by Tyler Keevil
She says the knife was her husband’s, has outlasted him by several years. Then, looking bashful, she ends her little demonstration. Puts both knife and duck away. She sits back down. Makes a general comment about it being hard, the loss of a husband. And you expect her to leave it at that. You want her to leave it at that. But unfortunately she goes on, awkwardly. She says she sees you, coming and going. Always alone. It is not good to be alone, she says. You take a long drag on your cigarette, looking straight ahead. There is a tension in your jaw – an ache. It feels like a betrayal, or a trap. The whole thing a set-up. As if she’s brought you out here to help you, save you. Play surrogate mother.
‘You should do social things,’ she says, in the same way she told you to hop aboard, to pull in the ropes. ‘Be around people. I know what it is like, you see.’
You nod, stiffly, and tap ash over the side. Tell her you’ll think about it. She says you can come out with her, on the boat, whenever you like.
You smile bitterly. ‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ you say, in a way that makes it clear you won’t be taking her up on the offer.
After that she goes quiet, perhaps sensing that something has changed. The warmth of the coffee and liquor leaking away, the warmth of your camaraderie leeching out of you, the wind picking up, the cold turning that much sharper, its edge cutting.
You have both been stubbing out finished cigarettes in an old tin, stained and ashy, where the butts are entwined together like a nest of worms. Now, you flick yours overboard, into the water, where it lands with a deflating hiss. Seconds later, a fish snaps at it – the flash of gullet, the quick flick of tail. You both look in that direction, surprised. A few seconds later the butt floats back up again, the fish having realised it’s been duped.
Marta looks quizzically at her rod, pulls on the line a few times, and releases it. ‘My bait is not working,’ she says, and sighs, then settles back into her chair. After a few minutes of further pretence, you suggest that it’s time to head back.
lessons
Walking down Vinohradská, in the drizzling sleet, you see the sign: Czech For You! Accompanied by a cartoon line drawing, the smiling teeth spilling off the side of the man’s face, like one of those pictures done by children for charitable causes. It stops you, that sign. Perhaps because you’ve told a number of people that you’re intending to learn Czech.
Until now, you’ve had no real intention of pursuing it. But it has a powerful pull, that silly, slightly unhinged ad. Maybe it’s fated; maybe a language course is something you should try. Maybe Marta was right, and being around people is a good idea, healthy. All those grief guides – which you’ve left by the bin – would recommend the same, you’re sure. And what’s the alternative? More wandering. Or Mario. As of late you’ve been walking down to Wenceslas Square. Not to take him up on his offer of some work. Not specifically. But out of curiosity. That night – the strangeness, the sense of threat and newness – was the only moment of this trip that hasn’t felt as if you’ve been stuck in stasis, time frozen, nothing happening.
Better, surely, to try something else, even as clichéd as a language course, than set loose that part of yourself. Let it have more reign. To do something deliberately risky, dangerous. To take that step, to let yourself fall. So, you go inside, sign up for a month-long course in beginner’s Czech. There are forms to fill, and payment up front. More than you can afford – most of your remaining money – but you pay all the same.
The administrator tells you the current course started on Monday (it’s now Wednesday), but you’re welcome to join the class tomorrow morning, which you do. Sitting at the back, with a fresh blank notebook in front of you, and a set of photocopied pages handed out by the teacher – a tall, slim Czech who is handsome and accommodating, his English impeccable. He looks as if he could be a waiter in a five-star restaurant (which he is in the evenings, you learn later).
Back in school – a student again. The feeling disturbingly familiar, the seats just as rigid, the classrooms just as cheerily drab. The lighting high-key, the air so cold you can see your breath some mornings (the teacher apologises constantly about the lack of heat, assures you repeatedly it is getting fixed). Yet somehow comforting, comfortable, despite that. If nothing else, you know your role here. You simply have to sit and listen and jot down notes. Every so often you fill in a quiz, or are paired up with another student to practice your speaking skills, memorising and repeating set conversations: how to order food, how to ask for directions to the library, the museum, the police. Víš kde jsem? Můžeš me pomoci?
