Amber

by Stephan Collishaw

  ‘Where did. you get this stuff?’ he asked. ‘Is there more?’

  ‘This?’ Hashim said. ‘This is just shit. If you want some real pieces, then I can get you some that would interest you.’

  ‘What kind of pieces do you have?’

  Hashim waved his hand above his head, as though rare, precious pieces of jewellery were so common in Afghanistan he could just pluck them from the air.

  ‘Many pieces. Not far from here was once an ancient and important Buddhist site. There are many pieces of jewellery and other things you might be interested in. You’re interested in Buddhist icons? No? There are many more things that will interest you. But…’ He rubbed his thumb and index finger together, ‘… they cost.’

  ‘You find me something interesting and I will find the way to pay you,’ Vassily said.

  I fell asleep with Tanya’s fingers curled in my own, the warmth of her body close to me. In the darkness, a vision of the waves of pale blossom rolled over me. I was walking beneath the trees, reaching up, plucking a sprig from a low branch, examining the delicate petals, marvelling at the careful colouring of each miniature canvas. A child laughed. The blossom slipped from my fingers and fluttered to the ground. The earth was dark, rich. I bent to retrieve the pale petals. My fingers loosened the earth, searching delicately.

  ‘Leave it,’ somebody said. ‘Wait for the sappers.’

  I inched forwards across the ground, eyes straining for evidence of the buried mines. I stiffened. A child was crying. My fingers reached out again to loosen the earth.

  ‘Leave it,’ a voice said.

  A child was crying, a pitiful ululation, a desperate, heart-rending sob.

  ‘Just wait for the fucking sappers.’

  The earth was stippled. Tiny plumes of dirt rose before me. Little pillars of dust. The dull thwack of bullets entering a tree trunk.

  ‘Sniper!’

  ‘Find cover!’

  I lay still, lips pressed tight against the hot earth, ears pricked like a dog’s, heart thudding in the dry soil, a searing pain slitting my skull in two. I rolled, was trapped. Could not move.

  I gasped, my mouth gaping, drawing in air, as though surfacing from beneath the waves. My eyes opened wide, straining against the darkness. My hands flayed, pulling at the sheet wound tight around me, balled in my fists, suffocating me. I sat up, struggling to catch my breath, placing myself slowly, feeling the edge of the bed, the tight knot of sheets, the worn carpet beneath me. Tanya still asleep. I buried my head in my knees, pressing my eyes shut.

  When the panic had receded and my pulse calmed, and I had unwound the sheets from around my body, I sat on the edge of the bed. My head throbbed and, lifting a hand and touching it gingerly, I discovered I was bleeding. I had banged it against the corner of the side table, falling from the bed.

  I got up, pulled on Vassily’s old dressing gown and slipped out of the bedroom, pulling the door quietly closed behind me. There was a half-drunk bottle of brandy on one of the bookshelves in the sitting room. I took a glass and poured myself a large one. Turning on the standard lamp, I settled in the armchair. By its arm there was a pile of photo albums Tanya had not tidied away. Many of the photographs had fallen from the pages when they had been pulled from the shelf and she had put them by the chair, planning to sort them out.

  Flicking through the albums, I looked at my friend, young, full of life. I came across a photograph I had taken the summer after we moved to Vilnius. Vassily stood on the beach dressed in a pair of shorts, clasping Tanya to him. Sea water was still streaming from his hair and beard so that he looked like Neptune risen from beneath the waves, and Tanya was screaming, pulling away from him, her dark hair swinging out against the shimmering light bouncing from the surface of the sea. I picked the photograph up, examining closely the two bright, happy faces.

  ‘Amberella, Amberella,’ Vassily was shouting. I could hear his voice, remember its exact cadence, remember the way they had fallen, struggling, to the sand the moment after this picture had been taken, Tanya laughing and screaming and shouting for help. It was the summer after Tanya had introduced me to her university room-mate Daiva. She was standing behind me, watching the two of them. Slipping her arms around me, she rested her chin on my shoulder. It was a moment of pure joy.

  ‘Amberella was a beautiful young girl who lived here in the village,’ Vassily had told us the evening before. It was late June and we had borrowed a car and driven to the coast to visit Tanya’s grandparents. We took a bottle and settled on the beach, watching the sun set, listening to the wash of the waves on the sand. It was a sultry evening but later we built a small fire, for its light, not warmth.

