Vassily squatted down beside me and followed my gaze out over the hill towards the cottage.
‘What a beautiful place,’ I said.
Vassily nodded and placed a hand on my knee. ‘Beautiful and terrible.’
He lifted the shattered body of Pavlov and laid him in line with the other corpses at the side of the road. There were five. Taking out a rag he used for testing the oil in the KamaZ, Vassily wiped the blood from my face. We stood in silence over the bodies of our friends for some time.
‘I remember the scent of narcissi,’ I told Tanya, drawing closer to her in the darkness.
When the Mi-8s arrived we loaded the bodies into their trembling, swollen bellies. Vassily picked a handful of the brilliant yellow narcissi from the side of the road and laid them on the chests of the soldiers in their body bags. The helicopters shuddered and rose with a roar.
We watched as they soared sinisterly over the orange grove, black against the bloody sun. Beneath them the pale blossom shivered and fell like snow upon the cooling earth. Vassily laid his hand on my shoulder.
‘Death will not go hungry tonight.’
It was while we were away on that first raid that Kirov met Hashim. I pictured the Afghani merchant, his thin straggly beard, dirty shalwar-kameez and dark turban, his uneven smile and the way he used to cough up phlegm and spit it on to the floor in large dark pools, stained with naswar, tobacco mixed with opium.
In the short time Kirov had been in Afghanistan he had already learnt how to abuse the system. Following the incident in Jalalabad, when he had paid for vodka with a grenade, he had begun buying all kinds of privileges with stolen goods and services. Rumour had it that his mafia connections in his home town of Kaliningrad would have bought him a ‘white ticket’ out of national service if he had not been implicated in the violent rape of a teenage girl, which made a two-year break in central Asia seem sensible, until things quietened down.
When Kirov went to pick up some goods from Jalalabad one day, he met a merchant who told him he had something that might interest Kirov. Hashim had various things at the back of his store◦– jewellery, Western cigarettes, Russian vodka, tape players and televisions from Japan.
It was late when we arrived back at the base after the raid. Kirov was lying back on his crudely made bunk, smoking Marlboro cigarettes and listening to a Western cassette◦– Kim Wilde, on a new Japanese tape player.
‘What the fuck?’ Kolya muttered.
Kirov sat up with a sly grin and proffered the packet of cigarettes. We each took one and stood around the tape player, gazing at it in wonder.
‘How many cheki did it cost?’ Kolya wanted to know. Kirov shrugged. He pulled a bottle of Stolichnaya from beneath his blanket and waved it before our eyes.
‘Get some glasses,’ he said.
‘Stolichnaya!’
‘Where the fuck?’
‘Shhh! If the rest hear they’ll all want some.’
‘Turn off the light.’
The glasses clinked in the darkness. We sat beneath the small window, listening to music playing softly on the tape player, smoking the beautiful, smooth Marlboro cigarettes and drinking Stolichnaya, which tasted as sweet as milk after the spirits we had been making for ourselves.
‘Maybe we died too,’ Kolya said, his voice weary, but cheerful. I could see his wide grin in the faint light from the window. ‘Maybe we were killed and are in heaven, like the muj think.’
‘Don’t they get whores too?’ asked Vassily.
‘Where did you get all this stuff?’ I asked Kirov.
‘A trader in Jalalabad,’ he answered.
The next time the convoy drove into Jalalabad for supplies, we went to Hashim’s small store near the hospital. It was then we discovered the prices we could get for things. Anything. The wing mirrors from the KamaZ, spare wheels, ammunition, uniforms, medical supplies. We could get a hundred thousand afoshki for a Kalashnikov. Bulgarian biscuits from the army store would fetch a good price, as would sweets, canned milk.
With the afoshki we earned selling equipment we had stolen from the base, we were able to buy products from the West coming through from Pakistan. Cigarettes, good vodka, cassette players, video players and presents we could take home when our service was over. We sold our boots, which we rarely wore owing to their extreme unsuitability for the terrain we were in, and our flak jackets, sleeping bags and uniforms, which were all so uncomfortable in the hot climate that they were never used either. They did not fetch much money, but it was often enough for us to buy better equipment, which the mujahidin were smuggling into the country. The only time we were required to wear uniforms was when senior officers visited from Kabul or Jalalabad, which was rare. Generally full uniform was only insisted on for the newest recruits.
It was the jewellery which caught Vassily’s eye. He lingered over the huge lumps of lapis lazuli, the beryl and the gold and silver, some of which was obviously antique.
‘Where did. you get this stuff?’ he asked. ‘Is there more?’
‘This?’ Hashim said. ‘This is just shit. If you want some real pieces, then I can get you some that would interest you.’
‘What kind of pieces do you have?’
Hashim waved his hand above his head, as though rare, precious pieces of jewellery were so common in Afghanistan he could just pluck them from the air.
‘Many pieces. Not far from here was once an ancient and important Buddhist site. There are many pieces of jewellery and other things you might be interested in. You’re interested in Buddhist icons? No? There are many more things that will interest you. But…’ He rubbed his thumb and index finger together, ‘…they cost.’
‘You find me something interesting and I will find the way to pay you,’ Vassily said.
I fell asleep with Tanya’s fingers curled in my own, the warmth of her body close to me. In the darkness, a vision of the waves of pale blossom rolled over me. I was walking beneath the trees, reaching up, plucking a sprig from a low branch, examining the delicate petals, marvelling at the careful colouring of each miniature canvas. A child laughed. The blossom slipped from my fingers and fluttered to the ground. The earth was dark, rich. I bent to retrieve the pale petals. My fingers loosened the earth, searching delicately.
‘Leave it,’ somebody said. ‘Wait for the sappers.’
I inched forwards across the ground, eyes straining for evidence of the buried mines. I stiffened. A child was crying. My fingers reached out again to loosen the earth.
‘Leave it,’ a voice said.
A child was crying, a pitiful ululation, a desperate, heart-rending sob.
‘Just wait for the fucking sappers.’
The earth was stippled. Tiny plumes of dirt rose before me. Little pillars of dust. The dull thwack of bullets entering a tree trunk.
‘Sniper!’
‘Find cover!’
I lay still, lips pressed tight against the hot earth, ears pricked like a dog’s, heart thudding in the dry soil, a searing pain slitting my skull in two. I rolled, was trapped. Could not move.
I gasped, my mouth gaping, drawing in air, as though surfacing from beneath the waves. My eyes opened wide, straining against the darkness. My hands flayed, pulling at the sheet wound tight around me, balled in my fists, suffocating me. I sat up, struggling to catch my breath, placing myself slowly, feeling the edge of the bed, the tight knot of sheets, the worn carpet beneath me. Tanya still asleep. I buried my head in my knees, pressing my eyes shut.