The workshop was strewn with work. Pulling my chair close to the heater, holding out my hands to the blue flames to warm them, I recalled the promise Vassily had made, soon after he had taken me from the hospital to Tanya’s village.
‘I will teach you how to work amber,’ he said. ‘We will be jewellers, the two of us, craftsmen of the highest order, the best on the Baltic coast. I will teach you all you need to know. We will make jewels and forget about the past.’
A neighbour in the village, a stooped elderly man with wild silver hair, had machinery for working amber. The workshop was in the basement of his house. Its tiled floor and cabinets were white with dust from the worked amber. Even the cobwebs were heavily sugared with it. The walls were lined with templates and everywhere there were tubs full of amber chips, some buttery yellow, others chalk white, whilst others were rich shades of orange or red. A pot of small black amber beads was like a tub of caviar. Held up to the sun, they were blood red. Heated, the small oxygen bubbles at their heart exploded, giving the pieces a crazed look.
In a crudely built outhouse were the machines for polishing and firing the amber. A barrel filled with cubes of oak turned for two days, smoothing and polishing the surface of the ancient resin.
As I was remembering, the telephone on the shelf above the heater sprang abruptly into life, rattling harshly, causing my heart to flutter in panic. For a couple of seconds I sat and watched as it rang on the shelf, then I snatched it up and held the receiver to my ear. My heart was beating rapidly, and crazily, for a moment, it was Vassily’s voice I was expecting to hear, longing to hear.
‘Da?’ I said into the echoing silence. ‘Who is there?’
The telephone hissed and crackled but nobody answered.
‘Who is it?’ I called.
Faintly, I thought, I could hear the sound of breathing, but it might have been only the wind, or the sound of cavernous space that occasionally opens up between one telephone and another.
I waited a moment longer then replaced the receiver. Sitting down again, I lit a cigarette. When I had stubbed it out in the overflowing saucer, I got up and went back over to the telephone. I dialled the number for Vassily’s apartment and listened as it rang and rang.
When it became clear than Tanya was not home, I turned on my desk lamp and pushed aside the piles of invoices and orders strewn across it. Beneath the sheets were some pieces of amber I had been working a few days before. I picked up one of the small tear-shaped pieces and held it up to the lamp, examining the way the light entered it and hung suspended in its heart.
‘You know where amber comes from?’ Vassily said, one evening, in the village. We were beside the pond, close to Tanya’s grandparents’ cottage. Vassily had given Tanya a necklace he had fashioned. Each piece of amber had been shaped and smoothly polished and strung on to a silk thread. In the centre of the string of beads was a larger piece, a translucent, golden tear.
‘Many years ago, when the forest grew thick here, when this land was under the care of other gods, when the spirits lived in the trees and Perkunas, the God of Thunder, ruled in heaven, the most beautiful of the goddesses was a young mermaid called Jurate.’
Vassily’s face reflected the glow of the sun, which was setting across the village. On the opposite side of the pond a heron rooted among the reeds.
‘Jurate was the most beautiful mermaid,’ he continued. ‘Her hair was golden and her eyes blue, bluer than the sky on midsummer’s morning. She lived not far from here, just off the coast, beneath the waves in a palace built of amber.
‘In a small village like this one, there lived a young fisherman called Kastytis. Kastytis would take his boat and fish in the waters of the beautiful Jurate’s kingdom. Jurate sent her mermaids to warn him away, but Kastytis paid no attention to the messengers of the goddess beneath the waves. He continued to sail out and cast his nets on the water above her palace.
‘One morning Jurate herself rose to the surface to confront the fisherman. But when she approached him in his boat, she instantly fell in love. She took the young fisherman with her, beneath the waves, to her amber palace, and there they lived.’
Vassily stubbed out his cigarette in the dirt. Clumsily the heron took to the air, its wings beating over our heads, up across the trees towards the seashore.
‘And they lived happily ever after?’ Tanya asked.
She was sitting by him and with a small pang of jealousy I noticed their closeness. Vassily shook his head. He took another cigarette and Tanya lit it for him. The flare of the match illuminated their faces in a warm, bright glow. The sun had settled behind the trees and the air was pink and blue and cool.
‘Jurate, you see, was already promised to another,’ Vassily continued. ‘Long before, Perkunas had promised the young goddess to the god of the waters. Perkunas was furious when he discovered that Jurate was in love with a mortal. He cast a bolt of lightning down from his heavenly throne, shattering the goddess’s palace of amber. Jurate was imprisoned within the rubble of her ruined palace for all eternity.
‘When the winds are high and the waves break heavily upon the shore, the sea throws up fragments of her palace. And sometimes, too, it throws up these.’ He touched the tear-shaped amber drop on the necklace that lay at Tanya’s throat. ‘The tears of Jurate, a prisoner still, crying beneath the waves for her lost love, Kastytis.’
Before I turned off the desk lamp, I glanced around to see whether there was anything needing my urgent attention. There were bills that needed settling, but I was in no mood to deal with them. I gathered them together and pushed them into a leather briefcase to take with me. Switching off the lamp, I turned to the heater. As I extinguished the flame and bent to check it, I noticed a shadow flit across the door. Straightening up, I turned to call that the shop was closed. A dark shape stood outside, face pressed to the dirty glass, peering through.
‘We’re closed,’ I shouted.
The figure did not move. Irritated, I took the key from the desk and shuffled over. As I approached, the figure stepped back, away from the glass. It was an old lock, and the key fitted awkwardly, so that I had to jiggle it to get it to turn. It undid with a solid clunk. The door flew open, catching my wrist, twisting it painfully. Astonished, I stepped back as the figure moved forward rapidly, entering the shop, pushing the door closed.
‘Zdrastvuy, Antoshka,’ the man said. ‘It has been a long time.’
‘Kirov.’
The lean figure nodded and grinned humourlessly, turning the key in the lock.
‘Don’t want any of your customers disturbing us, now, do we?’ he said.
‘I thought you were in prison…’ I stammered.
Kirov laughed. He threw back his closely shaved head, his mouth opening to reveal gold teeth that glinted dully.
‘I would have come to see you at home,’ he said, ‘but when I telephoned this morning you were not in.’ I was about to explain I had been in the shower, but stopped myself. In his presence the familiar feelings flooded back; feelings I thought I had left behind, that the years and the haloperidol and vodka had scratched from the surface of my memory. The stink of thornbush. The scent of wood smoke. Oil. Sweat. Fear. Dust billowing up from the wheels of the APC. For a moment I was back there, in Afghanistan. I stood rooted to the spot, unable to speak, unable to move. It was as if he had leapt from my dreams; my nightmares.
‘What do you want, Kirov?’ I asked, finally.
‘To renew old acquaintance.’ He chuckled, wandering over to my desk. He placed the door key on the table and picked up one of the tear-shaped amber beads, examining it closely. ‘In these times of mourning it is important we all pull together, no?’ He grinned again, dropping the amber on to the table.