  ‘Her father was a fisherman and they lived in a small hut,’ Vassily continued. ‘Though their house was the smallest and meanest in the village, Amberella was the prettiest girl for miles around and her father and mother adored her.

  ‘Each morning she would run out to this beach and take an early morning swim in the sea. One morning, as she was swimming, the current caught her and she was dragged down beneath the waves, down into the depths of the sea. The prince of the sea had seen the beautiful young woman bathing in his waters and fallen in love with her. It was he that had reached out and drawn her down to his palace in the rocks, far below the surface. Amberella was his prisoner. The sea prince kept her as his princess, in his fabulous palace built with bricks of amber.

  ‘Poor Amberella was heartbroken. She wept and begged the prince to return her to her parents, who she knew would be stricken with grief at losing their only daughter. The prince was angry that Amberella wept and begged him daily to let her go. Finally, however, moved by her pleas, he harnessed his frothing white horses and rose with her to the surface of the sea in a raging storm.

  ‘Amberella’s father was in his fishing boat when his daughter rose from beneath the sea in the prince’s chariot, with a crown of amber on her head and amber beads laced about her neck. As she plunged once more beneath the tossing waves she pulled the amber beads from her neck and threw them to her father. And that was the last he saw of her.

  ‘When the storms rage and the waves crash upon the beach, still Amberella tosses her amber beads from the window of her palace beneath the sea, hoping they will wash up on the shore to show her parents that she loves them and thinks of them always.’

  Putting the photo album aside, I stood up. A photograph spiralled to the floor from my lap. Bending down, I picked it up to slip back into the album.

  It was a black-and-white photograph and the quality of the image was very poor. It was of a group of uniformed men, arms draped around each other’s shoulders, caps awry, Kalashnikovs held casually in hands, grins on most faces. Behind the group was a large tree, a eucalyptus.

  I recognised the group immediately and found myself at the back beside Vassily. My eyes scanned down to the foreground of the photograph. Chistyakov knelt at the front, his legs and knees indiscernible, fading into the poorly developed edge of the photograph, as though when the photograph had been taken his very existence was already draining away.

  I turned the photograph over. On the back, in pencil, somebody had scrawled ‘Jalalabad 1988’.

  ‘June,’ I said, and poured myself another brandy.

  Chapter 14

  The morning after the photograph was taken, two helicopters were scrambled from the base to deal with sniper fire coming from a village on to the road to Jalalabad. Chistyakov joined the small group of granddads boarding the Mi-24s.

  ‘Have a last cigarette, before you go,’ Kirov said, proffering his packet of Marlboros.

  ‘Don’t say “last”!’ Chistyakov snapped. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  Kirov grinned maliciously. Superstitiously we never used the word ‘last’. As the helicopters disappeared into the distance, I joined the supply trucks’ military escort heading into Jalalabad. The wind was gathering force and raising dust in dark swollen clouds, which rolled across the plains and hung above the city lik
e a thick autumnal mist, blurring the sun. The dust stuck to our slick, sweaty bodies. Each movement we made grated; our tongues were thickly furred with the fine Afghani soil, our hair stiff and white. The Afghans pulled their shawls tightly around themselves, covering their faces. The whole city seemed to be shrouded under a suffocating, billowing grey burqa.

  We were returning to base slowly, an APC before and behind the supply trucks, when a call came through that the two helicopters that had gone on the morning raid had been brought down by the mujahidin, and that Chistyakov was missing.

  We were met by a couple of BMPs just outside the village. One of the granddads who had been on the morning raid came over to parley with us.

  ‘I thought the muj brought your two helicopters down,’ Lieutenant Zhuralev said.

  ‘Did they fuck!’ the granddad spat. ‘The pilot crashed. We landed just outside the village. It was quiet, so we were going in to take a look around. The wind got up, blowing like hell, so we could barely see a fucking thing. We should have pulled out then. As we got close to the village the dukhs opened fire. Not from the village but from some kirize behind us. As we were retreating, one of the pilots panicked – he started to take off. What with the wind and dust storm he comes down in some trees. In the confusion we lost some of our boys. Chistyakov is unaccounted for; we think the muj must have taken him.’

  As we wound slowly down the rutted lane to the village, which was situated on an incline, the wind began to drop. The sun appeared, bloody and heavy, sagging towards the hazy horizon. The fields and trees were white with dust. As the late rays of sun caught them they shone scarlet. We were a kilometre from the village when Kolya, sitting beside me, spotted the dark shape in the dirt a little way off the road.

  ‘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.
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  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.

  Chapter 15

  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.