Your Still Beating Heart

by Tyler Keevil

  ‘You need to be careful,’ she says, and it sounds both motherly and foreboding.

  It occurs to you that you haven’t thought of your own mother for some time. It’s as if you have severed yourself from that aspect of your life – your past in Britain, in Wales and London. You don’t have space in your psyche for it, for the person you used to be.

  All you have is this, now. Him, escape, and safety.

  With your wound tended to, you and Marta go to have a smoke on deck. You sit huddled in your jackets, the river looking black and still, but movement evident in its sounds – the steady churn, like a cauldron on the boil.

  As you sit contemplating your chances, Marta gets out her fishing knife. It has a leather sheath with a strap to hold it in place. She unbuttons the strap, slides the blade free of its sheath. Offers it to you by the handle. Tells you it would be good for you to keep on you.

  ‘For protection,’ she says.

  You take it. Hold it. Cold as an icicle in your palm but not nearly so heavy. You are surprised by its lightness, its seeming delicacy. You comment on this. Marta grunts – a noise you recognise now as habitual. ‘Not heavy, but strong,’ she says. ‘It will do what needs doing.’

  You run your finger along the cutting edge. Marta keeps it sharp – the blade wickedly curved, with a serrated back edge for gutting, scraping. You grip the handle, remembering a similar handle, protruding from Tod’s chest. Imagine the stabbing motion that put it there. Just one thrust was all it took. The reaper’s rattle. Easy death. Right here, in your hand.

  The wound on your thumb throbs. You are gripping the handle too tightly.

  ‘Is Czech,’ Marta says, with a hint of pride. ‘Finnish steel. Very good.’

  Marta takes the weapon back, gently. Brings out a sharpening stone, about the size of a bar of soap. Demonstrates how to hone the blade, running it along first one side, and then the other. The soft rasp of steel on stone. As she does this, she tells you about her husband. That he in fact didn’t die of a heart attack – a truth you’d suspected. His heart did stop, she jokes bitterly, when he fell in the Vltava. He had those debts. Their boat business, their apartment lets. It was not going well. He borrowed money, and couldn’t pay it back. It was ruled to be an accident, which meant she got the insurance. And maybe it was. Or maybe it was accidental suicide, or accidental murder. Either way, they killed him – this she knows.

  The tale both similar and different to what you’d imagined, though you don’t mention this, and don’t question Marta about the people her husband owed. It’s clear it wasn’t Valerie and Pavel, just as it’s clear that it must have been the same kind of people.

  Marta re-sheaths the knife, hands it to you along with the sharpening stone, which is to be yours, as well. ‘It is important they don’t get their way,’ she says. ‘It is important that we all do what we have to do.’

  You accept this gift, and this wisdom. You think of your cut thumb, of all the little lapses in attention you’ve had along the way. You can’t only focus on Gogol; self-sacrifice won’t be enough. If you don’t survive, he won’t either. Your fates are entwined, now, like strands in a rope.

  closer to the end

  Hoar frost has settled on the tie lines, stiffened the knots. With numb fingers you pry at the hitches, having to work each loop before it will loosen. The sky grey and flat and featureless, dark as flint rock. Paling slightly towards the east. No sign of the sun, and there won’t be: the arrival of dawn must be deduced, inferred. The smokestack of the boat sticks up in stark silhouette, spewing a black column that widens as it rises. The engine rumbling, ready.

  You awoke in the dark, the cold. A small shape curled towards you, seeking warmth. Your feet gone numb. Marta warned you of this – the boat’s heating system runs off the engine, so overnight the cold creeps in, stealthily. It was like waking up in a freezer. You felt Gogol shivering, wrapped him in an extra layer of duvet. And you came out here, on deck, at Marta’s request. Time to go. Time to cast off. Time to head for Dresden.

  The final knot loosens, slackens, allows you to undo it. Gathering the line, you toss it on deck, where it lands heavily, like a coiled snake. You palm the gunnel, vault it – more confident in doing this now – and Marta begins reversing the boat out of its berth.

