Amber

by Stephan Collishaw

  The pail was heavy with milk and we carried it together back across the field, our red fingers touching on the cold metal handle. Tanya hung the pail on the handlebars of the bike and we walked back to the village.

  ‘You’re looking much healthier,’ she said, appraising me as we walked.

  I smiled. ‘I feel great.’

  The sun had risen above the tops of the trees and the unruffled surface of the pond reflected its dazzling rays. The early morning mist had begun to dissolve but, in the shade, the grass was still white with dew.

  ‘And yet…?’ She hesitated.

  We stopped on the road. I looked down into the village, which was beginning to stir with life. Across the glittering pond, I could see the low cottage. Vassily had come out of the door and stood stretching. He lit a cigarette and a pale puff of smoke rose slowly into the air above him.

  ‘And yet you still dream,’ Tanya said. ‘You have nose bleeds and migraines. If an engine misfires in the village, you turn rigid. You refuse to mention the past – as if nothing ever happened to you before you came here. Don’t you think it would be better for you to talk about it?’

  For some moments I did not reply. I watched Vassily smoking his cigarette. I felt my chest tighten and shivered involuntarily. Icy tendrils coiled about my insides. Tanya reached out and laid one of her hands on my arm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’ve upset you.’

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s fine.’ I took care to speak calmly, to hide my fear, but still my voice was thin and pitched too high. I tried to smile. ‘It’s better, I think, just to forget about it all.’

  I could see the concern in Tanya’s eyes.

  The past was like a movement in the deep shadows of night. I turned from it. Curled within the bright sunlight of the present I could ignore it. I longed for Vassily’s company; for the comfort he was able to give me. His laughter and stories, the craft he was beginning to teach me. I walked on towards him and Tanya followed.

  ‘Come with me,’ Vassily had said one morning. ‘I am going to teach you how to work amber. Amber will heal you. Amber has always been used for medicine, you see, comrade, my friend, as far back as ancient Rome. You can wear it for things like jaundice and goitre, and it will heal them. It’s also good for the kidneys and the heart.’

  In the village workshop he showed me the basics of shaping amber on an old lathe, taught me how it is polished, hardened and coloured. Told me tales and taught me about the folklore connected to it.

  ‘Amber powder mixed with honey is a traditional recipe,’ he told me, ‘for the eyes and the ears, or taken with warm water it’s good for healing the stomach. There is even one I heard of where amber powder is mixed with vodka – and this, my friend,’ he gripped my shoulder and grinned, ‘this would improve your sexual potency, yes? Give you some drive, eh?’ And he laughed. ‘Ah, but you are not needing it. Blyad! How happy I am for you, my little comrade. I brought you from the hospital and you were a shadow, empty, and now look at you!’

  Chapter 32

  Moving out from the darkness of the tree canopy in Vingis Park, I followed Kolya back on to the footbridge. He walked quickly, the soles of his shoes clicking against the cracked concrete. The metal box was gripped tightly beneath his arm. He seemed excited to have it. There was something about his story that did not quite add up. I wondered for one moment whether he had been lying to me; whether he had invented the story. Quickly, though, I dismissed this idea. There was no reason not to believe him.

  As we approached the city side of the bridge a figure emerged from the shadows. Kolya’s pace faltered. I had been gazing down at my feet as I walked, lost in thought, and almost walked into Kolya’s back. The dark figure stopped at the end of the bridge and leant against the metal railings. Kolya inhaled audibly; a sudden, sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Zdrastvuy, Kolya,’ Kirov said calmly. His tone was so pleasant, I half expected him to hold out his hand for Kolya to shake. He nodded to me, and smiled. He took a long, slow drag on his cigarette and exhaled the smoke into the darkness. I stood rooted to the spot. He seemed to have stepped straight out of my thoughts, a phantasm. I felt bile rise in the back of my throat. My breath caught and my muscles tensed with fury.

  Kolya backed away, clutching the metal box to his chest with both hands.

  ‘Kirov,’ he muttered.

  ‘It’s been a while,’ Kirov said, moving towards us slowly. ‘What is it, eight years now, Kolya?’

  ‘You bastard,’ Kolya snarled.

