I stood up and walked over to the door. The wind gusted, rattling the glass in the window. Sullen clouds darkened the sky, bearing night prematurely.
‘You think I should try to find him?’ I said.
She got up and walked over to me. I felt her standing close behind me. She rested her head between my shoulder blades.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Vassily wanted you to. I think you should, for him. He made me promise to make you. It was important to him and it’s important that you stop burying your experiences, it isn’t helping you. And so what if Kolya just wants to sell the bracelet to buy drugs? What is that to you?’
Not answering, I stared out into the street.
‘You have no idea where to start looking for him?’ Tanya asked.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I haven’t seen him. Not since Afghanistan.’ I turned from the doorway. ‘The letter,’ I said, ‘if only I had not thrown away the letter.’ I had a sudden vision of it, snagged in the branches of the birch tree by the banks of the Vilnia.
‘What?’ said Tanya, seeing me hesitate as I crossed the room.
‘The letter,’ I said. ‘I was in the Uzupis Café. I screwed it into a ball and tossed it out towards the river. It caught◦– in the twigs. Do you think it’s possible… it’s still there?’
Tanya looked dubious. ‘I don’t think there is much hope.’
Tanya’s apartment was warm and inviting after the icy wind. It was less than a kilometre from the shop, but in the time it took us to walk that short distance we were chilled to the bone. Tanya’s teeth chattered as I closed the door behind us.
‘I’m going to take a hot shower to warm up,’ she said.
She disappeared into the bathroom. In the sitting room I turned on the standard lamp. The sofa was still made up as a bed. Clogging the surface of the low table were empty cups, sticky glasses and overflowing ashtrays. The air was thick with the smell of stale cigarette smoke and brandy. Clothes littered the floor.
Finding a clean glass, I poured myself a drink from the half-empty brandy bottle and drank it quickly. I poured a second and relaxed with that. Glancing at my watch, I noticed it was late. Instinctively I felt a spasm of guilt. I almost rose, before I remembered than Daiva had gone, that she would not be waiting for me. That the apartment would be empty. I sank back into the sagging armchair and drained the second glass. Remorsefully I considered how many times I had made her wait. How many times I had not been able to face going back to the apartment and had continued drinking with Vassily instead.
Hopelessly, and though I knew better, I got up and went over to the telephone. Dialling the number for our apartment, I listened as it rang.
After a minute I replaced the receiver and stood by the table, my mind skimming back across the last couple of years, recalling the number of times I had failed to come home to her, the number of times I had shamed her in front of her colleagues with my drunken sarcasm so that she had stopped inviting them to our apartment.
Hearing footsteps behind me, I turned. Tanya was dressed in a white cotton dressing gown; her hair was wet and dangled around her face in loose dark curls. She smiled hesitantly and my heart lurched. Zena, I thought, and trembled at how much she looked like that other beautiful young woman in that other world, that other time.
‘I’m sorry about the mess,’ Tanya said, looking at the detritus of her life scattered untidily about the room. ‘I just can’t seem to…’
Her explanation faded away when she saw how I was looking at her. When I reached out for her, she did not step away. I pulled her close. She rested her head against my chest. My lips grazed her hair, which was damp and smelt fresh and clean. I felt that if I reached down and touched her she would not stop me, that she needed closeness, the physical touch of another human, the comfort of skin against skin. I longed to, but didn’t. In the bedroom, in the pale light that filtered through half-drawn curtains, I undressed quickly and slipped in between the clean sheets. We lay close; I could hear her breathing, could feel the heat from her hand by my own, could smell her soap-scented body. With every part of my body I could sense her.
‘Tanya,’ I said, to remind myself who it was by my side.
She turned over and I felt her breath on my skin, could see her face milky cool in the light of the moon.
‘Yes?’ she whispered.
I reached out and ran a finger gently across her cheek.
‘I feel confused,’ I confessed. ‘Confused and afraid.’
Mistaking my meaning, she sighed and nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Me too.’
I withdrew my hand and we lay close but not touching. After some minutes she turned from me and later I heard the catch in her breath and a slow exhalation and knew she was sleeping. My mind spun. The image of a girl played across the ceiling above me. As much as I tried to banish it, she returned. Screaming. Her face distorted by fear. Screaming.
Leaving Tanya, I went back to the sitting room and poured myself another two drinks. When I went back to bed, I lay and watched the wind-tousled shadows of the trees dancing on the ceiling and thought of Daiva and Laura and where they were and wondered whether Laura had noticed my absence. I recalled the soft sound of her breathing as I lay in bed. The moments when, waking in the night, I would lift my ear from the pillow and hold my breath to listen for some sound of her, straining, unable to relax back into sleep before I heard the low sigh, or a faint rustling as she moved in the crib.
Spring had come suddenly, the year I met Daiva. Buttery yellow petals broke through the melting snow and the clouds flew higher, large billowing cumuli, which sparkled in the sunlight. Sharp showers sluiced away the last of the grey packs of ice, and children reappeared in the streets, shouting and laughing and running after a winter of incarceration.
In the early summer, Daiva and I had taken the trolley bus to the edge of the city and wandered in the forest, down to the river, where we lay in the deep grass at the edge of the water, watching the heron poking around the fields and the trout lolling lazily in the warm shallows.
I clung to our desire; found peace in the act of love. There no thought was required. I abandoned myself to the cool smoothness of her skin, the feel of her ribs, the arch of her belly, the sharp, hot exhalation of her breath.
As the months unfolded, the tightness of my chest loosened and the crushing weight lifted from me. I no longer jumped at the sudden crackle of static on the telephone line. I no longer woke in the night, with a scream on my lips, upright and soaked with fear. That other life◦– that life I slewed off, like a snake its skin, as Vassily put it◦– no longer haunted me with its dark emptiness.
I awoke in Tanya’s bed the next morning just after dawn, and, unable to return to sleep, got up and made myself coffee. The sky was bright and cloudless, and over the tops of neighbouring buildings I could see the trees in Kalnu Park tossing in a strong breeze. I felt curiously calm after the events of the previous couple of days, as though, having slipped down a crevice, my fall had finally been broken and I was left on a ledge, regarding my position.
Sipping the coffee, I thought of Vassily, of the years we had spent together and all that he had done for me. I thought of Kolya, too, the young boy I had grown up with in the children’s home, his bright face, his laughter. Of how he had blushed in shame when Liuba had declared her affection for him.
Tanya was sleeping still when, just before eight o’clock, I took her coffee. Sitting beside her, I brushed her dark hair from her face. She stirred and looked up and smiled sadly.
‘I was dreaming,’ she said.