10: Nyctophilia – A Preference for Night or Darkness
—Dejvice, Prague, October 2016—
Simon sat on the living room floor, his back against the plastic-covered couch. His limp arms felt like damp rags as they rested against his body. He was exhausted. His shirt, hair, forehead, and even eyelashes were covered with little white dots, traces of the wall paint he used on the ceiling. The large work lamp illuminated the room from the corner, casting long shadows like an early morning in a tall winter forest. He could pretend the twirling dust motes were wisps of fog lazing around in utter silence. He stared upward, observing the subtle texture of the clean white space—there were cracks and bumps, spidery clusters of something nondescript, mountains and lakes like on the surface of the Moon… He had to pull himself together. He’d managed for so long. He could manage longer yet.
It was half past three in the morning; he had just finished painting his living room walls and ceiling, and ripping off the old wallpaper in the bedroom. The loft was a mess of long strips of tape; the paper he used to cover floors was still attached in some corners; the contents of Simon’s toolbox were scattered all around him, together with different parts of the ceiling lamp and several light switches.
When did I become so disorganized? I’m the most structured and systematic person I know!
He was going to paint everything white. And maybe he should rebuild the kitchen or at least change the doors to the cabinets. Everything was going to be clean white, black, and stainless steel—the same as everything in his head. He had a sudden vision of a Björk music video. The awful D-word almost entered his head, but he ducked just in time, and it flew away buzzing like a hornet.
There was a notebook on the floor next to him which, besides some smudges and splattered paint, contained random ideas for his next two lectures on psychosis. Since Marta moved out, taking with her the last skimpy bits of Simon’s ability to feel something akin to happiness, he had to occupy his hands and brain constantly to stop diagnosing himself. But now he was exhausted, sick to his stomach. He was so angry. Why couldn’t he just let it go? After all those years, why was it all still so fresh in his thoughts and memories? He craved some closure, yet at the same time, he was terrified of what the resolution would be.
Simon was a rational man, a scientist. He knew all there was to know about testosterone, estrogen, vasopressin, and oxytocin, about how the dopamine, serotonin, and adrenaline systems worked. He knew what made the heart beat faster, pupils dilate, and the breath shorten. And he firmly believed that even the warmth and safety of a certain pair of arms was just another chemical process within the indefinite complexity of nature. What he felt in the embrace was never safe. Only irrational and therefore dangerous.
He was well acquainted with the scientific research on lust, attraction, and attachment. He’d read everything he could put his hands on from The Selfish Gene to Helen Fisher. Hell, he’d even read the sexist graphomaniac who wrote that pseudo-psychological trash about women being from Venus and men from Mars. He had to create an unbiased opinion of his own, after all. The research on why one person could so completely occupy your thoughts was inconclusive at best. It just said that yes, it’s not a myth; one person could.
Simon found it unfair that the drive to find a monogamous relationship applied to gay people too. Why? When society hindered them to raise children? Securing the best way to breed offspring was, according to many socio-biologists and anthropologists, one of the main reasons for monogamy. Simon despised whining about the unchangeable, but being an evolutionary side effect sucked.
In the end, Simon didn’t know more about love than what he could gather from a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club song. Ain’t no easy way out. Why the hell did he have to obsessively think of one man, to crave him this much after not being able to touch or even see him for so long? Men were supposed to be visual creatures. Did he even remember Matěj correctly? Could he still recall his face, the shape and texture of his hands, the sound of his voice?
A vision of a lean, blue-eyed boy appeared in front of Simon. The boy had wooden gauges in his ears. He was clad in a tattered red T-shirt way too large for him, and black boxers. His shaggy, almost-black hair covered his forehead and some strands reached to his eyes. He held a frying pan in one hand and frantically shook the other in the air, mumbling profanities. He eyed the growing blister with disgust and then hissed as he put the burned index finger between his lips. Pancakes. Simon had to be honest with himself. He had an eidetic memory when it came to Matěj.
