by Mike Carey
All prisons I’ve ever been in have felt pretty much the same to me. They may be more or less grim, more or less grey, more or less tolerant of torture and the meticulous demolition of the human spirit, but the same pall of despair and abnegation hangs over them all, a psychic fog sublimed out of shipwrecked lives. For an exorcist, the genius loci is always a very real presence: after my first few minutes in Irdrizovo Prison – an innocuous cluster of low whitewashed buildings behind an endless chain-link fence, vaguely reminiscent of a high-security Butlins – there was a taste in my mouth like rancid tin and a throbbing pain behind my eyes.
Dragan Anastasiadis seemed oblivious to this miasmic atmosphere. A tall fat man dressed immaculately in a light blue linen suit and a cream shoestring tie, he had met me at the gates as promised, shaken my hand and offered heart-felt commiserations that I didn’t really need – I’d never even met Jovan Ditko – and shepherded me past the various guard posts with dispatch.
He kept up a courteous, consultative manner in front of the guards, talking about the mechanics of the appeals process and the hopes he’d entertained that the president might be persuaded to intercede with a stay of execution at the last moment. But when we were briefly alone, waiting in a bare anteroom for someone to escort us through to the maximum-security wing, he let the mask slip.
‘The truth, Mr Castor,’ he said, ‘is that this entire legal process was a farce. The death penalty in Macedonia is available only for treason and the most atrocious war crimes. The man Jovan killed was a colonel in the army, but the motive had nothing to do with war. It was about a woman. The prosecution did not even contest this. But to kill a colonel, apparently, is a war crime – even if you kill him because he is having sex with your fiancée. And even if there is no war.’
He shrugged lugubriously.
‘What about The Hague?’ I asked. ‘I know you’re not part of the EU structure yet, but even a theoretical ruling . . .’
I broke off because Anastasiadis was already shaking his head. ‘For that very reason,’ he said, ‘they turned us down. They can’t afford to prejudice future relations with the Macedonian state by interfering in their sovereign affairs before they have any legal right to. No, my route ran along well-worn channels, and it became clear quite early in the process that the verdict would always be guilty. And to be fair, Jovan is guilty, as far as that goes. It was a horrible murder, marked by extreme and shocking brutality. But the death sentence offends me in my soul. And for a man I have defended, the offence is double. It is a guilt I have to carry now – that I could not stop this. It is a dyspepsia of the soul that will not go away.’
The expression on his face made the comparison seem like a valid one: he looked like a man who’d eaten a big lunch very quickly, and was now finding to his dismay that it didn’t want to sit still where it had been put. I’ve got enough guilt of my own without going looking for extra helpings, but I felt sorry for Anastasiadis. The law is a poor fit for a man with a tender conscience.
The sound of keys turning in locks and of bolts slamming back brought us both to our feet. Our escort had arrived, in the form of two prison guards as heavily armoured as riot police. They talked to Dragan, ignoring me. Their language was quick-fire, full of Greek-sounding liquid labials. Dragan answered in the same language. He pointed to me, and one of the men nodded. Then they led the way back through the door by which they’d just entered, locking it again behind us, across a small bare cinder yard where a solitary ghost loitered, almost invisible in the sun of noonday, and into a concrete bunker only two storeys high.
The yard was pleasantly warm, but a wall of heat hit us as we entered the maximum-security wing. The guards must have felt it even more than we did inside their elaborate body armour, but they gave no sign of discomfort. Anastasiadis fanned himself gently with the back of his hand. The air smelled of sweat, urine, disinfectant and something greasy and insinuating that might have been pomade.
The space inside was open-plan: ground floor and first-floor gallery all of a piece, both with cells leading off a bare, bleak central space. The cells we passed were open-plan too, with bars for walls. Each held two men: two pallets, side by side rather than bunked one above the other, two chairs, a table, a slop bucket. Men played cards in monastic silence or lay on their pallets and read. A uniformed guard sat at one end of the structure on a plastic chair, lethargic and disengaged. He looked as though he wouldn’t have stirred himself for anything less than a full-scale riot.
