Through Every Human Heart Read online

  ‘Actually I trained as a nurse originally,’ she told him.

  He took this as permission to describe the fracture and surgery in detail, including the costs.

  Whatever her destiny was, it hadn’t been nursing. That had just brought out the worst in her. Being a PA was more satisfying. She was learning so much. Irene was teaching her about aesthetics, what worked and what didn’t and why, and the exposure to colour and creativity made her feel much happier about life.

  Just as she was wondering how to detach herself, she caught sight of Irene, gesturing her towards their table. The music faded and a man with a deep bass voice was announcing on the microphone that the main business of the evening was about to begin, and please give a warm welcome to your host for the evening, who was the comedian she didn’t like. There was an enthusiastic round of applause.

  Mr Tartan Tie reached into his pocket for a card. ‘In case you ever want to speculate.’

  ‘Speculate?

  ‘Investment advice.’

  ‘Oh right. If I ever come into some money.’ She smiled back. As if she would. As if that was what he meant.

  She gave him a nice but non-committal wave and seated herself at her place, studying the programme. When she looked up, the Great Indian Bustard on the wall seemed to be looking down its long beak at her with a dour and disapproving eye.

  Chapter Five

  Feliks closed the door behind him. He looked first at Lazslo but he seemed fascinated by the stone floor, and didn’t look up. There was a rich smell of coffee in the air. Not for him perhaps. Janek was playing with the lid of the silver coffee pot, tracing its fine Byzantine lines. There were only two cups on the tray. Definitely not for him then.

  Was he meant to speak first? He would not. He was used to silence now, and willing to bet he could endure it longer than Janek. And he was right.

  ‘Do sit down, Feliks. You make me nervous, hovering like that.’

  He’d been in this room before, but didn’t remember it well. He turned one of the chairs round, hitching his cassock above his trousers, so that he could sit astride, facing Janek over its back, as if he were the questioner, not the accused. Carefully he folded his arms, in case his hands betrayed him again.

  Janek got the symbolism at once, and stood up, stretching as if his back was stiff. He began moving around the room.

  ‘Such a long drive we’ve had to get here, so far from all the dust and grime. This high mountain air must be very beneficial, Feliks. For someone who’s been dead for almost four years, you look astonishingly robust.’

  Dead? So that was why he’d been left alone. How had it been done? He glanced at Lazslo, willing him to look round.

  ‘You didn’t know? How fascinating. You died and were buried, my dear. There was a decent crowd, suitably distressed, and snow falling in graceful sympathy on your coffin from a leaden sky. The Boss didn’t cry, but I could tell he was moved. There were no photographs, but you had an inch or two in the newspaper. If they could see you now, I believe they’d be rather taken by your manly vitality. You must pause before every mirror you pass.’

  ‘They don’t have mirrors here. God looks into the soul and sees the truth.’

  ‘Is that so? What a quaint idea. And such a troublesome concept. The truth is always an abyss. Kafka, I believe. But you were always such an energetic thinker, such a ruthless pursuer of ideas.’

  ‘Whereas you were merely ruthless.’

  When had Janek started reading Kafka? It wasn’t at all likely. The man hadn’t the brain power.

  ‘Dear me, we are a little tetchy today. I thought this life was meant to induce serenity. Very different from your dashing past activities. It struck me as we stepped through the gate, that all this was exactly not you. You were always so keen on taking charge of things and now here you are in a tight little world of self-denial, where a hen is the closest you can get to a vagina. . . .’

  ‘Cut the shit. Why are you here?’

  ‘Your father sent me.’

  It came like a slap in the face. But it was possible. Janek had never had an original thought in his life. He was at the bookcase now, pulling out the fragile books, pretending to read the title pages.

  ‘You’ve never actually taken vows, I’m told. What stopped you? You could have risen to some kind of eminence here, surely. I can’t quite imagine you as our national copy of Rasputin, the beard isn’t nearly long enough for one thing.’ Finding his fingers dusty, he wiped them against one another, with an expression of distaste. ‘Enough of my prattling. As I said, your father wants to see you.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘But he does. I assure you, his very words. ‘Tell the laddie I need to see him.’

