Stephan Collishaw - Amber

As the weeks passed, I surfaced slowly. The doctors reduced the dosage of my tranquillisers and I did not shout or curse or threaten. The blankness, the emptiness induced by the drugs, stayed with me, even after the medication had been withdrawn completely. Vassily came frequently, sitting with me in the chilly hospital ward, talking to me, caring for me.

‘Just look at you,’ he said, dabbing the spittle from my chin. ‘Just look at the state of you.’

Vassily’s face was drawn and tired. Beneath his eyes, dark sacs hung like vials of poison. His hair dangled over his forehead, his beard was unkempt and his eyes were bloodshot. His hands shook as he touched me.

‘Just look at you,’ he mumbled, dabbing and wiping. ‘What a fucking mess.’

‘Where am I?’ I asked him one day.

‘You’re home,’ he said. ‘Back in Lithuania. I’m going to take you with me. Look after you.’

When, after a couple of months, the doctor considered me, if not well, then at least not dangerous, I was discharged. Vassily met me in a taxi at the gates of the hospital and we drove into Vilnius together. We stayed in a small apartment belonging to a friend of his for a couple of days before Vassily moved me to the coast to stay with a family in a small village close to the sea. Jurgis and Vaida lived with their granddaughter, Tanya, a student.

Vassily worked with Jurgis, making pictures from chippings of amber. As the summer passed, I sat in a wooden chair Vassily had placed in the shade of a tree, smoking cigarette after cigarette, the cheap tobacco scorching my throat, watching the heron poke around the pond, the family’s dog wandering back and forth across the parched grass on which it was tethered, the quiet rhythms of village life.

The smells and sounds of the small cottage comforted me. The scent of the wood and the dust. The sound of the rain as it beat against the roof, the wind as it crooned in the tips of the pines. The pain and nausea began to subside. I felt like a child laid up in bed, sick with fever.

Whenever I awoke, my heart beating rapidly, the scent of smoke in my nostrils, the echoes of screams in my ears, Vassily was beside me, watching over me.

‘Shh,’ he would whisper as I cried out in the darkness.

‘Where are we?’

‘You’re home, comrade, you’re safe now. It’s OK. Sleep.’

‘All I can see is darkness. What is going on?’

‘It’s night-time.’ He stroked my head. ‘You are sick,’ he said. ‘You are tired and sick. Sleep now, tomorrow you will be fine. You will feel much better.’

Only Tanya disturbed the stillness of my existence. Her presence acted like the dropping of a smooth pebble into the shallows of a pond; the ripples fanned out slowly, making the surface shiver, splintering the mirrored tree-tops and layered clouds. Guarded as I still was by the effect of the neuroleptics, perhaps I was unaware of her physical resemblance to Zena. I was aware only that I longed for her and feared her in equal measures. I explained my confused feelings to myself as guilt for being attracted to her when it was so obvious Vassily was in love with her and their relationship was budding.

When I was feeling stronger Vassily took me on a walk through the forest to the beach. The grassland rolled down from the thick woods to the sand dunes. The land was boggy, criss-crossed with little streams. There were endless low hollows and sudden sharp inclines up the sides of hillocks. I was exhausted by the time we had covered half the distance. We sat for some time on top of a grassy knoll, looking down at a cottage close to the beach, sheltered by stubby maple and birch, bent by the winds blowing up off the sea. We did not speak. The silence was broken only by the cry of a gull, the rush of the breeze as it riffled the long grass and the sound of the waves breaking on the beach.

Vassily shuffled along the water’s edge, bent double, his eyes not rising from the sand at his feet. I followed just behind him, watching his back, keeping close. He stopped and lightly lifted a heap of dark, tangled seaweed with the toe of his split shoe. A gull landed on the damp sand. It, too, rooted about, with its beak, hopping on a couple of paces when Vassily got too close, then foraging once more.

Vassily stopped suddenly. I squatted beside him. Picking a pebble from the sand, he examined it, cleaned it on the cuff of his jacket and held it up.

‘It’s gintaras ,’ he said, using the Lithuanian word. Amber.

I held out my hand and he dropped the dirty lump of ancient resin into my palm. It was light, and warm, quite different to the feel of a pebble.

He was standing at my side, looking down at the amber in my hand. I could feel his warm breath on my skin. He seemed nervous. He rubbed his hands together and peered at me from beneath his dark fringe. He took the amber from me and wrapped his thick fingers around it, pressing it into his flesh.

As the summer passed, I quickly began to recover my strength. I walked along the beach every morning, going a little farther each time, easing my legs into an easy pace along the soft sand. One morning, waking early, I saw Tanya slip out through the room in which Vassily and I were sleeping. I followed her, pulling on a thick jumper. She was in the kitchen, tying back her hair in the dim pre-dawn light. Seeing me, she smiled.

‘Where are you going so early?’ I whispered.

‘Out to milk the cow,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you come and help?’

I followed her. The air was cold and damp. A mist rose from the dark earth, dissolving in the sharp, clear sky. The last stars were faintly visible. The pond was sheathed with a smooth, milky skin, unstirred by even the faintest breath of wind. Tanya mounted her bicycle and I walked beside her, through the village to the one narrow, metalled road that snaked away through the fields. Their cow was tethered outside the village. Tanya left the bicycle at the edge of the road, and I followed her through the wet grass, and across a brook. The cow’s breath rose in pale clouds. She lifted her head as we drew closer and Tanya hugged her affectionately. I squatted down beside Tanya as she placed the metal pail beneath the cow’s straining udders.

‘Have you done this before?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘No.’

She reached out and took my hand, guiding it to the cow’s teats. Her hands were warm and strong. I pressed my forehead against the firm flank of the cow, as Tanya did, and allowed her to guide my fingers. A jet of milk splashed into the pail. It trickled from our fingers and Tanya laughed and put her finger to my lips. When I sucked it, it was sweet. For a moment I held on to her hand and our eyes met and my heart lurched fearfully. Tanya pulled away and we finished off the milking.

The pail was heavy with milk and we carried it together back across the field, our red fingers touching on the cold metal handle. Tanya hung the pail on the handlebars of the bike and we walked back to the village.

‘You’re looking much healthier,’ she said, appraising me as we walked.

I smiled. ‘I feel great.’

The sun had risen above the tops of the trees and the unruffled surface of the pond reflected its dazzling rays. The early morning mist had begun to dissolve but, in the shade, the grass was still white with dew.

‘And yet…?’ She hesitated.

We stopped on the road. I looked down into the village, which was beginning to stir with life. Across the glittering pond, I could see the low cottage. Vassily had come out of the door and stood stretching. He lit a cigarette and a pale puff of smoke rose slowly into the air above him.

‘And yet you still dream,’ Tanya said. ‘You have nose bleeds and migraines. If an engine misfires in the village, you turn rigid. You refuse to mention the past◦– as if nothing ever happened to you before you came here. Don’t you think it would be better for you to talk about it?’