‘Are you not angry?’ I asked, watching his soft smile as he talked to me of his village. He laughed quietly.
‘Don’t you hate us?’
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You are a child of God as much as I. How could I hate you?’
‘Is there space left in this world for compassion?’
‘Compassion?’ A broad grin wrinkled his leathery face. ‘Listen, child, compassion is easy for me. Compassion is the gift of the powerless◦– the dying.’ He indicated my gun. ‘Now, if it was the other way round, if I held the gun and you sat here defenceless, you might not find me so understanding.’
He coughed up a large gob of phlegm and spat on to my dusty boot. He smiled still, as though this was a normal thing to do, as though I could not mind.
At that moment there was a loud explosion. The ground shook and dirt shivered from the ceiling. For a moment I thought the building was going to come down on top of us. I ducked down, covering my head. The old man did not move. A resigned smile twisted his lips.
‘Now you must shoot me,’ he said. ‘The village, you see, was mined. We set the mines and our “informers” gave you a little bit of information. We knew you would not be able to resist.’
He stood up. He was the same height as I, broad shouldered, and despite his years still looked strong. He tightened the dirty cotton chemise across his chest. ‘Here.’ He grinned again. ‘Shoot me.’
I could hear, as the rumble of the explosion drifted on the breeze, rolling away across the plain, banking against the rise of the foothills and echoing back, the sound of crying, the desperate weeping of young men whose legs and arms lay detached from their bodies. Young men crouched over dead friends with whom, only moments before, they had been sharing a joke. A cigarette. The old man laughed.
‘Come on, shoot,’ he taunted. ‘I would, if I was in your position.’
My hands trembled. I felt my heart pounding. I thought again of Zena. Of her eyes on me. The old man stepped towards me; I stepped back, waving at him, indicating he should not approach. I felt my back press up against the mud wall. A prickly sweat broke out on my forehead. I wiped it. My face was slick with perspiration. The old man’s grin was friendly. He reached out a large hand, stubby fingers, grasping at the Kalashnikov.
The image of Zena’s face interposed itself between the old man and me. A fleeting image of her supple body twisting beneath me, the soft warmth of her ochre skin. I closed my eyes and felt the gun shift in my hands as the old man’s fingers wrapped themselves around it.
A familiar metallic chatter jerked back the lids of my eyes. The old man stepped away. He held his hands to his chest. Blood seeped through the cracks of his fingers. It bubbled up like a warm geyser beneath his hands. He coughed, almost as if he were clearing his throat. Blood spilt, crimson, from his full lips, trickled on to his white beard. He fell to his knees before me. His face twisted and his throat gurgled and for a moment, as I stood there, bewildered, watching him, I thought he was laughing. A hand took hold of my arm and pulled me roughly through the doorway.
‘What the fuck is the matter with you?’ Kolya rasped. ‘If I hadn’t shot him he would have taken your gun.’
I nodded, blindly. He pushed me forwards and we ran through the smoking, dust-hazed streets.
Chapter 24
‘Warsaw Street?’ I said to Kolya. ‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. If Kirov or Zinotis did follow me tonight, they might be watching your apartment.’
Kolya gazed at me for a second and I wondered if he was taking in what I said, or whether the fix he had had earlier and the vodka he had consumed since had dulled his comprehension.
‘If they followed you, they could well be outside now,’ he said, nodding towards the door. ‘It seems you have given them more than enough opportunity.’
He continued to gaze at me, his expression remaining vacant as his tone grew more ironic.
‘If Kirov and Zinotis have any idea where I am, it will be because they followed you. I don’t really think you are in a position to advise me on my safety.’
‘OK,’ I agreed.
Kolya pulled on a thick coat, turning its collar up around his ears. We left the apartment, slipping out through the doors into the street as unobtrusively as we could. Standing in the shadow of the doorway, I checked each parked car, each shadow, each pool of darkness. There was no sign of anybody. It was late and there were no pedestrians, no cars on the road. We hurried down the side streets, taking a longer route back to the Rasa district, looping up around the cemetery and back down towards Warsaw Street from the far side. As we approached Kolya’s apartment block, he touched my arm and indicated for me to follow him into the darkened area behind the buildings. A door at the back of the apartments opened on to a small yard of muddy earth, criss-crossed with lines for hanging out washing and beating rugs.
We walked up the shallow stairs to the front entrance of the apartment block, where Kolya reached for the light switch in the stairwell. I told him to wait. Pushing open the door I scanned the street carefully. There were few cars and no sign of anybody watching, lingering in the shadows. I relaxed a little.
We climbed the stairs to the fourth floor in silence. Kolya made slow progress, pausing every few steps to take a gulp of air into his lungs. At the end of every minute the light clicked off and I had to press the switch again. When we reached the fourth floor it did not come on.
‘It was working when I came here earlier,’ I said.
‘They’re always going,’ Kolya muttered. ‘It’s the cheap bulbs they buy.’
The door to the apartment was open slightly. Kolya pushed it gingerly, to see whether the safety chain was on. The door swung open with a squeak. He looked up at me. I raised my finger to my lips. We stood in the silence of the early hours of the morning, listening for noises coming from within. There was none.
‘It looks like there have been visitors,’ Kolya said, his voice low.
‘Your landlady…’ I said, but he had turned away.
The apartment was in pitch darkness. Kolya edged around the door, his trembling fingers feeling along the wall for the light switch. Beneath our feet, papers were strewn, barely visible in the pale light of the street lamp glowing through the dirty windows of the stairwell. Kolya’s fingers found the switch and pressed it. I heard the hollow click, but no light came on. From somewhere deep inside I heard a strange low muttering.
I felt Kolya’s hand on my arm, his fingers gripping my sleeve tightly, the nails digging through the damp cloth and biting into my flesh. It was impossible to see his face in the darkness. We moved forwards, together, down the corridor. Beneath our feet shattered glass crunched; a large sharp object scraped my ankle painfully. We moved slowly, listening. The muttering had ceased and, apart from the soft crunch of our footfalls, the only other sound was of water running in the bathroom.
Kolya flicked on the bathroom light switch and immediately the square around the door was illuminated brightly. Seizing the handle, he pulled the door open, the slab of light falling painfully brightly across the chaos of the corridor. The bathroom floor glistened, the old linoleum slick with water dripping from the overflowing sink. A mirrored-door cabinet hung from the wall, askew, disembowelled, its contents filling the sink, cotton-wool plugs stopping the flow of tap water escaping through the drains. Pills were scattered colourfully in the stained bath.
‘Shit,’ Kolya muttered.
He turned from the bathroom and crunched quickly to the front room. The light from the window was enough to indicate the uselessness of trying to switch on the lamp. Its bulb was shattered. The old sofa on which I had been sitting only a few hours earlier had been slashed; its stuffing poured out over the floor. The large bureau was overturned, its contents spewed around it.