Read Amber Online

Authors: Stephan Collishaw

Amber (2 page)

I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable, my hands IO trembling, longing for a drink. The vision of Ghazis clouded my mind, like the smoke that had drifted from the village, clogging my lungs. I wiped a bead of perspiration from my forehead.

‘I really should be going,' I tried again. But Vassily ignored me.

He sank back against the pillows. His skin was grey and glistened with sweat. His breathing was rapid, shallow, painful. His hands trembled on the arms of the chair.

‘You must find Kolya,' he said urgently. ‘He will tell you all about what happened. Take him to the bracelet and he will tell you all.'

‘I'm not interested, Vassily,' I said.

I longed to get out. My chest felt tight, constricting my breathing. My head spun and I noticed that my own hands were shaking.

‘You must, comrade, my friend, you must. Promise me. I am a coward still, I know. I should tell you myself. The whole tale. Promise me you will find him?'

He looked into my eyes, beseechingly. I squirmed under his gaze.

‘But how am I supposed to find Kolya?' I asked, irritated and bewildered by his demand. ‘Or take him to this bracelet?'

Vassily reached behind him and pulled out a crinkled envelope. He handed it to me carefully.

‘It came not long ago,' he said. ‘It is a letter from Kolya.' He pressed the envelope into my hand. ‘It seems he is back in Vilnius. He's been in Kaliningrad for some years, from what I hear. When he was released from prison, he came to see me, demanding money. “His share,” as he put it. He was a total mess; prison had only made his problem with drugs worse. I gave him some money and he disappeared. For years I heard nothing from him, then a few months ago I received this.' He indicated the letter. ‘He's back in Vilnius for medical treatment. He needs some money. I haven't got anything to give him, but perhaps, after all, the bracelet can do some good.'

Reluctantly I took the envelope from him. I sighed, and slipped it into the pocket of my jacket.

‘The letter doesn't have his home address on it,' Vassily continued, ‘but there must be some clue here – the clinic perhaps. On the back of his letter I have written how the bracelet can be found. Promise me you will find him. He will tell you what I am not able to. The bracelet cost so much. The price was too great.'

The door creaked open and Tanya, his wife, slipped into the room. Seeing Vassily looking so pale, his hair slick with sweat, the blanket around his feet, she hurried over to him. Questioningly she looked at me, as she pulled the blanket up around his knees, and wiped his forehead.

Vassily gripped my hand.

‘We have been good friends, no? The years have been good ones? We have forgotten together. We have laughed together. You will not hate me, when you hear the story,
tovarich
– comrade, you will forgive your friend?'

I squeezed his hand. ‘Of course,' I said. ‘Of course, my friend.'

‘I have stayed too long,' I added partly to Tanya, partly to her husband, who still held on to my hand. ‘It is late. I must go and let you get some rest.'

In the dark passageway, as I opened the front door of their apartment, I paused. Tanya was close behind me. I touched her cheek gently. She trembled slightly, 12 and when she held me I could feel how hard she struggled to hold back the tears.

‘He's been on edge for the last few days,' Tanya said. ‘He gets so angry and it's draining the last of his strength.'

Chapter 2

It was late October and the evening was cold. Above the rooftops, the newly risen moon hung despondently. The cathedral was ghostly pale, the streets quiet. For some minutes I stood on the cracked paving outside the door of his apartment block, my mind reeling, memories bubbling up, seeping across the floor of my consciousness, flooding it.

When the cathedral bell tolled the hour, not wanting to return home, I headed slowly in the direction of a café. Settling myself at a table overlooking the river, I reached into my pocket for a packet of cigarettes. My fingers curled around the letter Vassily had given me. Pulling it out, I examined it. Kolya's handwriting was spidery, small letters trailing away towards the bottom right-hand corner of the yellowing envelope. My fingers trembled as I screwed it into a ball. Tossing it out into the night, I saw it catch in a mesh of twigs, a little farther down the slope towards the river.

