Your Still Beating Heart

by Tyler Keevil

  You and Gogol go upstairs to your room. The bedroom has odd cedar wall panelling – chalet-style – that smells of resin, but not unpleasantly so. The bed is wood-framed as well. A glass-panelled door leads to a private veranda. The sun is setting and the light is fading, going, but beyond the veranda you can see a ravine dropping down to a stream. The dark sheen of the water rippling with movement. Not iced over. That sticks in your mind: a tiny detail. How the rivers have frozen, but not this little stream. Something to do with the flow rate?

  There’s no TV, which is a disappointment for Gogol. You can tell. But you assure him you’ll have dinner, and play games. What games you don’t say. You don’t have any games. But you can make up a game. Something. After you make a phone call. You tell him you will be just a minute, and go into the bathroom, shut the door.

  The phone has been off. The idea being that, if they should phone, they will assume (or are meant to assume) that you are out of signal range, rather than simply letting it ring.

  Now you switch it on.

  You have signal. They have called – twice – but there are no messages. Both calls came from Valerie’s number, not Mario’s. But it’s Mario you call now. He answers on the first ring. He must have heard from them. They are worried, so he is also worried.

  They are, of course, right to be worried.

  But Mario tries to put a brave face on it, in the first instance. Calls you his snow queen, tells you he hopes everything is going well. Says that he’s heard you’ve crossed the border, that you’ll be arriving in Prague soon. You tell him then. You tell him that you will not be delivering the boy to them. That you are reneging on the deal.

  Your voice is level as you say this. You are looking at yourself in the mirror above the sink, as if talking to your own reflection, not him. He doesn’t answer for a long time. When he does, it’s not rage, but a whimper. A whine. ‘You cannot do this,’ he says. ‘You have to hold up your end. They will kill you. They will kill me.’

  You tell him that if you deliver the boy – you never use his name – they will kill him. They will cut him up for his organs.

  This is just a guess, a test. You still don’t know, until Mario tries to explain. Ineptly. Pathetically. That it is not all his organs they want. It is just his heart. His heart. To save another child, you see? A girl. A girl who is dying. This is not the kind of thing they do often, or ever before. It is a one-off deal. To save the child of a friend, or a family member. A life for a life.

  You tell him you’re sorry to hear that (though you’re not sure it’s true), but that it doesn’t work that way. Life, death. Valerie and Pavel don’t get to choose. You don’t go on to say that death is simply out there, waiting, deciding at random, on a whim. You don’t want to get into a philosophical discussion about it. Mario wheedles and cajoles, reminds you that you were the one who came to him, that you asked him for the job. He did you a favour.

  ‘And I’m telling you this as a favour,’ you say, ‘to give you time to get away. They’re expecting me soon. You’ve got maybe half an hour, an hour, before they guess what’s happening. Go, now. Leave Prague. Run. We’re already running. It’s the only way.’

  Mario says ‘but’ and then you hang up on him.

  You put the phone aside. You look at yourself in the mirror above. A blotch of red on either cheek. The slow creep of colour returning. A bit of fury and fear. You twist the cold tap, use both hands to scoop handfuls of water to your face. It’s ice cold – coming in from the pipes outside. You slurp it, too, feeling the chill on your teeth. You have to stay calm, cool, clinical. You have to be what Mario believed you to be.

  As for him, you’ve given him a chance. That’s all you could do. And maybe more than he deserves.

  You twist off the tap, pat dry your face with a hand towel. Turn to the door. Gogol is waiting patiently for you, sitting on the bed, dangling his legs and kicking the side of the baseboard idly with his heels. You smile at him, leaving the phone and everything else back there in the bathroom. Food, you tell him. Time for food, and games.

  games

  The game you come up with for Gogol is very simple. You’re limited by the language barrier, and to games you can make easily. There’s a note pad next to the telephone, and you use it to create a series of cards, twenty-four in total. On each card you draw a shape: a diamond, a circle, a square, a star, a triangle. Twelve shapes in total, and two of each type. The simplest game of all: memory. The function that makes us human. Or so they say. Or so you’ve heard, somewhere. Memory being vital to our identity, our sense of self, our capacity to consciously learn from experience, to develop and adapt.

