‘Tell me, Alexei.’
Her lips found the exact spot between his shoulder blades where a nerve throbbed unrelentingly. He tipped his head back, resting it against hers, and immediately she wrapped her arms around him, her bare breasts tight against his spine, her hands cradling the scar on his side. For a while there was nothing but silence and the tick of their heartbeats.
‘I was born and brought up in Leningrad, though I still think of it as St Petersburg,’ he said. ‘The person I believed to be my father was part of the government there, always at the beck and call of the Duma or the Tsar. I hardly ever saw him.’ He paused before adding thoughtfully, ‘I certainly never knew what kind of man he was.’
One of her fingers, so oddly erotic in its doe-skin sheath when the rest of her was naked, reached out and found the scar on his thigh, which it started to circle gently. Watching the movement made him feel dizzy.
‘My mother,’ he continued, ‘led an extremely social life, constant balls and soirées, and I had a tutor for my lessons. No other children. Just adults.’
‘A lonely life for a little boy.’
‘Except there was one man. I knew him as Uncle Jens. Every week he came and showed me what a boy’s childhood should be.’
‘You’re smiling,’ she laughed, though she couldn’t see his face. ‘I like this Uncle Jens already.’ She brushed her hair like velvet against his skin and he felt his loins stir once more.
‘My mother took me to live in China when I was twelve.’ He made no mention of the Bolsheviks. ‘But as soon as she heard my father had died in the civil war she remarried a French industrialist. ’
‘Don’t tell me you went to live in Paris. I am green with envy. All those dresses.’
‘No, you frivolous creature,’ he laughed. ‘We stayed in China. There’s a large Russian community there, and as soon as I was old enough I became part of the liaison advisory delegation because I could speak both Russian and Chinese.’
She tugged a strand of his greasy hair and teased him, ‘So there’s an intelligent brain lying somewhere under all this good Russian dirt.’
He laughed again and it felt good. He’d forgotten how much laughing helps. He turned and wrapped his arms around her naked body as she knelt on the bed, kissing her lips and taking a lingering pleasure in their soft, pliant response. But after a moment she pushed him away, leaving only her hand on his chest.
‘So?’ she demanded.
‘So what?’
‘So how did you get from liaison officer in China to filthy tramp in this backwoods town of Soviet Russia?’
He brushed his lips along the soft angle of her cheekbone and wondered how much of this would be passed on elsewhere, but he couldn’t stop his tongue now.
‘That’s simple. I discovered I had a half-sister.’ He looked deep into Antonina’s dark troubled eyes and didn’t want to lie to her, to add to the shadows that haunted her lovely face. But nevertheless he did. ‘I was sick of the bourgeois life. At the time I was considering returning to Russia for good.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I wanted to be a part of this great undertaking. This sculpting of a whole new nation, this transformation of thought processes to an idealistic instead of materialistic society.’
She eased her slender body out of his arms and lay back on the pillows, her long naked legs stretched out, her gloves stroking them as though they belonged to someone else. There was something unself-consciously sensual about the slow, ritualistic movements.
‘So you came here together,’ she said without looking at him, ‘you and your Lydia, to find this Jens Friis?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s no longer at Trovitsk camp, you know.’
‘Are you certain? Is that what you came to tell Lydia?’
‘Yes.’
‘So where is he now?’
‘Moscow.’
‘Fuck!’
Moscow. Damn the Cossack for being right.
She regarded him solemnly. ‘So now you have the information you wanted. Are you going to leave me?’
‘Antonina,’ he said teasingly, ‘where else am I going to get a bath and a shave? Of course I’m staying.’
She laughed, delighted, and ran a toe all the way up his arm and into his beard.
Her skin tasted of olives. Of warm sunlight on good French burgundy with plump ripe olives. It tasted civilised. It’s what Alexei had missed. He was sick to his soul of greyness and dirt and utilitarian living. He wanted olives.
He kissed Antonina’s throat and felt the flutter of her pulse as his tongue traced the fragile line of her collarbone, heard her excited intake of breath. Like a child when it spies the Christmas tree. His own breath quickened as he ran a hand along the length of her naked thigh, caressed her slender waist where a small blue scar broke the smooth perfection of her skin, and let his fingertips trail softly over her breasts and down into the valley between them. She moaned and murmured something inaudible, shutting her eyes, her lips opening in a smile of secret pleasure. He touched her teeth with his tongue. They tasted of brandy.
‘Is this dangerous?’ he murmured.
‘Of course it is. That’s why you’re here.’
‘And you?’ He kissed each eyelid. ‘Is that why you’re here?’
‘I’m here because…’
A pause, nervy and tense, seemed to take over the room, then reluctantly her eyelashes lifted and he could look into her eyes. They were dark and confused. Slowly they began to fill with tears.
‘Oh Antonina, what are you doing?’
Gently he took her in his arms, rocked her against his chest as he lay back on the pillows and enveloped her shuddering body. He kissed her dark glossy hair and tightened his grip on her. He didn’t know this woman or what was hurting so fiercely inside her. But he did know he didn’t want to let her go. If he were married to someone who routinely sent starving men out to haul wagons like slaves, or dig coal with little more than their bare hands, he too would come looking for ways to ease the pain. He might even wear elbow-length gloves in bed the way she did. Quietly he breathed in her perfume and felt an unexpected connection with Antonina. He rested his head on hers, cradling her to him, feeling the warmth of her body flow into his.
How do any of us know what we will do until we do it?
‘Kolya.’
The blond young truck driver lifted his head from a copy of Pravda and regarded Alexei with interest. He had the kind of eyes that would always be interested. In anything.
‘What can I do for you?’ He tossed his newspaper into the cab of his truck and watched as Alexei approached.
Alexei had tracked him to an open concrete yard alongside the road to the foundry. Drivers gathered there with their trucks, waiting in line to make deliveries or to collect a new load from the ironworks, and the queue was sometimes so long that a stall supplying kvass had been erected, another selling chai and blinis beside it.
‘Let me buy you a drink,’ Alexei offered and gestured to the stalls.
Kolya grinned. ‘I’d prefer vodka.’
‘So would I.’ Alexei pulled a bottle from his pocket. He took a swig from it himself and handed it across to Kolya, who did the same.
The day was dull, the cold not so intense as a month ago and snow was shovelled into oily mounds round the edge of the yard. For a moment Alexei held his breath, considering the risk he was about to take. He had to judge his man well. He was in no doubt that OGPU secret police had informers in every corner of Felanka. When a handsome bird suddenly rose from somewhere downriver, a Siberian crane spreading its black-tipped wings and circling effortlessly above the truck yard like an extra pair of eyes, Alexei laughed out loud. He turned to Kolya and slapped him on the back.