Your Still Beating Heart

by Tyler Keevil

  After several minutes she emerges from one of the corridors at the base of the horseshoe-shaped tower-block. You cross to her. She’s in her mid-forties, dressed in clothes that aren’t much more than rags. A tattered apron. Torn stockings. A pair of battered trainers, one sole held on with duct tape. A grey bun on top of her head. Her face is grey as well, and granular. Her eyes are skittish, frenetic. Looking around you, past you, as if she thinks there might be other people with you, nearby, in hiding. A trap of some sort.

  She is still holding that dirty cloth in her hand – the one she waved to attract your attention. Rather than exchange any form of greeting, she signals with it again, whipping it in a quick, jerking motion: back the way she came. You are to follow. This woman, apparently, is not the one you’re picking up.

  Her movements are surprisingly quick, darting. Moving down the corridor and along two side passages, mostly in the dark. Subterranean scurrying. The corridor smells of sweat and rankness and gasoline. Every so often, the woman holds her rag to her face, as if in defence against the stench.

  You feel you’re being naïve, just following, just going along with her. Leaving your expensive rental car exposed, and entering this den, this hovel. All on your own. But then, you’re not all on your own. You’re a representative. And it must be known who you represent. Should this woman, or anybody else, try something, your employers would not be happy. There would be repercussions. There would be retribution. That must have been made clear. Or perhaps it is simply assumed.

  Now she is leading you past a broken elevator – the doors half open, the shaft empty, vacant, foul-smelling – and up a stairwell, which doubles back on itself twice. Then out into a hall on the third floor. You see nobody else, but you sense there are other occupants, behind the doors. Aware of you, your presence and your passing and your purpose. As if you truly are an emissary, a delegate. Bestowed with authoritative power. As if you could stop at any one of their doors and call them out, take them with you.

  The walls are water-stained, sloughing plaster like snakeskin. The carpeting is mildewed, spongy underfoot. Smelling faintly of urine.

  Her door – or the door she brings you to – is at the end. By this point she is in what you would call an agitated state. Muttering to herself, her body making jerky, disjointed motions. Like those marionettes near Wenceslas Square. She paws at the door, forces it open. It swings inwards, revealing a living area of some sort – mattresses on the floor – and a kitchenette. All just quick impressions. Cupboard doors hanging off. Piles of dishes, paper plates, empty food tins. A nest. And the people. Half a dozen of them. At first you think they are all young children, and all boys: they are dressed in soiled shirts and trousers, and have the pale, thin, undefined bodies of the permanently malnourished. But, as your eyes adjust to the dimness, the murk, you see that some are probably older – teenagers – and some are adolescent girls. But so thin – their physiques underdeveloped – that it’s hard to tell; there is little difference. As a group they hang back from the door, watching you warily but without any real sense of animosity. They are worried only of what you might do to them.

  Somewhere, a baby is wailing.

  The woman enters the room and goes to one of the boys and snatches something from his hand. A canister. She splashes its contents on to the rag and holds it to her face and takes a long, soothing inhale. This seems to steady her. Removing it, she stares at you defiantly, almost proudly, and passes the canister back to the boy.

  You understand that this is why you are here. Why the trade couldn’t be done downstairs. She needed you to bear witness. To see. To understand.

  She moves along the line of youths and children. Whether they are hers, or simply ones that have ended up in her care, you don’t know. You never will know. She stops and puts both her hands on the shoulder of one and guides him forward, pushing him towards you. He is small, and does not walk properly. He has a limp of some kind. A bad foot, or leg. His face hidden in a hoody. The features poking out are pointed, elfin. He could be six or seven, or he could be older, afflicted by stunted growth.

  He is holding something in his hands. Slips of paper.

  The woman stops him in front of you and nods, curtly. Her eyes glazed with fumes, seeming to look just beyond you. She is waiting for something, and for a few moments you don’t comprehend that she is waiting for you. You are too overcome. Too overwhelmed. But you still have enough of your faculties to recall this is a two-sided transaction.

  You hold up the suitcase.

