‘‘That will be fifteen patacas and thirty avos, Senhor Pinto,’’ Nadia said, placing a varnished box of Culebras cigars into a paper carrier bag.
‘‘We should spread our magical wings and glide away together,’’ he whispered, slipping her a few notes and coins.
With Iain gone so long, a number of men, including the magistrate Senhor Pinto, had started to take an interest in Nadia again.
‘‘Perhaps,’’ continued the short, little man with the skin-crackling smile. ‘‘We can start by taking a stroll by the Praya and enjoy the sunset.’’
‘‘I’m very busy with the shop. With Uncle Yugevny semi-retired, I’m running it now.’’ She glanced at her ledger. As it happened, she’d learned much in the past three months: how to manage inventory and stocktaking, how to gauge seasonal demand, and what it meant to secure credit from a bank. She’d even taught herself to replace the lever at the side of the cash register, which allowed the till to ring again.
Senhor Pinto placed his hand on top of hers. His skin felt cold and lizard-like. ‘‘I have some embroidered handkerchiefs for you. Beautiful little cranes and swans, all satin stitched. Not as beautiful as you though.’’ Nadia felt her insides shrink. ‘‘May I give them to you?’’ he asked, twirling his moustache.
‘‘You are too kind, Senhor Pinto, but I prefer not.’’
‘‘Why? You think I am too old?’’
‘‘Handkerchiefs bring on tears,’’ she said.
‘‘Nonsense, you think me old. But I am young. Look, look at this musculo!’’ He flexed his arm, urging her to squeeze his bicep. ‘‘Every day I do muito exercicio.’’ She pictured the old man huffing and puffing in his bathroom, pulling on his spring-loaded contraption, dressed only in his underpants. The image made her smile broadly.
‘‘You see?’’ he said. ‘‘Pinto can melt even the most frigid heart.’’
Senhor Pinto kissed her hand and bid her farewell just as Mamuchka and Yugevny emerged from the paint-chipped corridor. As always, Mamuchka was dressed in a long-sleeved, black organdie dress. ‘‘Adeus, Olga,’’ he called, making a hasty retreat. ‘‘I’m off to court.’’
‘‘Adeus, Pedro.’’ Mamuchka sat in her usual chair by the teapoy in the corner. ‘‘More offerings of handkerchiefs?’’ she asked.
Nadia nodded, jotting some numbers into her ledger before returning to her Christmas project.
‘‘Why are you wasting your time with window displays?’’ said Yugevny.
‘‘I’m trying to make the shop less stuffy, more modern. A display with a Christmas tableau will bring in more customers.’’
‘‘Well, I think it is stupid. This is a tobacconist not a toy store.’’
‘‘It’s called progress.’’
‘‘Progress? Progress died when they murdered the Tsar.’’ He went off in a huff.
Nadia shook her head. She’d spent most of the morning working on the window display, giving it a bright, nativity theme. There was a marble painted in gold to symbolize the guiding star. A lush carpet of hay forged from Montecristo cigar labels. Papier mache wise men wrapped in silver leaf. She’d even formed the words Feliz Natal and Happy Christmas out of cigar bands, draping the banner over the window frame.
When the shop bell tinkled a few moments later, her mother offered a pebble-voiced welcome. Without looking, Nadia continued with her task, pinning paper poinsettias to a strip of silk bunting.
‘‘Mamuchka,’’ she said, ‘‘can you serve the customer.’’
‘‘But ish you I wish to speak weeth,’’ the voice announced in English. ‘‘I have something to geeve you, Senhora.’’
She turned and saw Fernando Costa standing by the door, his huge bulk almost dwarfing the glass cabinets that housed the porcelain jars and briarwood pipes.
Costa bowed his head. From somewhere deep within his enormous overcoat he fished out a letter.
‘‘The deeplomatic bag arrived this morning with mail from the north.’’
‘‘The north?’’ Her eyes widened with expectation.
‘‘In it wash thees letter addressed to you.’’ He held the envelope high in the air.
She took a step forward, reaching out. ‘‘Give it to me.’’