With the other students you make an effort, are polite, attentive, engaged. You know there is a degree of superficiality to this – it’s merely a persona, worn to fit the classroom environment – but they don’t seem to notice, or care. No doubt they have problems of their own, are wearing masks of their own. We all do this, constantly. Engage in these forms of play-acting.
Your fellow students are all mildly interesting, in their own ways. There is the Australian woman who worked on films, as a set designer – all the blockbusters by one big-name director – but is now living here, with her husband, who’s a hedge-fund broker. There is the Bangladeshi woman who also came here for a man, who met her husband on the day of her arranged marriage and has only been married two months. When you ask her how it’s going, she says, wryly, ‘So far, so good.’ Along with them there’s the Dutch student, already fluent in German, English, and Dutch, learning Czech as a way of talking to his girlfriend in her own language. Then there is the American woman who attends the class for the first week, but after that opts out, saying she can’t commit: it was just something her partner thought would be good for her. And the Canadian boy (he really does look like a boy) who is so painfully, obviously alone, and lonely. Who admits to you, between dialogues one day, that he came out to Prague on a one-way ticket, wanting to a be a writer, get some life experience, meet new people, maybe fall in love.
For so many others, it’s apparent their presence in Prague – and the class – is connected to another person. A husband, a partner, a potential partner. As if we need that other to define ourselves, our self. In a way, you’re still doing the same, or pretending to: you’ve come to Prague since it meant something to you and Tod. Though you’re beginning to wonder how true that is. It was the place you first travelled together, and the place he proposed. That’s enough to explain your visit to anybody who knew the two of you, as a couple, an item. It has a sentimental and romantic ring to it, a way of going back, of coming to terms, of dealing with grief. But, in truth, Prague doesn’t mean more to you than any other place you visited with Tod. The reason the two of you first came, no doubt, was simply due to images, anecdotes, marketing posters. It seemed a romantic city to visit, like Venice, or Barcelona (places you also visited with him). He didn’t have any true connection to the country, and your faint link through your grandfather hasn’t made you feel any more at home here, either.
You don’t tell any of this to your fellow students, of course. You don’t need to justify your visit to them in the way you did to people back home. You merely say you’re interested in the language, the culture. You visited Prague before and fell in love with the place. Using these convenient, acceptable lies.
You realise within a few days that the class isn’t what you hoped it would be: it may be what you need, but it isn’t what you want. You find it hard to concentrate. You make token notes, engage in the dialogues and group discussions, play along with the others, but outside of class you retain little, never revise or memorise. By the end of the first week, you find you are tuning out, gazing at the frost on the window, the hazy streets beyond, listening to the rattle of rain and sleet on the pane. This, too, is a familiar feeling, and still comforting – just like being back in school. You don’t need to pay attention unless called on directly, and your tutor is far more understanding, patient, and supportive than your school teachers ever were. This is only his day job, a way to top-up his tip
s. He has no investment in his students. He will smile tolerantly, is always quick to repeat his question, or coach you through the answer.
In between, you feel as if you are still wandering the streets, still adrift in the cold, still trying to figure out this city and why you are in it, as if the buildings are puzzle blocks, one giant concrete Rubik’s cube.
In the second week, you skip a morning or two. This doesn’t seem to affect your performance in class. There is no real sense of progression, and some of the other students – aside from the Dutch polyglot – are just as hapless as you. You don’t fall behind, even attending irregularly. But eventually the impulse to attend at all dwindles, and unlike school you feel no obligation to keep up the pretence. You walk in at the start of the fourth week, when the class is in session, but instead of joining the others in the classroom you head to the office. You explain to the administrator (the same red-haired young woman who signed you up) that you appreciated the tutor, got on with your classmates, but would like to drop out. She expresses surprise, disappointment, but it’s as feigned as your student persona: she’s used to this. People coming and going, entering and exiting. All with their own reasons. She says the school can refund you for the remaining week of your tuition, but not for the classes you’ve already skipped.
