A Shadow of Myself

by Mike Phillips

  Joseph looked around. Next to him was a short line of what looked like transit vans, but they had been resprayed in black, the side panels removed and replaced with glass. These were the hearses, he guessed.

  Valentin came away from the stairs. He came past them and made a gesture, putting his hands together and resting his cheek on them.

  ‘Sleeping,’ George muttered.

  They began walking along the rows of vehicles, peering in and opening doors. Joseph stayed where he was, slumped against the wall, almost too tired to take in what was happening. Five minutes, he thought. It was clear now that when his brother said five minutes he really meant a matter of hours.

  Suddenly he heard Valentin shout, the urgency of his tone jerking him into wakefulness. At the other end of the room George was running, threading his way through the cars at speed. Joseph pulled himself away from the wall and followed, charting a course to the point where he could see the top of Valentin’s head. When he got there he emerged into a sort of clearing where the cars had withdrawn into a rough circle surrounding a gleaming limousine, doors open, the headlamps still glowing. Valentin and George were standing in front of the car, but they were staring at a heap of blue overalls on the floor at their feet. They’d found the staff, Joseph thought, drunk again, and in his head he framed a mocking remark about cheap labour. Then he saw the puddles of blood staining the floor all round the figure. Some of it had mingled with the grease and oil which covered most of the surface, and it shone like a dark red lacquer. Then George moved, looking back at him, and he saw the head, carefully perched at the end of the bonnet, hair stiff and plastered close to the skull with blood. The skin of the man’s face was dyed the same lurid strawberry colour, and for a moment, Joseph felt that he was looking at some kind of exhibit in a gallery, a representation of death. Then his head whipped round away from it and his stomach turned over. He started walking blindly away, and he felt George’s hand gripping his elbow.

  ‘Wait.’

  George pushed him against one of the cars and they stood in the silence, listening. Valentin crept softly past them, the gun in his hand pointing ahead of him. The image of the head kept running through Joseph’s mind. The eyes had been open, staring, the mouth snarling. A thought struck him and he turned to ask George whether this had been Milena’s brother, but as he moved George’s grip tightened and he put his finger to Joseph’s lips.

  It could only have been a few minutes, but to Joseph it seemed like an eternity before they heard Valentin calling out. George let go of his arm, and they walked towards the entrance where Valentin was standing upright, staring at the maze of cars and vans in the yard, the gun was still dangling by his side. As they approached he spoke to George in a quiet tone.

  ‘There’s no one here now,’ George told Joseph, ‘I take you back to your hotel. Valentin will take care of this.’

  Later on Joseph felt like a fool for asking the question, but it was the first thing that popped into his head.

  ‘Are you gangsters?’

  George frowned, and when he answered his voice seemed to have grown harsher and deeper, throbbing with an undertone of anger.

  ‘No, mister film director,’ he said. ‘We are not gangsters. We are just businessmen. That is all. Businessmen.’

  SEVEN

  Joseph was still drowsy with sleep when the telephone rang. He had spent an uneasy night, punctuated by dreams of terror, but after the night sky had begun turning grey, he had fallen into a black hole from which he emerged with reluctance, fighting the echoes of pain and anger which the buzzing of the telephone triggered in his head.

  It was a woman, and for a moment he wondered whether he had missed a session that he had been scheduled to attend at the festival, then he recognised Radka’s voice and he was wide awake, his thoughts snapping back to the events of the previous night.

  ‘Can you meet me today? We have to talk.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Joseph told her, ‘I’m leaving this afternoon.’

  He’d had a vague idea about staying for another day and taking a tour round the city, but after what had happened at the factory in Smichov he was determined to get away as soon as possible. His nightmares had been full of visions of the severed and bloody head, and even now, in the full light of day, it was as if a bloodstained curtain had fallen across his memories of the night. This was an almost physical sensation which had been with him since he’d emerged from the open mouth of the building and stood beside Valentin, his eyes searching the menacing shadows which shrouded the jumble of hulks in the yard.

