The Master of Rain Part 40

Field found it impossible to answer. It seemed to open up too many other questions. She stood and took his head to her stomach. When he straightened and put his big arms around her, he noticed, for the first time, a picture of the tsar and tsarina on the mantelpiece above the fireplace on the far wall. It was a formal picture, Nicholas in military uniform, his wife in a long white lace dress. Natasha followed his gaze.

She walked to the closet and turned. "I know a cafe in the Concession which will be open. It is early, we will not be seen."

She took a long red dress from the closet, more suitable for dinner than breakfast. She slipped it over her head and then turned her back to him, to allow him to do up the b.u.t.tons. It was well made, elegant, and obviously expensive.

Natasha searched for her keys in the silver pot by the door and then stepped out into the dark hallway, her heels noisy on the stone floor. Field looked at his watch. It was five o'clock in the morning, but he had never felt less tired in his life.

In the lift she checked herself in the mirror, rearranging her hair. He touched the curve at the bottom of her back and she gripped his hand and smiled at him.

Outside, there were no rickshaws, so they walked beneath the streetlamps that still brought only a dim glow to the streets.

Field took her hand and she held his for a moment before letting it slip free. She did not smile at him, and now that they were in public, her mood seemed to have cooled.

"Did somebody hurt you?" she said.

"What do you mean?"

"Always so angry." She imitated him. "Shoulders hunched, fists bunched. Like a boxer!" Their footsteps kept a steady rhythm. "Tonight you are smiling and it is better."

Field didn't answer.

"Why did you come to Shanghai?" she asked.

"To escape. Like everyone."

"To escape what?"

"Just to escape."

"Your family?" She took his hand again briefly, glancing about her, a teasing smile at the corner of her lips. She seemed much younger suddenly. "Why do you care about Lena . . . about me?"

Field did not answer. The first glimmer of dawn was visible through the leaves of the trees. Thin shafts of light fell across their faces as they walked beside the gracious houses with their angular, corrugated tile roofs and small attic windows still lingering in semidarkness.

"You have family here?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"But you left-"

"My mother died when I was a little girl, my father before we left Russia, my sister of tuberculosis here."

"I'm sorry."

They turned into Avenue Joffre and stopped by a family sleeping together in a huddle against the window of a jewelery shop, two young children sandwiched between their parents. Natasha reached into her pocket and slipped a note under the father's hand. Field could see the man was an opium addict; his eyes were drawn and haunted, his skin pallid and yellow. The children and the mother were so thin that the bones in their faces seemed ready to break out of their skin. "Your uncle should do something for the poor of this city," she said.

Field looked at her. "My uncle?"

"Your uncle is the munic.i.p.al secretary, no?"

"How did you know that?"

She laughed. "So you you can find out about can find out about me, me, but not the other way around?" She shook her head. "They do nothing, the businessmen here, only pillage it, like . . . pigs. All for big business and their own pockets, while so many starve." but not the other way around?" She shook her head. "They do nothing, the businessmen here, only pillage it, like . . . pigs. All for big business and their own pockets, while so many starve."

"Yes," he said, not wanting to argue.

"They live in their big houses and offices and clubs and they pretend this world does not exist."

"It's the same everywhere."

"But worse here. I do not believe anywhere is worse than here. So much wealth, so much suffering. Worse even than Russia."

"That's a surprising view, given-"

"Why surprising?"

"I thought your family was driven out by the Bolsheviks."

"That's ideology. Ideology is the enemy of humanity." She stopped and faced him. "You make a war with Lu, but for the Chinese, your leaders are worse than he is."

"I don't think-"

"He gives back. He is an animal, but for the Chinese a leader. The others give only back to Europe."

She turned away.

"You lived in Kazan?" he asked.

She shook her head dismissively and walked on. "It was a long time ago."

"In the picture-"

"I do not like to talk of it."

"You still feel-"

"It was all too long ago, another life."

"You came here with your sister."

"Yes."

"You were close to her."

Natasha smiled. "She was older, but she was shy and kind and a little timid. She always looked after me. Papa called her the little mouse." She frowned. "But it was an affectionate name."

"What was her real name?"

"Please. Enough." She smiled at him softly. "Tell me about your family."

Field stared at his feet. "My mother and sister live in Yorks.h.i.+re. My sister is married, but they have no children."

"And your father?"

"He's dead."

"I'm sorry. It was long ago?"

"About a year."

"He was ill?"

"In a way, yes."

"In a way?"

Field hesitated. "He committed suicide."

There was a sharp intake of breath. "So sad."

"That's one way of looking at it."

She turned to him, confused. "You did not love him?"

"No."

She stopped again. "You sound so hard."

"Not as hard as he was."

"He hurt you?"

"Mostly my mother."

She looked at the ground, then moved on again. "Now I understand a little more."

"Understand what?"

"About you." She sighed, almost inaudibly. "Why so angry."

The cafe was opposite the Siberian Fur Shop and it had only just opened. Behind the counter, a grumpy, overweight Frenchman with a long gray mustache eyed Natasha in a manner that irritated Field.

They sat in the corner, at a small round wooden table, and watched the dawn gathering beyond the window, a red sky chasing away the remnants of yesterday's storm. Field ordered coffee and a croissant and Natasha borscht and black bread.

"What kind of man was he?" she asked.

"Does it matter?"

"To know you-" she shrugged-"it matters."

Field thought for a moment. He looked out of the window again. "He wanted me to be an accountant or a missionary and he was the worst combination of both."

"And you are neither."

"His father was a shoes.h.i.+ne boy, and for him, there was no margin of error." Field held up thumb and forefinger so that they were almost touching. "One mistake, no matter how tiny . . ."

"He was a missionary?"

"He acted like one. My mother came from a well-to-do family, and her parents believed she had married beneath herself. She grew up in a big house with plenty of servants, and they didn't think my father was worthy of her." Field sighed. "He was an accountant, but he was ambitious and he started a business selling hosiery. The shops always struggled and I don't remember . . ." She leaned forward to touch his hand. "Neither of them ever smiled. I don't recall them appearing to be anything other than miserable." Field withdrew his hand and leaned back, not wanting the intimacy of someone else's touch as he recalled the past. "Sometimes my father would come home in a terrible temper and we would be sent out of the room and then he would push Mother until they began to argue. He would shout louder and louder." Field could hear their raised voices as if they were in the next room, and he wanted to put his hands to his ears as he had done so often as a boy. "The next morning my mother would have bruises on her face."

Natasha looked at him with concern in her eyes.

"What about your your father?" Field asked. father?" Field asked.

Natasha shrugged. "He died of a disease . . . something . . . we never quite knew." She waved her hand. "It was a long time ago."

"But it doesn't feel like it."

She shrugged. "Life is sometimes sad."

"And sometimes happy."

She smiled. "Sometimes."

Thirty.

How old were you when your mother died?" he asked.

"Seven."

"Do you remember her well?"

"Remember, but not so well."

"She was beautiful."

"I'm not beautiful."

Field did not dignify this with a response.

"Tell me more about your father," she said quickly, as if trying to move him away from her own past.

Field felt that there was something stilted about their conversation that was not present in their lovemaking, as if only in bed could they shed the thousands of barriers, seen and unseen, that separated them. And yet, he reflected, the purity of emotion was the same. Here he felt as he had all night. He wanted to know about her and perhaps she him, but their questions were oblique, their answers wary. He looked out of the window. "He's dead."