Through Every Human Heart (2 page)

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 mattered, 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.

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.

The minutes limped by. Lazslo held his cup in both hands, trying to relax, knowing that Janek was only pretending not to watch him. He felt he had never hated the man more. As for Feliks . . . No, he refused to go there . . .

He drained the cup, replaced it on the tray, sat down and picked up a small ivory, or perhaps bone, Pieta from the bookcase beside him. The knife strokes were unsubtle. There was no maker's name underneath.

He resisted the urge to check his watch.

What if Feliks didn't come, and he, Lazslo, was sent from the room to find him? What if he couldn't be found?

‘Macabre, don't you think?' Janek said suddenly, pointing to a triptych above the fireplace.

They might take the car, it was possible, he had the keys in his pocket. Feliks might say, ‘Drive to the border,' and they might drive to the border, stop just before it where the forest offered plenty of cover . . .

‘Whose head would it be, I wonder?'

‘It's possibly John the Baptist.'

‘What a mine of eclectic information you are, my dear. Tell me, what did he do? Why is he on a plate?'

‘Herod killed his brother and married the widow. The Baptist reprimanded him in public, so Herod had him killed.'

‘Herod?'

‘The king at the time. Of Jerusalem. Around 29AD.'

Janek stroked the arm of the chair, pushing the cloth back and forth. His fingernails were so smooth Lazslo suspected he polished them. Certainly he coloured his receding hair, or had it coloured for him. There was grey at the temples but nowhere else. Knowing this was the most miniscule of comforts, but Lazslo had clung to it many, many times.

‘Dear me,' Janek said. ‘A lesson to us all.'

‘A lesson?'

‘Here we are, Lazslo, earnest servants of the new democracy, yet we must remain vigilant. We must not displease our superiors, or even our heads may roll. So tell me,' he poured himself more coffee, ‘what did you think of our corpse? For myself, I don't think I would have known him, if we'd passed in the street. Not that one would ever have classed him as handsome. One wonders what his fond Papa will say.' He crossed one leg over the other, and brushed his trouser cuff as if as if some irritating red dust from the garden had clung to him. ‘I must say I had hoped for a little more enthusiasm, Lazslo. You and Feliks were quite intimate once, they tell me.'

Loosen the leash then jerk it a little. It was Janek's favourite game. Lazslo pictured a chain below the older man's chin, watched a line of dark blood form then begin to ooze, trickling down the white collar onto the shirt . . .

‘Well, weren't you?'

‘We weren't in the same year.'

‘You published that bold, seditious rag together. You were close.'

‘No. He wasn't . . . We weren't friends.'

It was a lie. Or was it true? Had he really been any different from the others, anything more than a blind worshipper? The whole thing had been furiously intoxicating because Feliks was who he was, the rebel son of the most hated man in the regime. Feliks was dangerous, bold, invincible. But friendship would have been as impossible as kissing incandescence.

Janek drained his cup. ‘It doesn't surprise me. Men like him rarely make many friends. They're too full of their own self-righteousness to be bothered with the likes of you and me. We bore them.'

‘Maybe he won't come.'

‘Oh, he'll come. He's making us wait, but he'll come. He has no choice. You know, this is remarkable coffee. I wonder where they get it from. They might make their own brandy too. Places like this often have a little secret cellar worth looking into. So you weren't close, even when you worked side by side?'

‘It was a committee. And as you say, he was a loner. We hardly saw him.'

Janek stretched and smiled. ‘This will amuse you, Lazslo. Do you know, the thought had actually entered my mind that you might have known he was here all the time?'

‘I thought he was dead. Everyone did.'

This was true. Despite his fears, he had gone with everyone to the graveyard, devastated, frozen half to death themselves in the whirling snow. A week later he'd been summoned to the police station. Two days after that he had found himself working for Janek.

‘My dear, you're going to break her if you continue to rub so fiercely.'

Lazslo looked down. The Madonna was still in his hands. He put her back on the shelf.

Janek continued, ‘I'm so relieved you weren't keeping things from me. I should have believed Vasreche after all.'

