Amber (19 page)

‘Daiva,' I said, ‘I understand.'

‘You don't, Antanas, you don't understand at all. That is the problem.'

‘There are lots of problems, Daiva.'

‘And drinking won't solve any of them,' she shot back. It was a line she had delivered many times before, and I knew it had come out before she could stop it. She paused and drew a deep breath.

‘I'm sorry.'

‘It's OK.' I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the wall. I desperately needed a drink. My mouth was so dry I found it hard to speak, and in my chest I felt the familiar heavy press of dull despair.

‘I love you,' she said, quietly, almost whispering.

I squeezed my eyes shut tightly. ‘Me too.'

‘Then why are you so distant? What's happening to us, Antanas?'

‘Daiva,' I said, ‘not now, let's not argue now.'

She didn't reply. For a minute we remained like that, listening to the silence of the telephone line.

‘I'll call again,' she said finally, her voice catching on the edge of her tears.

‘OK,' I said.

There was another short silence, and then I heard the soft click of her receiver sliding into its cradle. For some moments I continued to stand there, my forehead pressed against the wall, the receiver to my ear, its buzz tickling me.

Girls were brought to the base intermittently. Mainly they were Russian girls who worked in offices in Jalalabad – civilian employees who had volunteered, doing their International Duty alongside their brothers, or earning some hard cash, which it was impossible to do in their towns and villages back home, saving up for their weddings. Zhuralev had picked one up fresh from Kabul and installed her in his building on the base for a couple of months before she managed to escape. Bringing them to the base for parties was one of Kirov's little business ventures. He rarely took part in military duties any more, paying off the commanding officer with the profits of his drug deals and prostitution.

One evening, as I squatted outside our barrack hut, rinsing grease from plates, a shadow approached in the swelling darkness.

‘Do you have a cigarette?' she asked.

I dried my hands on my shirt and took the crumpled packet from my pocket. She took one nonchalantly and waited for me to light it.

‘You not enjoying the party?' I asked nervously.

She exhaled the cheap smoke slowly. ‘They're all drunk.'

She had prominent, wide cheekbones and blue eyes. Leaning against the dusty wall of the hut, she was illuminated by the thin pulse of light coming from the bulb dangling just inside the door.

She made no secret of her name or background. She was, she said, Masha from Krasnoyarsk. She worked in an office, she told me; typing, mainly.

I rinsed the last of the plates and took them inside. When I came back out we stood for some time in silence, smoking, listening to the noise of the party. An argument broke out briefly, and there was the sound of a glass shattering. A young woman's voice screeched shrilly, angrily, and the argument subsided.

‘I hate it here,' she said with some feeling.

‘The base, you mean?'

She shook her head. ‘Afghanistan. Don't you?'

I thought for a moment. ‘I don't know,' I said, ‘I don't really think about it. There doesn't seem to be anything else. It's not like I have any choice.'

‘Do you have a girl?'

‘Here?'

‘Don't be silly. Back home.'

‘No.'

‘I can't stand the dust here. Or the noise.'

She dropped the butt of her cigarette on to the earth, and ground it into the dust with the heel of her shoe.

‘I can't stand the smell. Anything. Every night I dream about the dark green of the trees of my home town and the river that runs by the foot of the garden of my mama's house. My little sister.'

She was wearing a neat cotton shirt and a little red scarf tied tight around her throat. Her hair was brushed out. She smelt fresh and perfumed.

‘Well?' she said. ‘Do you want it?'

I nodded mutely. She did not look at me. We walked out of the base, slipping behind the huts and disappearing into the darkness at the back of the camp, through a hole in the fencing, across the narrow, well-worn track through the minefield.

We settled beneath a tree on the edge of the field and made love mechanically. When I had given her the money she asked me for (gauchely, I had to ask how much was required) she walked back to the base on her own. I watched her recede, not having told her she was the first. When I went to sleep that night, I thought of her and decided I would call her again when next I was in Jalalabad.