  In preparation for playing, you and Gogol sit opposite one another on the bed, which is covered in a floral-patterned duvet, made from crisp nylon. You lay out the rudimentary cards face down, in a five-by-four rectangle. Gogol intently watches you place each one, as if he can perceive the images on the undersides, through telepathic force. To demonstrate the game, you turn over one card, and then another. A triangle and a square. You hold them up side-by-side, comparing, saying the name of each, and shake your head. Not the right match. You put them back, try again, until you find another triangle and hold the pair together. Triangle and triangle. Gogol nods vigorously, showing he understands.

  Just before the game begins in earnest, there is a knock at the door. This startles you – sends a flare of fear through you – until you remember the food, the order you placed. Still. Best to be cautious. Before answering, you call to whoever it is – just a minute – and open the veranda door. You put Gogol’s shoes on his feet, guide him outside. You tell him, calmly, that if anything bad happens (not defining what you mean by this) he is to run. You point to the woods, act out the motion of running.

  You know this is hopeless: where would he go? How would he outrun them? But it seems safer than having him standing right there when you open the door. Which you do. Cautiously – just an inch, standing to one side of it, with your left knee under the doorknob. Ready to lean in with your full weight.

  But it’s the owner. Smiling tentatively. She has a tray in her hands, with two plates, covered in tarnished silver cloches. You imagine her putting the tray down, lifting a cloche, pulling out a gun. But, of course, she only places the tray on the large work desk that doubles as a table, and turns to you, nods. You can’t tell if she’s expecting a tip and when you hold out a one hundred koruna note she seems mildly amused.

  But she takes it, then pauses, looks around. The bathroom door is open. Gogol is not in the room, not in the bathroom. She looks at you, asks about your boy. You hold a finger to your lips, tell her you’re playing games. Hide and seek. It is his turn to hide, yours to find him. She smiles tolerantly. Folds and pockets the note. Lets herself out.

  When you step on to the veranda, Gogol is not there.

  You feel a sick flutter in your chest, a double-beat of your heart. You scan the woods. Maybe he misinterpreted your explanation, thought you were telling him to run. But it’s dark, and all you can see are the shadows of trees, shrubs.

  ‘Gogol,’ you call softly. ‘Gogol?’

  Rustling movement beneath you. And then, from under the veranda – from a space under the veranda that looks far too small for anything but an animal to fit in – appears a dirty face, followed by his shoulders, the rest of his body. Wriggling and squirming. Emerging worm-like into the night. When he’s out, he rolls over, his hands rich with muck, his new clothes smeared. He grins at you, pleased by his deception. You are too. It may well have worked, if it had been them. Much better than your idea of running.

  It occurs to you that he’s more experienced at this than you. At evading, at avoiding those who mean him harm. At being smart. He was born into it. It’s his whole life. To the extent it’s instinctive. He’s not just your charge, but your ally. Your helper. Your accomplice.

  You hold out a hand, pull him to his feet. Crouch to lift him back up to the veranda.

  Inside, you wash hi
s hands – scrubbing the mud off them – before sitting him down to eat. He eyes his plate of goulash and dumplings suspiciously, perhaps recalling the food at the diner, the nauseating effect it had on him. You’ve had snacks on the go since then, but not another full meal. You explain to him that he must eat slowly. And eat less. You remove half his portion, shovel it on to one of the side dishes. You cup your hands around what remains without touching the food, as if measuring the size, and then hold your hands up to his belly. Demonstrating how the size is comparable. You give him the thumbs up, and he smiles.

  You spoon a dumpling from your plate, take a bite, make a big deal about chewing it, slowly. Swallowing deliberately. Taking your time. Being calm. He does the same, with the first dumpling. But as he continues the pace soon accelerates, your advice forgotten – the dumplings disappearing down his gullet in ravenous gulps. Unable to help himself. But rationing his portion seems to have worked. He is not immediately sick, at least. Though once finished he does lay back and hold his belly, as if worried it might burst, or rebel again.

