Your Still Beating Heart

by Tyler Keevil

  Not going to work. Something else. Try something else. Extending both arms flat out in front of you. Leaning your weight on your elbows. Kicking furiously, to raise your torso, seal-like, your upper body now pressed on the ice. You understand: this is your chance. Your one chance. You don’t have the strength to do this again. Find your focus. And pivot sideways, lift a leg, raise the sodden weight clear of the clinging water, up on to the frozen surface. Use the leverage to work the rest of your torso out, your other leg. And then roll. Away from the hole. Towards the shore, the thicker ice, safety.

  Then a terrible cramping sets in. Unlike any cold, or effects of cold you’ve ever experienced. Your whole body contorting, contracting inwards. Spasms and shudders. Wracking your bones, rattling your teeth and skull. As powerful as a seizure.

  Somewhere, far off, you can hear him crying out for you. Not in your mind, this time. The word singing in the frozen air: ‘Maty!’

  And directly beneath you is a face. Denis. His desperate features so clear it’s like a reflection in a mirror. He’s made it to the surface too. And his body is contorting – just like yours. Only he hasn’t found the opening. His fingers scratching frantically at the underside of the ice. The last convulsions. A final sigh of bubbles. Then a faint look of surprise. His tiny, easy, meaningless death.

  As if he realised, at the last, that’s it?

  You roll to your knees, still crunched in a cannonball. Your hair already stiffening, freezing in the sub-zero air. Crystallising around your head in a crown of spikes and barbs. You work to control your spasming muscles, stretch your arms forwards to counter the contractions. Palm the ice. Transfer weight to your arms. Push. Get a leg under you. The other. Each body part functioning in isolation, stiff and disconnected. Your joints rusted hinges. But obeying. Heeding your need. You straighten your knees. Somehow. You stand.

  At the back of your mind, this thought: don’t stay in the waterlogged clothing. It will kill you. The water, the freezing temperature. Get the outer layer off, at least. You tug your sweatshirt over your head. And your long-sleeved shirt. The skin of your arms bone-white and bare to the elements. Impossible to get free of your frozen jeans, or tank top. Leave them.

  A gust of cold air ghosts across your shoulders. All sense of feeling gone. You are totally numb, on the outside and within. All emotions and feeling pared back to one single driving feral impulse: where is he? Find him. Save him.

  Look around. A few hundred metres away you see two lumps on the ice. Two bodies. Pavel, and Marta. You sent Gogol the other way. You turn. See the red flare of Valerie’s hair. Her figure stooped, crouched beside her truck. Struggling with something. Trying to drag somebody out from beneath it. Gogol. He didn’t get into the cab. Maybe he wasn’t able to, or decided hiding under the truck was better, safer – saved by his innate ability to evade.

  You know then. What has transpired, and what you must do.

  the snow queen

  Crossing the ice with a sense of purpose that is close to divine. Having reached this frozen state, partially hypothermic, your nerve endings numb, barely able to feel. As if you’re now beyond physical sensation and pain and emotion, and all things human. As if you’re now solely a creature of the cold, having taken it into you, absorbed it, accepted it as your own.

  The lake smooth and glassy underfoot. The winter winds swirling around you, catching in your frozen hair. You are walking on water. Floating like a wraith. Focused entirely on that truck, the child beneath it, the red-haired woman intending him harm. Everything else is hazy, blurred. Nothing else matters.

  In the sky, no movement. No definition at all. Just that same grey glaze. As if there’s a mirror up there, or another frozen lake, reflecting the world back down on itself.

  You reach the shore, the path of trampled snow. You step on to it. Feeling the granular bits of ice beneath your feet. A heightened sense of awareness. Attuned to the snowy landscape. Only twenty steps from Valerie, who is sprawled flat by the wheel – her head partially under the chassis, her arms reaching underneath. Gogol has positioned himself between the rear wheels. He’s clinging to part of the undercarriage, holding on while she tugs and yanks at his ankles. Something comical about her posture. Like a vexed mother trying to drag her misbehaving child out from under a table.

