I was sitting on a park bench in Ghetto Square when once more the sight of a young woman struck me painfully. She walked slowly across the grass towards me looking down at her baby in its pram, oblivious to my presence. She cooed softly down to the child, soothing it. Her long brown hair was tied neatly back behind her head. Her hands rested on the handles of the pram.
She paused for a moment about ten paces from me. I took my camera from the wooden bench by my side. My heart beat disturbingly as I raised it to my eye. I felt as if I was committing a crime. Focusing the lens with shaking fingers I took the photo quickly. The click of the camera exploded in my ears and seemed to carry across the grass of the park, drowning the sound of cars rushing by. She did not look up. I placed the camera back on the bench beside me. I felt flushed and ashamed.
A moment later she straightened up and continued once more on her path. She passed within a few feet of me. Her scent cut into my nostrils. Her coat rustled against her legs. There had been something about the way she had looked down at the child that ruffled my heart. As soon as she had disappeared from view, I clutched the camera and hurried back to my apartment. Arriving breathless once again, I threw my keys onto the table and took the camera into the bathroom. Standing over the sloshing fluids I watched the blurred image slowly appear on the paper.
When the print was dry I unhooked it from the line in the bathroom and pinned it to the wall beside the Russian. They hung there together on the walclass="underline" two mothers, both young and undeniably pretty. The Russian was dark with long hair and this new one was just a little lighter. While the Russian stared out of the photo, challenging, the other gazed down into the. pram, unaware.
For a full hour I sat at my desk and stared up at these two photographs. One by one I smoked a packet of twenty Prima cigarettes. The lines of Marcinkevicius winged like dark angels above my head; I love you with hands black from crying. With darkness and death. The earth, I felt, was beginning to shift, and the long dead were stirring.
Praise for Amber
‘Collishaw’s latest evokes Hemingway’s war-torn landscapes with spare language and haunting imagery… a sensuous tale of survival… an intensely moving account of this war and the scars it has left.’
‘Gripping… A haunting and ultimately uplifting tale of love, friendship and betrayal.’
‘Collishaw is impressive in his descriptions of war… The struggle of a man to return from such horrors and try to live as a loving husband and father is described by him in heartbreaking detail. This is a compulsive read.’
‘A tumultuous tale of friendship distorted by love, greed and the barbaric effects of war… the bittersweet love story at the core of this tale… really strikes the deepest chord… a captivating read.’
Copyright
Published by Dean Street Press 2015
Copyright © 2004 Stephan Collishaw
All Rights Reserved
The right of Stephan Collishaw to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2004 by Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN 978 1 910570 01 2