Читать книгу A Shadow of Myself - Mike Phillips - Страница 11

George’s car was a shiny dark-red Jaguar. It looked brand new. The interior was lined with soft cream-coloured leather into which Joseph sank, his muscles relaxing and coming to rest by an instant reflex. Through the darkened windows a premature twilight softened the harsh geometry of the city’s suburban fringe. Suddenly Joseph felt like a part of the surroundings, gliding imperceptibly through its streets, floating on a carpet whose discreet vibrations filled him with a sense of power and command. As soon as they’d got into the car the stereo had started up, playing a Stevie Wonder album that Joseph remembered buying as a teenager. George tapped his fingers on the wheel in time to the music, looking round and smiling at Joseph, but for a couple of minutes he said nothing.

In spite of his determination to maintain his distance, Joseph found himself studying George’s profile, searching it for signs of a resemblance to himself or his father. He was conscious of waiting for George to speak, to explain more about who he was, how he had arrived at this time and place, but in a few minutes he was also overwhelmed by the ridiculousness of the situation. He looked round the interior of the car again. There was no way, he thought, that George could be a common or garden confidence trickster. To drive a car like this he’d need to be making some serious money.

‘What do you do for a living?’ Joseph asked, pitching his voice above the music.

George grinned, as if the question amused him.

‘Business. I’m a businessman.’

‘All right,’ Joseph said. ‘What kind of business?’

‘Business, you know. I buy. I sell. Only business.’

There was something final about the tone in which he said this, as if he had no intention of volunteering anything further, and Joseph tried another tack.

‘How old are you?’

‘I was born in 1958. In Berlin.’

That would make him four years older than Joseph.

‘Is that where you live?’

George glanced sideways at Joseph, smiling reflectively, as if he understood the point of all these questions, and had no intention of giving too much away.

‘Sometimes.’

His enigmatic manner had begun to drive Joseph to a high point of exasperation. He peered out of the window, trying to control his irritation. On their right was some sort of wood.

‘Letinsky Sady,’ George said when he saw Joseph looking.

‘What?’

‘Letna Park.’

It didn’t look much like a park, Joseph told him. In England parks were man-made, manicured pieces of turf and garden reclaimed from the sprawling of cities. Even the royal parks, which had been there for a very long time, were designed and designated as places of leisure. In comparison Letinsky looked like a tract of forest which had somehow survived from prehistory, its tall dark trees climbing up a steep slope which was crowned by a rectangular block of rusting concrete. Even though they were close to the middle of the city the scene had a gloomy deserted air which made Joseph think of running wolves and bodies abandoned among the fallen leaves.

‘When Michael Jackson came to Prague,’ George said, ‘he placed a big statue of himself here in the park.’ Joseph peered out trying, without success, to imagine it. George nodded his head as if to emphasise a point. ‘I was here. There were kids fucking everywhere under the trees. It was great. Before that they say there was a big statue of Stalin, the biggest in the world.’ He looked round at Joseph, grinning. ‘In those days nobody fucked without permission.’

It was easier to imagine Stalin’s frown brooding over the dark wood.

‘So what happened to it?’

‘Oh, they exploded it many years ago.’

They had crossed a bridge, but they seemed to be climbing, going away from the centre of the city. Ahead of them reared a tower, three pillars of shiny metal like the needle noses of rockets thrusting upwards into the supine grey sky. Streaks of water, fine and delicate lines of wet beads, began tracing decorations along the outside of the glass.

‘All year it rains in Prague,’ George said.

‘My father never lived in Berlin,’ Joseph told him. ‘In 1958 he was in London.’

‘Yes,’ George said. ‘When I was born he was not there.’

He pulled over to the kerb and stopped. Peering out, Joseph saw that they were parked in a street where a gaggle of shopfronts alternated with offices and apartments, most of which seemed to be lined with scaffolding. Everywhere he went in the city it occurred to him, there was scaffolding. The façades of the building were usually long ruled blocks of plaster, like the grand streets of an English seaside town, but there was nothing elegant about them. Instead the surfaces were peeling and spotted, some of them with a bulging rotten look, as if only the grey piping of the scaffolding was holding the plaster in place.

