Amber

by Stephan Collishaw

  Approaching my block, I glanced up over the trees, and searched among the hundreds of windows for my own. The cool light of the weak sun, veiled by clouds, reflected from the window, open slightly to let in a breath of air. Having mounted the stairs, I paused for a few moments outside the door of the apartment, listening. The idea of going into its silent emptiness sent a shiver down my spine.

  Suddenly, crushingly, I missed my little daughter’s face, the soft sound of her breathing in the night, the tight clench of her small hand on my finger. I missed Daiva, the sweetness of her scent, the gentleness of her touch, the light ring of her laughter, which I had not heard in months.

  I turned the key in the lock, quickly opened the door and stumbled inside. The apartment was cold and felt forsaken. I unscrewed the top of a bottle of vodka, and raised it to my lips, not bothering with a glass. The liquid was cool on my tongue and then the heat flared up from my stomach, burning its way to the back of my throat. I took another gulp and felt the pain in my chest receding, the tightness of my skull loosen.

  I lay back on the sofa and closed my eyes. My breathing came more easily now and the pain had gone. I listened to the hiss of tyres on the road eight storeys below, the low throb of engines, the calls of children playing outside, a broken melody being picked slowly from a piano in the apartment above.

  I thought back to the late October days of two years before. After some years together, in an attempt to solve some of the problems and tensions in our relationship, Daiva and I had married in the autumn. Vassily and Tanya witnessed our wedding. October had faded in a pale blue haze of bonfires that hung in the still air, in soft reds and the rich yellow of the leaves of the oaks and maple twisting to the earth in slow, dancing loops, crinkling under foot.

  On the first of December Daiva woke early and ran to the bathroom. From beneath the sheets I could hear her vomiting. I pulled on a dressing gown and hurried to her. Her face was a pale shade of green. Carrying her back to bed, I tucked her beneath the sheets. When I returned from the kitchen with coffee and a glass of water, she was retching again, into the bin beside the bed.

  ‘I think I’m pregnant,’ she said, falling back against the pillows.

  I lifted the covers and undid the buttons of her nightdress. Her body was warm. I ran my fingers down her chest to her belly. There was no sign anything had changed, no evidence of the miracle at that moment occurring in her body. I laid my head on her stomach and listened to the low gurgles of her digestive system, trying to imagine what was happening inside there.

  ‘What do you think?’ she said, her voice laced with concern.

  ‘What do I think? Daiva, it’s wonderful.’

  ‘You don’t worry it is all too soon?’

  I lifted myself up so my chin was resting on her soft belly and gazed into her sleepy face.

  ‘No,’ I said. And truly I felt that. The past dropped away from me, the need for a past, a history. Everything lay in the future, in the slow growth of the seed within her womb, the development of its limbs, the swell of her belly-life, new life, gestating within her. All concern suddenly lay in the months and years ahead, not in the years that had gone.

  By the time the worst of the winter was over, the swell of Daiva’s belly was noticeable. Her whole body seemed to blossom, like a bud on the first spring flowers, defiant of the frost, shooting up from the dark, cold earth, at first a bulging, tight calyx, then growing, swelling, the leaves stretching stickily around the maturing petals.

  And as she grew and we felt the first tentative kicks against the inside of her womb, the stretch of the baby’s limbs, and as the days grew longer and brighter and the maples and birch budded beneath our windows, I allowed myself to believe I could hold back the darkness, that the fear would not return. When an engine misfired, when the telephone crackled suddenly and sharply, when a child screamed as I stood in the queue in the store and the cold prickling sweat jumped out on my forehead and my heart raced, I would stand aside, hidden in the shadows, and take a quick mouthful of the spirit in the small metal flask Daiva had given me for Christmas. Just one mouthful, to feel its heat burn its way up from my stomach, blistering my fear. Just one mouthful and then I would step back into the queue and make believe nothing had happened.

  Daiva gave birth in the late summer. On each of the five days they kept her in the maternity ward, I went and stood beneath the window. Each time I came, she held the small parcel of blankets up for me to see. On the fifth day she stood in the hospital entrance, the plaster crumbling from the walls around her.