I smoked the cigarette quickly, greedily. I was agitated and angry with Vassily. An unspoken agreement had been broken, a door had been opened on to the darkness, a door I had spent years struggling to keep closed. I had little doubt Kolya's letter was just a begging letter, pleading for more money to support his drug habit. Though Kolya and I had grown up together, and he was as close to family as I had, we had grown apart in Afghanistan, wary of each other as he became more and more dependent on the opium and marijuana he was smoking. I made no attempt to contact him after my slow recovery, fearful of once more raking up memories of those times. I flicked the cigarette out in the direction of the snagged ball of paper. Behind it, the lights of the city shimmered on the oily flow of the river.

The
kishlak
. Ghazis in the Hindu Kush. Once the door had been opened a crack it was hard to push shut. Crackling images fluttered like sparks in the night sky. The sand. The dust on my tongue, coating my teeth. A cobalt canvas pulled taut across the sky. Jagged mountains. Hands slick with blood.

‘Bring me a vodka,' I told the girl who had idly sidled up.

‘It's quiet tonight,' I said when she returned, attempting to engage her in conversation. She looked at me sullenly for a moment, then wandered away.

In the inside pocket of my jacket I had a photograph. I laid it before me on the stained tablecloth. It was of the two of us, Vassily and me, squatting on the beach. I had come across it in an album earlier in the day and put it in my pocket to show Vassily. In the photograph I looked small and pale and he, beside me, his arm around my shoulder, resembled a bear, his shirt opened to the waist, chest hair vying with his straggling beard. He was laughing, I sombre. Behind us a wave broke heavily on the rolls of white sand.

I met Vassily in Afghanistan. I had been sent to that hellhole to do my national service. After those dark years, it was he who nursed me back to a semblance of health. It was he who put me back together again when I was finally discharged from hospital. He who taught me my trade, my love of jewellery. Vassily was a jeweller, the finest jeweller in Lithuania, a man whose talent was exceeded only by his capacity to waste it. He was a drunkard. A teller of tales. He was the closest friend I had and now he was dying.

I closed my eyes, felt his bristles against my cheek. The smell of his breath; of vodka and garlic. His laugh, as large and deep as the forests of Siberia, as warm as Odessa in spring. I slipped the photograph back into my pocket. Tossing back the drink, I immediately called for another.

At eleven I left. The streets were quiet as I walked back through the centre of the city to the trolley-bus stop. Few people braved the bitter wind. I turned up the collar of my jacket and stuffed my hands deep into my pockets. Before I reached the stop on Gedimino I heard, behind me, the rumble of wheels on the uneven cobbles and the electric click of the trolley bus. For a moment I hesitated, almost glad of the chance to miss it, to avoid going home. It pulled into the side of the road and its doors opened with a loud pneumatic hiss. At the last moment I ran, catching the doors as they were closing. They sprang back and I hoisted myself in.

Daiva was sitting on the floor in the centre of our apart­ment, flicking through a magazine. She looked up when I came in, and raised a finger to her lips. Laura, our baby, was sleeping. Daiva's eyes were ringed darkly, I noticed, from sleepless nights. I tried to smile, but the muscles in my face seemed paralysed and barely moved. ‘How is Vassily?' she asked. She strained to control her voice, to soften the sharp tone that had charac­terised our conversations for so long now.

I shrugged.

Her eyes examined me; my cheeks were flushed from the exertion of climbing the stairs to the apartment.

‘You haven't been…' she began.

I looked at her. Though I knew what she meant, I made her finish the question. Made her say the words once more. She faltered a moment, knowing she should not have begun but unable to hold herself back.

‘You haven't been drinking again, have you ?' she asked, her jaw setting in a hard, defiant line.

‘My friend is dying,' I said slowly, enunciating each syllable with care, ‘and all you are bothered about is whether I have had a drink or not?'

‘Drinking doesn't help, Antanas,' she shot back angrily.

I opened the door on to the balcony and stepped out into the night. A slight feeling of guilt niggled at me for having used Vassily as an excuse. Just a week before I had promised Daiva I would stop drinking. She had arrived home late one evening to find me in a stupor, oblivious to the screams of Laura in her cot in the bedroom. I had managed four days before I started again. The late traffic flowed easily down Freedom Boulevard, red lights glittering on the wet surface of the road. The television tower was lost already in the low clouds. For some minutes I stood there, as the wind blew in gusts, tousling my hair. I thought of Tanya, with whom I had shared a drink earlier, before I had gone through to see Vassily, thought of the smell of her hair, the softness of her body, the way she closed her eyes as she threw back her head and laughed.

