Your Still Beating Heart

by Tyler Keevil

  The books sit on your desk, untouched.

  Days pass. You have no calendar, no watch, and your phone has long since run out of battery. You vaguely intended to get a charger, but, in your wanderings, you have passed several phone kiosks and shops and never felt the impulse to pick one up. There will be texts and messages – from friends, relatives, your mother. And it’s a relief not to have to deal with them. Just as, you imagine, it must be a relief to them when they get your voicemail, are able to leave a supportive message and feel good about helping you, rather than get mired in an actual conversation, with the potential for messy emotional outpouring. This way, they can offer you the verbal equivalent of a pat on the back: There, there. Time heals all wounds. This too shall pass. He would want you to move on. You’ve heard those maxims already, or variations on them. Condensed versions of the wisdom in the bereavement books. You do email your mother, so as not to worry her. A way of making contact, without connecting. To tell her you are fine, that this is helping. It was the right thing to do. She writes back, briefly, saying she is so pleased for you. A short note, tapped on her phone.

  Despite the cold, Prague is hazy, murky. An inversion layer has settled over the streets. You heard of this, last time you visited, but never witnessed it. A coalescence of smog and pollution. As if some giant silk worm has taken up residence, spun a cocoon over the city. You can see to the end of a block ahead of you; after that, the buildings become vague shapes, the cars and people just shadows.

  You understand that painting now – the one of the watches dripping and melting in the heat of some nameless, aimless desert. Something similar seems to be happening here, in Prague. Or perhaps it’s the opposite. Instead of becoming malleable, drawn out, extended, time is congealing, slowly solidifying, coming to a halt. Either way, time is revealed to be arbitrary, meaningless. A human construct about as tangible as shadows on a cave wall.

  On one of your morning wanderings, you find yourself in the Old Town. It’s nearing nine o’clock, even though you’ve been walking for hours (you’re often awake long before daylight). It’s not yet busy or bustling. No A-frame signs advertising puppet theatre, or live jazz, or mask shops. No tourists, craning their necks, pointing and clicking with cameras and phones. No stag or hen parties. Just cobbled streets, empty doorways, shuttered windows. Your feet lead you, by chance or a faint recollection – embedded muscle memory – around a corner, down a narrow alley and out into a small square dominated by the front of a church, and the Astronomical Clock. You stood here – in this exact spot – years before, with Tod. Along with dozens of other tourists, on a hot June day. All of you smelling of sweat and sunscreen and anticipation. The clock is renowned, astonishingly intricate – centuries old but still functioning, with numerous dials and cogs set within its face. A kind of elaborate cuckoo clock that performs a pantomime play when it strikes the hour. You wait for the hour, as you did then, only alone, this time – in the cold of winter rather than the heat of summer.

  The hands on the clock face creep around slowly, each tick a momentous effort. At times it seems as if they aren’t moving at all. But eventually, finally, the clock strikes nine. Two shutters open. Mechanical figures appear within, passing by the windows: the twelve apostles, each carved individually. And, either side, figures representing human vice lurch to life. A man holding a money pouch, signifying greed. Another with a mirror, for vanity. A third playing a lute, to show lust and decadence. While close at hand a skeleton shakes his hourglass, rings a little bell, his rigid grin gleeful and indifferent. Serving as a reminder of what awaits each of these characters, and each of us. Like a grand version of those sculptures and paintings – memento mori – the Victorians kept on their mantles. Featuring flowers, skulls, hourglasses. Cheerful and eerie reminders that time is passing, that life is fleeting, that death is coming. Sooner than you think.

  An obvious message, so easily ignored amid the fray of life. You’re sure that’s what you would have done, the last time you were here. You would have watched the little display and taken a few photos and then gone for a drink with Tod and forgotten. Now, these wooden figures stuck on their rails and ruts and perches seem a simple and profound representation of what you know from experience to be true.

  the bridge

  One morning your walk takes you to the Vltava, the major river that meanders through the centre of Prague, divides Praha One and Praha Two. Looking down at the blackened water, smooth and free from waves, sleek as obsidian, you know it must be flowing but the only signs of movement are the oiling currents that seem to shimmer across the surface, and even those are so subtle and delicate that they could be a trick of the light – just a reflection or refraction. It’s hard to tell if the river is actually in motion, or if it has somehow slowed, hardened, fallen under the spell of stasis that has settled over the rest of the city. Possibly the surface is coated with a very thin layer of black ice, not yet thick enough to turn opaque. You’ve seen that before, on canals back in Britain. Just a millimetre of ice, like a veneer.

