Your Still Beating Heart

by Tyler Keevil

  He reaches for it, slurps at it zealously. Finishes it in less than a minute. Then sits there hiccupping – each one causing his whole body to shake.

  When the food comes, Gogol doesn’t attack it, as he did the Coke. He gazes at it in something like wonder, something like awe. A plate of chips and a beef burger. The grease congealing beneath the bun. He looks shyly at you, as if not quite daring to believe that this is for him. To eat it, he must let go of his papers. He tucks them in the pouch of his hoody, picks up the burger, and takes a bite. Tentatively. As if he fears it’s a trick. As if you might be the witch in a fairy tale – the Baba Yaga figure – who is going to poison him, or put him to sleep, entrap him in a cage for fattening up. But when there are no ill-effects, he takes another bite, and another. He puts the food away without pleasure, without manners, without any sense of self-control. Just biting and gnawing and chewing. Like a starved wolf who’s been thrown a scrap. His antics are such that the men at the bar look over, say something, laugh heartily. Not nastily. Simply awestruck at the sight of the boy’s appetite, his lack of restraint.

  Gogol is nearly done, and you’ve hardly started. You begin to eat. Still watching him. Oddly enough his clear and desperate need of it makes you appreciate the food all the more. The meat is gristly, overdone, with that old-liver taste. But it is something. You are eating, and breathing, and your heart is still beating. And this is all that matters, all there is.

  As soon as he is done, he wipes his hands on his hoody – ignoring the napkins that are at the side of the table – and pulls out the papers again. Clenching them, as if he doesn’t trust them to be safe in the pouch. You point to them. Ask him what they are. He looks at you shyly.

  Then he spreads his hands, unfolds what lies inside. There are two pieces of paper. One looks like a report of some kind; the other is a newspaper article. Both are equally tatty, soiled, torn. He hands you the report. You spread it on the table in front of you. It is some kind of official form – all of it in Ukrainian. You can’t make any sense of it. One section, near the bottom, is highlighted in red ink.

  You nod in approval, as if you understand. Offer it back. In exchange he slides you the other piece. It has been torn from a glossy magazine. You look at the article, the writing, in confusion. Then he makes a sound – no – and motions for you to turn it over. When you do, you see images of a rollercoaster and rides, a mock castle. A life-sized Mickey Mouse. A theme park. The theme park. The title and caption is entirely in Ukrainian, illegible to you, but the word on the sign above the entrance in the photo is in English: Disneyland.

  When you look up, Gogol is beaming. You have not yet seen him smile. His teeth are rotten, yellow-brown, the canines crooked and sharp as fangs. He taps the image and nods eagerly. Says something that sounds like a question.

  Yes, you assure him, sliding the advert back. Not brave enough to spoil his fantasy. You tell him you can take him there, to Disneyland. You are taking him there.

  Understanding in that moment, this is the lie he’s been told.

  In the parking lot, before you even get in the car, he throws up everything he ate. The food too rich, or too much for his stomach to handle. It comes up in three full heaves – hitting the pavement in Coke-and-ketchup spatters. Reddish black, like blood that has been poisoned, tainted. You pat his back, both sympathetic and revolted. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve, looks up at you in suspicion.

  As if you might be the witch in this fairy tale after all.

  a stopping point

  You drive by the inn on the first pass. It doesn’t look like an inn or hotel or motel or any kind of establishment that you’ve seen. It’s an old farmhouse, set back from the road. An estate. A relic of better times, of a completely different agricultural system. Even the satnav is confused, trying to find the place by the postcode. It tells you that you have arrived when you are in the middle of an open stretch of main road; the only building in sight, in the dark, is this old, decrepit farmhouse. The lights are on. You assume that must be it.

  You spin a U-turn, crunching ice and gravel at the roadside, and head back to the gateway. There – you see it now. A painted wooden sign, with the now familiar and strange Ukrainian lettering. It’s peeling, faded, the words barely discernible. But you can make out готе́ль and you know – from your minimal guidance – that it means an inn, or lodgings.

