by Sue Gee
‘You said you did not like Berlin.’ Gaby was rubbing his ears.
‘The cat was the only nice thing. She had kittens, I wanted to bring one, but Mum wouldn’t let me. This one looks so old and ill. Poor puss.’
‘You’re blocking the way,’ said Harriet, drawing the children aside as a young couple came out of the doorway. ‘Come on.’ They followed Karel into the hall, and into a shadowy dining room.
‘In fact, it’s a bit like the Hotel Scheiber, isn’t it, Mum?’ said Marsha, looking about her at half-closed shutters, white linen on empty tables, a beaten brass gong.
‘It is a bit. Come on,’ said Harriet again, shepherding the girls forward. She was conscious of a rising tension as she did so – as if, in urging and ushering, she could push away the hour ahead, when she must sit in this room and eat and talk like an ordinary human being.
Dust in a narrow beam of sunlight, a heavy face across the table, a stillness, a silence, a moment you might look back on all your life, thinking –
Then. That’s when it was.
Karel was talking to the waitress. He was showing his mother to a pleasant table overlooking the square, holding out a chair for her, and for Harriet; motioning the girls to their places. He took the menu from the waitress with a smile, then read out the dishes in Czech, translating into English with some difficulty.
‘Houskovy knedliky – these are a dumpling as big as your fist, sliced up … There are also potato dumplings, potato soup, a roasted pork, a roasted hen …’
‘Cluck cluck, cluck,’ said Marsha, laughing.
He looked at her over his glasses. ‘What should I say?’
‘I don’t know – if you say hen, it sounds as if it’s still got its feathers on.’
‘It has.’
The waitress, her straight brown hair held back with a slide, stood chewing a fingernail. Karel consulted Hannah, and ordered. Wine came, and syrupy squash for the girls, and a basket of bread. They ate, they talked, they looked out at the square, where old men sat smoking beneath the trees. The food, when it eventually arrived, was overcooked and heavy, but Karel could not have made the hour or so they sat there more enjoyable. He concentrated on being a host as he did upon his work: he was attentive and charming and funny, and Harriet, finishing, put down her knife and fork and raised her glass.
‘Thank you. You have given us a lovely time.’ She looked across at Marsha. ‘Hasn’t he?’
Marsha nodded. ‘It’s been great. It’s been brilliant ever since we got here.’ She chinked her glass with his; she got up, went round the table and hugged him, resting her cheek against his. ‘Thanks. Thanks a lot.’
Karel patted her face. ‘It is my pleasure, little one.’
They had coffee and cake, and Harriet insisted on paying the bill.
‘Please. We must do something for you.’
‘No, no –’
‘Let her,’ said Marsha, and Karel bowed.
They left – Gaby and Marsha sounding the gong, very quietly, as they went past. Outside, the cat had fallen asleep on the steps, and the square was almost empty. Hannah made a suggestion; Karel translated.
‘My mother wonders if we would like to go for a drive in the mountains, before we return to Prague. That is –’ he turned to the girls. ‘You two may go to the park, with Granny, yes? And we –’ He looked at Harriet ‘– we might have a little time together. Would that suit you?’
‘I – yes, yes, I think so. Marsha? Is that okay?’
Marsha hesitated. ‘I’d like to go up to the mountains.’
Karel put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I understand. But your mother and I have not seen each other for twenty-five years, you know, and soon you will be going back to England. We have not had time to talk to each other. I mean, like boring grown-ups.’
It was true.
She nodded. ‘Okay.’
‘Good girl.’
They arranged to meet, back here in the square, for tea in the hotel if it grew too hot and they were delayed. They walked back to the car; Hannah took the girls across to the park. There were swings, there was a view of the lake, the château.
Harriet and Marsha kissed goodbye.
The road wound upwards, between dense conifers. They passed signs to Dresden and Berlin, they passed a few other cars, a lorry or two. On either side of them the forest stretched dark and still, the ground carpeted thickly with needles, fir cones, brushwood. Here and there were clearings; once, the sound of an axe.