Costa continued to hold it above his head, out of Nadia’s grasp. ‘‘Not until you tell me something first.’’
‘‘Let me have it!’’
‘‘Where ish Iain? Tell me where he ish heading?’’
‘‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen or heard from him in four months. You’re his friend, surely he must have confided in you.’’
‘‘No. I shuspect he did not tell me because he knew that I would try to dishuade him.’’
‘‘Well, I don’t know where he is.’’
‘‘Are you shoor? He didn’t mention anything about Manchuria?’’
‘‘It will probably say in the letter.’’
‘‘It doesn’t.’’
‘‘You mean you’ve already read it?’’
A desultory grin. ‘‘Of course.’’ He handed it to her. ‘‘The letter came via the British Consulate in Dairen. Sent almost five weeks ago. Did Iain ever tell you where he wash going, what he wash planning?’’
Nadia hesitated. ‘‘Months ago,’’ she said, frowning, ‘‘he mentioned my father.’’
‘‘Your father?’’
‘‘He mentioned going into Russia to rescue my father. But I never believed …’’
‘‘Putanheiro! He’ll be shkinned alive! No wonder there’s been no word.’’
‘‘Are you saying Iain’s gone missing?’’
Costa looked her straight in the eye. ‘‘It appears that way. None of our stations have heard anything since Dairen.’’ Nadia stared at Costa. ‘‘The theeng is, you shee, we want to inform him that he can return to Macao. You remember the man who was trying to kill him, Utaro Takashi, the head of the Golden Tiger secret society? Well, he hash been deported, handed over to Osaka police. Iain can finally come home.’’
The day after Christmas; a powder-blue sky. Izabel’s boys were playing football in the square and the church bells rang long into the morning. Nadia, alone in her bedroom in Macao, at her bureau, cut off by brown curtains from the world, surrounded herself with old photographs of her family.
She drew open the brown curtains. The sun was lifting off the horizon. There was a telegram from the Great Northern Telegraph Co. on the chenille bedspread. Nadia stared at the piece of frail, blue-tinged paper. With her index finger she traced the words one by one. The days and weeks without Iain had become a wasteland. A chasm had been left behind. After an eternity of waiting and more torturous waiting, living day after day without word, the communiqué had arrived wholly without warning. She had to read and reread the message over again and again if only to convince herself that it was no lie. Not wanting to cry but ultimately unable to stop herself, she cleared her throat and heard her own quivering voice announce once more:
ARRIVING MACAO ON MERCHANT NAVY SHIP TAIBU EVENING DECEMBER 26 STOP VERY MUCH LOOKING FORWARD TO HOT BOWL OF PORRIDGE STOP IAIN
Finally, after 152 days she would be able to hold him once more, feel the muscles of his arms envelope her, wrap her in his love. It had felt like a lifetime; she was determined never to be apart from him again.
She shrugged back her shoulders, momentarily feeling a nervous pressure infect her. She ought to have been ecstatic, yet something hot and troubling was making a home inside her chest. That’s when it struck her. Why was there no mention of her father, she wondered. Why had Iain left this vital question open and unanswered?
Nadia gathered up the jade monkey pendant and her piece of cloudy glass, shaped like a crown – her two most prized possessions – and pressed them to her lips. She gazed up at the image of the Virgin, hanging on the north-east corner of the wall, and said a prayer to Saint Nikolai Chudotvorets and to the Holy Mother of God, thanking them both for their miracle-making. After crossing herself and bowing to the waist, she scooped up the telegram and raced down the stairs to see her mother.
Nadia found Mamuchka sitting in the hallway by the kitchen, a console table at her elbow. It was well beyond noon yet she hadn’t changed out of her billowing, tasseled nightdress, its plumes rising and falling with her breathing; she looked stranded, like a marooned jellyfish, the piled, flouncy cloth of her dressing gown resembling the blue float of a Portuguese man-of-war. She was in a plain wicker chair that looked out of the tiny window and onto the street below. Her body, her posture, was held rigid, her face taut. In her hands she held the bowl of soup Izabel had given her an hour earlier. The soup was untouched, cold now.