So that is the extent of your experience as a Czech learner – seemingly unimportant, mostly forgettable. Except for the fact that, as you’re having this discussion – checking out, as it were – the Canadian boy is making a cup of tea, using the kettle in the kitchenette across the corridor, which students are allowed and encouraged to do. You noticed him when you first entered, thought little of it. But when you finish – taking cash for your tuition refund – and leave the office, he’s waiting for you, looking concerned. He says he overheard, is sorry to learn you’re quitting. He asks, hesitantly, if you’re okay, and you tell him you are. It sounds straightforward enough, and he smiles shyly, says you should keep in touch – that maybe you could get a cup of coffee sometime? The two of you, or with the other students? You look at him curiously, wondering if this is an awkward, juvenile attempt at a pick-up. But no, he’s simply being friendly, sociable, maudlin. Unwilling to let even a passing acquaintance go. The sentimentality of youth.
‘Sure,’ you say, ‘why not?’ Then, putting him to the test, you ask, ‘Now?’
He looks at the cup of coffee he has just made, laughs, and puts it down on the windowsill. ‘I guess so,’ he says. ‘We’re just doing the same dialogues again today.’
A seemingly innocuous exchange, which will lead to no long-term friendship, no amorous liaison, no platonic indie-film relationship. This boy means nothing to you, and never will. He is only a minor player, exempt from the real drama to come. His is a walk-on role, a bit part, with a few token scenes. But his presence is important, nonetheless. It’s vital, actually, since he is the one telling this story.
He is me.
beginnings
That’s how I heard some of this, how I heard the start of it. Until the day you and I went out for coffee and started drinking, we hadn’t actually talked much, aside from the few times we were paired up in class: the repetitive droning of language dialogues, with short intervals in which we chatted about the city, the weather, while waiting for other students to finish and catch up. I had noticed you, or had taken note of you. But then, I’d taken note of everybody – had taken notes on them, actually. I’d told you I wanted to be a writer, that I’d joined the class for the experience. It was also for research. I recorded mannerisms, jotted down dialogue, observed and described, trying to capture everybody in that class as potential characters. I had several pages dedicated to you, the enigmatic woman with the Welsh name. Eira.
The day you quit the class, you and I went to that tourist bar a few blocks away from the language school. It had been a keep or a dungeon at one time and all the drinking areas were underground, in vaulted cellars, like something out of Poe. We tried to order coffee, but they didn’t serve it, so we got beers instead. It was a good place to drink at eleven o’clock in the morning – there were no windows and it was impossible to tell the time of day. We had our own nook, with a rough-hewn oak table. They were going for a kind of mediaeval atmosphere, and served their tuplák beers in big steel tankards. At first, we didn’t do much except sit, and sip. The place was almost empty, with only a handful of other customers, but lively Czech rock leaked from the speakers – a sly attempt on the part of management to make it seem as if it was a normal time to be sitting around drinking.
You got out your pack of Smart, and lit up. You offered me one and I accepted it because I was embarrassed not to. It has to be said, I was intimidated by you. You just had this look that seemed to say, I don’t care any more. About anything.
There was nothing extraordinary about the meeting, no sense of instant connection or potential friendship. But I got the feeling you were okay with me, and I was okay with you. I’ve always liked people who can just sit, and think, and be around somebody, without feeling obligated to talk about things that don’t matter.
After the first tuplák, I asked you what you were doing in Prague, and you told me the real story. Very succinctly, and straightforwardly: that your husband had been killed, stabbed in a confrontation on a bus in London, and that you had been at loose ends ever since. You’d originally decided to come because it was a city that meant something, to you and to him, but that was more of an excuse than anything else.