‘Vasreche?'

‘The name rings no bells? Ah well, he professed not to recognise yours either. Sometimes it's so hard to know. He sweated terribly, I remember. He became quite incoherent towards the end.'

He couldn't recall the name. As Janek's secretary, he had access to everything but he couldn't recall the name. So there was no file.

‘You can't imagine the trouble I had convincing Vasreche that his information about Feliks wasn't going to get him off the hook. He'd been here and hereabouts in the autumn looking for something, manuscripts of some sort, relics, it hardly matters. He'd seen our friend, recognised him despite the . . . how shall we put it?, Alterations . . . and talked about it to some of his cronies.'

‘And he came to you.'

‘Well, not willingly. Very few people come to me willingly.'

Was this directed at him? Probably. It didn't matter. What mattered was the shock he'd seen in Feliks' eyes. What mattered was what Feliks was presently thinking, what Feliks was going to say to him. He wondered at his continued ability to speak coherently, to hear what Janek was saying.

‘He'd held some temporary post in the History Department at the University before he entered his life of crime. I thought you might have known him.'

‘But I was in Computing Science. And I was two years behind Berisovic. It must have been before I got there.'

‘Quite right. Vasreche was dismissed the term before you began. And besides, you would have had nothing in common. He was a man with no principles, no respect for authority. So you really didn't know Berisovic was here.'

‘He was dead. His father was at the funeral, you yourself . . .'

‘I know, I know. Tell me, what do you think we should do with him, now that he's alive?'

His mind faltered, his tongue lay in his mouth dry as a dead leaf.

At last Janek leaned back in his chair. ‘Why do I ask you? Forgive me, my dear, I'm a sentimental fool. It's neither your decision nor mine.'

Smart casual, Irene had told them. No long dresses, no formal suits. Several of the men were in kilts though. Dina liked to see men in kilts, as long as they had decent calf muscles. Not every man could wear a kilt. Members of rugby teams wore them admirably as a rule. There wasn't much to beat a rugby player in a kilt.

She'd tried to time her arrival early enough to avoid Irene's disapproval, but not so early as to be among the first present. There wasn't a bar, just tables with chairs round them, name-cards on the tables and little plates of peanuts and snacks. She'd learned from bitter experience that it was a serious mistake to sit anywhere at the beginning, or indeed the middle, of any social function, for so many different reasons, so she stayed on her feet.

‘Three line whip tonight,' Irene had reminded everyone. It was a charity auction for endangered animals, hosted by a well-known Bank whose new offices they had furnished, with a few other important client firms invited. Dina felt mildly hypocritical, knowing she wasn't nearly as concerned about saving the planet as she ought to be.

White voile curtains hid the evening sky. Mindless music flowed. Massive pompoms made of tissue paper hung from the low ceiling: black and white striped, in imitation, she guessed, of zebras, and brown spots on beige, which might have been anything really, giraffes or leopards, or even pigs, except that pigs weren't endangered. The tables were close to the podium, but most of the guests were still standing in groups behind them. Immense photos of the creatures which would benefit from the evening were arranged round the walls: snow leopards, tigers and pandas, insects and birds, reptiles she'd never seen or heard of. Women in the Bank's trademark colours were standing around with programmes and information packs. They were uniformly slim and good-looking. Were they actual Bank staff?

Expect some famous faces, Irene had said. Probably they were too famous to come on time. The cheery leader of the city council was cheerily holding court, and she recognised one woman who did the news on STV, and a middle-aged comedian she'd never much liked, and someone who she thought might be a famous footballer, but no one from Arbanisi Design, except the middle-aged man with the tinted glasses who did something somewhere on their top floor. He was standing by himself, poor soul.

Then she saw Paul, looking very grand, contemplating a bronze abstract wall sculpture. He turned, noticed her and raised a friendly eyebrow. She manoeuvred her way to him through drifts of aftershave and perfume. She recognised Anais Anais. That was an old one. Mother had worn it a lot.

