‘Antanas!’ Tanya cried, as she opened the door of her apartment. She was sleep-ruffled, wearing one of Vassily’s large old shirts, her hair tied back with a ribbon. ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded, taking my arm and leading me into the apartment.
‘It’s a long story.’ I sighed, feeling suddenly very weary.
‘Come and sit down,’ she said. I followed her through to the sitting room and collapsed on the sofa.
‘You look terrible,’ she said, kneeling beside me.
‘Kolya shot Kirov,’ I told her.
Her eyes widened and her hand went up to her lips. I shook my head. Already the events of the previous few hours had begun to recede and an air of unreality clung to them, as if I were waking slowly from a nightmare.
‘And Kolya?’ Tanya said. ‘What happened? Did Kolya tell you what Vassily wanted you to know? What was it all about?’
I paused before I answered. As I looked at her, it struck me with renewed force how much she resembled Zena. The short dark hair. The colour of her eyes. The animated passion in her movements. I nodded slowly.
‘There were things he told me,’ I said, ‘about the bracelet, about how they got it.’
I found I was reluctant to tell her, reluctant to talk about it and so, through my own words, make more real the story I had been told; to validate it with the retelling.
‘We dug up the bracelet,’ I said instead.
‘You have it?’
Tanya sat up, a startled, excited expression brightening her eyes.
‘I threw it in the river.’
‘You what?’
I shrugged. She gaped at me, bewildered. ‘It’s hard to explain,’ I said. ‘When I held it in my hand, I got the strangest feeling. I thought of all those who had died because of it. I don’t know. I can’t explain. I saw Kolya’s greed, his hunger for it, Kirov’s, Zinotis’s. The effect it had on Vassily. It seemed right to put an end to it.’
Tanya stared at me and I could see her struggling to grasp what had gone on, struggling to understand what I had done. What Kolya had done. And perhaps also what Vassily had done.
‘I need to get out of these clothes,’ I said to deflect her attention.
‘Of course,’ Tanya said, solicitously, getting up quickly. ‘Go take a shower. Freshen up.’
She looked embarrassed at having been so insistent. Putting a towel in my hand, she pushed me in the direction of the bathroom. I stood for a long time beneath the shower, enjoying the feel of the stiff jets of hot water pummelling my flesh. After I had towelled myself dry, Tanya gave me coffee and I smoked a couple of cigarettes.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked tentatively.
‘Better,’ I said.
I looked across at her, curled in the armchair, legs tucked beneath her, chin resting on the palm of her hand.
‘Did Vassily ever say much about Afghanistan?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘He spoke of it sometimes,’ she said. ‘I thought we were so open with each other. When he jumped in the night hearing something, when he had his headaches and when I found him sitting alone in a room, we talked about it. He told me what was important. That is why I was so bewildered by all these secrets.’
I considered what I should tell her. I longed to talk to her, to probe her◦– to demand from her the answers her husband could no longer give. To ask whether she knew how much he had betrayed me.
‘There were things that happened there,’ I said.
I paused. She had let her hair loose, and it fell around her face, its rich curls accentuating the rosy swell of her cheeks.
‘There was a girl I met there,’ I said.
Tanya looked up, surprised. She smiled. ‘Really?’
‘Her name was Zena.’
It was strange to hear the name on my own lips; it had been so long since last I had spoken it. When I said it, I felt my tone soften, deepen, and recognised the cadence of my younger self, felt momentarily the gentle happiness spring from my tongue, as though the very act of saying her name had the power in some tiny way to transport me back to that time.
‘She was a nurse,’ I said, feeling Tanya’s eyes on me. ‘She was an Afghani girl. Beautiful. She had short dark hair and was full of energy, of life. She was a lot like you. In the middle of all that horror I fell in love.’
‘You never said.’ Tanya leant forward and took my hand.
‘When I first saw you, standing outside your grandparents’ cottage, it was a shock. You were so like her. What I felt for you then confused me.’
Tanya was trying, I could see, to understand what had happened, what I felt.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
I did not answer at once, struggling to find the words to explain to myself as much as to her.
‘You frightened me. Attracted me. Both at once. When it became clear Vassily was in love with you, I explained my confused feelings to myself as guilt. When I met Daiva she was so different; her coolness, her reticence. She felt safe to be with. I fell in love with what Daiva was not. I used her to defend myself.’
‘I had no idea,’ Tanya said, leaning back in her chair. ‘I mean, I knew you were attracted to me and I was flattered by that, but when you met Daiva… you were so in love.’
For some moments then we sat in silence.
‘What happened to the girl? The Afghani nurse?’ Tanya asked, breaking the silence.
‘She was killed.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I know only what Kirov told me a few hours ago.’
‘What did he tell you?’ Tanya’s voice shook a little, as if she was afraid, as if she knew what I was about to say.
‘Vassily sold her for the bracelet,’ I said. ‘There was a deal◦– they sold Zena to the KHAD, to the secret police, to buy it.’
‘No,’ she whispered. She withdrew her hand from mine, wiped it across her forehead and closed her eyes.
‘Do you think it is true?’ I said. ‘Do you think Vassily could have done that?’
She opened her eyes again, looked at me, squarely.
‘Do you?’
‘I don’t know what to believe.’
Tanya sighed. She buried her face in her hands. ‘I don’t know what to think any more,’ she said.
A little later Tanya announced that she had to go to work for a few hours. She ran her fingertips across my face, gently. ‘Will you be OK? It won’t be for long. You can stay. There is food in the kitchen and you can sleep in the bed.’
‘That’s fine,’ I said.
The apartment was quiet when she had gone. I did not move from the sofa. The room ticked and sighed, exhaled into the silence. Ever since he had taken me from the New Vilnia hospital Vassily had been a friend to me. He had nursed me back to health. He had taught me how to work amber; had given me a trade, a purpose, to hold back the darkness. And yet he had never told me, never even intimated, the part he had played in the death of Zena.
Leaping up from the sofa, I kicked out at the chair he had been sitting in that last evening. ‘You bastard,’ I hissed through teeth clenched tight. ‘You fucking bastard.’ I kicked it again, harder. Felt the pain shuddering up my leg, exquisitely. ‘You fucking bastard!’ I shouted, feeling the blood rush to the surface of my skin, feeling the heat rise in my face. I fell upon the chair, kicking and punching it. Screaming until my throat tore and my lungs scraped for breath. The armchair overturned and I toppled with it, sprawling across the floor, the rug grazing the skin from my cheek and the palms of my hands.
‘You bastard,’ I muttered, feeling my cheek throb. Feeling the cool smoothness of the parquet floor by the door, the smell of wax filling my nostrils.
Leaving Tanya’s apartment, I went straight to Daiva’s mother’s. When I knocked, it was Daiva who answered. For some moments we stood in silence. She leant against the door frame. She looked tired and unhappy.