One of Simon’s many problems when looking for a partner was his intellectual snobbery. He knew it and didn’t really see a reason to be ashamed for it. He was open-minded and educated, so he required at least the same from the people he spent his free time with, though Matěj could not be easily judged and put into a convenient category. He was not as well-read nor as experienced as Simon. But he was brilliant. His mind was like quicksilver—a bottomless well of clever comments and ingenious sarcasms. He had an absolutely evil sense of humor and punished Simon for his occasional predictability with villainous verbal pranks.
With only the silent, empty apartment as witness, Simon allowed himself to recall their late-night droll pillow talk those rare times Matěj stayed over. He could watch Matěj’s profile, his neck arched in a fit of laughter. He could hear the laughter ring in his ears…could still see Matěj grinning widely and sticking the tip of his tongue out between his teeth, making Simon’s groin tingle. He would turn and kiss the grin away, noticing the smug glint in Matěj’s eyes…
The sadness flowed through Simon’s veins slow and thick like mud. He thought maybe his limbs would break under the weight of his desperate longing. When something hurt this much, there had to be some tangible consequence to it. Simon eyed his arms and legs half expecting blood to start seeping through the fabric. But nothing showed on the outside. He was embarrassingly healthy and intact.
He needed to finally crush these feelings and find someone else to focus on. And fast. Before his batteries ran out. He dragged his paint-covered hands over his face. Might as well convince myself I’m attracted to women. He burst into laughter at the thought but stopped immediately. He sat alone in an empty room in the middle of the night laughing out loud. Shit.
It felt so cold on the floor all of a sudden.
He gave up. He showered quickly and took a pill of Stilnoct. Lying on his stomach, he studied the texture of the sheets in front of his nose as the fabric dimly glowed in the darkened room. His eyes teared up just before he fell asleep, drooling on the pillow from the corner of his dry lips. Thankfully, there were no dreams to haunt him.
***
His phone startled him and he squinted at the clock on the nightstand. He did not have to get up yet, did he? Wasn’t he free today because of his Friday to Saturday thirty-six-hour shift? It took him a couple of seconds to comprehend it was a caller, not an alarm, that had woken him, and sat up on his bed, dialing the unknown number. He fumbled with his phone as he repositioned himself, dragging the sheets closer to his body. It felt freezing in the bedroom. He put the phone back to his ear just in time to hear the person answer.
“Simon?”
“Yes, who is that?” he asked in Czech.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” the person continued in English. The perky voice was somehow familiar, but Simon’s sleep-fogged brain couldn’t place it. “I need to talk to you.”
“You woke me up. Who are you?”
The man chuckled. “Mike. Surely you remember me.”
Mike. Of course. “Start with introducing yourself next time,” Simon grumbled.
“I did, but there was only some rustling in response. Again, sorry I woke you. I thought you’d be on your way to work. But now you’re awake and aware, can we chat?”
“What do you want?” Simon eyed his surroundings, his mood going fast from sleepy and grumpy to sour and angry. There were torn pieces of old wallpaper everywhere. Simon abhorred disorder.
“It would be better to do this in private. Are you free today?”
“Tell me what you want to talk about, and I’ll tell you if I have time for you.”
“It concerns Marta, of course.” Mike paused apprehensively. “And her brother.”
Simon closed his eyes and fell backward on the bed. “I’m very busy today, Mikey. Bye-bye.” He turned his phone off immediately, rolled off the bed and began tidying up the shredded wallpaper.
He spent the next two hours vacuuming, washing, cleaning, and polishing every object and surface he could reach. He realized he still hadn’t eaten or changed from his pajamas when the doorbell rang.
He opened the door with a scowl.
Mike smiled at him. “May I come in?”
“I’d rather invite Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Simon braced a hand against the door frame.
Mike ignored him and stepped inside ducking under Simon’s arm. Instantly the room felt noisy and crowded. “You look tired. Why don’t you put something on, and I’ll make coffee? Kitchen’s that way?”
