I am here to escape. To forget. To recharge.
Slávka looks across at me and smiles, not saying anything. I reach out and touch her hand, and then turn back to look at the mountains ahead.
We come to a T-junction and turn on to a road that Slávka informs me runs along the base of the Tatras Mountains, linking all the small towns and villages together.
For a while we drive in silence, a comfortable silence, each of us enjoying the scenery and the summer’s afternoon, such a stark contrast to the busy city we left behind only hours before.
“In summer,” Slávka eventually says, “…here is full of Slovak, Czech or Polish people, all come to walk and climb in Mountains. In winter, is very good for skiing. This is where I learn for ski when I was little girl.”
“Can you ski well?”
“All Slovak children can ski! Can you?”
“Yes. But not brilliantly. Enough to get from the top of the hill to the bottom in one piece.”
“Good. One day I maybe bring you here for ski in winter.”
“I’d love that. But only if you will promise to give me some personal tuition.”
“Perhaps…if you lucky man.”
We are both silent for a while. Slávka speaks next.
“Andrew…” she starts, glancing over at me, momentarily taking her hand of the wheel and resting it on mine. “I was thinking a lot on airplane…I still think it important you try again for find mother. If you want… I will try help you.”
I look at her, wondering how best to reply.
“Maybe. I mean, maybe you are right. After you mentioned it in London I did think about it again, and I think that maybe I should try again.”
We are entering a small village now, a sign announcing Stary Smokovec.
“So, what does your sister think?” she asks, and my mind flashes back to the telephone conversation I had with Hannah last Monday night.
“It’s strange. Trying to find my mum was really my idea. Hannah wasn’t particularly keen on the idea in the first place, and she always thought it was best to forget about her, but after a while she changed her mind. When I finally told her what happened when I went to try and see her, she actually sounded disappointed. She even suggested that maybe I should write a letter to my aunt and ask her to forward it to my mum, and then see what happens.”
“Is good idea. You should do this...”, Slávka nods, whilst steering the car into a car park. “Okay, before we go for hotel, I take you for walk for seeing my favourite place in Tatras.”
“And where is that?”
“Aha…that is surprise, but you will see soon. Follow me.”
We walk from the car park through the small town and follow a well-worn path through the forest, eventually arriving at a cable car station. We buy some tickets, and after waiting five minutes for the next one to arrive, we climb aboard and are soon rising rapidly up the side of the mountain.
As we gain altitude, Slávka starts pointing excitedly to distant points on the horizon, telling me what they are.
“So where is your town?” I ask.
“Over there, in this direction. But Bardejov is too far for you see from here. It must take one and half hours for driving there.”
The view that is slowly unfolding before us is truly magnificent. The beautiful Tatra mountains quickly dissolve into small rolling hills covered in dense pine forest, which ripple out on a flat expanse of land that extends as far as the eye can see. Slávka smiles at me.
“Are you glad you are here, Andrew?” she asks, cocking her head to one side, and wrapping her arms around mine.
“Yes.” I reply. “Yes, I am. I’m glad I decided to come.”
Which is true, although when Slávka first suggested I join her on her trip home to Slovakia I did originally say no. I think that at the time when she first mentioned it, it just struck me as too big a step, too much commitment for us so early in our relationship. I hadn’t even kissed her yet. In fact, I still haven’t, but over the past week we have spent most of our free time with each other and if it wasn’t for her, I don’t know how I would have got through the last few days. Slávka has been my salvation.
Although it’s more than that. The truth is that I absolutely love being with her. I feel something for her that I have never really felt for another woman. Her personality, her looks, her interests, …her intellect; she is probably the cleverest woman I have ever met.
When I came to London, the last thing on my mind was to meet another woman, but there is something about Slávka that is intoxicating. Something special that draws me to her more and more, every time I see her.
I think we can both sense that there is something very special that could develop between us. I know that I am acutely aware of it, so she must sense it too. Which is why I am so scared to kiss her: why, at the end of every evening when the moment arrives, and the pressure to act, to do something, to take her in my arms and complete the connection…that is why I back down every time, why I avoid that next step, and why I protect myself by just kissing her on the cheek or giving her a cuddle.
I am scared. So scared.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about this over the past week. Normally it takes a year or two for me to get to the stage in a relationship where I start to ‘fuck’ it up, deliberately or subconsciously: when I realise that the easiest way to prevent myself from getting in over my head and from falling too deeply in love, to stop exposing myself to the risks that being happy may bring with it, is simply to make the other woman want to end the relationship now. The perfect protection mechanism. Why worry about the possibility that the woman I love will leave me sometime in the future, when it’s so much easier to force them into a corner and make them end it now? Why procrastinate until the pain is far worse? Why not get her to do now what she may do tomorrow anyway?
Thanks to Kate, and to Hannah, I know myself now that this fear of commitment is the one true legacy that my parents have handed down to me as my birth right. But doing something about it, changing it, overcoming it…that means taking a risk. Putting myself into the hands of someone else.
