make up-no need to take the train after all. But leave that afternoon. Drive to Vienna. Don’t stay in Prague any longer.” He paused, as if he’d forgotten a detail in the rush. “Don’t talk to anybody at the station. That’s important. You don’t see me, not even if we’re alone there. Do you understand?”
Nick stared at him, trying to catch up. Was he crazy? “You can’t do this.”
“Do you understand?” he repeated.
“You can’t just get on a train.”
“Yes. It’s the ticket that’s difficult. A Czech would get it early, with the visa. No one goes to Vienna at the last minute. But for you it’s easy.”
“No one goes to Vienna at all.”
“Russian Jews,” his father said. “They have exit visas. This is the train that connects to Vienna. It’s how they leave. Don’t worry, I have papers.”
“Yours?”
“Someone’s. They won’t bother me. Once I have the ticket I’m all right.”
“No risk at all.”
His father looked up at him but didn’t answer. “When you get to Vienna, stay at the Imperial. I’ll contact you. And don’t tell anyone you’re there-anyone.”
Nick dropped his cigarette and took him by the arms. “What’s going on? You can’t do this,” he said again. “What if it doesn’t work?”
“It has to. It’s not what I planned, Nick. But now we do it this way.”
“But why? This morning-”
When his father didn’t answer, it occurred to Nick, a chill like the night air, that it had always been the plan — not the elaborate exchange but an escape, clandestine like the rest of his life, drawing Nick in deeper, one story into another, until he was on a train platform buying a ticket, an accomplice. No risk at all, unless he was caught.
“What about your list?” he said. “Your documents?” Had he made that up too?
“There isn’t time now. But they’re also here,” he said, tapping his head. “It should be enough.”
If they exist at all, Nick thought. Now there were other papers, good enough to use on a train, insurance policies. How long had he had them?
But when he looked into his father’s face, he saw that the smooth confidence of the morning was gone. Now there was the worry he’d noticed earlier, something hasty and makeshift. A new plan, while Nick had gone dancing.
“What’s happened? Are you in some kind of danger?”
His father shook his head. “Not yet. I just have to do it differently.”
“Not like this. Let me go to Paris and-”
“No,” he said abruptly. “Go to Vienna. It’s important, Nick, please. Do this one thing for me. There’s no danger to you. A lost ticket-you can’t be blamed for that.”
“I wasn’t thinking about me.”
“No,” his father said, his eyes softening, as if he’d received an unexpected compliment. “So you understand?”
“How long do I wait in Vienna? If you don’t show up?”
“In that case you won’t have to wait at all,” he said, almost wry again. “But let’s hope for the best. It’s simple, Nick. Just keep your head. We’ll be all right.” He paused and looked around. “Well. We can’t stay here. You don’t want to be seen with me. Tell Anna to come out. Say I’m not feeling well.”
Nick raised his head to speak, but his father’s eyes were steady, pragmatic. There was nothing more to be said. Nick looked away. “I’ll get them.”
“Just Anna. You stay here.” A little smile. “Have another dance.”
When Nick moved from the wall, his father stopped him. “Nick?” he said, his voice anxious, then reached for him, a bear hug, no longer caring if anyone could see. The platform goodbye they weren’t supposed to have. He held Nick for a minute-the same clutch, unmistakable — then pulled away.
“What was that for?” Nick said, to cover his embarrassment.
“For luck. You always brought me luck, remember?” Sitting at his side while his father played poker with the other men, watching the cards, happy to be up late.
“Not always,” he said.
“Yes, you did.”
Inside, the band was still playing, the hall light and warm, as if nothing had happened. “Memories of You”, a romantic low-register solo, calming the crowd down after the raucous opening number. Anna left even before he’d finished his message, snatching her coat, an attentive nurse. Molly raised her eyes.
“Tired,” Nick whispered. “We’re on our own.”
She smiled, obviously pleased, and put her hand on his. He drifted with the music, relieved that they couldn’t talk. What could have happened? Something at the funeral? This morning there had been a plan. This was more like flight, the bag ready at the door. What had spooked him? “Goody, Goody”, a speakeasy song, fleshed out for the big band.
“You okay?” Molly said, looking at him.
He nodded, forcing himself to smile. Why was happiness so hard to fake? Everybody else was beaming, a kind of collective euphoria. This was the way his father had sat, not even hearing the music. He grinned. In case they could be seen from the balcony.
The band was brought back twice, and even when the curtain was down people kept clapping, reluctant to leave the party. They followed the crowd back to Wenceslas, where it spilled down the long street, clumping at tram stops and the few bars still open for a late drink. Molly wanted to go on to Laterna Magika-‘We can still catch the end’-and because they wouldn’t have to talk there either he went along, his arm around her shoulder, not giving anything away.
It was in a cafe at the bottom of the square, off Narodni Street, and the minute he walked in he knew it was a mistake. The dark room, smoky, filled with shadows, was the part of him he’d been trying to push away. They couldn’t take a table without interrupting the show, so they stood at the bar in the dark, and Nick found himself scanning the room, looking at faces to see if any of them were looking back.
The mimes worked in front of a bright spot, forming shadows against a screen, like children making rabbit ears on the wall with their fingers held up to a lamp. The play between the actors and their own larger shadows caused a trick of the eye, a clever chiaroscuro, but all Nick saw were the shadows, dancing, then elusive, sliding toward the edge until you could no longer see where they ended and the real dark began. The customers, sitting at cabaret tables, gave off the same effect, sometimes visible in the light, then vanishing into the recesses. No wonder the Czechs liked Goodman, the bright lights and the simple, bouncy music. This was the native product, all shadows, a city practised at fading into doorways.
He went into the men’s room, grateful for the light. A man, cigarette dangling, stood at the urinal, so he went into the stall. What if there was someone in the stall tomorrow? What did he do, keep going back until it was empty? He pulled the chain, looking up at the flush box mounted on the wall. He’d imagined a toilet with a back, a convenient shelf. Where did you leave the ticket, on the paper dispenser? Why had his father changed his mind? The man at the urinal said something in Czech over the plywood wall, hearty, maybe a joke about the effects of beer on the bladder, but it could have been anything. What if someone spoke to him? Nick just nodded to him blandly when he came out, not even stopping to wash his hands, afraid of being caught out by language. He pushed open the door to a round of applause.
“Aren’t they wonderful?” Molly said brightly. “There’s one more set. Want to sit?”
“No. Do you really want to stay?”
“You don’t like mimes. Here, finish this.” She handed him a brandy. “Ten minutes, okay?”
He took a long pull on the drink to burn away his mood. When he looked up over the glass, a shadow had come out of the wall.
“We meet again,” Marty Bielak said. “You seem to be everywhere tonight.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Well, a nightcap.” He held up his glass. Where else had he been? The Alcron. The Cafe Slavia. The legman making his rounds. Items for tomorrow’s column. Just like the old days. The Stork. The Blue Angel. Another iron
