Your Still Beating Heart

by Tyler Keevil

  You have, but can’t recall why, or when. So she explains. That during the Second World War it was converted into a ghetto for Jews deported from other areas of Czechoslovakia, Austria and Germany, and beyond. It was presented as a fully functioning town, with schools, shops, places of work, a doctor, a dentist. The International Red Cross was invited to inspect it, to attend theatre shows, performances by the Jewish orchestra, to observe the community spirit, the well-adjusted citizens, to see all the children doing their schoolwork, playing sports and games. Terezín demonstrated that what was taking place under the Third Reich, there and elsewhere, was truly a ‘relocation’ – not anything worse, as some were saying, as the rumours implied. The inspectors went away happy, wrote up reports full of praise.

  You listen to all this grimly, your fingers prickling.

  Marta proceeds to explain that Terezín was merely a show town, of course – a charade. With limited capacity. Most of the children, the musicians, the teachers, the townsfolk were sent on to Auschwitz, to Bełżec, to Treblinka. To make room for the next citizens, and the next.

  Now Terezín is preserved, a museum: tourists can visit and see the buildings, the theatre, the orphanage, the drawings done by the children. Read about where they ended up, how each one died – at one of those places, sometimes just weeks after completing a picture of grassy fields, a shining sun, smiling stick figures.

  Marta taps her cigarette. Ash falls from it, lands unceremoniously at your feet.

  ‘These are the things humans do,’ she says.

  And it’s true. Stark, brutal, undeniable. There are no explanations, no words. No point in discussing it further. The two of you walk solemnly back to the stern. Gogol is still sitting very still, diligently overseeing the lines. Marta calls to him, questioning, and he shakes his head, no. So far, no bites, no nibbles. She tells you that it’s time to go; it’s best to keep moving. She’s going to start the engine, raise the anchor, but Gogol is welcome to sit back here, watch the lines, trawl for a while. She has to proceed slowly, anyway – speed on the river is limited, and it would be foolish to draw attention by breaking the law.

  From below deck the steady rumble-thrum of the engine begins, followed by the slow grinding of the anchor chain, link over link. A backwash of water from the stern as the propeller churns, and the boat is moving once again. You sit out on deck with Gogol. Watch the lines trailing after the boat, dropping to the surface about twenty metres back, between the endlessly parting wake. The two floats mark the point of contact, bobbing and dipping on the foam. They strike you as discretely menacing. So bright and red and friendly and obvious. Yet underneath, hidden from view, hangs the weight, the bait, the fatal hook. The real danger is always hidden from view, always kept out of sight.

  evil

  You puzzle over the nature of evil, as you chug down the slowflowing river between snow-covered fields and frosted trees that lean out from shore, seeking the light of a sun that isn’t visible. While Gogol regards his fishing rods, you smoke a short way off, peering into the depths. All is dark, murky, opaque. There are evil deeds, but are there evil people? What Marta told you of Terezín seems evidence enough. A fake town, a halfway house on the way to the concentration camps. Everybody being made to perform, play their parts, before being sent on.

  All those children.

  You look over at the child beside you, staring so intently at his lines. Hoping for a catch, as if it’s all that matters in the world. And maybe it is. Food is a matter of survival, after all. You would like to think he is blissfully oblivious to evil, to the things that men do, but of course he is not. He knows it better than you. Has lived through much more than you.

  You take a long drag on your cigarette, your fingers numb except for where they touch the filter, feel the heat of the smoke passing through. You’d like to believe otherwise, but you know that the abuse and cruelties he has suffered are part of human nature – just as much as the nurturing, caring instincts. Both sides are in us. And under certain conditions brutality and callousness and sadism can spread, take over, metastasize.

  How else to explain Terezín, the camps, the Nazis?

  You don’t know enough about that, the psychology that enables it. But you know – we all know – that even amid those horrors there were those helping, trying to counteract it. Hiding families in attics, in cellars. Or working to secure safe passage. For friends, for relatives, for strangers. Or else simply refusing to inform, to comply, to give up others.

  People trying to do what they could, to save those they could.