  I noticed Kolya’s hand moving beneath the metal box, feeling slowly inside his jacket, his eyes not leaving Kirov. He pulled out the pistol. Clumsily, releasing the safety catch, he pointed it at Kirov’s chest. His hand trembled so much he had difficulty keeping the Makarov level. Kirov glanced down at the short barrel and his lips twisted into a sardonic grin. He stepped forward, closer to Kolya.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘You haven’t got the nerve, Kolya. You were a coward then and you still are.’

  A bead of perspiration rolled down Kolya’s forehead. He wiped it away with the back of his arm, holding the box tightly.

  Kirov turned his attention from Kolya, nonchalantly ignoring the pistol directed at him. He tossed the stub of his cigarette over the rail of the bridge. I watched as the bright point of light twirled down through the darkness to the water below.

  ‘He has told you about the bracelet, then?’ he said. ‘He has told you what your friend Vassily forgot to tell you?’

  ‘I’ve told him how you sold the girl to your friends in KHAD,’ Kolya spat at him. ‘How your deal cost us half the platoon.’

  Kirov did not look at Kolya. He gazed intently at me. His eyes were the colour of steel. Ice blue.

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Antanas,’ he said. ‘After all these years you have a right to know.’

  He came closer. His eyes did not leave mine for a moment. He did not blink. I felt a shiver of disgust run down my spine. Kolya advanced, suddenly, waving the pistol, pressing it up against Kirov’s chest. Kirov brushed him aside angrily.

  ‘Get out of the way, you useless little shit,’ he barked. ‘You see,’ he said, his eyes turning back to me, ‘you didn’t know. You didn’t see his face. You didn’t know how much he longed for this one. From the time Hashim put him on the scent of it he was like a dog at a bone. He was like a bitch on heat. He would not let it go.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about Vassily. Oh, I know, he has been a real friend to you, yes?’ Kirov sneered. ‘You can’t imagine Vassily might have done something to hurt you? It was him, you stupid fucker. It was Vassily.’

  Feebly Kolya once more tried to step forwards, but Kirov spun around angrily, his hand balling into a fist, his lips a tight line. Kolya shrank back.

  ‘We slipped away in Ghazis, Vassily and me and this little shit.’ He waved his hand dismissively in the direction of Kolya. ‘Oh yes, it was all a set-up, right from the start. As soon as Hashim told Vassily about the bracelet, he was obsessed. He had to have it. He kept saying, “If this is what I think it is, it must be worth a fortune.” But it wasn’t just the money with him, he knew about the bracelet, had read about it before. He went on and on. “Just think, Nero wore it! Tamerlane’s wife!” And his eyes would light up and he would almost salivate. It was the same time as KHAD were after that little girl of yours. Vassily had never liked her. She was trouble. Why couldn’t you just fuck one of the whores like any normal person? When they explained how he could pay for the bracelet, that it would just take the “accidental” shooting of Zena in the confusion, he agreed straight off. The generals and Political Officers in Jalalabad were so keen to lick the arses of local sympathisers that it didn’t take much persuading to send the Agitprop Brigade out and make sure she was with them.

  ‘We agreed to meet Hashim in Ghazis. He would have the bracelet there for us and we would make sure the girl was shot in the ambush. I had a little bu
siness of my own with the muj, a few small armaments. Everybody would be happy.

  ‘We fed details to KHAD about when we would be arriving in Ghazis, and I told Hashim how many vehicles there’d be and where the vehicles would be in the convoy. The plan was they’d mine the road from Ghazis and pick off the last two vehicles, which would be the BMP with the grenade launcher and the heavy machine gun they wanted, and the Agitprop Brigade’s APC.

  ‘We met Hashim in a room above a shop away from the market. When Vassily set eyes on the bracelet, he couldn’t speak.

  ‘That was it,’ Kirov said. ‘That was what it was all about, that was what he sold her for. You should have seen his eyes, you would perhaps have understood then. There was madness in them. He had to have the bracelet.

  ‘Things went wrong when we crossed the brook, coming down from Ghazis. The mine was supposed to be detonated as the last two vehicles entered the water. That way there would be the least casualties. Hashim promised that any of our soldiers captured would be released without harm. But then things fucked up. The mine detonated too early. It all got confused.

