chapter 1

 

Dense darkness hung in the room. Too dense for an exclusive address in the middle of the city. She gently pressed the bridge of her nose. She felt blood come loose beneath the flesh and trickle down the inside into the paper towel. She had long been oblivious to the pain. She had learned to think about details. Somewhere below her eyelids she observed that little red drop blotting into the thirsty paper. One, another, more and more. She was sitting on the wide bed. She knew something was wrong. The blow had landed right on the tip, wreaking havoc inside. She’d already had her nose broken once and it had never healed properly. Back then it had been the second or third time since the wedding that he’d laid hands on her. He had begged. He had knelt before her, begging her not to go. That night she had heard for the first time that hollow, empty sound that only a mutilated human body makes.

The worst thing was the regret. She waited. Gone would be his set jaw – with his hand over his mouth, he would be surprised, as if he had discovered her by chance in the park. Horrified at the pool of blood on the parquet flooring and devastated by her tears. None of what could be seen on his face would be fake. She had known for a long time that he was sick. The scent of aftershave drifted through the bedroom. She strained her ears for the sound of a cry from Berucha. It was because of her that they’d argued today. A match was struck on the terrace of the next-door apartment. For a moment she saw a pale face with a grey goatee in the darkness. Through the vent she even heard the first slow exhalation with which smokers welcome a fresh dose of nicotine into their lungs. She used to smoke too. In prehistoric times, when she and the girls would sit in the pub after volleyball beneath the posters of nude pin-ups and leering footballers.

He had lived here for about a year. A big charismatic guy of retirement age with a small Jack Russell terrier that would sit up on its hind legs and give Berucha a paw. She didn’t know anything else about him. But the maths was stark. Their one-bedroom flat with a kitchen and balcony had cost four and a half million six years ago. The apartments in the south wing of the building were much more luxurious, mostly with four rooms and large terraces. When they moved into the new-build in the middle of Bertramka, prices started at ten million, depending on the flat’s amenities and the size of the terrace. The ones with a second balcony onto the inner courtyard had a ten per cent surcharge on top of that. The man with the grey goatee must have been fortunate in life to be able to afford a luxury city-centre residence for himself and his dog at his age. She hadn’t thought the world was unfair for a long time now. Everything is our own fault. A single NO in her life could have ensured that she wouldn’t be sitting here in an overpriced flat with a broken nose, her daughter wouldn’t be afraid to spend the weekend with her father, and the man she loved so much wouldn’t be sitting in the living room in front of the television cooling his grazed knuckles with a bag of frozen vegetables. Once again she felt that strange sensation as the accumulated blood ran down the inside of her nose. She changed the tissue. She touched the bone and felt a distinct bulge. At that moment, she was engulfed by pain. The bone had shifted slightly under her fingertips. If she didn’t do it now, she never would. She switched on the bedside lamp and turned towards the mirror above the small glass table. For a moment longer she summoned up the courage to look. Then she pulled the tissue away from her nose. It was bluish and clearly skewed to the right. For a moment she wondered whether to try slipping into the corridor and out to the stairs. But at the thought of leaving Berucha here, she immediately dismissed the idea of running away. He had never hurt her, never touched her. Thankfully, the only lightning conductor for his emotions was her. But there had been a first time for hitting her too. She would protect Berucha from him, she had sworn that to herself a hundred times. The blood stopped dripping. She reached into the basket under the bed and pulled out a pair of his socks waiting to be darned. She took a deep breath and shoved them almost entirely into her mouth. The material began to choke her, she’d have to hurry. She tried to grasp her bent nose as firmly as possible, closed her eyes and transported herself in her mind to the gazebo in their garden. Her father had let vines grow over it, but the fruits were sour and his ambitions as a cultivator died away as quickly as they had flared up. In a few years the gazebo looked like a green cave. Her most beloved place. Her kingdom. She applied pressure. She felt herself fainting under the sudden rush of pain. She must have lost consciousness for a few moments.

“Will you please stop it?”

He was standing over her, handing her paper towels. She collapsed against the headboard and the blood oozed from her nose with renewed gusto. She let out a broken whine. Jakub bent down and quickly turned off the lamp. Then he went over to the curtain and yanked it in a single movement. In her despair her gaze strayed to the illuminated wall of the balcony opposite. The man with the grey goatee was no longer standing on it. Under her own window she could just make out the outlines of the old tent propped against the heater. In it God had created Berucha.