  When I approached, she held out the bundle. I felt the light weight of the baby in my arms. Still so small. I kissed the little bulge of her cheek and her eyes flicked open and looked up at me. Her eyes were dark and honest, they examined me, her brow furrowing seriously. Her lips opened and she uttered a little growl and struggled beneath the tightly wrapped blankets. My heart leapt.

  ‘She’s saying hello,’ Daiva whispered, close beside me.

  We drove back to the apartment and lay on the bed, the three of us, as the sun sank slowly behind the apartment blocks. Carefully I unwrapped Laura, allowing her to roll and flex her arms and legs. She squealed with pleasure. I gave her my thumb and her tiny fingers wrapped themselves around it, gripping it with a surprising strength. After a while she began to cry and Daiva fed her. I watched as the feverish sucking gave way to a soft pull at the nipple, a thin blue trail of milk dribbling from her full lips. Her eyes flickered and closed. Daiva’s eyes closed, too.

  A little later, levering myself up from the sofa, I changed my clothes, transferring the fifty-dollar bills to the wallet in my new jacket. To get to Santariskes Clinic required taking a trolley bus into the centre of the Old Town and another back out to the outskirts of the city. I had contemplated telephoning the hospital, but realised I would get nowhere without the crisp American bills. Before I left the apartment, I telephoned Tanya to check she was OK. The telephone rang and rang but there was no answer.

  I walked quickly to the trolley-bus stop, glancing over my shoulder, nervous of being watched, not relaxing until I had boarded the number 16 into the Old Town, certain I had not been followed.

  Santariskes Clinic is spread over a large area with many different buildings. After only a moment’s hesitation, stepping down from the trolley bus, I turned to my left and entered the main reception area of the hospital. A middle-aged woman sat behind a desk, reading.

  ‘I’m looking for a friend,’ I said, approaching her. ‘What ward?’ she asked, not looking up from her book.

  ‘That’s what I don’t know,’ I said, forcing a jovial smile on to my face.

  She glanced up, an irritated crease furrowing her brow. ‘What is your friend in for?’ she asked, not attempting to hide her frustration.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I confessed. I smiled again, hoping futilely to find a chink in her steely demeanour.

  For a moment she looked at me as if I were a cretin.

  ‘So how am I supposed to help you?’ she barked, openly aggressive now.

  I sighed. I had little energy to go wandering around the many buildings of the hospital, hoping someone might have heard of, or remember, Kolya.

  ‘It’s like this,’ I said. ‘A friend of mine wrote me a letter. I haven’t seen him for some time. The address on it was Santariskes Clinic – he was here, but I don’t know if he still is.’ I began to remove the letter Kolya had sent Vassily from my leather case, but already I saw her eyes sliding from me, the features of her face stiffening as she turned her attention away.

  ‘Please,’ I said.

  I opened my wallet and slipped out one of the fifty-dollar bills. I let her see it. ‘I really need to find this friend,’ I said. ‘I would be most grateful if you were able to help me.’

  When she looked at me again, her eyes were full of contempt. She snapped shut the book on the counter in front of her. It was, I noticed, a cheap Western romance translated into Russian.

  ‘What are you w
asting my time for?’ she said. Her eyes darted to the fifty-dollar bill half concealed in my fist. ‘Go and take your American money to the whores at the Hotel Lietuva.’

  Her voice began to rise and I glanced around nervously. A few heads had turned in the large, under-lit reception hall.

  ‘Kolya Antonenko,’ I continued. I folded the letter, revealing only the address at the top, and pushed it across the scarred wooden counter towards her. ‘Perhaps he is still here. It is vitally important I find him…’ I hesitated for a moment, considering what story would convince her. ‘A very good friend has died,’ I tried, pinning my hope on this truth, ‘a comrade from Afghanistan. We all fought together. The funeral is in a couple of days.’