  After dinner you leave the plates and tray outside the door, and return to your game. Now you’re able to play it properly, without interruption. You take turns choosing pairs of cards, trying to remember, trying to find a match. Stars and triangles, circles and squares. Haphazardly scattered. Random patterns. Together, you slowly bring order to it. A very human endeavour. Sifting through, sorting, matching, arranging. Each pair being placed in a set together, and laid out in front of you. The simple act of categorising, of recognising similarities, is so natural, so fundamental to existence. Another way of making meaning.

  Lately, you’ve been thinking more and more about this. About the meanings we make, about the conventions we’ve created to provide us with purpose. The rituals of prayer and worship and congregation that constitute our religions. The complex series of laws, set in stone – and then reset – that maintain order. The lines drawn on maps to establish political boundaries, national borders: utterly rigid, yet prone to change and flux. The customs specific to each culture and society, seemingly unique but also often similar, universal. The clocks and calendars we’ve devised to determine our concept of time. Sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour and twenty-four hours in a day and three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, except for those leap years that reveal the whole scheme as a ruse, a construct. But regardless we stick to it: a certain number of years spent in primary school, secondary school, college or university. Then into the workplace: minimum wage and eight-hour work days and five-day weeks and weekends and statutory holidays and monthly paydays and annual tax returns and P60s and P45s and pension plans and eventual retirement. All while adhering to other social norms: meals out and pub nights and first dates, and hen dos and marriage vows and baby showers, and Halloween fancy dress and Christmas parties and New Year’s resolutions. All these established but wholly arbitrary traditions, accepted so blithely, regarded so gravely. All these routines and regulations and rules society has developed over time, to help us navigate our way through existence, and give it some meaning. Just like the rules in that old board game – The Game of Life – though at least in the game everything is simplified, and streamlined.

  These thoughts are not new, nor particularly novel – just the meanderings of your mind while playing this game, gazing at shapes on white cards. And the thoughts have distracted you: it’s your turn. Gogol is waiting.

  You pick two cards. A star and a circle. No luck. In playing against a child, in categorising these basic cards, you expected to be merely pretending to play, while allowing Gogol to win by finding most of the pairs. But after Gogol picks out two triangles, two circles, and then two stars, in as many turns, you realise you must focus if you’re to compete, let alone win. But you don’t win – not in the first game, nor the second, nor third. Gogol doesn’t make a single mistake, never forgets where a card is once he has seen it. In comparison, your mind is leaky, creaky. The old model. This pleases you – for his sake – but also worries you. Each time you get a card wrong. Each time you lose against a child.

  What else have you forgotten?

  What else have you overlooked?

  consequences

  You’ve forgotten about them. And the phone. Until they call. Why didn’t you turn it off, throw it out? After hanging up on Mario, you simply put it aside, left it on the counter next to the sink. A black plastic shell. Innocuous as a cockroach. Lurking among the hand towels.

  You don’t even notice it as you cut Gogol’s hair: standing in front of the sink, snipping the tufts. You can’t do anything about the oddness of that, about a boy so malnourished his hair is thinning, patchy. But cutting it shorter hides that. Tod liked to wear his hair short for the same reason. He worried about losing it, going bald. It ran in the family. His hairline had started to recede. You found ads popping up, on your home laptop, for Regaine, for hair treatment clinics in London. The fear of aging, those small signs of mortality. You smile fondly at the memory. Tod. You are used to cutting hair, since he liked you to cut his. He was fussy and particular about it, never satisfied. But he preferred what you did to going to the barber. He was embarrassed, you think, for them to comment on it, talk about it.

  So you are an old hand when it comes to giving Gogol a trim. Gogol watches himself in the mirror as you work this transformation. His black hair is silken, soft. Wisps and tendrils floating down into the sink, where they form complex patterns. You wonder if there are any traditions, any cultures, that used hair to tell fortunes. Like reading tea leaves, Tarot cards, or bone throwing. Hair seems a reasonable option, these delicate filament extensions of a person, carrying DNA, a genetic identity, removed and left to fall in prophetic patterns.