Nadia placed her hand on her mother’s back. Olga Shashkova raised her head and looked into her daughter’s eyes. They both smiled hugely. Nadia brought the jade monkey pendant to her mouth with satisfaction and kissed it, just as Mamuchka emitted a great, staggered sigh. She did this several times, drawing in a great breath and sighing, as if breathing was a struggle for her.
‘‘How do you feel?’’ Nadia asked.
‘‘Oh, the way any wife would feel if she was about to meet her husband again after twenty years. Terrified mostly.’’
‘‘Mamuchka,’’ she said, hinting at caution. ‘‘There was no mention of Papashka in the telegram.’’
‘‘Your father is with Iain, Nadrichka.’’
‘‘Mamuchka, please, I urge you … don’t build your hopes up.’’
There was a moment’s pause. The sounds of the streets emptied into the house, voices floating in from the cobblestoned lanes. Nadia, restless and intimidated by her mother’s stillness, by her laboured breathing, needed to break the silence. ‘‘What are you thinking about?’’ she eventually asked.
‘‘What, right at this very moment?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘I was just thinking whether we ought to make up the spare bedroom. We’ll need to change the bed linen. Otherwise where will your father sleep?’’
‘‘Won’t he be staying in your room?’’
‘‘I haven’t laid eyes on him for almost a quarter century! I can’t share my bed with a nyeznakawmets, a stranger!’’
Not for the first time Nadia felt disjointed. For years she had reeled away from the heartache and grief of losing a parent. Now, all of a sudden, his resurrection was staring her full in the face. What would she say to him? Should she hug him, kiss him? Maybe Mamuchka was right, she realized. Perhaps he was a stranger, an outsider – there was no way of guessing what type of man he had become.
‘‘You know,’’ said Mamuchka, ‘‘your father always hated travelling on boats. He would always get terribly seasick, poor soul. Do you think he will be alright on this merchant navy ship?’’
Nadia shook her head and smiled. She relieved Mamuchka of the cold soup. She didn’t know this about her father – that he suffered from seasickness. There must have been dozens of facts about him that she didn’t know. Would she be discovering dozens and dozens more similar facts in the coming weeks, she wondered? She placed the soup bowl on the console table and with her hands she massaged her mother’s shoulders, working the tension out of them, saying, ‘‘Let’s go see what the ladies are preparing for Iain’s homecoming, shall we?’’
Along the hall, within the kitchen, Mrs. Lo, Izabel and her two children were putting up Chinese characters in red ink, posting eighty-eight symbols of Shou (longevity), Fu (good fortune) and Ai (love, affection) across the wall and trailing them all the way down the stairwell to the ground floor. Nadia saw that the best silver was laid out and the food – two thick loaves of fresh white bread, steamed buns, a suckling pig flavoured with sea salt, a tureen of caldo verde, a dish of roasted almonds, garlic mussels, sausages with green beans, marinated herrings, a fat wedge of imported Portuguese cheese called Queijo da Ilha, a mountain of quavering strawberry jelly, some fruit and three bottles each of red wine, beer and seltzer – was spread out on the kitchen table. There were also dainty bowls full of eggs dyed red with yen chih, for luck, placed in each corner of the room.
When Mamuchka saw the range of dishes she gasped and said, ‘‘Bawzhemoy! Are we expecting a regiment of soldiers?’’
Mrs. Lo clapped her hands with brio and said, ‘‘Ayah! We forget to cook fish. Fish is for good luck. I should cook fish for your hussbun and give him the cheek to eat!’’ then she said to Mamuchka, ‘‘Olga, what year your hussbun born in? If he born in year of pig, we must all wear purple colours for good luck.’’
Taken aback by the question Mamuchka had to think hard about this, before concluding, ‘‘1865 … he was born in 1865 …’’
‘‘Him an ox! Wahhh! He a very speshow man! He very stable husband with strong heart like a bull! My son Lennox is a dragon. He also a very adaptable and careful character.’’
