speak English?”
“Yes, a little English. I am the landwoman here. This is my building.”
“I see. I’m pleased to meet you. May I help you with something?”
“Yes, please. Open the door.”
Maya stepped aside. The landlady bustled in and looked the studio over sharply. Slowly, a pair of the lighter stress marks disappeared from between her much-furrowed brows. Maya took her for seventy-five, maybe eighty. Very sturdy. Very well preserved.
“You go in and out for days now,” the landlady said briskly. “You’re the new girlfriend.”
“I guess so. Uhm …
“My name is Mrs. Najadova. You are much
“Well, I came here from Munchen. But really, I’m just passing through.”
“Welcome to Praha.” Mrs. Najadova opened her valise and thumbed through a series of accordion folders. She produced a fat sheaf of laminated papers in English. “This are your support documents. All for you. Read them. Safe places to eat. Safe places to sleep. This is important medical service. Maps of Praha. Cultural events. Here is coupons for shops. Schedule of train and bus. Here is police advice.” Mrs. Najadova shuffled the documents and a little stack of cheap smartcards into Maya’s hands. Then she looked her in the eye. “Many young people come to Praha. Young people are reckless. Some people are bad. The wanderjahr girl must be careful. Read all of the official counsel. Read everything.”
“You’re very kind. Really, this is enormously helpful.
Mrs. Najadova removed a gilt-embossed gilt smartcard from her jacket pocket. “These are church services. You’re a religious girl?”
“Well, no, not actually. I’m always pretty careful about drugs.”
“Poor girl, you are missing the true fine part of life.” Mrs. Najadova shook her head mournfully. She set her valise down, and deftly removed a telescoping dust-mop handle and a sterile packet of adhesive sponges. “I must sample the room now. You understand?”
Maya put the documents on the new bedspread. “You mean for contagion sampling. Yes, I’ve been wondering about that. Do you have some tailored subtilis or maybe some coli? Something I can spread around to knock back any pathogens. That corner under the sink smells kind of yeasty.”
“From the medical support,” said Mrs. Najadova, visibly pleased. “You report for official checkup. They will give you what you need to keep good house.”
“Isn’t there another way to get those microbe cultures? I’m not really due for a checkup just yet.”
“But it’s free checkup! Gift by the city! It’s all written on the documents. Where to go. How to report.”
“I see. Okay. Thanks a lot.”
Mrs. Najadova assembled her mop and began methodically creeping about the studio, scraping and dabbing. “The potter has wild mouses.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“He has bad hygiene. He leaves food and insects come.”
“I’ll watch for that.”
Mrs. Najadova, having reached a decision, looked up. “Girl, you must know this. The girlfriends of this crazy man, they are not happy. Maybe at first a few days. In the end they always cry.”
“It’s very sweet of you to be so considerate. Please don’t worry, I promise you I’m not going to marry him.”
The door opened. A neatly hair-cut Emil came in with a shopping bag. A violent argument erupted at once, in blistering Czestina. There was shouting and stomping and vile condemnation, charge and countercharge. It seemed to last forever. At last Mrs. Najadova retreated from the studio, with a shake of her mop and a final volley of vitriolic threats. Emil slammed the door.
“Emil, really. Was all that necessary?”
“That woman is a cow!”
“I’m surprised you could even remember her name.”
Emil glowered. “To forget a lover is very sad. A tragedy. But to forget an enemy is fatal stupidity! She is a
“It’s true that combining landlady with all those other social functions does seem excessive.”
“She spies on me! She reports me to hygiene authorities. She poisons the minds of my friends against me.” His brows knotted. “Did she talk to you? What did she say?”
“We didn’t really talk. She just gave me all these free coupons. Look, I can rent a bicycle with this one. And this chipcard here has a Praha net directory in English. I wonder what it says about photography studios.”
“It’s all rubbish. Worthless! A commercial snare!”
“When was the last time you actually paid the rent here? I mean, how do you
“Oh, I pay. Of course I pay! You think Najadova runs a charity? I’m sure she reminds me.”
She cooked. They ate. Emil was upset. The loss of his morning and the quarrel with the landlady had put him off his feed. His hair looked much nicer now, but Emil was a congenital challenge to grooming. He spent the evening paging through his catalog of works. This was not a good sign.
She seemed unable to shrug off the argument—the fight had shredded her nerves. As the night advanced she grew ever more irritable. She was jumpy, short-tempered. She felt bad—a strange internal tightness.
Her breasts grew swollen and achy. Then she realized the truth. It had been such a long time that it almost felt like an illness. But it was womanhood. She was about to have her first period in forty years.
They went to bed. Sex chased his bad mood away, but left her feeling as if she’d been sandpapered. The night wore on. She began to realize that she was in for a very hard time. No mere lighthearted hiatus in the month’s erotic festivities. The event stealing over her body was something vengeful and postwomanly and medical. Her eyelids were swollen, her face felt waxed and puffy, and an ominous intimate ache was building deep within the pelvic girdle. Her mood was profoundly unstable. It seemed to rocket up and crash down with every other breath.
Emil tumbled into sleep. After an hour she began to quietly weep with bewilderment and pain. Crying usually helped her a lot nowadays, it came easily and would wash any sadness away like clear water over clean sand. But weeping wasn’t working that way tonight. When the tears gave out, she felt very sane, and very lucid, and very, very low.
She shook Emil awake as he lay peacefully slumbering.
“Darling, wake up, I have to tell you something.”
Emil woke up, coughed, sat up in bed, and visibly reassembled his command of English. “What is it? It’s late.”
“You remember who I am, don’t you?”
“You’re Maya, but if you tell me anything this late at night, I won’t remember tomorrow.”
“I don’t want you to remember it, Emil. I just want to tell it to you. I have to tell it to you. Now.”
Emil grew alert. He tucked the heavy curtain behind the headboard of the bed and a turbid mix of moonlight and streetlight entered the studio. He looked into her eyes. “You’ve been crying.”
“Yes …”
“And you have to confess something? Yes, I can see.… I already know it. I can see the truth there in your eyes.… You’ve been unfaithful to me!”
Amazed, she shook her head.
“No, no,” he insisted, raising one hand. “You don’t have to tell me a word! It’s all too obvious! A beautiful young girl, with a poor shattered crackpot—no man in the world could be easier to deceive! I know—I offer nothing to command a woman’s loyalty. My arms, my lips—what do those matter? When Emil himself is a ghost! A man who scarcely exists!”
“Emil, listen to me now.”
“Did I ever