  ‘So where is he? In jail or on his death bed?’

  ‘What strange ideas you have, Feliks. Your father is where he always was. In charge. Oh, don’t glower at me like that. It’s perfectly true. The wording on the door is different, of course. We keep in step with the times.’

  Feliks looked from Janek to Lazslo, seeking confirmation. Or something. Anything. But Lazslo was still staring at the floor.

  ‘Why does he want to see me?’

  For the first time he sensed a hesitation. Janek seemed to be pausing to think, choosing his words instead of merely blabbing on.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  It sounded like the truth.

  ‘That must hurt,’ Feliks said. ‘After all these years.’

  ‘But you know how secretive he likes to be. On the other hand, I was the only one he trusted enough to come and get you. Nobody else knows you’re alive. I take no end of comfort from that.’

  In the past Janek wouldn’t have dared operate independently, so presumably he was here on Boris’s instructions. Of course those instructions might say that he was to be taken from the monastery to be killed somewhere on the road. Most likely Lazslo had been brought along to confirm the identification, and then to be killed as well. There was an air of profound misery surrounding him, as if that very expectation was in his mind.

  ‘Supposing I don’t want to come.’

  Janek frowned. ‘Do you know, I don’t think that possibility occurred to him? One of the drawbacks of getting your own way all the time. Now, I’m different. I so rarely get my own way. Constantly I worry that things might turn out badly. Life can be so fragile. That very word occurred to me when Father Konstantin was speaking to us earlier. I think it was something about the slenderness of his aged neck. Did I speak to you about it, Lazslo?’

  Lazslo jumped.

  ‘I . . . I don’t remember.’

  ‘You don’t remember? How unlike you. Your memory is one of your finest qualities. Do you know, Feliks, since Lazslo began working for me, not long after your death in fact, I hardly write anything down. He’s quite amazing. A real treasure.’

  Working for him? No, it wasn’t possible . . .

  ‘. . . don’t know how I’d have got through these troublesome years without him at my side. He’s a mine of information, a veritable mine. Come to think of it, I expect he remembers every miserable detail of your funeral, including his own tears. I’ll get him to write it all down for you.’

  The room grew cold. Smaller. Feliks felt suddenly aware of his own breathing. The quickest of glances told him that Lazslo was now looking at him. He closed his eyes.

  ‘I do believe we’ve tired you, my dear. I’m tired myself. Why don’t you take a little time to think things through? We’re going to stay overnight. Those roads are ghastly in daylight; they would be more or less suicidal in the dark. And we can’t have that again, can we?’

  Chapter Six

  Even though the car windows were closed, Feliks could taste the dust as they drove down through the narrow pass. Here and there, a thin aspen had seeded in a crack in the red rock walls and a few spindly bellflowers clung to the barren outcrops. Soon there were more trees, and more houses. They passed a river where a wooden watermill slowly rotated its wheel in t
he unrushed current.

  He tried to distract himself with Kafka. (He was sure Janek had merely picked up his quote second-hand, scavenged it from somewhere, like a rat on the municipal dump, not even understanding its meaning.) A Jew, a vegetarian, and a sufferer of TB. Dead at forty. So if he were Kafka, almost three quarters of his life would be gone. He didn’t know much about the man, having only read a couple of books in translation. He’d found them strange and clever, if unsatisfying, though not as old-fashioned as he’d expected for someone who’d lived so long ago. Of course the translations were modern.