Mamuchka smiled and said, ‘‘Vek zhivi, vek uchis – you live and learn.’’
‘‘Maybe I still have time to buy fish,’’ said Mrs. Lo. ‘‘One with big cheeks.’’
During this exchange, Nadia had to remind everybody three times that there was no certainty that Papashka would be on the boat. ‘‘Iain might be alone,’’ she said.
‘‘What?’’ said Mrs. Lo, now resigned to opening a can of sardines. ‘‘You think Iain will come back empty handed? Like a beggar? Choy! Dakka laisee! Oyo, I no think so!’’
Nadia challenged everyone with her eyes. ‘‘All I’m saying is we might be disappointed.’’
Izabel who had been silent for some minutes decided to speak out, arching her already arched set of eyebrows higher. ‘‘Look, whatever happens, we know that Iain is safe. Isn’t that what really matters?’’ She rubbed Nadia’s arm. ‘‘Am I right?’’
But who would she actually prefer to have back, Nadia wondered, Iain or her father? She thought about this for several seconds. Iain was her future. Her father was her past. If she had to choose between them she would opt for her future. She felt grateful to Iain, she felt committed to him. Yet something perverse made her hate him for going into Russia, for putting himself at such risk.
‘‘Am I right?’’ Izabel repeated.
Nadia nodded.
‘‘Do you think we need more wine?’’ said Mrs. Lo, ‘‘We better buy a few bottles of vinho verde … and some fyercrackers, maybe some flowers too.’’
‘‘Camellias would look just doocky!’’ said Izabel.
Mamuchka, who was torn between rapture and apprehension, tried and failed to get into the spirit of things. She said, ‘‘Yes, flowers would be nice. No yellow ones, though, and make sure you buy odd numbers. Russians believe that even numbers are for funerals.’’
Moments later Uncle Yugevny entered the kitchen. He gave out a yelp of delight when he saw all the food. ‘‘Oughtn’t we be celebrating by now? Where is the wodka?’’
‘‘The boat doesn’t dock for another four hours!’’ said Mamuchka.
‘‘So? I am thirsty!’’ he said. ‘‘By the eyes of the domovoi, since when did a Fillipov need a reason to haff a drink?’’
‘‘The joy of Russia is drinking,’’ said Nadia, quoting Prince Vladimir, the 10th century Russian monarch.
‘‘And without drinking we cannot be,’’ finished Uncle Yugevny.
‘‘We could have a little port, I suppose,’’ said Nadia.
‘‘Phooey!’’ said Izabel. ‘‘Why have a little when we can have a lot.’’
Taking his cue, Uncle Yugevny uncorked a bottle of Sandeman and started filling glasses to the brim, Cossack-style. As he did so, he broke into song. He sang a melody about old Mother Russia. After a while, they all shared in the singing, including Mrs. Lo, who tried her hand at Cantonese opera.
Sitting around the kitchen table, laughing, they all decided a second bottle of port would be a bad idea. Instead they passed around the dish of roasted almonds, and debated whether they should all go to receive Iain at the pier or if it should be left to Uncle Yugevny to meet the ferry alone.
Three hours and a bottle of red wine later it was determined that Uncle Yugevny would go and the women would stay behind and wait. Nadia, her mouth as dry as a communion wafer, applied some make-up to her eyes and changed into a pale yellow cotton dress with an Empire waist and a short hem. She looked into the mirror and took it straight off, putting on a Cheruit-inspired dress instead. Tiny butterfly wings were beating wildly in her chest. She felt vulnerable and squeezed with anxiety.
In the cavernous entrance of their home, under the crystal chandelier, surrounded by red Chinese symbols and taffeta party balloons, Nadia and Mamuchka stood by the front door. They watched the entrance and the shadows that passed along the window, not quite knowing what they expected to see, listening out for the footsteps that would echo in a brand new, uncertain world. They gripped their sides with their arms.
Inhaling a breath, they heard a hand rattle the doorknob from the outside and a key being inserted. The doorknob twisted.
Their ribs felt crushed.
They did not cry. They would not cry.