Amber (3 page)

‘You're not stupid,' she said, in her office. I gazed down at the polished wood parquet, avoiding her gaze. ‘It's not as if you've no brains,' she went on, more to herself now. She got up and looked out of the window at the young children jumping and racing across the parched lawn beneath the trees. The sound of their shouting drifted through the window, and from somewhere the faint sound of radio music: Pugacheva's old hit ‘Harlequin'.

‘You're a dreamer,' Ponia Marija said decisively, as if the label made my lack of success somehow more palatable. She turned from the window. ‘That's your problem. It always has been, since you were little. You were always sitting in some corner with your head in the clouds.'

She moved closer to me and fondly ran her fingers through my hair. I shrugged.

‘I'll talk to the director of the Technical School, see if we can get you a place there.'

The director of the Technical School had, however, not been able to find room for me. As the summer wore on, burning its way steadily through the last remaining patches of greenery, I waited for the inevitable conscrip­tion papers to arrive. There was no getting out of it; there was nobody to get me a ‘white ticket'. The medical tests at school had found me fit and healthy.

‘It'll be a laugh,' Kolya said, grinning. We sat on the wall surrounding the children's home. Kolya was looking forward to being conscripted. He lit a cigarette and drew on it deeply, wincing, his Asiatic eyes closing to a narrow slit.

He took up an imaginary Kalashnikov and fired it, rat-a-tat-tat, in a swooping semicircle, mowing down the enemy. Liuba giggled. She was curled up in the shadow at Kolya's feet. Kolya took another drag on the cigarette and passed it down to her. She took it delicately, between two fingers, and affected a pose she must have seen on television. I gazed out across the field that sloped away from the town, towards the lake. It was just possible to hear the screams of the youngsters splashing about in their swimming costumes.

It seemed like a dream that I would be leaving this place and going out into the world. As a man. I imagined coming back to the doors of the children's home, tanned, my face lined, my uniform neatly pressed, twenty years old. I imagined the way they would greet me, how Ponia Marija would look at me – ‘Antanas?' – not believing. ‘My God,' she would cry, ‘my God, is it you ? How you have grown, you're a man!'

‘But what if… ?' Liuba began. Her small face gazed up at Kolya, her eyes wide, her eyelashes tickling her high, broad cheekbones. ‘What if they send you to… ?' Again she faltered.

Kolya took the cigarette from her and kicked his heel against the wall. There was a moment's nervous silence. ‘I'm not worried,' he said. ‘They can send me… I hope they send me to Afghanistan. I'll show those fucking Afghanis.'

He seized his imaginary Kalashnikov again and this time leapt from the wall, the cigarette hanging from his thick lips. He rolled on the ground and turned to us, firing a spray of imaginary bullets. Rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. Liuba squealed and curled herself into a tight ball, her head disappearing between her knees. I laughed and jumped down on the other side, poking my head over with an imaginary gun of my own. Rat-a-tat-tat. Kolya came rushing at me, a blood-curdling yell splitting the warm summer air, the cigarette falling from his lips and dancing on the dusty earth. He hurdled the wall and fell on me, wrestling me to the ground. We tumbled in the grass, gripping each other hard. Liuba shouted and, feeling a burst of sudden, brilliant energy course through my veins, I pulled Kolya down and held him tight, glorying in the fact that Liuba was hanging over the wall watching me being victorious.

Kolya and I received our conscription papers at the same time. We took the bus to Vilnius together. Liuba sobbed at the station. She threw her arms around Kolya's neck and would not let go.

‘Look after him,' she said to me, her eyes and cheeks red from sobbing.

Even Ponia Marija had a tear in her eye. Kolya and I joked, dismissive of all the tears, which we found embarrassing. As the bus jerked forward out of the crowded bay a small jolt of fear clenched my stomach. I turned and waved to the group who had come to see us off, jostled by the crowd who had arrived for market.

The bus pulled out on to the road and slowly picked up speed. Familiar scenes slipped past the dusty window; houses and trees and shops I knew intimately. The marketplace was already busy with stalls and shoppers. pushing each other as they competed for the first bargains of the day. Jeans and T-shirts shipped in from the West, almost new. Oily engine parts. Fresh eggs and, in the corner near the street, a little girl with a grubby face and torn dress selling kittens from a card­ board box. It was a late summer's day, bright and warm, and it was impossible to be unhappy or tense for long. The feeling of unease, the ball of fear that lay heavily in the pit of my stomach, soon dissipated.

