Your Still Beating Heart

by Tyler Keevil

  You don’t answer immediately. You motion to Gogol to go out of the bathroom. Thinking of him, first and foremost. As you always will, from now on. Shutting the door behind him. Your own blood rushing, pulsing, throbbing. You tell Valerie that she can’t have him. Not him or his heart. You’re already halfway across Europe. You’re going to escape and then report her and the authorities will find her.

  She simply laughs at you. Says you are lying. Says the authorities will find you – on their behalf. ‘We already know you got on a bus,’ she says. ‘There are only so many buses from that depot, at that time. We will find you soon enough. Then Pavel will do his work on you.’

  As if to punctuate this threat, Mario’s screaming crescendos again – either a renewed agony, or she is holding the phone closer, forcing you to listen. An unbearable sound, which evokes a physical reaction – you recoil, flinch, close your eyes. But that’s worse. Against the dark of your own eyelids you can picture Pavel, his delicate hands. The precise way he played his harpsichord. The same precision he is using now, on Mario’s body. The same as he will use on you.

  ‘And then,’ she says, ‘he will see to the boy.’

  The images are enough to trigger nausea, the taste of bile. Burning through your icy facade.

  ‘No,’ you say, resorting to denial. ‘No.’

  It’s the only word you can manage, and you sound hoarse, unconvincing. The phone sticks hot to your ear. A leech, draining your faculties. Poisoning you with dread. Debilitating, after feeling so little, for so long. You want to hang up, know you should hang up. Shouldn’t stay on the line too long. They might use it, trace you. Find you by the signal. But you can’t leave it like this. With Valerie still gloating, in her position of power. Having found your weakness.

  It’s as if she’s already won. As if it’s over.

  But it isn’t. Not yet. You open your eyes. Look at yourself in the mirror, at the hard-faced woman. Her hair a spiky crown of foam. Glowing eerie white under the bathroom lights. A strange sight. A stranger. You hold her gaze. You are her. You are not you, any more. You don’t just look different. You are different.

  ‘No,’ you repeat, clinging to that word, turning it into a renunciation. This time more forcefully. When Valerie tries to say something, taunt you further, you simply cut her off, speak over Mario’s wails, somehow keeping your voice steady, level. ‘You evil fucking witch,’ you say, passing on the insult the Ukrainian man gave you. Then you tell her the bus was just a ruse – they can follow all the bus routes they want. They won’t find you. They don’t even know who you are. These words aren’t just false bravado, but come to you like an epiphany, delivered clear and cold, ringing out with the force of prophecy.

  Before Valerie can answer, you end the call. But even then, Mario’s death cries still seem to echo – inside the bathroom, inside your head – so you shove the phone in the basin, fully immersing it, leave it there. As if you can break the spell through this trick. An irrational reaction, but it helps. You place a hand on either side of the basin, to steady yourself. Squeeze the porcelain, seeking comfort in its coolness. The tap is still dripping. You watch each drop hit the water, the effect calming and hypnotic. A steady rhythm your pulse seems to match as it slows, steadies. You want to believe what you said is true: you are not who you were. The woman you were – the wife, the widow – is not enough. You have to be more. You have to be better, stronger, smarter.

  For him. For Gogol. The thought of him giving you strength.

  Only once you’ve regained your composure do you open the door, smile at Gogol. He’s waiting there wide-eyed, terrified – not of you but for you. He’s heard you talking, of course. Even if he hasn’t understood the words, he’s felt the current of fear as if through a conduit. You draw him to you, tell him it’s okay. You tell him that there are people out there, wanting to hurt you and him. But you won’t let them. He is safe with you. You are learning a lesson of parenthood: you have to pretend it’s okay, even when it’s not.

  He looks at you in a solemn, curious way – his hair still filled with white lather. The time’s almost up, on your dye jobs. You lead him again to the sink. Turn him around, get him to tilt his head back, scoop handfuls of warm water over his hair, until the foam runs out, dissipates. Even wet, you can see it’s worked.

  Your turn next. Leaning over, dunking your head, rubbing out the dye. Then pulling the plug and letting the tap run, making sure you’ve got it all. Your hands are still trembling, from the call, the residual emotion. A charged, electric feeling. All through your body.