Simon sighed and went to the bedroom, slipped into a pair of old jeans and a Radiohead T-shirt. The jeans were baggy and fell low enough he felt the hem under his heels when he took a few steps. When did he lose so much weight?
He found Mike in the kitchen—the espresso machine was growling and spitting like a flesh-eating monster. There was a paper bag with smallish cinnamon buns on the table. Simon grabbed one and sat down, taking a bite. He was ravenous.
“Let’s get this over with,” he mumbled around the bun.
Mike nodded and got straight to the point. “Marta told you we’re trying to find and contact him.”
Simon laughed out loud at that. “Of course you are. Why doesn’t it surprise me?”
Mike was dead serious, though, when he said, “I want Marta to be happy.”
Simon only laughed harder. “You sound like a Steel romance.” He popped the last piece of the bun into his mouth and chewed, rocking back on his chair until it scraped against the wall behind him. Was he overdoing the casual stance? Suddenly he felt like an adolescent. Mike wasn’t stupid.
Self-consciously, Simon sat forward and crossed his feet at the ankles instead. “Anyway. If he is alive and healthy, he’s had enough time to contact her. Apparently, he has his reasons not to. What do you think you can accomplish?”
“You don’t know why he disappeared.” Mike sent him a cautious, suspicious look over his shoulder while he busied himself with the cups.
“He left his injured little sister alone in a hospital, and the dead body of his father on the kitchen floor. Why the fuck would you want to find him?” Simon asked, his voice as hard as he could make it.
“He did what?”
Simon observed, almost amused, as Mike snapped back from his surprise and put the cups on the table, overly cautious.
“What exactly did Marta and Lukas tell you about the events of June 3rd 2013?” Simon asked, smiling as he lifted the coffee to his lips. Thank Nature for caffeine.
“Seems like they left out some details.” Mike sat down on the opposite side of the table. His eyebrows furrowed in contemplation.
“They did.” Simon nodded.
“Care to fill me in?”
Simon took another bun and bit into it. Mike needed a reason not to look for Matěj. Simon had several.
“We were at the University for Matěj’s graduation ceremony the whole morning. Matěj got confirmation of a job at Motole hospital just a few days beforehand. Surgical residency. He was supposed to start in a month’s time. So, he and Marta were planning to finally move out on their own.
“We came to the apartment to make lunch and then we were heading out to celebrate. Petr wanted to join us later.” Mike looked confused. “Marta’s boyfriend at that time. Marta’s father was out of town on a job. He was in construction, specialized in something to do with statics and roofs. I don’t know what. But he was away a lot. Thank goodness.” He wiped his fingers on a paper towel and took a sip of his coffee. “Marta ran to the shop to buy tomatoes and a bottle of wine. Funny thing, we had tomatoes, but Matěj insisted we needed those cherry thingies. He was a very particular and slightly unpredictable cook.” Simon’s face grew strained, his casual mask was slipping. He stared out the kitchen window to the opposite facade.
“Marta was out shopping when their father came home early and in a mood. After a few weeks of sobriety, he was drunk again. He looked so out of it I would never have believed he’d be able to hit a wall and not miss. I was wrong. Later, I found out he got fired the day before because he was caught hungover on the building site. The test showed remnants of alcohol in his blood. It meant he was finished. No one in the business would employ him after that.
“Had I known in what mental state he was in when he came home, I wouldn’t have left. But Matěj started pushing me out of the door, saying he’d deal with the old bastard and meet me at this café, Dolce Vita, in an hour and a half… I argued, he argued back, then his stepfather joined in, rambling about fucking faggots in his house, and I thought maybe my presence only made things worse…so I left.”
Simon paused, measuring his words. He a felt dull ache in his temples and realized he’d been gritting his teeth, staring through the open window at the same spot on the other side of the street. “I wish I hadn’t… I knew Matěj could handle himself, but still. It felt wrong to just leave him there…” He shifted in his chair, aware he was causing Mike’s unease, though Mike’s expression was only patient. “I tried to call Marta, but her phone was still on silent after the ceremony. I took a walk to Dolce Vita, had a coffee and a whiskey and waited.