  While departing, you watch the docks, the gangplank, the premises. Staying vigilant. The marina is directly behind the rear of the inn. You can imagine this as a lively stopping spot, during tourist season. But now there’s hardly anybody around. Except, up on the back porch, near the bar area, you notice a man standing by the rail. Smoking a cigarette. Looking down. At the morning view of the river, or at you? Impossible to tell in the half-light. His face is obscured by shadow, marked by the cherry-red tip of his cigarette. Like a single eye.

  You raise your hand in acknowledgement. Testing. There is no response. Either he is not looking at you, or is pretending not to. Either way, the inn will have a record of your stay. And it might be possible to track you using the name of Marta’s boat, painted so obviously on the hull. She had to use it to check in, along with her own name, as the registered owner. A few phone calls, or somebody acting as lookout, and they’ll know where you’ve been, and be able to guess where you’re going.

  As Marta navigates the boat downriver, you join her in the wheelhouse. You start asking her about these concerns but she shakes her head. Tells you, tersely, that the river here is still narrow, and steering by sight in the half-light requires all her attention. You go to make coffee, and while the kettle heats up you check on Gogol – still sleeping – and study Marta’s map of waterways. Gogol’s chess piece from last night, the white queen, still marks the spot where you were moored at the inn. You adjust it, slide it downriver. Soon you’ll cross the German border and, shortly after, you’ll arrive in Dresden. You haven’t thought about that enough, about what happens next.

  One step at a time is not enough. You need to think two, three steps ahead. Like a good chess player. You pick up the queen, jump it to Dresden, to Bruges, to Calais, to London. Still such a long way to go. And if you think too far ahead, you may miss what’s happening now, right in front of you. How to do both?

  You hold the queen in your palm a moment, feeling the weight of the marble.

  The kettle is boiling, screaming for attention. You twist the camp stove burner off, fill two mugs with instant coffee, and take one up to Marta, who accepts it wordlessly. You cradle yours, feeling the warmth of the liquid seeping through the ceramic, passing into your fingers. When you put it on the dash, the steam creates a cloud on the windscreen.

  Dawn turns to early morning. In time, the river widens, becomes more languorous in its flow, and the landscape changes. The banks rise steeply, lined with spruce and alder, and plateau in frozen fields – possibly for cattle or sheep, though no livestock are in sight. You sense a change in Marta too – the dissolution of tension. A more casual driving stance. You wait for her to speak. When she does, it seems she too has been thinking ahead.

  ‘In Dresden,’ she says, ‘we must get you both to the car rental agency. Quickly. No time to waste.’ You ask her if she thinks they’ve figured out your plan, and may be following, and she says that whether they have or haven’t doesn’t matter, you need to act as if they have. Then, as an afterthought, she adds that it will be best to stay in public places, and public spaces. They are less likely to try anything drastic with witnesses around.

  ‘We will get you a car,’ she says confidently, ‘and you will go.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  She says she is due a vacation. She will likely keep going. Up the Elbe. Maybe all the way to Hamburg. She has always wanted to see Hamburg. You don’t ask her when she’ll go back. You fear that she may not be able to. Giving up her apartment lets, her home. Her whole way of life. All to help you.

  You thank her, again, as earnestly as before, and her response is just as nonchalant.

  ‘How is the boy?’ she asks.

&nb
sp; ‘Cold.’

  ‘He should eat, drink. Keep his energy up.’

  You gather the mugs, feeling chastised – being absent in your mothering. And take them down, drop them in the sink. You enter the cabin with the intention of waking Gogol up. But once you shake him, and he fails to stir, you find yourself lying down next to him. He is completely huddled in his sleeping bag, downy dyed-blonde hair poking out the top. Like the furry head of a caterpillar.

