Amber

by Stephan Collishaw

  As my fingers tightened around the bracelet, I felt my thoughts twisting, spiralling away from me. I glanced up at Kolya, who had turned from the railing and was looking at the jewel in my hand. There was a hungry look in his eyes. He moved towards me, his thin hand reaching out. I stepped back.

  ‘Wait,’ I said.

  A look of surprise crinkled Kolya’s forehead, followed swiftly by annoyance.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  My mind tried to struggle towards some sort of revelation which I felt shivering in the darkness, just eluding me.

  ‘Did Vassily ever tell you the story about Freyja?’ I asked. ‘About the Amir Timor?’

  Kolya held out his hand. He shuffled forwards, grasping for the bracelet. I took another step back and found my spine pressed up against the railings. The sky had begun, barely perceptibly, to lighten. The thick darkness was dissolving and the flowing water was faintly visible. I held out my hand, suspended the bracelet over the drop.

  ‘No!’ Kolya called frantically.

  I opened my fingers and released the bracelet. It clung to my flesh, a sharp sliver of gold ornamentation snagging on my skin. Kolya jolted against me as he tried to grab it. The sudden jerk released the bracelet and it fell smoothly through the blue air, breaking the surface of the river with barely a splash, disappearing immediately, swallowed up in the darkness.

  A thin howl escaped Kolya’s pale lips. He hung over the edge of the railings, eyes desperately searching the water, vainly hoping it might reappear.

  ‘It’s over, Kolya,’ I said.

  I felt a weight lifting from me. Kolya turned, a look of absolute fury twisting his features. He hurried away, breaking into a shambling run. Dropping from the end of the bridge, he slithered down the muddy river bank to the water’s edge. I stood watching him as he rushed up and down the bank, wading knee deep in the fast-flowing water, his arms reaching out to its depths, his low moan carried up to me through the cool air of the gathering dawn.

  Chapter 33

  Passing the glittering domes of the Russian Orthodox church under a dawn-flushed sky, I crossed Zverynas Bridge on to Gedimino. An elderly man swept the wide cobbled street, working his way slowly and steadily into the centre of the Old Town. A flock of pigeons broke from the square by the parliament buildings as I passed, rising up into the sharp, clear air, bursting into flame as the first rays of sun touched them.

  That was what it was all about, Kirov had said, that was what he sold her for.

  I shook my head, ran a hand through my hair. I pictured Vassily as I had last seen him, the night before he died, frail and thin, his beard hanging limply on the blanket.

  When they explained how he could pay for the bracelet, he agreed straight off.

  His chest had risen and fallen in a steady, slow rhythm. His hands, punctured by drips, lay by his side on the sheet. I had taken his fingers between my own, felt the hard calloused flesh, the faint, warm pulse.

  You should have seen his eyes, you would perhaps have understood then. There was madness in them. He had to have the bracelet.

  Before I left, I had bent to kiss him, and smelt then the stench of approaching death above the smothering scent of disinfectant. Had it been for nothing, then, those years of friendship, that companionship which had kept me alive? Had it all been a deception? He had been my brother, my friend. He had taught me to live again.

  You have a right to know, Kirov had said.

  The street cleaner looked up as I passed, resting on his broom. He watched me, unabashed. A truck stopped outside a bar. The driver jumped from the cab, whistling. He rolled up the canvas sides, revealing barrels of Danish beer.

  You have a right to know.

  My mind skittered over the years, skipping like a stone across water, touching and moving on. Zena. The kishlak. Ghazis. Vassily patiently showing me how to clip the amber on to the lathe. ‘There is something you need to know,’ Vassily had said, ‘something I should have told you many years ago, but didn’t. Should have, but couldn’t.’

  Lukiskiu Square was quiet. The rising sun lit up the spire of the church behind it. Far down Gedimino, the cathedral sparkled brilliantly. A police car was drawn up at the side of the road. Inside a policeman was sleeping, his green cap pulled low over his forehead, his window half open. An elderly woman opened a window in one of the apartment blocks on February 16th and shook out a sheet.

