The Master of Rain Part 51

Field nodded.

"She was never the same. There was no laughter." Natasha stared at him. Field wasn't sure what she expected him to say.

"I won't be like that, Richard. I won't lie down and die."

"Lena believed she could escape."

Natasha sighed. "The last few weeks, she was more like her old self, just a little. It is hard to say what I mean, because there was so much we did not-could not-talk about. The past-you think it binds us, but it's not like that. It seems black, do you see? It all seems black. What we have lost-it is so terrible, and the present so bleak, that we can never talk about it. Sometimes with others, if they had lived in Moscow or somewhere else, then it is possible to discuss the past or talk about the revolution. But not to Lena, because we had known each other too well."

"Because there is no escape?"

"Of course. But Lena believed. And-"

"You think it was a mistake?"

Natasha didn't answer. She was staring out of the window.

"Your father died in Russia?"

For a split second he saw the uncertainty in her eyes as she turned to face him and tried to recall what she had previously said. He wished immediately that he had not spoken. "On the s.h.i.+p," she said.

"You buried him at sea."

"No, in Harbin."

Field wanted to ask if she ever went up to see the grave but thought it a subject best left alone.

She smiled at him. "You are a good listener."

He shrugged.

"Few men know how to listen." She paused. "It is strange. Once, I would have been your equal. Now, if you took me to one of your clubs, you would be thrown out in disgrace."

"I'm not a member of any clubs."

"No, but-"

"And I doubt I was ever your equal."

Natasha did not respond.

"I don't think running hosiery stores matches up to being a tsarist officer."

"I told you, Richard, there is no shame in being poor."

"There is when it matters more than life itself to be rich." Field shook his head. "My father sank so deep into debt that his only escape was to blow his brains out."

"But you admired him."

"No."

"But you loved-"

"I hated him. Hated what he did to my mother, to us, to himself." Field stared at his hands, trying to contain his anger.

"How can this be so?"

"If your relations.h.i.+p with your father was different, then you can count yourself fortunate in that, at least. Mine was incapable of valuing what he had, or of not overvaluing what doesn't matter, and the result was that he carried his anger within him. You say your father was soft; well, mine was hard. He would come home from work and the atmosphere in the house changed, as though someone had flicked a switch. We had to be quiet or we would be beaten, my sister and I. If we didn't put our toys away, we were beaten. If he caught us talking after our lights had been put out, then we would be beaten. I say we, but it was usually me, and all the time, my mother did nothing."

Field realized he'd said more than he'd intended but now could not stop himself. "She would never say a single word. She would come in and soothe us, put her hand on my brow as I was crying and say that she was sorry, and the more she did that, the more I hated her, too." Field was staring at her. "You don't want to hear this."

"I do." Her face was white. She put her hand on his and he tried to withdraw it, but she gripped it fiercely. "No."

"You said-"

"I don't care."

Field ripped his hand free and glanced around the empty room. He bent his head. "I don't know why I'm telling you this." He lit a cigarette, his hand shaking. He leaned back.

"They're your family, Richard."

"It's extraordinary how anger can sustain you. My whole life, until I came here, was like a s.h.i.+rt that didn't fit. I didn't come here to escape, I came here to begin again-to forget, to discard everything that had gone before." He looked at her. "You cannot go back. I don't want to. We're a perfect match."

Field sighed. "He always used to say, 'Don't be fortune's fool, Richard. Whatever you do, don't be fortune's fool.' "

Thirty-seven.

Ten minutes after leaving the French Club, she led him through a pair of wrought-iron gates and down a stone path that ran along the edge of an enormous, well-tended garden. It was so peaceful here that they could have been miles from the city. The house was tall, with a dark roof and narrow windows, and covered in ivy.

The woman who opened the door was small and rotund, perhaps about fifty-though it was hard to tell-her graying hair held back by a red peasant scarf. Without saying a word, she took Natasha in her arms and hugged her hard and long.