  You lay with an arm around him and stare at the hatch overhead that allows in a small square of daylight. The glass glazed with frost. Slowly thawing as the cabin heats up. It occurs to you that something is different from last night: you can feel the engine, rumbling not just through the mattress but all around you – in the hull, the walls, the deck. The engine has its own thrumming rhythm that seems to rise and fall. You feel safe and secure in here. A single vessel floating down this artery of Europe. You check your watch, tell yourself you can afford five minutes. No thoughts of Dresden, no thoughts of being caught, or escaping. Just this womb-like comfort, rocking on the water, in the belly of a boat, the slow pulse of the engine reverberating right through your flesh and bones. Gogol, sensing your nearness, wriggles closer without peeking out of his bag – just finding you intuitively.

  In time, you become aware of something jutting into your hip, hard and uncomfortable. You shift position, pat the mattress. Feel in your pocket. The chess piece. You tucked it in there when the kettle boiled. You remove it now. Study it. The solemn marble queen. A crown on top of her head. A face white and nearly featureless, emotionless. Hollows for eye sockets. Despite being in your pocket, she feels cool to the touch. A snow queen. A reminder of who you must be, to get through this. You stand up, gripping her tightly, like a talisman.

  dresden

  The city appears in miniature on the horizon, emerging from the snow and haze. A vague jumble of shapes. Not as striking as Prague, from afar. Far fewer towers, spires, and turrets. Far more blocks, squares, and rectangles. Not a postcard city – not like the city of a hundred spires – but a city that’s more practical, functional. Or so it seems.

  Gogol comes to join you at the bow, stands beside you in silence. Perhaps sensing your apprehension, picking up on your anxiety, in that way children can. Or in the way he can.

  For you, Dresden is an unknown. Dresden is merely a collection of images, imprints. Not a real city yet – since you’ve never visited it – but a reported and recorded city. The impression of a city created through books, and media. All you’ve heard of Dresden is what most people have heard: the Allied attack, the firebombing. Firebombing that turned into a devastating inferno, ravaging the city. Indiscriminate annihilation. Not military targets or resources, but houses, hospitals, schools. Men, women, children. Civilians. Innocents.

  You eye the dull sky uneasily, picture bombs scattered like seeds, dropping towards the earth. Flowering into towers of flame. Blossoming billows of smoke. You put an arm around Gogol’s frail shoulders, instinctively, as if that would be enough to shield him from such an onslaught, or any unforeseen attack, calamity, disaster.

  This the mistaken belief of parents throughout history, that they are all-powerful, that they can somehow protect their own child from harm. Like the figures of Pompeii – the child turned towards its mother, the mother embracing it, seeking to shield it from a volcanic explosion, the obliterating waves of ash and hot gas. An apocalypse.

  The poignant impossibility of that.

  The parents of Dresden must have done the same. Still seeking to save their children. Right up to the hopeless end. And yet, the city is here, again. After the war came the rebuilding. Reconstruction. A chance to start anew, all over again. You hope that’s what Dresden represents.

  That idea – of rebuilding, reconstruction – reminds you of that physics class, of time unwinding. Something your teacher said about an author who wrote about Dresden, describing the firebombing in reverse, just like the film clips. The flames on the ground diminishing, extinguishing. Damage miraculously repairing. Buildings rising, reassembling. Bombs leaping up like fleas, to be drawn straight into the bays of the planes with magnetic, magical force. The squadrons returning to their bases, landing. Time flowing further and further back, like a river reversing its course.

  You gaze down into the river beneath you, at the reflection of Dresden there. Shimmering and rippling. Hard to tell which way the water is actually flowing. The Elbe could be running south towards the Vltava, pulling Marta’s boat with it. All the way back past Terezín to Prague. Disembarking. Bidding goodbye to Marta. Driving back across Slovakia to Ukraine. Dropping off Gogol, leaving him to his fate. Mario reanimating – the magician reappears. And for you a return to indifference, a return journey to Prague, then all the way to London. And further, further back. To before the funeral, up to that night. The knife in Tod’s chest. Removing it. Getting off that bus. The cinema. Walking backwards with him, walking back to your house, your life, still waiting.

  And yet. You wouldn’t go back even if you could.

  This, the stark truth. This, not a betrayal of Tod but an acceptance. An understanding. What’s real, what matters, is this moment here, looking towards Dresden. Your arm around Gogol’s shoulders. Believing it’s the beginning of your journey with him, not the end.

