Fires in the Dark

by Louise Doughty

  The man released him and turned away quickly, bending double over the gutter. Yenko fell to his knees, dizzy. There were more white spots before his eyes. He blinked hard and they disappeared.

  After a moment, the man straightened himself and turned back to Yenko. Yenko scrambled to his feet and rested a hand against the stone portal to support himself.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ the man said in his deep voice. ‘You must excuse me. I have consumed a deal of home-made wine this morning on an empty stomach and feared it was about to decide that there were better places to ferment.’ He coughed, then brushed down his coat. ‘You have not come upon me at my best.’ He stopped and stared at him. ‘Your father …’

  ‘He is dead …’ Yenko said again. ‘They killed him. The rest of my family are in a camp in Moravia. I escaped. I am the only one.’

  The man drew himself up to his full height and regarded Yenko. ‘You have suffered a great deal.’ It was a statement, a simple observation, plain and unpitying.

  Yenko looked down at the cobbles.

  ‘Come,’ the man said, lifting an arm and gesturing down the passage. ‘I am Ctibor Michálek, landowner and farmer no longer – but human being, still, just about. This is my home.’

  CHAPTER 24

  The old man lived on the top floor of the building above the shop. The entrance was down the alleyway and across a tiny courtyard, through a rough, blackened door. A dark brown staircase led up to a long hallway, the far end lost in gloom.

  They stumbled along the hallway, their boots clumping on the wooden floor. Ctibor stopped at the end, leaned against the wall and began a complex procedure of checking each of his many pockets until, with a belch of satisfaction, he located a large, wrought-iron key. As he fumbled it into the lock, a door down the corridor behind them creaked open. Yenko turned. At the far end, by the stairs, there was a single small square window of opaque, etched glass. Just visible in its light was an elderly woman who had come to the door of her room to peer at them. Ctibor lifted his hand without turning. ‘How nice to see you, Mrs Talichová,’ he said solemnly, ‘this is my nephew Jan.’

  The woman went back into her flat, slamming the door.

  ‘We will have to come up with a few details for Mr and Mrs T….’ mumbled Ctibor as he succeeded in turning the key.

  The interior of Ctibor’s apartment was only slightly less gloomy than the hallway. He gestured for Yenko to walk in, kicked the door shut behind them, then shuffled over to the single window and opened the wooden shutters. White light flooded in, revealing the dusty interior of the room. ‘I call it my rooms,’ said Ctibor. ‘I say to my friends at the Spotted Pig, time to go back to my rooms. As you can see, it is but one room. The lavatory is down the hall.’

  The room was cold but airless, musty-smelling. The walls seemed to lean inwards. Yenko thought of the number of stairs they had climbed and how long and complicated it would be to get out again. He had never been inside a building where you had to exit through more than a single door. ‘Excuse me … sir …’ he asked, hesitating over how to address this gadjo, ‘may we open the window?’

  ‘It doesn’t open,’ replied Ctibor, as he shuffled over to the two-ring stove in the corner. ‘And you’d better get used to calling me Uncle.’ He paused. ‘Uncle,’ he repeated, cocking his head on one side and smiling. ‘I like that.’ He opened a cupboard. ‘Make yourself at home, Nephew.’

  There was a single bed with a brown, stained eiderdown and large square pillow – and a low armchair next to the empty fireplace. The four walls of the room were covered with dusty pink wallpaper. It had a repeated palm-tree pattern, the trees a slightly deeper pink. The floorboards were bare.

  Ctibor turned from the cupboard holding a small tin box. ‘Sit, sit.’ He held it up and rattled it ‘You won’t believe what I have here …’

  Yenko sat in the chair. Ctibor came forward, prising the lid off the tin and holding it out to reveal ten or so wizened coffee beans. ‘Don’t ask me how I got them,’ Ctibor tapped the side of his nose. ‘I was saving them until the end of the war, but I think your arrival demands something special. Now …’ he turned back to the cupboard. ‘I know it’s here somewhere.’ He muttered to himself until he located a small wooden coffee grinder. He unscrewed the lid ceremoniously, dropped the beans in one by one, then stood beaming at Yenko while he wound the handle.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Yenko.

  After making the coffee, Ctibor reached up to a high cupboard above the sink and brought down a small brown bottle. ‘One or two little drops, just to liven it up …’ he murmured. He brought the cups over, handed one to Yenko and stood next to him, waiting while he lifted it and took a sip. The liquid inside was brown, hot, not unpleasant. Yenko tried to smile.

