Your Still Beating Heart

by Tyler Keevil

  Of Brno you don’t remember much, but you remember the bus station. It was a hub – busy, bustling, dirty, chaotic. You hope it hasn’t changed. If you are being followed – a legitimate possibility – then it may be your best chance to elude them. At least, for now.

  It’s late afternoon, and turning to dusk by the time you enter the city outskirts. From the motorway, you see a series of warehouses and storage units, and then sprawling outlet malls and superstores. You’ve programmed the satnav to take you to the bus station. So far, the route could still be one you might follow, if you were circumnavigating the city and carrying on to Prague. Not suspicious at all. But in two miles you will turn off towards the centre, and that will look like a mistake, or a deliberate attempt to do exactly what you are trying to do.

  You check the rear-view. There are more cars now. Impossible to tell, but you think a brown saloon is one you’ve seen before. Maybe.

  The turning comes up. You signal, slide around the off-ramp, get on to a wide avenue heading towards the bus station. Passing car dealerships, a large DIY store, then a neighbourhood of squat apartment blocks, underpasses lathered in graffiti. A billboard advertising economický software. You check the satnav. Just five kilometres from your destination, now.

  You reach across, touch Gogol’s shoulder. A touch is enough to wake him. He sits up with a start – in his eyes a raw fright that is heartrending. But when he understands he is in the car, with you, he relaxes immediately. His faith and trust in you now absolute.

  You tell him that the two of you are going to leave the car and get on a bus next. That he must be ready to move quickly and follow you and do what you say. Then you repeat the crucial and core information: no car. We take the bus. The bus. He nods, repeats the word, confident in its articulation, if not its meaning.

  Opposite the bus station is a multistorey mall, with retail stores, a hypermarket, McDonald’s. The universal blue ‘P’ signs directing you towards parking. You almost follow those, then think of something else. Drive past, turn down a side street. The area here is seedy, sketchy, inner city. People standing in tatty parkas, with the hoods cinched tight over their faces. Smoking the air with their breath, huddled in circles, backs to the world. You park up alongside a group of young lads, yank up the handbrake. Go around to Gogol’s door, let him out. Pop the boot. Grab your duffel bag. Slam the boot.

  The men have stopped to watch this. Curious. Leering. You walk over to the one in the middle: a tall, big-nosed boy with a stud earring and a flame tattooed on his neck. You hold out the keys, and a thousand koruna. Tell him, in plain English, that he can have the car for as long as he wants, as long as he can. Until he gets caught.

  He smiles, widely, looks at his mates. Says something in Czech and laughs. But he takes the keys and the money. Calls you crazy. Tells you in English they won’t ever get caught. The car won’t ever get found.

  ‘Good,’ you tell him. Handing him another five hundred. ‘And we won’t either.’

  He calls you crazy. A crazy holka.

  Taking Gogol’s hand, you walk past them, back towards the mall. Near the entrance is a pedestrian footbridge, extending from the second floor over the street to the bus station. You cross this hurriedly, feeling you are potentially exposed to drivers and onlookers below. But the railings are high; the chances that you’ll be picked out among other people, going both ways, minimal. One of those chances you have to take. Hoping you get a bounce.

  You allow yourself a discreet smile, at the thought of the car. At the idea that it might not be found here near the station, which you were counting on. That it might simply vanish. Maybe get given a paint job, new plate numbers, or be broken down for parts. Too good to be true, too good to count on, but a seeming possibility.

  It’s getting near rush hour and the bus station is packed. People everywhere, queuing to buy tickets, standing in front of big digital displays, their heads tilted up to enable them to read the arrivals and departures, the numbers of the bus stands. You don’t stop to look. You need tickets, go straight to one of the sales counters. You wait in line, holding Gogol’s hand, the duffel bag slung over your shoulder. Every so often you glance around, casually. Checking left, right. Trying to keep a look out. But you don’t know who you’re looking for. They could be nowhere, or anywhere. No one, or anyone. You could be paranoid, or deluded, or both.

