“No. But sometimes-” He paused again. “In case it goes wrong,” he finished. “At least we have this time.” He put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “It’s not so long for a visit. I’ll show you things.” A weekend parent, offering treats.
Nick nodded, embarrassed. How could he go?
But before he could say anything else, make an excuse that would play, he saw his father look past him. He withdrew his hand, alert.
“V alter, jak se mate?”
Nick turned.
“Anna,” his father said, but it was another Anna, broader and short, slightly out of breath from climbing the hill. She said something in Czech, but his father answered in English, “No, we have ten minutes. I’ll walk with you. An American,” he said, nodding toward Nick, an explanation for the English. “I was showing him the way to the Loreto.”
“ Dobre odpoledne,” Nick said, offering his hand. “Nick Warren.”
“How do you do? Anna Masaryk.”
“Masaryk?”
“My uncle,” she said automatically, smiling a little at his surprise.
For a second he was jarred, as if she had stepped out of history, straight from the death scene in the Czernin courtyard over the wall. But she was no older than his father, someone you could meet in the street.
“You heard they took Milos‘s book?” she said to his father.
“Now it begins all over again. How many years this time? All that work.”
“Maybe he kept a copy.”
“What difference? They’ll never allow it now. They don’t want us to know.”
“You know,” his father said, consoling.
“Me? I always knew. But to prove it-they’ll never allow it. They’re afraid of the truth.” She caught Nick’s glance and said, “Excuse me. You’re visiting Prague?” Then Nick saw her look quickly at his father and back again, as if there were something she didn’t understand. Had she noticed the resemblance?
“He’s just been to the Narodni Gallery,” his father said before he could answer. “Now the Loreto.” A tourist.
“Ah, yes. There’s a very good Goya. I hope you saw it.”
Nick nodded, hoping he wouldn’t have to describe it. What Goya? Were they going to talk about art?
“Of course, the best are in the Prado. But this is very good. It’s lucky that we have one.”
“Perhaps one day you’ll see the others,” Nick said. “In Madrid.”
The woman looked at him wryly. “I doubt it. It’s not allowed, to go there.”
“Oh,” Nick said, stumbling. “Well, perhaps when things are looser again.”
“It was never allowed. Not since ‘37.”
“Czechoslovakia doesn’t recognize Spain,” his father said, helping. “It’s still considered a Fascist state.”
“Oh,” said Nick, feeling awkward. Another wrong turning in the maze. The old categories, still current, like Masaryk’s death. Everything was yesterday here. No one had moved on. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” Anna said. “For the Goyas. You’re staying in Prague long?”
“No, only a few days.”
“Perhaps you would come to tea. If you have time.”
A casual invitation, to a stranger in the street?
“Yes, if I can,” Nick said vaguely, ducking it.
“Valter, you bring him. I never see you anymore. We’ll have a salon.” Was she trying to find out if they knew each other? “It’s good to speak English,” she said to Nick. “You can tell me about the new books. I like to keep up, but it’s so difficult now. Well, we’ll be late. Tomorrow then, if you can. Valentinska Street. It’s in the book. But of course Valter knows.” She took his father’s arm.
“Goodbye,” his father said, shaking Nick’s hand, acquaintances. “I hope you enjoy the Loreto.”
Nick looked at him, waiting for some sign, but his father avoided eye contact and moved off with her, an old couple on their way to a funeral. They reached the corner, and then his father stopped and walked back.
“I told her I forgot to ask your hotel,” he said quickly. “There’s something-the police report. How did you see it?”
Well, how? “A friend got it for me,” Nick said.
His father nodded to himself, thinking. “Was it a copy? You know, a carbon?”
“I don’t remember. Why?”
“They turned everything over to the Bureau. But if they kept a copy, that would explain it. Why they have it.”
“Does it matter? It’s there.”
“But not in the Bureau file. It doesn’t make sense.” He shook his head. “If they found the lighter, what happened to it? It would have been evidence, something like that. So why didn’t they use it?”
“You were gone.” Nick looked at him. “Maybe they will.”
“They still have it?”
Did they? “I don’t know. All I know is they found it. Or said they did.”
“In the hotel room,” his father said to himself. “My lighter.”
“Yes. The one with your initials.”
“But how did it get there?” he said, frustrated, like someone searching for his glasses.
“Well, that’s the question.”
“Yes,” his father said slowly, preoccupied again. “If I could remember-” His eyes narrowed in concentration, lost in his puzzle.
Over his shoulder, Nick saw Anna Masaryk still waiting on the corner. “I’m staying at the Alcron,” he said.
His father glanced up, then nodded and turned without a word, the way old people hang up the phone without saying goodbye, their part of the conversation finished. Nick watched him go, his head bent in thought, until Anna called something to hurry him and he was back in his Czech life, offering her his arm, almost courtly. Then they turned the corner and Nick was alone.
Now what? Unexpectedly, he had the afternoon. But he didn’t want to see anything. Not the Loreto and its famous chimes. He wanted it to be over. He stared down the empty street.
When he heard the footsteps behind him, he froze. Had someone been watching? The steps grew nearer, then passed-a man in a long winter coat, glancing at Nick out of the corner of his eye. He stopped a little farther along and turned, and Nick waited for him to speak, but instead he whistled, and then Nick felt the dog sniffing at his feet. The man said something, presumably apologizing for the dog, then called and began to walk again, looking back once over his shoulder, suspicious. Nick smiled to himself, relieved. What if everything were just as it seemed? A man with a dog. A friendly invitation to tea. Maybe she did like to talk about books, ordinary after all, just a dumpy woman with a magical name. Maybe they were all what they seemed here. Except his father.
He turned down the hill, toward the Mala Strana, replaying the conversation in his head. Easier not to know them. Was he any different? He remembered them shooting blindly into the jungle, everyone in his platoon, ten minutes of random fire. And then the odd stillness afterward, no sound at all, his ears still ringing. You couldn’t trust yourself there either, all of your senses on alert. A twig snapping was enough to set them off. They were lucky that day, no snipers when they located the bodies. One had been shot in the face, his jaw blown open, hanging slack with blood and pieces of bone, and Nick had stared at him, wondering if he had done it. There was supposed to be a connection, the thud of your bullet hitting a body, maybe a scream, but he hadn’t heard anything over the noise of the fire. Some actually claimed victims, like pilots after a dogfight, but they were lying. No one knew. It was easier. Later, in his safe job at the base, he walked around the airstrip with a clipboard, taking inventory on the shipments, and he would see the body bags lined up for the flight home, plastic, like garbage bags, held together with tape. He checked his list, then handed in the manifest and went for a beer. That easy, if you didn’t know them.
He stopped for a minute on the street near some scaffolding where workmen were replastering an old melon-colored facade, and he realized he was sweating. When you started thinking about it, all of it came back, even the heat.
He followed the streets downhill, zigzagging as if he were shaking off a tail, a real spy game, so that when
