Stephan Collishaw - Amber

‘What do you want, Kirov?’ I asked, finally.

‘To renew old acquaintance.’ He chuckled, wandering over to my desk. He placed the door key on the table and picked up one of the tear-shaped amber beads, examining it closely. ‘In these times of mourning it is important we all pull together, no?’ He grinned again, dropping the amber on to the table.

‘He always was fascinated by amber,’ Kirov continued, settling himself in Vassily’s chair. He waved his hand, indicating I should sit. Reluctantly I did so, opposite him. ‘Never understood it myself,’ he said, ‘not unless it was worth something. Very few of the stones and jewellery we smuggled out of Afghanistan were worth much. There was just the one, really. Just the one.’

His fingers formed a tight steeple, the tips resting against his lips. He gazed over them, his piercing grey eyes settling on me, examining me.

‘You would know all about that one, wouldn’t you,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘No, Kirov, I know nothing.’

‘Oh, come now, Antoshka, he told you nothing? You know nothing of the bracelet?’

Again I shook my head.

‘We got it in Ghazis,’ he said, gazing at me, openly examining the effect of his words. He laughed as if this were funny, but as he chuckled his eyes continued to stare at me stonily.

‘Vassily told me nothing,’ I said. ‘You really are talking to the wrong person.’

‘You think you owe him something? I know, you’re an honourable man, Antanas. The question is, was he?’

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

Kirov eased himself forward in Vassily’s chair. A sly grin crept across his face.

‘Vassily. Was he an honourable man? Was he worthy of your gratitude, your respect?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said.

I got up and took the key from my desk, indicating to Kirov I considered our conversation ended. Kirov, however, did not move. He watched me closely. With deliberate care he slid a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and extracted one. Slouching back into the chair, raising his feet and resting them on the edge of the desk, he lit the cigarette and blew a cloud of thin blue smoke into the air above his head.

‘No, you don’t,’ he said at last. ‘You have no idea what I am talking about, do you? How much did our friend Vassily…’ He paused mid-sentence, took another drag on his cigarette and tapped the ash from it on to the floor. ‘How much did he tell you? About what happened there, in Afghanistan?’

‘We didn’t talk about it.’

Kirov laughed. ‘I’ll bet he didn’t.’

‘I said “we” didn’t talk about it,’ I corrected him pointedly.

Kirov rose from his seat suddenly. He stepped over to me, raised a finger and prodded my chest.

‘There are things you should know,’ he whispered. ‘There are things he should have told you. The kind of things a friend would have told you. You think he was being considerate of your feelings, stepping around the past, keeping it from you? You think it was for your sake he did not say anything? You’re mistaken, Antanas. You’re very mistaken. There are some stories Vassily should have told you. There are some confessions he should have made.’

He drew steadily closer, until I could feel his hot breath against my face. His eyes had narrowed and his lips were trembling. With a shudder I recalled the almost sexual thrill he had taken from killing in Afghanistan. Recalled the way he would lick his lips before we went on a raid, the way they would tremble like this as he tested the blade of his knife against the soft pad of his thumb, drawing a little blood, sucking it up, savouring it on his tongue.

I recalled the evening when, drunk, he had grabbed me in the heavy darkness by the latrines, the blade of his knife cold and sharp against my throat.

‘I’ve seen you watching me,’ he whispered, his breath hot in my ear. ‘In the showers.’

I had heard of his reputation. I tried to pull away, but he pressed the blade deeper so that it bit into the soft flesh of my throat. I felt his hand reaching, searching. A torch beam startled him and I was able to slip out of his grip.

‘I’ll get you,’ he whispered.

‘Wouldn’t you like to know what Vassily did?’ Kirov taunted me. ‘Wouldn’t you like me to tell you?’

I stepped away from him and stumbled against a worktop. As I steadied myself, my hand came down on a pair of shears we used for cutting metal. My fingers curled around them, behind my back, opening the blades. Kirov advanced on me. His eyes glittered maliciously. A sudden image of him bent over a body flashed through my mind, the knife bloodied in his hands as he slit around the ear of the dead Afghani. Taking the lobe, he lifted it with the care of a chef and eased it away from the side of the skull as his knife sawed at the gristle.

‘It’s not a pretty story.’ Kirov grinned. ‘But then that’s why I like it so much.’

I whipped the shears from behind me and flicked the blades threateningly in his face. He stepped back, startled. Not giving him a chance to recover, I thrust them at him again, forcing him to take several paces backwards and stumble on the bags of unworked amber.

‘I want you out of here,’ I said, my voice trembling. ‘I want you out and I don’t want to see you back.’

‘Now, Antanas…’

‘Get the fuck out of my shop.’

I stabbed the shears forcefully towards him, and he had to step back again. This time he tripped and sprawled on the floor, in the soft pale dust of the amber.

‘I want you out, Kirov,’ I breathed, standing above him, ready with the shears to slash him if necessary.

He got to his feet, dusting himself off as he rose. For a moment I thought he was going to lunge forward and fight, but he grinned and backed away. When I unlocked the door and opened it, he lingered a moment longer.

‘That bracelet, Antanas, it belongs to me,’ Kirov said. ‘I paid for it with all those years rotting in a cell. Kolya has it, da ? You know where he is? Is he here in Vilnius? I will get it◦– and him for what he did to me. While I was in prison, he thought he was safe, but now…’

‘I’ve not seen him, Kirov.’

Kirov nodded and grinned, as if he did not care whether or not this was the truth.

‘I’ll find him,’ he muttered. ‘You just stay out of it. If you don’t…’ He smiled. ‘I know where Tanya lives. She’s all on her own now…’

When he left I locked the door immediately. Taking the key from the lock, I drew the blinds down over the windows. Without turning on the lamp, I slumped into my chair by the desk and waited until I had stopped shaking.

Kabul. February. The sky had cleared and the temperature had risen a few degrees. The mountains that ringed the city were thick with snow. Kabul was fragrant with the scent of wood fires, the air blue with smoke and sharp, bitter cold. The plane left Tashkent on the first. Our last days in Uzbekistan were an unbearable strain and Andrei Konstantinovich, a plump, red-faced conscript from Estonia, blew a hole in his hand while on sentry duty.

‘Don’t fucking think you’ll get out of it like that, you fat little bastard,’ Oleg Ivanovich screamed, as the young boy lay moaning in the medical wing, three of his fingers missing. ‘I’ll get you sent to the worst fucking hellhole you have ever seen. You’ll wish it was your stupid fucking pimple of a head you had blown off!’

Kabul glittered faintly in the darkness below us. As the plane dipped down towards the earth, helicopters rose to escort us. Flares arced across the sky from the choppers, illuminating the night with their brilliant colours. We pressed our faces to the window and watched the spectacle like children on New Year’s Eve. Kolya whooped.