He touched her cheek. His fingers rested there and she leaned against them, the weight of her head in his palm. A murmur escaped her lips, a wordless sigh that shuddered up from deep within her, and without warning his arms curled around her. He held her so tight against his chest that neither could breathe. His hand pulled off her hat, dropped it to the ground and cradled the back of her head, fingers moving in the dense waves of her hair. A low moan rose from his lungs and brushed the skin of her temple.
They stood like that. No words. No kisses. No greeting. Unaware of where they were. And when they’d been still so long that a vole scuttled past their feet, pattering over the black loam, Chang An Lo lifted his head and smiled at her.
‘My love,’ he said softly, ‘you have brought my soul back to me.’
She kissed him. Breathed in his breath, tasted his tongue. Grew aware of his hunger for her. She felt her skin come alive again, though until this moment she hadn’t even realised it was dead.
They walked, arms close around each other’s waists, hips touching, feeling their bones and muscles relearning how to be one instead of two. Back across the patchy grass and over the trodden snow, towards the circus tent where people were milling around.
A moment earlier, when they had sat down on Chang’s coat in a buttery patch of sunlight slanting through the trees, a man in leather trousers with four children, all twig-thin, had come barging through the undergrowth gathering firewood. He was bundling it up with the help of the swarthy urchins into a stack on his back, held there by a leather strap. From their colourful garb and bright neckerchiefs Lydia guessed they were part of the circus. Chang had put a finger to Lydia ’s lips. It smelled clean and fresh, and she’d kissed the knot of scarred flesh where his little finger used to be. The man didn’t even see them but his presence was enough to dispel the sense of privacy, so they’d risen to their feet, picked up her hat and reluctantly emerged from the shelter of the trees.
‘You look well, Lydia. It pleases my heart to see it.’
‘You look alive.’ She glanced sideways at him. ‘It pleases me to see that.’
He smiled, that slow inward smile she had not forgotten.
‘How is the war in China?’ she asked.
‘There is much to tell and much to ask,’ he said without answering her directly, his arm holding her close against his side as they walked. He shortened his stride to hers; she lengthened hers to his.
‘Questions like how did you become part of the Chinese delegation? ’
‘And what happened on your journey across the Russian steppes?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘ Lydia, my love, I can see it in your eyes. That things happened. ’
As their footsteps faltered on a patch of snow, their gaze fixed on each other.
‘And Kuan?’ Lydia asked quietly. ‘Is she part of your delegation? Or part of your life?’
‘And the Soviet officer with the wolf eyes? Is he an element in your nothing much?’
They smiled at each other and let it go. She thought she had remembered everything about him but she was wrong. She had forgotten the way she felt herself change when she was with him, slowing the blood in her veins and the thoughts in her head. She became more like the person she wanted to be.
‘No questions,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Later.’
He kissed her hair. ‘There will be a later.’
They strolled on towards the circus tent, their movements in rhythm with each other, but the fact that he’d felt the need to reassure her there would be a later instantly raised doubts in her mind. Her throat grew tight and she fought back sudden tears. What was going wrong? She was here with Chang An Lo, his arm around her waist, his ribs rising and falling in time with her own, the long muscles of his thigh stretching and shortening next to hers as they walked, and they were speaking in English. This was everything she had longed for day after day, month after month. So… what was wrong?
It was the words. They felt like burrs between them, as if their bodies remembered but their tongues had forgotten, no longer able to find the words to share. She leaned her head on his shoulder, her ear on the strong line of his collarbone. Ignore the words. Ignore the questions. Listen to his heartbeat instead.
One side of the tent slapped noisily in the wind as they approached it, harsh as a whipcrack, and a man in a short padded jacket and torn rubber boots came out with a wooden mallet and a handful of iron pegs. He knelt on the ground and started to hammer one of the rope loops into the ice-bound earth.
‘Are there any animals?’ Chang asked in Russian.
‘Round the back.’ The circus man didn’t look up.
‘Spasibo.’
The question surprised Lydia. She didn’t know he had an interest in animals. Back home in China when she showed him her pet rabbit, he’d wanted to eat it. That memory made her smile. They stepped over the guy ropes and followed a well-trodden mud path that skirted the tent and led to a row of wagons at the back. The vehicles were painted in great splashes of colour with designs of circus acts – a lion tamer curling a whip, a ballerina upside down on horseback – and though most of the trucks were closed up, several had their sides pinned back to reveal cages within. A rope fence stretched several feet in front of the bars to deter the public from approaching too close.
Lydia could see why. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘lions.’
In one of the cages lazed two lionesses, their big square heads resting on their front paws, their tawny eyes half closed, their coats shaggy to keep out the cold. An interested group of people had gathered in front but a small boy was trying to drag his father over to the next cage. Lydia glanced at Chang. His attention was also on the next exhibit and his black eyes possessed something that hadn’t been there before, a kind of focusing himself in the moment. She looked across at the cage and behind the bars a massive male tiger was standing with muscles tensed, defiantly glaring with yellow eyes at the spectators. He was utterly magnificent. He snarled silently to reveal fangs that turned Lydia ’s stomach. She noticed Chang take a step closer.
‘You are drawn to danger,’ she said.
His body stilled. She saw it. As if he’d slowed his heartbeat at will. He spun round to look at her, turning his back on the wild creature, and reached out to lift a lock of her hair and let it trail through his fingers like flames.
‘I only put my hand in the fire when I have to, my love.’
‘Coming to Moscow,’ she gestured towards the scrubby patch of wasteland where they were standing, and the tired-looking tent, ‘and coming here today, it seems to me that’s putting your head as well as your hand in the flames.’
He shook his head, saying nothing at first, but his black eyes drifted back to the tiger and stayed there. Lydia was jealous of the animal.
‘I came,’ he said softly, ‘because I had to.’
‘Because Mao Tse Tung ordered you to?’
Ignore the words.
His gaze flicked abruptly back to her face. It brushed against her with a touch that was almost physical, over her hair, the planes of her face, the neat curve of her ear, the fullness of her mouth.
‘I came,’ he said again, ‘because I had to.’
She didn’t ask for more.
Instead she looped her fingers around his. ‘How did you know I was in Moscow?’
‘I didn’t. I knew you were in Russia. That was enough.’
‘ Russia is a big country, Chang An Lo,’ she laughed. ‘I could have been anywhere.’