Kolya picked up the letter again and examined the writing.
‘You mean to say,’ he said, ‘it’s written here where the bracelet is?’
I nodded. ‘Vassily never sold it. He buried it. He wanted to forget about it◦– the whole thing, the bracelet, what had happened. But he couldn’t. It haunted him right up to his death.’
He looked up from the letter, and regarded me, his sunken gaze receding to some place I could not see.
‘Kirov was responsible for what happened,’ he said, slowly. ‘For Zena. For that whole fucking mess.’
‘For Zena?’ I said, my throat tightening, the blood seeping from my face, leaving my skin cold and clammy. I stood up and paced over to the window.
‘You remember, of course.’
‘Of course I fucking remember,’ I said, my voice brittle. I gripped the window ledge. ‘Do you think I could forget?’
Kolya shook his head. He did not seem to notice the anger in my tone. He stood up and came over to me, put a hand on my shoulder.
‘You don’t know Antanas, you never knew.’
‘I don’t want to talk about Zena, Kolya,’ I said. The perspiration stood out on my forehead . My heart was thudding. My hand trembled when I put it up to push him away. ‘That’s not what I came here for. Vassily told me you had to tell me something about the bracelet. That’s the only story I want to hear. You understand?’
‘But Zena…’ he began.
I lashed out at him. He stumbled backwards, a look of surprise crossing his emaciated features .
‘I said I don’t want to talk about Zena,’ I yelled. I punched the window frame hard. The pain that shot up my wrist was blissfully sharp. My knuckles were bloodied. Biting my lip, I punched the wood again, thrilling to the fierce burst of fresh pain. The lump in my throat loosened, the bubble of fear shrinking in the darkness, in the corner of my mind.
‘Hey!’ Kolya said, pulling me back, his voice shaking. ‘Tovarich, stop!’
I allowed him to pull me away. To push me down into the seat by the table.
‘Here,’ he said, almost overturning the glass in his hurry. ‘Here, a drink.’
I licked clean the torn flesh. Tasted the sweet tang of blood on my tongue. Concentrating on the soreness of my knuckles, I allowed the panic to recede. Kolya slumped into the chair opposite me. He closed his eyes and sank his head into his hands.
‘So Kirov is out of prison and Zinotis is after the bracelet,’ Kolya mused after a while. ‘It’s time I left Vilnius, I think. Do you think you were followed?’
I recalled the times over the past few days when I had been convinced I had seen a flicker in the shadows when I looked behind me, sure somebody had been watching me but seeing no one. Remembered too how Zinotis had turned up at Tanya’s apartment, then my own. A shiver ran down my spine.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
Kolya shifted in his chair. He turned the empty glass in his hands, not refilling it. I waited for him to say something. He picked up the letter and stared again at the instructions Vassily had scribbled on it.
‘Antanas, tovarich, I think we are going to have to move fast,’ he said, quietly. ‘Help me to find the bracelet and I will tell you about it. It is a story you should hear, whether you want to or not.’
I nodded, aware of the danger I had placed Kolya in.
‘We’ll have to go back over to Warsaw Street,’ Kolya said. ‘I need to get some things.’
Chapter 22
I saw Zena as much as I could, volunteering to escort the supply convoy into Jalalabad as regularly as it went. Vassily laughed at my enthusiasm to take a job largely left to new recruits. The trip to Jalalabad was slow and dangerous◦– after dark the rebels often mined the potholed roads and would launch regular, lightning attacks along the route.
On the weekend leaves we were occasionally given I would stay with Zena, her Tajik room-mate, Nadia, sleeping in one of the other rooms. Often I would wake in the early hours of the morning and sit up and watch her as she lay sleeping, the pre-dawn air cool on our skins; the sweetest hour of the night, when I wished the day would never come.
‘Hold me,’ she would say, drowsily. ‘Hold me tight.’
And I would hold her, feel her smooth, lean limbs curl around me, the warmth of her breath on my chest.
‘I don’t want to move from here,’ I would say. ‘The night is best. When it’s dark the world disappears and it is just the two of us and this bed.’
‘This bed is my world.’
‘Your body is my world.’
‘I like that. I like it when you look at my body. Look at me. Why should I be hidden? Why do they want me to be hidden?’
And so it should have stayed. But joy in Afghanistan was as insubstantial as breath on a pane of glass.
‘Who do you think you are?’ Zena said, her voice tight with emotion, one day a few weeks later.
I stood in her doorway. She had been dressing, getting ready for a night shift. A brush hung in her hand; she pointed it at me accusingly. Her face was pale, and dark shadows rimmed the underside of her eyes.
‘You know what happened at the kishlak?’ she demanded.
I nodded. ‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘I was there.’
‘You disgust me. You are no better than they are.’
The kishlak, the Afghan village, nestled in a hollow by the river. There was an orchard of orange trees by the side of the village. Some months earlier, not long after we had arrived, the orchards around Jalalabad had been in full blossom, the tiny fragrant flowers shivering in the breeze, like the frills and folds of a thousand young girls’ dresses. Their branches were heavy with fruit now. The mud-brick walls of the village were dark and strong, the doorways to the small family compounds brightly painted. At the edge of the orchard was a well. The first time I drove past the village, I noticed an old man seated by the side of it. I had been smoking hashish. We had been in the mountains for two nights and the hashish was a relief from the cold and fear and boredom by the small fire, well shrouded so the mujahidin would not see it.
Under the trees there were children playing. The bright colours of their clothes shimmered in the dappled shade. As we drove past, clouds of dust rose lazily from our wheels. The scent of oranges hung in the air. Security measures demanded we train our weapons on the passing village, but I could not suppress a shudder as we turned the big guns on the children. The sudden flash of their movements ceased as they saw us. They drew closer, a small group. A child pulled close to her elder brother, hugging his thin leg. The boy’s arm snaked around the girl’s shoulder and he folded her close, his large eyes staring out from beneath the trees.
The old man by the well looked up too, hearing our engines. He wore a grubby white turban. As we passed his eyes caught my own and locked on to them. In his hand he held an orange, given to him, perhaps, by one of his grandchildren playing among the trees. The morning was still apart from the noise of our vehicles passing. A slight breeze stirred the trees. The air was cool. The old man held my gaze.
‘You look at me like I’m a piece of shit,’ I commented. ‘Do you have any idea what it is like to be out there?’
‘What’s this?’ she said, thrusting her face forwards, indicating with a jab of her index finger the livid scar down the side of her face.
I shook my head. ‘Zena,’ I said, ‘you live in this moral world, this world of good and bad. I don’t know how you do it. We are soldiers, we have to do our job. We have to survive.’
‘That kishlak was your job?’