  Three cars are parked haphazardly in the driveway, near the front porch. On the veranda, a single light glows orange, and when you pull up and get out you can hear the bulb buzzing. You walk around to Gogol’s side. Again, he doesn’t emerge until you open his door. Again, he is cautious, watchful. You talk to him, even though you know now he doesn’t understand. You explain that you’re just staying here for one night. A warm bed and food. The act of talking helps keep you calm, clears your head – and seems to reassure him.

  The front room of the farmhouse has been converted into a reception and drinking area: a long wooden bar, a motley selection of liquor. Sofas and chairs scattered around the place. The space is cold and practically empty, but at the same time quite raucous. At the bar sit two women and a man, talking animatedly. The man is, at least. Dressed in a pinstripe suit, with his hair slicked back, and wearing a pair of glasses with chunky black frames. He waves a short, puffy finger and declares something boisterously in Ukrainian, which makes the women laugh. They are dressed identically: mini-skirts, halter tops, heels, tights. Only the colours of each item are different. Both have bold, conspicuous hairstyles, sprayed and dyed pastel colours, like dancers in an eighties’ music video. Off to the side, sitting together over a board game of some sort, are two men. One of them younger, in an ice hockey top, his face flecked with pimples. The other older, sitting hunched in a paint-spattered sweatshirt, with a wool hat pulled low over his brow. Builders, maybe? Contractors en route to a job? On the board between them are little discs or tiles, which they push around with their fingers. The pieces make a click-clack sound, like an erratic metronome. Something off. Not quite right.

  You may speculate about these people, but that’s all it is: speculation.

  Behind the bar, a huge woman perches on a stool, so that her body mass spills over the sides of it. She has lanky, greasy hair that falls in ringlets to her shoulders. Meaty biceps, bare and tattooed. She appears stoic and firmly planted. Buddha-like. She looks at you (the others look too, momentarily quiet) but she makes no move to stand or greet you. So you go to her, say that you have booked a room, for you and the boy. You don’t give her your name. You don’t know if your name has been mentioned by Valerie. You just say that there is supposed to be a room. And there is. The woman nods again, causing her chin fat to quiver. She sighs wearily and shifts, easing her bulk off the stool. Emanating from her is the faint smell of body odour, yeasty as rotten beer. Her biceps, despite the cold, are slick with a sheen of sweat. The tattoo on the left one shows a skull, a snake woven in a figure eight through the eye sockets.

  ‘Come,’ she says to you, jangling a pair of keys.

  She labours – that is the word for it – towards a hall. Behind you, the board game begins again – click-clack-click – and the suited man at the bar mumbles something that slowly crescendos to a punchline, explodes into more laughter, possibly at your expense.

  Your room is up a flight of stairs, and seeing the innkeeper ascend them is something quite extraordinary: one step at a time, pausing to rest after each, like a climber atop Everest, sucking at thin air. You wonder why she couldn’t just direct you. Maybe it’s a matter of pride, or principle. Or maybe it’s simply habit, what is always done. She reaches the first floor eventually, and makes a final rhino charge down the hall to reach a door. She throws it open with a gasp, motions you into the darkness beyond. You feel a pang of misgiving, of mistrust. But you shouldn’t have anything to fear. You haven’t fulfilled your main purpose yet. They hired you for the border. After the border is when you need to be careful.

  Then you think: no, you need t
o be careful now, from here on in.

  Or rather, you needed to be careful from the start.

  As you step inside, you instinctively put a hand on Gogol’s shoulder, guide him behind you so you are shielding him with your hip and thigh. Not that this would do anything. But it’s revealing. You are already thinking of him as being under your protection. As being your ward.

  A light comes on. No menacing figures, no men in balaclavas. Just the sight of a rumpled bed. The sound of the heavyset woman wheezing behind you. The smell of air freshener failing to mask the stench of stale smoke, of sweat, of sex. A sink in one corner. No bathroom. The toilet, apparently, is down the hall. You deduce this because the big woman points in that direction and gasps something, before throwing the keys on the bed, and lumbering back downstairs. As if she needs to descend without pausing too long, before her muscles cramp up, or her energy reserves run out. There has been no talk of payment. There will be no talk of payment. That has all been arranged by Valerie.