‘You see,’ said Karel, nodding towards the window.
Harriet looked, and saw, here and there, trees bleached of colour, the needles fallen, the branches bare. They were, indeed, like skeletons, and when other cars had disappeared the silence was, as Karel had said it would be, eerie and oppressive.
She thought: I have come to a place of death –
‘You are quiet,’ he said, changing gear. ‘You are finding this unpleasant?’
‘Well –’
‘I am sorry. When we reach the top it is better. I know some people who dislike the forest, but it is such a long time since I have been here, and it is important to me. Not just to write about, but to see these things. For your brother, too. You will be able to describe to him – or perhaps he will come one day to see for himself.’
‘Perhaps.’ Then, unable to stop herself, she said, ‘At the moment he has other things on his mind.’
‘Yes?’ Karel turned to look at her. ‘And you, also, I think.’
She did not answer.
‘Harriet?’
She closed her eyes, fighting back tears.
He said gravely, ‘You are very sad, I know it. I should like very much to help you.’
‘Don’t, don’t –’ She covered her face.
‘I should stop the car?’
‘No, no. I’m sorry –’ she felt in her bag, and found a packet of tissues. She blew her nose as they drove on in silence, climbing higher and higher.
They reached the top. It was better. Karel parked the car at the side of the road.
‘Shall we walk a little?’
They got out, locking the doors. A path ran alongside the road. He put his arm round her; they walked. Every now and then a car or lorry went past, this way, that way, coming to Prague, going to Berlin. They were on a ridge, Germany on one side, the new Czech Republic on the other. Somewhere to the south was Austria; somewhere to the north the Polish border.
Karel said: ‘We have talked of many things since your arrival. Perhaps I should say I have talked. Of public, political things. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Harriet has talked little. She has asked a lot of questions.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘No, no. Sometimes it is easier to talk about public, political issues.’
She said, thinking, ‘I thought you preferred it.’
‘I enjoy it, that is true. I am deeply engaged. But prefer it? I am not sure. There is another side to life, after all.’
‘Yes.’ They walked on in silence.
She said carefully: ‘May I ask you, then? About you and Danielle?’
‘Danielle and I are friends, now, I have told you.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘But it was not always so. She left me for someone else. Well –’ he smiled wryly. ‘For several someone elses. Danielle does not find it easy to be faithful. I found that difficult. But still –’ he made a gesture. ‘In the end I had to accept it. In the end we said goodbye and we have made great efforts, since; she too has made this effort.’
‘For Gabrielle –’
‘For Gabrielle, and also for ourselves. It is not pleasant to be on bad terms. There has to be an … accommodation. Yes? That is the right expression?’
‘I think so.’
They walked on; she said, thinking of everything she had observed in him, everything she knew about him: ‘It’s hard to imagine how anyone could wish to leave you.’
‘That is a very nice thing to say.’
/> ‘It’s true.’
They stopped on the path; looked at each other; he turned her to face him, his hands on her shoulders. On either side of them the forest stretched away, sloping to east and west.
He said: ‘But still we are talking about me, and my life. What about Harriet? You come on a journey to look for a friend from the past. Yes? And something happens. Perhaps a great deal happens. I try to work it out, I make guesses, I do not like to press you, but I wish to know you better.’ He looked at her with great seriousness and affection. ‘You are going to tell me?’
From some distance behind her a lorry was approaching, on the other side of the road, coming from Germany.
She said slowly, ‘I do not know where to begin. I told you: I am a political person, too. I have always been active, and … and so on. There was an expression in Britain which had great currency, for a while: the personal is political. I think that’s true. I’ve always thought it was true. But on this journey I have met – what can I say? A darkness? In other people, perhaps in myself. Perhaps it has changed me. It is something which until now I have not had time for, or been really aware of. But in Brussels – in Berlin –’
The lorry was drawing closer, its heavy rumble the only sound on the road. Karel, for a moment, glanced towards it.
