Саймон Моуэр - Prague Spring

‘Not really.’

‘Is very beautiful. Very private.’

‘And now what do you do?’

The man pauses and takes another drag on his cigarette. ‘I watch people. You perhaps.’

At first James feels only bewilderment. ‘You what ?’

‘And your girl. And these Americans, what are they called? Ides of March. And all these kids.’

‘You watch us? Are you some sort of pervert?’

The man laughs. A faint gleam of teeth. ‘Maybe you could say perversion, but it is my job. To watch people.’

‘Your job ?’

‘In London it was important people. Cabinet ministers, members of your parliament, civil servants. But now? Students like you.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about? Are you police?’

‘Police, yes. Something like that.’

‘Why should I believe you?’

‘No need to believe. Not at all.’

‘So why are you telling me this?’

The man pauses. The dull beat of music comes from the building behind them. Light leaks out across the grass as a door is opened, letting out a sudden flood of sound. There’s a shriek of laughter and two shadows running. ‘Perhaps I am warning you. You’re having fun. It’s an adventure, isn’t it? Lots of good kids, lots of cheap beer and laughter. Music, all that kind of stuff. Girls. But don’t make mistake. Here can be, will be, very dangerous.’ He flicks his lit cigarette end into the darkness, so that it spins over and over, a small, angry fire, and vanishes into the river. And then the shadow, like its cigarette, has gone.

Bewilderment is overtaken by a kind of nausea. James walks back to the lights and the noise. Inside the sweltering space, recorded music is being played. The Ides’ instruments lie around the stage like the debris after a fight. Some of the audience are dancing but most are just waiting for the next set. There’s Jitka talking with some people.

‘Have you seen Ellie?’

She grins. ‘You wanna meet my friends?’ Wanna. Her American intonation is exaggerated. There’s an exchange of greetings, smiles, nodding, the fumbling of language. Hi. Ahoj . Nazdar .

‘I want to find Ellie,’ he insists.

‘She’s around some place. I saw her going out.’

He excuses himself and pushes on through the crowd towards the far door. Archer, the drummer, is there with his arm round the waist of a whey-faced girl, his free hand clutching a bottle of beer.

‘Where’s Ellie?’

The drummer’s eyes are clouded. ‘Who’s Ellie?’

‘You know. The English girl. You gave us a lift in France, remember?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ A vague gesture, a grin. ‘Saw her with Elliot, man. Out back. The van.’ He squeezes the girl and she emits a little shriek of delight, like a doll that cries out when tipped over.

The van.

James pushes through the door. Beyond there’s a courtyard where people stand in groups smoking, talking, drinking. Parked against the far wall is the van. The Ides of March, it says on the side panel. Childlike flowers – daisies, buttercups – are painted across the corrugations. There’s something of the cash box about the vehicle. Riveted panels, doors closed and sealed, the sum inside unknown.

Ellie and Elliot. An assonance of names. James can imagine an assonance of bodies. Possibilities crowd in on him. He wants to know and he doesn’t want to know. He wants to see and yet he doesn’t want to see. He crosses the courtyard and goes round the back of the van and peers in through the single rear window. Within are variegated shadows and a chaos of stuff – boxes, blankets, sleeping bags, clothes – in the midst of which an octopoid creature writhes, tentacles spread, in the throes of ecstasy or death.

He looks away. If he looks away maybe nothing has happened. If he looks away, maybe everything will be as it was before. Behind him guitars clash and drums sound like thunder. Feedback screeches through the building and out into the night and a voice calls over the sound system, ‘Elliot? Hey, can you hear me? Where the fuck is Elliot?’ The name booms out into the night. ‘Calling Elliot! Come in Elliot!’

There’s noise inside the van, animal scrabbling. He waits, watching, until the side door of the van slides opens and Elliot emerges, all teeth and beard and seaweed hair, swearing and pulling at his trousers. He slides the door shut behind him and hurries across the courtyard. James runs forward and grabs him. ‘Who’s that in there?’ he demands.

Elliot stumbles, looks confused.

‘In the van. Who was in the van with you?’

The man shakes his head, eyes clouded. ‘A chick, man, a chick. What the fuck’s it got to do with you?’ He throws off James’s grasp and disappears into the building. All around people are pushing their way back into the venue while James stands there against the stream, wondering. Cowardice confronts him. To know or not to know. Ellie or not Ellie?

Spin a fucking coin. Heads, you open the door. Tails, you walk away.

He doesn’t even dare trust the decision to the coin. Instead, he goes back inside the Kaverna, where the audience are clapping and cheering expectantly and the Ides are on stage again, strapping on their guitars, John fiddling with his microphone – ‘How y’all doing folks?’ – and Archer hitting the cymbals, sending splinters of sound crashing around in the narrow space. Elliot is there, his fingers snaking across the strings of a Fender Stratocaster as they snake across James’s fevered imagination. John throws out his arms. ‘Beware, The Ides of March!’ There’s cheering, even some screaming, and the band breaks into ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, jingle-jangling its way through the specious phrases while James pushes amongst the crowd looking for Ellie, the Ellie that isn’t in the van, the Ellie who doesn’t pull her knickers down for stoned guitarists, the Ellie who, so her father warned him, has a mind that lives on fantasy. Jitka’s there but where is Ellie? ‘Take me on a trip,’ the Ides sing, ‘upon your magic swirling ship’ and Jitka lifts her arms and puts them round his neck. ‘Haven’t you found Ellie?’ she mouths against the sound of the band.

‘No idea where she’s gone.’

She casts her dancing spell his way and they move in some kind of harmony, for a moment pressed hard together. She is small and sharp and surely she wants to be kissed. There’s that mole on her upper lip. He leans towards her and for a moment their mouths touch before she pulls away laughing, tapping his lips with her agile, violinist’s forefinger. ‘Bad boy,’ she mouths. He turns and sways, careless of what he does, indifferent to whether he is or might be a bad boy. And Ellie’s there in front of him, dancing with the pair of them, her eyes glazed, her hair a disordered cloud. Jitka laughs silently. James leans towards Ellie’s head and shouts against the noise. ‘Where have you been?’

She mouths the words: ‘A walk. Fresh air.’

He knows it’s not true, hopes it is. ‘I was looking for you.’

‘I had a smoke.’ She pulls him closer so that her voice booms in his ear. Laughing and talking at the same time: ‘I’m stoned.’

‘Where did you get the stuff?’

‘You want some?’

‘No.’

She moves her head in time with the music like some kind of automated doll. The music jangles on, replete with all the platitudes of the age – magic swirling ships and smoke rings of your mind and all that stuff – while the crowd sways and waves, for the moment quite indifferent to the threats that encircle them. Music, they feel, can overcome anything – the Vietnam War, the Warsaw Pact, all hate, all violence, all the grim realities of life.

After the gig comes the sad, post-coital let-down. People hanging around outside the venue, their ears still singing. Others drifting away into the night. There’s calling and fractured laughter. Equipment is being carried out of the side entrance into the group’s van. And on the footpath alongside the river James and Ellie have a seething row.