Which, I realise, is probably where the expression ‘falling in love’ really comes from. If you let yourself fall in love, you have to be prepared to let go, to fall, not knowing…but hoping, trusting that the other person will catch you. And that is it. The root of the problem. I have to trust. I not only have to trust my own feelings, but above all, I have to trust Slávka.
The main reason Slávka originally asked me to come with her was to get me out of London, to help me get away from what happened with Sal. But in my mind, I couldn’t move from one bad situation to another that scared me even more.
All that, however, was before the day before yesterday: the morning of Thursday July 21st and another day that will go down in history. By seven o’clock that night, I had my ticket to Slovakia. By nine o’clock I was packed and ready to leave. And now I am here.
So why did I come?
The truth is that after what happened with Sal,…and then after Thursday, I knew that I couldn’t stay where I was. I had to get out of London. I had to leave. And the only person I could think of being with was Slávka. The only place I wanted to be, was anywhere she was.
Which, I think, is as good a reason as any.
My mind flashes back to London and what happened on Thursday morning...
Over the past two weeks - perhaps because I had not been sleeping as much as I would normally like and I am becoming overtired- I had been growing increasingly nervous about travelling in London, becoming more edgy each time I climbed aboard a tube train or a bus, always looking for anyone who might fit the picture of the stereotypical Muslim fundamentalist terrorists-Asian or Arabic looking men with beards who might be carrying a bag or a rucksack. Most other Londoners seem to have been getting back to normal, not worrying about the risks of another terror attack. But they were able to go home and forget about it each night, and were allowed to watch television, or go
out for a drink, or play with their children…I on the other hand, have had to go to the hospital each night to visit one of the victims, constantly being reminded of the bombings, constantly seeing pictures of Sal in my mind each time the tube doors close behind me and the underground train starts to disappear into an underground tunnel. For me there has been no respite, no forgetting, no let up in facing the constant, daily results of what happened on the 7th July 2005, …and could happen again.
Then, on Thursday morning, on July 21st, it all seemed to happen again. Once again we all found ourselves glued around the television sets in one of the board rooms at work. Once again we had watched in fear and awe as we learned that another four suicide bombers had boarded three packed underground trains and a bus in London, had shouted praises to a God-who I had until now always thought was a god of love and not a god of death and destruction- and had reached for their detonators to blow themselves up.
Almost supernaturally, none of the bombs went off. For some reason, the detonators blew up, but failed to explode the bombs packed into the rucksacks. According to the news there was also even a fifth bomber, but at the last minute he lost his will to die and apparently decided life was better than oblivion, so he ditched his bomb without trying to set it off.
Why did the bombs not go off? Did the God of Love step in and overpower the god of Destruction and Death? Or was it just a question of luck: good luck for us, but bad luck for the terrorists?
Whatever it was, it petrified me. It was the last straw. I found myself too scared to step foot on a tube again and I needed to get out of London. I needed… I needed an out.
So I called Slávka, and now I am here, with her.
.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks me, intoning the word ‘are’ heavily, and obviously making an effort to improve her English.
“Nothing…” I reply. “ No, that’s not true. I was just thinking how nice it is to be here,” and without thinking I lean across to her and kiss her on her cheek. She looks at me as if she may be expecting more, hesitates a moment, but then says nothing.
The cable car lurches slightly, and we both turn around to see that we have arrived at the end station, half-way up the side of the mountain.
“Come on,” I say, stepping out of the doors as they open and offering her my hand to help her out in an over exaggerated display of chivalry. “So where is this favourite place of yours then? Show me, I’m dying to see it.”
She takes my hand and we walk through the cable car station, outside and onto a path that takes us back down into the forest, winding its way down the side of a ravine.
The air is fresh and full of the scent of pine, the sun is shining high above from a clear blue sky, and within minutes all thoughts of London are far, far away. We are following a well worn path through the forest, the sound of running water getting louder and louder the further we descend, hand-in-hand,
After fifteen minutes, Slávka stops and reaches across to some small bushes beside the path, plucking some purple fruit of their short green branches. When she has gathered a handful, she turns and offers them to me, first putting a few in her own mouth to show me that they are safe.
“Blueberries…” she says. “In Slovakia, forest is full of them. They are delicious.”
Slávka is right on two accounts. First of all, they are delicious. Secondly, blueberries bushes are everywhere, carpeting the forest with free food that in London would cost a fortune for only the handful that Slávka has just given me.
Perhaps it is the Scotsman in me, unable to turn down a free feast, or maybe it is just that the opportunity to pick wild blueberries in a forest doesn’t exactly come around every day, but it is over half an hour before we carry on walking, our bellies full and lips and fingers completely purple.
The sound of running water becomes almost deafening, until eventually the path levels off, emerging at the bank of a fast flowing mountain river. We cross a small bridge and Slávka leads the way up the other side of the river, following another path upstream until suddenly we find ourselves standing by the side of a large turquoise rock-pool, deep enough to swim in, with a fantastic, tall waterfall cascading from high above and crashing down into the far side of the pool with awesome, breathtaking power.