Jakub turned on the lamp on his side of the bed and sat down. She tilted her head back and felt the warm blood running down her throat. Iron, sugar and something else she couldn’t place. She had to swallow it so she didn’t choke. She was drinking her own blood. She was a bloodsucker, like he said. Draining everyone. She should get up and go to the kitchen. Take a shower. But she was unable to move. She sensed that this drama wasn’t over yet – the curtain was stubbornly hanging high above the stage, where she and Jakub were sitting in a silence the audience were enjoying. He finally put his hand over his mouth and tried to fix his gaze on her. Today for the first time she didn’t see remorse in his expression. He just nodded, as if replaying all the blows and strikes of his fists that had landed on her face.

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t do this anymore…”

“I went too far, I’m an idiot. You know what I’m like. An asshole. Do you want me to drive you to the hospital? I’ll say I hurt you.”

She was tempted to stand up and get dressed, but she knew nothing would come of it. So many times they had set off for the emergency department only to stop at every intersection with Jakub begging her to forgive him and endlessly repeating what would happen once the police began poking about in their family affairs. His firm would go under, he wouldn’t be able to pay their loans, Berucha would get a hard time at school. Did their daughter deserve to be pointed at?

What had happened to her? She had studied philosophy, spent ten years writing for magazines about culture and intellectual developments in the world, she’d had a clear vision of the depths a person should never sink to. Now here she was lapping up her own blood. She knew she wouldn’t go to the hospital. She wouldn’t announce to the world that her husband was an impulsive tyrant who dealt with his problems with his fist in her face. On Monday she would dutifully call in sick and take a week of unpaid leave to give her bruises time to fade. She would keep it quiet like she always did. She would do that. And Jakub would lean towards her as he was leaving for work and whisper in her ear – good girl. Then she would watch his big car drive out of the garage, recalling Jacques Rousseau’s statement that freedom can never be regained. But how is it possible to lose it so many times?

“I’d like to get a divorce, Jakub.”

She heard somebody else say it for her. He reached over and turned out the light. He didn’t say anything. She heard the rustle of fabric. He had pulled the covers over him. Without taking a shower. Just like that, as if having a nap after lunch. Everything in the bedroom was plunged into darkness. Even the blood that flowed through the soaked paper towel onto her forearm. She suddenly felt unbearably tired. The one sentence that she had been carrying inside her for the last three years had drained her as if she had had to raise every word up to the highest point in the world. And nothing had happened. Just as she’d expected.

She was awakened by silence. She looked at the alarm clock shining through the gloom. It had been a long time since she’d woken up of her own accord. There was a dark circle of dried blood on the cover under her head. It was half past seven. The bed next to her was empty. Made up. On Saturdays Jakub went to football with his friends. Maybe it was the loss of blood that had made her sleep so soundly. Maybe it was the fact she had said what she said to Jakub. Apart from the intense stabbing pain in the middle of her forehead and the pressure in her chest when she breathed in, she actually felt good. She leaned over to the mirror beside the bed. It was better than she’d expected. Although her nose had swollen up and turned pink, it hadn’t gone black and looked fairly straight. Even the blow Jakub had dealt to her right cheek looked no worse than a wasp sting. On the other hand, her ribs had turned blue almost up to the armpits. That didn’t matter. She quickly pulled on a T-shirt but had to swap it for a long-sleeved top to hide the bruise on her forearm. She stripped off the bedding and stuffed the whole lot including the duvet into the washing machine.

“What happened to you?”

Watching her in the mirror was the sparrow-like face of their sleepy daughter. She tried to smile at her and felt a twinge in her nose.

“I fell out of bed during the night, didn’t you hear it?”

Berucha shook her head and then looked at her mother with a serious and searching expression. Sometimes she saw her own mother in that nine-year-old face. Reproachful but concerned and always capable of reading her like a naïve children’s book.

“Did you talk to Dad?”

She nodded and turned away quickly so she wouldn’t notice that the memory had brought tears to her eyes.

“I don’t have to go there, do I?”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

“So I don’t have to?”

“We’ll see.”

“I don’t want to go!”

She stared at the floor tiles, which she had always detested. Jakub had ordered them, like everything in this flat, without bothering to ask her opinion.

“We’ll talk about it later, OK?”

“I don’t want to be there with him without you.”

How many times had she wanted to ask Berucha why? Whether something had happened. But the fear of the answer always made her swallow her curiosity and reassure herself that of course nothing had happened. It was just the stubbornness of their pre-pubescent daughter. The sound of a dog barking came from the other side of the wall. Berucha leapt cheerfully onto the couch and knocked on the black-and-white wallpaper. The dog barked again.

