Through Every Human Heart Read online

  Janice Brown has published five teenage novels and many short stories. Born in Paisley, she now lives in Central Scotland. She has taught Creative Writing in schools and colleges. She began writing her first adult novel, Hartsend while studying for her PhD in English Literature at Glasgow University. She and her husband have three grown up children and five grandchildren.

  By the same author

  Hartsend

  For young adults

  Sweet n’ Sour Summer

  Missing!

  Bad Company

  Relative Danger

  A Dangerous Place

  THROUGH EVERY HUMAN HEART

  Janice Brown

  First published in Great Britain and the

  United States of America 2015

  Sandstone Press Ltd

  PO Box 5725

  One High Street

  Dingwall

  Ross-shire

  IV15 9WJ

  Scotland.

  www.sandstonepress.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  © Janice Brown 2015

  The moral right of Janice Brown to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.

  The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.

  ISBN: 978-1-910124-49-9

  ISBN e: 978-1-910124-50-5

  Cover design by Rose Cooper, Valencia, Spain

  Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Postscript

  To Iain and Ruth Laing with love

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks to Graeme Cuthbertson and Ewen Maclean for all their help.

  ‘Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.’

  Alexander Solzhenitzyn, The Gulag Archipelago

  Prologue

  As they drove on through the gathering dusk, Feliks could still taste the bananas, still smell them on his fingers. He wanted to share the wonder of bananas with the woman beside him but it was impossible. Dina was concentrating on the road, cornering most carefully, never exceeding the speed limit, her hands always in the right position, as if trying to prove herself the perfect driver, to show herself in perfect control of this one thing when the rest of her world was in chaos. She hadn’t spoken a word for a long time now, apart from monosyllables in the store at the petrol station.

  Even if she got over her anger and began speaking to him again, she wouldn’t understand his enthusiasm. Safely packaged in their own smooth skins, highly nutritious, protected from dirt and germs, simple to open, simple to eat, bananas seemed to him to be the embodiment of honesty, almost miraculous in their simplicity and flair. He’d had them at home as a child. Specially imported at Christmas, they were green, hard and bitter. ‘You have to be patient, darling. Just a little longer.’ But they were so exotic one couldn’t wait, even though one still remembered last year’s stomach pain.

  He glanced over at her. No, she would take bananas for granted, like everything else in her life. In the West everything was taken for granted. Pure water, warm beds, freedom to say what you believed, and as many bananas as you wanted, flown in or shipped in, whichever it was, from their tropical home. He tried to supply the name of the tropical country, but his brain was too tired.

  I could live in such a country. I could bear that. I would sit in my backyard all day from dawn to sunset and live on bananas.

  He’d watched her relax in the store at the petrol station, glad of her sandwich, and afterwards, blowing like a child on the too-hot soup in its cardboard cup. Her face seemed to soften for a few moments, and he’d felt again how she seduced one’s attention – the unsettling, demanding vulnerability that she herself seemed so unconscious of. Now her lips were set in a grim little line.

  Since their first meeting he’d been running around like a headless chicken. He’d seen these often enough back home. Fresh from the axe, comical, tragic, the most absurd of sights in an absurd world. Well, this particular chicken had now done something. He’d tried to be heroic. Quite literally he’d given it his best shot.

  I don’t want to be a hero. I don’t want anyone’s worship. I don’t want to meet anyone’s needs or make their dreams come true.

  So what do you want, Feliks?

  A small house with a banana tree in the garden. Is that too much? One small house, one tree, out of the entire world?

  You want your own tree? What would you do, piss on it like a dog? Because that’s what you are, Feliks, a dog. A lame, headless chicken of a dog, in need of a tree to piss on.

  Chapter One

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Janek asked.

  ‘It’s cold in here,’ Lazslo told his boss. It was true, but it was a different sort of cold altogether that was chilling his soul. Memories from his childhood had ambushed him the moment they’d stepped out of the sunlight into this small mountain church, into the sweet-sick smells of tallow and incense, and dust under old pine benches. Twenty years flew from him, like startled sparrows from a bush. He was a child again, in short trousers and a shirt too tight around the neck, staring at a coffin which held what had been his grandfather, the first corpse he’d ever seen. He felt again the rising panic, the desperate desire to escape out into the June sunshine where some of his classmates were joyously, noisily kicking a ball against the poplar trees around the square. When he’d tried to pull free, Grandmother’s fingers had tightened on his.

  Janek shrugged. ‘You’re right. We won’t linger, I was simply curious.’ He turned back to the frescoes.