It was the first time I had been to the capital and Kolya and I gaped in excitement at the size of the city. We jabbed each other, animatedly, pointing out buildings, cars, cafés and bars and, above all, girls.

‘Look at her!' Kolya cried. ‘
Oi!
‘ He sat back with a blissful grin on his face. ‘I've never seen so many beautiful girls in my life.'

‘And what about Liuba ?' I teased him. ‘She told me to look after you and I think by that she meant keeping you in order.'

‘Who? Liuba who?' Kolya grinned, eyes creasing into his high, rosy cheeks.

‘Me, on the other hand,' I said, ‘I'm free to pick and choose.'

I was envious of the attention and tears the beautiful young Liuba had spent on Kolya.

We swaggered through the streets of Vilnius, stopping near the bus station for a drink.

‘How old are you two, then?' the woman behind the bar asked with a wry smile, looking at our fresh young faces.

‘Old enough,' Kolya said, trying to imitate the rough aggression of the men we had seen in bars in our town.

The woman laughed. She leant forward, drawing her face close to Kolya's. ‘Old enough for what ?' she whispered, blowing the fringe of his hair away from his large square face. Her breasts rested heavily on the polished surface of the bar. Kolya's face flushed and he fell silent. We drank our beers quietly and left.

‘She was too old or I would have had her,' Kolya said as we made our way to the bus stop that would take us to the base we had been told to report to.

I nodded. ‘She wasn't bad, though, was she? I mean, even though she was getting on a bit.'

‘Fuck off, she was old enough to be your
baba
.'

We laughed raucously, ignoring the crowd that pushed around us. When the bus came we shoved each other on, fighting through the bodies, giggling and jabbing each other. The passengers watched us good-humouredly, knowing where we going.

Nobody was in the apartment the next morning when Tanya telephoned. The small red light blinked on the answerphone when I returned just after lunch. I hesitated a moment before pressing the button. Tanya's voice filtered nervously from the clumsy apparatus. She sounded fragile and distracted.

‘Antanas? It's Tanya.' She paused. ‘They've taken Vassily into hospital.' She hesitated again and I heard her laboured breathing above the crackle of the telephone, as if she were stifling a sob. ‘Perhaps you should come to see him. They don't seem hopeful.'

For some moments, I heard the soft sound of her breath as she continued to hold the telephone receiver close to her lips. Then, quietly, gently, she replaced it.

A dim light illuminated Vassily's bed. In a steady, slow rhythm his chest rose and fell. His hands, punctured by drips, lay on the sheet by his side. I took his fingers between my own. The flesh was hard, calloused. Black hairs bristled from them. I felt the warm pulse. Life. His face was more shrivelled than it had been when I had seen him the previous day. His beard hung over the fold of the sheet. Closing my eyes, I caressed his fingers between my own. Fingers that had taught me so much.

‘He's in and out of consciousness,' Tanya told me when I bumped into her in the corridor. ‘Mostly he's sleeping, but every so often he wakes. Sometimes he is very lucid and at times not at all.'

‘What have the doctors said ? Have they…'

She shook her head but said nothing. I looked away down the corridor. We stood together awkwardly in the semi-darkness. I could see by the way her chest swelled and by the tightening of her jaw muscles that she was close to tears. She blinked twice. I laid a hand on her shoulder and she staggered slightly. We embraced clumsily, our stiff bodies colliding in the grimy corridor.

‘I'd better go in,' she said.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘You will let me know if there is any change?'

She nodded. For a moment longer she lingered, as if there were something more to be said. I longed to hold her, but did not move. She slipped through the doorway into the ward. The nurse came and I gave her a box of chocolates I had bought from a shop on the way, and some fruit from the village; the small expected bribes to make sure the patient was well treated. A bottle of champagne had already gone to the doctor. The nurse smiled, dourly.

‘Take good care of him,' I said.

She nodded, a little severely. ‘Of course.'