“Stop it!”

“We’re talking to each other!”

“Bára, you can’t go knocking on strangers’ walls, we’ve been over this a hundred times!”

“Fritz is my friend, he gives me his paw and brings my sandals.”

She reached her little fist towards the wall again.

She didn’t know what got into her, but suddenly she was standing behind her, yanking her back. “I said enough!”

The girl wasn’t expecting such a sudden loss of balance, clawed the air and fell backwards onto the stainless-steel table with the marble top that for so many years had reminded her of a gravestone. Her long red hair splayed out across the floor and lay there without moving. It took an eternity before she was able to breathe again.

 

The first person she saw come out of the consulting room was Jakub. She had no idea how he had got inside, but she knew that Jakub could do anything he really made up his mind to. That was one of the things she’d loved about him. She didn’t know who had called him, but it wasn’t important. He was her father after all and he had a right to know that his daughter had banged her head. He walked up to her and sat down heavily. She got up, but Jakub took her by the hand and gently sat her down again.

“Well? What’s wrong with her?”

“Two stitches and mild concussion. The kind of thing that happens to children from time to time.”

“Did you talk to her?”

He nodded.

“I have to see her…”

The pressure of his hand in her lap increased. She realized his thumb was pushing against her bruised rib.

“Inka, I asked you for something.”

Because of Berucha she had completely forgotten about her broken nose and swollen face. She looked at him and was surprised to find he was smiling. Not sneering, but smiling. Nicely and cheerfully. That was how she remembered him when they had started out together twelve years ago, and that was how she pictured him as she made excuses for him. She couldn’t help smiling at him too. The pressure of his thumb on her rib eased off and Jakub pulled her close. She could feel how hot and sweaty he was. He had left in the middle of a match and had a damp jersey on under his jacket.

“You look great…”

He was squeezing her a little harder than he needed to, but she took it as an apology. She looked him in the eye and once again found herself doubting everything she had been thinking yesterday and what she had said to him. This was Jakub who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, Jakub who had left his team to be with his daughter, with his family when it was in danger. His rosemary-blue eyes were shining.

“They want to keep her in overnight.”

“Why?”

“I promised her I’d come in the evening and stay with her.”

Suddenly she felt a stab somewhere deep below her kicked ribs. She gently pulled away from him and fixed her hair.

“I’ll come…”

He looked at her and sighed, as if she had just deeply wounded him.

“Inka, come on. It’s just one night, we’ll be home in the morning after the doctor does the rounds. I’ll take you both for lunch, how about that?”

For a moment longer she sought the courage to tell him that Berucha was afraid to be with him, but in the end she just nodded silently. She got up and waited for him to get up too. A message came through on his phone.

“We got through to the finals. I’ll drop you off at home and help them win it.”

For a long moment she stared after the shiny exhaust of the SUV. The car had long since disappeared around the bend and her head was still buzzing with the silence that had set in as they got into the car. Neither the news nor the voice of a singer who had got the better of every regime banished the silence from the car. Not a word was said about the night before. Like so many times before. She would have to be the one to bring up who had done and promised what. And that took courage. She wished he would strike her again on the way so that she could activate the last remnants of her self-respect, which it was otherwise impossible to rouse from the eternal sleep of fear.

“Are you all right?”

The voice behind her boomed as if it was coming out of a well. She turned round and saw a tall, grey-haired man with a cigarette and a little dog on a lead. The shaggy Jack Russell weaved between her legs.

“Yes, thanks…”

Their gazes met fleetingly and Inka headed up the steps to the door to the building. There she realized he was following her. She caught the scent of a mixture of perfume and tobacco smoke. She held the door open until the little dog ran in under her feet.

“I saw the ambulance this morning.”

“My daughter banged into a table, but she’s all right…”

He said nothing. For an eternity he said nothing and just looked at her with his chestnut-brown eyes. He’d have had to be blind not to see her bruises and her nose like a pompom from twenty centimetres away. She felt hot.

“I…I’m so sorry about the knocking. My daughter thinks the dog’s barking at her, that she’s talking to him. I’m really sorry.”

The man finally gave her a little smile. His grey chin seemed to stretch out wide and his face transformed into that of a cartoon character whose name she couldn’t remember. She kept gazing at him a little longer than she wanted to.

“You forgot that it’s my dog who wakes the whole building every morning.”

