“No. I wanted to see you, it’s true. Selfish. But there’s something else.” He reached up, putting his hands on Nick’s shoulders. “I want to put an end to that time. For both of us. I need you to help me.”
“But-”
“Don’t you see? You’re the only one I can trust.”
Nick looked at him, amazed. In the distance, the applause began. “To do what?”
His father looked up at the sound of the clapping, the lights beginning to come on, and patted Nick’s hand. “Not here. We’ll talk. It’s a long story. We can’t start it here.” Then he held him by the arms again. “Tomorrow.”
But the lights seemed to bring with them a kind of urgency. There would never be time to catch his breath, sort out the noises that were a jumble in his mind. He watched me grow. He’s dying. Something’s worrying him. Was any of it real? He felt somehow that his father might rise up and float away, like the applause.
“Nick!” He heard her voice from the other end of the arcade, tentative, obviously looking for him, and he grabbed his father’s shoulder.
“One thing,” he said. “I have to know.”
His father looked at him, surprised at the strength of his grasp. “What?”
“Tell me the truth. The truth. Just to me. That night, when you left-did you go to the Mayflower?”
His father stared, assessing, then looked down, almost with a smile. “So you think that too. I thought I was the only one.” He looked back up. “No, I didn’t go there. Somebody else killed her.”
There it was, as simple as that. Nick felt empty with it gone, the relief of an aching limb finally removed.
“But you do think she was killed?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Nick.” Molly again, closer now.
“Who-”
“It’s all the same crime, you see,” his father said, leaning toward him, conspiratorial. “What happened to her. What happened to me. That’s why I need your help. I want to know. While I still have time.”
Before Nick could respond, Molly was with them. His father glanced at him, a flicker of the eye to signal an end to the conversation. But why shouldn’t she know? Secrecy became a reflex. Nick looked at her, waiting to see if she’d overheard, but the words, so loud to him, evidently hadn’t carried.
“There you are,” she said. Then, to his father, “Hello again.”
His father took her hand. “Thank you. For bringing him. I owe you a great debt.”
“I’m glad someone does,” she said cheerfully, refusing to be solemn. “You’ve had a visit?”
“A sighting,” his father said. He looked around at the people milling toward the garden door. “Tomorrow we’ll visit.”
“You’re going?” Nick said.
“It’s better.”
“But we’ve just-I’ll come back with you.”
“No, no. Tomorrow. The country.” He smiled at Nick’s urprise. “The weekend is sacred here. To stay home would be noticed. We leave our flat every Saturday at eight. Like clockwork. So we must keep the clock running.”
“You’re going away?” Nick said, incredulous.
“And you. Leave the hotel early, with your camera. There’s a lot to see in Prague. I can pick you up by the tram stop-”
“We have a car.”
His father smiled. “Rich Americans. I forgot. Even better. Two cars. You know the tank at the bottom of Holechova?” This to Molly, who nodded. “Eight-ten. It’s quite safe. They never follow us there.”
His voice, growing faint, ended in a small cough. Then the coughing came again, stronger, until he was forced to give in to it, partially doubling over to catch his breath.
He took a handkerchief out of his pocket to cover his mouth.
Nick leaned forward, peering at him. “What’s wrong?”
His father waved his hand dismissively, still catching his breath. Then he managed a smile. “Nothing. Overcome with emotion.”
He tossed it out casually, and in that second Nick heard his father again, young, unable to resist an ironic turn. But he looked drawn, shaken by the cough.
“It passes,” he said, and fumbled in his pocket for a small tin box, the kind used for pastille candies. When he opened it, the pills seemed enormous. “Soviet medicine,” he said wryly. “Not for the weak.”
“There’s some water in the men’s room,” Nick said, turning to get it. To his surprise, his father leaned on his arm and began walking with him.
“Just a moment,” his father said to Molly, attempting to be jaunty, but his voice was raspy now, and Nick wondered if it really was just a coughing spell.
In the men’s room, people were lined up at the urinals. Nick’s father went over to the washbasin, taking his time with the pill. He chased it down with water and stood quietly for a minute calming himself. A few men left.
“Better?” Nick said.
His father nodded. “What we talked about before? It’s better, I think, not to say anything.”
“To Molly, you mean. Why?” A man at the urinal glanced in their direction, surprised at the English, but Nick ignored him.
His father was nodding again, stifling the beginning of another cough. “Not yet. Not even her. Not until I’m sure. I’ll explain.”
“You all right?” Nick put his hand gently on his father’s back, afraid that a stronger pat would set him off again.
“You think it’s crazy, don’t you? Whispering in corners,” he said, his voice now in fact a whisper. “You’re not used to it.”
Nick looked around the room. The overhead vents might be hiding mikes, but why? Who would bother to bug the men’s room at the Wallenstein Palace? It occurred to him for the first time that his father, this man he didn’t know, might really be paranoid, common sense and skepticism worn down by the years to a membrane too thin to stop suspicion seeping through.
“Is it always like this?” Nick said.
“No. Sometimes they really are listening.”
Nick smiled, relieved. It was the kind of offhand joke his father would have made on 2nd Street, having a drink with his mother before they went out. A throwaway, not a story, and she’d be smiling, just happy to be with him. His father smiled now too, pleased with himself. But when he spoke, his voice was serious. “I don’t do it for myself,” he said, looking straight at Nick. Then another cough, his face crinkling up a little in pain, and he turned around to the basin so that Nick had to look at him in the mirror.
“What’s wrong with you?” Nick said, alarmed, frustrated at not knowing how to react.
In the mirror his father lowered his head, eyes dropping out of sight, and waved his hand again. “It’s all right. You go. Please. I’ll be fine. Tomorrow. By the tank.”
But Nick wouldn’t let go. He took the back of his father’s shoulders, turning him. “It’s not all right. You’re sick.”
The man at the urinal had zipped and now came over, saying something in Czech. His father answered quickly, the sound of Czech surprising Nick.
“He thinks you’re molesting me,” his father said, his head still down, trying again for a wry joke. “You’d better go.”
“Tell me what’s wrong.” Nick still held him by the shoulders, but when his father lifted his face Nick let go, stung by the look of dismay.
“It doesn’t matter. Just a side effect. Please,” his father said quietly. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”
Nick looked down in confusion and saw the stain. His father had wet himself. When he looked back up, his father’s eyes were moist with embarrassment. “It’s all right,” Nick said, words to a child.