Outside, the weather had begun to clear. I found a quiet café off the main street, ordered a coffee and lit a cigarette. It had been to Tanya's grandparents' cottage that Vassily had taken me when I was discharged from hospital after Afghanistan. The cottage was roofed with corrugated tin sheets that were brown with rust, blending naturally into the autumnal colours of the overhanging trees. The door stood open, a net curtain trailing across the packed-earth doorstep. Tethered to a stake in the garden, a large dog barked furiously. A young woman stepped out, barefoot on the worn earth. Her hair fell around her shoulders, framing a hand­ some face. I paused for a moment, seeing her. There was something familiar about her face. It attracted me and frightened me simultaneously.

‘Tanya,' Vassily said.

‘You're back, then,' she said.

‘
Da
,' he said, with a grin, ‘I'm back, as I promised.' His tongue licked nervously at his lips, but I could see his eyes devouring her. After a moment he collected himself.

‘And this,' he said, with a flourish of his large hand, ‘is Antanas, my comrade in arms, my brother and friend, as I have also promised to you.'

Tanya appraised me for a few seconds, her eyes travelling up my emaciated body, resting finally on my own. ‘Vassily tells me you have been ill.'

I shrugged, sheathed still in the dark haze of the neuroleptics the hospital had been feeding me. Slowly her features worked their way into my mind, teasing out the memory of other features, of feelings numbed over the long months – years – of medication.

We followed her as she stooped through the low doorway, brushing the curtain aside. After the bright afternoon light, the gloom of the small room into which we stepped was, for several moments, impenetrable.

‘
Senele
,' Tanya called, ‘Vassily is back. He has brought his friend, the Lithuanian boy.'

The shuffle of broken slippers on the stone floor drew my eyes to the doorway leading off from the kitchen, through which a woman appeared, a twig broom in her hand. Moving closer, she nodded to Vassily. She examined me.

‘Just look at the state of you,' she said, and despite the twist of her lips and the angry way she said this I could see she was concerned.

Tanya led me through to the back room and laid me on a large sofa beneath the window.

‘Vassily has told me a lot about you,' she said, kneeling beside me.

I nodded, unsure how to respond. I found the idea of conversation difficult. She lingered a moment longer and then got up and went back into the kitchen, leaving behind only the scent of her body. I lay listening to the sound of her voice in the next room. Transfixed by it.

When I had finished the coffee, I ground the cigarette out in the ashtray and left the café. It was early enough to go back to the workshop for a couple of hours, but I could not face it. I caught a trolley bus home and waited in the gathering gloom for Daiva and the baby.

Tanya telephoned again the next morning. Daiva roused me from the sofa, where I had been sleeping. In the kitchen Laura was crying. ‘It's Tanya,' Daiva said, her voice coloured with too many implications. My heart shrank and my hand trembled as I picked up the receiver. Tanya's voice was thick with sorrow, choking on the news of her husband's death. I stood on the cold tiled floor, barefoot, in silence.

‘He's gone,' she said. I heard the catch in her throat and there was a short pause as she steadied herself. ‘This morning. Early.'

‘Tanya,' was all I could think to say. After that the silence grew too oppressive for us both. I heard her sobbing, far away down the crackling line. I longed to be there with her, to hold her and comfort her.

Daiva stood by the kitchen window, looking out, her back to me. She did not turn as I put down the receiver. For some moments we stood like that, without saying a word. She did not offer me comfort. Instead she picked up a plate and rinsed it under the tap. Laura had stopped crying and was muttering into a bowl of porridge. I picked up my jacket, slipped on some socks and shoes and left the apartment.

For some time I paced back and forth outside, unsure where to go. It had always been to him that I turned. And now he was gone. In the end I headed for the bus stop on Freedom Boulevard. Catching the number 16 to the station on the edge of the Old Town, I made my way along the familiar route, through the old ghetto, towards the Gates of Dawn where he and Tanya had their apartment.

I was about to stop in the small beer hall close by their block when, looking up, I noticed the light in their window. For some moments I stood in the centre of the narrow cobbled lane that twisted down, away from Filharmonija Square, looking up at the third-storey apartment. Dull clouds, which had moved once more across the city, hung low and threatening now. The old grey plaster falling from the walls of the buildings was dark. Only the moss seemed enlivened. It was verdant, growing up thickly from the foundations.