The Forgotten Dead

by Tove Alsterdal

  ‘Lies,’ she muttered. ‘Lies, all lies.’

  ‘At least tell me his name,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Then you’ll just try to find him,’ she said.

  ‘How could I do that if he died in prison?’

  ‘We don’t know if that’s what happened.’

  ‘But that’s what you told me.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  We went around and around. I no longer knew what she’d said or what I’d imagined. I had only one clear memory from my childhood in Prague.

  I’m sitting on the steps outside a door, and I’m three years old. It’s evening. A single lamp is shining from a post, turning the yard a murky greyish yellow. There are no sharp contours. A few trash cans nearby, and an old bicycle leaning against the wall. My legs and hands are freezing. I’m just sitting there, wearing thin, light blue pyjamas and brown shoes with laces. Mama is calling me from the stairwell. ‘Come in now, girl,’ she shouts. ‘If you don’t come inside, I’m going to lock the door and you’ll have to stay out there all night.’

  But I don’t go inside because I’m waiting for Papa.

  Then I hear her footsteps. They’re echoing, becoming an entire flock of footsteps, and the door behind me opens and Mama grabs my arm hard, lifting me up. I’m dangling in the air like a rag. ‘Come inside this minute,’ she yells.

  I kick and squirm to get free, crying ‘Ne, ne.’ I shout, ‘I have to wait for Papa. He’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Look at me,’ she bellows, but I squeeze my eyes shut. ‘He’s not coming back,’ she says. ‘Don’t you understand?’ And then she drags me up the steps, making my legs thump against the stone floor. The sound of the door slamming reverberates in the stairwell.

  And that’s all I remember.

  I’d never told what little I knew about my father to anyone, not until I met Patrick. He kept asking me about him. Those sorts of things were important to him. He always wanted to know where someone came from, who that person was.

  ‘I want to know everything about you,’ he said, pulling me close. ‘Everything.’

  ‘And I want more wine,’ I said. We were at his place on the evening I started telling my story, sitting on a small sofa squeezed in between the kitchen and the bed. That was before we tore down the wall between the rooms and I moved in. During that first, enchanted time.

  ‘What do you know about the Prague Spring?’ I asked.

  Patrick opened a bottle of red wine.

  ‘They were trying to democratize the country, open it up, release all the political prisoners, and so on,’ he said. ‘A kind of glasnost twenty years too soon, and it ended in ’68 when the Soviet tanks rolled in.’

  ‘The political aspect was just a small part of it,’ I said. ‘Otherwise it was the same as in Paris and the States and everywhere else in 1968. Hippies and rock music and free love. Smoking whatever you wanted, fucking whoever you liked.’

  Patrick filled our wine glasses and sat down next to me again.

  ‘And it didn’t stop because the Russians moved in,’ I went on. ‘They kept on playing rock and doing all those other things whenever the bureaucrats weren’t watching. You might say I’m the product of a basement concert and a whole lot of marijuana.’

  ‘Was your father a musician?’

  ‘He played in a band that nobody remembers any more, but I once heard Mama say that one time he jumped in as a substitute for the Primitives. Have you ever heard of them?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘One of Prague’s many bands in the sixties. Some of its members later formed Plastic People of the Universe.’

  ‘That’s a band I know,’ said Patrick, his face lighting up. Like all journalists, he took pride in knowing a little about almost everything.

  Plastic People of the Universe became legendary in the Czech underground in the ’70s. They had lost their licence to play officially, so they continued in secret, converting radios into loudspeakers and giving concerts in barns out in the country. Inspired by Zappa and The Doors, they used to play under a banner with the words: Jim Morrison is our father. That was reason enough for me, during one period, to buy all The Doors’ records, imagining that the music somehow connected me to my father, that in the lyrics I could find traces of his thoughts. That particular detail I didn’t mention to Patrick.

  ‘When they were finally arrested, there were violent protests,’ I said. ‘Václav Havel and other intellectuals wrote Charta 77, proclaiming that everybody had the right to express themselves, that people couldn’t be imprisoned for playing music, and so on. A few years later, he disappeared.’

