Kaliningrad

Winter came early to Königsberg. By October the sea wind already carried salt and iron, and the cobblestones of Harbour Street were always wet, each step returning a dull, hollow echo.

Heinrich Brandt's shop stood at the far end of Harbour Street. A wooden sign hung above the door, its lettering long since worn away. He did not mind — those who came to find him needed no sign.

Brandt was a tall man, somewhere past fifty, his beard gone grey at the edges. His eyes were the colour of stones in shallow water — grey, with a trace of green — and when he looked at people there was a flatness to it, the flatness of a man who had seen too much to be surprised. His hands were large, the knuckles thick, yet when he lifted something fragile they were perfectly steady, as though he had always known what was worth being careful with.

When the door was pushed open, Brandt did not look up.

The man who entered smelled of the sea. His boots were muddy, his face darkened by weather, cheekbones sharp, lips cracked. An old scar ran from his left brow to his ear — the kind left by some hurried night long ago. His eyes held something Brandt had seen many times at the harbour: not grief, but exhaustion — what remains after grief has been used up entirely.

He unfolded the cloth in his hands, set it on the counter, and stepped back, as though he did not wish to touch it again.

The amber was larger than Brandt had expected. Deep in colour, almost reddish-brown. Something was inside — he leaned closer — an insect, whole, its antennae still spread, as though it might move at any moment.

"Where did it come from."

"The sea." The man said. "My father pulled it up. He spent his whole life out there. This was the one piece he never sold." He paused. "But he's dead now."

Brandt did not look up. He was waiting.

"I want fifty thalers."

Brandt straightened and looked at him. "Twenty."

"Forty. There's an insect inside. You saw it."

"I saw it. Twenty-five."

The man's jaw tightened. He looked at the amber, not at Brandt.

"Thirty-five. My father spent thirty years in that water for this thing."

The shop was quiet for a moment. A ship's horn sounded from the harbour, carried in, then gone. A thin film of condensation clung to the window glass.

"Thirty thalers," Brandt said. "That is already a fair price."

The man did not answer immediately. He looked at the amber once more — not appraising it, Brandt recognised the look — taking leave of it.

"Fine."

He took the money and left the cloth on the counter. At the door he stopped, without turning back.

"He never let me touch it," he said, his voice flat, as though speaking of someone else. "He said it couldn't be sold."

Then he was gone. The sea wind bent his silhouette as he walked away. It was only then that Brandt learned his name was Dmitri — he had written it on the crumpled receipt, in an unsteady hand, like a man not accustomed to holding a pen.

Brandt stood behind the counter and looked at the amber. The shop was very quiet, only the wind outside. The insect's antennae remained spread in the reddish-brown light, fixed there.

He locked the amber in the bottom drawer of the cabinet. He gave it no price.

— 1807 —

Napoleon's army entered Königsberg. French soldiers were quartered on Harbour Street; the cobblestones were cracked by cannon wheels. Brandt died that winter of typhus, not war. His possessions were inventoried, the cabinet removed, the drawer opened, the wooden box taken by someone who had never known him.

— 1871 —

Prussia unified. New lamps appeared on the streets of Königsberg — gas lamps, turning the cobblestones yellow at night. The amber passed through several hands in those years. Each pair believed itself to be the last.

— 1944 —

The Royal Air Force bombed Königsberg for two consecutive nights. Harbour Street burned on the first. The fire turned the surface of the sea red. Brandt's shop had long since ceased to exist, but the outline of the street had remained — until the bombing took that too.

— 1945 —

Soviet forces took the city. The German residents were expelled. The streets were renamed — given Russian names that no one remembered the origins of. The new inhabitants who moved in walked the same cobblestones, and did not know the people who had been cleared away, and did not wish to.

— Now —

It was an ordinary Saturday morning. Moscow, November, the sky a flat grey. Between the stalls of the antique market, someone had lit a wood fire for warmth; the smoke drifted through the cold air.

Anya Dmitrieva, twenty-eight, her brown hair cut short, two small gold rings in her ears, wearing an old blue coat with an unfinished breakfast in the pocket. She had not come to buy amber. She did not even know what she was looking for.

She picked up the amber and held it toward the grey light.

"There's an insect inside," the vendor said. "Quite rare."

She bought it. The price was low. She put it in her coat pocket alongside the unfinished breakfast and kept walking.

At home she set it on the windowsill. The heating had fogged the glass slightly; sunlight came through and the amber's colour turned beautiful. She looked at it for a while, then went to do other things.

Three days later, she knocked it off the windowsill while tidying up. It fell to the floor and broke into three pieces. She bent down and picked them up. The insect was still in the largest fragment, antennae still spread.

She dropped the pieces into the bin and went to do other things.