  Ctibor chuckled benignly. ‘You think it tastes burnt,’ he said humorously. ‘That’s because it tastes of coffee. That’s what coffee tastes like! Na zdraví!’ He raised his cup, took a sip himself and pulled a face. He perched his bulk on the edge of wooden crate next to the sink, nodding and nursing his cup between his large red hands.

  ‘Who owns this block, the Talichovás?’ Yenko asked, lifting his cup to indicate the room. On the wall, there were square, less faded patches of wallpaper, where pictures had once hung. In the corner, the tap dripped into the sink with musical precision.

  ‘No, I do,’ said Ctibor.

  Yenko looked at him in surprise.

  ‘In practice I do, on paper, I don’t,’ Ctibor corrected himself. ‘The farm was forfeit; courtesy of the Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom, and actually this whole building belonged to my farming business, but they burnt the paperwork along with all my furniture, so they don’t seem to have quite realised it. The tenants on this landing have been here since before the war, downstairs there are some newcomers. I think you’ll be able to come and go without too many questions being asked. How long for, I don’t know. We’ll worry about that when we come to it. For now, you’re my nephew, up from the sticks.’

  Yenko looked down into his cup. He remembered his father telling him that Ctibor had a wife, but sensed it might not be a good idea to mention her. ‘You ground up these coffee beans, for me …’ he said, and Ctibor nodded solemnly. There was a long silence, broken only by the dripping of the tap and Ctibor taking occasional small but noisy sips from his coffee dregs.

  Eventually, Ctibor clapped one hand on his knee and said, ‘So, what are your plans while you’re in Prague?’

  Plans? Yenko shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how long I’m here for. When summer comes, I’ll go back to the camp and get the others out. That’s if the war’s not over by then.’

  Ctibor frowned. ‘You really think you can get them out?’

  ‘I got myself out, didn’t I? I got here, to you, with nothing.’

  ‘You must tell me all about it!’ said Ctibor.

  It wasn’t a game, Yenko thought, with a sudden rush of bitterness. It wasn’t an adventure. Gadje. What do they know of the war?

  Ctibor must have noticed the dark look on his face. He looked at the floor. ‘I heard the Gypsies were all gone,’ he said quietly. ‘I have a couple of friends left in Kladno. I heard about the round-ups. A bad business. And what they did in those villages …’ He shook his head slowly, then took a deep breath. ‘I decided I was better off away from the countryside, after a while. It was too painful. In Prague, you hear things, but it’s different somehow, when it’s people you don’t know. That’s why I like being here. Somehow you feel safer among strangers. It should be the other way round.’ He paused, and shrugged. ‘I am sorry, about your father. Very sorry. He was my friend. I had hoped …’

  ‘Can I stay, here, with you?’ Yenko asked bluntly.

  Ctibor lifted his head. His gaze was direct. ‘Of course,’ he replied.

  *

  Yenko unpacked his few possessions – his spare clothes, his tin cup … He hesitated as he unwrapped the last small lump of bread, no more th
an a bite. He ran his tongue over the gap in his gums. The swelling had gone down. He had used up the salt.

  ‘Uncle?’ he said tentatively, lifting up the scrap of bread, thinking he would die if he had to share it.

  Ctibor was at the sink, rinsing their coffee cups. He turned. ‘Oh no, no thank you. I still eat the goulash at the Spotted Pig, though God knows what they use for meat. Sometimes I forget to eat at all. Other things … Now you’re here I suppose I will have to get in some supplies.’

  Yenko ate the bread quickly, before Ctibor changed his mind.

  When Ctibor had finished clearing up, he turned. ‘We can make up a bed for you out of cushions, over there,’ he waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the fireplace. ‘Our main problem is your appearance.’

  Yenko looked down at himself.

  Ctibor was wiping his hands on a dishcloth. ‘I normally wash in the sink.’ He glanced over and saw the look of disgust on Yenko’s face, misinterpreted it. ‘You want some privacy, of course. I’ll show you where the bathroom is. You’d better do it now. There’s no window in there and we can’t use the electric light so you’ll have to prop the door open with a brick which we keep in there specifically for that purpose. We have an agreement to whistle. There’s no soap either, I’m afraid, just caoline, which leaves you dirtier than before, but even so. It’s here in this tin. Make sure you bring it back.’