Next to the car was a massive doorway faced with rusty metal. It was painted black, but the gloss was crumbling and peeling, the grey patches giving it a scaly, diseased air.

‘We are here,’ George announced. ‘Come.’

Joseph got out of the car and looked over at George on the other side.

‘I’ve gone far enough,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m going to take a taxi back to my hotel. Maybe after I phone my father we can talk.’

George frowned. He put his keys in his pocket and walked round the front of the car towards Joseph. As he came closer Joseph made a quick sweep of the street behind him. Apart from a couple of pedestrians on the other side it was practically deserted. This was a feature he had noticed earlier. Once outside of the central district of the city, there were very few people to be seen walking around. In comparison the suburban streets in London were thronging with traffic. Suddenly the empty street seemed alive with menace. Anything could happen, Joseph thought. As George came closer he took his hand off the car and stood up straight, holding his ground.

‘My father is always called Kofi, but his full name begins with the English letter “a”. Akofi. He trained to be a lawyer at the School of Economics, the great institute in the centre of London. He was a freedom fighter against the British. When his country was liberated he became an important diplomat in Russia. In 1957, one month before Christmas, the authorities in Moscow demanded his deportation. They sent my mother away on the same day. That is how I was born in Berlin. When my mother heard you speak on the TV, it was the first time she’d heard his name in over forty years.’ He paused. His jaws clenched tight, the lines of his face set stone hard. He took the keys out of his pocket. In the silent twilight of the street they jingled. ‘We came to Prague to see you. My brother. But come, go, phone. No difference. Fuck you.’

He turned away from Joseph and quickly walked round the car, across the narrow pavement. Without looking back he stuck the key in the lock, yanked the door open and went in, slamming it shut behind him.

Left alone, standing by the car, Joseph experienced a moment of irrepressible doubt, and without pausing to think about what he was doing, he ran after George and banged on the door. It opened immediately, and Joseph had the feeling that George had simply been leaning against it, waiting for him to knock. In the moment before George opened the door Joseph had been full of angry words, but as their eyes met he was dumb. They stood like this, on either side of the open door, before Joseph spoke.

‘What do you want from me?’

George took a deep breath. He shrugged.

‘I don’t know.’ He gestured with one hand. ‘So?’

‘All right,’ Joseph said. ‘All right.’

The stairs were dingy, wide and bare, their footsteps echoing back from the muddy brown walls. In contrast the apartment was neat and gleaming with the air of being newly painted and furnished.

They had come in through a short hallway into the big living room. On Joseph’s right the wall was dominated by a huge abstract painting, a curling red shape which flowed ominously off the bottom corner of the canvas. Beside it a group of framed photographs which he guessed were views of the city. On the other side of the room a big round table, already laid out for dinner, was posed next to a pair of French windows which opened on to a balcony guarded by a sinuous wrought-iron rail. The apartment building was close to the top of a hill, and beyond the windows Joseph could see a wide vista, the grey slate of roofs punctuated by the pointing fingers of the church steeples, sweeping upwards to the sky out of gracefully curved triangles. This was the frame within which he saw Radka for the first time, her back towards him, and silhouetted against the pearlescent twilight of the evening city. Remembering the moment later on, he guessed that there must have been a stray beam of late sunlight striking through the glass, because her light fair hair seemed to be shining so that her head was shrouded by a bright and golden aura. It was only when George called her name, and she turned, smiling, to greet him, that Joseph noticed little Serge standing beside her.

‘This is my son, Serge,’ George said proudly. He pushed the little boy towards Joseph. ‘Speak. Speak to your uncle.’

The boy’s forehead furrowed with anxiety. He was about six years old, Joseph guessed, with a pale freckly skin, light green eyes, and a mop of reddish-brown curls in a halo round his head. At first Joseph had been startled by his appearance, but when he looked closely he could see the African ancestry in the shape of the boy’s lips, in the dark undertone of his skin, and in the tight shape of the curls edging his cheeks. On the other hand he felt a peculiar flutter of disturbance somewhere inside him. His father Kofi was a man so dark that, out in the sunshine, his skin seemed to splinter and absorb the light. The thought that this pretty, curly-haired white boy might be his grandson was strange and unsettling.