  When Gogol points to the city, you explain that you will be getting off the boat there, renting a car. You mime the act of steering a wheel, to make it clear. Try to imitate the sound of an engine. We drive. We drive home.

  He considers this. Then, falteringly, asks, ‘Where is home?’

  It is the most complex sentence you’ve heard him say in English. Articulated slowly, deliberately, it has a profound aura about it. Like a proverb or Buddhist mantra. You begin to say that home is Britain, Wales. Not London, but the hills of Ceredigion. The sight of the sea. But then you stop, knowing none of that means anything to him. So, you simply place your palm on his chest, and then on yours. That is home. Your home. His home. Together. Like another old proverb: where the heart is.

  He smiles, accepting this explanation. Knowing it to be true.

  A faint tapping behind you. Marta is knocking on the windscreen from within. She motions for you, beckoning you inside. You go join her, bringing Gogol with you. She says the boy should stay below deck as you enter the city. No sense taking chances.

  You lead him down there, get out the chess board for him. Help him arrange the pieces. The two of you found time for a rematch after breakfast. As with your homemade memory game, Gogol has picked up the rules quickly. Needs no further coaching on the moves. You tell him you can’t play with him this time, but he seems content to try on his own, shifting and sliding the pieces around, playing both sides. The dark king and queen against the light. Trapped on the board in their small-scale, endless struggle. You leave him to it.

  Up in the wheelhouse, Marta explains that she knows of two places to dock in Dresden: the marina in the city centre, and another further out, south-east of the city – the direction of your approach. Though the central marina is closer to public transit links, and car rental agencies, she thinks it would be prudent to dock on the outskirts, make your way from there. If you’ve been noticed on the river, or if they’ve figured out that Dresden is your potential destination, they will most likely be watching the main marina. They may not even know of the other, which is smaller, not used by tourists and cruise ships. A spot for local vessels, with a members’ club and long-term moorings, but also a few overnight and casual berths.

  All this makes sense to you; you have no reason to doubt Marta’s judgement, and are encouraged by the impression that she may know something they don’t, may even know a bit more about Dresden, which isn’t their home turf. Later, perhaps, you will think back, and wonder if there were mistakes made along the way. Or perhaps know that mistakes were made, but be uncertain what they were. Such is the benefit, or curse, of hindsight. But, for now, you must trust, and hope, and believe this is the right c
ourse of action, the only course of action. This is the path that leads to safety.

  mooring up

  The marina sits within a wide, oxbow bend that has been extended and expanded. Divided from the rest of the river by a pair of breakwaters – imposing jumbles of stone and concrete block, mottled with algae, rising from the water like the pincers of a giant rock crab. Boats must pass between to reach the docks and wharf. The marina isn’t meant for larger vessels; the entrance deliberately narrow to limit access to crafts like yours.

  As Marta steers towards the gap, she instructs you to stand on the foredeck, to ensure she doesn’t grind the hull or gunnels against the breakwaters – there is only about a foot leeway on either side. You stand ready to act as fender, pushing off against the edges if needed, but Marta negotiates the passage expertly, without incident.

  Once you’re through, you begin to flip the buoys over the side, letting them dangle and bounce against the hull as Marta chugs towards the short-term berths. The marina is the largest you’ve passed on the Elbe, perhaps fifty or sixty vessels, arranged in a maze-like grid of floating docks. Many of the boats are not in use, the windscreens covered in blue tarpaulin, the hatches battened down, the sails stripped to the rigging. But a few boats have people on them, and others are being cleaned, or repaired – either by the owners or tradesmen.

  The short-term berths are on the far side, near the members’ club and office. On the approach, Marta drops the throttle into reverse, expertly slowing to stillness. Points to the bow, barks an order at you. Taking the rope, you clamber awkwardly over the forward gunnel – there is a four-foot drop to the deck – and manage to lash the line to a cleat, though in your rush and nervousness you forget the knots Marta has taught you, instead simply looping the line in a series of figure eights. It seems to hold.