  Yenko smiled to himself. This Unclean gadjo who stank of alcohol and washed the dirt from his body in the same sink he used for cooking utensils – that he should be worried about his hygiene … it was almost endearing.

  Ctibor saw the amused look and growled at him. ‘I know, I know, I’m hardly a swell. We’ll have to get you some papers, I suppose. God knows how. I know a man who gets me office supplies on the quiet, confiscated stuff, he’ll know someone else who’ll know, that’s the way it works these days. There’s a bit of a problem with payment, though. I don’t have much in the way of disposables.’

  ‘I have these …’ Yenko said, pushing his hand inside his jacket to find the two silver picture frames he had taken from the dead couple in Moravia. He handed them to Ctibor.

  ‘Well, that’s a start,’ murmured Ctibor, turning them over. ‘You wouldn’t believe the price of silver these days …’ He paused, glancing up at Yenko, looking at him afresh. He is going to ask me where I got them, Yenko thought. I will tell him, tell him I stole them.

  Ctibor shook his head. ‘Life has been very dull …’ he muttered, inconsequentially. Then winced, as if he had just said something both stupid and true.

  *

  When Yenko returned from washing, Ctibor was shrugging on his coat. He explained that he had to go down to the shop, ‘Just for a couple of hours. I still call it the shop, even though I only use the office at the back. Then I’ll try and get us something to eat. I’m sure you’re hungry. Stay away from the window.’

  After Ctibor had gone, Yenko lay down on the floor and tried to sleep but he was too nervous. Ctibor could be going straight to the authorities to report him. Maybe he should just pack up his things and leave now, while he had the chance. He wished Ctibor hadn’t told him to stay away from the window. It made the window irresistible. After pacing the room for a while, he went over to it and pressed himself against the adjacent wall, then turned his head so that he could peer out without being seen. Ctibor’s room looked out over the back of the block and a deserted, narrow street. The buildings opposite seemed to lean towards him – the fluted terracotta tiling almost close enough to jump to in a single leap. It was as if the buildings were in a confidential huddle, whispering to one another, gossiping about his arrival. He shrank back and slid down the wall into a squatting position, arms wrapped tightly round his knees. He closed his eyes and waited.

  *

  Ctibor returned at the end of the afternoon, triumphantly clutching a brown paper bag containing some dry, hard biscuits and a glass jar of milky liquid with white lumps in it. ‘Home-made cheese,’ he said. ‘At least, that’s what they called it.’ There was also a single pickle; a small bent gherkin, which he halved with scrupulous fairness. After they ate, they sat talking about the cherry harvests of Yenko’s youth, their shared memories, both avoiding the topic of his current predicament. How good it feels, Yenko thought, just to spend a little time pretending the war does not exist. It grew dark outside. Ctibor closed the shutters. They would go to bed early, he explained as he hung the blackout curtain. Everybody went to bed early these days – nothing else to do. His tone was apologetic, as if he thought Yenko might want to go out on the town. Yenko nodded. Every bone in his body ached for sleep.

  They made a makeshift bed, a rough arrangement of cushions of varying depth and consistency. Ctibor tried to persuade him to use the eiderdown but he insisted he was fine with a blanket – in which case, Ctibor said, then he must have the pillow. Yenko took it to please Ctibor, and found as he settled down that it was a most uncomfortable object, a soft cloud that lifted his head at an ache-inducing angle. He would push it aside as soon as Ctibor was asleep.

  He closed his eyes. Ctibor was still getting ready for bed. The last sound Yenko heard before he fell asleep was a bubbling and swooshing noise as the flabby old man, his saviour, gargled ostentatiously and spat into the sink.

  *

  In the morning, he woke to find Ctibor fully dressed and moving quietly around the room. He had removed the blackout curtain and thin pencils of white light shone between the shutters.

  Yenko blinked from beneath the blanket, wrapped around his body like a cocoon. He felt a strange sense of peace, and realised he was unable to move. He never wanted to move again. Dying must be like this, he thought calmly.

  ‘I have to go down to the shop,’ said Ctibor, buttoning the flies on his voluminous trousers and lifting his braces over his shoulders. ‘You’d better stay here until we get you some proper clothes. I have coupons. I never use them. I’ve got some old stuff but it would be a little large on you. There’s tea in the cupboard when you’re ready, and I saved a bit of bread. It’s in the tin with the blue pictures on it. I’ll try and get some more cheese later. And I can bring back a bottle of beer from the Spotted Pig at lunchtime. It’s quite normal for me to do that, won’t raise any eyebrows.’