We went up to the first floor via a circular staircase, blocked off at the bottom by a lockable grille. There was a second grille at the top, which another guard had to open before we could step out onto the landing. Up here, close to the ceiling of the low building, the smell of piss was pervasive, hanging heavy in the still, overheated air. The prisoners in these second-storey cells lay to a man on their pallet beds, as still as the dead, arguably more so. A suicide net was slung over the open space in the centre of the gallery; more bizarrely, so were a few clothes lines on which socks and T-shirts in subtly varied shades of institutional grey hung limply.
Anastasiadis led the way to the furthest cell on the right, then waited while one of the two guards unlocked the door. Both guards remained in place while we entered, locking us in and then standing to either side of the door like unlovely bookends.
Jovan Ditko was sitting on the floor of the cell, dressed only in vest and pants. His head was bowed, the slop bucket cradled between his spread legs. He’d vomited into it, and he looked as though he might be about to do so again. Anastasiadis looked back through the bars at the guards, pointed to the bucket and spoke to them again. They shook their heads, only very slightly out of synch. Anastasiadis shouted, his face flushing suddenly red. One of the guards shouted back, while the other turned his face aside as though the controversy embarrassed or upset him.
‘They will not empty the bucket,’ the lawyer said to me apologetically. ‘I reminded them that this is Jovan Ditko’s last night on Earth, but they say the buckets are only emptied on the morning shift.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, although the stench in the room was close to stomach-churning. I tuned it out with an effort of will. My preferred sense is hearing, so I focused on the sounds of the place: the sounds and the meta-sounds – the spirit music that plays in the background for me wherever I happen to be. Irdrizovo was a symphony in a minor key, bleak and formless and unresolved.
‘Jovan,’ I said gently.
He looked up at me and nodded, then ducked over the bucket again. It wasn’t really a greeting, just an acknowledgement that I was there. He had Rafi’s face but harder and heavier, a lot less handsome. A three-day growth of stubble darkened his chin, and his face glistened with sweat.
‘Do you speak English?’ I asked him.
He muttered something that I didn’t catch. Mister Anastasiadis translated at once. ‘He understands English, but he doesn’t speak it very well. He’ll answer you in Macedonian.’
‘Okay.’ I turned back to Jovan. ‘Thank you for seeing me. I know it’s the worst possible time, in a lot of ways, but I thought you might like some news of your brother, Rafael.’ I thought of my cover story and decided it might be useful to have something to show for this trip besides one less notch on my conscience. ‘And I’d like to talk to you about your memories of him,’ I added.
This time Jovan didn’t even look up. He just rattled off a quick response to Anastasiadis, who replied to him rather than to me. For a while they batted something around between the two of them. I suspected the three-way communication system was going to be a real pain in the arse.
‘He says it’s been years since he even saw Rafael,’ Anastasiadis said to me at last. ‘They argued, a long time ago. When their father died, Rafael did not even come to the funeral. There is nothing between them now.’
‘How long ago was that?’ I asked. ‘When their father died?’
Another quick exchange yielded the answer. ‘Three years ago.’
Tha
t was after Rafi’s botched necromancy and my botched exorcism had landed him with his demonic passenger. He was already locked up in the Stanger by then.
‘He didn’t know,’ I explained. ‘He was in a hospital and . . . not really in touch with the outside world.’ Not in touch with anything, I thought. Rafi’s life had become pretty surreal at that point. His time perception, his awareness of self, his ability to lay down new memories and to make sense of the world, all had to be compromised.
I tried to explain this to Jovan, but it was a tricky concept to get across and I hit the rocks almost immediately. ‘Rafi has a demon inside him,’ I said, and Jovan was off on a tirade, glaring up at me from the floor.
‘Yes,’ Anastasiadis said. ‘He has a demon. I have a demon. Everybody has a demon. It doesn’t change who you are. It doesn’t change your obligations. You have to be a man, don’t you? Whatever else you are.’