  Remembering the moment, it was as if he had been lost in the shock and horror of what he’d seen.

  ‘Come on.’

  George had walked past him into the dark, and Joseph hurried to catch up. As the car drove through the gate he looked back. Valentin had closed the garage doors, extinguishing the light. In the darkness all that remained visible was the square outline of a sombre block poised against the night sky. Joseph made a conscious effort to slow down his breathing and relax, but now he was safe, speeding away from the butchery he’d seen, his hands started to tremble. His right forefinger twitched, a tiny movement imperceptible to anyone else, but he clenched his fists and concentrated, trying to bring his body under control.

  ‘Who was that man?’ he asked.

  ‘Milena’s brother.’

  Joseph searched his memory of the ghastly red features for a resemblance, then realised what he was doing and tried to put it out of his mind.

  ‘What will Valentin do?’

  ‘He’ll telephone the police and tell them.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we have stayed?’

  ‘No,’ George said. ‘Better we go. Unless you wanted to stay in Prague for much longer. Better if you leave today.’

  In any other circumstances Joseph would have left it at that. George was a stranger again, and it was obvious that he didn’t want to talk or explain matters further.

  ‘What do you think it was?’ he asked. ‘A robbery?’

  George shrugged.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Burglars don’t usually cut people’s heads off,’ Joseph said, ‘and neither of you seemed very surprised.’

  George shrugged again, and his expression didn’t alter, but Joseph saw his hands move on the wheel.

  ‘Maybe it’s some kind of protection racket,’ Joseph ventured recklessly, ‘the Russian mafia.’

  This time George looked around, a quick glance, his forehead creased in an irritable frown.

  ‘Russians don’t do that. If they want to kill they shoot you and walk away.’

  With that outburst George seemed to think that he had settled the matter, and they made the rest of the journey in silence. By the time he pulled up in front of the hotel, however, his mood had changed.

  ‘I’m sorry for this problem,’ he said, turning to face Joseph, putting his hand out to touch his shoulder. ‘This was not a good ending to our first meeting. Next time will be better.’

  Joseph clasped his hand without speaking, then scrambled out of the car, frozen by the embarrassing sense that he did not know quite how to respond. He believed now that George was his brother, but he also felt a swelling tide of resentment at being catapulted into a relationship and a situation for which he hadn’t been prepared. At the same time, looking at George, he had the feeling that, without knowing it, he had been searching for him all his life. Waking up the next morning, he had realised in a moment of instant clarity that the shadow in his mind was to do with his worry about George and whatever trouble he was in.

  ‘We can meet this morning,’ Radka’s voice said. ‘Now, if you like.’

  Joseph looked at his watch. He would need to check out by noon, but that still gave him a few hours.

  ‘Come to Zizkov,’ she said when he muttered his agreement.

  ‘Why don’t you come here?’ he broke in. ‘I don’t know where that is.’

  ‘No, better if you come there. No one will see us in Zizkov
. Take a taxi, and tell the driver you want to go to the church of St Cyril and St Method underneath Narodni Památnik, the national monument.’

  ‘I’ve been there.’

  ‘What?’

  She sounded startled.

  ‘On Resslova.’

  Now she sounded impatient.

  ‘No, no. That is the cathedral. Zizkov is where you must go. It is a church of the same name. Tell the driver Zizkov.’

  She repeated the instructions carefully, and after he told her that he understood she hung up without giving him the chance to ask what it was she wanted to talk about or why it was important that they shouldn’t be seen together.

  He picked up the phone and dialled Kofi’s number in England. He had meant to make the call when he got back from dinner with George, but he had been too disturbed to contemplate waking the old man in the early hours. Now there was no reply, and he guessed that his father had already left the flat. It was the routine with which he had become familiar in recent years. Kofi would get up early and set out for a nearby café where he breakfasted on a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich. Then he would walk to the public library where he perused the newspapers one by one. After that he would ensconce himself in the reading room, surrounded by reference books, and sit writing careful notes. This was a preparation for the autobiographical journal which he had been writing for the last ten years, and in his bedroom there was a pile of exercise books stacked against the wall, all of them filled with his perfectly formed, rounded handwriting.