  Yenko did not reply. He was wrapped in a warm blanket. Later, there would be tea and bread and cheese. He wouldn’t have to do anything. Someone else was going to just bring them to him, for no reason. I could die right here, he thought, just slip away right here, and my life would be complete.

  After Ctibor had left, he closed his eyes and dozed, making himself wake every few minutes, just to confirm that he was still there in Ctibor’s room, lying on cushions and swaddled. Nobody was beating or shouting at him. Nobody was blowing a whistle. Nobody was going to make him run. He thought he had escaped the camp when he left it. But now he realised he had only truly escaped when he arrived here in Prague; wonderful, anonymous Prague.

  *

  He dozed and woke for a couple of hours, until his bladder forced him up. He stood for a moment in his crumpled clothes, shivering. There was an old iron hook on the back of the door with a huge knitted robe on it. He pulled it on, on top of his clothes, its hem trailing across the floor behind him. He unslid the bolts at the top and bottom of the door, slowly, and turned the handle.

  He was no more than halfway down the corridor when a door opened a fraction and a white-haired, wide-eyed face appeared in the gap. He felt Mrs Talichová’s gaze on his back as he shuffled towards the bathroom, clutching the huge robe around his body with his arms. He urinated hurriedly, rinsed his hands in the cold water from the single tap over the cracked sink, then shuffled back along the dim corridor. The door was still open, just a fraction, and the same face was still staring.

  He quickened his step, fumbling with the loose handle to Ctibor’s room and rattling it in his haste. Inside, he slid back the two bolts and, still in the robe, hurried to his makeshift bed, curling up on the
cushions and pulling the blanket over his head, eyes closed, hands over his ears.

  *

  He did not leave Ctibor’s room for four days. His only forays were the brief shuffles to the bathroom‚ usually under the watchful eye of Mrs Talichová.

  One day, as Ctibor was returning, he heard the murmur of voices on the corridor and pressed his ear against the door to hear Ctibor’s low rumble of a voice explaining, ‘Yes, poor lad, he’s rather ill … no, he won’t be … nothing else …’ When the voices stopped talking, he skittered back to the armchair and crouched in it, feet tucked up beneath his body.

  Ctibor raised the matter after lunch. ‘I know you are afraid,’ he said. ‘It’s not surprising. But if you stay in here much longer it will arouse suspicion. Everyone is supposed to be conscripted into the arms factories, men and women, except for the old ones like me. Pregnant women get off so the birth rate is shooting up. I had to tell Mrs Talichová you’ve been ill, you’re recovering, but that will only hold good for so long. You must be seen to be acting as if you are what we say you are, it’s dangerous otherwise. Come down to the office with me this afternoon.’

  When he saw the look on Yenko’s face, he added, ‘I promise I won’t make you go out into the street. Just the office. I promise.’

  Yenko nodded.

  *

  The office was a large, wood-panelled room behind the empty shop at the front of the building. As Ctibor showed him round, he became nostalgic about the former glories of his business. ‘I used to employ fourteen people here. I had two girls just for the filing …’

  He showed Yenko the ledgers, where, he said, he kept records of fruit production in Bohemia, sent to him by the local Landrat and sometimes the farmers themselves – and the forms he filled in on behalf of the Protectorate authorities. ‘I used to be a farmer. When they took my farm away from me they gave me a consolation prize – I’m now a minor civil servant. That is why I have become ugly and fat. Still, it beats doing ten-hour shifts making grenades. This file here,’ he thumped down a huge box-file the colour of dried blood. ‘This here contains copies of my extensive correspondence with the Bohemian-Moravian Sugar Beet and Sugar Control Board, the most contrary bunch of buggers you’ll come across outside the Castle. If anyone walks in through that door – not very likely, so don’t panic – you sit at this desk, and you re-arrange these papers. You put them in date order. You file them alphabetically – er, let’s say the first letter of the second paragraph. When no one’s around you can make paper aeroplanes out of them for all I care, as long as they’re smoothed out and back in the file by the time we lock up for lunch. That, my friend František, I mean Jan, is your work. In payment, you’ll receive board and lodging. You just have to keep your head down while we try and work out what the hell to do with you.’