These things he absorbed to join those parts of her already living and breathing inside him. Her hair – which he had touched a thousand times in his dreams – was longer, and he allowed his fingers to trace its fiery ends where his hand lay on her back. A small, recent wound had not yet healed on the skin of her pale hand where it nestled like a bird in his palm. Yet she was still his fox girl, still Lydia.
But there were changes in her. In her eyes. The loss of her mother, of her home, maybe even of himself, had done something to her. There was a sadness at the back of her eyes that hadn’t been there before and he longed to kiss it away. She moved differently as well, more from her hips like a young woman, not like a girl any more. She had grown up. While they had been apart his fox girl had matured at some deeper level that he had not expected, and it grieved him to know he had not been there to keep the bad spirits from stealing her laughter.
He had deserted her – though he’d sworn it was only for as long as it took to fight for the future of China, and for the ideals that were wrapped around his soul. Denying himself. Denying her. Communism had demanded everything of him and he had given it.
But now… now things had changed.
‘I’ve missed you.’
She breathed the words softly. He inhaled them. Did not let them go.
‘I have missed you too, Lydia. Like an eagle misses its wings.’
She didn’t smile as they drifted round the room. It seemed that her smiles were not as easy to find as they used to be in China, but her eyes never left his face.
‘Lydia, my love.’
He felt her tremble. Saw the pulse at the edge of her delicate jaw.
‘Lydia, I am watched every moment. The Soviet wolves circle our delegation day and night, wherever we go, regulating who we speak to and what we see. They will not let our delegation be contaminated.’ His thumb imperceptibly stroked one of her fingers. Her eyes flickered, half closed. ‘If we are seen together you will be seized, taken to the Lubyanka for questioning and not released.’
For the first time during the dance she smiled at him. He wanted to touch her face, to feel her skin.
‘Don’t worry, my love,’ she said, barely above a whisper. ‘I know what you are saying. I won’t put you in danger.’
‘No, Lydia. Don’t put yourself in danger.’
‘I feel safe now. Like this.’ For a moment she let her head tip back with pleasure, the way a cat will when stroked on its throat, and her hair danced free and unfettered. ‘Here with you.’
Their eyes clung to each other.
‘We must stop, my love,’ he told her.
‘I know.’
‘Others are watching.’
‘I know.’
‘Look away.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Then I must.’
‘Don’t.’ She blew a gentle puff of air from her lips to his, more intimate than a kiss. ‘Not yet.’
They were locked together in silence as they danced. With a strange, unfamiliar movement he guided her across the floor, turning her again and again the way he’d seen others turn, so no eyes other than his own could remain on her face for long.
‘Where are you?’ he murmured.
‘In your arms.’
Her eyes were laughing, though her mouth was under control.
‘I meant where are you living?’
‘I know.’
He smiled. To release her would be unthinkable. Unbearable. ‘Your address?’
‘Unit 14, Sidorov Ulitsa 128. In the Sokolniki district.’ She raised one eyebrow at him. ‘Near a tyre factory.’
‘It sounds…’
‘Inviting?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you? Where are you?
‘In the Hotel Triumfal.’
Her lips parted, revealing the soft pink tip of her tongue and her strong white teeth. With the appearance of clumsiness he stepped on her foot, withdrew his hands from her and bowed low.
‘My apologies. I am no good at your dancing. I suggest we return to our comrades.’
She said nothing. Smiled politely. But he saw her swallow, saw the effort it took. As he escorted her back to the table where the Russians and Kuan were waiting, he could hear her breath. Feel it pulling the air from his chest.
31
The hostel was stiflingly hot. Alexei shifted position. He was stretched out on a narrow bed, blanket kicked to the floor. Uncertain whether to feel good that with his last few kopecks he had managed to secure a bed for the night, however seedy the place, or annoyed that the water pipes slung along the side of the wall were always rattling and boiling hot. And the fleas, thousands of the bastard things. How did such minuscule bloodsuckers possess a bite as big as a rat’s? And the heat was making the bites worse. He sat up.
‘Comrade,’ he said to the man on the bed right next to him, ‘does it ever get cooler in here?’
The man didn’t look up. He was sitting in just his vest and pants, picking at the hard layers of dead skin on his heels with intense concentration and dirty fingernails. Beside him lay his tattered socks and an open pack of Belomor cigarettes.
‘Nyet,’ he said as he flicked a yellow strip of skin to the floor. ‘It gets hotter at night when all the beds are full.’
‘Full of fleas, you mean.’
The man chuckled. ‘The little fuckers. They drive you insane.’
The room was a dormitory of sorts with ten beds pushed close together, but no other furniture. Any belongings were thrust under the metal bed frame or tucked under the wafer-thin pillow for safe-keeping while you slept.
‘Comrade,’ Alexei said, ‘for four cigarettes I’ll trade you one good sock.’
The man glanced across and grinned. He patted the Belomors. ‘I got them off a tovarishch for minding his horse and cart for an hour.’
Alexei peeled off his own unwashed sock and dangled it in the air at arm’s length. ‘Three cigarettes?’
‘Done.’
‘And a match.’
‘I’m feeling generous. You can have three of them.’
Alexei tossed over the sock. He’d have to find a rag to wrap around his foot or he’d get frostbite outside in the streets. A sock for three cigarettes? Not a good deal, not sensible. But there were times when sense was no more welcome than fleas.
Moscow was greedy. It was a city in a hurry, tearing down old streets, constructing new buildings on a scale that made its inhabitants’ heads spin. It had once relied on the textile industry to maintain its growth, but now factories of all kinds were stealing every spare scrap of space and cramming workers inside their walls in three-shift rotas. It was happening at a rate that some warned would empty the fields of Russia and bring food production to a standstill.
Alexei walked its streets in the dark, smoking the first of his cigarettes. He inhaled slowly, relishing the taste of it. It was his first cigarette for over a month. The stale overheated atmosphere and the fleas at the hostel had eventually driven him out for some clear night air, and despite one cold foot in his galoshes he was enjoying familiarising himself with the city.
Moscow’s street system was made up of a series of concentric circles, at the heart of which crouched the Kremlin like a red spider with a vicious, poisonous bite. The Arbat was the prosperous area where upmarket cafés, well-stocked shops, lice-free cinemas and spacious apartments could fool a person into thinking there was no such thing as rationing or empty shelves or shirts being traded in street markets for half a loaf of bread. Street lights gave the main roads an aura of civilised safety, though the pavements were often narrow and the mounds of ice against the walls so thick that at times Alexei was forced to pick his way along the road instead. But he would turn a corner and find himself in what felt more like a village than a great capital city. In these districts the roads were unpaved and boasted no streetlamps, just old-fashioned buildings with wooden front steps and outhouses.