  You must not hate me.

  An aching sense of loss gripped me – scraped the flesh from my heart with its fingernails. I paused on the pavement, gazed up into the sky, dizzy, as if I were standing on the edge of a precipice. The loss of his friendship. The loss of his love. The loss of his presence in my life. The loss of our lives, which he had bound together by the strength of his presence, of all that we had enjoyed, Daiva, Tanya, Vassily and myself. That life was gone now and would never be again.

  I found myself crying, then, for the loss of him, as I stood at the edge of the pavement unable to cross the street. Tears slipped down my cheek. My chest rose as I gulped for breath.

  ‘Antanas!’ Tanya cried, as she opened the door of her apartment. She was sleep-ruffled, wearing one of Vassily’s large old shirts, her hair tied back with a ribbon. ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded, taking my arm and leading me into the apartment.

  ‘It’s a long story.’ I sighed, feeling suddenly very weary.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ she said. I followed her through to the sitting room and collapsed on the sofa.

  ‘You look terrible,’ she said, kneeling beside me.

  ‘Kolya shot Kirov,’ I told her.

  Her eyes widened and her hand went up to her lips. I shook my head. Already the events of the previous few hours had begun to recede and an air of unreality clung to them, as if I were waking slowly from a nightmare.

  ‘And Kolya?’ Tanya said. ‘What happened? Did Kolya tell you what Vassily wanted you to know? What was it all about?’

  I paused before I answered. As I looked at her, it struck me with renewed force how much she resembled Zena. The short dark hair. The colour of her eyes. The animated passion in her movements. I nodded slowly.

  ‘There were things he told me,’ I said, ‘about the bracelet, about how they got it.’

  I found I was reluctant to tell her, reluctant to talk about it and so, through my own words, make more real the story I had been told; to validate it with the retelling.

  ‘We dug up the bracelet,’ I said instead.

  ‘You have it?’

  Tanya sat up, a startled, excited expression brightening her eyes.

  ‘I threw it in the river.’

  ‘You what?’

  I shrugged. She gaped at me, bewildered. ‘It’s hard to explain,’ I said. ‘When I held it in my hand, I got the strangest feeling. I thought of all those who had died because of it. I don’t know. I can’t explain. I saw Kolya’s greed, his hunger for it, Kirov’s, Zinotis’s. The effect it had on Vassily. It seemed right to put an end to it.’

  Tanya stared at me and I could see her struggling to grasp what had gone on, struggling to understand what I had done. What Kolya had done. And perhaps also what Vassily had done.

  ‘I need to get out of these clothes,’ I said to deflect her attention.

  ‘Of course,’ Tanya said, solicitously, getting up quickly. ‘Go take a shower. Freshen up.’

  She looked embarrassed at having been so insistent. Putting a towel in my hand, she pushed me in the direction of the bathroom. I stood for a long time beneath the shower, enjoying the feel of the stiff jets of hot water pummelling my flesh. After I had towelled myself dry, Tanya gave me coffee and I smoked a couple of cigarettes.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked tentatively.

  ‘Better,’ I said.

  I looked across at her, curled in the armchair, legs tucked beneath her, chin resting on the palm of her hand.

  ‘Did Vassily ever say much about Afghanistan?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘He sp
oke of it sometimes,’ she said. ‘I thought we were so open with each other. When he jumped in the night hearing something, when he had his headaches and when I found him sitting alone in a room, we talked about it. He told me what was important. That is why I was so bewildered by all these secrets.’

  I considered what I should tell her. I longed to talk to her, to probe her – to demand from her the answers her husband could no longer give. To ask whether she knew how much he had betrayed me.

  ‘There were things that happened there,’ I said.

  I paused. She had let her hair loose, and it fell around her face, its rich curls accentuating the rosy swell of her cheeks.

  ‘There was a girl I met there,’ I said.

  Tanya looked up, surprised. She smiled. ‘Really?’