  You put your bag on the bed. The only bed. Gogol can have the bed – you’ll use the blankets, sleep on the floor.

  You tell Gogol he needs a shower. He smells worse than the woman, worse than this room. Swaddled in a lifetime of grime. No towels have been provided. But there must be a shower. You motion for him to follow you, down the hall in the direction she pointed. Sure enough there is a toilet, and in the same room an old bathtub – the kind with brass clawed feet. It is greying, filthy. But there’s a detachable shower head. You twist the taps, let the water run. It sputters. Pipes make creaking and groaning sounds. The water is cold for a long time (you’re checking it with your hand), but eventually it changes to a very mild temperature that can’t be called warm, but is at least less cold.

  Gogol is standing well back, watching defensively. His arms crossed in front of him. He looks far younger than he did in the car, smoking, or in the café, eating greedily. Such a little boy. His age seems to keep changing, fluctuating. As if he is some kind of changeling, playing at the role of child when it suits him. Like now. You pluck at his hoody, tell him to take it off. He does so with obvious reluctance. ‘Come on,’ you say. You mime exasperation. Point at the running water. ‘Clean yourself up.’ You tell him that you won’t look, and turn away. But you hear nothing – no movement, no signs of obedience. When you glance over, he is just standing there, watching you timidly. You sigh, turn back to him. You tell him you’re not going to hurt him but that he needs to have a wash. You help him out of his shirt and then motion for him to undo his jeans. The garments, when they hit the floor, look like puddles of grease or oil. So heavy with filth. When he’s down to his tatty, threadbare underwear you pick him up under the armpits and put him in the bath, standing up.

  He is unbelievably light. As if his body is hollow. A papiermâché boy. You think he might melt away, dissolve in the water. But he doesn’t. He is indifferent and listless and you begin to wonder if you’re traumatising him, damaging him. Or if he has been damaged and that you’re forcing him to relive it. You try not to touch him, but keep one hand held ready, in case he slips and needs your support. With the other hand you hold the shower head over him and let it run through his hair, which flattens and lies inkily down the sides of his head. His hair is unnaturally thin, and when wet his head looks like a sad little egg, the top painted black. His one leg – his left – is noticeably spindly and an inch or so shorter than the other, as if it has atrophied or not grown fully: the reason he limps.

  The water pooling beneath his feet in the bath is dark, brackish, and you assume it’s from the old pipes, poor plumbing, until you realise that this is the grunge running off of him, endlessly. Layer after layer. He makes half-hearted motions at scrubbing himself, though uncertainly, as if he has done this so few times he doesn’t even know what to do.

  As the grime clears and the paleness of his skin appears more clearly, you begin to see that his upper body is dotted with scars, as if he suffered from chicken pox or small pox or some kind of sickness. Except the scars are too uniform, too perfectly circular. They are small burn marks. Seeing this – knowing this to be true – is enough to make you look away, momentarily shield your eyes, pushing your finger and thumb into them, as if you can rub out the image. A startling reaction. You’ve been numb for so long, as if living under anaesthetic, that hardly anything has had the capacity to touch you. But this does. This boy’s scars. You can’t comprehend what he has suffered, what he has been put through. And yet you’re altering his life. In a way that is hideously reckless, irresponsible.

  These realisations prickle into you, like acupuncture needles.

  All the same, eventually the water running off him clears, turns clean, and you take some small satisfaction in that. Satisfaction mingled with dread. Yes, you have been thinking about what he has been put through. But you haven’t been thinking enough about what awaits him. About what Valerie and Pavel intend to do with him once you bring him back to Prague, hand him over to them.

  Or perhaps you haven’t wanted to think about it.