  When the elderly woman in front of you finally figures out what bay she is leaving from, you step up. The clerk is an older man, grey-haired and unshaven, who seems in no hurry to serve you. You ask him when the next bus to Karlovy Vary is – one of the only destinations you’re familiar with. The clerk answers without checking his system, tells you it just left. That the next isn’t for another hour.

  You rub a hand over your face. Wonder if a bit of slow driving cost you those precious minutes. You can’t hang around here for an hour. Instead, you ask about buses to Kutná Hora. This time he has to check. You can’t get to Kutná Hora directly. It would be easier to take the train, via Kolin. Or a bus to the outskirts of Prague, and back out.

  This gives you pause. Neither feels right.

  ‘Is there any other way?’

  He sighs, mutters something under his breath in Czech, but after some tinkering with his keys tells you that you could catch a bus to Jihlava, then grab a local shuttle from there to Kutná Hora. Says something about them running this month, for a local festival.

  ‘That’s fine,’ you tell him. ‘Dve vstupenky, prosím.’

  Two tickets to Jihlava: one adult, one child. It goes without saying you pay in cash, and the peculiar, unique itinerary seems serendipitous: more difficult for them to deduce your route.

  He prints up the tickets, gives you them along with your change, and a receipt. Tells you it departs from stand nine. Gestures to direct you, but you’re already moving, leading Gogol, having seen the sign for Jihlava and the queue of passengers loading their bags into the open luggage compartment. You reach the queue just as it’s dwindling. Worry for a second the bus will be full, that you’ll be left waiting, after all. But when you present yourselves and your tickets, the driver – a tall woman standing by the door – merely nods and points at the luggage compartment. You throw the duffel bag in, climb up the steps with Gogol. He is gazing about in satisfaction. He says ‘Bus’ and smiles, proud to demonstrate his knowledge of the English word, his ability to match the signifier with the signified.

  You find two seats near the back – presumably left vacant since they’re near the toilet. You take the window. You still have five minutes to wait before departure. While you do, you pull your baseball cap down low, keep an eye on the forecourt. You’re feeling good, exhilarated, confident. You don’t actually expect to see anybody you recognise, so it shocks you when you do. Or think you do. At a distance. Standing by the departures board. One of the men from the inn – the older game player, in the wool hat. Walking casually around the periphery. Studying people in the lines. His hands in the pockets of his jacket.

  There are two layers of glass between you, one of them tinted, and fifty feet of space. But it’s him. You’re sure it’s him. You think you’re sure. Or are you simply imagining? The bus rumbles to life. Begins to beep, repeatedly, like a forklift, as it reverses out of its bay. You lose sight of the man behind a pillar. You turn your back to the window, angle your face away, lean over Gogol. Ask him to show you his magazine clipping, the ad for Disneyland. To keep him occupied, you point to each of the characters, pronounce their names. Mickey Mouse. Donald Duck. Snow White. He seems diligently fascinated by this.

  Then the bus shifts gear, moves forward. The bay falls away. Other buses slide by. The man is gone, left back there. Whoever he was, he didn’t see you. You squeeze Gogol’s hand and think again of Tod, his hockey phrases. You’re still getting the bounces.

  killing time

  Bones. Stacked up in four large piles, the ends of the fibulas and tibias aligned like matchsticks. Rows of skulls, most of them jawless,
their upper teeth resting on the craniums of the row below, as if gnawing on each other, apart from the bottom row where the sets of incisors seem to bite the floor. And on the ceiling, skulls arranged in elaborate, cascading patterns. A bone chandelier hanging from one of the crossbeams, with femurs forming the centre piece, and vertebrae curving out and up towards the skulls that hold the candles. A nearby plaque explains that it contains at least one of every bone from the human body. Positioned around it, a set of matching bone candelabras loom at head height.

  Bones. That’s always what the town of Kutná Hora has meant to you, since the single visit you and Tod took. So many other parts of that trip have faded, gone – though some are coming back to you now, those delicate prickles of déjà vu – but the Sedlec Ossuary, the so-called ‘bone church’, has stayed vivid, and is exactly as you remember. The kind of place you don’t forget, ever.