  But nothing could long distract him from the turmoil of his own thoughts. What can I do? Why does he want me? The questions repeated themselves. He still wore his cassock. There was apparently nothing else to change into. His old clothes had been bloodstained beyond repair, burned long ago. He had slept fitfully, trying to imagine some alternative to leaving with Janek, but none presented itself. He didn’t want the brothers to be harmed. It was one thing to be irritated by watery eyes and dripping noses, quite another to give Janek an excuse to drop frail old bones under his heel. He had always hated his father’s number one, and hated him still. It was easy to listen to sermons about loving one’s enemy. Impossible in practice. Janek was now in the front passenger seat, snoring, his forehead glistening, a bottle of plum brandy at his feet, and he imagined, several more in the car boot.

  Lazslo was driving. He wanted to hate Lazslo too, but it was hard. When he looked at Lazslo, he felt so much anger and frustration it was exhausting. Pity? No, he wouldn’t admit to feeling sorry for him. Everyone made their own choices. There was a small bald patch on the back of Lazlso’s head beneath the red brown curls. Was he aware of it? If he was, perhaps he didn’t care. Vanity had never been one of his faults. Vanity would have been better than this. Vanity would have been understandable. He had never had much success with women despite his good looks. A lack of confidence had made him his own worst enemy in that department. But it would be wrong to feel pity for him now. You make your bed, you lie in it. Cut him adrift, forget him, his mind advised.

  As they dropped further down into the valley, the volume of traffic increased, though they were still a long way from real civilization. Everything conspired to slow their progress. Lazslo used the horn from time to time to very little effect. He steered the big car carefully round broken-down buses, people who’d stopped to buy watermelons at the roadside, white geese waddling in the stirring dust with equally lazy children watching over them, carts laden and lopsided with summer vegetables. Feliks thought longingly about watermelon, imagining luscious scarlet slices of it filling his mouth. The brothers had provided goat cheese and rye bread, nothing wrong with that, but only small bottles of water, not enough for the three of them.

  Now and again he noticed wreaths of dried flowers on fences and roadside trees, something he’d never seen before. Memorials to accidents he supposed. A new tradition, imported from where? Would he find other things changed?

  If he’d been warned of their coming, what would he have done? Stupor in the face of clearly approaching disaster was ingrained in him, as in so many of his fellow countrymen, a national characteristic like olive skin and long noses. It was as if they were predestined to live out the tales told in childhood. In every story, evil prospered because the good did nothing. Consider the shepherd whose magic sheep warn him that two rival shepherds are about to kill him for his gold. Instead of fleeing, the rich shepherd goes home to put his affairs in order and waits to be murdered.

  They passed through rose fields and the perfume filled the car. He recalled a scarred table, scattered with white petals. Victor’s apartment, the autumn of his own first year at the University. Someone produces a mandolin. They sing all the old mournful folk songs, inventing salacious words when no one can remember the correct ones. The talk turns to politics, but someone bangs on the table, making the petals flutter, and says, none of that tonight. They all laugh and agree, because they know they are going to change the world, so what does one night off matter?

  He’d been the newcomer, the youngest there that night, and because he wanted to observe everything and everyone, he’d remained resolutely sober. He walked a girl home in light September rain. She’d asked him to because her boyfriend was too drunk. He remembered how tightly she had held on to him because of the slippery lime-tree leaves underfoot. At her apartment door, she kissed him on the mouth. It was a delight, she said, to find someone among Victor’s friends who could be trusted not to put a hand up her. Since Boris had introduced him to the delights of women as part of his sixteenth birthday celebrations, the unsought and undeserved compliment made Feliks want to giggle, but he’d managed not to. It was a long walk back to his house, with his mind on fire. He’d lain down on the bed with the feel of her lips still on his, kneading her imagined breasts until relief came.

  Chapter Seven

  Feliks woke when they stopped in a deeply-shadowed street of old buildings. Fatigue, comfortable seating and the steady, quiet rumble of the engine had conspired against him. He didn’t recognise the area. Directly beside them was the ornate pillared frontage of what looked like a public bathhouse. A couple of teenagers were walking along the narrow pavement towards them, with a thin black dog on a lead. It looked like a young dog, but one hind leg was missing. It stopped to pee against one of the pillars. The girl kept her eye on the dog, but the boy looked at the big Dacia and its tinted windows.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked Janek.