“I imagine after the fight with his stepfather, Matěj left the apartment trying to intercept Marta. But the grocery store didn’t have the kind of tomatoes they wanted, so Marta went a few streets away to another store. He must have missed her.” Simon smiled bitterly. “In the end, everything happened because of those stupid cherry tomatoes.
“She came back to the apartment. I don’t know what went down—she does not remember the details herself, only bits and pieces. Her father was still ranting about Matěj, and Marta probably said to him they were moving out. He beat her up in the kitchen. She hit her head and was knocked unconscious on the table as she fell. Such a damned cliché.
“It could have been barely ten minutes later when a neighbor saw Matěj come back to the apartment. The neighbor heard a gunshot and called the police. According to the police investigation, Matěj called the ambulance around the same time. He sounded lucid on the phone and cooperated well. Marta was bleeding from the back of her head, lying on the floor next to her father’s dead body when the paramedics arrived. She was already coming round but still very confused so thankfully, she didn’t notice much of the whole mess around.
“I don’t know how many action movies you’ve seen, but a shot through the mouth is not a clean way to go. According to one paramedic, Matěj was in the room when they arrived. The police officers who arrived only a minute later didn’t see him, though. The detective concluded Matěj must have left during the commotion between the arrival of the paramedics and the police. Nobody saw him go.
“I sat at the café for an hour and twenty minutes before I lost patience. When I came back to the house, there was already the whole cavalry on the street. An ambulance had loaded Marta onboard with a heavy concussion, and there was a black body bag waiting for the old man.” Simon gestured with his hands as if he’d just finished telling a good-night story. “And that’s it.”
Mike was silent for quite a while. “Anything could have happened inside the apartment while Marta was unconscious,” he said finally.
“Not anything. But there was a span of time—about ten to twenty minutes—when we don’t know the particulars.”
“You have basically no idea why he left, then.”
“I can assume.”
Mike just lifted his eyebrows.
“Never ever had their father hit Marta. Not once, not even when he was completely out of it. It’s strange to say anything good about the psychopath, but he adored his only daughter. When she was older, she used this to protect Matěj quite cleverly. But toward the end, she didn’t even know her father continued to attack Matěj now and then. He never did it in front of her, and Matěj didn’t want her to know. I imagine it’s even possible that Marta’s father hit her unintentionally.” Simon was deflecting and he knew Mike saw through him.
“You said Matěj was the last one who saw his stepfather before he died. Was Matěj in the room when he shot himself? It must have been horrible.”
“I have no idea. Nobody does. The coroner ruled it a suicide, so they stopped investigating.”
“But what do you think happened?”
“I said I don’t know!” Simon raised his voice again. He stood to put the coffee cups into the sink. He needed to move.
“Simon, you’ve surely thought about that afternoon daily for years. You must have some theory.”
“There is no explanation. He was a medic, for fuck’s sake! How come he didn’t go to the hospital with her? How could he leave without knowing she’d be okay?” Simon looked intently into Mike’s eyes. “Maybe he finally had enough of everything?” He said that calmly for once.
“There was a gun. He could have threatened Matěj.”
“It doesn’t explain why Matěj ran out of the house without talking to the police. No one in his right mind would have done that.”
Mike seemed to be putting things together, his eyebrows practically dancing in a slow rhythm.
“What you’re saying is that Matěj as you knew him wouldn’t have done that,” he suggested.
Simon stopped mid-movement.
“He took care of his sister for years, he loved her,” Mike continued. “There is no way he would have left her willingly. Am I right?”
Simon was silent. He wanted to believe it. But then there was the unforgiving Occam’s razor. He put the clean coffee cup on the counter in slow motion. Drops of water covered the surface he’d so intently wiped just a short while ago.