I look up at the sun, smiling down on us from so far above. We are surrounded by the beautiful pine forest, the birds singing in the trees, the sound of nature, all around us.
I am stunned by it all.
“Do you like?” Slávka asks, squeezing my hand.
I look across at her, her eyes sparkling in the sun, her cheeks rosy, her lips the most beautiful purple I have ever, ever seen.
“Yes, I like.” I reply.
And I wrap my arms around her, pull her towards me, and kiss her like I have never kissed a woman before in all my life.
I let myself fall, unchecked and without fear, and Slávka catches me.
.
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Chapter Thirty Nine
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.
As we check into the Hotel, there is a moment of nervousness and potential embarrassment whilst I wonder what the sleeping arrangements are going to be. As the receptionist reaches behind her to pick up the room key, I am both disappointed and pleased to find out that Slávka has booked two separate rooms.
Slávka hands me my key, smiling cheekily, knowing what I am thinking.
“See, you are safe tonight,” she laughs.
On the third floor, we open the doors to our respective rooms, no 38 and 39, walking into the room and both exclaiming simultaneously at the fantastic views we have from our windows and balconies that face directly onto the mountains in front. I drop my bag on my bed, and hurry back out of the room into Slávka’s room, bumping into her in the doorway as she rushes to meet me with the same idea.
“What a fantastic view!” I say, grabbing her hand and dragging her into my room. She pulls back a second, resisting.
“Oh,…no…it’s okay,” I almost stutter. “I’m not going to try anything!”
“Why not?” she asks, letting go of my hand and stepping back out of my room and disappearing out of sight for a second. I am just beginning to curse myself for what must be a big misunderstanding, when I hear her door closing and she reappears in my doorway, her key in her hand.
“…I just want to close my door. Now, first you show me view,…” she says, stepping into my room and closing the door behind her, walking over to me and kissing me passionately. “Then…,” she says, as we surface for air a few moments later, “...then I give you full medical examination to see effect of mountain air on Scottish man.” she laughs. “…if you want…” she adds nervously, almost as an afterthought.
I pull her towards me, kissing her again. “I thought you said, you were a doctor? If that’s what the doctor orders, who am I to complain?”
I have always been a fan of the British National Health Service, but during my stay at Hotel Kontakt, I am impressed not only by the splendid room service and hospitality that I experience in a Slovakian hotel, but also by the level of care and attention that Slovakian doctors are prepared to offer foreign visitors.
.
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Over the next few days, Slávka shows me her beloved Tatras: we catch the cable car up to the top of the mountains, and then walk back down through the forests to the bottom, picking more blueberries, and small, wild strawberries en-route; she shows me the Olympic ski-jumps at Stary Smokovec, where we catch the cute little local train that shuttles back and forwards along the base of the mountains, and we get off and on at several places, exploring various little towns, all of which are attractive mountain spa-resorts by summer, but functional ski-resorts in winter.
We visit the local city of Poprad, and explore the old town with its typical Slovakian style buildings, each one in the market square painted a bright yellow, orange, blue, green, cream or light brown, but looking stupendous when viewed
all together juxtapositioned against each other. She takes me into the local churches and cathedrals, showing me a typical Greek Orthodox church, explaining to me that as child under the communist era, she was christened in secrecy by candlelight at her grandmother’s house one night, by a priest who risked severe punishment if he was caught.
During the day we eat in little mountain huts, or Chata’s, and in the evening Slávka takes me to her favourite restaurants and introduces me to typical Slovakian food.
And at night time, we make love.
.
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On the Tuesday evening we are just finishing one of her favourite Slovak traditional meals - brynzove halusky-, which she explains to me is made of potatoes and flour that is mixed together to form small round dumplings, which are then cooked in hot water and mixed with soft cheese made from sheep’s milk. I think it is the first time I have ever had cheese made from sheep’s milk, but then again, in the past few days I have done a lot of things for the very first time. Slávka is introducing me to a world of firsts, and she is a good teacher. Which is perhaps not so surprising, since she comes from a family of teachers.
“So,” I say to her. “There is something that I have been wanting to ask you.”
“Okay, what is it?” she asks, taking a sip of her Saris beer to wash down the last mouthful of halusky.
“Your English is really excellent, but sometimes you make some simple mistakes, and I was wondering if you wanted me to correct you or not? To help improve your English?”
“Absolutely, Andrew. Please. Please. I must improve English. Sorry if I make mistakes but no-one is telling me when I say wrong words, so I never get better.”
“Good, because there is one thing that you do that I just don’t understand. You often say the word ‘for’ instead of ‘to’ and you never, ever say the word “the” before a word. Or “an” or “a”. Why not?”
“Aha. I have simple explanation for this. Sorry, I have a simple explanation for this,” she says, immediately correcting herself and laughing. “In Slovak language…”
The Sleeping Truth : A Romantic Thriller (Omnibus Edition containing both Book One and Book Two) Page 27