  Was this what they’d come to see? Clothed in sombre red and blue, with no gold to speak of and hardly any silver, all of the saints wore the same strained expression, as if they knew exactly how bad they’d looked when new, and how little faith they would inspire now that so many centuries had come and gone. In other regions, tourists came to visit and admire frescoes. There was no shortage of them. Only a few monasteries still functioned as such of course. Most were museums, though he’d
heard of one being turned into a hotel with a gourmet restaurant. This place was too unimportant to matter to anyone.

  Certainly Janek had made no attempt to find any human representative of the monastic community, though there were signs of life. A single candle burned at the front of the church. The white cloth on the altar looked clean. A brown clay vase held wild flowers: yellow pulsatilla and white marguerites. He looked up at the ceiling. Plain plasterwork, no coffered wood or intricate designs.

  So why were they here? For six hours with only one short break, he had driven from the capital through lush fields of barley, into forests of black, white and grey poplars, then aspen, loud with birdsong, and finally among pines trees on increasingly tortuous, and often shade-free mountain roads. Janek had slept for the latter part of the journey, or pretended to, waking in a strange mood as they neared their destination. He’d become oddly animated, talking rather a lot without saying anything of significance. He was city born and bred, and kept asking statistical questions about the countryside, most of which Lazslo couldn’t answer.

  The older man turned round. ‘Now, my dear, aren’t you going to ask me why we’ve come to Tavcaryeva?’

  ‘Why have we come?’

  ‘To dig up a corpse. There, I knew that would take your fancy. Confess yourself intrigued.’

  ‘I’m intrigued.’

  ‘Of course you are. Even in our line, we don’t dig up corpses every day. Now, what do you suggest we do with this corpse once we’ve brushed off the worms and fat white spiders? Come to that, what shall we do with the worms?’

  When his boss was in a mood like this, no answer was right. He had long ago learned to look diffidently into the air. Sometimes Janek let it pass, and sometimes he didn’t.

  ‘Oh don’t agitate yourself, our corpse is alive. Shall we?’

  Outside, it had somehow become late afternoon. Their path went along a brief avenue of not very tall white poplars, then under a low stone archway into a walled kitchen garden, larger than he expected. It was south facing, criss-crossed by elderly and very gnarled fruit trees, plum and apple he recognised, their fruit still forming. Between them two Angry Birds darted suddenly, one after the other, in well-practised zigzags, from one side of the orchard up into the same tree, their gold heads and black wing feathers etched clear against the pale peach breasts. The light itself here seemed golden, almost dreamlike, though after a moment he detected a faint smell of something like creosote on the air. There was a large compost heap against the far wall, and four long raised beds. He guessed the planks had been recently re-coated. He couldn’t quite make out what was growing in the reddish soil. Potatoes, beets, onions, he supposed, though this high up, everything would need a fair bit of manure. The winter would be cold. He could hear the squawking and clucking of hens somewhere beyond the high wall. Chicken for supper, perhaps. Not so very bad.

  ‘There he is,’ Janek said.

  The priest was young, about his own age, bearded, strongly built. He was in clerical garb, but had stripped to the waist, working with a spade in a row of small but healthy-looking purple cabbages.

  As they came closer, the man straightened.

  ‘How are you, Feliks?’ Janek said.

  Lazslo looked more closely and felt something inside him rip apart.

  No one spoke. A loose cloud of Large Copper butterflies flew gaudily round about them then flew on. The leaves on the fruit trees were completely motionless, as if they were too preoccupied with sunlight to do anything but breathe.

  Finally Janek said, ‘The monastic life must agree with you, Feliks. I see you’ve developed a fine pair of biceps, whatever else you’ve been up to.’

  ‘And what have you been up to? Still licking my father’s ass?’

  The spade sliced into the ground with a blow that would have severed a spine. Janek made a slight tutting sound.

  ‘Come now, don’t be like that. We’ve come an exceedingly long way. I thought you’d be glad to see some visitors from outside. And I was sure you two would be overjoyed at seeing one another again. Father Konstantin has given us the use of his room,’ he added. ‘We’ll wait for you there, Feliks. Don’t be too long. Lazslo?’

  Barely able to see his surroundings, Laszlo followed. Every moment of the way he listened and hoped and kept hoping. But there were no footsteps behind him, no movement, no calling of his name.

  Chapter Two

  In the wash-house Feliks pumped fresh water into the bowl, then splashed it over his head and arms and upper body. He stood upright, took the piece of canvas from its hook and began to rub himself dry. Then with a curse he flung it away, and smashed his fists against the sink. For a moment or two he stood there, before sliding down onto his knees. Janek’s face took shape in the throbbing darkness, and behind it, Lazslo’s, white as a bare root.