  ‘Her name was Zena.’

  It was strange to hear the name on my own lips; it had been so long since last I had spoken it. When I said it, I felt my tone soften, deepen, and recognised the cadence of my younger self, felt momentarily the gentle happiness spring from my tongue, as though the very act of saying her name had the power in some tiny way to transport me back to that time.

  ‘She was a nurse,’ I said, feeling Tanya’s eyes on me. ‘She was an Afghani girl. Beautiful. She had short dark hair and was full of energy, of life. She was a lot like you. In the middle of all that horror I fell in love.’

  ‘You never said.’ Tanya leant forward and took my hand.

  ‘When I first saw you, standing outside your grandparents’ cottage, it was a shock. You were so like her. What I felt for you then confused me.’

  Tanya was trying, I could see, to understand what had happened, what I felt.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

  I did not answer at once, struggling to find the words to explain to myself as much as to her.

  ‘You frightened me. Attracted me. Both at once. When it became clear Vassily was in love with you, I explained my confused feelings to myself as guilt. When I met Daiva she was so different; her coolness, her reticence. She felt safe to be with. I fell in love with what Daiva was not. I used her to defend myself.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ Tanya said, leaning back in her chair. ‘I mean, I knew you were attracted to me and I was flattered by that, but when you met Daiva… you were so in love.’

  For some moments then we sat in silence.

  ‘What happened to the girl? The Afghani nurse?’ Tanya asked, breaking the silence.

  ‘She was killed.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I know only what Kirov told me a few hours ago.’

  ‘What did he tell you?’ Tanya’s voice shook a little, as if she was afraid, as if she knew what I was about to say.

  ‘Vassily sold her for the bracelet,’ I said. ‘There was a deal – they sold Zena to the KHAD, to the secret police, to buy it.’

  ‘No,’ she whispered. She withdrew her hand from mine, wiped it across her forehead and closed her eyes.

  ‘Do you think it is true?’ I said. ‘Do you think Vassily could have done that?’

  She opened her eyes again, looked at me, squarely.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe.’

  Tanya sighed. She buried her face in her hands. ‘I don’t know what to think any more,’ she said.

  A little later Tanya announced that she had to go to work for a few hours. She ran her fingertips across my face, gently. ‘Will you be OK? It won’t be for long. You can stay. There is food in the kitchen and you can sleep in the bed.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said.

  The apartment was quiet when she had gone. I did not move from the sofa. The room ticked and sighed, exhaled into the silence. Ever since he had taken me from the New Vilnia hospital Vassily had been a friend to me. He had nursed me back to health. He had taught me how to work amber; had given me a trade, a purpose, to hold back the darkness. And yet he had never told me, never even intimated, the part he had played in the death of Zena.

  Leaping up from the sofa, I kicked out at the chair he had been sitting in that last evening. ‘You bastard,’ I hissed through teeth clenched tight. ‘You fucking bastard.’ I kicked it again, harder. Felt the pain shuddering up my leg, exquisitely. ‘You fucking bastard!’ I shouted, feeling the blood rush to the surface of my skin, feeling the heat rise in my face. I fell upon the chair, kicking and punching it. Screaming until my throat tore and my lungs scraped for breath. The armchair overturned and I toppled with it, sprawling across the floor, the rug grazing the skin from my cheek and the palms of my hands.

  ‘You bastard,’ I muttered, feeling my cheek throb. Feeling the cool smoothness of the parquet floor by the door, the smell of wax filling my nostrils.

  *

  Leaving Tanya’s apartment, I went straight to Daiva’s mother’s. When I knocked, it was Daiva who answered. For some moments we stood in silence. She leant against the door frame. She looked tired and unhappy.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

  She kissed me awkwardly on the cheek. In the kitchen Laura was sitting at the table, strapped into a child’s chair. I paced quickly across the tiled floor and scooped her up, pulling her clumsily from the straps. I held her close to me, burrowed my head into her clothes, inhaled her smell. Tears welled in my eyes and I felt a sharp pain in my heart. Laura cried in my arms.