  The receptionist exhaled slowly, releasing her breath through clenched teeth, so that it hissed like a tyre deflating. She looked at me frankly, aggressively, then turned on her heel and disappeared into the office behind her. I looked after her, unsure whether she had been convinced or not. For some minutes I stood there, by the counter. I could hear her voice, muttering angrily, as she moved about the office, whether to somebody else or herself, I could not tell. I was about to turn and go when she reappeared. She glanced at me as if amazed and irritated to still see me standing there.

  Pushing a pad across the counter, she picked up her romance again.

  ‘Name,’ she said.

  I paused, unsure whether she wanted my name or Kolya’s. She was engrossed once more in her book and did not look as if she wanted to be disturbed. I wrote Kolya’s name neatly in Russian and Lithuanian characters on the paper and pushed it back across to her. She did not look up or take the paper.

  There was a low bench against the wall on the opposite side of the reception hall and I wandered across to it and slumped down. Vassily’s funeral was indeed in two days’ time, Tanya had told me. I thought of him, asleep in the morgue. Soon he would be interred in the dark earth. Vassily, who had nursed me back to life, who had given me the means by which to survive, who had rebuilt my past and given me a reason to look to the future.

  I glanced across at the receptionist. A nurse had stopped by the counter and the two were talking animatedly. I stood up and wandered across to the doors, looking out across the large tarmacked parking area towards the trees.

  Ghazis, I thought, recalling Vassily’s words. It was in Ghazis in the Hindu Kush. You remember it? Yes. Of course you do. I hitched up my sleeve, slightly, almost unconsciously, and stroked the tender skin, the raw pink flesh. Flickering in the thick glass of the hospital reception hall window I saw the dance of flames, the dark swirl of smoke. Ghazis. There are things he should have told you, Kirov said, the kind of things a friend would have told you. What is there I need to know? I thought. I knew too much already, more than I ever needed to know, more than I could bear to know. And there was no honour in knowing those things.

  A tap on my shoulder startled me. I spun around. The receptionist stood beside me. She was looking at me with concern.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

  I wiped the perspiration from my forehead and pulled down my sleeve, struggling, with trembling fingers, to button the cuff.

  ‘Here,’ she said, pushing a slip of paper at me.

  I took it. For a moment I gazed at her, dislocated. She turned and marched back towards her desk. Looking down at the slip of paper, I noticed it had an address on it. Kolya’s address.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Spasiba.’

  I hurried after her. ‘Spasiba,’ I said again. She had taken up her novel again. I slipped the fifty-dollar bill across the counter. ‘Ochin spasiba.’

  She looked up and shoved the money back at me roughly.

  Chapter 16

  By the end of July we had been in Afghanistan for six months. The dembels left and we graduated to veteran status. We were the granddads. A group of new recruits arrived on the base, straight from Moscow and Moldavia and Tallinn. We threw a large party, extracting money from the recruits to buy rice and meat for the sashlik, for vodka and Bulgarian biscuits. The departing dembels organised our initiation. Twenty strokes of the buckle end of a belt across the backside. Not a murmur of complaint; we stood up and shook their hands. They slapped our backs. We were one of them now.

  One of our first jobs with the new recruits was to escort the Agitprop Brigade on an excursion to a village. The propaganda detachment consisted of an APC and a truck with a large red cross painted on its side. Their vehicles were flanked by a couple of our APCs, a BMP and a fuel truck. Lieutenant Zhuralev complained loudly as we pulled off the main road and headed down a winding track towards the village.

  ‘It’s madness,’ he said. ‘What’s the fucking point in playing doctors and nurses out here? I don’t see why I should risk my men just so that these fucking villagers can show off their sores and diseases and load up with grain that would be better off in our bellies.’

  A large crowd milled around the village. We sat on the APCs, guns at the ready, eyes vigilantly scanning the area. A loudspeaker was set up beside the Agitprop’s APC and began blaring out Soviet patriotic music. A couple of doctors set up a table and a long line of villagers snaked up to it.

