Amber (16 page)

‘There,' he called.

I jumped from the back of the APC and made my way towards it.

‘Stop!' Lieutenant Zhuralev called. I turned to him. He was perched on top of the leading APC. ‘Mines,' he called irritably. ‘Do you want to get blown to pieces?'

A couple of sappers jumped down with their dog and began a careful reconnaissance of the area.

The body, when I got to it, was sheathed in gritty dust. It was, in fact, just the torso of a body. For some moments it was hard to recognise what I was looking at. It looked like the carcass of a sheep or a goat. The arms had been hacked clumsily from the body. The bones glistened where they poked from the flesh. The head had been hacked away too, leaving folds of flesh. The legs were gone, and the genitals.

The torso had been peeled. The skin hung off in folds of fatty flesh, tarred now with dust. I stopped a couple of paces from it. Despite the sticky heat I felt my spine turn to ice. I placed my gun on the ground beside me.

‘Is it him?' a voice called from behind me.

I did not answer. No air was able to work its way up or down my throat. I felt my jaw clenched tight, so tight it hurt.

‘Is it Chistyakov?'

I turned to the APC, which had pulled carefully from the track, staying within the parameters of the area checked by the sappers.

‘How the fuck would I know?' I shouted, the words tearing at my throat, the exertion causing tears to spring to my eyes. I turned back to the torso.

‘Fuck,' I heard Kolya whisper behind me, from the top of the APC. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.'

The sweet stink of raw flesh drifted backwards and forwards with the eddying wind. I looked down the valley towards the mountains, towards the rise of trees, dark already, slipping quietly, unobtrusively into the oncoming night, as if guiltily sidling away from the event, wanting nothing to do with it.

I felt a surge of blinding rage swell in my chest. It caught as it rose to my throat. I turned quickly from the torso to face Sasha, who was vomiting by the side of the APC.

It was too late to launch a raid on the village that evening. We returned to the base and passed the night in silence; even the granddads were subdued. When the pre-dawn light seeped over the peaks of the mountains, we stubbed out our cigarettes and readied ourselves for the raid. I moved in a hashish dream, following my hands and feet through the necessary actions. I held the rage tight in my chest, feeding off it, not sure even against whom I raged.

The choppers rose into the cool air, turned and swooped away across the trees, down the river towards the village. The moon was up still, its large, pale face mournful and tired. As the sun edged its way up the mountains from China, across Pakistan, the western sky remained dark. White clouds plumed from the wheels of the APCs on the road beneath us. I thrust a magazine into my Kalashnikov, heard it click into place and kissed it. ‘For Chistyakov.' The metal was cool beneath my lips.

I gazed down at the country below us, pale beneath the light of the moon and the dying night. The river glittered. The forest was dark. The village rose up before us on the swell of a hill, still slumbering. Behind us, a dark eagle, flew another chopper. There was no pause above the huddled streets. No time for thought. As we drew close, the helicopter banked sharply and dived down towards its target. Dawn was shattered with the whistle of rockets. Blue-pink flames sprayed from our guns. There was a heavy thud and a dark column of debris erupted from the village. A second rose beside it. The other chopper moved in behind us and a moment later the village was transformed into a bubbling cauldron of mud and dirt and rags and spokes of wood. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. My heart pounded. I heard a whoop beside me. Kolya gripped my shoulder. His eyes were large, his pupils dilated.

The helicopter descended. As it rocked against the earth we leapt from its belly. My feet did not feel the ground beneath them. I flew across the churned earth. Kolya let off a round and I heard the bullets thud against the crumbling walls of the village. Wooden beams pierced the broken walls, like ribs from the carcass of a long-dead animal.

As I leapt across the walls, my eyes flicked from the dark corners to the smouldering mounds of rubble, searching for signs of life that needed to be extinguished. The only movement was the slide of clay as the walls crumbled around us. The village was deserted. The air was heavy with the scent of explosives, with the acrid smoke from burning wood, with dust churned from the earth. The rotors of the helicopters throbbed, the fire crackled, and our feet crunched in the rubble. From the far side of the village there rose a pitiful wailing. We scrambled towards the sound.

Beneath the rubble we found a dog, its body twisted and crushed, its fur matted with blood and dust. Kolya raised his gun and shot it. Its small body jerked against the earth and fell silent suddenly, mid-wail. Tethered at the foot of the hill there were goats and a couple of camels and an ass. They gazed up towards the village as if astounded by the sudden destruction of their home. A granddad who had joined us by the dog raised his gun and fired. The ass dropped to its knees and keeled over on to its side. Another granddad cheered. He fired himself, but his shot went wide and the first soldier jeered at him.

I turned away from the small group gathered at the edge of the village. As I wandered back across the flattened walls and charred spine of the settlement, I heard the crack of their rifles and the frightened moan of the animals tethered below them. In the corner of what had been a house, I stooped and brushed away the dirt. On the packed earth floor was a child's kite, broken-backed and ragged. From its tail hung a pink ribbon.

The sun rose above the jagged ridge of mountains and caressed the earth with its light. The heavy throb of the blades of the helicopters had ceased and from the trees behind the village I heard the call of a bird. I took the ribbon from the bottom of the kite and felt its synthetic smoothness between my cold fingers. Behind me the flattened village sighed and creaked as it settled once more into the dirt from which it had been raised.

Before we left, fuel was siphoned from the tank of one of the choppers and poured over the animals. Lieutenant Zhuralev tossed the burning stub of his cigarette on to the mound of corpses. As we rose into the air and circled the shattered village, the smoke curled into the pale morning sky.

Snowcapped mountains glittered in the rising sun. The river twisted and turned and rushed, white-backed, across its rocky bed. Cranes broke from the reeds as we passed, startled by the pulse of our rotors. The higher slopes of the mountains were dark with fir and cedar. Beneath them, across the foothills, the sun caught the leaves of the ash and alder and walnut trees. The sky was brilliantly clear. Deep blue. The colour of the Virgin's gown in an icon in a church I had seen once as a child. Pure blue. What a beautiful country, I thought.

Zinotis's thick old volume on the
Jewellery of the Kushan Empire
, which I had borrowed for Vassily some years before, was at the bottom of a pile of books in the back room of the workshop. My eyes fell on it almost as soon as I stepped into the room. I had returned to get some cash from the safe hidden beneath the floorboards. It was very doubtful I would get any information out of the Santariskes Clinic if Kolya was not there. It was hard enough to get information from doctors about yourself, never mind about other patients. A few dollars might extract an address from one of the badly paid orderlies.

Distracted, I pulled the book from the pile and took it over to my work table. The volume was pale with the dust of the worked amber. I opened it, cracking the dry old spine as I did so. I flicked over the pages, examining the dark photographs of jewellery from a long-extinguished civilisation.

Standing the volume by my chair, I lifted the thin carpet in the corner of the room and pulled open the small hatch in the floorboards. A metal safe was bolted to the concrete in the hole beneath the floor. Taking out the key, I unlocked it and drew from the safe a plastic bag. Wound tightly inside the bag was a roll of dollar bills. Extracting two fifties, I stuffed them in my pocket and replaced the bag in the safe, shutting and locking it, and smoothing down the carpet above the hatch. An orderly in the hospital earned around one hundred dollars a month. Fifty dollars ought to be enough to buy an address. Taking the volume on the
Jewellery of the Kushan Empire
, I locked up the workshop and took the trolley bus to my apartment.

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.