  Gogol looks over, perhaps sensing your scrutiny, and you smile through a cloud of smoke. He extends a hand, asking for the cigarette, and you hesitate. You’ve told him you’re going to be his mother: when will you start acting like it, fretting about his penchant for smoking – as well as so many other concerns, aside from pure survival?

  You compromise. Hand him the cigarette, but hold up a finger. One drag. He nods, seeming to understand. Draws deeply, making the most of it, before checking his line, huddled in his coat and hat. A miniature version of a fisherman. A boy playing dress-up. An image you’ll remember, you know. The boy as man: everything he could be, could become. After his one drag, he obediently hands the cigarette back to you.

  This gives you an idea. While you watch the lines, on the smooth floating stillness of the river, you teach him numbers in English, demonstrating with your fingers: one, two, three, four. Ticking them off on your hands, and then doing the same to his. The lightness of that touch, fingertip to fingertip. His cuticles still ringed with a grime that doesn’t seem to wash off.

  He is an apt pupil. Gets it quickly – recites them back to you. Then, shyly, he holds up a single finger and says, ‘Odyn.’ His word. One. You nod. He’s right. This has to be a two-way exchange. You hold up your fingers, reverse the game, let him count them for you, inducting you into his language: odyn, dva, try, chotyry. The words difficult and awkward in your mouth. Not easy. And it won’t be. None of it will be.

  In the middle of your lesson, Gogol’s fishing line goes taught and the rod leaps off his knees, skittering to the deck. No time to wonder, just react. He’s quicker than you. Diving on it suddenly, not grasping the handle but just grabbing the entire rod as if wrestling a snake, the line whizzing out now, and you joining him, taking hold of the handle, trying to slow the reel, both of you side by side on the damp cold deck, laughing and shouting, panicked and breathless and exuberant. You call Marta’s name, and she leans to peer out of the wheelhouse – then grins at your agitation and mimes a reeling motion, shouting, ‘You are fishing, I am steering!’

  So it’s just the two of you, facing this on your own. And it takes the two of you to slow the whirring reel, halt the progress of the fish. Then, cranking the handle around and around, reeling in line, one inch at a time. An arduous grind. The weight of the fish heavy, steady, but every so often jerking into life, the tip of the rod jittering this way and that. Your fingers, locked over Gogol’s on the handle, ache from the strain, sting from the cold. Until finally there’s a feeling of release, a sudden bouyancy – the fish has cleared the surface. You both stand, peer over the gunnel. The thing looks so small, after such effort. Not at all like those photos of proud fisherman, cupping a pike as big as their arm, their leg, the length of their whole body. No, this is just a river perch. A foot long. Speckled greyish-green. Pink-finned. Flicking its tail and whipping about, desperate to free itself. You and Gogol swing it over the gunnel, lower it to the deck, where it goes still, stunned, its eyes terrified, its mouth pursing at the hook.

  You call to Marta, announcing your success. She takes time to peer from the wheelhouse, nods approvingly, gestures to the tackle box. Where she keeps her hooks and bait, her fish-bat and knife, which she showed you last time. You fetch the bat, squat next to Gogol over the prostrate fish. He is gazing down at it in rapture. You don’t know how he’ll respond to what happens next, so you talk him through it, mime the act of hitting the
thing. Check that he’s okay with it, that he doesn’t want to throw the fish back.

  He doesn’t. He just nods, accepting, understanding more than you think, as usual.

  Pretending you know what you’re doing, you clumsily put a palm on the fish – gripping it when it starts to flap – and tap it with the bat. It jerks, twitches, and you hit it again, harder. Something crunches. Its skull, perhaps. And the fish goes still. A seam of blood appears at its gills. The job done. Gogol pats it, tenderly, as if to say: sorry, little fish. But he doesn’t appear sad, or distraught. He gazes up at you, his eyes gleaming, and says another English word, which he has picked up on his own: ‘Dinner?’

  Yes, you tell him. We’ll have it for dinner.

  You marvel at his toughness, his resilience. You are trembling, from the excitement of landing the fish, and the thrill of killing it. You have only ever killed flies and bugs and spiders before. This is a new sensation. It lingers as you and Gogol use Marta’s knife to extricate the hook from the fish’s mouth, then rebait it and let the line out behind the boat again. The perch goes in Marta’s cooler, resting curled on a bed of ice, looking strangely peaceful and snug.