  ‘You’re holding her too tight,’ Daiva said softly, extracting Laura from my grasp.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  I took a seat at the table and Daiva sat on the other side of our daughter.

  ‘I’ve called the apartment a few times, but you weren’t there,’ she said. ‘I got a little worried.’

  ‘I’ve been away.’

  Daiva spooned porridge into Laura’s mouth, and when she became restless took her into her arms. She muttered and struggled in her mother’s embrace.

  ‘I’ve had some time to think,’ Daiva said.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said, holding up my hands. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve made a decision, don’t tell me your mind is made up.’

  She leant back, her arms folded around Laura, drawing her to her breast tightly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve messed things up, Daiva, I know that. Things have been hard and I haven’t coped. I know I don’t really have the right to ask you to wait before you make any decisions. I know we have talked about my problems many times already, but please let’s wait a while. Let’s wait a little while before we make any decisions about what we are going to do.’

  ‘Are you suggesting you are about to change something? I mean, something significant?’

  I stood up and walked around behind her. I put my hands on her shoulders and rested my forehead against the back of her head.

  ‘I don’t know what I am capable of changing,’ I said. ‘I want to be honest. But I feel as if I have lost so many things, I don’t want to keep losing those things that are so precious to me.’

  ‘There are things that have happened, Antanas…’ she said quietly. ‘There are things I can’t… won’t live with. I don’t know if I can believe you are capable of changing now, after all this time.’

  I turned her head and held her face between the palms of my hands. Her pale blue eyes gazed into mine. I saw the fear hidden in the tiny creases beginning to web her skin.

  ‘I’m sorry, Daiva,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  When I returned to my apartment, I called Tanya at work. We met in a bar on Jewish Street.

  ‘How are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘More lost than ever,’ I confessed. ‘We did so many things there, Tanya. Things we never spoke about. When I first went to Afghanistan I really believed we were doing some good. I believed all the propaganda and lies. But the political instruction we were given and the ideals they pumped us full of just bore no relation to the situation. The longer we were there, the worse things got.’

  ‘It was war.’

  ‘Is that an excuse? Does
that alter anything?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s not about excuses. We can’t change the past; we can hide from it, we can accept it or we can let it chew us up. There are only so many choices open to us, only so many things we can do.’

  ‘Is it that simple? Does that answer the wrongs we did? There are wider implications.’

  ‘There are? What, like the fact that Russian boys are doing the same in Chechnya now, having the same done to them? That in all wars everywhere people do things they could never have conceived they were capable of doing? That afterwards they could never conceive of how they did them?’

  ‘Do you want, now, to start paying for the things you did? Are you going to demand too that those who did things to you pay also?’

  ‘It’s not just about the war,’ I said, sighing. I buried my head in my hands. ‘Why did Vassily want me to hear this story? What good did he think it would do? In the end it was only Zena who kept me sane, there was nothing else for me to cling to. How could Vassily have done what he did, Tanya? Is it possible? I loved him. Was Kirov telling the truth?’

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘it’s like this.’ She reached over and took my hand. ‘If Kirov was right, what then? Will you hate Vassily, your friend, who did so much for you? And if Kirov was lying, will those years once more seem to have been good ones?’

  She squeezed my hand. Her eyes burnt intensely. She shook me gently.

  ‘It is in nobody else’s power, Antanas, to say whether Vassily betrayed you or not. Not Kirov nor I nor Kolya can do that. We cannot validate or invalidate the years you shared with him. That is something you need to decide for yourself.’

  ‘But how can I do that if I don’t know the truth?’

  ‘I don’t see what the truth has to do with it,’ Tanya said. ‘Either you loved him or you didn’t. What does truth have to do with that?’

  She paused and we lapsed into silence. A young man was sitting in the corner of the café, near the window. As I watched him, a woman came in and he got up to greet her. I felt a little pang of envy at their easy, careless affection. Ten years younger than I and they had been born into a different world.