‘In Berlin,’ she said, ‘I spent a long time talking to someone I thought I despised. I no longer despise him. He is here in Prague, but –’
‘Harriet.’ Karel raised a finger to stop her. ‘One moment.’ He was looking over her shoulder, as the lorry drew near.
She turned, she saw it. A container lorry, driving at speed on the flat, a lorry she had seen – had she? – somewhere before, or something like it. She looked, shading her eyes from the sun. It drew near, it was level: she saw, just for a moment, German words on the side. She had noticed those words somewhere else.
INDUSTRIELLE MATERIELEN FÜR WETTERE
WERARBEITUNG –
RÜCKSTAND WIEDERVERWERTEN –
NICHT SPEZIFIKATIONGERECHTES MATERIAL –
Where had she seen them before?
A lorry was pulling out of a gate –
Approaching the gate was a group of people, shouting, holding up banners. A skull and crossbones? What were they shouting? The lorry went out of the gate, and a barrier came down swiftly –
Wilkendorf & Scheiber.
The lorry roared past them, disturbing the air, and she and Karel stepped back from the roadside.
He was frowning; he said: ‘Harriet, you must forgive me –’ and he turned and began to run, back towards the car.
‘What is it?’ She followed him, panting. ‘What is it?’
They reached the red Skoda, he unlocked the doors. ‘Quick! I am sorry, but quick!’
She fell into the passenger seat and he started the engine.
‘What?’ she said, as they squealed away from the roadside. ‘What’s in that lorry?’
‘Something that comes across the border too often, that’s dumped here where we are already –’ His face was grim, he changed gear and banged his foot down. ‘Waste. They are dumping toxic waste.’ He glanced at her. ‘Put on your belt, I am going to follow them.’
The road through the forest wound down, down, and the trees were dark and still. Ahead of them, the lorry had slowed, and they were keeping their distance. They rounded a bend; a narrower road ran off to the left, following the line of the mountains. The lorry took it. They waited, and followed, keeping it in sight.
INDUSTRIELLE MATERIELEN –
RÜCKSTAND WIEDERVERWERTEN –
NICHT SPEZIFIKATIONGERECHTES MATERIAL –
The words were painted on the back, as well as the sides.
‘What’s in there?’ asked Harriet bleakly. ‘What do they mean?’
‘I do not know the English exactly.’ He was frowning again, intent on the road. ‘Residues for recycling? Off-specification materials. That is clumsy. Industrial goods for further use. Something like this. It is a blind, it is making it all sound respectable. Recycling – it even sounds good, correct.’
‘But in fact –’
‘In fact there are drums of chemicals in there which no one is going to recycle. Solvents. Paint wastes with metals. Mercury, perhaps. Old pesticides, DDT, chemicals from the laboratory – who knows? All we know is that it is dangerous. More than dangerous, deadly. No one wants it in their own country. It is very expensive to burn. It is illegal to take it across borders without; notifying the country of destination. Naturally, the country of destination does not want it. Someone is paid to take it away, and dump it. Over the border, naturally.’
The road grew narrower and twisting, the trees alongside were dense and sunless. The lorry rounded a bend; they followed. Harriet could no longer bear to look.
She leaned back in her seat, she closed her eyes, but the images followed her –
A tram, humming across East Berlin; an argument. She had overstated her case. And yet –
A gut reaction was a gut reaction, and it told you who you were. What was the point at which you might say that somebody’s politics mattered a lot, and more than anything else?
On the far side of the industrial estate, a building, bolted and barred–
‘What’s in there?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ He was hurrying her away across the compound –
She had thought the people shouting at the gate were thugs, skinheads, the young neo-Nazis who had followed them later, across the estate to the refugee hostel –
‘Scheiber!’ A dog leapt on his chain. ‘Scheiber!’
