He smiled, and lit a kerosene lamp — I hadn’t realized it was getting dark despite it still being afternoon. “You be well now,” Trubkozub the elder said. “And if you ever need any furs or pelts, you know where to come.”
I promised I would, and ran after Volzhenko, my new fur boots squeaking on the smooth snow, colored lavender by the long slow shadows.
The tavern was noisy, smelly, warm, and welcoming. The rotmistr presided, as one would expect, over several tables pushed together. It was a Roman bacchanal in spirit if not in exact letter, and there was shouting and singing and spilled wine and awkward dancing cut tragically short by gravity, the cruel mistress of drunks and children.
Right away, I realized that as much as the rotmistr was always kind and welcoming, I would be better off trying to find some food by myself rather than joining the party already in progress. A young man, his dirty apron betraying his occupation as a scullery helper, loitered by the kitchen door but did not dare to venture into the tavern hussars had taken over so completely. I smiled at him. “Say, fellow,” I asked. “Is the kitchen still open?”
He scratched his freckled button nose thoughtfully. “The cook is there, only he has some friends with him since no one here seems to care and winters are generally slow. But go right in, see if he will make you something.”
I pushed the door and entered a cloud of steam smelling of sesame oil, and plowed through the dense artificial fog toward the sound of voices speaking Chinese.
I found the cook and Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi sitting around a thick wooden slab all the way in the back of the kitchen, next to a vast sink filled with boiling, steaming water, and a busy day’s worth of dishes. A woodstove blazed with red flames, and crackled with the resinous sap of the pine and fir branches.
“Hussar Menshov!” Kuan Yu cried out in English. “We wondered if you would be along with your fellow hussars. Have you found Mr. Bartram?”
I shook my head. “I worry the English have him, but I found no trace of him.”
Liu Zhi gave me a penetrating look. “You got here fast enough; you didn’t look for long.”
“I fell ill,” I said, and felt my cheeks blaze with shame.
Kuan Yu whispered to his friend and smiled at me. “Do not worry,” he said, reassuring. “Do not pay attention to Zhi — he’s a busybody. Here, meet our friend Woo Pei, the cook here.”
I shook hands with a very tall and very thin Chinese gentleman, who wore his hair braided in a long queue. His lips pressed tightly together, lest a word or a smile escaped from them.
“I hear you make great pot stickers,” I said.
He nodded. “My fame precedes me. Or rather, it escapes my kitchen and wanders about looking for new customers. Sit with us then, as I was about to make food for my friends. You are welcome to join us, but you mustn’t get angry if we speak our own language.”
I shrugged. “Why would I be? Surely if it is something that concerns me you would tell me. Correct?”
Woo Pei said something in Cantonese, and the three of them laughed. I busied myself taking off my new furs and watching Woo Pei boil water in a copper kettle, and pour it over flour. He mixed the dough and kneaded it with his long, thin fingers, then cut it into small pieces and flattened them. With minute, precise motions that seemed more suited to a watchmaker than a cook, he chopped onions and mixed them with ground meat and sesame oil, dusted the mixture with potato flour, and stuffed all the tiny dough circles with meat.
Before I knew it, he was heating a large iron skillet. As it hissed and sputtered oil, he dropped perhaps three dozen of the tiny meat dumplings into the skillet. He then poured water over them, covered the skillet, and sat down with the rest of us.
“Five minutes,” he told me in Russian, and then went back to talking with Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi. By then, the aroma of onion and meat had grown strong enough to distract me from any other thoughts but how hungry I was. Jack was an afterthought now, as I concentrated on not looking too impatient.
The pot stickers were delicious — fried golden on one side and steamed perfectly otherwise, served with brown salty and spicy dipping sauce, they seemed to me a most delicious meal I had ever tasted. I always got such an impression when eating after a long hike or a protracted riding lesson, something about the combination of physical exertion and fresh air made even the simplest food taste divine, a joy meant to be savored only infrequently, distinct in my memory from all the other mundane, everyday meals.
After the four of us had finished eating, I sat back in my chair, enjoying the pleasant sensation of fullness and warmth, accompanied by the first twinges of fatigue. I listened to the three Chinese men, and imagined myself back in the comfortable confines of the Crane Club, its vast windows gilded by the setting sun, its mysterious tiny machines and airship models humming and whirring, the tiny jointed wings folding and unfolding like paper fans…
Two words pulled me abruptly back into the tavern kitchen in a brand-new Siberian town. The words Taiping Tianguo stood out clearly in the otherwise incomprehensible speech.
I sat bolt upright and leaned over the table, as if sheer effort of my will would be enough to decipher the indecipherable syllables, and I wished I had learned Cantonese back in St. Petersburg when there was still someone to teach me. As Eugenia had warned me when I was just a child, no one grew up with no regrets; the best one could do was to make sure one’s regrets were not stupid.
Woo Pei noticed me straining to understand, laughed softly, and spoke to Kuan Yu, his gaze still lingering on mine. I felt rather like a dog, trying so hard to understand what the men around me were talking about, and vaguely hoping for something good, trying to discern their mood from their intonation — but their language was so alien, everything sounded the same.
Kuan Yu finally turned to me, and if I had a tail, I would’ve wagged it in relief and jubilation. “Apologies,” he said. “Woo Pei is away from home, so we tell him what we know about the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace. We also tell him about your Englishman, because everyone who travels through this town, they come here to eat and talk. At least, when there are no hussars around — they make it too noisy.”
“Well?” I sucked in my breath and leaned back, my hands fisted in the pockets of my britches, trying to feign impatience I did not feel. “Will he tell me if he’s seen my friend or not?”
Kuan Yu smiled, his anthracite eyes narrowing like those of a sated cat. “He hasn’t,” he answered. “But we have something we found in your compartment, after you left in Yekaterinburg. A letter.”
“Give it to me!” I cried, forgetting all proper decorum and reaching out with both hands, like a child. “Why haven’t you told me?” Relief and fear alternately lapped at my heart, making it soar with hope that this was my lost letter, my confession that did not belong in anyone’s hands but mine, and then plummet with grief when I thought that it was nothing, a useless scrap discarded by the previous passengers, a train schedule, a nothing.
Kuan Yu smiled still. “If I give that letter to you, will you do something for me?”
I heaved a sigh. Everyone wanted the same thing — information. Who spied on whom, why the British were forming alliance with the Turks, why there had to be a war… if only I could answer such questions to anyone’s satisfaction. It was intimidating, really, to realize how little I knew, and how little business I had meddling with forces and powers too great for anyone, least of all me. “What do you want?”
“Nothing much. Just your word that you do not mean to harm us, to harm the Taiping.”
I smiled, relieved. “I… we mean no harm, I swear to you. We want an alliance between China and Russia, because both are in danger of aggression from the West.”