  But no: it is flowing. There, at the base of the bridge, you can make out a rippling of current where the waters part around the pillar. This bridge is known, renowned – it is a thing to see when in Prague – dating from the fifteenth century. So old its brickwork is soot-blackened, the stones dark and speckled like pieces of charcoal fitted together. Underfoot it is cobbled. Vehicles don’t go over it. Every few metres, on either side, there’s a statue of some dignitary, some luminary, from Prague’s past. All these traits make it an iconic spot – Charles Bridge! A location that has been used in famous films. A place where significant meetings occur. Where innumerable photos have been snapped, countless poses struck by earnest tourists.

  But, of course, that’s not why you came here. You’ve been here, done all that. You could probably find the photos, if you wanted. Of you and Tod in summer clothes: shorts and tees, walking shoes, a small-ish backpack for snacks, for water. You were that kind of couple. Respectful, capable, inquisitive. Learning just enough language to get by, to show you were trying. And the photos you took seemed to capture that, prove it. No outrageous poses, no silly stunts or pranks. No excessive drinking. Just two young people, in love, seeing the sights, sharing their lives.

  Your return here was by accident rather than by design – a wrong turn, or a right one, on one of your daily wanderings. It’s still quite early, with the sun low in the sky, though it’s hard to tell through the cloud layer and smog. You don’t have the bridge to yourself, but the other people on it cross in both directions with quick, efficient strides. No time or inclination to take photographs, play tourist – they are locals on set schedules, with trams to catch, offices to reach, desks to sit at, shops to open, meetings to make.

  You have the time, though. Or rather, you have stepped out of time. Since you have no deadlines, no appointments, no place to be, nothing to do, the days are passing unnoticed, in a glaze of repetition that has oozed into weeks. Time so languid it may as well be stopped. It feels as if it has. An illusion, like the river that looks still and frozen yet is moving. You stare into the enigmatic water-mirage, flat and featureless as a black mirror, reflecting nothing. You can’t even see a version of yourself down there, just the darkness.

  As ever, when looking down from a height, you feel that perverse but natural desire to lean too far, to fall. An impulse that’s stronger in some people than others, but that we all recognise. For you it’s strong enough to trigger the rush of vertigo, the exhilaration that would accompany it, the sense in your body that you are actually falling, that the river surface is rushing up to meet you, and in a matter of seconds you’ll feel the icy shock of water, devastatingly cold. Come up gasping, or let yourself sink, your clothes heavy as chainmail, your boots breezeblocks, dragging you down.

  The thought of it gives you a thrill, like running the side of your thumb along a knife blade, evoking that shiver, that frisson.

  Tod hated your love of heights, hated to go nea
r ledges himself, and couldn’t stand how you acted around them. So careless, so confident. Like that cliff face in Capri – right to the crumbling edge, staring down hundreds of feet, higher than the seabirds, which were white specks below you, swirling round and round like scraps of paper in a whirlpool. And Tod standing maybe three metres behind, beckoning to you, urging you to be careful, to step back.

  This height is nothing compared to that. But still, the familiar tingle makes you think, maybe you always had it in you. A fascination with oblivion, with falling into the void. Not only now, during what would be described as a time of shock and trauma – such a tragic loss, that poor woman, her and her broken heart – but before Tod’s death. Maybe your penchant for vertigo thrills, the allure of heights, is in-built, genetic; a natural aberration.

  Maybe it sets you apart. Maybe it makes you different from most people.

