by Tyler Keevil
customs
It looks the same here as anywhere, everywhere: a vast concrete cave. The ceiling built low (if you jumped and reached up you could touch it) with square panels and dull fluorescent lighting. No windows. Linoleum floors streaked with scuff marks from boots, shoes, suitcases. Signs hanging from wires, in several languages, designating different areas for Czech and EU citizens and international travellers. Beneath each, people stand in queues, shuffling from foot to foot, blinking uncertainly in the harsh light, each line like one long creature with hundreds of heads and feet. When the front takes a step forward, the movement ripples all the way down, winding back and forth between the ropes and stanchions.
You join the EEA line. It is by far the slowest, with the most people, and not enough booths open. The officials are all diligent, thorough, meticulous. Checking passports, asking the odd question, and occasionally telling people to wait – or directing them to another area. The whole business, the sluggish churnings of bureaucracy, would have aggravated Tod. He would have spent long sections of the wait muttering to you about how inefficient the process was, pointing to the other lines, where at times the officials seemingly have nothing to do. And you would have agreed, not because you necessarily did, but to placate him. Really you view minor ordeals like this in more resigned terms than Tod ever did – something to be endured, like bad weather, or delayed trains.
When your turn comes, you don’t feel the flutter of anxiety you can recall from previous trips, the sense you might have done something wrong. You simply smile at the official, hand over your passport. It’s about eight years old, and the golden lettering on the front has faded. It feels like a worn wallet. He accepts it, flicks it open expertly, smiles back at you. There is something leering about it. He has a crooked tooth, a well-groomed moustache. He asks you how long you’re staying for, and it sounds like a pick-up line. Three months, you say. You’re taking a Czech language course. Both lies. You have no idea how long you’re staying, or what you’ll be doing. But he grunts, as if in approval, and asks no more questions. He hands back the passport, winks, tells you to enjoy your stay, that you’re the good kind of traveller.
You thank him, automatically, though in truth you’re startled: by the inept attempt at flirtation, the lack of professional polish. These officials are usually so neutral, so neutered. Emotionless and expressionless as robots.
The good kind of traveller. You consider the phrase as you stand at baggage claim, watching suitcases emerge from a dark hole, skitter on to the conveyer belt, then crawl around and around, aimlessly, like beetles. The official was speaking off the cuff – a misguided compliment – and you can’t be certain what he meant, but you can guess. He meant that you’re white, and British, and female. He meant that you’re not loud, brash, drunk, like the women who come for hen parties. He meant that you’re pleasant, and nice, but not too striking, not provocative. You dress down: casual jeans and T-shirts, walking shoes. You seem modest, co-operative, compliant. And, of course, you’re exempt from the racial profiling that is not meant to go on, but often does. You don’t have dark skin. You don’t wear a burka, or a hijab, or traditional dress. You don’t come from a country riven with strife, civil war, crisis. You aren’t a refugee or a political activist. You aren’t going to be a problem.
The good kind of traveller. A seemingly innocuous comment. But one that stays with you, and one that you’ll remember when they approach you, and you’ll understand at once why you’re perfect for the job they have in mind. Or seemingly so. Perfect in a very superficial way. A painting, a veneer. They will underestimate the rest of you, the depths of you. They will fail to realise – until it’s too late – that appearing compliant and obedient is merely a persona, a mask that you happen to wear particularly well. When it suits you.
Your luggage arrives, eventually. A big blue duffel bag, full of books. You expect to get some reading done, but don’t expect much else. You sling it over your shoulder, carry it towards the exit – glass doors that slice open and closed on automatic sensors – and step through into the Arrivals hall of Václav Havel Airport. On your immediate left is a kiosk selling snacks and drinks. It’s nearly eleven o’clock at night, Czech time, and having hardly eaten on the flight you should be hungry, but you aren’t.
From a nearby cashpoint you get some money, as much as your bank allows in a single withdrawal: three hundred pounds, or nearly nine thousand koruny. About a quarter of what you have left, after the funeral expenses, the flight, booking the bedsit. Tod didn’t have any life insurance – the idea of dying so young simply unfeasible – and living in London didn’t allow you to put away any real savings. Still, you have enough to get by, for now.