But no – that was another thread in the political tapestry. The group at the gate had been shouting about something else; the skull and crossbones on banners had been not about Fascism, or racism, or unemployment, but criminal dumping.
A graveyard, an overcrowded burial ground; pieces of paper held down by pebbles, messages left for the wind, unbearably sad and poetic.
‘All that fucking misery has to come out somewhere – You wouldn’t care for me if you knew me, Harriet – I still do things you wouldn’t believe –’
Smoking, smoking, smoking.
Cigarettes kill you. Who cares?
Christopher, Christopher – I don’t want to say goodbye –
‘They dump it over the border, naturally,’ Karel was saying beside her. ‘They dump it here, and I see them, we go to the International Court of Justice.’
Then he slowed right down, and she opened her eyes. The lorry ahead of them bumped over an unmade track and they bumped after it, slowly, slowly, seeing the driver look in his mirror, aware of them, no doubt about it, but going on because there was nowhere to stop and turn back, only the ruts and the mud, a clearing, a barn, and somebody waiting.
Even before they all stopped and got out, even before the driver turned to Karel and shouted, she knew who they would see at the entrance to that rotting barn, coming towards them, heavy and tall and smoking, greyer than grey when he saw her –
‘Christopher!’ She heard herself wailing.
‘Harriet –’
He took a few steps, inhaled on the cigarette, flicked it away.
And stopped, suddenly, clutching his chest.
He staggered, as if he had been hit –
And doubled up, groaning and crumpled, and fell.
‘Christopher!’ She raced towards him, weeping, weeping, flung herself down beside him, cradled his head in her arms.
Chapter Seven
There are those who embrace life, and those for whom death is always a shadow, walking alongside.
Was that true?
Harriet was not used to thinking like this. She had grown used to thinking like this. She leaned on the sill of the pension bedroom window and looked out: at the moon, at the star-filled sky, at one or two lights in other windows. Someone was walking down the hill, through gaslit streets, towards the river. It was very late.
Not far from here, one winter, Kafka had written all night in a rented
house, feverish fingers racing across the page, drawing his coat about him as the fire sank low, coughing and coughing. His sister, asleep in another room, woke and heard him.
‘Franz?’
He spat into his handkerchief, his pen scratched the page, writing, writing …
I have scarcely anything in common with myself –
Harriet put her head in her hands. She listened to Marsha, breathing unsteadily, restless. She listened to the footsteps, walking away down the hill, growing fainter. A church clock chimed, then, almost at once, another: single, sombre notes. One o’clock. Again, in another part of the city. Again. Like the sound of a funeral bell, tolling the years of a life.
Was that how Christopher would be buried? Would wish to be buried?
They had left him there in the barn, on sacking –
Somebody else would have to –
Papers, an inquest, a flight back to London –
‘Mummy?’
Prickles rose on the back of her neck; she turned round, shivering.
‘I thought you were asleep.’
‘I can’t.’ Marsha was sitting up in bed. ‘I can’t, I can’t.’ She held out her arms.
‘No,’ said Harriet, ‘neither can I.’
She climbed into bed beside her; they lay with their arms wrapped rond each other. Harriet heard herself murmuring, comforting, trying to make everything right.
The moon rose, and light fell through the window, touching the end of the bed, the chest of drawers, the wooden box of letters which had brought them here.
Chapter Eight
They were walking along the waterfront. Behind them, the children were following slowly, keeping their distance. Barges went past, going north, going south; black-headed gulls cried above them.
Harriet said: ‘And now I have told you everything.’
‘Thank you.’
She said: ‘Do you understand? How it is possible to care so much? Even when –’
‘I think so. I am not sure, but I think so.’
‘I don’t,’ said Harriet.
They stopped, and the girls caught up with them. For a while they walked on together, the Charles Bridge behind them, the islands ahead. The sun was sinking, the air was tranquil and still. They leaned on a railing, watching the swans.