Amber (29 page)

Looping my arms beneath her, I lifted her from the dust. Her body was strangely stiff, resistant to my touch. She was heavy and I struggled slightly under her weight.

Carefully I laid her on the pile of wood. She looked fragile in death. I pressed my lips to the scar running down the side of her face. A breeze had picked up, blowing from the east, from Pakistan. It rustled the dry grass in the pyre and whistled across the roofs of the huts.

I knelt before the pyre. There should have been something fitting for me to say, but I had no prayer – no prayer any god would find decent, would consider bending an ear to listen to. A poem, a couple of lines, would have done, something to sanctify the moment, but my mind was dark, a blank fury. I knelt in silence, my head bowed, my hands trembling.

When I rose I took the can of fuel and went quickly to the farthest hut. There, without pausing, I sloshed the fuel around the dark interior. There was little in the hut, just a table and a rug. In the corner was a Koran, and I took that and ripped a page from it. Taking from my pocket the Chinese lighter Vassily had once given me, I lit the crinkled yellow pa per and tossed it to the floor. A small flame rose from the packed earth. It ran quickly along the rug, and as I turned the fuel exploded with a dull thud, knocking me forwards with a warm burst of heat. Without turning back, I hurried to the next hut and doused that with fuel, taking care not to use too much. Tearing another page from the Koran, tucked beneath my arm, I tossed the flaming, crinkled ball into the hut and watched it explode in flames.

When all the huts were burning I stood once more before the roughly fashioned pyre and drank in her form. She seemed shrunken in death. Reduced. Childlike and vulnerable. The dry grass and wooden beams crackled as they burnt around me. Dark smoke billowed up into the clear air, then, caught on a draught of suffocating wind, bent back down and swirled around the village. Ships of flame sailed the currents of air, descending beside me lightly, smouldering in the dust.

Slowly and with care I tore each remaining page from the Koran. I clothed her with the sheets, spread them over her, weighted down with dust. As I worked, the fire descended softly upon us, settling on the dusty pages, on the grass that stuck out like unruly whiskers from between the planks of wood. The pages darkened, wrinkled and curled along their edges. Blue flames rushed along them, joining, spreading. The grass withered, pulled itself into the cracks, smoking, charred. A gust of wind blew low across the hilltop. There was a gasp, like a sudden intake of breath, a moment's silence, and then a belch of flame jumped from the wooden mound. The pages lifted into the air, sailing on the updraught, into the smoke-darkened air, as if God Himself were drawing His Word up into His hands.

The heat knocked me back and I staggered and fell into the dust. I felt the flesh on my face blister. The air tore at my lungs; my throat burnt. I crawled beneath the billowing clouds of smoke, my hands and knees shredding themselves on the sharp stones. At the edge of the village the path descended a sharp incline. In my hurry I stumbled from the path and, blinded by the smoke and my tears, I fell.

‘Come on,' Kolya urged. He thrust his hands beneath my arms and pulled me up. ‘We can't hang around here all night. Let's get moving.'

The smoke plumed from the hilltop, like a volcano. From nowhere, then, the cry of a child arrested me, catching all at once the hate, the raging anger in my heart. Shrivelling it. I stopped; the dust rose in swirls around me; the smoke, forced down by the wind, curled into the trees. The scream froze my legs. I looked back up towards the village, barely visible, the sun behind it dark and brooding. The choking smoke burnt the back of my throat; the fire crackled in my ears as it rushed along the dry wood, through the grass roofs, consuming the village.

Scrambling back up the bank, madly, I thought it was Zena crying from her pyre. Crawling forwards on hands and knees, struggling for breath beneath the thick clouds of smoke, I worked my way into the centre of the village once more. The cries came from the hut in which the old man had been standing. I crawled over his inert body and stumbled around the back of his crumbling home. Smoke poured from a ventilation window high in the wall. I clambered up to it. From inside I could hear a hoarse low cough, the sound of a child struggling to breathe. I called through the opening. I clawed at the mud, pulling away dry handfuls, enlarging the hole.

I pushed myself through into the darkness. Landing heavily, I immediately felt the movement beside me. Squeezed tight into the corner was a child, eyes pressed tightly shut, face dark, lips blue, throat gasping, groping for oxygen, tearing painfully, choking on the smoke. I scooped the girl into my arms and staggered out through the flames.

