by Micah Nathan
A gust of wind ruffled his hair. “You like grass?” he said.
Art looked at me. I shrugged.
“How much?” Art said.
The young man turned, looked down the street, and whistled with two fingers. Moments later I heard the buzz of a small engine, and I saw a guy on a moped driving toward us, wearing a helmet with a tinted face shield and a big motorcycle jacket like he was riding a Harley.
The moped rider stopped and took off his helmet. He had short, black hair like his friend, and he looked a bit older. The two of them talked, and the moped guy glanced at us cautiously.
“How much do you guys want?” he said. His Czech accent wasn’t as thick as his friend’s.
“A few buds,” Art said. “If it’s good, then maybe more.”
The moped guy nodded. “It’s good,” he said. He unzipped his jacket, pulled a pipe out from one of the inside pockets, and surreptitiously handed the pipe to Art. Art nodded toward a small alley tucked between two tiny homes and we ducked into it, brick walls on either side, the sound of a television blaring down from one of the shuttered windows. The guy wearing the orange ski jacket stayed on the street, presumably to keep watch.
Art took a few hits and passed me the pipe. I took one long draw and it felt like someone dropped an ember down my throat. I doubled over and tried to stop myself from coughing but it was useless—the smoke exploded out of me and Art and the moped guy started laughing.
Not bad, I heard Art say.
Better than not bad, the moped guy said. Fucking great. You want the whole bag?
I coughed again and looked up. The weed was strong; I could already feel it stroking the front of my brain. I rubbed my face and looked toward the wintry, dusky sky and took a few deep breaths. Nice.
“You know anything about the church that burned across the street?” Art said. He handed the moped guy a few folded bills.
The moped guy quickly counted the money, then slipped it into his pocket and gave Art a rolled-up baggie, something dark and green inside.
“It wasn’t a church. It was a monastery,” he said. He sniffled and zipped up his jacket. The wind was getting colder. “The place burned to the fucking ground, man. They’re building a McDonald’s, I think. Big Macs and fries,” he said, and he smiled and rubbed his stomach. “You hungry?”
Art shook his head. “Where did the monks go?”
The moped guy thought for a moment, then he snapped his fingers. “Hotel Paris,” he said. “In Stare Mestro. You know where Máchova Street is?”
Art nodded. He looked at the baggie, unrolled it, and lowered his nose to it.
“This isn’t what we smoked,” he said.
The moped guy frowned. “Yes it is.”
Art took out one of the buds and crushed it between his fingers. “No, it’s not,” he said. “It doesn’t smell the same, and see how short and dense these are?” He held up a bud. “Looks like an indica strain. We just smoked sativa. I’m sure of it. I can tell from the high.”
The moped guy looked nonplussed.
“It doesn’t matter,” Art said to me, pointedly ignoring the moped guy. “Really, the weed here is so cheap it doesn’t matter.” He flashed a smile and dropped the bag in the snow. The moped guy laughed, incredulous, but Art walked back onto the street. He looked eager to get going.
“Go with God,” the moped guy said, and he put his helmet back on and fired up his moped. The kid in the orange ski jacket was holding the baggie Art had dropped, staring at it and talking rapidly in Czech to his friend.
Art thrust his hands into his pockets and we continued down the narrow street. It’s always the small moments that define someone, and watching Art trudge through the snow, head down, oblivious to the wonders all around us—the spires, the cobbled streets, the ancient churches stuck like stone fists into the hillside—I finally understood the extent of his obsession, and rather than frighten me, it made me respect him even more.
We crossed the Charles Bridge and headed into Stare Mesto, the old town square. Even though I’d taken one hit I was very stoned, and I think Art was too because we wandered for an hour before finding Máchova Street. It had started snowing again, a light downy shake that floated languorously from a soft black sky, swallowed by the slow-moving dark waters of the Vltava or curling in the wind around streetlights like fluttering moths.
Groups of people spilled out of bars and onto the street, laughing and holding onto each other, some with bottles in hand triumphantly raised to the night sky like pagan kings howling at the moon. I saw a man bend over and throw up into a snowbank and there was a woman rubbing his back while she talked to her friend, and I marvelled at how many good people there were in the world, and how I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else at that moment, gliding through the snowy streets of Stare Mesto on a winter night in Prague, Art walking by my side, his black greatcoat trailing in the wind, bag slung over his shoulder, while I listened to his stories about the Premysl family, Bohemia’s first dynasty, and their rise to power in the 10th century.
And then suddenly we were there: standing in front of a gabled, low-lying, boarded-up brick building that ran the length of the sidewalk to the street corner, Hotel Paris painted on an old, faded sign in peeling black paint, with a silhouette of a dancing girl under the name.
Art and I stood there for a moment, gazing up at the sign. Every window had a board nailed over it, and the front door was spray-painted with graffiti.
“That moped guy was full of shit,” Art said. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.
“Are you still high?” I said.
Art kept rubbing his forehead. “I think so,” he said. He exhaled sharply and opened his eyes. “Actually,” he said, “I’m really stoned.”