Your first purchase in Prague is a pack of cigarettes, a European brand chosen at random: Smart cigarettes. The name pleasingly oxymoronic. Outside, by one of the dozens of bus shelters, you light a Smart and blow smoke into the cold winter air. As with your taste in music, the smoking was a side of you that Tod disapproved of, managed to change. Or encouraged you to subdue. The two of you were thinking of trying, or starting to try, for a baby, and he’d been adamant the smoking had to stop, which it did. But there’s no Tod to stop you now, and no need. The nicotine rush feels fresh and virgin – a dizzying high.
You wish you’d been more honest with him, about your wants and needs, your likes and dislikes. He was always so vocal, so communicative. The teacher in him, perhaps. During your arguments he would speak very calmly and make big, repetitive gestures with his hands, as if explaining a lesson plan. Even if you didn’t agree with him, you tended to defer, acquiesce, simply for the sake of ease. You thought you were doing it for him – the little compromises everybody talks about, when they speak in general terms about relationships – but see now it was insulting, duplicitous. If you’d cared enough, you would have fought more, fought harder, to convey your point of view, retain some sense of self. It might have made your relationship stronger, somehow. More solid. And, right now, you wouldn’t be feeling this twinge of relief and satisfaction at the taste of cigarette smoke, instead of what you know you should be feeling: remorse, melancholy, grief. You miss him, yes. That’s a given. But finally, you can smoke again. Finally, you can do whatever the hell you want.
trouble will find you
The landlady of the bedsit said she would meet you at seven in the morning, and because of the late flight you have several hours to kill. So you catch one of the last airport buses to Wenceslas Square, which – like Times Square, or Piccadilly Circus – is always bright, always bustling, always noisy. You remember that, from the time Tod proposed. The square isn’t actually a square. It’s more of a boulevard. About a kilometre long. Maybe fifty metres across. Lined with a series of impressive buildings – art nouveau, or neo-Renaissance, or some other classic style. All five or six storeys high. Most now refashioned for tourism: retail outlets and souvenir shops and cafés and bars and restaurants and hotels with revolving doors and casinos offering slots, poker, roulette. You don’t bother with any of it, settle on a bench near Můstek Metro, beneath a building topped by a modern-looking clock, the golden hands slow-ticking around. The people who are out now are clubbers, bar-hoppers, groups here for hen or stag parties. All drunk, loud, energetic. Some glance your way. Sitting there, blowing smoke into the cold, your feet kicked up on your duffel bag, huddled in your coat, your headphones in, listening to Tod’s playlists. You don’t look like a mark, a tourist. Nobody has bothered you, bothered with you. Nobody has even talked to you.
Not until Mario.
He finds you at two in the morning: as if he has been waiting for that clock to hit the hour. A short man, dressed in a beige linen suit. Dark brown leather shoes. Maybe alligator skin. Polished to glossiness, reflecting the lights of the square. A black shirt, unbuttoned to show his chest, which is shaved and smooth. He has well-oiled hair and teeth so clean and white they look false. He doesn’t speak immediately, but smiles, staring at you curiously, without malic
e. As if you are a cat that has adopted this perch for the night.
He reminds you of one of the characters in Casablanca. Some kind of hustler, or conman, or petty crook. When he appears (and he really does seem to appear, like a magic trick) you happen to be listening to that song – a favourite on Tod’s playlist – about trouble finding you. And it feels like it has. But you’re not worried about it. You don’t seem to be worried about much, since Tod’s death.
He says something, inaudible over the music. You remove your earbuds, and without you prompting him he repeats himself: asking for a cigarette, patting at his jacket as if to emphasise that normally he would have one – he would have numerous cigarettes – but he’s forgotten them. He has used English for your sake. You fish the pack of Smart out of your pocket, toss it to him. He extracts a cigarette slowly, presents the pack back to you, and he does it so graciously, so reverently, it feels like a proposal. Not very different, at all, from the way Tod held out the ring, only a few blocks from here.