A sharp breeze rustled the branches of the trees in Vingis Park. The sudden noise startled Kolya and he turned quickly on his heel, his hand reaching beneath his jacket. The moon had disappeared, covered by another thick layer of cloud blowing in from the coast. The only light came from the lamps on the bridge, just visible through the trees.

I pushed up the sleeve of my jacket and unbuttoned my shirt. My fingers trembled so that it took a while. It was so dark that it was hard to make out the crinkled pink skin. The scars. I felt the skin's odd hairlessness, its wrinkles. Tentatively Kolya reached out and placed his fingers on my arm. They were cold and trembling too.

I felt again the weight of the fragile child's body in my arms, recalling how I had stumbled down the hill, the branches of the trees lashing my face, my arms numb with pain. How I fell, headlong, tossing the child aside. Crawled through the undergrowth, picked her up and staggered on. And fell and gathered her and stumbled on.

‘We're pulling out,' a voice shouted close to my ear.

Vassily was perspiring, his face black with dirt, glistening with large beads of sweat. He loomed over me, blocking out the light. His hand reached down and brushed my cheek. I tried to turn my head, but it would not move.

His hands gripped the front of my flak jacket. He pulled the child from my arms. I struggled to hold on to the small body, pulling it close to my chest. Crushing it against me. Another set of hands pulled at my arms. The pain seared through my body, vibrating in my head. It was as if somebody were pushing hot iron against my flesh, tearing the skin away from my bone.

‘He's badly burnt,' somebody said.

‘Come on, let's move,' Vassily said, his voice tight with fear. ‘They may come back and we're totally fucked. Zhuralev has taken a bullet, and the radio operator is dead.'

I tried to struggle to my feet, but Vassily pushed me back down.

‘Just roll over,' he said. ‘Let's get you on to the stretcher.'

Hands reached out and tugged at me. Pulled and pushed. Lifted and dropped. Sick with exhaustion, I lay still as they hoisted me up. They ran, jolting me so my teeth rattled. I heard the splash of water as they forded the stream and their heavy breathing and curses as they stumbled down the line. My head throbbed and my arms burnt.

‘Zena,' I murmured, my voice hoarse, barely audible above the noise of the engines of the armoured vehicles.

There was a strong wind blowing. The sand was whipped up from the track and swirled in dark, choking clouds around the stationary vehicles. The wind was accompanied by a heavy throb, a clattering pulse. My stretcher was lifted and slid along the floor of a helicopter.

A medic looked down at me, gently pushing my head to one side, digging strong fingers into the side of my neck, eliciting a pain so sharp it brought tears to my eyes and a cry to my lips. A look of wearied annoyance crossed the medic's face and he pushed my head roughly back into place. He turned and extracted a syringe from his bag, took a small glass vial and snapped off its nipple. Inserting the needle, he sucked the morphine up into the syringe. The tip was white from where it had been boiled. Its rubber looked dark and perished. He injected me and turned immediately to deal with another casualty.

Sitting above me, on one of the metal seats along the side of the chopper, was the medic with the spectacles.

‘Zena,' I said.

He glanced down at me. His spectacles were cracked and a yellowing bandage had been wound tightly around his head. Blood had begun to seep through it, a dark stain.

A rush of warmth flooded my senses, entirely at odds with the desperate darkness of my thoughts. I fought it. My eyelids flickered. When they slid closed, I opened them again, lifting the skin with deliberate effort. The metal beneath me lurched suddenly and somebody cursed. Somebody else was crying. My eyelids fell heavily and I could not lift them, though I tried.

‘Zena.' The helicopter dipped as it turned so that my stretcher slid across the metal floor, coming to rest against the legs of the seats. Darkness enfolded me.

‘Let's go now,' Kolya said softly.

I nodded and pulled down the sleeves of my shirt and jacket. We turned in the direction of the bridge and trudged along the dark path in silence, feet crunching on the gravel. On the back of my neck I felt a drop of rain. Glancing up, I saw the dark shape of an owl swoop down across the sky and settle at the top of a tree. From the far side of the bridge it was possible to hear the dog barking still, disturbed by some other nocturnal soul. On the bank of the river, by the end of the bridge, work was being done to create a new path through the centre of the woods to the auditorium. The earth-working equipment cast weird shapes in the darkness. Kolya shivered and hurried on towards the light of the lamp on the footbridge.

