As he disappeared under the archway she sank her forehead against the glass, trying to freeze out the thoughts in her head. But not the anger. She needed that. Because it was not anger at Dmitri Malofeyev, it was at herself. She groaned long and loud and thumped her forehead against the pane as if she could force the images away. The feel of his lips. The spicy scent of his cologne. The hot flutter of his breath on her face. His fingers gentle on her breast.
Where did it come from, this treacherous pleasure she’d felt? She hated him. But worse, she hated herself.
The bathroom was cold, so cold Lydia could see her breath. A naked light bulb hung from the ceiling like a dull yellow eye and a finger of damp was creeping down one wall, blistering the paint, as if something was living under it. It wasn’t Lydia ’s evening for a bath, the use of which was on a strict rota, so she stood on her towel to keep her feet warm and stripped off her clothes.
Her skirt. Her cardigan. Her blouse. Her undergarments. She dropped them in a haphazard pile on the floor and stood naked in front of the washbasin. Her eyes meticulously avoided the small square of mirror above it because she couldn’t bear to see up close what betrayal looked like. What colour it was. What shape it took. What holes it chiselled in a person’s face. She ran the cold water and started to wash herself.
At the end of ten minutes her skin was sore and she was shivering, but her hands finally stilled. She’d realised it wasn’t the dirt on the outside that mattered, it was the dirt on the inside and she didn’t know how to get at it.
37
The bathroom was warm. The Hotel Triumfal looked after its privileged guests well, and Chang An Lo heard Biao’s intake of breath when he walked in and set eyes on the gold taps with their chrome and marble fittings. Biao’s own accommodation in the hotel was somewhat humbler, down on the second floor, a small room above a noisy bar. Chang shut the door behind them and turned on both taps in the washbasin and then in the bath. Water flooded out in a rush, spurting around the shining porcelain, gurgling down the plugholes, filling the small space with swirling and splashing, the water pipes juddering.
‘Now, my friend, let us talk,’ Chang said in an undertone.
‘Is it safe?’
‘Half the time I think the listeners are asleep.’
Biao still looked wary. His long arms moved restlessly at his side like bamboo leaves in the wind, his dark eyes roaming the tiled walls. Chang was thankful that he’d brought this young companion with him to Russia – and not just because it removed him from the battlefields of China and allowed his father to sleep at night. Biao was the shield at his back. He needed him.
‘Don’t disturb your thoughts with concern about the listeners, my brother,’ Chang said. He brought his lips close to Biao’s ear. ‘In this waterfall they are deaf anyway. But when Kuan said words that were ill-chosen yesterday, neither she nor I were questioned about them. I am certain the bearded ones find our Mandarin sounds as hard and unruly on the ear as we find their Russian ones.’
Biao nodded.
Chang spoke quickly. ‘There is a way out through the bathroom window, across the roofs. I need you to go out into Moscow unobserved. You must go now, before it is time for the dinner they have planned for us tonight.’
Biao nodded again, black eyes bright. ‘The bearded ones have wits as slow as a worm. It will be no problem.’
‘Thank you, my friend. Xie xie.’
For a moment they listened to the water.
‘Is this for the fanqui girl?’ Biao asked at last. ‘The one you danced with?’
Chang was surprised that Biao would question him, but he nodded. His young companion rearranged his face, sucking in the walls of his cheeks.
‘Comrade Chang,’ he muttered, ‘I offer my humble opinion that it is not wise to take such risks for a foreign devil, a fanqui. She is clearly not worth-’
Chang stiffened, a lengthening of his muscles, no more. But it was enough.
Biao lowered his head. ‘Forgive my worthless tongue. It does not know when to be silent.’
‘It was always so,’ Chang laughed. ‘You have not changed.’
‘Of course it is my pleasure to perform whatever task will be of assistance to the friend of my heart.’
‘Thank you, Hu Biao.’
‘It’s just that I…’ He stopped, his head still bowed, so that the tendons at the back of his strong neck were pulled taut.
‘What is it?’ Chang asked.
‘My tongue has no ears to listen or to learn.’
‘Finish what you wish to say.’
Hu Biao lifted his eyes and with their upturned lashes and hooded lids they reminded Chang sharply of Biao’s father, Hu Tai-wai, the man to whom he owed so much; the man who was his father in all but name. He felt a rush of affection for his young companion.
‘Spit out the words, Biao, or I shall be tempted to push my fist down your throat and drag them out myself, the way your mother pulls pups from a bitch.’
He laughed and saw Biao take a breath, followed by a faint shiver of relief, and for the first time it occurred to Chang that his childhood friend viewed him with fear as much as with love. That saddened him. Had the war turned him into someone he no longer recognised? Had he left the best of himself on the killing fields of China?
‘Biao, let me listen to your words of advice.’
‘The gods have taken good care of you, Chang An Lo. Don’t tempt them to forsake you because you have swapped their attention for that of a long-nosed foreign devil.’
‘I have promised them much already. I have sworn it in the proud name of my ancestors.’
‘No, my comrade. The gods are fickle. Stay with your own kind. Come back to China and marry my sister Si-qi. You know how much she loves you.’
Chang smiled. ‘The beautiful Si-qi already has my worthless heart and that of many others too. I will always love her sweet face and her wise mind.’
‘Then marry her.’
‘I can’t.’
‘It’s what my father and mother would wish with their dying breaths.’
‘Ah Biao, that is cruel. You know I can refuse them nothing.’
For a long time the two men looked into each other’s eyes with only the sound of the running water between them. It was Hu Biao who finally looked away.
‘What is it you need, Chang An Lo?’
‘I need a room.’
Edik returned late in the evening looking pleased with himself, puffing out his bony chest, and Lydia gave him a hug before he could object. He handed over the note in a hurry, as though he had somewhere else to be, then he and the pup disappeared.
The note contained an address and a street map. The map was drawn by hand and she imagined Chang sitting in his hotel room, carefully sketching the lines for her so that she’d make no mistake. There was no Dearest Lydia and no signature on it. Nothing that could be traced to them.
Just four brief words at the bottom. You are my life.
Lydia waited until she heard the snores of Liev and Elena, thickened by Malofeyev’s bottle of vodka, and only then did she slide out of bed.
The room was black, the window blacker. Outside the night sky had disappeared, no moon, no stars, just an emptiness that looked as if it had swallowed the city. Quickly Lydia pulled a bundle from under her bed and dressed herself in several layers of Elena’s jumpers and skirts, one squeezed on top of the other, until she was fat and bulky. Only then was she satisfied.