  When it’s done, the alteration is subtle but significant. As with the change in clothes, it makes him look more ordinary, regular, average. Hard to even notice how thin his hair is. Maybe it will grow back fuller, invigorated by a better diet, by protein and vitamins. His hair will grow and he will grow as well. You’ll make him better. You’ll make him a genuine, actual boy.

  You catch yourself thinking these thoughts, then reject them. He doesn’t have to be made into anything. He doesn’t have to fit a mould, look like a standard ‘type’ or model of boy. This a hard lesson. This something you’ll have to learn – to accept that he has suffered. And not everything can be made better, not all wounds heal completely. There will be scars. Far more than the burns on his body.

  After his haircut it’s your turn. Having hacked off your ponytail on the go, the results look less than elegant. In the mirror, with more time, you improve it. Evening out the back. Cutting away your fringe. Shortening everything, all around. The result isn’t a professional job, but you’re happy with it – short and spikey. Punked. You haven’t had hair like this – so little of it – since high school. Your face looks narrower without the hair, your forehead higher. Not a new you, but definitely a different you.

  Gogol sits on the toilet, watching. He seems content just to watch, to be. There’s no restlessness in him, no manic little boy energy. He’s not like other children in that way. You try not to dwell too much on what may have made him this still – his tense and instinctive wariness, watchfulness. Like the trick of a prey animal, avoiding the attention of predators. A stick insect. A butterfly, or moth. So much about him you don’t know, may never know.

  When the trim is done, your hair lies mingled with his in the sink, a tangled nest of strands. You scoop it up in a ball, deposit it in the bin. Next, fill the sink with water. Lean forward to dunk your head, wet your hair. Pour the blonde dye, rub it vigorously into your scalp, creating a shampoo-like lather. The directions say to wait for at least ten minutes.

  Gogol reaches for the bottle, looks at you shyly. Points at his own hair. Him too? You can’t think of a reason why not – and it might help disguise him. So you guide him to the sink, tilt his head forward, cup handfuls of the warm water over the back of his head, lettin
g it run through until his hair is soaked, stuck flat to his scalp. You massage the dye in gently, fingers spider-walking his scalp, stroking his eyebrows to cover them too, being careful not to get any on his forehead, in his eyes. He beams up at you, his hair full of white foam, unaccountably happy just to be trying it – even if he’s not sure what it does.

  You twist your wrist, point to your watch. Hold up all your fingers, fanned out – hoping to signify ten minutes. He seems to understand that you have to wait, and so the two of you do – with him on the toilet, and you perched on the edge of the bath. It’s so still and silent in the bathroom that you can hear the slow drip of water into the full sink, and even the faint tick of your watch, the second hand shaving seconds off the wait, the time, your life.

  When the phone rings it’s like an alarm. Abrasive, blaring.

  You spot it then, lying among the towels. Where it’s been all along. Waiting for you. There’s no need to answer it. You shouldn’t answer it. But you look at the display. You see that it’s Mario’s number, not Valerie’s. Maybe that’s why you answer it. Or maybe you answer because you need to know.

  You press accept. You don’t get the chance to say anything. The phone erupts with screaming. Screaming unlike any you’ve ever heard. The high-pitched, drawn-out shrieks of a human being in true pain. Closer to a pig or a lamb being slaughtered. A raw bleating.

  Then it fades, as if the phone is being moved away. A voice asks you if they have your attention. It’s Valerie, and you know then that Mario is dying, that he did the wrong thing. That he tried to go to them, explain to them. Cut a deal, make amends.

  Valerie tells you that you just heard the sound of a man being operated on without anaesthetic. Of seeing his own organs being removed while still alive. The kidneys first, then liver, and then – before death – the still beating heart. She tells you that this is what they are going to do to you. Unless you bring them the boy. Now.