  From the shelf, you take a towel, vigorously scrub your head first, and then Gogol’s. You turn to consider yourselves in the mirror. Your hair looks identical: wet spikes, frosted with blonde. You are both so pale it looks quite normal, almost natural. And it makes you look more similar – his facial features not so different from yours, both of you thin, bony, and a bit emaciated. You’ve been subsisting on very little since arriving. You lacked the appetite, the will. But you have to change that. No time for romantic abstinence, for surviving on smokes and booze. You can’t waste away. You both need to be healthy. Vigorous. Prepared. For whatever is coming next, now. For whoever is on their way.

  Gogol beams, touches his hair tentatively. The change in hair colour is not the effect he expected. Seeing that, you smile too.

  He could almost pass for your son. You could almost be family.

  What do you do, when people threaten your family?

  You put a hand on his shoulder. That sense of physical connection. That feeling of kinship, of protecting your own.

  vigil

  A still, clear, frozen night. From your perch on the veranda – where there’s a wicker table and two chairs – you can see down into the ravine, and across to the hills. They’re ancient and rounded, worn by the elements, like the hills of Wales. The moon is up and it casts a bone-white glow on the slopes. The rounded domes look like skulls, the patches of shadow forming the eye sockets, nostrils, gaping mouths, like a large-scale version of the Ossuary.

  To your right you can see the steeple of the Ossuary itself and, beyond it, rooftops of buildings in town. Kutná Hora is a quiet, sleepy place, a tourist stop, but only because of the church, and not known for bars, nightlife. Most sounds from the town tapered off around eleven. Other people are asleep by now. Not you. You should try – you need the rest to stay sharp – but you’re too wired, too worried to sleep. The exchange with Valerie still fresh in your mind. The sound of Mario’s screams. His piercing, shrieking terror. You wonder if he really made the mistake of going to them, or if they tracked him down, caught up with him. If they were monitoring his mobile, or yours. You don’t think the idea’s unfeasible. Various scenarios come to mind. Mario in his apartment, desperately loading a travel bag, when the door bursts open and they seize him. Or him down in Wenceslas Square, while trying to arrange his passage out, to elsewhere, anywhere. His last hustle. But too late – he’s grabbed, forced into a car. Mario the magician disappeared like one of his acts.

  However it happened, Mario is gone, and now they’re coming after you.

  You consider what Valerie said. They know you got on a bus. Could they really find out, through legwork, deduction, which specific bus? There’d be numerous buses leaving Brno, say, within a one-hour time frame. And all the various stops along each route. But they might work it out, eventually. If they have the resources. Or else Valerie might have been bluffing. You were bluffing her, so it’s not unreasonable to assume she was doing the same. Trying to scare you. Hoping to get you to do something stupid, to reveal yourself. Flushing you out. Like pheasants from the underbrush.

  But you can’t assume that. Can’t be certain that they won’t show up here, during the night. Which is why you’re sitting up, vigilant. Frightened of going to sleep, and waking to discover you’ve let your guard down, failed. The punishment for this not death but torment, a grotesque fate like something out of Bosch, those mediaeval paintings of hell. A sca
lpel across your abdomen. Your glistening organs being handled like jewels.

  You sit up, physically shake yourself, seeking to banish those thoughts, dispel Valerie’s nefarious influence. She’d want you to dwell on it, grow sick and stupid with fear. Make a foolish mistake.

  Focus, instead. On the here and now.

  From your perch, you have a view of the main road in and out of town from the east. A small bridge crosses the ravine down to the right, and vehicles travelling from Brno would likely use it – the direction you came from, the direction you assume they would be coming from. Every so often a vehicle appears, its headlights strafing across the stones and brickwork. You can’t see the car park of the penzión, but you can see the driveway. So long as you’re awake, and alert, you’ll be able to tell if anybody arrives.