  Joseph had wanted to speak to his father before leaving Prague, but now he knew that Kofi wouldn’t be back till mid-afternoon when it was time for a nap, and by then he would be high in the skies, halfway to England. He banged the phone down, feeling a snap of irritation at the thought that he would be meeting Radka again without having had a chance to hear Kofi’s side of the story.

  In the taxi the driver, a spotty youth with thin blond hair, switched on a Motown tape and began humming along to the music. He glanced over his shoulder at Joseph.

  ‘American?’

  Joseph shook his head.

  ‘English.’

  The driver raised his eyebrows in surprise, then his lips peeled back to display a set of rabbit teeth.

  ‘Premier football. Manchester. Mitchell Owen.’

  He raised his hand in a thumbs-up gesture, and Joseph tried to think of the name of a Czech footballer, but he couldn’t remember any, so he contented himself with nodding and grinning inanely before turning to look out of the window.

  They had crossed the river and were going downhill along a narrow, bustling street. In comparison with the medieval stone and plate glass of the city centre, the buildings here were fairly recent brick and plaster. Beyond the façade of the street he could see the tops of high-rise towers. Zizkov, Joseph thought, reminded him of the East End in London.

  Within a few minutes the taxi swung off the main road into a cul-de-sac, which ended in a pedestrian walkway facing a courtyard of cobbled stones in front of the old stone church.

  At first he didn’t see Radka because his eyes were fixed on the hill which towered above the church. On the top was an oblong brick building which he guessed was some sort of tomb, flanked by a giant statue of a man on a horse. Joseph had seen plenty of statues in the last few days, but there was something ominous about this one which put him in mind of what George had said about monuments. Even at a distance the man on the horse looked as if it would only take a word to get him spurring straight down the hill, his angry sword slashing. At the bottom of the slope, Joseph could feel his presence like a vibration in the air.

  ‘Jan Zizka,’ Radka said. She had approached without his noticing until she was close enough to touch. ‘The Hussite general. A Czech hero. He invented the use of wagons in war. Like tanks.’

  Everywhere I go in this country, Joseph wanted to tell her, there’s a monument to violence. A bunch of dead losers, he thought irritably, then he stopped himself short, puzzled by the intensity of his reaction. Perhaps it was, he reflected, that the rhetoric of the monuments was an angry, mournful counterpoint to everything he saw.

  She was dressed all in black. Tight black trousers, a black silk shirt and a short black jacket. She put her hand on his arm and he hesitated, uncertain how to greet her, but she leant forward to kiss his cheek.

  ‘I’m not going up there,’ he told her, nodding at the hill.

  She smiled and squeezed his arm.

  ‘Let’s walk,’ she said.

  The houses in the corridor between the church and the hill were red brick terraces, which looked postwar but were already dilapidated.

  ‘There are many Romas in this district,’ Radka said. ‘They built houses for them here.’

  As if to provide an illustration, a dark-skinned couple leading a toddler by the hand came round the next corner and walked past on the opposite side of the street. Automatically, Joseph raised his hand in greeting. The man smiled and waved back at him.

  ‘A habit I picked up from my father,’ he told Radka.

  In the old days, Kofi used to say, when he first came to Europe, black faces were such an unusual sight that they would greet each other in the street like long-lost brothers. He had met many good friends that way. In London, where Joseph had grown up, there were so many black faces that the custom had been redundant for a long time. Even so, seeing the dark skins and the black Indian hair of the Romas, Joseph had felt the strange leap of kinship about which his father had spoken.

  ‘What happened last night?’ Radka asked suddenly.

  ‘Nothing much,’ he answered. ‘We went to a café. Didn’t George tell you?’

  He was playing for time. If George hadn’t told her about discovering the decapitated corpse, he must have had a reason. To blurt it out now would be disloyal.

  ‘George tells me only what I need to know,’ she said. ‘He talked about you, but I knew there was something else. He said he might go away for a while.’

