Black Vodka (2 page)

She laughs and plays with the ends of her hair. She shuts her eyes and then opens them. She fiddles with her mobile, which she has placed on the table. Lisa shuffles her shoes, which are red and suede. She eats a hearty portion of duck with apple sauce and discovers I like delicate dumplings stuffed with mushroom because I am a vegetarian. When she stabs her fork into the meat it oozes pale red blood which she mops up with a piece of white bread; little, delicate dabs of the wrist as she brings the blood and bread up to her mouth. She eats with appetite and enjoyment. That she is a carnivore pleases me.

After a while she orders a slice of cheesecake and asks me if I was born a hunchback.

‘Yes.’

‘Sometimes it’s difficult to tell.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, some people have bad posture.’

‘Oh.’

Lisa licks her fingers. Apparently it’s an excellent cheesecake. I am pleased she is pleased. The waitress offers us a glass of liqueur from a bottle that has ‘a whole Italian pear’ lurking inside it. The pear is peeled. It is a naked pear. We accept and I say to Lisa, ‘We should get that pear out of the bottle and make a sorbet with it’ – as if that is something I do all the time. In fact I have never made sorbet. She likes that. It is as if the invitation to wedge the pear out of the bottle is like freeing a genie. She becomes more animated and talks about her job. Apparently when she finds human remains on a dig, bones for example, they have to be stored in a methodical way. Heavy bones, the long bones, are packed at the bottom of a box; lighter bones such as vertebrae are packed at the top.

‘Archaeology is an approach to uncovering the past,’ she tells me, sipping her liqueur – which, strangely, does not taste of pear.

‘So when you go on a dig, you record and interpret the physical remains of the past, is that right?’

‘Sort of. I like to know how people used to live and what their habits were.’

‘You dig up their beliefs and culture.’

‘Well you can’t dig up a belief,’ she says. ‘But the material culture, the objects and artefacts that people leave behind, will give me clues to their beliefs.’

‘I see. You know why I like you, Lisa?’

‘Why do you like me?’

‘Because I think you see me as an archaeological site.’

‘I am a bit of an explorer,’ she says. ‘I’d like to see the bone that protrudes in your thoracic spine.’

At that moment I drop the silver fork in my right hand. It falls noiselessly to the carpet and bounces before it falls again. I bend down to pick it up and because I am nervous and have downed too much vodka, I start to go on an archaeological dig of my own. In my mind I lift up the faded rose-pink carpet of the Polish Club in South Kensington and find underneath it a forest full of wild mushrooms and swooping bats that live upside down. This is a Polish forest covered in new snow in the murderous twentieth century. At the same time, in the first decade of the twenty-first, I can see the feet of customers eating herrings with sour cream two metres away from my own table. Their shoes are made from suede and leather. A grey wolf prowls this dark forest, its ears alert to the sound of spoons stirring chocolate-dusted cappuccinos in West London. When it starts to dig up an unnamed grave that has just been filled with soil, I do not wish to continue with this mental excavation, so I pick up the fork and nod at Lisa, who has been gazing at the lump on my back as if staring through the lens of a microscope.

The rain tonight is horizontal. It makes me feel reckless. I want to give in to its force. As we step onto Exhibition Road I slip my arm around Lisa’s shoulders and she does not grimace. Her hair is soaking wet and so are her red suede shoes.

‘I am going home,’ she tells me. She beckons to a vacant taxi on the other side of the road and all the time the warm rain falls upon us like the tears in my dream. Her voice is gentle. Rain does that to voices. It makes them intimate and suggestive. While the taxi does a U-turn she stands behind me and presses her hands into my hump as if she is listening to it breathe. And then she takes her forefinger and traces around it, getting an exact sense of its shape. It’s the kind of thing cops do to a corpse with a piece of chalk. Now Lisa bends down and opens the door of the taxi. As she slides her long legs into the back seat, she shouts her destination to the driver.

‘Tower Bridge.’

He nods and adjusts the meter.

When she smiles I can see her sharp white teeth.

‘Look, you know that Richard is my boyfriend – but why don’t you come home with me and compare notes on those vodkas?’

