35.

29 June, midnight, Czernograd, the Prazsky Park district

After they left the club –he still did not know if the place had a name and he did not ask her – she called a taxi and they waited inside the gate. “It’s a bit too far to walk,” she explained. Both the courtyard and the street were completely deserted, lights in the windows around far outnumbered by the streetlamps. It was hard to believe that beneath their feet men, women, and those who once used to be men and women, drunk expensive alcohol and chatted sparingly while some gyrated their bodies in full view and others let their veins be open in private.

When the taxi turned up a few minutes later, for a second Jake thought that Michal will jump out of the car and throw his arms around him, asking in broken English how he’s been and whether his sister has proved to be of help. But their driver was an elderly man in a flat cap and a knitted vest who greeted them in a perfunctory way and kept quiet the whole way while on the radio, turned down low, a local night DJ played golden oldies from the time when the man was young and life was simpler without American tourists and the whole world outside to worry about.

They sat on the back seat, still holding hands, a few words exchanged once in a while, Jake staring out the window, Marina playing with her phone. The taxi was taking them south again, and the streets were busier here. It would have taken them an hour to walk, but inside the old Citroen it was a ten-minute drive and a ten tallar fare.

The taxi driver let them off on a busy street lined with low, two or three storey buildings, dark upstairs, well-lit deserted shopfronts downstairs. A long queue snaking along looked like the mannequins from one of the boutiques gone on a night outing while the owners were asleep.

“Another nightclub?” Jake asked. “What should I beware of here?”

“Only yourself,” she said, a mystic in high heels. “Look over there,” she changed the topic before he could query her. “This is the old castle,” she motioned with her head in the direction down the street.

Jake has only seen it before on postcards and in his travel guide. Neither the structure nor the hill were particularly impressive by the continental standards. If Czernograd were a woman she would be an A cup. At night, the walls of the castle were lit up by multi-coloured spotlights, giving it a garish, psychedelic look. The royal family had abandoned its former keep a long time ago, moving down to a more impressive and convenient palace complex by the river. The castle was left to the tourists.

“We better line up,” Jake said. The queue didn’t seem to have moved since they got out of the taxi.

“We better not,” she took him by the hand again. They walked past the line and the past the entrance, left into a side street and left again into a narrow alleyway, where they had to squeeze past industrial rubbish bins overflowing with refuse. At the end, and he didn’t know how she could see in the dark except perhaps with the aid of good memory, there was what sounded like a buzzer, which she pressed next to what must have been a door, now masquerading as a wall.

“You certainly know your way around,” he said.

“That’s why I’m such a good guide,” she said. The door open and a man ushered them in. Dressed all in black, like everyone else seemed to be tonight, and sporting a wired earpiece, he was tall and slim, a manager perhaps rather than security. They embraced with Marina and exchanged a few words in Ruthenian.

“Jake, this is Mirco,” she said. “An old friend of mine.”

“Nice to meet you, man,” Mirco shook his hand with a wide smile. He seemed to have picked up his English from MTV, somewhere in the vicinity of Jersey Shore.

“Likewise,” Jake nodded.

“You will have to excuse me, it’s a busy night and we’re short on staff,” Mirco sighed and shook his head. “Besides, Marina knows this place better than many people who work here.”

They said a quick goodbye and then Marina led Jake down the corridor and down a stairway. There was a moment, about half the way down, where the brickwork and paint finished, replaced by chiseled stone.

“Going underground again?” Jake said. “Most of the interesting stuff around here seems to happen below the surface.”

“You know the least of it,” she replied. “The whole Czernograd is built on a limestone bedrock, and this part of town, the Prazsky Park and the Castle Hill is all honeycombed underneath with natural caves, and a lot of man-made ones that were added over the centuries.”

Just like at the other club the music came first. Nothing wistful or exotic this time, just some generic dance - – Jake always had problems telling the electronica sub-genres apart – that assembled itself the closer they got to the belly of the beast. First the thumping beat, then then the gut-shaking bass, followed by snares and blips, and finally the melody line, or rather a looped synthesised riff.

The stairs must have been the service ones for the staff, since they emerged on the floor behind an oval-shaped bar, where an army of worker ants was juggling glasses, bottles, cash and perfunctory smiles, trying to satisfy the besieging throng. There were a few brief greetings as Marina recognised a few of them, and then they were from behind the bar and on the edge of chaos.

The cavern seemed vast, a series of interconnected chambers, work of nature completed by human hands, now all shadows and light, hundreds of bouncing bodies caught in a strobe kaleidoscope.

“Not quite your scene?” Marina shouted into his ear.

“Not really,” he shouted back. Our idea of fun when we were younger was to put on some rap or hard rock on the stereo, drink copious amounts of alcohol and vomit in the bushes, he thought. “But this… this is cool. Never been in a cave like this.”