  You get out your cigarettes – you’re down to your last few Smarts – and light one more. In the cold, the smoke feels soothing in your lungs. The rest of your body is numb. Even huddled in a coat and cap, various layers of clothing, if you’re not moving, not doing anything, the cold creeps in. You feel as if you’re seizing up, crystallising, going solid. Turning into an ice sculpture, not a snow queen.

  The thought of that nickname saddens you. Poor Mario.

  You can’t sink into stillness, sentimentality.

  Regardless of whether or not Valerie was lying, bluffing, or partly telling the truth, you need to move. And when you move it has to be fast, purposeful.

  Flying would be ideal, but it’s not an option. Gogol can’t fly without a passport, and he doesn’t have one. Clearly. He doesn’t have any ID whatsoever. Aside from his sad little medical report – his ticket to what he thought was Disneyland, but was actually death. So it has to be overland. Trains might work, but are a risk. To be in plain view, easily spotted. Your new haircut and dye job revealed as a paltry and feeble disguise.

  No, driving would be safest. Driving would be best. You can drive straight west. The borders in the EU are no longer real borders. There are no checkpoints. There would be nothing to stop you. The main problem is finding a new car. One that they can’t track, can’t recognise. Not a rental – not anything that requires your name, a record. No, a private sale would be best. There must be something for sale in this town. An old beater. That’s all you’d need. So long as it runs. Unless there’s another option. Something you haven’t thought of yet.

  You stand and stretch. Shrugging off that numbness, the lethargy of cold. You lean against the railing, gazing out. Thinking it all through has calmed you some. But the anxiety is still there – like a ball of hooks, tangled in your guts. You think it might be there for good. Even if you get away – today, tomorrow, this time – will you and Gogol ever be safe? Ever be able to relax? A week from now? A month? A year?

  Those timescales are meaningless. What matters is now. Tonight, tomorrow.

  You open the sliding door, ease yourself inside. Gogol is a dark lump on the bed. A little cocoon of a boy, enshrouded in sheets, the duvet. You pull a chair over to the window. If you’re going to stay up, you may as well be inside, near him, where it’s warm. You position the chair so that you have a view of the driveway leading up to the penzión. You’ll be able to see any vehicle as it arrives.

  A stirring from the bed. Gogol. He’s sitting up. He asks you something, in his own language. Talking to phantoms. Haunted by his old life. The words are lost to you, but the meaning, the fear, is clear enough. ‘Everything is okay,’ you tell him. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  He does, and you settle down to wait out the night, like a sentry on duty.

  running

  Morning. A line of pink light on the horizon. You’re not any safer, but the light makes you feel safer. There were no cars in the night, no ominous knocks at the door, no violent intrusions. Valerie was bluffing, after all. Or they’ve come up against the limitations of their resources, the vastness of the bus network. After all, how would they track you down, even knowing you got on a bus?

  Feeling triumphant, you stand for a minute at the veranda door, smoking, and watch Gogol sleeping in the soft light of dawn. His hair is dry now and the dye-job more striking, the strands all silken and pale, like the fuzz on the head of a duckling, newly hatched. He’s on his belly, one arm folded awkwardly beneath him, the sheets a tangle around his legs and torso. He does not sleep well, or easily. His dreams troubled, his soul unsettled. He woke half a dozen times in the night, always looking to you for confirmation and affirmation: ‘It’s okay,’ you would repeat at such moments, ‘I’m here. You’re safe.’

  You shower and change and when you come out of the bathroom, he’s sitting up, looking bashful, embarrassed. He’s clutching the sheets, eyes downcast. You go to him, suspecting, and see that they’re damp. The smell of urine emanating from them. You take the bundle, chilly and wet, from him, speak in a cheerful, friendly voice, tell him not to worry about it. You’ll explain to the owner.

  To take his mind off it, you lead him into the bathroom, help him brush his teeth. They’re so brown and ruined you thought he might not even know how, but he seems confident enough, scrubbing up and down with the toothbrush, grinning at you through the foam. When he spits, it’s pink with blood.

  Downstairs, the owner has set two tables – one for you, and presumably one for her only other guests, who apparently aren’t awake yet. When she comes out to take your order, she glances curiously at the hats you’re both wearing indoors (to hide your change in hair colour), but makes no comment. She thinks you’re American tourists, after all, and Americans wear caps all the time. Instead, she takes your order – bacon and eggs and toast, for both of you – and ducks down her little hole-in-the-wall corridor, towards the kitchen.