I don’t need any persuading. I jump in beside her and slam the door extra hard. As the cab pulls out, Lisa leans forwards and starts to kiss me. Does she want to know more about my habits and beliefs and how I live? Or is she curious to find out if her sketch of
Homo sapiens
was an accurate representation of my body?

The meter is going berserk like my heartbeat while the moon drifts over the wildlife gardens of the Natural History Museum. Somewhere inside it, pressed under glass, are twelve ghost moths (
Hepialus humuli
), of earliest evolutionary lineage. These ghosts once flew in pastures, dropped their eggs to the ground and slept through the day. There is so much of the world to record and classify, it’s hard to know how to find a language for it. So I am going to start exactly where I am now. Life is beautiful! Vodka is black! Pears are naked! Rain is horizontal! Moths are ghosts. Only some of this is true, but you should know that this does not scare me as much as the promise of love.

Shining a Light

It is the last Saturday in August. Alice is waiting in baggage reclaim at Prague airport, and she knows before it is completely certain that her bag will not appear. For twenty minutes the luggage belt has looped along its tracks in a slow mesmerising circle, a dead grey river. Her bag is not on it. Yes, she can fill in a form. She can give the official her mobile number and the address of her hotel near Malá Strana, but she tells herself to accept that she has lost everything. The cheerfully vague official in charge of missing luggage (her name is Petra) understands that filling in the form is a waste of both their time but she takes the trouble to guide Alice through the procedure. Petra’s breath smells of aniseed or something like that. Alice isn’t really bothering; she can barely read her own hurried writing. The worst thing is that her mobile-phone charger is in the bag that has gone missing. Even if the airline does find it and calls her to collect it, her phone will be out of charge.

Petra has a system in place to process loss – and she has other information too. She warns Alice about dishonest cab drivers; the minibus shuttle will drive her to her destination for a cheaper price than a private cab. Also, given that Alice has lost her bag with her mobile charger in it, she should use a public telephone box and buy a phone card. The emergency number is 112. And then she tells her there will be a screening of a film in the park on Tuesday night. It’s free but everyone dresses up.

It is Tuesday night and Alice is dancing in a park in central Prague in the blue dress she has worn for three days.

The film Petra referred to turns out to be an outdoor screening of Martin Scorsese’s documentary of the Rolling Stones in concert. Midges are biting her arms, it is eleven at night and the moon is shining on the crowd. Two Serbian women, Jasna and Adrijana, dance with her while Mick Jagger sings ‘Yeah, you light up my life’. Alice has only just met them but she is pleased to have their company. She tells Jasna that when Mick walks away from the microphone to change his costume, the stage goes dead because he is not on it. Like the luggage belt at the airport when she realised her bag was not there.

Jasna’s and Adrijana’s boyfriends are queuing for beers. They wave to a man selling frankfurters and shout, ‘Hot dogs!’ Adrijana insists on buying one for Alice too. They smother the hot dogs in ketchup and drink beer and watch the swans sleeping on the black water of the Vltava. When the film ends they all invite Alice to join them for a swim the next day in a lake just outside Prague. Apparently it’s not really a lake, it’s an old mine that flooded a few years ago in a rainstorm. It’s near a cornfield and there are castles nearby and a forest and eagles. Would she like to go? Alice nods and smiles and they all cheer and wave their beer bottles at the dark sky.

Later, when she walks over the cobblestones towards her hotel in Malá Strana she realises that arriving in a country with nothing but the clothes she is wearing has made her more reckless, but more introspective too.

The car that pulls up outside her hotel on Wednesday afternoon is a beaten-up Mercedes. Adrijana shares the Merc with three other families and Wednesday is her driving day. Jasna, Petar and Dimitar, who are sitting in the back, move up to make room for Alice to squeeze in. There is someone else in the car too. He is introduced to Alice as a famous brilliant terrific genius composer of electronic music. The composer tells her his name is Alex but she can call him Mr Composer if she likes. And then he doesn’t say a word for the entire journey.