  ‘Your father? What happened? Was he arrested?’ Patrick took my hand.

  ‘I don’t know. He never came back.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I was three years old. What do you think I could do?’

  ‘But your mother, friends of the family, didn’t they protest?’

  ‘She had a child to support,’ I said, looking away. ‘She couldn’t get a job in the field she had trained for, thanks to him. She had to sew clothes and clean houses. Of course she was furious.’

  I couldn’t look at Patrick. Those eyes of his that wanted more and more from me.

  ‘But haven’t you ever gone back and tried to find him?’

  I shook my head.

  In November 1989 I was eleven. The Berlin Wall had fallen, and on TV I watched the crowds swarming Wenceslas Square in Prague, people rattling keys, joined by more and more, hundreds of thousands. And I thought I would recognize him if only I could see his face. I remembered the camera zooming in on a grey shed made of corrugated metal, with big black letters scrawled on the side: It’s over — Czechs are free!

  Then I read in the newspaper that the secret files kept by the police were going to be opened. Mama refused to discuss the matter. She certainly had no intention of ever going back. And besides, she said, I wouldn’t find anything in those files.

  ‘But they spied on everybody,’ I said. ‘There must be tons of information in those files.’

  ‘Nothing but lies,’ she said.

  ‘How do you know that before you’ve even read what they say?’

  ‘I just know.’

  I could still smell the scent of her perfume as she came closer. I thought she was ugly. I wanted to be like my father.

  ‘And do you know why I know?’ she hissed in my ear. ‘Because that sweet little father of yours lied. He lied about where he’d been. “Love is free,” he’d said, and he wasn’t going to let anyone take away his freedom. He had no interest in politics, he just wanted to play guitar, and fuck whenever he felt like it. In all those years he would go running across the courtyard to that other woman, and everyone knew about it except me. He didn’t want to be bothered with a kid in dirty diapers who cried every night.’

  ‘Then why did you tell me he was in prison?’ I shouted. ‘You said he was a prisoner.’

  I pulled away and threw myself onto the bed, shaking as my whole world split apart.

  ‘He ran off,’ said Mama. ‘He left us. And I was the one who had to pay the price. I was the one who couldn’t get a job and was left behind in that rat hole with a kid.’

  After that I didn’t ask any more questions.

  Patrick put his hand on my cheek. Pulled me into his arms. He smelled of olive soap and aftershave.

  No matter what, she’s dead now, I thought. And nothing that happened in the past plays any role. It doesn’t exist. Time leaves everything behind. Only the present moment exists, and Patrick, who had asked me to move in with him. This is year zero.

  That he was in my life at all constantly surprised me. And the fact that he didn’t leave when he got to know me better.

  ‘I would have gone back to look for him,’ he said. ‘I would have been totally obsessed with finding out where I came from.’

  ‘It was too far, and we couldn’t afford it. She didn’t want to. And besides, she lost her memory during those last years.’ I
took a sip of wine. ‘And no matter what, she’s dead now.’

  Patrick brushed a few strands of hair out of my face, and I wished he wouldn’t give me such an insistent look. The look that made me want to be completely truthful.

  ‘Right before the Communist regime fell, Plastic People was allowed to start playing again,’ I said. ‘But only on the condition that they changed their name.’

  ‘Don’t tell me they agreed.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t they? They never asked to be heroes. They just wanted to play music.’

  I’d read that the band members had quarrelled about it, but in the end they’d taken the name Pulnoc, which means midnight. Because around midnight the misfits come out, those who refused to be captured and governed, a bureaucrat’s worst nightmare of free people who go their own way or push all the boundaries, those who refuse to obey or be shamed or adjust to the norms, the insane and the fantastical. They are the ‘plastic people’.

  ‘But after the Velvet Revolution, they took back their old name, of course, and went on tour, making the most of their legendary reputation. They even played at the Knitting Factory.’

  ‘Were you there?’

  I shook my head. I was nineteen at the time. All dressed up and wearing make-up. With a beer in my hand and a pounding heart, I’d sat at home on my bed, trying to think of what I would say when I went up to them after the gig. The only thing I knew was that two of the band members had played with my father. Maybe. Thirty years ago.