"This is Richard," she said quietly. The woman smiled at him, her face flushed. He stepped forward to offer his hand, but she took him, too, into her arms, with such vigor he thought his ribs would crack. She stepped back into the kitchen. "Ivan," she shouted.

There was a grunt from within.

"Look who has come to see us." Her English was heavily accented.

Ivan was thin and angular, with a hook nose and a chin thick with stubble. "Natasha," he said, transformed by her presence and repeating his wife's greeting, suddenly boyish in the way he walked and smiled. He offered his hand stiffly to Field as they were introduced and gave him the stern look of a prospective father-in-law.

"Come, come," the woman said. She took his arm and led him to a large table in the middle of the darkened kitchen. Ivan glanced anxiously at the clock on the wall. "There is time," his wife scolded him. "It is Natasha." She looked at Field and smiled.

Field smiled back.

"I wish to know all about you. Some tea?"

"Tea, yes, that would be wonderful."

"All."

"There's not much to tell . . ."

"You are shy. Natasha has never . . ." She looked at Natasha, whose face burned red.

"You are from a good family?"

"Katya . . ."

"You have a good education?"

"His uncle is the munic.i.p.al secretary," Natasha said. Katya looked at her husband and garbled at him in Russian. They both nodded with satisfaction and Field knew that he'd pa.s.sed some kind of test.

He eased himself back in his chair and caught sight of a picture on the shelf behind them. It was a recent formal photograph of Natasha, taken with the clock of the Customs House in the background. She was standing next to, and had her arms around, a young boy of five or six. They looked happy.

She followed his eyes, then stood suddenly and moved in front of the picture so as to block his view. "We really should go," she said, her head bowed. Field saw the shock in the old couple's faces as they realized their mistake, the easy familiarity of a moment ago evaporating in an instant.

He stood, mumbled a good-bye, and slipped through the house before following her retreat back down the stone path.

"I must be mad." She turned to him once they'd reached the street, a new determination in the set of her chin. "For me, it is-"

"He's your son."

"No." She shook her head forcefully.

"For G.o.d's sake."

"On my mother's life, I swear it." She stared at him. "I made a mistake," she said. "I started to dream again."

"I don't think you understand . . ."

"It is you who do not understand." Her expression darkened. "Why will you not believe me when I say that I am not free to love you? What I have done I had no right to do."

He stepped toward her.

"No," she said firmly. "Go now. I have some things I need to tell them."

Field took a step back, but still hesitated.

"Good-bye, Richard," she said, and went back inside, shutting the wrought-iron gate behind her.

Field watched her go, willing her to look around, but she did not.

Thirty-eight.

Field set about the record books in the Immigration Department with renewed energy, burying himself in his work, frustration and anger driving him until lack of sleep began to overtake him.

The sweat settled on his brow and it was as much as he could do not to lower his head onto the book in front of him.

He took numerous cigarette breaks and, all through them, Pendelby plowed on, never seeming to lose concentration, until he stood and announced he would be breaking for lunch. Field was suddenly alone in the room, listening to Pendelby's retreating footsteps on the stairs.

He leaned back in his seat, wiped his brow again, and cursed the heat silently. He stood and walked along the corridor and down the stairs to the back of the immigration counter, where he asked the woman politely if he might be able to borrow a telephone. She took him through to her office.

Field called Yang and asked if he had any messages. There was one from Caprisi, asking him to ring back. Field stared at the phone, then picked up the receiver and asked the operator if she would again put him through. The taste of betrayal was in his mouth. He thought himself a fool to have trusted anyone here.

"Caprisi, it's Field."

"Polar bear."

There was an awkward silence.

"You called me," Field said.

"Yes, where are you?"

Field hesitated. "The Immigration Department."

"Hunting for addresses?"

"Yes."

"Well, keep hunting. Macleod has called it off; the door-to-door boys were being tailed."

"By whom?"

"The French."

Field could hear the sound of his own breathing.

"Still there, polar bear?"

"Yes."

"You're very quiet again."

"Am I?"

"Are you all right?"