“Your uncle is the municipal secretary, no?”

“How did you know that?”

She laughed. “So you can find out about 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.”

“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 Yorkshire. 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 café 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 shoeshine 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 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.”

“Was he like you? Not the cruelty, I mean but-”

“Albert Field had a platitude for every occasion.”

“Tell me one.”

“Honesty is a cloak to keep out the chill of loneliness.”

She frowned.

“In his eyes, if you’re honest, you’ll always have something to hold on to, no matter what the world chooses to strip from you. You will always have your integrity and a sense of self-worth and value.”

As he watched the color draining from her cheeks and realized what he’d said, Field wondered if, subconsciously, he had chosen the quote deliberately.

“So part of him was a good man?”

Field did not answer.

“I think you are your father’s son, Richard.”

Natasha was suddenly subdued and withdrawn as the café owner brought their coffees on a round wooden tray.

“And you,” he said. “Are you your father’s daughter?”

“I am glad he did not live to see Shanghai.” She sat up straight. “What will you do with me?”

“He was in the army.”

“What will you do with me? You have discussed it with your colleagues?” She was nervous and suddenly uncertain at the intrusion of the real world.

“What do you do for him, Natasha? You go to his house?”

“I do not want to talk about it.”

“I’m afraid you’ve got to tell me exactly what happens.”

“It is my business.” He thought the defiance he could see in her eyes was in fact fear.

“Has he ever shown any violence to you? Has he ever hit you or-”

“He does nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Sure.”

“Why does he-”

“Why do you want to know?”

Field continued to stare at her.

“I go… Always the same. To his house. There is a telephone call and I go down. I am shown to the room on the first floor by his bodyguards, and there I wait. Then one of the housekeepers comes down. Sometimes it is a long time. One hour, two. More.”

“You’re alone in that room?”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“Then I am taken upstairs, and the housekeeper-always the same, a Chinese woman wearing a uniform-she tells me to begin. At first, she explained, I must take my clothes off slowly and then, when he waves his hand, I can go.”

“The housekeeper withdraws.”