He stared at me and we burst out laughing. We laughed so hard we collapsed onto the soft snow, and then we sat on the curb and gazed out over the river at the twinkling lights of Mala Strana.
“Let’s stay here,” Art said.
“We’ll freeze to death,” I said.
“I mean in Prague,” Art said, and he drew his knees into his chest and wrapped the front of his coat over them. “I have enough money. We could rent a place near the university, get our degrees there. We wouldn’t ever have to go back.”
“What about Dr. Cade’s project?” I said.
Art remained quiet for a moment.
“He’d find someone else,” he said. “There’s always someone else.”
It was a strangely seductive proposition. I had nothing. I was beholden to no one. Would I be missed? Would anyone even notice I’d left? I’d be another story for Dr. Lang, another boy from the city who’d dropped out, and maybe one day I’d run into some student at Aberdeen, and I too would warn them about Cornelius, crazy old Cornelius who kills pigeons in his search for immortality, and Art would continue looking for the Philosopher’s Stone while I lived out my life among the dim bookshelves of Charles University, lost in antiquity.
If our existence has weight, then I believe that weight has to remain in place long enough to sink into the earth and make its mark. My problem was I felt I hadn’t stayed anywhere long enough to sink in, that I was a footprint in the dusty earth of my West Falls farm and a footprint in the grimy stairwells of my Stulton tenement, and if I left Aberdeen I’d be a footprint there, too, a faint smudge on its burnished wooden floors and marble stairs. The existential vertigo would be too much. I believed it was entirely possible that if I left, one day I would wake up in our Prague apartment and find myself invisible, weightless. An afterthought.
I took a deep breath and tried to clear my head.
“We should go back to the Mustovich,” I said, turning to Art. “Tomorrow we can ask around and see if—”
Art stood up and walked to the front door of the Hotel Paris and knocked. He waited, ear pressed to the door, and knocked again, and to my utter amazement, it opened.
A boy appeared, wearing a dark brown robe, his young face staring at Art from
the doorway. He blinked once, twice, and then pulled his cowl back. His hair was short and simple, cropped close to his scalp. He had gentle, soft features, and a lilting, almost feminine voice that floated onto the night air like a wisp of smoke.
“Dobrý vecer,” the boy said. “Máte práni?”
“Dovolte mi, abych se predstavil,” Art said. “Jmenuji se Arthur Fitch.” Art gestured to me. “Toto je pan Eric Dunne.”
The boy nodded and smiled.
“Mluvite anglicky?” Art said. I knew that phrase. Do you speak English?
The boy lifted his hand, palm down, and turned it over, then back, several times.
“Albo Luschini,” Art said, and at the mention of that name the boy smiled and opened the door wide.
The boy led us down a short hallway with wooden panelled walls that smelled like old cigarettes. I watched the snow melting from the back of Art’s coat, dripping onto the scarred wooden floor.
At the end of the hall the boy opened the door into a large room with a low ceiling. Little round tables were scattered about, some with older monks seated at them, talking and eating, and other tables had boxes stacked atop. The floor was carpeted in red and the walls were papered in yellow, with alternating strips of gold and fading red fleur-de-lis running from floor to ceiling. A staircase sat to the left of a raised stage at the far wall, curving slightly to the right, a tattered red runner going up the stairs. There was a brass pole in the middle of the stage, and Christmas lights were wrapped around the pole.
The young monk hurried ahead and bent down to talk to one of the monks sitting alone at a table with open books scattered around him and a calculator at his hand. After a brief moment the monk stood, slowly, beckoning to Art and me.
“Come,” he said, speaking across the room in a strong, clear voice. His English was lightly accented. “Come join us. We have more food if you wish.”
Art and I sat at the table. The old monk smiled at me and I nervously smiled back. He was short and lean, with big, thick white eyebrows, like bushes rooted to a cliff edge. He wasn’t wearing a robe like the others; instead he had on brown sweatpants and a faded T-shirt that read Cats! The Musical!
The old monk filled two cups from a half-empty bottle of red wine, and pushed them across the table to us.
“God be praised,” he said, and he raised his glass and gulped noisily. “And wine that maketh glad the heart of man…” He set the cup down and smacked his lips, and then he sat back and folded his hands together and smiled, wrinkles spreading from the corners of his mouth. I looked at the other monks, who were simply staring at us, obviously enjoying the entertainment.
“I am Brother Albo,” the old monk said. “Peter says you’ve come to see me.”
Art put his bag on the floor and introduced us. “Mr. Corso from Charles University gave me your name,” Art said. “I’ve come to see your collection of manuscripts.”
Albo nodded. “Most were saved,” he said. “God be praised. The library was the last to burn, and what we lost was mostly to smoke and water.”
“I’m so sorry to hear about your monastery,” Art said. He looked around and flashed his winning smile. “But this looks like a good place to start over.”