Paul was committed to his lover too firmly to allow one any hope, but being around him always made Dina feel better. He gave her a sense that life could be managed. Not completely of course – she wasn't that stupid, life would always be a bit confusing sometimes – but when you were with Paul, you felt that there were answers around if you just thought about things more carefully. Irene, naturally blond, mid-thirties, currently single, was the founder and ideas person in Arbanisi Design. Paul, a little older, with wavy black hair greying so beautifully, dealt with difficulties and made the ideas happen. Arbanisi Design was small compared with many other companies, but it was Irene's baby and she didn't want it to grow much bigger, and neither did Paul.

‘Hello, my best girl,' he said. She'd been charmed by this greeting in her first weeks with the firm, until she realized that he said it to all the women in Arbanisi Design, even the two harridans in the showroom. Actually she was still charmed. It had become something of a continuing challenge to make sure she was the ‘best' best girl.

He seemed to be without his partner.

‘A three piece suit? Isn't that breaking the rules?' Dina said, lightly prodding his waistcoat.

‘Shoot me,' he said.

‘Will I do?' she asked.

‘Oh, very nicely' Paul smiled.

She was learning. To conceal her non-ideal waist, she was wearing a loose silk top. Loose but not completely liberated. No bra straps peeping out, and strictly no cleavage. Her breasts were too much without encouragement. Cropped trousers to make her look taller and show off her neat ankles. The shoes were daring but not wildly so. She could walk quite far in them, if need be.

‘Of course, the success of your evening may also depend on the state of your bank balance.'

He meant the auction.

‘Not good this month,' she said.

‘Then no reckless bidding, please, especially for Irene's things.'

‘I promise to be good. What did she decide on?'

‘The cigarette case.' He flipped open the schedule. ‘ “A beautiful piece of Imperial Russian art”,' he read. ‘ “Solid silver, gilded inside and out, polychrome cloisonné enamel in seven colours.” '

‘Do people still buy cigarette cases?'

‘I'm sure some do. But she's put the peacock thing in as well. It'll probably reach four figures. Rescuing these poor lemurs and sand cats is very close to our Wise Leader's heart.'

‘I liked that pendant.'

‘But you wouldn't wear it, sweetheart,' he said. ‘Too fantastic, too big, and way too many sapphires for you. To wear that very expensive chunk of old Central European bling you would need to be . . .'

She interrupted, not much wanting to be told what she would need to be. ‘That looks completely right, doesn't it?' she went on, pointing to the bronze statuary. Paul had been a bit wary about it mid-contract.

‘Oh definitely,' Paul nodded. ‘Context is all.' He lifted his glass to a passing couple, ‘No escort tonight?'

‘Gone to London to sort something.'

‘Silly fool.' He put his free arm round her shoulder and gave her a brief squeeze. ‘Let's get you a drink.'

This done, he excused himself, and wandered away to chat to someone else, confident, she imagined, that she was a big grown up girl who would swim and not sink. If Derek had been able to come, she thought, this would have been less stressful. Or just a different stress?

Derek ticked most of the boxes. She enjoyed the way he looked at her, but she was beginning to feel mildly claustrophobic. He was sometimes a teeny wee bit too complimentary. ‘You look lovely' would have done, instead of going into detail, and asking where she'd bought this or that. She didn't want to lie, but sometimes it wasn't much fun to have to admit that your striking new top had come from Tesco rather than Next, with mother-of-pearl buttons substituted by yourself for the unstriking originals. And for someone in such an important job, with so many people underneath him, Derek's mind seemed to work in an awfully ordinary way. Or was she being unfair? Her own mind wasn't that interesting. She hadn't got nearly good enough results at school to get into Medicine, and had just scraped into the nursing degree course. But four months into their relationship, she felt there should still be surprises. Or maybe a few profound thoughts. Like: were they meant for each other, and was she the most wonderful woman he'd ever met?

‘Does he make you laugh, honey?' was Ronni's question.