A week later we once more accompanied the Agitprop Brigade on one of their visits to a village in the mountains. Zhuralev swore continually; he hated these trips. ‘At best they are pointless, at worst they are a fucking security nightmare,' he commented.

The Afghani nurse, Zena, was with the brigade once more. She worked hard, examining the patients queueing in the sun, treating their diseased limbs, suppurating sores and whimpering, pale children. I repeated Zhuralev's words to her, later in the day, when she took a short break. She drank from a battered canteen in the shadow of the APC, her forehead slick with perspiration, the khaki of her shirt dark beneath her arms and down the length of her spine.

‘There is no medical care in most of the villages of Afghanistan,' she said, eyeing me disdainfully. ‘It is the women who suffer most. The men won't let them be treated by male doctors and will rarely allow them to go to one of the hospitals in the city if they need care.'

She emptied a small handful of water into the cupped palm of her hand and splashed it against her face, running her fingers through her thick black hair, curling it back behind her ears.

‘Why do you think you're here?' she said, her eyes closed, fingers pushing the cool water into the corners of her eye sockets, flushing out the dust. ‘Just to shoot the locals and destroy their villages?'

‘We're here to protect the locals from the American-backed rebels,' I said, a little stiffly, discomfited to find the Political Officer's words emerging from my mouth. Annoyed at her prickliness, I was unable to stop myself. ‘The American imperialists want to destabilise the country and we're here to stop them.'

Zena grunted. She opened her eyes and gazed at me for a moment. A bead of water clung to her eyelash.

‘Don't deceive yourself,' she said softly. ‘They don't want you here any more than they want the Americans. But as you're here, you may as well do some good.'

I flushed. Her tone embarrassed me. She held my gaze for a moment longer, then wandered back to the queueing sick.

As I watched her, a middle-aged man wandered shiftily from a doorway. He paused for a moment, glancing around at the soldiers and the rows of APCs and BMPs. He wore a dark turban, which seemed to be unravelling. When his eyes alighted on Zena, he took a step back. After a moment's hesitation he stepped forwards, determinedly, the palm of his hand beating against his forehead. Seeing him approach, I stepped forwards myself. I was about to call out to him when Zena looked up and noticed his arrival.

As their eyes met, he began to shout. At first he spoke in the local language, but after a few moments broke into heavily accented Russian.

‘Russian whore… hair uncovered… prostitute…' For a moment Zena gazed at him, then she dropped the arm of the woman she had been examining, shooting back at him a stream of Pashtu. He stiffened visibly. The colour of his face changed as he realised Zena was a local girl. He snatched at his beard and pulled it furiously. Ducking down, he plucked a stone from the dirt, and, before I could move, lobbed it forcefully towards Zena. The line of patients scattered. The stone fell short, rolling to a stop by Zena's feet. She did not flinch. She stood with hands on hips, confronting him, willing him even, to approach her.

The turbaned man glanced around at the soldiers closing in on him. Turning, he disappeared into the shadows of a doorway, a stream of abuse drifting behind him. We laughed.

The Agitprop Brigade worked through the heat of the afternoon, until the last of the sick had been attended to, the sacks of rice had been handed out and leaflets distributed to the thinning crowd. A bowed figure approached Zena from behind, as we began the process of packing our things away. A hand reached out from beneath the large cloth wound around the figure and touched her shoulder. As she turned, he lashed out.

I heard her startled cry and looked up. Zena had bent to examine the hand of the man, but suddenly she dropped to her knees and crumpled to the earth. The figure turned and ran, the large cloth dropping away from him, revealing the man who had abused Zena earlier in the afternoon. Kolya shouted, but he did not stop. As I ran towards Zena I saw Kolya raise his gun and heard its sharp metallic retort.

When I knelt beside her, she was trembling. Lifting her, I noticed the blood flowing down her face, pooling in the socket of her eye.

‘What did he do?' I said.