  Lazslo of all people. What had Janek told him to get him here? What threats? What promises? For all his irritating ways, there had always been something endearing about him. They’d nicknamed him Squirrel because of his reddish hair and his amazing ability to remember things, like a squirrel hiding its nuts away, although someone pointed out that squirrels forgot many times where they’d hidden food, and Lazslo forgot nothing, so it wasn’t altogether apt. The nickname stuck because he was such a fearful soul, so nervous, always darting glances sideways, waiting for the sky to fall on them.

  Why had Janek brought him? Why had they come?

  He had not foreseen this. He wasn’t ready. The walls that surrounded him seemed to melt, becoming what scientists said they had always been, not solid, but merely atoms moving at great speed.

  His hands were shaking. Really shaking. He almost laughed. Once upon a time he’d been ready for anything. Perfectly in control, with no self-doubt, no regrets, and none of the pointless introspection he’d seen and despised in those around him.

  More than three years ago when he’d arrived at Tavcarjeva, he’d been close to death, a wreck, physically and mentally, or so they told him. (Was it late winter or early spring? The brothers would know; he wasn’t certain.) They had nursed him back to life. ‘Death is not an accident,’ they said. ‘It is God’s doing.’ What they wouldn’t say was how he’d reached them, or who had borne him to their isolated mountain top, to sensory deprivation, silence, darkness and vacancy, an emptiness that gradually eased its way into one’s bones. Plain food and plain chant became his existence. When eventually he could move about, they’d suggested the garden. It had been turning increasingly to wilderness before his coming. He’d been sent by God, they told him. This he doubted, but let them believe what they wanted to. They were so old and fragile, so well-meaning, solemn and undemanding, and he didn’t have the energy to argue. Then by the time he could think straight, he found they had crept into his bones along with the silence. He couldn’t bear to disappoint them or undermine their certainties.

  He’d begun to work in the garden, weeding, pruning, sweeping leaves, then onto the harder work. Seeds and plants had arrived, some had taken, some hadn’t. The fruit trees, especially the plums, had astonished everyone. There had even been an attempt at jam.

  But while the days had become bearable, the nights had become harder for quite some time. Memories returned. In the dark his former companions came to him, with bemused, bewildered faces. Anna came to him. Go away, he told her. You shouldn’t be here, you’re dead. You know you’re dead. And though in his dreams he invoked the names of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and all the Saints he could think of, they did nothing to help. If such beings existed, they were all on her side. They knew why she was dead. They knew whose fault it was.

  The months had passed and when word of the regime’s fall reached the tiny village and its monastery, it seemed to meander in most casually, as unremarkable as the smell of supper’s barley soup. Ageing, yet somehow untroubled by age, the brothers seemed to breathe a communal sigh. God’s doing. Governments and ideologies were passing vanities. Eternal truths, prayer and silence were all that m
attered, and ultimately, only silence. Tavcarjeva, isolated, unimportant, faint pinprick on a faded map, held all safe. He had been lulled into its careless waking slumber.

  Time to wake up, Feliks Berisovic. Whether you are ready or not.

  Chapter Three

  The Abbot’s room refused to belong to any century in particular. Neither mediaeval nor modern, it appeared to Lazslo to succeed in what seemed an earnest attempt to imitate the sanctuary itself in drabness and mediocrity. The open window looked out onto a grassy expanse, with troughs of nettles and herbs, then to the wooden fence and the narrow approach road. He caught mint, lavender and something that might have been fennel, but most likely wasn’t, not at this altitude. There was one cushioned armchair near the fireplace. It might be worth something, if it wasn’t a reproduction. He could tell Janek was thinking the same thing. The material was tapestry, picturing the grape harvest, little mediaeval men and women in groups accepting tankards and carrying baskets of fruit to the cart. Very traditional, often copied. A little odd for it to be here.

  Janek seated himself after inspecting the room. He made a face, obviously finding the armchair less comfortable than he had expected. There was a bare stone fireplace, and beside it an unsafe-looking electric fire, encased in steel. An oak bookcase, without glass, held a dozen or so hardback books with illegible titles on the spines. A matching table and four upright high-backed chairs, a couple of paintings on wood, and a floor lamp with a white fringed shade on a metal stand were all the other furniture. In contrast to all this serious poverty, an ornate silver coffee pot and matching cups had been set out for them on a silver tray. The coffee proved to be excellent.