“It won’t happen again…”

“He sits in the kitchen and waits for your daughter to knock on the wall. He could pee himself with happiness. Which he sometimes does. And that’s when I do start to get angry…”

“Excuse me.”

She finally squeezed past and headed for the stairs. She deliberately bypassed the lift so that she wouldn’t have to spend another minute with him.

“Mrs Vítová!”

He knew her name. She stopped with a foot on the first step and turned around. Against the light from the front door, all she could see was his tall, thin silhouette. For a moment it seemed he had forgotten what he wanted to say, but eventually that husky bass of his reverberated along the corridor.

“Don’t be afraid to knock…if you need to.”

The lift with the man in it was already ascending, but she was still standing on the first step.

Jakub left for the hospital precisely at six, as promised. Punctuality, decisiveness and severity towards himself and others – those were the cornerstones of Jakub’s life philosophy. He didn’t cut himself or others any slack, which often led to a build-up of stress and the anger associated with it. What had once seemed like attractive manly strength now suggested to her an autistic defect. A diamond form destroying everything that couldn’t or wouldn’t get out of the way. Perhaps that was why the relationship between him and Berucha had got so much worse in the last year. Jakub was unwilling or rather unable to understand that something momentous and fragile was going on in his daughter, that she was changing from a child into an independent thinking being. She had tried to smuggle a few publications about the onset and course of puberty onto his e-reader, but it usually just ended in a quarrel. Before Christmas he had caught her putting a print-out of an article about the development of a child’s psyche into his briefcase. He shouted at her for rummaging around in his personal belongings and then without warning let fly with his right hand and knocked out her incisor. In its place there now gleamed a tooth for thirty thousand which he had had imported all the way from Norway for her. He promised that when the two of them were nothing but dust, that tooth would still be as fresh and bright as it was today.

He came back at eight. He tossed the overnight bag he had packed into the bedroom and then sat down in the kitchen. He opened a Red Bull and drank quickly. She stood in the doorway and tried to gauge how much of a bad mood he was in. To her surprise, he began to speak without prompting.

“She threw me out.”

In a second she felt the air in the kitchen grow thick and the temperature rise. A drop of sweat ran down her back.

“Why?” She was almost whispering, she was so afraid of the answer.

“She wants to try it on her own. Apparently she’s a big girl and she can cope with one night in hospital.”

There wasn’t a trace of aggressiveness in his voice. In fact, she got the feeling he was quite amused about being given the boot. She sighed. She felt relieved.

“She’s right, isn’t she?”

On the other side of the wall, the dog barked. Jakub got up and went over to the fridge.

“What about dinner?”

The fridge was almost empty.

“Sorry. I thought you wouldn’t be here.”

He reached for his jacket and silently headed into the corridor. When it seemed as though he was about to leave, he leaned back so he could see her.

“So, how about it? Shall we go and get something to eat?”

They hadn’t been out together for about five years. Not that they didn’t go anywhere. Office parties, Christmas, celebrations. But there had always been plenty of other people there, or at least Berucha. Now they were sitting in a dimly lit restaurant a few blocks from their house, a cold glass table with a small begonia in a flowerpot between them and jazz coming out of hidden speakers. They had called their daughter at the hospital together and now they were waiting for the food, which she had no appetite for. If she had been able to cut away the last five years and perceive nothing but the candle, the flower and him, she would have had to admit that she was happy. But she wasn’t capable of anything like that.

“Where did you end up?”

As soon as she’d asked, she sensed the ambiguity of her question. But Jakub wasn’t nearly as perceptive. He shrugged and held up three fingers.

“Not much to celebrate.”

She nodded. Long ago she had learned to see Jakub’s minor successes as failures and losses. She managed to ask how many teams had taken part, what the format of play had been and how they had celebrated. Then she was rescued by the waiter and a Caesar salad that could be chewed for an incredibly long time – in fact, until it was time to leave – freeing her from the obligation to ask questions. She knew Jakub wouldn’t ask her about anything. She didn’t remember how it used to be. As far back as her memory went, she had always been the one who asked and Jakub liked to talk. He never asked her about the job she had got after her maternity leave, whether she enjoyed it at the local council and what the work of an officer for the cultural development of their district actually involved. Or was she grateful to him? She didn’t think about work – or, at least, not often. Her duties came to an end at the lobby, and from there to the end of the world there was only fear of what would happen at home.