  Valerie is so engrossed with Gogol that she doesn’t hear you, doesn’t notice you coming up. It occurs to you then, maybe you did die, down there. Maybe you didn’t survive. Maybe this is your death-vision: a miraculous escape, and rescuing Gogol. Delusions of salvation.

  You hold up your hands, study them. Gauging their corporeality. They are frozen, clutched in claw-like shapes. But you can move them. They are real. You are here. You take the last few steps and say her name softly: ‘Valerie.’

  She hesitates, still holding on to Gogol. As if unsure she has heard. As if maybe your voice is the wind hissing over the lake surface, stirring the snow. As if her brain is perhaps playing tricks on her. Her guilty conscience. Scorpions in her mind.

  Until you say it again. Rasping the name through your throat.

  ‘Valerie.’

  She looks up then, lets go of Gogol, turns and sits with her back to the truck, her mouth half-parted in horror.

  You will never understand what you look like to her, in this moment. Your clothing frost-stiff and stuck to your skin. Your hair a crown of ice. Your lips blue. Your feet bare and frostbitten. You must look like the undead, a nightmare vision. An impossibility. The spirit of all those she has had killed and submerged beneath the ice. Risen up for vengeance. The snow queen that Mario called you, christened you, predicted you would become.

  This is not a time for words. There is no language left. Nothing now but to act, the final action. Valerie attempts to get up and you fall upon her, pinning her, getting your frozen fingers around her throat. Feeling the heat of life there as you squeeze, tightening your grip like a torque, only dimly aware of her struggles, clawing and clutching, scratching at your face. To such resistance you’re oblivious, impervious, too numb to feel pain, to feel anything but the flutter-pulse beneath your thumbs that is slowing, diminishing, ending.

  . . .

  Gogol is peering out at you, from beneath the truck. His wide brown eyes like those of an animal in its den. Wondering if the threat has passed. You must look as fearsome to him as you did to Valerie. But he would never, will never, be frightened of you. Even now. Having seen what you’ve done.

  ‘It’s okay,’ you try to say, and find you cannot speak.

  So you think it instead: It’s okay – you’re safe now.

  And as if understanding he crawls out. The look on his face puzzles you. Relieved, but also concerned. Of course. He is saved, but are you? Not if you stay there, exposed, in the cold.

  The truck. The keys.

  You try to clutch the door handle, find you can’t, your fingers fail you. You signal to Gogol you need him to open it. He pulls on the lever – using the full weight of his body – and the door swings wide. The heater is still on low and the released air exhales outwards like a breath. That single sensation – the possibility of warmth – sets you shivering again.

  You crawl inside, on to the front bench seat. The keys are waiting there, in the ignition. You paw at them, can’t turn them. Give up, clutch at yourself. Your body beginning to curl and contort again.

  Look at Gogol helplessly. Please. The keys.

  He gets in next to you, reaches across you. Twists the keys in the ignition. The engine starts easily, smoothly – a soft purr. The force of the heater increases, boosted by the engine, and you fumble at the controls, crank the fan even higher – as high as it will go. Hot, painful blasts of air gust over you.

  Without you asking him, Gogol shuts the door.

  You slump sideways on the bench seat, shuddering as you begin to thaw. There’s an ominous tingling in your hands, your feet. You test your fingers, move them experimentally, and see that your fingertips are completely black – as if burn
ed. Frostbitten, dead skin. The same sensation in the soles of your feet. Your toes. As these damaged parts of your body warm up, the pain is excruciating. You curl up and cry out, weeping. Gogol holds your head in his lap, cradling you and stroking you, as you once did him. In this moment, you have become the child, and he the parent.

  Lying there in his arms you know that you will live, that you have prevailed, the two of you. You have faced and escaped death. And, with the clarity brought back from the depths of that frozen void, you understand what comes next. As soon as you have warmed up you will take Valerie’s clothing. Dress in her coat, her scarf, her shirt, her trousers. Her boots. You will roll her, and Pavel, into the hole in the ice. And Marta, too. They deserve the ignominy but it will be a dismal burial for her, for such a true friend. But necessary. One day you will find her family, if she has any. Explain how she died saving Gogol, saving you.