  The woman looks at it. Lets go of his shoulders. Takes it.

  That is all. The trade has taken place. She either doesn’t think to check the contents, or doesn’t have the courage to question you about it, or is too high, or too far gone, to consider it rationally, properly.

  The boy is looking up at you. He has skin so pale it’s practically translucent. Blue veins threaded beneath the surface. Big eyes that blink, birdlike. Not knowing what else to do, you reach out and take him by the hand, tell him to come. He allows you to hold it, but doesn’t grip it back. In the other hand he is still clutching his papers.

  At the door you look back at the woman, once. Her expression is indescribable and unforgettable. In the days ahead you will look back on this moment, and that expression. You will understand it to be a look beyond misery and anguish and despair, beyond having lost heart and hope. Beyond, even, the realm of human emotion. Rather, a sense of soullessness. A desolation.

  Then you are going, walking down the corridor, leading this boy in the hoody by the hand. At the stairs it occurs to you that you should hurry. You don’t know what this woman was promised in payment, but it must have been more than rocks and soiled, obsolete notes. So old that banks likely wouldn’t even exchange them. The locks on the suitcase only took you a few minutes to pick. You suspect now that no key has been sent, even if one had been promised, but it won’t take long for her to open the locks, or break them open.

  This happens when you reach the ground floor, the forecourt, now far darker than when you went up – twilight comes early to the tenement, the sides of the building blocking out the remaining daylight. In this new gloom you hear the sound, echoing down through the building. A terrible, high-pitched keening. A wailing. You pull the boy’s arm, shift into a run. He has trouble, limping along at your side. But he doesn’t resist. He is trying to keep up, to keep pace with you. He wants to go, to get away too. With you.

  This is the beginning. Of the two of you. Of being on the run, together.

  From the very start, he places his faith in you.

  Something lands by your feet, cracks on the concrete. Goes skittering off across gravel and ice. A rock. One of the rocks. Glancing back, you see the woman on the balcony, shaking the suitcase at the sky, screaming, pulling at her hair. The kids and youths are the ones throwing the rocks. Raining them down on you in punishment. None hit you, but one hits the bonnet of the rental car, bounces off, leaving a deep dent, chips in the paint.

  You unlock the car with the key-fob while running. Yank open the passenger’s door, guide the boy inside. Hurry around behind, using the car for shelter, and get in the driver’s side. It all seems to occur in jump cuts, short flashes of experience, that stuttery sense of panic, alarm. No room to turn the car around. Just shoving the key in the ignition, throwing the gearstick into reverse, stomping on the accelerator and running it backwards down the alley, half-turned in your seat to steer. Just missing the burnt-out Jeep.

  When you glance back, forward, you can still see the woman – on her knees now, her fists wrapped around the bars of her balcony, shaking at it in her fury, as if trapped in a cage, and all the others, all her children, howling and dancing around her in aggravation, but just as impotent and helpless and entombed.

  gogol

  You glance at the boy watching the world go by outside his window. He sits in his seat clutching his pieces of paper. He isn’t wearing his seatbelt, and you don’t ask him to. He is alert and te
nse as a stray cat. He smells like a cat, too: a sour stench that emanates from his clothes, his hair, his skin. Oily and malign. His hood is still up and he remains hidden in it. His pale nose poking out. A tangle of black hair hanging in front of his eyes. His feet just touching the floor of the car.

  You drive with focussed determination, navigating from memory, not having yet reprogrammed the satnav. The buildings of the town seeming to fall away around you: first becoming half-collapsed structures, then crumbling into piles of brick and rubble, and finally dissolving into the landscape. It’s only once you are outside the town limits that you’re freed from the anxiety of the alley – the feeling that you could be caught at any minute, trapped in purgatory with the inhabitants, their nightmare life-in-death. Surely you can’t trade a suitcase full of rocks and worthless notes for a child without consequences. Surely there must be repercussions.