Daiva had not moved when I re-entered the room. I put my hand on her shoulder and felt her stiffen. She flicked over a page in the magazine, then another. I noticed she was not wearing the wedding ring I had made for her. The ring, embedded with a small, beautifully clear piece of amber, was on the table, beneath the reading lamp. I ran my fingers through her fair hair. She stood up and pulled away from me.

‘Don't, Antanas,' she said. ‘Please don't.'

‘Daiva,' I said.

She stood a couple of paces from me for a moment. I tried to think of something more to say. I knew that if I apologised she might soften, might step forward and wrap her arms around me as I needed her to.

Instead I said, ‘I'm suffering, you know.'

But my tone was ironic, mocking, which was not how I had intended it. Daiva turned and walked rapidly away, shutting the bedroom door behind her. I slumped down on the sofa, pulling a thin blanket around me.

Sleep washed over me as soon as my head settled against the rough cloth of the sofa arm. My eyelids drooped heavily. As I was sucked downwards, the spiral of flames exploded up towards me. The sound of crying mushroomed out of the darkness. A shriek. The sharp crackle of automatic gunfire. The heavy boom of an incoming rocket. My tongue was furred with dust. My scalp prickled. I fought to open my eyes.

‘Antanas. Antoshka!'

A jagged escarpment, thin bush. Movement down there in the shadows of the ditch. A face.

‘Antoshka!'

I could see it clearly now, slick with sweat, dark, fierce. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. My heart was pounding. My hands shook as I raised them. Kirov's face jumped out of the flames. His eyes glittered malevolently. His thick lips twisted in a ferocious grin.

‘Antoshka,' he whispered. ‘I've been looking for you.'

‘Shh,' Daiva said.

She knelt on the floor beside the sofa. Gently she stroked my forehead with the back of her hand.

‘It's OK, you were dreaming,' she said softly, drawing me up with her voice, pulling me to safety.

I clung to her. She helped me up from the sofa and led me into the bedroom. Carefully she undressed me, throwing the sweat-sodden clothes into the laundry basket in the corner. I slipped between the cool sheets and, with trembling fingers, switched on the small lamp beside the bed. Daiva went into the kitchen and boiled the kettle. She came back a few minutes later with a cup of sweet black tea.

‘Are you OK ?' she said, sitting on the edge of the bed, her forehead creased with concern.

‘I'm fine,' I said.

She took my hand and laced her fingers between my own. I felt the trembling recede, felt the muscles in my neck loosen. I sipped the tea slowly. Daiva settled in the bed beside me, close to me so that I could feel the warmth of her body. Beside us, in her wooden crib, the baby was sleeping. The hands moved slowly, cautiously, around the face of the clock. Daiva breathed gently in her sleep. It was only when the sky began to lighten and I heard the first trolley bus click down towards the Old Town that I pulled the sheet up over my head and allowed my eyes to close again.

Chapter 3

The summer of 1987 was hot. I was seventeen years old, nearly eighteen. School was over and the days stretched out languorously, long, sun-baked hours in which I was left to dangle. Waiting. In June I had taken my final school exams and the results had been one ‘satisfactory' after another, to the distress of Ponia Marija, director of the children's home where I lived.

I had been lying on my bunk when Kolya poked his head around the door, grinning. He had come directly from her office, his results being no better than mine.

‘She wants to see you,' he said.

I swung my legs off the bunk and got to my feet with a sigh. I paused for a moment, glancing out of the window at the younger children playing on the grass. Liuba was sitting by the side of the sandpit, in the shade of a large maple, watching her little sister dig a hole in the sand.

‘She's just had a go at me!' Kolya chuckled. ‘You're in for it now.'

I sloped down the corridor, gloomily resigned to a lecture, unable to affect Kolya's nonchalance. He had been in the children's home since he was a baby, and looked on Ponia Marija almost as a mother, while I had arrived at the age of six. I had settled in with difficulty, crying constantly for my mother, who had disappeared late one night in an ambulance and never come back.

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