‘I don't know,' she said, her voice no more than a whisper. ‘I didn't feel anything, I didn't realise he had done anything.' Her voice shook. I pressed a cloth against the wound that tore down her face . ‘But then there was blood,' she continued, ‘such a lot of blood. His fingers were covered in blood and I thought the blood had come from him, that he had come to get some medical attention. I bent down to examine his hand and then I saw the blade between his thumb and finger.'

One of the doctors came over and cleaned and bandaged her wound. The razor blade had cut a thin line down her face, beginning at her scalp and finishing at her jaw.

‘Let's hope the blade was clean,' the doctor commented. When she felt a little stronger I helped her to her feet. She gazed across the market to the place where the body of her attacker lay sprawled in the dirt. She took my hand and led me across to the corpse. Kolya had hit him twice; once in the back, the other bullet catching him cleanly through the neck. The sand soaked up his blood.

‘This is what a woman's body does in Afghanistan,' she said as we stood over him. Her voice was full of bitterness. ‘Just the sight of her uncovered face and hair and arms. That is what we learn here from being a child. Look what happens when a woman does not obey the rules. Look and learn.'

The village marketplace was deathly quiet; apart from our convoy it was deserted. We pulled out quickly.

It had already begun to grow dark when I set out, with Kolya's letter in my pocket, across the city to the Rasa district. The buildings here were dilapidated; shabby curtains pulled across dimly lit rooms, litter-strewn gutters and, in a doorway, a mangy dog that did not even stir as I passed.

Warsaw Street lay behind the railway station. I hesitated when finally I found the address given to me at the hospital. The idea of seeing Kolya after so many years troubled me. I glanced around at the run-down buildings, the conspicuous deprivation, and felt a spasm of painful shame that I had done nothing to track him down after Afghanistan, to offer him support.

I pressed the buzzer by the street door. The metal plate covering the intercom panel had been prised away from the wall by vandals and wires protruded from behind it. After a few moments a tinny woman's voice answered my call.

‘I'm looking for Kolya,' I called into the twisted metal grille.

‘Who is it?' the voice crackled.

‘Antanas – I am an old friend of Kolya's.'

There was a short pause. The intercom hissed. It had begun to rain. Large drops splashed against the crumbling bricks, blotching them. I turned up my collar.

‘He's not here,' the woman said.

‘Can I come up?' I shouted.

Again she hesitated. A sharp wind drove the rain against me. The door clicked and I pulled it open and slipped inside out of the sudden downpour. The rain beat heavily against the door behind me. The stairwell was warm and dry and smelt clean. It was almost pitch black inside. I felt along the wall and pressed the light switch.

The woman was waiting by the door of her apartment when I reached the fourth floor. She showed me inside and insisted I have a cup of coffee. The apartment was neat, but barely furnished, with a few photographs displayed. After a short while she brought in the coffee and went to sit on a hard chair close to the window. Nervously, she brushed at a loose strand of hair. She was a small woman, her face worn and tired and rutted already with deep lines.

‘I'm looking for Kolya,' I said.

She grunted, and a bitter smile lifted the corners of her thin lips. Turning her head, she gazed out of the rain-smeared window.

‘
Nu
, well, you're not the only one,' she said in Polish.

My Polish was not very good and I struggled to grasp her implication.

‘There is somebody else looking for him?' I clarified.

‘Someone else?' she said. ‘Always someone else. He's been here two months and nothing paid.'

‘But did somebody else come here? A man? Kirov – his name?'

She shook her head, and I was not sure whether she had not understood me or whether she was confirming that Kirov had not been there.

‘Have you any idea where Kolya is?' I tried.

‘The last I saw of him was Thursday. He went out for cigarettes.'

‘He didn't say where he was going?'

The woman laughed at that.

‘Are you not concerned?' I asked.

She shook her head despondently.

‘Kolya and I grew up together,' I told her, ‘in the children's home. We were drafted to Afghanistan together.'

She turned away from the window. ‘You understand,' she explained, ‘he is not well. He has morphine addiction, his little gift from Afghanistan. He is sick.' She shrugged. ‘There is only so much you can do. What, am I to throw him out?'