Over Serge’s head George smiled broadly. In the short time it had taken them to climb the stairs his mood had lightened, and he was now cheerful and expansive, the genial host. The contrast with his outburst of rage on the street left Joseph bewildered and uncertain.

‘Speak,’ George told the boy. ‘Speak.’

‘Ahoy,’ Serge said eventually.

‘Not Czech,’ George muttered, stooping down behind him. ‘English.’

The boy’s lips worked silently for a moment.

‘Hello,’ he said eventually.

Standing behind George, Radka clapped her hands loudly.

‘Bravo Liebling. Gut. Gut.’

‘Speak English,’ George said quickly, looking round. He stood up. ‘This is Radka.’

Joseph put out his hand to shake hers, but she came past George and grabbed his hands, pulling him towards her and kissing him on both cheeks. As she did this George watched with an ironical smile, as if he could sense Joseph’s unease at being cast in the role of an affectionate brother-in-law. The odd thing, Joseph thought, was that he could already sense the changes in George’s mood, and even work out what he was thinking.

‘You are just like him,’ Radka said, still holding his hands. Her voice had a husky sound, unexpectedly low in pitch. Joseph shrugged. After all, everything that had happened in the last hour had been a shock, and somehow it seemed natural and inevitable that the touch of Radka’s hands should be alive, tingling in his nerves like the aftermath of electricity.

They drank vodka sitting round the table. Serge sat opposite Joseph playing with a long thin glass filled with some kind of fruit juice. He was quiet, his eyes round and fixed on the visitor, and Joseph guessed that his English had been exhausted with the single word. Occasionally he asked his mother a question in German.

‘He wants to know,’ Radka said, ‘if you have seen a lion in Africa. Like the Lion King.’

Her eyes laughed at Joseph. They were a light blue, and against the slight tan of her skin they gave her face an exotic reckless look, as if she was making him a dare.

‘I saw one once in Africa,’ Joseph said. ‘But I live in London where they keep the lions in a zoo.’

Radka translated and the boy gave a sharp, ‘Ah,’ as she said the first bit. His eyes grew wider, glued to Joseph’s face.

‘My mother wanted to come,’ George said suddenly. ‘To see you. But her health is not good, you know.’

‘She lives in Berlin?’ Joseph asked politely.

There were many other questions that he wanted to ask instead, but with Serge’s eyes following his every move he felt constrained about challenging George. Looking across at the boy he wondered whether this was what his brother had intended. In the next instant he realised, with a slight shock, that for nearly an hour this had been how he was thinking about George. As his brother.

The first course was a cold beetroot soup, the earthy flavour heightened by the resin taste of the wine. Joseph’s head was swimming after his second glass, and he remembered that since they had arrived George had been drinking steadily. It didn’t seem to affect his manner, but Joseph could feel his own senses clouding.

‘She refused to leave,’ George said. ‘She lived in the same apartment until the Wall came down. Berlin is her home.’

‘And yours?’

George smiled.

‘For me change and movement is still possible.’

‘Can you come to Berlin?’ Radka asked. She took in Joseph’s look of surprise. ‘Katya was so excited to hear your voice. She wants to meet you.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Joseph told her. ‘I’m leaving here in a couple of days.’

‘There is a message,’ she said, as if she had anticipated his reply.

She’d hardly completed the sentence before George broke in, speaking rapidly in German. Immediately Serge slid off his seat and stood next to Radka, reaching out to hold her hand.

‘It is now his bedtime,’ George told Joseph.

The boy seemed surprisingly obedient, walking round the table to shake hands with Joseph and then toddling off serious-faced behind Radka.

‘There is a message,’ George said.

He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and brought out a lilac-coloured envelope. On the front there were only two words, written in an elegant copperplate script. His father’s name – Kofi Coker.

Joseph turned the envelope over in his hands.

‘You’ll give this to him?’ George asked.