  These are the kinds of things you think while standing on the bridge. These, you are confident, are not truly suicidal thoughts. You don’t actually want to jump, to hit the ice-cold water fully clothed, to soak and sink. It seems too melodramatic, and also too obvious – a sad fate more suited to the jilted or betrayed or abused heroines in Tod’s Russian novels. Those books stacked on your desk. There’s a reason you’ve left them untouched: the ones you did try reading at Tod’s behest you found unbearably frustrating, the characters too dreary or moping or fatalistic. Too resigned.

  Nobody would think that of you, you hope. You are reasonably sure you would have the reader’s sympathy, despite your emotional detachment.

  As if to confirm this, you notice that somebody is trying to get your attention. A figure down at the river’s edge is waving, using both arms in a scissoring motion over their head, like a traffic control worker directing planes on the runway. The person is standing at the bottom of some stone steps, which lead to a wooden jetty. On the jetty, a dark green sign – the print too small to read from a distance. And, at the end, a boat. A fishing boat. Something about the figure is familiar, and after a few seconds you clock that it’s Marta. She must have recognised you, too. She said something about this – about her boat, and launch. Every day she must be here, and this day you’re here too. You wave back, acknowledging her, and begin to walk towards her side of the bridge. She invited you, after all. And it would seem rude to simply walk away now.

  a boat ride

  Marta’s boat is called, appropriately, Marta. It has a deep, carvel hull – the long wooden planks painted pale blue – and a wheelhouse at the front, with a hatch leading to the cabin below deck. It’s a sturdy trawler, a good boat. Her husband built it and christened it. When the boat passed to her, she didn’t change the name. Even though it seemed odd to pilot a boat with her own name, she didn’t want the bad luck that changing it might bring.

  She tells you this as you stand on the dock, handing her the gear and supplies she’s brought along for the day’s trip: tackle box, fishing rods, packed lunches, a red plastic cooler marked with scuffs and rimmed with grime. Her sign at the end of the dock is just a chalkboard, propped up, scribbled on with white lettering, Czech at the top, and English beneath it: Fishing trips and boat tours. See the city from the water. Two trips per day. Morning and afternoon. At the bottom is Marta’s phone number.

  Once the boat is loaded, the two of you wait on the dock to see if any other customers might show up. You sit in folding lawn chairs – the seats and backrests made of nylon strips, beginning to fray in places. You smoke and watch the water, talk only occasionally. From this close you can more clearly see the slow-moving surface, gently turning with eddies and back currents, so sluggish it seems to be congealing. You ask Marta if it ever freezes, the Vltava. She nods, ano. Sometimes. Not as often as when she was growing up. Back then, she tells you, the young people would come here to skate, even play hockey. But there were accidents. Every so often a child would take a risk, skate on thin ice, go through. She doesn’t elaborate; she leaves it at that, leaves you with the image of children sinking, unable to swim with skates on their feet.

  After a certain amount of time – about an hour – Marta claps her hands to her knees and stands up.

  ‘No customers this morning. Is fine. Is usual. I still fish. You come.’

  It isn’t a question, or an offer – more of an order. And you obey, waiting as Marta hops back aboard, ducks into the wheelhouse, and fires up the engine. It chortles to life in the morning cold, coughing a few times, emitting an initial backfire of billowing exhaust from the smokestack, jutting up above the roof. Poking her head back out, she tells you to undo the lines. You manage, after some fiddling.

  Letting the lines drop, you stand complacently and watch the boat drift away from the dock, carried by the current. Marta motions impatiently, urging you to jump, jump, and you do – straining to make the gap, slipping on the water-slick deck, landing hard on your hip. Laughing, Marta comes out of the wheelhouse to help you up, and you find that you’re laughing too. A strange sensation, to laugh, after so long.

  ‘Bring in the ropes, the buoys,’ Marta tells you, pointing, and returns to the wheel.

  You follow orders, and in a way it is quite pleasant – to be instructed, to have purpose. To be active. The ropes are cold and slick as you pull them in, hand over hand, coiling them inexpertly on deck. The buoys are large but light, like thick-skinned balloons, red and rubbery. By the time this is done, Marta has steered the craft to the centre of the river, and turned it upstream. You pass under Charles Bridge – the ancient stonework forming an arch overhead, glistening wet, thick with moss and algae. For a moment the reverberations of the engine are enclosed, echoing, amplified, until you drift out the other side.

