The Russian Concubine Read Free

warm bile swept up from her empty stomach. In the center of the yellow smear of liquid that spread out on the snow’s crust lay two tiny cotton packages, each no bigger than a hazelnut. At a gesture from the officer, a bearded soldier scooped them up and handed them to him. They sat, dirty and damp, in the middle of his black glove.
    Valentina stepped closer. ‘Diamonds,’ she said proudly.
    He scraped off the cotton wraps, eagerness in every movement, until what looked like two nuggets of sparkling ice gleamed up at him.
    Valentina saw the greed in his face. ‘One to buy my daughter. The other for my husband.’
    ‘I can take them anyway. You have already lost them.’
    ‘I know.’
    Suddenly he smiled. ‘Very well. We shall deal. Because I have the diamonds and because you are beautiful, you shall keep the brat.’ Lydia was thrust into Valentina’s arms and clung to her as if she would climb right inside her body.
    ‘And my husband,’ Valentina insisted.
    ‘Your husband we keep.’
    ‘No, no. Please God, I . . .’
    But the horses came in force then. A solid wall of them that drove the women and old men back to the train.
    Lydia screamed in Valentina’s arms, ‘Papa, Papa . . .,’ and tears flowed down her thin cheeks as she watched his body being dragged away.

    Valentina could find no tears. Only the frozen emptiness within her, as bleak and lifeless as the wilderness that swept past outside. She sat on the foul-smelling floor of the cattle truck with her back against the slatted wall. Night was seeping in and the air was so cold it hurt to breathe, but she didn’t notice. Her head hung low and her eyes saw nothing. Around her the sound of grief filled the vacant spaces. The boy with dirty blond hair was gone, as well as the man who had been so certain the White Russian army had arrived to feed them. Women wept for the loss of their husbands and the theft of their sons and daughters, and stared with naked envy at the one child on the train.
    Valentina had wrapped her coat tightly around Lydia and herself, but could feel her daughter shivering.
    ‘Mama,’ the girl whispered, ‘is Papa coming back?’
    ‘No.’
    It was the twentieth time she had asked the same question, as if by continually repeating it she could make the answer change. In the gloom Valentina felt the little body shudder.
    So she took her daughter’s cold face between her hands and said fiercely, ‘But we will survive, you and I. Survival is everything. ’

2
    Junchow, Northern China
July 1928

    The air in the marketplace tasted of mule dung. The man in the cream linen suit did not know he was being followed. That eyes watched his every move. He held a crisp white handkerchief to his nose and asked himself yet again why, in the name of all that’s holy, he had come to this godforsaken place.
    Unexpectedly, the firm English line of his mouth dipped into the hint of a smile. Godforsaken it may be, but not forsaken by its own heathen gods. The lugubrious sound of huge bronze bells came drifting down from the temple to the market square and crept uninvited into his head. It reverberated there in a dull monotone that seemed to go on forever. In an effort to distract himself, he selected a piece of porcelain from one of the many stalls shouting for business and lifted it up to the light. As translucent as dragon’s breath. As fragile as the heart of a lotus flower. The bowl fitted into the curve of his palm as if it belonged there.
    ‘Early Ch’ing dynasty,’ he murmured with pleasure.
    ‘You buy?’ The Chinese stallholder in his drab grey tunic was staring at him expectantly, black eyes bright with feigned good humour. ‘You like?’
    The Englishman leaned forward, careful to avoid any contact between the rough-hewn stall and his immaculate jacket. In a perfectly polite voice he asked, ‘Tell me, how is it you people manage to produce the most perfect creations on earth, at the same time as the foulest filth I have ever