Mike barreled on. “So, something else must have happened. Something you don’t know about. He could have been in shock—PTSD makes people forget long periods of time, his stepfather could have said or done something to make him snap. Jesus, witnessing a suicide would be enough to make anyone lose his mind—”
“Mikey, I’m a psychiatrist. Those things you talk about only happen in movies. In reality, there is zero chance the events could have induced a permanent memory loss. And nobody could be in shock for three years straight.”
“Simon, my point is, you do not know what happened. You can’t judge him.”
Simon despised when people did that. Telling him what he could and couldn’t do. Pretending to understand him, to know him or his motives. Why the hell did he tell Mike all those things? Was he a masochist after all?
“He took his bag,” he said barely loud enough for Mike to hear.
“What?”
“His bag. His phone, his wallet with all his credit cards, his ID, passport, and his brand-new diploma from med school were all missing from the apartment. Even some clothes. He thought of everything.” Simon finished on a tired exhale. He shook his head slowly and smiled sarcastically. The tug on his lips twisted, though, and he ended up grimacing. “He packed a fucking bag while his sister lay injured on the floor with a gun-waving lunatic in the room. He wiped out his bank account from somewhere a few days later, sent most of the money to Marta as a twisted goodbye.”
Mike had to know what that meant. He scratched behind his ear and rubbed his hand over his skull uncomfortably. “It’s why the police didn’t look for him that hard.”
Simon gave just a sad smile and a shrug in response. Mike seemed to finally understand his point.
“Was there some problem between you and Matěj?” Mike asked, as if out of the blue, making Simon dislike him even more.
Simon sighed in defeat. “Matěj was an emotionally deprived orphan and an abuse victim who had been forced to take care of his sibling since the age of twelve. He was unpredictable at best. He was seven years younger, my student. Any romantic or sexual contact between a teacher and student was of course highly inappropriate if not forbidden. And then there was the tiny detail of being openly gay in a still mostly homophobic society. I’d have to try really hard to think of something that was not a problem.”
“Marta said you two broke up just days before he disappeared. Yet you were there for his graduation,” Mike ventured, and Simon barely restrained from snapping at him. He took a few calming breaths.
“We came to a mutual agreement. The relationship wasn’t going anywhere. We just had…trouble letting go.” Oh God, what an understatement. The tear-stained face flashed in front of Simon’s eyes, and he winced. I will leave you be after tonight, I swear. Simon hadn’t let himself think about that particular night for years. He didn’t know there were even deeper layers of pain for him to discover.
Mike tore him out of the memory. “Why did you stay in the relationship for months? Why did you even start in the first place?”
“Because I was stupid.” He began pacing, looking for something to do with his hands. Unluckily, he’d already spent several hours cleaning the whole apartment. “There’s no point in looking for someone who does not want to be found and does not want to return. It’ll only hurt her further.” He started wiping the kitchen counter again. Mike stood next to him, stoically watching his frantic movements.
“She’s an independent, intelligent person, Simon. She thinks she needs closure. I promised to help her because she knew neither you nor Lukas would. Your wounded ego is not reason enough to—”
“This is not about anybody’s ego!” Simon yelled and then cringed at his own loss of control. He exhaled and continued calmly. “I took care of her after he left. You didn’t see her then. How do you know what’s best for her?”
“That’s the point, Simon. I believe she knows what’s best for her.”
Simon stood with his back to Mike, his hands gripping on the counter. He shook his head and closed his eyes. “You don’t need my permission for anything. Do whatever the hell you want.”
“You are the most important person in her life. I thought we shouldn’t leave you out of this.”
“In this particular case, I really don’t mind being left out. Thanks for the breakfast. You know where the door is.”
The echo of the closing door still resonated in the empty space when Simon turned and stared.
The D-word was a stinking hairy creature skulking in a corner. It was wet and blind. Like a mole but bigger, with sharp, bared teeth, ready to bite down all the way to the bone and hold on tight. Simon stepped around it and dressed for yet another run.