  You watch the lines with newfound optimism, as the boat carries the two of you towards a snow-coated valley, the hillsides spiked with pines, like the gates of a giant portcullis. You ruminate on swinging the bat, the killing blow. Just a fish. But still. It felt illicit and powerful. To know you have it in you, too, that capacity for life-taking, for death-making.

  A soft pressure on your hand. Gogol is holding it, the fingers you counted together, as if sensing your queasy exhilaration. You can feel your pulse through his palm. You can feel, too, the certainty that you will do anything to protect him, will do anything to those who seek to harm him. The knowledge is powerful, all-encompassing, electrifying – as if you’ve just plugged into a vital current, are charged with life.

  All your previous musings regarding good and evil now seem abstract, esoteric. Evil deeds or evil people: it’s pure semantics. They are evil. Valerie is evil. An evil witch. Just as the man at Gogol’s building said. A proclamation you’ve passed on to her, like a curse. Seeking to commit this small-scale atrocity, to kill a boy – to kill your boy. That won’t happen. You know it. But you know something else, too. Feel it through the lifeline, the ley-lines, you are plugged into for that brief moment. It jolts you with the power of prophecy. A frozen void. Blood in the snow. A desperate struggle. There will be killing, before all this is through.

  The boat floats on, over the placid water. Off the stern a crow arcs like a boomerang through the air, nearly catching itself on the fishing lines before slinging away. Your feeling of clairvoyance fades, dissipating in the cold, but you are left with that ominous sense of an ending. You squeeze Gogol’s hand, as if seeking reassurance that you can protect him, be the guardian you need to be, when the times comes.

  dinner

  The churn and spit of spray. The flecks of foam and whitewash flashing in the dark like tiny teeth. Gnashing the water where the river grows shallow, near the bank.

  You’ve moored overnight behind a riverside inn, with a simple dock running parallel to the bank. About a dozen moorage berths. Empty except for two boats, both battened down, covered in blue tarps. This being the off-season, there aren’t many holidaymakers or sightseers around. And not many vessels on the river taking long journeys, aside from the cruise boats running from Prague to Dresden, and vice versa. The lack of river traffic worries you, as does the lack of guests staying here, at the inn. It makes you stand out. It makes you feel exposed.

  But Marta said dropping anchor, as you’d done for your lunch stop, wasn’t an option overnight. It was illegal, a hazard. Going against that could potentially draw more attention. And trying to navigate the river at night, in this old boat – no satnav, no digital maps, no depth sounder – was not just foolish, but risky and unfeasible.

  So a riverside marina or an inn like this was the only option. Marta has gone to sort the moorage fee with the owners, while you and Gogol prepare dinner – the perch he caught. There is satisfaction in the routine: a struck match, the hiss of gas, the little camp stove burner igniting with a whoosh of flame, lacing a circle around the hob. You tell Gogol that he can be your helper, your assistant chef. He imitates these words – helper, assistant chef – articulating the syllables slowly. Trying them out. Sounding more confident with his English.

  You drizzle oil in a pan, set it on one burner. A pot of water on the other. While both heat up, you get Gogol to peel potatoes, using a rusted peeler from Marta’s drawer. Showing him how to do this, without cutting himself, working outwards, away from the other hand. He sets to it with his typical zest. While he does, you get out an onion, slice it on an old white chopping board, cross-hatched with years of marks. Like slashes in a sheet of ice.

  When that’s done, you brush the pieces into a pan, set them sizzling, and move on to a carrot. You are so fixated on watching Gogol, ensuring he is careful and doesn’t cut himself with the peeler, that you forget to pay attention to yourself. Make a basic, beginner’s mistake by cutting into the tip of your left thumb.

  Not a deep cut, but definitely a cut. The blood comes immediately – appearing along the slice, forming droplets. You swear, turn on the tap, run it under the cold water. The red turns pink, washes off. Spirals around the tin basin, whirlpooling down the drain.

  Gogol has stopped peeling to watch, his eyes wide, worried.

