Exit wound

‘What do you want to know?’

‘As much as you want to tell.’

She wrapped her coat more tightly around her against the wind that was blowing along the prospekt. With it came a few spots of rain.

‘Grisha was an idealist. He loved poetry. That’s how we met. His family lived in the same apartment block as mine. One evening, when I came back from school, I found him sitting on the front steps. He was reading Pushkin. I loved Pushkin. We got talking. He wanted to go to university to study literature, but his family didn’t have the money or the influence to send him – in those days you couldn’t do it any other way. That’s why he joined the army.

‘He would have been conscripted anyway to fight in Afghanistan, so why not get a university education from the army as well as fight for them? It meant signing up for five years, but then he’d be free of it. He wanted to become a teacher. But to do that he first had to become a soldier.’

‘What was he? An engineer, an officer?’

‘No, he was nothing special. Just a normal infantry soldier. One of the thousands our government sent to be slaughtered out there.’

‘I had a friend, a British soldier. He’s just been killed in Afghanistan.’

‘Did you love him?’

I had to think about that one. ‘There were four of us who were close – we’d done a lot together. I’m the only one left now. You know what? I think I cared for all three of them. I miss them very much.’

She looked away. Her tear-stained cheeks glistened in the glow of a street-lamp.

I’d surprised myself talking about Tenny, Dex and Red Ken like that. I decided to cut away before it happened again. I didn’t like not being in control. ‘So, how much older than you was Grisha when you met? Was he old-enough-to-be-your-dad sort of old?’

‘No, no.’ She gave a giggle, which surprised her even more than it surprised me. ‘We’d started dating when I was just sixteen – a schoolgirl. He was almost nineteen. Like I said, my father did not approve of the relationship. But by then my father did not approve of anything much.’

She paused.

‘He was an alcoholic. The Soviet system killed his love of life. He worked in a factory that made machine tools. He hated it. My mother was scared of him. I was his only child. He wanted me to make something of my life, and study, study, study, he said, was the only way to achieve it. Grisha and I had to see each other in secret. Thank God he had a motorbike, a Ural, so we could escape every so often for a few hours on our own.’

For a second she seemed lost. ‘When he joined the army Grisha went away for almost a year. In that time I saw him only once. He didn’t talk about his training, but I could see that it had affected him deeply. It was only years later, through my work, that I found out what they do to recruits. Systematic abuse. Punishments have nothing to do with your performance. If the officers and the NCOs in charge are having a bad day, they beat you. If they are bored, they beat you. When Grisha came home that summer, he was a changed person. He didn’t want to talk about the army, just kept telling me that it wouldn’t be long – another four years – and then he’d be free of it. I had just turned eighteen so we decided to hand in our application.’

‘For what?’

‘To get married. Russians do not have engagements and rings. We just apply to ZAGS, the department of registration. They furnish a date when you can marry.’

The rain was falling harder now. She unwrapped the scarf from her neck and tied it round her head. ‘It was stupid – I was so young – but I wanted to let him know that I would wait for him. I couldn’t tell my father. But Semyon was very supportive. He became like a father to me, too. It was he who bought the Ural, a beat-up old thing from the Great Patriotic War, and restored it for Grisha. The only times I saw Grisha happy that summer – his old self – was when he and his father worked on that bike and when we were out riding on it.’

I didn’t say it, but Grisha was lucky to have had her – and Semyon. I’d never had a dad who cared enough about me to buy me a skateboard, let alone restore a motorbike.

‘We bought the rings…’ She gently played with hers, twisting it around her finger. ‘But the wedding never happened. He was sent to Afghanistan before ZAGS would give us a date…’

Her tears returned, and I thought about the three I’d lost. I’d never dwelt on how much those fuckers meant to me. It wasn’t as if we’d lived in each other’s pockets but just being with them again, even fleetingly, had made me feel good. They were my family, or as close as I was ever likely to get.

‘Anna, you still have family. There is still someone who…’

Ahead of us, lit by a flickering street-lamp, was a bus shelter. Anna stepped into it and I followed. The shelter stank of the things bus stops normally stink of. The rain drummed on the roof.

She smiled sadly and removed her scarf as I reached out and touched the ragged bruise on her neck.