  This feeling – of guilt, remorse, wrongdoing – coupled with the realisation that you have got away with it – evil witch – compels you to explain, to the boy, that it’s not really your fault; that you’re just making the exchange, and delivering him. That you had no idea what was in the suitcase, until it was too late. That it’s a terrible thing that has been done, to his mother, or whoever that woman was. You go on like this for some time, a confession of sorts, seeking to absolve yourself. Telling him what’s been building up inside you. Except, when you glance over, you see the lack of understanding in his eyes. The utter incomprehension, mingled with caution. Like a pet regarding its owner – having no idea what any of it means, only that you are upset, a strange lady speaking so adamantly, defensively.

  ‘You don’t understand English.’

  It’s not a question, and his look is confirmation enough. It comes as something of a relief, to know that whatever you’ve said hasn’t registered, that whatever you say is merely sound to him. Vowels and consonants floating in the air between you. Totally meaningless. But your outburst, your monologue, has made you feel calmer. You roll down your window, light up a Smart. The boy doesn’t seem at all bothered by this. You remember his mother, the rag, try to imagine all the things he’s seen, but can’t. There’s a disconnect in your capacity to understand. The phrase ‘worlds apart’ doesn’t begin to account for it.

  As if to accentuate this, he holds out a trembling hand, like a beggar asking for alms. You look at the hand – the nails rimmed with grime, the palm lined with dirt, cuts, scrapes. It takes a moment to clock that he’s asking for a drag. You hesitate, hand over the smoke. He puffs at it offhandedly, casually, like another child – a typical child – might suck idly on a lollipop. When he’s done, he hands it back. Accustomed to sharing. A seasoned smoker. You don’t immediately take a drag. You have a brief, shameful, flutter of concern – about what ailment this boy might be suffering from, what illnesses he might be infected with. You immediately regret these thoughts, despise yourself for thinking them, and suck defiantly on the filter to dispel them.

  For the next few miles, the two of you pass the cigarette back and forth, sharing the comfort of nicotine. It makes him look older, the act of smoking. It may well be that he’s seven or eight. You’ve always found it difficult to judge the ages of children, and his state – begrimed, enfeebled, undernourished – makes it all the harder.

  When the cigarette is finished, you carefully stub it out in the car’s ashtray. The first time you have done so. As if you are teaching him one good habit – not to litter – out of guilt for irresponsibly allowing him to smoke. When you finish, he opens and shuts the ashtray a few times, testing its function. A newness. Then he plays with his window, again imitating your action. Using the electric button to scroll it down, letting in blasts of cold air, and then rolling it back up. He’s likely never been in a vehicle this new, this luxurious.

  You cross a bridge over a river, the surface glazed with ice, ghost-pale and glowing against the growing dark. It has begun to snow lightly – thick, delicate flakes that twirl through your headlight beams like confetti – but it isn’t sticking to the roads yet.

  In the passenger seat, you notice the boy peering sideways at you, while pretending not to. You catch his eye, put a palm on your chest, and introduce yourself. Saying your name, sounding out the syllables for him, in a slow and simple way that reminds you of your Czech language class. Ei-ra. That’s me, you say. Then you point to him, tap his sternum, ask him what he’s called. He understands enough to get your meaning. He says something that sounds like Go-goal. Gogol. You repeat it aloud, to make sure you’ve got it right: Gogol. And he nods – your pronunciation, at least, is correct. Such an odd name. An ugly name, for an ugly boy. And something familiar about it, though at first you can’t recall what.

  It’s only later, after minutes of silence, when you’ve stopped thinking about it, that the memory resurfaces: a famous author. One of Tod’s dead Russians. You know nothing about him, except a phrase Tod was fond of quoting, with ironic relish: we have all emerged from Gogol’s overcoat. It didn’t mean anything to you then, and doesn’t mean anything now.

  This particular Gogol doesn’t have an overcoat. He doesn’t have any coat. Just a dirty, torn hoody. He is still huddled in it, even though you have the heater on high, as if the chill in him runs too deep, can’t be warmed by ordinary means. You know that feeling. That sense of being bitterly cold, benumbed. Emotionless.