  ‘Zdravets.’

  ‘You said we were going to the capital.’

  ‘All in good time, dear boy. Shall we go in? Punctuality gives him such pleasure.’

  Lazslo waited in the car.

  ‘Smoke if you must,’ Janek told him, ‘But leave the window open.’

  The heavy outer doors were locked, and a printed notice read, ‘Closed for maintenance and repair.’ However, when Janek pulled on the bell, a smaller side door opened almost at once. They stepped through into a high-walled, ceramic-tiled passage, open to the evening sky. The attendant, a young dark-haired man, went ahead of them and opened another door into a small room, where Janek switched on the light and seated himself beside a wooden table, picking up what might have been the day’s newspaper.

  ‘On you go,’ he said.

  ‘By myself?’

  ‘Oh, he sees me all the time. I’d hate to intrude on such a reunion.’

  So his father was here, waiting for him. His mouth was suddenly dry.

  ‘How do you know I won’t find another exit, once I’m out of sight?’

  ‘I trust you completely. And you would merely be delaying the inevitable.’

  Feliks followed the attendant into a dressing room with peeling, green-painted walls, numbered lockers and a tiled floor which smelled strongly of disinfectant.

  ‘Please, sir.’

  The young man was holding out a large white towel. It finally dawned on Feliks that he was meant to strip and wear the towel. His clothes were picked up, folded and slid into a wire mesh basket. In the next room, the heat caught at his chest. It was empty and noiseless, apart from a faint hushing from the pipes. They moved next through a dim corridor and into a warm dry room, circular, perhaps fifteen metres in diameter. The door closed with a hushed thud behind the retreating attendant. Feliks caught the unmistakeable scent of fig oil. There were two men in the room, one standing, the other lying on his stomach. The first was Dimitar, in a black sleeveless t-shirt. The silver haired one, lying on the massage table, was his father. His face was turned away. Feliks willed Dimitar to look up. Just once, he pleaded. Just once. But it was a re-enactment of his first encounter with Lazslo. The old man was intent on his work, massaging Boris’s back with long, smooth strokes. So, his back was still troubling him. Excellent.

  Above them the domed ceiling was dark against the night outside, but the lowest circles of its small coloured bullions of blue and lilac gleamed slightly, reflecting the glow from a series of
glass-encased wall lights. There was no other door. The tiled walls curved around him, in an interlocking formulaic pattern of knights on horseback, with stringed bows and long lances, round and round with no crack or imperfection. It was a room fit for silent whispers, old treasons, foul conspiracies.

  Boris raised one hand, signalling for the massage to cease. He sat up, glanced over, then reached for a towel and patted his face and neck for several seconds.

  ‘Feliks. Come closer. Take the stool,’ he said.

  Feliks went closer, but did not sit. His tongue felt as if it was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He could feel his heart beat.

  His father smiled. ‘What can I say? I feel I should say something memorable. It’s not every day a man gets to meet a son who’s risen from the dead.’

  At last Dimitar looked up. Some kind of emotion crossed his face. Feliks couldn’t read it.

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind my sending Janek for you. He’s a bit of a slob but at least he does what he’s told to do without fussing, which is a rare quality these days. So how long has it been, anyway? Three years now?’

  ‘Why am I here?’ Feliks said.

  ‘I wanted to see you, naturally. It’s not every father who weeps for a dead son, then finds him alive.’

  ‘You wept for me?’

  ‘You’re my only son. Of course I wept for you.’

  This was so patently a lie that Feliks wanted to laugh.

  ‘God forgive you,’ he said.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Suicide is a mortal sin. One shouldn’t weep for a suicide.’

  ‘So it was a suicide attempt.’

  ‘A poor one, but mine own.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I must have thought it was a good idea. I was full of good ideas at the time.’

  Boris seemed slightly unsettled, as if he didn’t know how to respond.