  You will take whatever money they had on them and you will get in Valerie’s truck with Gogol and you will drive it back to the highway and from there you will have an open and uncertain road ahead of you. There will still be so many variables, so many challenges, to get home, to get him home with you. First to London, then on to Wales. But those obstacles will be overcome. You will make it, eventually.

  You will pick a secluded place in the countryside, in Mid Wales. Settle there with him. Legally change your name. Apply for guardian status. Make up lies to tell your friends, your own mother. Nobody will ever know. He will be a normal boy. Or almost. This secret of your shared past never hidden from him, never forgotten by either of you. But the trauma won’t be a weakness, it will be a strength. A bond that will always hold you together, keep you united. You’ll send him to the village primary. Buy him his school uniforms. Make him packed lunches. Sign him up for sports. For music lessons. Take him on trips and holidays. Take him, finally, to Disneyland. And so many other places. Get treatment for his leg. Heal him. Nourish him. Watch him grow. Watch him thrive. Nobody will come looking for him, and if they do nobody will ever hurt him. You have made sure of that. You will make sure of that. You are his parent and protector, both mothering and murderous, caring and vicious, tender and wrathful. Willing to fight and kill out of love, to ensure the survival of your child.

  You know all these things with the power of prophecy as you lie in the truck with your head tucked against your son’s chest, feeling the surge of blood returning to your veins, the strength of your own heart, beating in time with his, bringing you back to life.

  absolution

  I want to leave you there, end the story on that note – a moment of hope. Imagining your future with Gogol. The possibility of happily ever after is all we really ask for, in stories as well as in life. Do we really want or need a denouement?

  But, of course, that is not the end. There are certain facts, certain truths, that need to be told, for the purposes of resolution. I have been assiduous and diligent, in that respect; I have researched every angle, found out – as near as I can – what actually happened.

  I know, for example, that a year after you came to my apartment, and these events took place, the lake and their cabin was found. By two hunters who had trespassed on to the private property, property no longer guarded or secured, property owned by the woman who had called herself Valerie, though it emerged that was an adopted name.

  An investigation followed. Soon, they uncovered the horrors that took place in the cabin. Despite Mario’s claim that the job was a rarity, a ‘one-off’, it was, in fact, as common as their other smuggling activities. Adults and children. Evidence of harvesting. Body parts and organs sold on the black market. The lake filled with the bones of their victims. And also those of their other enemies, or people who gave them problems. A convenient way of making them disappear.

  Not all the bodies were identified. But some were.

  Marta was.

  Marta Novotný. Her name is in the police records. A landlady, from Prague. And along with her a man named Mario – who apparently used his real name. Not so Pavel, or Denis. But among the bodies were ‘known associates’ of an established criminal organisation, including the woman who owned the lake itself, the cabin, the surrounding land.

  Since not all the victims were identified, it might have been possible that you were among them: you and Gogol both. But, of the children, none had a bad leg. Gogol got away, and you did too.

  But then, I know that, for a variety of reasons.

  I have gone through the news articles, the case files, the police reports. I told the Czech government that I’m a writer, investigating these incidents. And, of course, my story checked out, because I am. The boy you met in the language class grew up, eventually, and did become a writer. The authorities accepted that this was all research for my new project. I went back to the school, too. To check their enrolment records. To find out the full name and contact details of the British woman who took the beginner’s course, studied in the same class as me. I didn’t necessarily expect them to have all that information, but they did – probably for tax purposes, in case of an audit. And I didn’t expect them to readily hand it over to me either, but they did. My writing project providing justification enough.