  ‘I didn’t go.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I didn’t know my father’s name,’ I said, looking down at my hands and swallowing hard. ‘I didn’t know who to ask about.’

  Chapter 5

  Paris

  Thursday, 25 September

  The wind seized hold of the map, practically tearing it out of my hands. I stuffed it back in my bag, walking as quickly as I could in my new shoes. It was a district lacking in any urban planning whatsoever, with old buildings ready for demolition and a few high-rises pointing like grey fingers into the air, at God and the whole world. Men idly leaned against the walls, and I had to dodge past a pusher who came towards me, mumbling an offer to sell me drugs.

  Under normal circumstances I would have worn sneakers and a hoodie if I was venturing into this type of neighbourhood. I would have leaned forward, taking big strides, and no one would have been able to tell whether I was male or female. But right now I was dressed as Madame Alena Sarkanova, who was going to eat lunch at Taillevent in two hours, wearing pumps and a light coat. I’d spent the morning shopping for clothes in the cheapest boutiques I could find close to the hotel. It was almost like being back on the job and having to create a role. After I’d bought everything I needed, there were still several hours left, so I decided to explore the northernmost addresses on my list.

  I assumed that number 61 had to be located a bit further along, on the second side street. I hunched my shoulders and leaned into the wind as I cut across boulevard Michelet. That was why I didn’t see the building before I reached it.

  My mind abruptly stood still.

  In front of me was a black ruin, a phantom. The windows were holes giving way to darkness. I could see the sky right through the seventh floor where the roof had fallen in, taking the wall down with it. On the fourth floor was the skeleton of a charred bed. The smell of smoke still hovered like a nasty irritant in the air.

  It burned down, I thought, as I felt fear tighten in my chest. It burned down on that night. Patrick had yelled something in French on the phone, and then he had left, and this was what had burned. And he didn’t come back.

  Slowly I walked along the fence that had been put up around the site of the fire. It was already scrawled with graffiti. Next to the scorched building on one side was a vacant lot. On the other it leaned towards a low building. At the back someone had made a hole in the fence. I bent down and climbed through. All was quiet. In the middle of the yard lay the remains of a baby buggy. The fabric had been burned away. Only the steel frame, twisted and soot-covered, was left. A row of storerooms or sheds had also burned to the ground.

  I went through a hole that had once been a doorway, paying no attention to the danger. I climbed over glass and rubbish. Put my hand on a wall, turning my palm black. I saw a pile of bags and clothes that must have been set there later, because they were too clean to have survived the fire. Along the wall, double rows of mailboxes dangled close to the floor. I counted them all. Twenty-four. One for each apartment that had burned. The whole place stank of charred plaster and garbage, and I pulled my coat up over my mouth and nose as I climbed over the rubble from the stairway that had collapsed, then headed for the hole of the doorway on the other side.

  A restaurant had been located on the ground floor facing the street. The bar was still intact, while the rest was nothing but cold, black walls. The sign had fallen down outside and lay on the ground, partially obscured by ash and debris. I could make out the first letters: ‘Resta …’

  I checked to see that the ground was free of glass. Then I carefully knelt down and rubbed the sign with the sleeve of my coat until the words were visible. Restaurant Hôtel Royal.

  And all I heard in my head was Patrick’s voice, saying over and over: ‘But what’s burning? But tell me what’s going on, in God’s name!’

  On the door of the café hung a hand-lettered sign: We speak English. I ordered coffee and a baguette with cheese.

  ‘What happened over there?’ I asked the guy behind the bar, pointing towards the ruin that stood a few hundred metres away, across the street.

  The young man shook his head as he filled a glass of beer from the tap.

  ‘Terrible,’ he said. ‘A big fire, big scandal.’

  He gave my clothes an appreciative look. The café seemed to be a local hangout for construction workers, who sat at the tables eating omelettes and drinking beer, as they watched the lottery results on the TV screens. Some came over to the counter to cash in their tickets.