  Maybe the two of you have more in common than you think.

  disneyland

  Your instructions are to drive straight to the inn on this side of the border. But you haven’t eaten since morning, and the boy, Gogol, looks as if he may not have eaten for days, weeks. His entire life. Not eaten properly, anyway.

  At the roadside, a cluster of buildings rises up, takes shape. A truck stop, petrol station, and café – the same trio of structures you’d find back home. You put the indicator on, turn in. Parked in the fuel bay is a beat-up lorry, the hubcaps rusting, the canvas sides streaked with oil. Only a handful of cars parked at the café, beneath its blue awning. A glowing neon sign with Cyrillic script, which you assume says Open. The lights are on, at least. People move about inside.

  You park beside a pile of ploughed snow, waist-high, the contours melted like slag, and refrozen into ice. You turn to Gogol, who is regarding you apprehensively. You mime the act of eating, as if biting an invisible sandwich. ‘Food,’ you say. ‘Time for food.’

  He doesn’t get out of the car until you go around to his side, open the door. Then he creeps forth – all his movements cautious, wary. As if he thinks the ice on the tarmac underfoot is only an inch thick. As if the two of you are standing on a river, at risk of plunging through, like the skaters Marta mentioned, into the rushing, frigid waters. Tumbling into that furiously silent void.

  You take his hand, feel the smallness of it in yours. Tell him it’s okay.

  The café is a portable building, of the kind that can be hauled anywhere on a trailer. Just four clapboard sides, a flat, sloping roof. A box. As you step in, a bell tinkles above the door. There is enough room for a counter, a kitchen, a till, and a handful of plastic tables. At the counter sit two men, dressed in jeans, boots, fur-lined down jackets. Truckers. Nobody is sitting at the tables. It’s early evening – too early for any dinner crowd. If the place ever gets a dinner crowd.

  You sit at a table, look at the laminated menu, peeling and sticky with grease. The items are all hand-written. No helpful photos depicting the dishes, like in the tourist restaurants in Prague. Without thinking you ask Gogol what he wants, and he looks at you blankly. You show him the menu and his expression doesn’t change. Possibly – probably – he doesn’t read.

  You take the menu with you to the till. A woman about your age is standing at it, in a white blouse and apron, the front stained brown with grease and sauce and oil. She is hefty, muscular – her sleeves rolled up to show her forearms. You address her in English – you have no choice. You gesture at the menu, at the boy, and yourself. You say you want food. Fries o
r chips and burgers, and Coke. Assuming Coke should be universal. The woman listens to all this curiously. She looks to you, to the boy. Shrugs. Makes a rubbing motion with her thumb and forefinger. Money. Yes. Of course. Money. The spending money Mario gave you included some Ukrainian currency, some hryvni. For breaks like this.

  You do the tourist thing – the hopeless gesture of travellers everywhere. You hold out a fan of notes, let her take her pick. She does so shrewdly, plucking two hundreds. She does not offer change. If the hryvnia is about as valuable as the koruna, she’s taken just over five quid. Reasonable enough. She puts the money in the till, reties her apron, and waddles into the kitchen. You return to your table, feeling foolish, not as smart as you’d like to be. But you aren’t perfect, and besides, there’s no harm done. This time.

  Gogol is waiting quietly. You sit across from him. Get a real look at him for the first time. He is almost unbelievably filthy – the dirt visible all over his face, in his hair. A layer of it, like make-up. More evident here, beneath the fluorescent lights. The dark hoody is soiled, stained, torn. His mouth is tight, always closed. One of his lips slightly twisted. His eyes hard, wary. He is not a beautiful or handsome child – not a classic diamond in the rough. Despite that, despite the obvious hardships of his upbringing, he has a lingering air of innocence about him. A mistreated, abused child. But still a child.

  He has trouble meeting your gaze. He sits and stares at his hands, on the table in front of him. Still clutching his pieces of paper. You want to ask about that. You want to know. But the Cokes arrive, just then. In old-fashioned glass bottles. Placed down unceremoniously, but not rudely, by the server. Gogol’s even has a straw in it.