‘It’s like this,’ I said. ‘A friend of mine wrote me a letter. I haven’t seen him for some time. The address on it was Santariskes Clinic◦– he was here, but I don’t know if he still is.’ I began to remove the letter Kolya had sent Vassily from my leather case, but already I saw her eyes sliding from me, the features of her face stiffening as she turned her attention away.
‘Please,’ I said.
I opened my wallet and slipped out one of the fifty-dollar bills. I let her see it. ‘I really need to find this friend,’ I said. ‘I would be most grateful if you were able to help me.’
When she looked at me again, her eyes were full of contempt. She snapped shut the book on the counter in front of her. It was, I noticed, a cheap Western romance translated into Russian.
‘What are you wasting my time for?’ she said. Her eyes darted to the fifty-dollar bill half concealed in my fist. ‘Go and take your American money to the whores at the Hotel Lietuva.’
Her voice began to rise and I glanced around nervously. A few heads had turned in the large, under-lit reception hall.
‘Kolya Antonenko,’ I continued. I folded the letter, revealing only the address at the top, and pushed it across the scarred wooden counter towards her. ‘Perhaps he is still here. It is vitally important I find him…’ I hesitated for a moment, considering what story would convince her. ‘A very good friend has died,’ I tried, pinning my hope on this truth, ‘a comrade from Afghanistan. We all fought together. The funeral is in a couple of days.’
The receptionist exhaled slowly, releasing her breath through clenched teeth, so that it hissed like a tyre deflating. She looked at me frankly, aggressively, then turned on her heel and disappeared into the office behind her. I looked after her, unsure whether she had been convinced or not. For some minutes I stood there, by the counter. I could hear her voice, muttering angrily, as she moved about the office, whether to somebody else or herself, I could not tell. I was about to turn and go when she reappeared. She glanced at me as if amazed and irritated to still see me standing there.
Pushing a pad across the counter, she picked up her romance again.
‘Name,’ she said.
I paused, unsure whether she wanted my name or Kolya’s. She was engrossed once more in her book and did not look as if she wanted to be disturbed. I wrote Kolya’s name neatly in Russian and Lithuanian characters on the paper and pushed it back across to her. She did not look up or take the paper.
There was a low bench against the wall on the opposite side of the reception hall and I wandered across to it and slumped down. Vassily’s funeral was indeed in two days’ time, Tanya had told me. I thought of him, asleep in the morgue. Soon he would be interred in the dark earth. Vassily, who had nursed me back to life, who had given me the means by which to survive, who had rebuilt my past and given me a reason to look to the future.
I glanced across at the receptionist. A nurse had stopped by the counter and the two were talking animatedly. I stood up and wandered across to the doors, looking out across the large tarmacked parking area towards the trees.
Ghazis, I thought, recalling Vassily’s words. It was in Ghazis in the Hindu Kush. You remember it? Yes. Of course you do. I hitched up my sleeve, slightly, almost unconsciously, and stroked the tender skin, the raw pink flesh. Flickering in the thick glass of the hospital reception hall window I saw the dance of flames, the dark swirl of smoke. Ghazis. There are things he should have told you, Kirov said, the kind of things a friend would have told you. What is there I need to know? I thought. I knew too much already, more than I ever needed to know, more than I could bear to know. And there was no honour in knowing those things.
A tap on my shoulder startled me. I spun around. The receptionist stood beside me. She was looking at me with concern.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked.
I wiped the perspiration from my forehead and pulled down my sleeve, struggling, with trembling fingers, to button the cuff.
‘Here,’ she said, pushing a slip of paper at me.
I took it. For a moment I gazed at her, dislocated. She turned and marched back towards her desk. Looking down at the slip of paper, I noticed it had an address on it. Kolya’s address.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Spasiba.’
I hurried after her. ‘Spasiba,’ I said again. She had taken up her novel again. I slipped the fifty-dollar bill across the counter. ‘Ochin spasiba.’
She looked up and shoved the money back at me roughly.
Chapter 16
By the end of July we had been in Afghanistan for six months. The dembels left and we graduated to veteran status. We were the granddads. A group of new recruits arrived on the base, straight from Moscow and Moldavia and Tallinn. We threw a large party, extracting money from the recruits to buy rice and meat for the sashlik, for vodka and Bulgarian biscuits. The departing dembels organised our initiation. Twenty strokes of the buckle end of a belt across the backside. Not a murmur of complaint; we stood up and shook their hands. They slapped our backs. We were one of them now.
One of our first jobs with the new recruits was to escort the Agitprop Brigade on an excursion to a village. The propaganda detachment consisted of an APC and a truck with a large red cross painted on its side. Their vehicles were flanked by a couple of our APCs, a BMP and a fuel truck. Lieutenant Zhuralev complained loudly as we pulled off the main road and headed down a winding track towards the village.
‘It’s madness,’ he said. ‘What’s the fucking point in playing doctors and nurses out here? I don’t see why I should risk my men just so that these fucking villagers can show off their sores and diseases and load up with grain that would be better off in our bellies.’
A large crowd milled around the village. We sat on the APCs, guns at the ready, eyes vigilantly scanning the area. A loudspeaker was set up beside the Agitprop’s APC and began blaring out Soviet patriotic music. A couple of doctors set up a table and a long line of villagers snaked up to it.
‘Crowd control,’ Zhuralev barked at me, pushing me forwards towards the doctors. ‘Keep the locals in order.’ I strolled over to the flimsy wooden desk erected by the doctors. There were two of them. One was a tall, thin Ukrainian, the other, from Siberia, was small and dark with watery eyes. They had a nurse with them who spoke the local language and was acting as an interpreter. A young man from the village barged his way forwards towards the doctors at the desk. When I shoved him back and told him to wait he said something to me rapidly and pointed to his stomach. He was thin and stooped, with a long dark beard. I waved him back, and when he continued to press forwards, I put my hand on his chest and stopped him roughly.
‘Get back and stop pushing,’ I shouted.
The nurse turned, hearing me. Approaching quickly, she pulled me away from the stooped villager impatiently. She spoke to the man in a quiet, calm voice. He explained his problem to her, his voice rising, his bony hands gesticulating. He pointed at me and the young nurse glanced over her shoulder.
‘Tell him to wait his turn,’ I said, pressing forwards towards the man, whose long dirty fingers had taken hold of the nurse’s faded green shirt.
The nurse’s eyes flashed angrily. She called for one of the doctors, indicating for him to come over.
‘His wife is giving birth; she is in the village.’
Nodding, the doctor went to fetch some equipment. The nurse turned to me. ‘You come with us,’ she said. ‘We need some security.’ She turned and followed the young man down a narrow lane into the village. I glanced over towards Lieutenant Zhuralev, but his back was turned. Nervously I followed the nurse’s receding figure, concerned about walking into a trap. The doctor from Siberia caught up with me and grinned.