“It’s a pretty special cave,” she said.

“I bet it is. Shouldn’t it be heritage though?”

“Maybe. But it’s too late now. Too popular.”

“I can see why people would find it an experience,” he said.

“No, I don’ think you quite can,” her lips were now so close he could feel her hot breath. “But you will.”

Like hell, but with a slightly less maddening soundtrack and you can get out by the morning, he thought. The DJ shouted something into his mic and the dance floor responded with roar of approval. What’s the Ruthenian for “C’mon everybody, make some noise”?

“Why don’t you show me then,” he shouted at Marina.

She led him around the periphery, hugging the walls, her fingers brushing against the cool, smooth limestone. Rock on the left, dance on the right. Dance, but nothing social about it. A crowd, but everyone alone. Every man and every woman and every whatever else for themselves, within themselves. Last longer, look cooler, move faster.

Marina stopped when they reached a little cranny in the wall. She took Jake by both hands and dragged him inside. There was barely a room for two. She fished something out of her purse and placed it on the tip of her tongue, a little round, green tablet against the rich red background. Her eyes sparkled, a dare.

“I can have that sort of experience without living home,” Jake said. It was true, but he couldn’t recall the last time. He’s been getting straighter as he was getting older, or maybe just more easily bored with the season’s fashion. Including the chemical ones.

“No you can’t,” she said, her tongue and its cargo snapping back inside her mouth. “Not here.”

“Do I have to, mum?” he winked at her.

“Yes, you do,” she answered, like a mum. “I don’t. I choose to. You have to. You’re one of us. But you’re not. Not quite. Not enough. Not enough to connect. The caves don’t know you. They don’t talk to strangers.”

She sounded like she was already high, yet she couldn’t have been yet. Unless Ruthenian pill mills were churning out some really top shit. E with some extra magic.

“You need a door. Stranger.”

She whipped out another green pill and again put it on the tip of her tongue. But this time she grabbed the front of his shirt with her both hands and pulled herself towards him. He opened his mouth, inviting her tongue to come in. It did, sneaking in like a snake, depositing the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil inside his mouth. He swallowed the tablet and kept kissing. This is crazy, he thought. Why do we only get to do it under the most bizarre of circumstances? You’re an ass, Jake Voynich. Don’t keep fucking it up. Go for it.

Marina pulled away. He tried to grab her by the waist, pull her back to him and continue but she evaded his grasp.

“What now?” he asked.

“Just relax,” she said. “Wait for the door to open. Wonder around, take it all in... You’ll know.”

Whatever. Outside the alcove, the mass of bodies was still undulating in synch with the music. Somehow it reminded him of peas or something being shaken dry in a colander and he chuckled to himself. The base was really rearranging his insides. Or maybe it was alcohol and excitement.

Then he noticed that Marina was not there anymore. He felt panicked for a moment, not out of a stranger’s fear of being abandoned in unfamiliar surroundings and with a pinger to kick in at any moment, but because whatever it was that was coming up he wanted to share it with her. And even if nothing was coming up, he still wanted to be near her.

He touched the rock with his left hand and started slowly walking along the wall. He didn’t quite know why. To look for her?

-elelelelelelelelelelelelele

He turns around.

A man, naked but for a rough loincloth, his back roughly painted with the red ochre, bending on his knees in front of the wall, waving a burning twig in front of him. The smoke and movement obscure the limestone surface, but he can see a painted black contour of an animal, horned one, like a bison.

-elelelelelelelelelelelele

Somewhere from behind. Voices, together. And a sound of two pieces of wood rhythmically striking each other.

Jake comes closer and hunches down next to the man, balancing himself on the balls of his feet. Tracing lines on the wall with his finger. Human stick figures, wavy lines, dots. The smoke from the twig gets into his eyes, making them water.

-elelelelelelelelelelelele

“A nice animal. Who are you?”

-elelelelelelelelelelelele

The man turns towards him but where there are supposed to be eyes there are only empty sockets. He waves his twig only inches away from Jake’s face and Jake instinctively pulls back. He almost loses balance but steadies himself before he can fall on his back.

-elelelelelelelelelelelele

Then the man twists back and waves the twig to his other side.

Haraharaharaharahara

The sound becomes harsh and guttural, like hissing and hacking. Jake doesn’t like the sound; it feels like a cheese grater on his brain.

He follows the twig with his eyes. There, at the edge of the dancing circle of light sits another man. He hugs his knees tightly to his chest and he’s rocking gently back and forth. He’s completely naked and is shivering; Jake doesn’t know if it’s from cold, or fear, or something else. He looks different to the man with the twig; he’s older, that’s true, but also looks alien, as if he came here all the way from the depths of Mongolia and doesn’t belong here. His skin is darker, his face oval and wide, flat nose, half-moon eyes that stare into infinity as his lips move in a silent mumble.