  ‘Seventeen people died.’

  ‘What did you say?’ An icy chill spread from my feet up through my body. ‘How many people did you say died?’

  The young man nodded and held up his hands. ‘Seventeen.’ He set the full glass of beer on a tray and slid it along the bar to a man standing a short distance away.

  The bitter taste of coffee seemed to swell inside my mouth as I let that number sink in.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Why did it burn?’

  ‘Immigrants, you know. Africans. No emergency exits.’ He shook his head and said something to a woman sitting next to me. She was bowed low over her tall glass of beer. She wore garish eye make-up, and her hair hung in long wisps over her shoulders.

  ‘Une tragédie,’ said the woman hoarsely, gesturing wildly. I couldn’t understand the rest of her words.

  ‘They were burned alive,’ the bartender went on. ‘What idiots. They don’t understand a thing. Five, six, eight people living in one room, cooking food, everything.’

  ‘I saw a sign that said the building was a hotel.’

  ‘Hotel,’ he said, using a dishtowel to wipe a glass, which he then held up to the light. ‘Right. Five, six, ten in a single room. Bad place. Children too. Women and children.’

  A man with splotches of paint on his clothes and drooping bags under his eyes approached the bar, holding out several lottery tickets. The bartender went over to cash them in. The old woman kept on talking to herself, muttering something about ‘la grande tragédie, une catastrophe’, as she sank deeper into her beer glass.

  The taste of old smoke settled in my mouth when I inhaled. Patrick had checked out of his hotel on Tuesday. The hotel had burned in the early morning hours of the previous Saturday. He must have jumped into a cab and raced across Paris, maybe because he thought he could save those poor people. But he was unquestionably alive the next day. Three days later he had checked out, according to the hotel staff.

  I need to fill in
the gaps, I thought. Figure out what happened in order to find out where he went. And why he didn’t come home.

  For a dazed moment I thought there could be other fires. Maybe this wasn’t the same fire. Maybe this wasn’t the one that he’d survived. I coughed, noticing the taste of smoke way down in my throat.

  ‘When was it?’ I said aloud to the bartender. ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘Only two weeks ago. Yes. On Friday.’ He went through the doors into the kitchen.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, but the next second I felt ashamed. Seventeen people had been burned alive. From my seat at the bar I could see part of the rickety black silhouette across the street. It was now 12.15.

  ‘Toilettes?’ I said to the old woman next to me. She raised her head slightly and pointed with a trembling finger. A corner of red fabric stuck up from the sleeve of her sweater. She was wearing at least three layers of clothing. Maybe she’s no more than fifty, I thought. But she had no teeth, and a person without teeth looks lost.

  In the ladies’ room I washed a streak of soot off my forehead. Then I took out my make-up bag.

  By the time the third course was served, I hadn’t yet succeeded in getting the waiter to say anything more than ‘does it taste good?’ and ‘is this your first time here?’

  An entire swarm of staff flitted among the tables, following a strict hierarchy denoted by the colour of their jackets and whether they wore a tie or not. Lowest in the pecking order were several young guys wearing beige-coloured shirts. One of their jobs entailed discreetly approaching with a silver brush and small dust-pan to brush away the breadcrumbs that I’d spilled on the tablecloth.

  ‘It must be nice working here,’ I said to one of them, his face covered with pimples. He blushed.

  ‘A friend of mine was here two weeks ago. Maybe you remember waiting on him?’

  The boy smiled as he kept his eyes on the table, brushed away the last of the crumbs, and then disappeared. I took a sip of mineral water and tried to see what Patrick must have seen.

  The dining room of the Taillevent restaurant wasn’t much bigger than two ordinary living rooms lined up in a row. In the middle of the space stood an orange orchid enclosed in a glass dome. Otherwise the decor was entirely done in beige and brown. A sign of power, I thought. I had once used only brown hues in the set design for a production of King Lear. I’d had to fight for my interpretation. The cliché was to envelop Lear in gold and red velvet, but in my mind absolute power wore brown. Like in Nazi Germany. Like in the former Eastern Europe.