  The address you’d given was your old one in London, where you’d lived with Tod. Useless to me, but now I had your full name. I contacted the Home Office and Border Control, to see how much I could uncover about your movements. I didn’t get far, but with the support of a missing persons charity, and a little help from a sympathetic contact in the immigration department, I managed to check border crossing records at the time to at least establish that you did make it back to the UK. Crossing from Calais to Dover. No mention of Gogol, of course, but he would have been hidden – in the back, or the trunk. Not the first time you’d used that trick for him. It must have felt like déjà vu. And from Dover, presumably on to London, and then to Wales.

  I searched for you in Wales, scoured electoral rolls and directories and even enlisted various people-tracing organisations, but continually came up against dead ends. It took me a while to deduce you changed your name. A precaution to hinder Valerie’s associates from potentially doing exactly what I was trying to do – track you down, find you and Gogol. It’s simple enough to change your name in the UK, and there are ways to ensure a name change is kept private. You could have, for example, told them you or Gogol had previously been the victim of abuse, that you’d escaped a violent relationship. But just because the process was straightforward doesn’t mean it was easy. To choose your new name, decide who you would become. I dwelled on this. Pondered if you would have gone with something practical, commonplace – as a way of blending in – or picked something more distinct, maybe even symbolic. I created lists of names, weighed up what might appeal, though of course had no way of knowing. Eventually, I had to accept I wouldn’t be able to find you, and that was when I began to write this. As a way of working it out, making sense of it all.

  I wonder if you’ve spent time doing that as well.

  You must. You must think back on what happened. When Gogol is at school, perhaps, or playing with his friends. And one thing might bother you. How did they know you were going to Dresden? How did they find out? There was the inn, where you docked overnight. The owners, other boaters – the person standing on the porch. Any of them may have been working for Valerie, or inadvertently provided information about you.

  But that wasn’t the case.

  I had hoped to tell this whole tale and leave my role out of it, or mostly out of it. But I see now that is impossible. Part of the impulse to write this stems from my need to confess.

  I told them, of course. When they came to my flat. Pavel and the other man, the crooked cop. They didn’t even have to do very much. Nothing physical. Just Pavel’s soft-spoken promises. The threat of violence, of pain, a display of his surgical tools. Enough to make me break. Like so many others before me. Predictable and pathetic. In my case, all I had to say was one simple phrase: ‘They’re going to
Dresden, by boat.’ Six words. Pavel smiled when I said it. It had been so easy. He thanked me. He actually thanked me.

  I am a weak man.

  I know that. I live with that.

  There have always been people like me. Easy to scare, easy to coerce. All too willing to turn in somebody else to save their own skin. Like the informers who reported their neighbours, sent whole families to Terezín. We are the ones who make evil possible. I am culpable. I sent you to your death, and that little boy too.

  Only, somehow, you escaped your fate. I know this not just because I tracked you to Dover, but because I received a followup visit, from the crooked cop. Alone this time – and clearly desperate. He demanded to know if I had heard anything else, if you had contacted me again. He said his employers were furious. Telling me more than he should have, in his anxiety. That somehow you and the boy had gotten away. That Pavel was dead, and others too. He threatened me again, but I couldn’t betray you a second time, simply because I didn’t have any information to give. If I had, I like to believe I would have resisted – been able to stand up to him, to them, and make amends when given a second chance.

  It’s reassuring to think so.

  We have countless names for a coward: craven, weakling, faintheart, skulker, chicken, poltroon, recreant, dastard. Titles I must accept, and tarnish myself with. I’ve pondered over it and wondered about it endlessly: how can some of us be so feeble, and others so fearless? Why will some do anything to save their own skin, and others risk everything to save another?

  I don’t know. I simply don’t know.

  Maybe that’s partly what this has been about – trying to find out what motivated you and drove you on. I live with my cowardice like a wound, like a hidden deformity that marks my body under my clothes. I hide it well. Nobody can tell. Not when they read my words; not when I stand in front of them reading extracts and signing books. Not until now. Until this. Here I am, exposed as a coward, with a heart full of fear and frailty. Or perhaps readers will interpret this confession as a clever twist – an authorial device.