  He is shivering now – the bathroom, like the rest of the house, is frigid. You twist off the taps, causing them to squeak. Since there are no towels, you remove your sweater and use it as a towel, wrapping it around his trembling shoulders and giving his torso a quick, vigorous rub-down. When you’re done, you don’t want to put him back in his clothes, in the soiled stink of his old life and all those associations, so you leave your sweater draped over him, and to keep it in place tie the arms about his neck, like a cloak. Or a noose.

  chance encounters

  This time when you enter the inn’s lounge the effect isn’t as apparent. The businessman and the two women scarcely glance at you – your novelty value has worn off. And the sounds of the men’s board game only pause for a moment before the steady click-clack-click resumes, the gap so brief it’s barely noticeable, like the beat that a heart skips. The big owner merely purses her lips at you from behind the bar, as if blowing a silent kiss. Whether this denotes approval or disapproval you can’t tell.

  Against the window is the scratching of wind-blown snow.

  You have your mobile in hand. You cross the lounge, explain to the owner that you have no signal in your room, that you need to make a call. You say this in English, but make exaggerated miming gestures to demonstrate, holding the phone to your ear, shrugging your shoulders, holding your other palm out to imply the pointlessness of trying. You ask if she has a landline that you might be able to use. She shakes her head, no. Though whether this means she doesn’t have one, or has one and doesn’t want you to use it, you can’t tell.

  The man in the suit, who has overheard this, leans towards you and slaps the bartop with his palm. This to get your attention. He then hoists a shot glass, filled with a murky liquor, and tells you in English that he found some signal at the end of the lane – for his mobile network, anyway. You look at him uncertainly, wondering if this is a trick of some sort. Some fun at your expense. The two women appear unamused and uninterested in his titbit of helpful information. If it’s a ruse, they’re not in on the joke.

  You look out the window, ask if he means back towards the road. Yes, yes, he nods, waving that way with one hand, knocking back his shot with the other. Only a bar or two, but enough to make a call. Then, leaning in confidentially, he tells you that he just called his wife, to let her know he’s stuck in a snowstorm, and won’t be home on time. Possibly till the morning.

  He laughs uproariously again, and the women laugh along with him, as they’re supposed to – even though it’s unclear to you whether they’ve heard and understood. Either way, you thank him, tell him you’ll give it a try.

  Before going out, you return to your room to get your coat and hat. Gogol is lying on the bed, watching TV, still huddled in your sweater and his damp underpants. He didn’t take them off and you didn’t feel comfortable suggesting he do so. He’s shivering a bit, but it won’t kill him to sleep like that. He barely notices you: he’
s transfixed by the glow of the screen, his mouth ajar, his eyes unblinking. The show is a dubbed American comedy of some sort, filled with slapstick spills as two men chase each other through a carnival crowd.

  Having gotten dressed, you pick up his clothes from the floor. They are so soiled it’s tempting to throw them out. But they’re all he has. You take them with you, tell him you’ll be back in a minute. He nods vacantly, too engrossed to care.

  On the way out, you stop at the bar, again go through the act of miming for the woman – asking if she can wash the clothes. This time she seems to understand, or cares to. She nods, curtly. Taps her till to denote she requires payment – laundry wasn’t included in your booking. You get out your hryvni, let her select some notes – about the same as you paid for food. In comparison it seems a bit steep to wash one set of boy’s clothes, but you suppose she has to run the machine, the same as a full load. And it’s not like you don’t have the money. Just before handing the clothes over you remember Gogol’s only possessions: the wrinkled and grimy pieces of paper. His dreams of Disneyland, and that form. You remove these from the pouch of his hoody, tuck them in your pocket. Thank her.

  As you head for the door, you sense attention. An awareness. Not from the owner of the inn, or the three drinkers at the bar, but from the game players. As if they are watching you without watching you. When you step on the porch, you pause to light a cigarette. Use the excuse of shaking out the match to glance sideways, past the window. Catch the face of the older of the two men, angled towards you. Watching you. Definitely. Though whether it is pure curiosity, or something more, you don’t know. You wonder if they are meant to keep tabs on you. Report back to Valerie. Let her know if you failed to show up, or if anything seems amiss. Possibly you’re being paranoid, but it stays with you as you walk down the steps, past your car, down along the drive. Frosted gravel crunching beneath your heels.