  All these bones, arranged in artistic and architectural forms. The handiwork of a nineteenth-century woodcarver. A testament to human genius and sheer human audacity. It should be terrifying, menacing, foreboding. But you didn’t feel that then and you don’t feel it now.

  You did worry about Gogol – how he might react. But, upon arriving in town and walking to the penzión you’d previously stayed in with Tod, you found its reception shut for a brief interval in the early evening. The chapel was right nearby, in the Sedlec suburbs. You remembered the location. The power of the macabre to embed a memory. You and Gogol got there a few minutes before closing, and just inside the entrance was a desk that looked like it should have been manned, only it wasn’t. On top of the till an honesty box had been left for any latecomers. Perhaps somebody called in sick. A small boon for you: no curious clerk to ask questions. You paid the token fee for one child and one adult, and grandly descended the stone steps, oddly elated.

  This late in the day, out of tourist season, the Ossuary is deserted. With nobody there to notice you, remember you, report you, you are free to kill time. Another odd saying: to kill time. As if you could slip the knife in Time’s back, bash it on the head. Kill Time dead. And so, the two of you walk around the chapel together. Holding hands. Feeling the old, cold timelessness of the place. Gogol seems to share your understanding of it. Or else he simply takes his cue from you – it’s okay because you give the impression it’s okay. And for you it’s not hellish or horrifying or repugnant (as you’re sure some tourists must find it), but strangely peaceful, calm and beautiful. The ultimate memento mori. It puts the Astronomical Clock in Prague, with its pathetic little skeleton, to shame. Here is death’s real home – an entire chapel decorated with human remains. Or maybe not a home, but a domain, a dimension outside the ordinary, everyday world of flesh and blood.

  As you move beneath the bones, between them, you can hear the joints creaking along with the timbers of the church. Keeping a natural rhythm, attuned not with human clocks but something larger and more eternal. The bones as numerous as sands in an hourglass. All that remains of countless people, dead for centuries, stripped of flesh, of face, of feature, of name, of identity, of everything except this: these cold, still, brittle, beautifully arranged bones.

  Yet within your hand are the little fingers of Gogol. Warm, pulsing with blood.

  An absolute contradiction. The absurdity of being human, of being alive.

  Together you keep walking. The Ossuary, like so many chapels, is built in a cross. Down one of the branches hangs a huge coat of arms, the pièce de résistance, ingeniously constructed using a range of different bones. Scapulas fanned out like water-lilies; bundles of finger bones; delicate clavicles; slender ulnas aligned to form the shield, on which rest other bones that create the insignia and symbols of the aristocrat, or ruler, or whoever commissioned it.

  In some places, the bones complement stone sculptures, painted figurines – little cupids, bizarrely and perversely kitsch – and colourful oil paintings. They do not fit at all. These relics of a typical church seem idiosyncratic, jarring. Gogol stands before a little painted cupid, with rouged cheeks and lips, gaping in that gawp-mouthed way of his. Then he tugs on your hand. Motions as if to speak. You crouch. He has said only a couple of words to you. Now he cups his hand to his mouth, and whispers a question, phrased as a single word: ‘Disneyland?’

  You smile. Yes. This could be Disneyland.

  favours

  The penzión has opened when you get back, but doesn’t feel open. Upon entering, there’s a small reception nook where the manager should be, but isn’t. Off to the left, the dining room, just big enough for half a dozen tables, covered in vinylchequered table cloths. Above the fireplace, a boar’s head, its mouth parted in anguish. It’s half five but no guests are eating. The space is still and empty, so while you wait memories rise up like wraiths. You remember dining here, and even remember the table – that one, by the window – where you and Tod sat. You don’t remember the food, but you remember the wine. It was red, and sour. Vinegary. You would have sent it back, but Tod always worried about complaining, about coming across as a brash American – typically loud and arrogant. To avoid it, he went too far the other way. Being in London and Europe had made him timid, mouse-like. At times you missed the boy you had fallen in love with. The one who’d thrown himself into Morecombe Bay, risked drowning to impress you. The one who’d kicked in a night club door because a bouncer had manhandled you.