‘Yeah, but I’m not trying to be poetic,’ I said. ‘Rafi tried to do some magic, and he messed it up. There’s a demon stuck inside him like a . . .’ Having no clue what sort of referents Jovan would feel comfortable with, I groped for a non-technical simile. ‘. . . like a toad in a well. He’s been like that for years now. And for most of that time, he’s been locked up in a lunatic asylum. The demon controls his body, his actions. He’s not free to do what he wants to do.’
The lawyer was staring at me with an almost comically surprised expression, but Jovan emitted a snort that needed no translation. Clearly he didn’t think demonic possession was a good enough reason to miss your dad’s funeral.
‘Rafi wanted to tell you that he was sorry,’ I persisted. ‘Not specifically for that. For losing touch with you, I guess, and for any other bad blood there was between you. That’s why I came. To deliver that message. It seemed to be very important to him.’
In Jovan’s terse reply, Rafi’s name appeared twice.
‘The only thing that was ever important to Rafael,’ Anastasiadis translated, ‘was Rafael.’ Jovan was speaking again, with more animation, and the lawyer slipped into simultaneous translation. ‘He was always selfish. He cared nothing about the family, or anyone else besides himself. He always wanted to get out of here, and when he did he never looked back. Once or twice he’s written to me, but only to ask me to send his things on to him. His photos and his journals especially. I didn’t reply. If he wants those things so badly, he can come back – pardon me, he can fucking come back – and get them himself. Now, no more, please. No more of this. I have too little time left to make myself angry by thinking about Rafael.’
A silence followed this speech. Jovan seemed drained by it. His head lolled lower than ever over the foul, stinking bucket.
‘Is there anything I can get you while I’m here?’ I asked lamely. If nothing else it would be a way of keeping the dialogue open, but Jovan made a slashing gesture with his right hand.
‘Nothing,’ he muttered in English. ‘Give me nothing. And give him nothing, from me. No word.’
He lapsed into Macedonian again, and Anastasiadis laid a hand on my arm. ‘He wants us to leave,’ he said apologetically. ‘He says he won’t answer any more of your questions.’
‘The journals,’ I persisted. ‘Rafi’s journals. Do they still exist?’ I felt ashamed to ask, but I was thinking again about having something to show Jenna-Jane. More than that though, there was an outside chance – a tenuous thread of possibility – that the journals might throw up something we could actually use. I was a good salesman, obviously. I’d talked myself into believing there was some point in having come here.
‘Sepidye,’ Jovan growled. ‘They were burnt,’ Anastasiadis said. ‘Please, Mr Castor. We have to respect my client’s wishes.’
I offered my hand, but Jovan didn’t take it. No exchange of hostages, no using the last few hours of the present to ransom back some little piece of time past. Jovan Ditko was beyond that now. He was preparing himself for a drop much longer than the precisely measured fall from the gibbet.
I left him to it.
Back in the city I found a café – walking past three bars with increasing difficulty – and knocked back three tiny, deadly espressos. They were way too sweet, but so stiff with caffeine they made my nerves vibrate like a million tiny tuning forks. Then I trudged back to the hotel to collect my things.
But as I was packing – which consisted of throwing my washbag and my phone back into the rucksack I’d brought – there was a knock on the open door of my hotel room. I turned to see Anastasiadis standing on the threshold, looking slightly awkward and apologetic.
We’d parted company at the prison, after I’d thanked him for his help and offered him a translator’s fee (from the bountiful coffers of the MOU), which he’d refused. My first thought was that he’d changed his mind, and I reached into my pocket. He reached into his at the same time and produced a Yale key.
‘There is a house,’ he said without preamble. ‘It belonged to the parents, then to Jovan. Now, presumably, it belongs to Rafael. But I have no address for Rafael, and I understand that he is not to be found. Perhaps, Mr Castor, you will take the key and give it to Rafael the next time your paths cross.’
I hesitated. It seemed unlikely that anything of Rafi’s would still be in the house after all this time, or that it could be of any use to me if I found it. It might be worth the trip if his journals had survived, but Jovan had closed that avenue.
