But his father shook his head. “No. Now you’ll always think of me this way.” He looked up, his eyes a kind of odd plea, past all the jokes. “I can’t make it up to you. I’m not expecting-” He stopped, his voice almost feverish. “But not this. Not some stranger with wet pants.”
Now it was Nick who reached out to him, bringing him close in the dingy men’s room, holding him, whispering into his ear so that no one could hear. “You’re not a stranger,” he said.
“He’s all right. He wants us to leave separately,” he said to Molly outside.
“He doesn’t look all right.”
“I know. He’s been sick.”
“You look a little shaky yourself,” she said, studying him.
He led her toward the last of the crowd funneling through the garden door.
“I can’t stand it,” she said. “What did he say? What did you talk about?”
He looked at her, unprepared. Why not tell her?
“He’s not just sick. He thinks he’s dying. That’s why he wanted to see me,” Nick said, surprised at how easily it came out. It had begun already, the convenient half-truths, covering tracks.
“Oh,” she said, deflated. Then, an afterthought, “I’m sorry. How do you feel?”
“Ask me later. Right now, I’m not sure.”
The street was a small eddy of Tatras and Skodas, loud motors and clunky headlights shining on the cobblestones. In the square a large crowd bundled in coats waited for late trams. Instinctively, Nick headed away, toward the bridge, where couples were still loitering by the statues.
“What else did he say?” Molly said. “I mean, why doesn’t he want anyone to know you’re here? What difference would it make?”
“Maybe he doesn’t want anybody to know he’s sick. You summon the family, it’s a land of tip-off. I don’t know.”
She shook her head. “There’s something else.” But when he stopped and looked down at the water, she let it go, sensing his reluctance.
“This is the way cities used to look,” he said. “Just enough light to see where you’re going.” A delayed thought from the walk over, when he had taken in the streets without ads and lighted shops, just corner lights like sconces and recesses that were really dark.
“Nick? What was it like, seeing him? Do you mind my asking?”
He turned to her. “It was easy. It was him.” He looked back at the mist gathering along the surface of the river. Soon everything would be covered, insubstantial. He glanced over his shoulder as if he could catch a last glimpse of his father on the streets twisting up to Hradcany, a proof he’d really been there. “All this time. For years- years — I thought he was, I don’t know, on the other side of the moon or something. But he’s been here. In an apartment.
“All you have to do is drive in, spend a few dollars. All this time.”
She put her hand on his arm. “He hasn’t always been here.”
“Moscow, then,” he said, a little annoyed. “What’s the difference? The point is, he’s been somewhere. I could have seen him. They stamp a passport. That’s it. What did I think it was? Some fucking Checkpoint Charlie? I could have seen him, not waited until he was sick. So why didn’t I?”
She was quiet for a moment. “Nick, you’re not the one who left.”
Nick nodded. “I know.” He reached into his pocket for a cigarette and handed her one. “He wrote to me.”
“Wrote to you?” Her face was caught in the glare of the match.
“In the beginning. He says. Anyway, I never got them.” He lit his own and exhaled a long stream, looking back at the water. “It’s like I missed a train. And I don’t know why.”
She took his arm, leading him away from the railing. “Come on. You’re tired,” she said, her voice familiar, as if they were already a couple. “Maybe this wasn’t as easy as you thought.”
Karlova fed into the Old Town Square, where the clock was ringing to nearly deserted streets. There were no cars; the town had reverted to its medieval life. He could hear the click of her heels. Like him, the city was brooding and quiet, slipping back into its own past.
They were on one of the side streets that led toward the lights of Wenceslas when they heard the whistle, an urgent shriek of authority, and the clomp of boots, the sounds of a dozen war movies. Two figures were racing toward them, chased by a group of uniforms. Shouts, indistinguishable words, a Gestapo bark, and then the whistle again, flying toward them like a pointed finger. Nick froze. The sound of fear, always directed at you, so that even when it was merely overheard, you felt caught too. Here, in the foreign street, it had the anxious confusion of a bad dream-it was coming to get you. Shoes cracked against the pavement.
Before the men were halfway down the street, he felt a yank, Molly pulling him into the dark shadow of a doorway. She put her arms around his neck, drawing him to her, and the figures at his back became lost, just a background sound rushing past while they pretended to be lovers. No one stopped. He heard the boots, more shouts, all of his senses alive now with the adrenalin release of the whistle. Her breath was on the side of his face and suddenly he smelled her-skin, not perfume-and felt her against him, a touch as loud and surprising as the whistle. He kissed her almost by reflex, not thinking about it, and the kiss was surprising too, immediate and natural, like the smell of her, so that when he pulled back to look at her he seemed puzzled, not sure how it had happened.
“I thought you’d never ask,” she said, her voice low in her throat, as if they were still hiding from the police.
He leaned into her again, and this time the kiss was sexual. Her mouth opened to him and he could feel his body react, another reflex, unwilled. He moved his hands behind her, low, and she let him pull the curve of her closer, until she was pressed against him, warm beneath her clothes. She drew a breath, a swimmer’s gulp, before his mouth was on her again, pressing now, the kiss itself a kind of entry. She gave in to it, her mouth rubbing against his, then pushed away, putting her hands on his shoulders.
“No, don’t,” she said, a whisper, still catching her breath.
“I thought-”
“So did I.” She shook her head, then looked up at him. “It’s different.”
He said nothing, the silence an open question.
“You have other things on your mind.”
“Not now, I don’t.”
She smiled a little, then put her hand on the side of his face. “Yes, you do. No complications, remember?”
“It doesn’t have to be complicated,” he said, moving closer, but she held him away.
“It will be, though. I’m not as easy as you think, either.”
He stared at her, then dropped his hands.
“Come on,” she said, moving into the street. “The police must be breaking up the demonstration. We don’t want to get caught in that.”
“Sorry,” he said, embarrassed to hear the sulk in his voice.
She turned. “No, don’t. It’s not that. It’s just not right. Not now.”
“Is that a rain check?”
“I guess.” She looked up, biting her lip. “But things never work that way, do they?”
They walked without touching, keeping a space between them, but when they reached the long sweep of Wenceslas, alive with lights and patrolling soldiers, she took his hand again, slipping them back into their roles. The students with candles were bunched near the mounted statue, surrounded by police, who appeared to be moving them off one by one. The chase in the alley must have started this way, a sullen resistance that broke ranks, an unexpected scuffle. Now things moved with a ritual formality. No trouble. Several of the students were holding up an enlarged photograph on a poster.
“Jan Palach,” she said, nodding at the picture. “It must be a memorial service.” He looked at her quizzically, reluctant to speak English now that there were people around. She was moving them away from the top of the street, skirting the crowd to skip across unnoticed. “He set himself on fire in January, to protest the invasion.”
Nick stopped, appalled. “Like the Buddhist monks,” he said, seeing the image before him, the shaved head and saffron robes in flames, the black gasoline smoke. But that was in another world, tropical and alien, not fairy-