I did not wake as the Mi-8 skimmed low through the pass, ruffling the sky-blue lakes, tossing the branches of the trees. Nor did I wake in Jalalabad when they hauled me off and lined me up on the tarmac in the darkness, with boys with missing limbs, shattered skulls, boys already zipped into bags. I did not wake on the plane that transported us across the narrow fissures, the broken-backed mountains, the jagged teeth of Afghanistan, to Kabul.

It was dark when I came to. I could not breathe. I was tied and bound and choking. I struggled and tossed around. I have been captured, was my first thought. My grenade. One for the muj, one for yourself – our first lesson in Afghanistan. I could not move my arms. When I threw back my head to clear my windpipe a searing pain scalded me and detonated a series of mini-explosions behind my eyes. I cried out.

I heard the clatter of footsteps. The slap of rubber on tiles. The slop of slippers. Hands were pulling at me, lifting me.

Leave me – no – oh fuck, oh fuck.

‘Sedate him,' somebody muttered.

Lying on my back I could breathe more easily. My head continued to thump and I could not feel my limbs. Figures swam in front of my eyes.

Zena.

A hand reached out and clamped itself tightly over my lips.

‘Get it in quick, before he wakes the whole fucking ward with his screams.'

Light. My eyelids slid open. The brightness hurt, forcing me to squint. The walls were hospital green. A low rumble sounded softly in my ears. Carefully I peered from side to side. I could not turn too far without setting off the pain. The room was lined with metal-framed beds. Two nurses lounged against a wall, one gazing out of the window. As my mind cleared a little, I realised that the low rumbling, which I had taken to be traffic on the road outside, or the murmur of an old fan, was in fact the quiet moans of a hundred men. The moans rose and fell, a continuous stream of pain ebbing and flowing around the hospital ward. It took me a few moments more to realise that I too was a part of this current, my moan joining theirs, escaping my throat involuntarily, rising to float beneath the high ceiling, with the fat flies and spiders that nestled darkly in corners.

The nurse, noticing I had woken, wandered across to me. She took a cloth and gently dabbed the side of my face, wiping spittle from my cheek. She examined me for a moment, then straightened and turned away. I gazed after her as she wandered, seemingly aimlessly, down the ward.

It was growing dark again when next I woke. My eyelids flicked up and my mind seemed at once to be preternaturally clear. In vivid detail I remembered Zena turning as I called to her. She straightened slightly. I noticed the look on her face, the way it was twisted with fear, with the desire to hear what I had said. The look of surprise. I saw the dark hole suddenly materialise on her smooth throat. The way her eyes opened slightly wider, astonished that death had caught her so cleanly. Saw the second hole and the flick of her head as the impact knocked her to one side. I felt her beneath me, her body bucking.

I stared up at the ceiling of the ward. A large spider moved slowly across it towards a hole in the plaster where a light had been fixed clumsily. She straightened. The bullet pierced her throat. Her cheek. The spider made it to the dark hole and hesitated for a moment before disappearing.

The low hum of suffering had begun to rise, led by a single voice. It was a thin wail and it rose higher and higher. As it rose the other moans followed it, snaking up towards that small dark hole in the plaster of the ceiling, after the spider. The thin wail reached a peak and broke, became a sob, a heart-rending cry, which jerked and rasped. The chorus broke with it. The ward echoed to the sound of the screams, the lonely, tortured wails of the sick. The moans and keening of the frightened, the lost.

Feet slapped across the cold tiles. Angry voices shushed and hushed.

‘The new one,' somebody said, their throat tight with panic and annoyance.

They surrounded me. A male nurse sat on the bed and pressed down on my chest. By my side another was clumsily fumbling with a syringe, filling it, holding it to the light.

‘Shut the fucker up!'

I felt the soft warmth of a pillow descending across my face, pressing down, smothering me. A stab of pain in my arm. Other memories were surfacing. They broke through the skin of my consciousness, rising like divers, spluttering for air. Children dark with blood, wide eyed, thrown back against the walls, their clothes rumpled and ragged and disarrayed. Their bodies ill placed, wrenched into positions they could never have achieved in life. I wailed into the pillow.