That’s when the man tells you his name, and sits down on the bench. He explains that he often comes here, to this bench. That he likes to watch the people. His accent is distinct, crisp, but not heavy. He is sitting on the opposite end of the bench, separate from you. There is no sign of a come-on, no oily impropriety. After that brief introduction, he merely sits, and smokes, and watches, and soon you relax and return to doing the same. You’re still aware of him, but his presence has faded into the background – like any other part of the street scene – until he speaks again, asks what you’re doing here. There’s no reason to lie, so you explain about the bedsit, your morning meeting with the landlady. That it didn’t seem worth getting a hotel for just a few hours.
Ah, he says, though he sounds a bit disappointed. As if the answer is more ordinary than he expected. More ordinary than he wanted.
Calmly, still smoking, and looking straight ahead, he tells you that he lives in Prague, has done for several years, but it isn’t home to him, either. It never will be. Then he glances sideways at you, puts his hand to his face, as if placing a mask there. ‘Because of my face,’ he says. ‘Because of the colour of my face.’ The colour of his face is not white. He would not be classified as a ‘good traveller’ according to that customs official. Mario shrugs, as if resigned to this, and carefully bends down and stubs the cigarette on the ground. Then he stands, goes to drop it in the bin next to the bench. He tells you it’s cold, and that he knows of a bar nearby – not a tourist place. A good spot to warm up, to kill some time. If you’d like to go, he could show you, take you there.
The obvious answer is no, of course. How foolish and naïve to accept – to go with a stranger, in a pale suit and alligator skin shoes, to some bar he claims to know about. We’re all taught – we’re all trained – to do the safe thing, the smart thing, in these situations. And there is safety in the lights and noise and bustle of the square. But the bus, too, was supposed to be safe. Full of people. And all they did was turn and stare and gape and watch Tod die.
You ask Mario, ‘What do you get out of it?’
He smiles, appreciating the directness. ‘You will buy me a drink, of course.’ The way he says this makes it sound like a simple transaction. And maybe it is.
You stand, pick up your bag, sling it over your shoulder. You’re nervous, and it’s a good feeling. Like putting your hand to an electric wire, feeling the shock. It’s nice to feel something, anything. Besides, the bench was hard and the novelty of Wenceslas Square was wearing off. Five more hours is a long time, to be sitting alone in the cold through the night.
As you walk with him, out of the lights of the square and towards a darker side street, you feel a twinge of doubt. The old instincts. You ask, with that same directness, if he plans to mug you, if he intends any harm. He laughs, his teeth shining in the shadows. ‘Not me. Others, maybe. But I will do my best to protect you.’ He sounds half-serious, half-joking.
It’s hard to tell, with Mario.
slippage
All of the possibilities you discussed actually happen: Mario shows you the bar, you buy him a drink, and you are almost mugged. Not by him, but a man who seems to be his friend, or acquaintance. This doesn’t take place immediately. At first, the bar is exactly what Mario promised: a place to have a beer, keep warm. It’s two blocks north and four blocks west of Wenceslas Square. You kept track, in your head, as you walked with him. Your sense of direction has always been spot-on, unerring, ridiculously good, as Tod used to say. And it seemed prudent, to know where you were going, to know where Mario was leading you.
The bar is packed – mostly men, mostly Czech, mostly middle-aged or older, mostly standing. A few of them glance at you – openly, brazenly, and yes, lecherously – but none say anything. No insinuating comments, no boozy come-ons, no quick feels as you worm your way between them, awkward with your duffel bag. You can’t see any free tables, but Mario finds you one, somehow, pulling back a chair with a flourish. Mario the magician. You sit, fitting your foot through the strap of your duffel bag, so the bag can’t be ferreted away, carried off. Not unless you’re carried off with it. An old travelling trick, but useful.
