Without looking up from her task, the woman asked, ‘Are you all right?’
The voice was completely calm, totally composed, and took Lydia by surprise.
‘Da,’ Lydia said. ‘Yes.’
‘You were a long time in there.’
‘Was I?’
‘Have you been crying?’
‘No.’
The woman sank one whole forearm into the basin, let the soapy water swirl over it and murmured a long, drawn out, ‘Aah!’
Lydia wasn’t sure whether it was pain or pleasure. The woman flicked a glance in her direction and for the first time Lydia saw her eyes. They were dark brown, deep-set and not a bit like Valentina’s. She had pale skin, as if she had lived her life indoors.
‘Don’t stare,’ the woman said in a sharp tone.
Lydia blinked, leaning back against the washbasin. ‘We all do things,’ she said, and folded her coat tight across her chest. The room was chill. ‘To make ourselves feel better, I mean.’
‘Like shutting yourself in a lavatory?’
‘No. Not that.’
‘So,’ the speculative eyes slid again to Lydia, ‘what does a young girl like you do to make herself feel better?’
‘I steal.’ Lydia hadn’t meant to say it. She was appalled that the words had crept out. It had something to do with the unreal hour of the morning.
One dark arched eyebrow shot up. ‘Why?’
Lydia shrugged. It was too late to take the words back. ‘The usual. My mother and I were poor, so we needed money.’
‘And now?’
Lydia shrugged once more, a gesture her brother was always pointing out made her seem unthinking. Was he right? Did it? She stared thoughtfully at the neat maroon slippers.
‘It became a habit?’ the woman asked.
‘Something like that, I suppose.’ She glanced up and caught the woman’s gaze intent on her, saw it slide away self-consciously from Lydia ’s smooth pale hands to her own scuffed ones. In the mirror reflection, she saw something falter deep in the dark eyes, a crack open up somewhere. Lydia gave her a smile. At this unearthly hour of the morning normal rules of conduct didn’t quite apply. The woman returned the smile, lifted her arm from the water and gestured towards a smart leather bag on the windowsill.
‘Feel free to steal from me, if it helps,’ she offered.
‘Don’t tempt me,’ Lydia smiled.
The woman laughed and reached for a pristine square of white towelling that was draped ready over one shoulder, but in doing so she tugged too hard and it tumbled to the floor. Lydia watched the pale face crumple in panic.
‘It’s all right,’ she reassured the woman quickly and stooped to pick it up. ‘The floor’s clean. It’s just been washed.’
‘I know. I washed it. I washed everything.’
Lydia spoke soothingly, with the same tone she had used to her pet rabbit when he was nervous. ‘Don’t worry, no harm done. You can use the other side of the towel, the side that didn’t touch the floor.’
‘No!’
‘There’s a hotel towel on the wall over there.’
‘No. I can’t touch that… thing.’ She said the last word as if it were covered in slime.
‘Do you have another one?’
The woman breathed out. Nodded and pointed to her bag. Lydia immediately went to it, removed a small paper package from its depths and opened it up to reveal another pristine square of white. Without actually touching the material anywhere, she held it out to the woman but kept a good arm’s length away from her. Any closer she knew would be too close. For both of them.
‘Thank you. Spasibo.’ She patted her dripping arms, meticulously dabbing at each spot, and Lydia noticed scarlet hairline cracks in the skin.
‘You need cream on them,’ she said matter-of-factly.
‘I have gloves.’
The woman walked over to the leather bag and, using only forefinger and thumb, carefully extracted a pair of long white cotton gloves. She slid her hands into them and released a soft sigh of relief.
‘Better?’ Lydia asked.
‘Much.’
‘Good. I’ll say goodnight then.’ She moved towards the door.
‘Do svidania. Goodbye and… thank you.’ Lydia had opened the door when the woman asked quietly, ‘What’s your name?’
‘ Lydia. And yours?’
‘Antonina.’
‘Get some sleep, comrade.’
Slowly the woman’s head started to move from side to side. ‘Nyet, no, I have no time to sleep. You see…’ For an awkward moment no words came, then she murmured, ‘I am the wife of the camp Commandant, so…’ The words stopped again. With an uncertain frown, she stared for a long moment at the pure white gloves.
In the silence Lydia whispered, ‘The camp? You mean Trovitsk prison camp?’
‘Da.’
Lydia shuddered. She couldn’t help it. Abruptly she left the washroom. But as the door closed behind her, she heard the taps start to run once more.
2
That evening nothing had changed. The same confusing hotel, the same people moaning about the cold when really all they wanted to complain about was the lack of a reliable railway system. All waiting for the same train that never came. Lydia ’s feet ached from standing on a frozen station platform all day, but now she pushed it from her mind. It was time to concentrate.