Anastasiadis was still holding out the key, and – in his other hand – a small rectangle of card. ‘The address,’ he said, as though I’d already agreed. ‘It would be worth your while, perhaps, to visit the place before you leave. If there are any valuables or keepsakes, they should be taken away now. The neighbourhood is not of the best, and empty houses in Skopje seldom escape the notice of squatters for long.’
He wore me down just by keeping his hands held out towards me. Or maybe I felt that this was one more duty I owed to Rafi, one more small expiation for the big fuckup that had taken his life away from him. I had just enough time, if I left at once, and if the house wasn’t too far from the airport.
I looked at the card. It was one of Mr Anastasiadis’s own business cards with the address of the Ditko house jotted down in a small, neat hand on the back. While I was still looking at it, a sheet of paper covered in closely typed paragraphs was thrust under my nose. The writing was presumably Macedonian, but it was all Greek to me.
‘You will sign?’ Anastasiadis asked hopefully.
‘What am I signing?’
‘For the key. A receipt. You understand, Mr Castor, with this my duties are finished. I have waited a long time for them to be finished. This would be a kindness to me.’
Despite what my dad had drummed into me about signing papers without reading them, or indeed signing anything presented to you by a man in a suit, I gave the lawyer my scribbled name. He smiled in what looked like genuine relief, folded the sheet again and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
‘I will take you to the house,’ he offered in a burst of warm fuzzy feeling. ‘And to the airport afterwards.’
‘Deal,’ I said.
As we drove through the narrow streets in Anastasiadis’s shiny silver Lexus, he filled me in on recent Macedonian history – recent meaning everything since the Byzantine empire went down the Swannee. The main theme was how Macedonia kept getting dragged into other people’s wars despite a national predisposition towards dancing, strong liquor and healthy pragmatism. First it was the Greeks who wouldn’t leave them alone, then the Ottomans. More recently, they’d managed to keep their heads down through the regional rough and tumbles of the early 1990s, only to get badly screwed by the Kosovan conflict. Even then, Anastasiadis said, they did their best to stay out of the scrum. They were victims of drive-by ethnic cleansing at one or two removes when a quarter of a million Albanian refugees fled across the border from Kosovo and stirred up the nationalist aspirations of Macedonia’s own Albanian minority. What ensued was nothing as vulgar as a civil war,
the lawyer assured me. There were skirmishes, minor engagements, manoeuvring on both sides, and then instead of falling on each other like wolves the government and the Albanians signed an agreement not to be so hard-arsed in future. Anastasiadis seemed very proud of this outcome, seeing it as a mark of how civilised his people were. The Macedonian compromise: let’s not have a war, and say we did.
As the recitation went on, we were driving through narrower and narrower streets, until we reached a point where the rough-cast walls on either side almost clipped the Lexus’ wing mirrors. Now, as Mr Anastasiadis reached his low-key but impassioned conclusion, we turned – with about as much room for manoeuvre as an elephant has in a tanning bed – into an overgrown yard with high walls painted lemon yellow. Three of the walls were free-standing, while the fourth was the frontage of the Ditko house.
It was built on the same scale as the yard, which was one degree up from Lilliputian, and despite the paint, which made a bold and optimistic statement, it had clearly been allowed to fall almost into ruin in recent years. The pitched roof was sway-backed, like a spavined horse, and there were great pockmarks in the limed rough-cast, showing bare single-skin brickwork beneath. Weeds grew up between the slate-grey flagstones of the yard, almost to the height of a man, and one of the windows had a perfectly circular hole through it, starred all around with fracture lines, the hallmark of a local kid with a catapult and a relaxed attitude to other people’s property.
The place made a bleak enough impression, but when Mr Anastasiadis wound down the car window, between one breath and the next a sweet smell of honeysuckle flooded in on us. It was growing wild up the outer walls and the house’s frontage, annealing the decay by immersing it in its own opposite.
‘I will wait for you here,’ Anastasiadis informed me. ‘In this neighboorhood, it is best not to leave the car unattended.’
It was hard to argue with that. In front of this tumble-down cottage, the Lexus looked like news from nowhere – something not just from another world but from another age of humankind.