Mario motions to you, says something – hard to hear over the raised voices and raucous laughter – but you figure out he’s asking for money, asking you to hold up your end of the bargain. You have to get out your wallet – a mistake, since it’s stuffed with fresh notes – and fumble through it, trying to remember the exchange rate, the worth of koruny, the numbers so high. You hand him a two hundred koruna note, about a fiver, and this seems to please him. You know he’s clocked the rest of the cash, nestling in there, but you don’t know yet if that’s worrying. You think of your cigarettes, the ironic brand name, Smart. It wasn’t very smart to withdraw so much money at once, or reveal it. You will need to be smarter, watch yourself.
Mario is gone for a time and returns with two beers in the pintsized glasses they call půllitr. He is smiling, satisfied; it’s the smile of the salesman, when the contract is signed, when the handshake seals the deal. Your small transaction has gone exactly according to plan. You both hold up your glasses, crack them together. Na zdraví, you say. The beer is pils, and cold, and good. Sitting back, wiping his lips, Mario asks if you know Czech – and you tell him not much. Only the basics. Na zdraví. Prosim. Dĕkuji. Jak se máš.
‘And so,’ he says, ‘jak se máš? How are you?’
The expected tourist answer is dobře. Good. But Czechs don’t say that, and you certainly don’t feel it. Instead you say, ‘Jde to.’ It goes. Like ça va, in French. You’ve always appreciated such phrases, the stoic fatalism embedded within them. Whether you’re feeling well or ill, whether things are going good or bad, is meaningless. Foul is fair, and fair is foul. It is all one and the same. It goes.
Mario seems to appreciate it, too. Or your use of it. He nods, leans back, looks at you anew. You have the feeling that he’s done all this before – many times, perhaps – but that it’s not unfolding in the same way, with the same lines. You’re off-script, already. Out of character. Not playing the role he expected you to play.
You aren’t playing any role, really.
Mario can talk. That much becomes evident. He unrolls a smooth, casual flow of conversation, like a cowboy uncoiling rope. His English is proper and impeccable, as if he has taken great pains to learn the language correctly, not colloquially. He has a tendency to make precise gestures with his hands to emphasise points: pinning his forefinger on the table top, swiping sideways with his palm, or pinching all five fingers together and holding them up, as if offering you a jewel, to be considered carefully, from various angles. He’s doing most of the talking, but also – every so often – teasing a bit of information out of you. That you’re British, a Welsh woman who’s been living in London. That you’re recently widowed. That your husband was an American scholar. That you’ve come here seeking something. Only you can’t say what, or why. You tell him what you told the customs official
, that you’re going to take a language course. Mario accepts this, but warns you Czech is not an easy language to learn.
More beers appear, at certain intervals. The bar doesn’t show any signs of closing, even though it must be well past traditional closing times. You don’t actually know what time it is, and that’s a good feeling, to be off-clock, out of time. You’re drunk, of course, but not as drunk as Mario – he is a good-natured lightweight, laughing giddily at his own idiosyncratic stories – and you feel very lucid, calm, controlled.
It’s when you’re feeling like this that Mario’s friend shows up, looming over you both before taking a chair at your table. He does actually take it, too, without asking – turning it around and forcibly putting it down backwards, then straddling it. So different from Mario, in appearance and demeanour. About the same height, but twice as wide. A shaved head and blunt, brutish features. His eyes unnaturally protruding, bulging. As if constantly glaring at things. Glaring at you, from the moment he sits down. You are instantly wary; you know this type of man. We all know his type. Not wild, hopped-up, feral, like the addict who stabbed Tod – who didn’t even remember it, didn’t know what he was doing, as his lawyer claimed – but, rather, bristling with a natural capacity for violence. An inclination for it, even. A predisposition.
He smiles at you, his teeth small and yellow and uneven. ‘Hi,’ he says, pursing his lips into a threatening kiss. ‘Hi, pretty lady.’
You look to Mario, who sighs as if he was expecting this, but still finds it wearisome. He gestures jadedly, introduces the man as Denis, explaining that he and Denis work together, sometimes.
‘What kind of work?’ you ask.
This and that, Mario says, and Denis laughs.