  Tod had become so diminished. Like a tree uprooted. Removed from its soil. The weakening, and loss of strength. It came back that night, when he thought you needed his protection, and he got himself killed.

  The first time you visited this penzión, Tod had booked it as a romantic retreat, a luxury of sorts after a week of hostels, camping, backpacking. The two of you so young and eager, so vital. The only goals in your life to travel, to see, to eat, to get drunk at night and fuck, or fight, or both (in Kutná Hora it was both). Then wake up and do it all over again, in another town. The repetitive nature of it never tiring, never boring.

  You know this to be true, but find it hard to imagine now. Hard to remember when that was all that mattered. It has gone. Dried up with age. Fallen away. Like leaves. Like Tod’s thinning hair.

  But what do we exchange it for? An office. Paperwork. A cramped apartment that we can’t afford in a city that we don’t hate, but certainly don’t love. An economical car with a one-point-six-litre eco-fuel engine. Movie nights. Poker nights. Girls nights out. Getting drunk, but not that drunk. Having arguments, but without any enthusiasm – listless fights – lacking the crackling threat of recklessness, the possibility of real consequences.

  And, ultimately, getting killed on a bus for no reason. No reason at all.

  You and Tod would have stayed together, through anything. You know that. You’d already faced infidelity. You would have faced, and overcome, other challenges. Got by. Endured. Done more counselling. Signed up for evening classes. Taken yoga. Had kids – the big one. The big distraction, fulfilment, obligation. The best excuse to stay together. That parental stoicism you’ve seen in the eyes of people your age. That terrified pride. Our kids! Look at them, look at us. So well-adjusted. So content. Such a contribution to society.

  So settled. So perfectly functional.

  All that you have been spared. Maybe you should be grateful.

  You notice Gogol yawning and pull out one of the dining chairs for him to sit on. There’s no bell to ring, and so, after calling hello once or twice, you sit for some time too – a quarter of an hour – before the hotelier appears, coming down a dim hallway that, you see now, leads directly to her own apartment or living area. She rapid-blinks at you like a vole emerging from its tunnel. A very small woman, maybe six inches shorter than you, with hair that’s gone wispy on top, revealing patches of spotted scalp. You can’t remember what she looked like on your previous visit, or even if this is the same owner.

  She isn’t friendly but polite, professional. She doesn’t seem curious about Gogol and, you suspect, has already assumed that h
e’s your son, or at least your charge. And you suppose he is, now. She doesn’t require ID and just asks that you fill in a form: name, nationality, phone number and address. You make these up on the spot: American, rather than British; resident of New York, not London. Using knowledge of Tod’s family, trips to his home, to make it authentic – the pitiful truth being that Tod is useful to you now only as a ruse, a cover. You doubt the owner will be able to pinpoint your accent as British through the veil of translation. And, even if she did, you could simply be living abroad now.

  She’s pleased when you pay in cash. Accepts the notes, smooths them out. Tells you, in broken but clear English, that there are only a few other guests staying. That you can have the family room, for the same price. That you can have dinner or room service (you opt for the latter), and that breakfast is served from seven until ten in the morning.

  All this is straightforward enough. Just what you hoped for. So you don’t have to come downstairs again, you order dinner on the spot: beef goulash and dumplings and smažený sýr, the Czech fried cheese. She’ll bring it up soon, at quarter to seven.

  ‘Dobrý,’ you say. ‘That’s fine.’

  Your mind is moving ahead now. Thinking. The mention of seven o’clock has struck you, reminded you what’s coming. Seven is when you’re supposed to arrive in Prague, at the latest. Seven is when everything becomes very real and dangerous – more so than it already is.

  Seven is when they will stop waiting for you, and start looking. If they haven’t already.

  Before then you have one thing to do. One favour. A risk. But a necessary one. You have decided. A debt owed. Somebody to repay.