Joseph was about to say yes, then it occurred to him that in all the time he had been discussing his father with George he had never once considered the effect that this event might have on the old man. If it was true.

‘He had a heart attack a couple of years ago,’ he told George. As he said this he felt a curious sense, almost of betrayal, at revealing such an intimate matter.

‘He’s okay now?’

‘Yes,’ Joseph replied, ‘except I’m worried about how he’ll take all this. He’s an old man.’

If George understood the hint implicit in his words he ignored it. I’d take no notice too, Joseph thought, if it was my dad whom I’d never seen.

‘You must understand this,’ George said quickly. ‘My mother and father were separated by the authorities. She still loves him. Everyone loved him. He was known to everyone. Even Nikita Khrushchev spoke with him.’ He grinned at Joseph. ‘Maybe he was not such a great hero as she thinks, you know, but that is what she told me. This is forty years ago. She was fighting the rules when I was born.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Regulations. She could have made me never to exist – that would have been easy – or sent me away. But that would have been surrender.’ He looked away from Joseph, gazing through the French windows out into the evening sky. ‘This was not easy. I lived with a German family when I was a small boy, like Serge. I called the mother my mutti. You have two mothers, they told me. What a lucky boy. Then Katya married a German, an important policeman. He wanted to forget me, I think, but my mother insisted.’ He chuckled. ‘I think he hated me. No one would think I was his son, you know. But I was lucky. Only a few years, then he was killed.’ He got up and paced to the window without looking at Joseph. ‘My mother still speaks of Kofi, Kofi, Kofi, as if no time has passed. But I think she had believed that he was dead or lost, that she would never see or hear of him again. Then she hears you and her life begins. If she cannot touch him in some way she will die.’ He paused. ‘She is a woman of great passion.’

He said this last bit with a kind of gloomy pride. In the corner of the room the phone began to ring. George ignored it. The ringing stopped.

‘Maybe wrong number,’ George said carelessly.

‘Could it be your mother?’ Joseph asked. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to say her name.

‘No. No. We spoke before. She is waiting for me to call.’

The ringing started again. After a while Radka came into the room and picked up the phone. She listened in silence, then held it out towards George. He got up, his face expressionless, took the phone from her, and reeling out the long cord by which it was attached to the wall, went out and shut the door behind him.

It was dark outside now, and before Radka sat down she turned on a standard lamp perched in the corner below the photographs. She had changed her clothes, switching from the sweater and jeans she’d been wearing to a long white dress in some sort of crinkly material, which seemed to wrap around and envelop her body, giving her a comfortable, relaxed air, as if she had slipped it on to illustrate the fact that this was her province in which she was at home. She smelt of flowers – something with a lemony undertone which Joseph couldn’t identify. Citrus, but not lemon. Earlier on her hair had been bundled together into a bun on top of her head. Now she had let it down and it rippled in smooth flowing waves, over her shoulders and across her back. In the margin of the pool of light around the lamp, she glowed.

‘This is very important to George,’ she said. She gazed at him seriously, her eyes intent. ‘There was always something missing in his life. Just as his mother’s. Being with you is a great experience. Already he loves you.’

Joseph shrugged, too embarrassed to speak. It wasn’t so much the idea of what she was saying that disturbed him. It was the fact that she was saying it.

Suddenly he could hear George shouting, a ranting, angry sound. Radka’s expression didn’t change.

‘I put some photographs in the envelope with Katya’s letter,’ she said calmly. Outside the door George’s voice had risen to a roar without eliciting any apparent reaction from Radka. Perhaps it was the language, Joseph thought. To English ears emphatic German speech still carried the sound of a threat. ‘She wants to see him,’ Radka continued.

The door flung open and George strode in.

‘I have to go,’ he said without preamble. ‘Half an hour.’ He pointed at Joseph. ‘You wait? Okay?’

Joseph started to object, but before he could find the words George had turned and walked out. Radka got up quickly and went out after him, closing the door behind her. Joseph hovered for a moment, undecided about whether he should get up and follow, but then he heard their voices echoing in the hallway. It sounded like an argument, so he stayed where he was, and in a moment he heard the sound of the outer door slamming shut.