  ‘And then there you were, racing back across the brook into the thick of the fight. Vassily and I were trying to organise a retreat, Zhuralev had taken a bullet and you were heading back into the shooting.

  ‘What a mess,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘When we had regained control of the situation, you were missing. Vassily went off looking for you. They found you at the side of the road, a little girl in your arms. Ten were killed, and fifteen wounded. Vassily brought you back raving. Physically you weren’t in bad shape although your arms were burnt, but you were a fucking mess up here.’ He tapped his skull.

  ‘An investigation was launched into the whole fuckup. Intelligence wouldn’t have come up with anything if Kolya hadn’t squealed. We were convicted for trading Soviet army goods.

  ‘We were taken to the Pol-e-Tcharkhi prison. It was a fortress – the walls were so thick you could drive a car along the top of them.’ Kirov nodded at Kolya. ‘This little shit paid someone inside to finish me off. It wasn’t difficult. There were continual fights inside – knives, boiling water. There were killers who would do it for a dollar or two.

  ‘But he did a bad job and I went after him. For that I was given another five years on my sentence and transferred to a maximum-security prison.

  ‘When I got out six months ago, I wrote to Zinotis and he let me know the bracelet hadn’t been sold. Vassily, it seems, went a little crazy too, after Ghazis. Flagellating himself like some fucking Catholic monk. He was looking after you and refused to talk about the bracelet. Zinotis had stayed in touch with Vassily, but had heard nothing of Kolya. I tracked down some old vets, but nobody had heard anything about him. Somebody thought they’d heard he’d died of an overdose, years back. Then a few weeks ago Zinotis wrote to say he had seen Kolya in Vilnius.

  ‘When I got here last week, I couldn’t trace him. I went to see Vassily, but he told me fuck all. He was dying, of course, so when I threatened to kill him, he just laughed.’

  Kirov grinned, as if amused by Vassily’s attitude.

  ‘I kept an eye on you, after I visited you at the workshop. Zinotis got very excited after you visited him, so I kept my eye on him too. When I caught up with him a couple of hours ago, he was at an apartment up behind the railway station. He seemed to think Vassily had sent Kolya instructions on how to find the bracelet. He could find nothing in the apartment.’

  ‘It was Zinotis?’ I exclaimed, astonished. ‘I don’t believe it. You’re telling me he trashed Kolya’s apartment? Beat the woman? Professor Zinotis?’

  Kirov nodded and chuckled. ‘You didn’t think he was capable?’

  ‘I don’t believe any of this, Kirov. I knew Vassily, I talked to Zinotis… I know what they were capable of.’

  ‘Do you?’ he asked pleasantly. ‘And you, Antanas? Did you know what you were capable of? Did you know you were able to do what you did? Does your wife know what happened to those children? Will you tell your child when she is older? None of us are the people we seem, Antanas, you should know that. Afghanistan did that to us.’

  An icy tremor ran down my spine. Your child. She. Had Kirov been watching Laura? What did he know?

  ‘We are capable of anything,’ Kirov continued. ‘We hide it from the world, pretend we are like normal people, but slowly the knowledge of our history poisons us. Zinotis was just better at hiding it than most. He was a slippery bastard.’

  ‘Kirov,’ I said, my voice tight with fear and fury. ‘If you should do anything…’

  Kirov brushed my words aside with a flick of his hand and a nod. He had not finished.

  ‘Zinotis wanted to do a deal with me, but as he hadn’t bothered to tell me what you had told him about the bracelet, I could see he wasn’t to be trusted.’

  He raised his right thumb to his lips and licked it. His tongue was fatly red, disgusting. I noticed the thin cut down the soft pad of his thumb. Remembered it.

  ‘When I slit his throat, he moaned like a girl.’ Kirov spat out into the darkness, as if repelled by Zinotis’s fear in the face of death.

  ‘Back in Afghanistan not one muj I killed showed any fear – not even the boys.’ He laughed then. ‘When you come back to the apartment, you almost tripped over his body in the darkness. What? Don’t look so disgusted – we are all the same, you, Vassily, me – we are no different.’