  The back of the wheelhouse is extended with a fibreglass canopy, with a bench seat on either side to accommodate clients. You go in to sit near Marta, and, for a time, as you float south through the city, she points out various sights to you: the distant spires of St. Vitus Cathedral, the rooftops of Prague castle, and the fourteenth-century bathhouse that’s been converted into a five-storey nightclub. And, further upriver, Žofín Palace, on Slovansky Island. She does not elaborate as to the significance of these sites. She merely gestures, and states the names. You wonder if this is the extent of her usual riverboat tours. The thought pleases, and amuses. You appreciate the brevity, the concision. What more do tourists need, really? This is this, and that is that.

  A day cruiser approaches, large and garishly painted, flags flapping off the stern, and Marta steers closer to shore to give it a wide berth. Tourists wave at you from the upper deck. Neither of you waves back. Within half an hour, the buildings of central Prague have fallen away and the surroundings become more industrial: first low warehouses, then some kind of chemical refinery, with thin chimneys leaking dark smoke, like a whole pack of cigarettes burning at once. Marta no longer points out landmarks. Nothing here is worth noting.

  The industrial area gives way to woodland – the transition abrupt, nearly instantaneous. The banks are dense with trees, mostly willow and poplar. After another quarter hour, Marta eases up on the throttle, lets the trawler lose its momentum. You think she intends to turn around, head back, but she lets out the anchor instead, and tells you it’s time to fish.

  That is what you do – drifting in the slow current, the bow pointed upstream, the two of you sitting in the back, each of you cradling a rod. Fishing. You know as much about fishing as you do about boats, but, when you ask, Marta only shakes her head and laughs and says, ‘If you get a bite, don’t let go.’ It sounds like a proverb, the way she says it.

  Downstream, beyond the river bends, you can see Prague, the buildings dim and shadowy, obscured by the smog. It makes the cityscape look ominous, menacing. Out here the air is cleaner, fresher, though a glaze of clouds still coats the sky. The woods are silent and calm, the only sound the faint, endless slap of water against the hull. A cold wind is blowing steadily, cutting through your coat, causing your eyes to water.

  Marta must noti
ce it too. She says something about a north wind from the Baltic Sea. You ask how far along the river you can travel. She gestures vaguely over her shoulder, further upriver. ‘Very far. Almost to Austria, to the Lipno Dam.’ Turning back towards Prague, she adds, ‘And that way even further. At Mělník it becomes Elbe, and Elbe goes to Germany, to Dresden.’ From beneath her seat she pulls out a battered Thermos. She unscrews the lid and pours you both a mug of coffee, tops it up with liberal splashes of something that must be liquor, even though the bottle is not labelled. It tastes strong and herbal, medicinal, and warms you from within.

  For the most part you sit in silence, staring at the black water, at the thin threads of fishing line running like spider webs off the stern, glistening with water drops. Between cups of Marta’s special coffee you smoke – another way to keep warm. You consider possible topics of conversation: asking Marta about her husband, about whether they had any children; telling her about Tod, about the stabbing, the loss. But you don’t give voice to these ideas. Such prying and confiding would feel pointless. Your husbands, your pasts, your histories, none of those things matter. You’re here, in a boat, in the Czech Republic, fishing. Two widows, sharing coffee and cigarettes. Even that word – widow – defines you in terms of what you once were, a wife, not what you are. Two women, sharing coffee and cigarettes.

  All you say, instead, is dĕkuji. Thank you.

  ‘We have not caught anything yet,’ Marta says.

  You explain it doesn’t matter; it’s enough to be out here. She grunts, unconvinced, and secures her rod in one of the holders on the stern, then gets out her fishing knife – a slim, curved blade about six-inches long – and begins to whittle a piece of wood. Within a few minutes she’s carved out a rough-looking duck, and holds it up – as if she needs to impress you, or leave an impression, due to the failure of the fishing. You smile politely, compliment her on her skill. Not knowing what else you should say, when it comes to wood whittling.