 

—

 

For the first time in ages, they got together in bed. He didn’t switch on the giant television she had to put up with on the opposite wall of the room. He gently placed his hand on her back. His fingertips pressed on the vertebrae and lightly circled around them. She would never have believed he remembered this. She closed her eyes and perceived nothing but the warm circling points on her back. Perhaps she even sighed, because he dared to move his hand higher up, to her neck and under her hair. She couldn’t help pressing herself against him. He fascinated her, like a volcano: unpredictable, terrifying, but magnificent.

She hadn’t enjoyed sex so much for a long time. Maybe it was because Berucha was away and there was no risk of the door bursting open. In truth she knew that it was down to Jakub. He pushed inside her not with the mechanical precision of a figure on an astronomical clock, but with desire. When was the last time she had felt that shuddering inside her, felt him lay his forehead on her shoulder, his lips opening wordlessly, tickling her on the neck and under the chin? He didn’t hurry. He avoided her sore ribs. Afterwards they lay side by side. Inka took hold of his hand. He didn’t pull away. She clasped his warm fingers and through the wall came the sound of Fritz demanding his evening knock. Could it end this way? The world would be set to rights after one beautiful night of passion. She would forget…

In the morning she woke refreshed. For a moment she was confused, but then she remembered the evening and turned to Jakub’s side of the bed. It was empty. She held her breath, trying to work out where he was. She couldn’t hear water from the bathroom or footsteps in the kitchen. She couldn’t hear the television. She slid her hand into the space beneath the duvet, but it was already cold. He must have got up much earlier. The feeling of happiness slowly began to muddy like a pond stirred up by the clumsy toes of rubber boots. She walked through the flat and couldn’t help but notice the open wardrobe from which a suitcase had disappeared. And clothes from Jakub’s shelves. Her legs automatically carried her to the window to make sure the big car wasn’t there either. Her breathing quickened. The finger on the screen trembled as she dialled his number. An automated voice told her that the owner of the number was currently unavailable. She was seized by panic. She still didn’t know why. But her body, or rather her brain, had already analysed what she would figure out a few seconds later. Fritz was barking wildly on the other side of the wall. At that moment her foreboding and fear met as they returned from the dead end of yesterday evening. Berucha.

She took the stairs in the hospital three at a time. The breath in her lungs grew short and ragged. On the third floor she had to stop and lean against the railing over the window. When she opened the door to the room they were supposed to have taken Berucha to yesterday, she staggered. The room was empty. Both of the beds made up, no sign that its occupant had just popped out somewhere. There was the kind of definitive cleanliness and whiteness that only goes with death or recovery.

“Are you looking for someone?”

“Vítová. I’ve come for my daughter…”

“You’re too late, your husband’s already picked up your little girl.”

“Picked her up?”

She tried to be surprised, but she had known it from that silence in the flat. She had known it from the kisses on her neck – that miracles didn’t happen, that after one night of passion all that happens is that the one who’s drunk has a headache for longer. And yet she hadn’t been able to stop it. It was her fault. She stared at the nurse, who tried to smile and shook her gently.

“Mrs Vítová, is something wrong?”

She walked past her without replying. She didn’t quite know what was happening yet herself.

It wasn’t till around lunchtime that a message alerted her that Jakub’s number was available again. She quickly dialled it. His voice was calm but cold.

“Do you need something?”

“Where’s Berucha?”

“With me.”

“And where are you?”

“That’s not important. The important thing is that you do something about this. Go and see a doctor, get some pills…”

“What are you talking about? What pills?”

In the handset she could hear him chewing something. Maybe he was having lunch.

“Inka, don’t play games. Berucha told me how it happened.”

“It was an accident. I just pulled her off the couch so she wouldn’t hammer on the wall. Her foot slipped.”

“I’ve reported it to the police. The doctor confirmed the extent of the injury…”

“What are you talking about?”

“You could have killed her. Just a few more centimetres. I told them we’re getting divorced.”

She felt something burst and the wall she had built to protect her, that high wall begin to crumble and rain down on her.

“Where’s Berucha?!”

He waited for her to stop screaming into the phone.

“I’ve asked for a preliminary injunction, because you are a sick person, Inka. Unstable and desperate…”

“Where have you taken her?!”

“They’ll be in touch, don’t worry…”

Her legs failed her and she sank to her knees. People in the street turned round and quickly crossed to the other side of the street. Hysteria choked her voice into a ridiculous falsetto.

“Where is she? You can’t do this! Do you hear me, Jakub!?”

 

Translated by Graeme Dibble