  You sit and sip coffee, bleary-eyed, dazed by lack of sleep, feeling almost peaceful. Gogol has a glass of orange juice, which he drinks very dutifully, with the utmost concentration. Sip after sip. When the food comes, he eats, if not slowly, then at least less ravenously, having begun to understand that there will be more meals like this, that he can enjoy the experience, that he can taste the food. You eat as well, and are surprised by your own appetite. The eggs go down easy, the yolks rich and warm as blood. The bacon is thick-cut, crisped to perfection. The kind Tod would have liked. You have to remind yourself that a man died last night, a man you knew. Tortured to death. But it doesn’t ruin your appetite.

  Your revived empathy has its limits. Ironically, you’re still Mario’s snow queen, even if he’s no longer around to call you that. You’ll hold on to the name, the title. Draw strength from it. It gives you an edge. An edge you’ll need.

  When the owner comes back to clear your plates, she mentions that your friend called earlier. Asking after you. You look at her dully for a moment, full of food and contentment and overconfidence. Unable to process her cheerful, passing comment. You have to repeat it yourself, aloud, as a question: my friend called?

  ‘She was not sure what hotel you’d booked into.’

  Still you are blank-faced. The owner pauses, with the plates held expertly in one hand, the other on her hip. ‘It must be you,’ she says, getting impatient. ‘A woman, and a little boy. Here on holiday. That’s what she said.’

  You reach for your cup of coffee, lift it. Replace it without taking a sip. The cup rattling against the saucer. ‘How long ago was this?’ you ask her.

  She tells you it was this morning, just before you came down.

  You knock back the coffee, push away your plate, and when the woman asks if you’d like more coffee you tell her to be quiet and listen – listen. ‘The woman who called is not my friend. They will come here, looking for us, if they aren’t here already. Whatever you do, don’t tell them we are going east. Tell them we are going west, to Germany. Do you understand?’

  The woman’s expression reminds you of Gogol: wide-eyed, open-mouthed, awe-struck. You have to repeat the question – do you understand? – before she confirms that she does, she does understand. You’re already getting up, m
otioning to Gogol. Heading for the stairs. Not knowing how they found you, but knowing that they have.

  You spend less than five minutes in the room. Simply throwing everything into your duffel bag, pulling on your jacket and shoes, instructing Gogol to do the same. He is quicker to act now. Able to read your moods, take his cue from you. And maybe able to understand more than you realise. Sensing the urgency, certainly. And the aura of fear, of being hunted, of having to run, to hide. This he knows all too well.

  Then, out the glass door on to the veranda. Into the cold clear morning. Taking Gogol by the hand. A three-foot drop, landing next to his hiding spot from last night. The ground is hard, frozen, but there’s no snow. Just a covering of frosted leaves, mottled brown and red. Crunching underfoot like shards of glass. With the duffel bag slung over one shoulder, and your other hand holding Gogol’s, you make your way down the slope of the ravine, until you’re out of sight of the penzión and below the road into town.

  Not sprinting but hurrying, moving efficiently, walking with an odd lurching gait due to the angle of the descent. Your breath puffing out in front of you. It’s hard for Gogol, because of his leg. His weak leg on the downslope. Thin and seemingly as fragile as the twigs that snap underfoot. But he doesn’t complain. Simply tries to keep up, keep pace.

  You think of all the time wasted through the night, when you were so smug and content. So certain you’d eluded them, that you were still being smart, getting the bounces. Really you were being overconfident. If it costs you, and they catch you, they will make good on their promises. Pain and death.

  You cling to the hand of the boy following you, trusting you, relying on you.

  Along the side of the ravine, you head towards the bridge. It’s a modern structure, a simple concrete arch, with two abutments supporting it. You reach the abutment on your side and scuttle beneath it. When vehicles pass overhead the whole structure seems to hum and vibrate like a giant tuning fork. On the other side there are hills and woodlands, offering concealment from the road.