  I opened my mouth, but found that no words would come out. I gaped, the blackened little bodies of the children twisting in the darkness before me. The thought of Laura.

  Kirov paused for a moment, as if appreciating the effect his words had on me, playing with me, then he turned and addressed Kolya. ‘And now, at last, I have found you,’ he said. ‘And the bracelet.’

  His voice was quiet, but menacing. He moved towards Kolya. A single, sharp retort cracked open the night. The sound echoed from the walls of the houses on the hill, waking the dogs, and hummed down the metal rails of the bridge. Kirov gasped and stepped backwards. Trembling, Kolya raised the pistol and fired a second shot that sent Kirov tumbling. His head hit the railings and bounced off. As he lay sprawled across the concrete, his arms flailed in a puddle.

  ‘Fuck,’ I gasped. ‘Kolya!’

  Kolya said nothing. He stood shaking, the Makarov hanging loosely in his hand by his side. The metal box had fallen from his grip and opened on the bridge, disgorging its contents.

  For some few seconds after he had fallen, Kirov’s arms splashed feebly in the dirty puddle. I knelt beside him. The two shots had both entered his chest. He had been dead in a matter of moments. As the juddering subsided, the slight breeze lifted his hair, giving him an air of animation still. His neck was twisted awkwardly against the rusted metal railings.

  Along with the sharp retort of the Makarov, his words echoed in my head, ‘We are all the same… no different.’ I shuddered. We are the same. No, I thought, no, Kirov, not the same.

  Instinctively my fingers reached out to feel for his pulse, but I drew them back, unable to touch him. ‘Not the same,’ I whispered. And I thought of Laura and how much I loved her and needed her. The horror that had stopped my heart, as the bullets flung him back, dissipated then, leaving me suddenly calm. He’s gone, I thought, and felt no pity.

  ‘He’s gone,’ I said to Kolya. ‘You killed him.’ Kolya knelt beside me. In the light of the street lamp his face looked pale and waxy.

  ‘We’ll push him over the railings,’ he said. ‘Into the river.’

  Kirov was heavy and awkward to handle. As we hoisted him up, his head lolled backwards and cracked hard against the top of the railings. Ridiculously, I winced and lifted him more carefully. The dogs continued to bark in the houses on the hill and I was afraid somebody would come out to investigate.

  We settled the body on the waist-high railing. For a moment he teetered there, the look of surprise frozen on his face. And then gravity did its work, dragging his body down. It broke through the surfac
e with a heavy splash but in the poor light it seemed for a moment that he had not submerged. His dark shape hung on the water, moving fast with the strong downriver current. As it passed across the glittering discs of reflected street lamps, though, it became evident that it was his coat which was sailing away towards the city. Of Kirov there was no sign.

  Kolya stared down into the darkness, pale faced, hair plastered to his forehead with perspiration, trembling violently from the exertion.

  ‘The bastard deserved it,’ I said, laying my hand on Kolya’s sleeve. ‘If anyone ever deserved it that evil bastard did.’

  Kolya nodded slowly, his eyes not leaving the coat as it slipped away into the darkness. Kneeling down, I took the bracelet from the metal box. I fingered the large amber sphere, took in the glorious inclusions. It was for this Zena died, I thought. For this she had been sold. I felt a huge wave of sorrow wash over me. Its waters encircled me, foaming around my ears. The heavy suck of its withdrawal pulled me with it. A dark clenched fist held my gut tightly in its grip.

  The amber seemed to be unusually warm – my palm tingled, and when I ran it across the back of my hand the hairs rose. Vassily’s words came back to me with startling clarity. I pictured him before me, sloped forwards in the armchair, the pained, weary expression on his face. You will not hate me, when you hear the story, tovarich – comrade, you will forgive your friend? I looked down at the bracelet.

  I must be holding a fortune in my hand, I thought then. My mind spun dizzily for a few moments. The inclusions were beautiful. I had never seen such good examples. The amber was large and clear, shining even in the light of the street lamps with brilliant warmth. The metal was heavy, ornate, gold lace. Sometimes, Vassily had said once, and I tried to remember when, sometimes great beauty is a terrible thing.