He fixed me with a motionless gaze, but didn’t say a word. The cigarette burned down and though he was breathing, he wasn’t dragging on it. A fleck of ember tumbled off his bristly grey cheek onto the sheet, singeing it. I hurriedly palmed the ash onto the floor. I took away the cigarette and put it out in a cup. Dad didn’t move a muscle. He just breathed and looked somewhere past me.

I pulled the blanket up to his chin, tucked it under the mattress, and lay a jacket on top. Tottering from the ease that had suddenly washed over my body, I went to bed. Reflecting on how well Phenazepam was doing its job, I muttered: “Sunday’s offensive. Just think if it’s true and the push is on Sunday.”

They say repetition is crucial for children, I read that somewhere. You need a regimen. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s that they’re grasping for a framework to understand the rules that dominate our lives. It’s important to know what’s coming next.

In childhood memories, it is the routines that stick in the memory: the family rituals, both good and bad. If you can say always or every Sunday, that’s it. When I was small and couldn’t sleep, my mother would always “draw buttons,” that’s what she called it. She would take my hand and draw a circle in my palm with her index finger, and thus calmed, I would immediately fall asleep. Or Mum would never cry when he beat her. Or the house was always spotlessly clean. Dad was obsessed with tidiness. On Sunday morning, he always made pancakes. They stood in a tall heap on a wide, yellow-edged plate and their soft smell would float around the flat. I was never able to get the edges crispy like that. Jesus, what am I wittering on about? How am I going to purge these memories of always? How to rid myself of this city? You’re so clever. You tell me.

Chapter 22

Deafened by the explosion, Andrei slid out of his sleeping bag and crawled to the mouth of the tent. A second blast followed, then a third, louder and closer. Andrei slithered forward, the soldiers at his back were astir, somebody shouted out. Andrei emerged from beneath the canopy and shimmied under an APC. The earth trembled. The twilight had turned yellow from the explosions, and the machinery and the tents were ablaze.

Rockets landed like meteorites on every inch of their outpost. The woods next to their encampment shuddered. Andrei was engulfed by heat. Five ammunition trucks disappeared in a tower of fire. A row of tightly arrayed tanks and trucks filled with ammunition blew up. Crippled figures tottered across the field, carried the stricken, or tumbled as they were pierced by flying steel shards. Andrei didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t stop himself. From his prone position under the infantry fighting vehicle, he could not tear his eyes away from the tent where his platoon still lay.