I shook my head, still marveling at the sensation of breeze on my bare neck. “It’s better than being alone in a strange place. If Nightingale and her underlings catch up with us, I’d much rather you be here than behind a wall.”
“Safety in numbers,” he agreed.
I finished wrapping the letters into a silk scarf I had purchased on our way to the tavern earlier that day, and wrapped the scarf in butcher’s paper. This way, a casual inspection would present the package to be a modest gift. I even enclosed a note saying, “Dear Auntie, I hope you like this scarf. All is well. Love, Sasha.”
We ate some cold bread soup, fortified with no small amount of sour cream, and started on the potatoes and fried fish.
“There has been a great deal lot of paper sent back and forth,” I said somewhat unintelligibly, since the food in my mouth interfered with the clarity of my enunciation.
“This is what politics is all about, I think,” Jack answered. “Paper. It’s a good thing you have a letter from Wong Jun — it should help us.”
I thought of how sad Wong Jun looked in his cell. “Yes, it should. But we also need to remember his advice: while we are in China, we will be judged by their laws.”
“Ignoring that is what brought on the Opium War,” Jack said, “although the Chinese call it the Unfair War — and it was. The English are… uninterested in behaving in any manner contrary to their own immediate benefit. It’s a national shortcoming.”
“Chiang Tse mentioned an official in Canton,” I said. “Lin, I think — Commissioner Lin. Lin Tse-Hsu. He wrote letters to your queen, and he said again and again it was wrong to smuggle opium, that profit was a poor excuse for spreading such misery. He thought that if only she knew about it, she would stop the trade on moral grounds. I thought it fascinating that someone expected others to forego self-interest for the sake of doing the right thing.”
Jack shifted uncomfortably on his bed, the plate on his bony knees tilting perilously before he steadied it. “I was not proud to be English when the war started. However, Lin and the rest of the Qing are not so innocent — just ask your Manchu friend.”
“I know about the Han people not liking the Manchu,” I said. “I know they conquered East Turkestan. But you studied philosophy, you know that this is a poor rhetorical maneuver: whatever the Chinese had done does not justify what the British did.”
Jack looked suitably chastised and continued picking at his supper in silence. I finished mine, addressed the package, and headed down the stairs to hand it to the courier.
The tavern was full for dinner, mostly with merchants and an occasional freedman. The owner and his contingent of waiters — all greasy young men in long aprons that once were white at some point in their tragic existence — hurried to and fro with dishes of borscht and heaping plates of pickled herring and boiled potatoes, sauerkraut and thick slices of bread.
“Hey, poruchik!” a loud voice came from behind me and I turned, feeling my stomach turn to ice, afraid to see the Nikolashki or Nightingale’s spies. Instead, there were three hussars sharing a table in the corner, and they all gestured at me happily.
I held up one hand indicating I had some urgent business but I would join them as soon as I could, and went to look for the courier. He — a tall thin man whose face expressed great doubt that there was anything in the world at all worthwhile — took my package.
“Request a response,” I said. “When will you return?”
“I take a train tonight,” he said. “Return tomorrow, early afternoon.” So he would be taking the same train we did; it seemed reassuring. “Any instructions in case you have to unexpectedly leave?”
I pressed a few silver coins in his palm. “Yes. Forward as fast as you can in care of the stationmaster at Nizhniy Novgorod.” The courier nodded and even managed a wan smile once he counted the coins. With that, he disappeared, leaving me with nothing else to do but talk to the hussars.
Judging by the color of their faces and the empty vodka bottle in front of them, they were sufficiently inebriated. While Eugenia enjoyed an occasional nightcap of brandy with lemon, I had never picked up the habit of distilled spirits. It occurred to me however that in my male guise I could attempt it with minimum of judgment.
“Which regiment?” the tallest and burliest of them greeted me. He also had the most impressive mustache, and I almost felt dejected over my sparse stubble. I was sure a youthful lieutenant would have felt that way.
“Semyonovskiy,” I told them. A well-rehearsed lie.
They all nodded, and the burly one offered me his hand. “Rotmistr Ivankov,” he said. “And these here dolts are Cornets Petrovsky and Volzhenko.”
I shook hands as firmly as I could, but doubted I inflicted any damage.
“Sit and have a drink with us,” the Rotmistr said.
I nodded my agreement. The rotmistr looked like one of those people it was easier to say “yes” to than explain why you didn’t want to have a drink with him.
The rotmistr ordered a round, and as we waited, the conversation took on a familiar form — we compared places of birth and length of service (I decided not to lie too much and pegged mine at six months, which provoked gales of laughter). The rotmistr in his thirties and the cornets in their twenties were clearly not old enough to had participated in the Patriotic War of 1812 —they had not even been born — and regretted it. Yes, they had traveled abroad — mostly to pacify whatever natives protested the construction of the railroads or somehow found themselves unhappy the empire’s influence had reached them. And wherever it was, there were these friendly, loud, drunk men on horseback, ready to burn houses and do unspeakable things. By the time four glasses filled with vodka arrived, I felt that I needed a drink.
I had seen people drink before, and I tossed my shot back rather confidently and took a quick bite of one of the thoughtfully supplied pickles to keep from coughing.
They asked me about my life and I answered truthfully that I traveled with a friend — an Englishman, I hinted, of considerable importance. I was his local guide but said I could not tell them more.
They nodded that they understood, and I could almost see the ideas forming in their skulls, the slow, laborious movement of minds used to only the simplest of operations — they saw my uniform and heard the word “Englishman,” and assumed I was on a secret mission of a great military and governmental importance. In fact, I was. In any case, I was grateful to be spared any additional lying. They started talking about their squadron — Rotmistr Ivankov was their leader— and I, relaxed by alcohol and warmth and fatigue, let my mind drift.
I thought of my conversation with Jack and wondered if I had been too harsh with him. If, really, one could not help but take the side of one’s country. And then I thought of the letters to the queen written by Commissioner Lin, and I felt so angry — one of the passages Chiang Tse quoted to me from memory spoke of sameness, of how essentially alike the Chinese and the English were. It was the English and the Russians who kept denying the similarity, and instead they found Professor Ipatiev and others like him who wrote stupid books about beastliness of everyone who was not them.
The word “Turkestan” caught my attention and brought me back to the table. My new friends spoke of their impending departure to that distant province, and lamented the fact it would take the cavalry so much longer to get there than the train.
“We’ve been there before,” the rotmistr told me, his voice made soft and intimate by alcohol. “You won’t believe what it’s like there, lad — steppe, yes, but also a desert. Not a single tree as far as the eye can see, just golden dry grass and red clay ringing under the hooves and the blue mountains on the horizon.”