  ‘Crowd control,’ Zhuralev barked at me, pushing me forwards towards the doctors. ‘Keep the locals in order.’ I strolled over to the flimsy wooden desk erected by the doctors. There were two of them. One was a tall, thin Ukrainian, the other, from Siberia, was small and dark with watery eyes. They had a nurse with them who spoke the local language and was acting as an interpreter. A young man from the village barged his way forwards towards the doctors at the desk. When I shoved him back and told him to wait he said something to me rapidly and pointed to his stomach. He was thin and stooped, with a long dark beard. I waved him back, and when he continued to press forwards, I put my hand on his chest and stopped him roughly.

  ‘Get back and stop pushing,’ I shouted.

  The nurse turned, hearing me. Approaching quickly, she pulled me away from the stooped villager impatiently. She spoke to the man in a quiet, calm voice. He explained his problem to her, his voice rising, his bony hands gesticulating. He pointed at me and the young nurse glanced over her shoulder.

  ‘Tell him to wait his turn,’ I said, pressing forwards towards the man, whose long dirty fingers had taken hold of the nurse’s faded green shirt.

  The nurse’s eyes flashed angrily. She called for one of the doctors, indicating for him to come over.

  ‘His wife is giving birth; she is in the village.’

  Nodding, the doctor went to fetch some equipment. The nurse turned to me. ‘You come with us,’ she said. ‘We need some security.’ She turned and followed the young man down a narrow lane into the village. I glanced over towards Lieutenant Zhuralev, but his back was turned. Nervously I followed the nurse’s receding figure, concerned about walking into a trap. The doctor from Siberia caught up with me and grinned.

  ‘One more sobaka to welcome into the world,’ he said, a little breathlessly, as he hurried forwards with his bag. ‘As if there aren’t too many already. In a few years’ time he’ll be throwing stones at us when we go past.’

  There was a small group waiting outside the house when we arrived. The nurse took the clean cloths and the medical bag the doctor had brought with him.

  ‘You stay here,’ she said, pointing to a spot outside the door. I glanced at her furiously. ‘Unless, that is, you want one of these men to blow your brains out.’ Her small hand swept around, indicating the crowd of men who had gathered near the door. They gazed at me sullenly, their beards straggling over long soiled shirts. The nurse ducked in through the doorway. I raised my gun apprehensively.

  ‘Give a yell if you need some help,’ the doctor shouted after her. He grinned and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. Knocking the packet against the palm of his hand, he flicked a cigarette towards me. Nodding to the stooped young father-to-be he offered him one too. The young man smiled shyly and took one of the Russian cigarettes. The ja
ngle of patriotic music drifted across the mudbrick walls from the Agitprop APC. From inside the building came the sound of a woman shouting. I could not tell whether they were cries of pam or anger.

  ‘You think she’s OK in there on her own?’ I said.

  The doctor grinned. ‘Zena? Sure she is OK. What do you think they’re going to do, shoot her when she has delivered the baby? That isn’t how it works, you know that: they’re all nice and friendly when we’re here. We’ll give them some sacks of rice, medicate their problems, hand out a few leaflets and everybody will grin and say what a great thing the revolution is. And then when we’ve gone, the men will be off to the mountains to join their mates, bombing our bases and laying mines and sniping at us.’

  The nurse appeared twenty minutes later, wiping her hands on a cloth, the medical bag tucked beneath her arm.

  ‘They’re both fine,’ she said.

  She had a dirty stain on the front of her shirt, which she dabbed at with the cloth. As we paused in the courtyard while she spoke to the stooped young man, I watched her. She had a good body, barely disguised by the unflattering khaki uniform. When we walked back up towards the marketplace, she stumbled in a rut in the dusty road, and I felt the weight of her body press against my own. A rush of excitement surged through me. Glancing up, she must have noticed the expression on my face. She shook my hand from her arm aggressively.

  ‘You speak the local language?’ I said, to hide my embarrassment.

  ‘I speak Pashtu, Dari and Russian,’ she said, matter-of- factly, as if anybody might.

  ‘How did you learn?’

  ‘Pashtu from my mother and Dari at school.’

  ‘You’re one of them?’

  ‘Don’t look so shocked, I’m not going to shoot you.’

  ‘No, it’s just that… it’s unusual.’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ she said, waving her hand impatiently. A bead of perspiration ran from her hairline and clung to her forehead.