‘What’s the matter?’ Popkov asked. Behind him the sky was shifting its choice of grey, slipping into the colourless shade that came just before sunset. Pigeons began to settle on the roofs. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked a second time when she didn’t respond.
‘Nothing.’
‘It doesn’t look like nothing.’
‘Well, it is. But thanks for asking.’
He growled, an indistinct rumble in his chest. She made herself concentrate on the room, on its four square walls. They were still here. They were going nowhere. She could rely on that. The three-storey house overlooking a central courtyard had once been smart but some years earlier had been taken over by a housing committee, which had carved the living space up into small chunks and allocated a few square feet of it to each person. Enough for a bed and, if you were lucky, a chair and a cupboard. Lydia wasn’t lucky. She had a bed but Popkov got the chair.
Washing and cooking facilities were communal at the end of the landing, and the rota system was supervised with hawkish efficiency by a Housing Manager named Comrade Kelensky. He prowled around in an ill-fitting suit with an air of reproach. Lydia had already been in trouble for not cleaning the communal stairs thoroughly enough. She’d scrubbed them twice, as instructed, but as soon as her back was turned a bored little child from downstairs bounced a muddy ball on them. Kelensky made Lydia perform the task again. While she did it, Popkov had sat himself down at the top of the steep flight of stairs like a dark-eyed St Peter at the gates, elbows on his knees, humming chastushki, peasant songs, to himself and munching sunflower seeds from his pocket. She wasn’t sure if he was guarding her from others or from herself.
She packed the roubles neatly back into the moneybelt and zipped it up. It was stained with sweat and rubbed thin in places.
‘Your brother should have had the sense to divide the funds equally between you,’ Liev grumbled.
‘He didn’t trust me enough.’
The window rattled as a sudden gust of wind fingered the broken pane, and the daylight outside took another step towards the solid shadows of a winter’s afternoon. Silence drifted into the room. Lydia buckled the belt firmly around her waist once more, tucked her legs under her on the bed and pulled the quilt over her shoulders. She watched the big man take out his battered old tin of tobacco and roll himself a smoke with the smooth ease of long practice. His thick fingers dwarfed the cigarette he stuck between his lips.
‘It’s a waste of time,’ he growled. ‘Waiting outside the church each day.’
‘Don’t, Liev.’
‘I mean it, Lydia. He’s not coming.’
‘He will.’
‘I don’t want…’ He stopped.
‘Don’t want what?’
‘I don’t want to see you hurt. Again.’ He lit the cigarette, took a drag on it and inspected its glowing tip so that he didn’t have to look at her.
Lydia swallowed awkwardly, both touched and angry at the same time. Damn him for doubting Alexei.
‘Liev, Alexei will come, I know he will. Tomorrow or the day after or the day after that, but one day soon I’ll walk up the steps to the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer and he’ll be waiting there for-’
‘No. He’s gone. Good riddance to the bastard.’
‘Don’t, Liev,’ she said again.
He jerked his bull frame away from the windowsill and seemed to fill the small room. Elena had gone out on some mission of her own but still the place felt overcrowded, its drab walls pressing in on them. Lydia unzipped her moneybelt, pulled out one of the notes and threw it on the bed in front of the Cossack.
‘Go buy yourself a drink, Liev. That filthy temper of yours is-’
‘Why are you so fucked up by Alexei’s disappearance?’ he demanded. ‘You and he were always at each other like cat and dog. The man is an arrogant prick. We’re better off without him.’
Lydia threw off the quilt and leapt to her feet, a tiny figure next to his bulk. She thumped a fist on his granite chest.
‘You stupid Cossack,’ she shouted at him. ‘Take that back.’
‘Nyet.’
‘Take it back.’
‘Nyet.’
They glared at each other.
‘He’s my brother. Can’t you see? Are you so blind with your one eye? Alexei means everything to me. He’s all the family I’ve got until we find my father. Don’t ever say I’m better off without him, you ignorant peasant.’
‘Chyort, little Lydia,’ Popkov said. ‘He’s not worth-’
‘He is to me.’ She was struggling for breath. ‘I owe him. Everything.’
‘Don’t talk rot, girl. You owe that bastard nothing. He’s deserted you now the going is tough, and before that all he ever did every step of the way was complain.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘Hah! Tell me how.’
A long sigh crept out of Lydia’s lungs and she slumped down on the edge of the rumpled bed, her arms snaking tightly around her thin body. Her hair fell forward, shielding her face.
‘Don’t you remember?’ she murmured through the fiery curtain. ‘How he issued the order that saved Chang An Lo’s life when he was in the hands of the Nationalists. That was the reason Alexei had to flee Junchow. The Nationalists wanted revenge on him. He gave up everything to help me. To save Chang An Lo for me.’
Popkov uttered one of his dismissive grunts. ‘He’s still a bastard.’
Lydia raised her head, realised this was a battle she could not win, and dug up a lopsided smile for him. ‘Maybe you’re right, you old bear. I’m sorry I shouted. He is a bastard – in more ways than one.’
Liev laughed with such a boom the window pane fell out.
Rooms were scarce. Peasants were flocking into the city. Lydia had been astonished by their numbers and they all wanted rooms. She had watched them wandering the streets, up and down the Krasnoselskaya, a blanket under one arm, a pair of boots or a sack of tools slung over their shoulder, anything that they could sell or barter in exchange for food. She’d learned to recognise them. It wasn’t just their homespun clothes and their big-knuckled hands, but the bewilderment in their eyes. Is that what hers were like too? Uncertain. Nervous. Rolling loose in her head.
‘Why did they leave their villages?’ she asked Elena as they waited in line with their ration cards.
‘Why do you think? They’re starving out there in the communal farms and they’ve heard there are jobs to be had here.’
‘It must be true because there are factories going up all around us. It’s part of Stalin’s Five Year Plan.’
‘Exactly.’ The woman lowered her voice. ‘But they’re peasants, for God’s sake, they don’t know the first thing about operating machinery. If they can press the on and off buttons, they’re doing well.’
‘Aren’t they trained?’
‘If you call losing a finger training, yes. When they’ve lost one, they don’t make the same mistake again.’
‘How do you know all this?’
Sometimes it astonished Lydia how much this woman knew. Lydia had heard little about her life except that she’d had a child and fallen into whoring.
‘It’s the one bloody thing I’m any good at,’ Elena had chuckled one night when they passed a prostitute parading the street. She’d slapped Lydia on the back with relish. ‘Don’t get any ideas. No one would want a skinny runt like you.’