Haraharaharaharahara

The eyeless man throws the twig at the old man, and the flame sails through the air as if in slow motion and it strikes the man and bounces off his knees and falls on the ground before him. The man gives a quiet yelp but keeps rocking.

Haraharara

Even angrier now.

Then the twig burns itself out.

Some young guy is bending over him, short blonde dreadlocks kept upright like a bunch of pale asparagus by a wide red bandanna. He says something to Jake that Jake can’t hear, and even if he could hear he probably couldn’t understand. What he does understand is the hand extended to him. Jake grasps it and the dreadlocks guy yanks him up to the upright position.

“Have you seen Marina”? Jake asks, but the man has already turned away from him and is dancing off.

He now notices that he is somewhere else in the caves, without quite knowing where exactly or how he got there. He knows that he is further away from the DJ and the main dance floor because the sound is less overbearing and the flickering light sparser. But there are still people here, though they do not seem to be aware of the music, or much else around them for that matter. One girl is kneeling in front of a limestone column, trying to embrace it, while weeping loudly enough to be heard through the noise. A few others sit against the wall or lay on the bare stone floor, lost and alone each and every one of them, even if they can only stretch out their hand to touch the other.

Then he feels something touching his face, and he realises it’s the flakes of snow, slowly drifting down from above. The snow, here?

But where is here? He’s standing in a room, sparsely lit and musty, soaked with dry heat. The entire wall opposite him is covered from the floor to the ceiling in bookshelves. But it’s the desk that dominates the room, and two men sit across it, staring at each other as if over an abyss.

“I beg you to reconsider,” says one of them. It’s so warm, so why is he wearing his fur coat? Then again, why is it snowing inside?

“No. That can’t happen,” says the other man. “It won’t happen. I won’t do it.”

The man is looking in his direction, but past him, eyes unfocused on anything in this room.

“Grandpa?” Jake says.

He thinks he can feel a delicate shiver pass through his grandfather’s body, as if an angel’s feather had caressed the man along the spine.

Jake takes a few steps towards the desk, towards Bohu, his father’s father. He extends his hand, wanting to reach out and touch the man’s face.

“You are the last one. If not you, then it will have to be... him...“ says the other man.

“Then, so be it,” his grandfather says.

Jake’s hand slowly descends down to his grandfather's shoulder, about to touch the fabric of his suit instead.

...but grandfather’s shoulder turns to stone. And he’s touching the cold, smooth wall of rock rising in front of him. More than that, he’s leaning against it, hands apart, blood thumping in his ears and his heart racing fast. His head is swaying from side to side and he feels nauseous. Someone bumps into him, then someone else, or maybe the same person, and he keeps on leaning and he keeps on swaying.

Funny, he can’t say if his eyes are open or not, but he feels as if someone is looking him straight in the face, but how could this be if in front of him there is nothing but limestone?

He’s being held, and his grandfather’s face towers over him, taking up almost the whole field of vision. He must be tiny.

He doesn’t recognise the man holding him then; he only knows him now. Then, it’s just a strange visage, not one he’s used to, that of the people he eventually comes to call his mother and his father. These faces he does recognise and they bring him peace and contentment that come with love and familiarity.

But this stranger...

He’s holding Jake and talking to him, but he’s not speaking in English; he’s speaking Ruthenian – at least that’s what Jake thinks, that’s how it sounds to him, the language he doesn’t know – and yet Jake can understand it all.

“You could have been,” his grandfather says. “But it’s better that way.”

And then he kisses him on the forehead, for the first and the last time in Jake’s life, and Jake start to cry.

And then he feels lips on his eyes and cheeks, kissing the salty water away.

“Hush, hush,” she whispers and her lips move down and lock onto his.

He can taste her, and it’s sweet and familiar and comforting, like the sight of his parent’s face. He can’t remember now why he was crying – he can’t even be quite sure anymore that he was crying at all – but if he was, was it over some dream or because he couldn’t find her? And why did he now think of his parents’ faces?

Doesn’t matter now; she’s here. She’s found him, or he’s found her, somewhere underground where the limestone breathes and gets into your head and tells tales, long forgotten and already half-forgotten yet again.

They crash into a wall but it feels soft like a mattress, not a rock. Her hand reaches down and unzips his jeans and releases him. He picks her up and hoists her up, her legs wrapping themselves around his waist and her arm around his neck. He’s thinking – half-thinking – how he’ll manage to pull down her panties but he finds there’s no need; no obstacles on his way tonight, he thinks and he thinks that he laughs out aloud, but maybe not, because her tongue is in his mouth and his in hers and their lips locked, so maybe someone else is laughing, maybe someone else is watching but he doesn’t care, and she doesn’t care, and they don’t care, and she grasps him and guides him into her and he slides and then the whole world explodes in a blaze of rainbow fireworks.

Photo by Alexander Popov on Unsplash