When they finally arrive at the lake that was once a mine, the green water is still and flat. Alice thinks it might have some sort of force that will suck her deep into the earth and make her disappear like her lost suitcase. Jasna lends her a swimming costume but Alice takes her time getting changed. She folds her blue dress carefully and then places it on a rock. Everyone is in the water, except for Mr Composer who refuses to swim and sits on the same rock as her dress, buttoning up his jacket and shivering. When he catches Alice’s eye he shrugs his shoulders and wryly translates the sign at the entrance to the lake. He tells her it says, ‘DANGER! NO SWIMMING!’ He watches her climb down the clay path and dive into the water. It is very cold and she cannot feel her legs. Adrijana and Jasna have swum out to the centre of the lake where it is deepest. They have pinned up their brown hair and swim calmly and slowly together like the swans on the Vltava. After a while they turn on their backs and stare at the sky.

Alice climbs out of the water and sits dripping wet next to Mr Composer or Alex or whoever he is. He hands her a plastic carrier bag. Inside it is a heavy square of cake. He explains that it is baklava made by his mother who he has just returned from visiting in Belgrade. It is not like the baklava Alice is used to because it’s heavy like bread. He takes out his mobile and Alice hears him say, ‘I’m at a lake outside Prague with Alice who is from Britain, which is why I am speaking to you in English. She wants me to tell you she likes your cake.’

When he ends the call, Alice points out he has the same mobile phone as she does. That’s really interesting Alice, he says, and tells her that he, like Adrijana and Jasna, had to cross three borders ‘during the war’ to get to Prague. Every now and again she notices a strained look in his eyes. She is just about to ask him something when Jasna creeps up behind her holding out her blue dress like a flag. It has fallen off the rock and is smeared with mud.

On the way back to Prague they stop at a pub for beer and Alex orders a plate of smoked ham. While the others are talking he tells Alice that though they are all from Serbia they did not know each other in their own country. They met for the first time in Prague. In fact, he says, we didn’t really want to meet each other at first because you never know what each other is going to be like. Adrijana asks Alice if she has heard of a famous European philosopher. She tells her the philosopher’s name. Alice has never heard of him. Well, he has this beautiful wife, Adrijana says to Alice. Beautiful like you. Long blond hair. But this philosopher, who we like very much because he has written about what life is like for us, he is very, very busy. Always giving lectures all over the world. In fact right now he is probably writing a lecture somewhere and it is midnight and the philosopher’s beautiful wife is on the phone and she is saying to her husband, so kiss yourself good night tonight and I will kiss myself good night and you stroke your own hair tonight and I will stroke my own arm tonight. Alice does not really understand why they are all laughing so much. She feels lonely and out of the loop, whatever the loop is, and anyway she’s not that sure the loop is a good place to be.

‘Are you ok, Alice?’ Alex prods her arm with his long fingers. ‘By the way,’ he says, ‘I really like your blue dress.’ He asks her when she is returning to the UK. She tells him she is leaving later that evening. ‘Uh huh,’ he says. ‘Then tonight you will kiss yourself good night. And I will kiss myself good night.’ He tells her he’s going for a walk in the woods to stretch his legs before the drive back to Prague. The woods are just across the road from the pub. Alice asks if he minds if she joins him? She wants to see autumn leaves.

The sky has clouded by the time they cross the road to where the entrance to the woods begins. When they get there, Alice doesn’t want to walk with him after all. She has changed her mind. He says, ‘Well, anyway, I’m really happy to meet you.’ He waves his hands around a bit and suddenly grabs the ends of her blond hair with his fingertips. She wants to ask him where on the map his country is but it sounds insulting and ignorant and she doesn’t think she can ask a question like that. He lets go of her hair and he says, ‘I really like so much your blue dress and red tights. If I stop working in my stupid job, one day I will buy you a pair of shoes.’ And then he walks into the woods.

The season is turning and she wants to go home to England. A bird scrambles in the upper branches of a tree. She watches the bird and she thinks about Adrijana and Jasna swimming in the deep, cold lake. They have been hurt in ways she has not been hurt. They have left all the seasons in their country behind them.