In the heart of the hotel the bar stank. Stank like a camel pen because there had been a delivery of dung today to burn on the fire. It was a big shambling place, packed with too many vodka-stained eyes and too much greed. Lydia drew a slow breath and watched carefully. She felt the greed throb in the air around her, crawling like a living thing from one man to another, creeping through their mouths and nostrils down into their empty bellies and their crusted lungs. She had to time it right. Just right. Or Liev Popkov’s arm would break.
Money was thrust into hands. Men shouted across the room and spirals of cigarette smoke rose, turning the air as grey and thick as rabbit fur. In one corner a forgotten dog hurled itself forward to the limit of its stubby chain, choking off its bark. Its scrawny ribcage heaved with excitement.
All eyes were focused on the struggle taking place at the centre table. Chairs had been kicked roughly aside. Bodies jostled to find a place close, close enough to see the sweat burst forth and veins rear up like serpents under the skin. Two men were seated opposite each other. Big men. Men who looked as if they chewed the heads off weasels for fun. Their heavy bearded features were contorted with effort and the greasy black eyepatch of one of them had slipped out of place, revealing a sunken, twisted socket the colour of overripe plums. Their massive forearms were locked in battle.
The arm wrestling had been Liev Popkov’s idea. Lydia hated it at first. And yet in a strange insidious kind of way she loved it at the same time. Hate. Love. She shrugged. A hair’s breadth between them.
‘You’re out of your crazy Cossack mind!’ she responded when he came out with the idea. He’d just downed half a tankard of gut-rot vodka.
‘Nyet. No.’
‘What if you lose? We need every rouble of the money we have left.’
‘Hah!’ Popkov shook his big shaggy bear’s head. ‘Look, little Lydia.’ He jerked up the sleeve of his filthy shirt, seized her hand in his paw and placed her fingers on his massive biceps. It didn’t feel like a piece of human anatomy. It felt more like a winter log that had been warming in front of the fire. She had seen him break a man’s face with it.
‘Popkov,’ she whispered, ‘you are a devil.’
‘I know.’ His white teeth flashed at her above the black beard and together they had laughed.
Now she glanced quickly up at the gallery landing above them. It coiled round two sides of the room and led to the corridor of shoeboxes which the hotel chose to call bedrooms. A tall figure was up there, leaning forward, alert and staring down on the scrum beneath him, his arms resting on the banister rail, his thumbs linked as if he couldn’t bear his flesh to touch its grimy surface.
Alexei Serov. Her half-brother.
They shared a father, if it could be called sharing. Which Lydia doubted.
His brown hair was swept back from his face, emphasising the arrogant forehead inherited from his aristocratic Russian mother, the Countess Serova. But his fierce green eyes came straight from the Viking father Lydia could only dimly remember. Jens Friis was their father’s name, a Danish surname neither of them bore. Jens had worked as an engineer until 1917 for the last Tsar of Russia, Nikolas II, and now, more than twelve years later, he was the reason that she and Alexei had spent months travelling with the unruly Popkov in tow, all the way through the mountains of China to this godforsaken dead-and-alive hole in Russia.
A shout dragged her attention back to where it should have been, and her young stomach swooped with a sudden flutter of panic. Popkov was losing. Not just pretend losing. Really losing.
She felt sick. Coins were pouring into the grubby green kerchief on the bar where the bets were held, and all of them were now against Popkov. That was exactly what she and he had planned, but she’d left too late her signal to him to start fighting back. The black hairs on his burly forearm were only a hand’s breadth from the surface of the table as his opponent forced him down, and the bulging muscle started to twitch and shake.
No, Popkov, no.
Damn it, how could she have left it so late? She knew he would see his arm break before he’d allow it to collapse in defeat.
‘God damn you, Popkov,’ she yelled at the top of her lungs, ‘are you some kind of babushka or what? Put a bit of effort into it, will you?’
She saw his teeth flash, his shoulder swell. His fist lifted a fraction, though he never took his one good eye off his opponent’s face.
‘He’s done for!’ someone shouted.
‘Da, I’ll drink well tonight.’ Raucous laughter.
‘Finish the job. You’ve got him-’
Sweat dripped on to the stained table and the dog in the corner barked in time to their rapid heartbeats until someone slapped it down. Lydia elbowed a path through the crush of bodies to stand right behind Popkov, desperately rubbing her own right forearm as if by doing so she could rub fresh life into Popkov’s tearing muscle.
She couldn’t let him lose. Couldn’t.
To hell with the money.