  ‘I think you should ask him about it,’ Joseph told her.

  They came back round to the front of the church and Radka pointed to a café in the cul-de-sac which led up to it. They sat at a table on the pavement, and Joseph ordered American coffee. He was facing away from the monument, but he could still sense it behind him, like a tiger waiting to spring.

  ‘There was another reason I wanted to see you,’ she said.

  The American accent of her English was more noticeable than it had been the previous night. She was wearing the same scent, and he turned his face away from her, almost in fear that the look in his eyes would reveal his secret longing to touch her.

  ‘When you see Kofi,’ she continued, ‘persuade him to come to Berlin. For Katya.’

  The request gave him a shock. He had almost forgotten about Katya, and, remembering, he felt again a slow burn of resentment at the way Radka and George spoke about him, as if, somehow, he belonged to them.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he told her. ‘He’s an old man, and maybe he won’t want to do that.’ Her eyes widened as if he’d said something that upset her, and he realised that his voice had sounded curt and dismissive. ‘What I mean is this – put yourself in his position. He last saw Katya over forty years ago. Now she reappears with a son he’s never seen or heard of. It’s going to be disturbing and he’ll need some time to think about it. I don’t think he’ll want to go rushing off to Berlin.’

  In the back of his mind was the shock that the old man would experience when he heard the news. There was something else too, a niggling thought he struggled unsuccessfully to suppress. Perhaps his father would sense his own strength in George. In Kofi’s company Joseph usually felt pale and insubstantial, his responses strained, almost as if he was always standing at arm’s length. Liz had always commented on the distance between them. ‘You’re so cold towards him,’ she’d said once. ‘That’s because he’s so fucking warm,’ he’d replied savagely. Somehow he knew that George would be different with the old man. He’d
probably hug him and drink with him and match Kofi’s interminable flow of stories with his own, and he’d stand on the street shouting with laughter. If it was possible, Joseph thought, that these people would never turn up again he would forget about them and say nothing to his father. But he couldn’t take that chance. If Kofi found out that Joseph had concealed all this from him it would seem like a betrayal.

  Radka’s gaze was speculative, weighing him up.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about rushing,’ she replied. ‘Her birthday is soon. We’ll be going to spend it with her. Perhaps we could all meet in Berlin then? It would make her very happy.’

  I don’t care, Joseph thought, she’s nothing to do with me.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s the best idea,’ he said. ‘Even if I could persuade him. Why don’t you and George come to London and bring her with you?’

  ‘She won’t come, and George won’t come without her.’ She paused, a little frown of puzzlement creasing her forehead. ‘She thinks that he won’t want to see her.’

  ‘I thought she was always going on about him?’

  Radka hesitated.

  ‘Maybe something happened between them, some quarrel.’

  ‘Forty years ago?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Maybe it’s because she was young and beautiful when she saw him last. Now she’s afraid of what he’ll think. Maybe. I don’t know, but she won’t come unless she knows that he wants her.’

  ‘That makes it difficult,’ Joseph replied. ‘You’re asking me to persuade him to do something that she won’t do. I don’t think I can. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I want to.’

  This was what he’d wanted to say in the first place, and he felt a kind of relief at coming out with it. She was frowning, and now she leant forward to come closer, a note of urgency sounding in her voice.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘I want you to do it for George.’

  For some reason, Joseph thought about his mother. This was the sort of problem in which she would have expected Kofi to be involved and had she been alive she would have spoken of it with an undertone of wounded triumph. He was sure that she would have known nothing about Katya, and if she had she would have relegated her to the faceless army she described as ‘your father’s women’. The phrase reminded him suddenly that he had grown up feeling an extra edge of anger about Kofi’s absence in his thoughts. Somewhere in his childish imagination, he remembered, he used to have an image of his father lolling in a room hazy with smoke and the smell of perfume, a crowd of half-naked women stroking his supine body. Such notions had faded from his mind as he grew older, but when he thought of escorting his father to meet Katya, an echo of his mother’s indignation surfaced.