Then you said, ‘What about you?’
I think I said ‘Jesus’ or something like that, and told you how sorry I was.
My reaction had an odd effect: it made you laugh. I was doing this thing, where I raise my eyebrows and stare straight ahead, as if I’ve been lobotomised, sent into a state of total shock. You waved your cigarette, brushing your tragic backstory aside, said not to worry about it. I took a long pull from my tankard and plonked it down hard. I said I’d known there was something about you – something that was different, or not quite typical.
You looked at me curiously, and I admitted I’d been watching the other students, observing them, in the hopes of mining some material. I’d already told you about wanting to be a writer. Now I explained I didn’t know how to go about it. I was just living in Prague, messing around, blowing all the money I’d saved up doing odd jobs back home. I hadn’t written much, and knew enough about literature to tell what I had written wasn’t any good.
You listened tolerantly. You’d just told me your husband had been stabbed in the heart and here I was, moaning about my artistic struggles. But you took it at face value. You said, evenhandedly, that these things take time. That I was young. That I had to stick with it. You said you’d been a decent actress once, that you’d had aspirations along those lines, after university, but had given them up. They’d seemed too impractical, too unrealistic. You were getting older, and had gotten married. You weren’t earning and you and your husband wanted a nicer place, space to start a family. London was expensive.
‘But now,’ you said. ‘I wish I’d kept up my acting. It meant more than I realised. And the rest didn’t amount to much. Besides, Tod’s dead anyway.’
Because his death had come up again, I asked you about it – about how it happened. So, you me told the details, with that air of resignation: the bus, the aggro junkie, the scuffle, the knife. I was enthralled, and in response all I could think to say were the kinds of things you’d no doubt heard countless times already: that it was such a tragedy, him being so young. That it wasn’t fair. That you were doing amazingly well. That you were ‘holding up’ better than most people would have, including me. You accepted these trite comments without resentment. You were very polite, very patient.
A lot of the things I said, I wouldn’t say now, obviously.
We drank through lunch, finished your pack of cigarettes. I was pretty wobbly by then. I wasn’t used to drinking at that time of day. At some point, I asked you what you planned to do, now that yo
u’d quit the language class. You looked off, to the left, stared at the rest of the bar. A few more people had come in by then, and some were eating – we could smell the fried food, hear the incomprehensible murmuring of several Czech conversations.
Turning back to me, you said you’d met a guy – a guy called Mario – on the night you’d arrived. In Wenceslas Square. A kind of street hustler. He said he might be able to find work for you, if you wanted it. You were running out of money, so had to do something.
I was in awe. I sensed, in you, all the things I’d come to Prague wanting to do, and hoping to experience – but was too young, timid, and scared to undertake. Not you.
Shortly after, you stood up, stretched, said you were going to walk off your buzz. I stammered something about keeping in touch, scribbled my number and address on the back of a napkin. I rose with you. I wanted to follow you. But, of course, I didn’t. You shook my hand and took my napkin and pulled on your jacket and left.
I finished my beer, hurried back to my flat, got out my notebook, and in a drunken blaze jotted down everything we’d discussed, everything you said. I thought I’d had some kind of epiphany; I thought you were the key to something. And then, once you reappeared, contacted me again, I was convinced of it. By then you were in deep, involved in something dangerous, and potentially deadly. A matter of life and death. I didn’t know the full story, but I trusted you enough to believe you were doing what was right. That you were on the side of good.
I tried to help, as best I could. Now, of course, I wish I could have done better.
Maybe that’s why I’ve felt compelled to get this down, write out your story. I wanted people to know. What you did, the risks you took. This great act of generosity. And though I couldn’t do anything else, couldn’t do nearly enough, I could at least do this. As a form of personal penance, and a way of discovering, and recovering, the truth. Or, at least, something closer to the truth. And, of course, as a way of getting closer to you. Understanding you.