  ‘It’s okay,’ you tell him. ‘Just a nick.’ Even if it’s a little worse than that. Severe enough that you have to wrap it up in a paper towel to continue clumsily prepping the dinner.

  When Marta returns, she eyes your bandage – bloody now – but doesn’t comment. Just takes over the cooking duties. You are demoted to a second assistant, like Gogol. With her long-bladed fishing knife, she begins gutting the perch. Clean-slicing a line from its gills to tail, prying open the flesh, letting the innards spill out in a glistening bundle. All those tiny organs. This, of course, makes you think of Pavel. The knife not so different to a scalpel. That surgical precision. You shiver. Marta, unaware, tips the guts into the bin, scrapes the rest of the fish clean, then lays the perch in the pan, covers it with a lid. As it fries, the smoke and stink fill the small galley.

  When it’s done, Marta drizzles the fried fish oil over the potatoes, and dinner is served. The perch meat is firm and white, with a mild, almost sweet flavour. Gogol chews the first few bites thoughtfully, considering – another new taste for him. Partway through the meal, you notice a drop of blood on your plate and get up to the change the bandage.

  Marta finishes first, having devoured her food lustily. Sitting back, she belches and dabs her mouth with a napkin, takes a swig of beer. ‘I told the owners,’ she says, ‘that we have two passengers, two women. The boy, I did not mention. In case these people looking for you have figured out our plans, with the river. You see?’

  You do see. You thank her, get up to wash the dishes, but she intervenes, explains it is not good to wash dishes with that thumb. Tells you she’ll do the cleaning up, that you can look after the boy.

  Beneath the galley bench, Marta has some games. Given the choice, Gogol picks chess – an old set with a wooden board and carved stone pieces. Marble and onyx. You show him how to set it up: pawns in front, rooks, knights, bishops and royalty in the back. The rules are difficult to explain without the language, so you attempt to demonstrate – pushing the pieces around, showing him the ways they are meant to move. He watches, follows, imitates. When he’s grasped the basics you reset the pieces – black for you, white for him – and play an informal game together. The rules are only loosely applied, but Gogol intently pursues your king, regardless. Then, mid-game, he mischievously plucks his queen from the board and moves her to Marta’s map of the waterways, open next to you on the table. Places the piece there, going off-piste. The queen has escaped the boundaries of her board.

  You smile, slide her tow
ards your position, nearing Dresden. The endgame. Leaving her there, you play a few more moves before conceding the win to Gogol. It’s time for bed.

  The two of you are to spend the night in the forward berth – the one shaped in a V. Marta gives you sleeping bags, and lumpy pillows that smell of mildew. After doing Gogol’s teeth, you help him into his sleeping bag, lie with him for a time – your feet pointing at the door of the galley, your heads close together in the bow.

  Despite having decent sleep the last few days, Gogol still looks pale, fatigued. A lifetime of mistreatment, malnourishment, sleep deprivation – these things won’t be remedied in a few days. He lies on his side, very still, gazing at you in the dark. His face a pale moon. His eyes dark hollows. Giving him a grub-like appearance. Something not yet fully formed. He burrows closer in the dark. His hand finds yours and he touches the makeshift bandage on your thumb. ‘Okay?’ he asks, emphasising the two syllables separately, like two words: O-K.

  ‘Yes,’ you tell him. ‘I’m okay.’

  Heartrending, how easily that reassures him: you say it, and he believes it. And after being comforted he falls asleep immediately. Like narcolepsy – just dropping off.

  You extricate your hand from his, slip out the hatch, ease it shut behind you. Marta is doing the dishes, drinking another beer, humming to herself as she washes up, the tiny tin sink brimming with soap suds.

  Seeing you, she grunts, reaches for a tea towel. Tells you she ought to take a look at that thumb. You sit across the table from her, feeling foolish as a child yourself, and hold the wounded hand out. She puts on her spectacles, peers downwards at the cut, and frowns. ‘It should have a stitch,’ she says, but explains she doesn’t have a needle in her First Aid kit. What she does have is iodine – the ochre disinfectant you recall from childhood, now largely obsolete but still effective. She splashes it on, and you wince at the sting, accepting your punishment. She dabs it dry – the residue has stained your skin – and puts on a butterfly bandage to compress the wound.