narrow strip of floorboards between the beds and fretted at her thoughts, the way she’d fretted at the hat earlier.

  She tried to concentrate on Alexei, to picture him donning his coat ready for the evening sortie, staring into his own ornate mirror with that look of eagerness, almost wantonness, that sprang into his eyes whenever there was some action in prospect. He always tried to hide it, of course, and she’d seen him disguise it with a yawn or an indifferent flick of his hand through his thick brown hair, as if bored by the world around him. But she knew. She recognized it for what it was. She’d seen it flare in the green depths. Just like her father.

  She paced faster and kicked her foot against the bed frame to drive a jolt of pain up her leg. Anything to keep her thoughts away from Jens Friis. Instead she crammed images of the commandant’s wife into her brain, of her slender mistreated arms and the graceful swing of the fur coat as she turned her back and walked away along the railway platform.

  Walked away. How can you do that? How can you walk away?

  A rush of rage swept through Lydia. She wasn’t sure where it came from, but it had nothing to do with Antonina. She felt it burn her cheeks and scour her stomach, her fingers seizing one of her coat buttons and twisting so hard it came off. That felt better. She clung to it and tried to sweep away the misery that had driven a spike right through her from the moment on the train she laid eyes on the prisoners in the Work Zone today. The men hauling the wagon over icy boulder-strewn ground, no better than animals. No, worse than animals because animals don’t die of shame. Even from so far away she’d felt it, that shame, and tasted the acid of it in her mouth. And then one of the men had fallen and not risen.