Black Vodka

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.

When she looks at her watch she wonders if Alex might have got lost. Has something happened to him in the wood? She thinks something is about to happen. This is how she felt at the baggage reclaim. A feeling of dread in her stomach when she knew her bag had gone missing. Strange thoughts occur to her now as she waits for him. She wonders if there are people hiding in the woods because they have lost their country and their home and their children and their sister and cousin and she thinks Alex might have lost his brother and father because of something he said earlier. She thinks about the form she had to fill in at the airport and the official who looked bored when she listed all the things she had lost.

The material of her blue dress is rubbing against her skin as she paces up and down the road on the edge of the woods. A wind suddenly blows in and then she sees him.

He is walking towards her. There are small leaves in his hair as he stands too close and tells her his name is not Alex. Not exactly. It is Aleksandar. He tells her he saw a deer in the woods with small antlers and how he used to have an Italian coffee-making machine in his kitchen in his country which he liked a lot, the coffee machine he means, not the country, and he is sorry to have missed the Rolling Stones film last night in the park because then he would have been near her a little bit longer. Aleksandar squeezes his lips and lowers his eyes. He offers to charge up her mobile phone for her before she leaves for London. He folds his arms across his chest and leans back on his heels as if to get a better view of her and then he tells her it’s nice to watch her laughing at him while the wind blows her hair about.