‘Of course,' she said, for they did laugh a lot. But when she'd thought about it later, she wondered if they just laughed together at things. Which of course was a good sign. Just not exactly what Ronni had meant.

She had perfected his mother's lasagne recipe to please his Italian taste buds, but his soul seemed to be solidly Glaswegian, like his father's. And he was awfully, well . . . clean. Not a problem in itself, of course. Nobody in their right mind wanted to wake up next to smelly armpits. She just wondered if he was more interested in deodorants than destiny. ‘Release others to their destiny and claim yours.' She'd read that once in Marie Claire. She liked the idea of having a destiny. On the other hand, Derek had a lot going for him. It was difficult. Maybe she needed to rethink the boxes.

She caught sight of Irene, encircled mostly by men, her blond hair loose around her tanned shoulders. Dina's heart slipped a little. She loved dresses like the one Irene was wearing, but her own waist was basically in the wrong place. She'd worked that one out for herself at thirteen, when her growth stopped, after studying a picture of the dancer Margot Fonteyn, who'd been perfectly proportioned. In summer she felt more hard-done-to than in winter, because there were so many gorgeous simple dresses, so easy to accessorize. She loved big hats, but they made her look like a mushroom, wide on top above a dumpy stem. She never wore flat shoes because they made her look short. Only the week before, a bin lorry had almost reversed into her. ‘Watch that wee wumman,' someone had shouted. She'd told the story against herself at work. A ‘wumman' at twenty-six. And ‘wee'.

Paul came back, introducing her to a man with a tartan bow tie and spiky dark hair rising from a big forehead. She missed the name, but caught the fact that he worked for the Bank.

‘We're really pleased with all you did,' he said.

‘I'm glad to hear it. It was a fascinating . . .'

‘And I gather you work directly with the boss lady?' He looked towards Irene. ‘Not an easy person to work with, I imagine. Doesn't she scare you?'

‘No,' she said, puzzled by the question. What did he mean? It was a great job. They had a great time together. Irene knew what she wanted in a personal assistant and Dina did what was needed. Irene liked making choices. She liked not having to make choices.

‘You must be braver than you look,' he said with a laugh, showing all his teeth. His upper ones were fine, but the lower ones were kind of crushed together.

‘So what do you do in your time off?' he asked.

‘I like to cook,' she said, ‘especially for men who like to eat.'

‘That sounds interesting.'

It always did, which was why she said it every time. It wasn't hard to sound interesting. Or look interesting, if you had DD breasts and the man you were with cared about that sort of thing. Herself, she wished she could have a smaller bust and a bigger brain, and actually be more interesting than she looked. And more real and far more honest. And braver. Another one to add to the list apparently. His lower teeth looked miserably unhappy. Dare she mention orthodontics? She'd worn braces, top and bottom, for two years, but the pain had been worth it. Was that brave?

He chatted on above the music, she nodded and smiled. Was she brave? She had nothing to be brave about. Coming south to Glasgow hadn't been brave. What was there to be afraid of in life, apart from the usual things, like gaining weight, or deleting something important or seeing a daddy-long-legs in the bedroom just as the light went out?

Now he was talking about his last holiday in the Swiss Alps. She mentioned her childhood home and its mountains. He was interested but not so much. Switzerland was so clean, and so reliable, everything there was done properly . . .

You could be afraid of never finding true love, she thought. If you wanted to. If you wanted to let your mind dwell on such a thing when you woke too early and couldn't get back to sleep. She wanted to ask Mr Tartan Tie if he believed in Destiny, but it seemed unkind to distract him from his exploits off piste. She'd learned long ago the trick of listening without hearing. When she was still a teenager she'd deliberately let one of her father's GP trainees talk and talk to her at the dinner table for fourteen minutes.

She smiled and nodded as Mr Tartan and his broken leg were airlifted from the slopes above Wengen and taken to Interlaken.

Of course, if you were thinking very deeply and foolishly, and didn't have all that many friends because you were rubbish at keeping in touch, you could fear the prospect of dying dehydrated and alone in a hospital bed. It happened every day.

‘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.