Daiva stood by the kitchen window, looking out, her back to me. She did not turn as I put down the receiver. For some moments we stood like that, without saying a word. She did not offer me comfort. Instead she picked up a plate and rinsed it under the tap. Laura had stopped crying and was muttering into a bowl of porridge. I picked up my jacket, slipped on some socks and shoes and left the apartment.
For some time I paced back and forth outside, unsure where to go. It had always been to him that I turned. And now he was gone. In the end I headed for the bus stop on Freedom Boulevard. Catching the number 16 to the station on the edge of the Old Town, I made my way along the familiar route, through the old ghetto, towards the Gates of Dawn where he and Tanya had their apartment.
I was about to stop in the small beer hall close by their block when, looking up, I noticed the light in their window. For some moments I stood in the centre of the narrow cobbled lane that twisted down, away from Filharmonija Square, looking up at the third-storey apartment. Dull clouds, which had moved once more across the city, hung low and threatening now. The old grey plaster falling from the walls of the buildings was dark. Only the moss seemed enlivened. It was verdant, growing up thickly from the foundations.
Knowing I should leave her, that I should not intrude, still I pushed open the heavy wooden door and found myself in the familiar musty gloom of their stairwell. When the door closed behind me, I was in almost pitch darkness. I pressed the light switch, but nothing happened.
Slowly I made my way up the stairs. Grimy windows on the second floor let in a pale light. I stopped and peered out into the street, at the beer hall where I would have been better off going.
I pressed the buzzer and stood back from the door, so that she could see me properly when she put her eye to the spyhole. For some moments I waited. I was about to press the buzzer a second time when I heard her footsteps. She moved the flap over the spyhole and there was a moment’s silence as she peered through. A key turned and the door opened.
‘Antanas,’ she said. She stood in the doorway, illuminated from behind by a small lamp on a table in the hallway. It was only when I moved closer that I noticed the state of her face. Her cheeks were red and her eyes swollen and dark. In contrast the blood seemed to have withdrawn from the rest of her face, leaving it deathly pale.
She allowed me to step into the apartment, then embraced me. I held her tight. Her hair smelt of the disinfectants they use in hospitals and the Russian cigarettes Vassily smoked.
‘You smell of him,’ l said.
She smiled. ‘I smoked God knows how many of his cigarettes when I got back this morning. I feel sick, but I needed to smell him.’
We sat in their small lounge drinking coffee, and I smoked the last of the cigarettes in the packet he had left. Everywhere there were signs of him, and it struck me then how much of him there was in this apartment, unlike my own, which showed barely a trace of me. Before I left she stopped me in the corridor.
‘He left something for you,’ she said. ‘Wait.’
She disappeared into the bedroom and emerged after a few moments with a long, thin envelope. He had written my name on the front.
‘For an hour or so yesterday he was quite lucid, although he was in rather a state. He wrote it then. He made me promise to make you find Kolya, an old friend of yours.’ She shrugged.
I slipped the envelope into the pocket of my jacket. ‘Thank you, Tanya.’ I kissed her cheek, which was cool and paler now. ‘If you need anything…’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course.’
Leaving the apartment, I crossed over to the beer hall, but at the door I stopped, suddenly afraid to enter, knowing I would not find him there. Walking quickly back across the town, I went to a bar we had never visited, a modern one on Gedimino. I drank quickly to hold back the tears. Digging the envelope from my pocket, I pulled from it a thin sheet of paper. The sight of his large flowing handwriting caused a spasm of pain to tighten my chest.
‘Antanas,’ he wrote, ‘the years have been good ones, haven’t they? You must not hate me. Find Kolya. He will tell you what I have not been able to. Find Kolya. And forgive me, my little brother.’
I stared at the writing for some time. The words slowly took form and ordered themselves into phrases. But still I could not find the sense. I could not think for what he could want forgiveness. Folding the paper, I put it back into its envelope. For years it had been Vassily who had helped me hold back the flood of memories. Those years in Afghanistan were a dark hole around which we stepped with care.
The bright peacefulness of Tanya’s grandparents’ cottage, where Vassily had taken me in his rattling Zhiguli, had allowed me to slough off the bleak desperation of the hospital. Tanya’s grandfather sold tourist trinkets and he put us to work producing cheap pictures from chippings of amber.
We sorted the amber chips into coloured piles. Little mounds of each shade dotted the card table on which we worked. Vassily picked up a thin sheet of plywood and laid it down on the table. With a cheap emulsion he painted a crude black outline of the Madonna’s face and shoulders, copying a picture Jurgis had given him. When the paint had dried, he brushed a portion of it thickly with glue and we proceeded to build up the image using the chippings of amber. Around the rim of the picture we built up a luminous halo with deep orange amber that glowed warmly. As we worked in towards the black outline of her head, we switched to the brighter yellow pieces, while for the face and shoulders we used the larger dark pieces, which when stuck into the thick layer of glue flamed bloodily red. The robe that fell from her shoulders we fashioned with the small bone-white fragments.
When we had finished, Vassily carefully assembled a flimsy pre-prepared wooden frame around the picture. A sheet of waxy paper was glued across the back, hiding the poor-quality wood the picture had been built on, and two small tacks were tapped into the frame. Taking a length of string, Vassily measured it off and cut it. Deftly, his thick fingers tied the string between the two tacks. Once he had finished he held it up, turning it slightly, allowing the amber to catch the rays of the late afternoon sun cutting across the tops of the trees and falling heavily against the peeling paint of the cottage. The amber glowed, each transparent yellow piece gathering its own little parcel of light.
‘The best trinkets on the Baltic coast,’ Vassily commented ironically.
He took the picture to a small hut attached to the cottage. Opening the door, he indicated I should come and look. Inside, stacked neatly on shelves, were more pictures. They differed in size. While some were large with stylised pictures of pine trees framing beaches, others were tiny little miniatures. A crucifixion, another Madonna, the Pope, Lenin. Most were executed crudely. The pasting was visible and the shades had been built up with little care. It was obvious which ones had been produced by Vassily. I picked up a miniature he had done of the head of the crucified Christ. In the small space he had been able to capture a look of sorrow, dark amber beads of blood trickling down from the crown of thorns.
‘This is beautiful,’ I said.
Vassily grinned. ‘Jurgis moans I take too much time over them. And it is true, I do. They will only go for a few roubles, what is the point in working so hard on them? I don’t know, I can’t help it.’
He shrugged, taking a larger piece of amber from his pocket. It was orange and clear, with only a few blemishes in it.
‘Look,’ he said, leading me outside into the sunlight. He held up the amber so that it caught the sun. ‘Isn’t it beautiful? So warm; it is like a piece of sunlight solidified. From this we get the word electricity. The Greeks called it elektron when they discovered it, lustrous metal. And look.’ He rubbed the amber hard against the ripped woollen jumper he wore and then held it over a little fluff. The fluff clung to the amber. ‘Static electricity. It is a source of power, of healing, of life. It is an elemental force for good, preserved from the very beginnings of time, from the prehistoric forests which grew thickly here, across the plains to Scandinavia before the sea poured over them.’