“It’s adequate,” Albo said. “Do you know about the Hotel Paris? It was…what is the word…” He looked down in thought. “A burlesque hall,” he said, grinning. “Lady dancers, on that stage,” he pointed to the stage, “and the rooms upstairs? Sometimes for tourists, mostly for the patrons and whatever lady dancer caught their eye.”
Monks living in an abandoned strip club. If I wasn’t high I would’ve started asking a thousand questions, but as marijuana tends to raise the ridiculous up to the sublime, all I could do was sit there with my mouth shut and my eyes wide, sipping the sour wine Albo had poured for me, trying to stay focused on their conversation.
Albo told us about the Paris Hotel, how it had been previously owned by Nikolai Donegar, one of Prague’s most famous magicians, who’d originally opened the hotel as a night club. Nikolai was hit by a streetcar and killed, and his son Nikola turned the Paris Hotel into a den of drugs and prostitution. Nikola was arrested sometime later, and the Paris Hotel was slated for demolition, but for ten years nothing happened. It just sat there, rotting and abandoned, until Albo approached the city council and told them of his need for a new abbey. It was God’s will that this blessed building be given to us, Albo said.
“Now,” he said, “we continue God’s will by raising money and restoring what was once a beautiful building. We plan to take down the stage, remove the bar”—he gestured to the opposite wall, where a bar ran the length of the room, boxes and cookware on the back wall where liquor bottles used to be—“maybe even start an orphanage in the spare rooms. But it is all a question of money.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.
“Do you miss your old monastery?” I said.
Albo looked at me, a queer smile spreading across his wrinkled face.
“Yes,” he said, slowly. “I suppose I do. But if God had intended us to remain there, we would still be there. The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever; the Lord shall rejoice in his works. This is the new path he has intended for us.”
Just like my old farm, I thought. And everywhere else I’d been. I found comfort in the old monk’s words. If God had intended me to remain there, I would still be there.
Art reached into his bag and took out his Oslo book and Gilbert’s Universal Compendia. He opened the Gilbert and slid it to Albo. While Albo read, a cat appeared, slinking along the floor, black with white paws and a white nose. It brushed by the table leg, tail curling high, and then wound its way around Albo’s feet, arching its back and rubbing its face against his calf.
“Mr. Corso said you have the Malezel book,” Art said.
Albo scratched his head. “We have many books,” he said. “I don’t know them all. Who did you say you spoke to?”
“Mr. Corso,” Art said. “From the university. He works in the library archives…”
Albo slapped the table, rattling our wine cups. “Of course, of course,” he said. “He helped us catalogue our holdings a few years ago. He would know better than I. Did you say you were college students?”
We nodded.
“And you came to Prague for a book?”
“It’s part of a research project,” Art said, quickly.
“Must be an important research project,” said Albo.
“Very,” Art said.
Albo raised his eyebrows and nodded slightly. He took a sip of his wine and remained there, staring at the two of us as if we were eminently fascinating. Which, perhaps, to a Czech monk, we were.
“You,” he said, pointing at me. “Are you part of this research project?”
Before I could think of a good answer I’d already spoken. “No,” I said. “I’m on vacation.”
“This is how you spend your vacation?” he said. “Following your friend to monasteries in search of an old book?”
“It’s either this,” I said, “or cable TV.”
Brother Albo laughed, as did some of the monks who’d been listening. “That’s good,” Albo said, slapping the table again. He looked a little drunk. “Very good,” he said. “Cable TV. Very, very good.”
Albo finished his wine in one gulp and stood up, patting his belly and looking around like he’d forgotten something.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll take you to the books. We’ll see if Mr. Corso was right.”
From Gilbert’s Universal Compendia:
1359, JOHANN MALEZEL MANUSCRIPT, “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam”
Binding: Full, alum-tawed pigskin over wooden, partially bevelled boards, blind-stamped, -tooled, and -embossed. Rows of acorns fill the center panels, whose borders incorporate the names of the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, plus the cardinal virtue of Justice. The owner’s initials (L.D.) are also blind-stamped on the front cover, and the volume retains the bottom clasp and a remnant of t
he top one.
Reported Condition (as of May 1910): Binding as above, spine and covers moderately stained and abraded with loss of leather at the corners, a small hole in the front cover, few small wormholes in the spine. Pages variously age-toned and foxed, with occasional wax and water-drop stains (also, possibly chrism); obscuring of letters in one place (p. 38–40) where a drop of wax has burned a small hole through the page.
Albo led us out of the dance room, down a narrow corridor, and through a set of double doors. We walked down a stone staircase, silent as thieves, and when we got to the bottom Albo pulled on a lightbulb and there, in towers and stacked piles and heaps and mounds, was the largest collection of books and miscellany I’d ever seen.
The books were confined to the center of the room, in chest-high stacks, and piles of them lined the walls and sat in huge wooden crates. The rest of the basement was filled with junk: lamps and broken chairs and tables; bundles of curled, yellowed newspapers and magazines; old carpets rolled and piled atop each other like logs. An entire wall was filled with mirrors, some smoked, others speckled, most cracked, casting the room’s reflection in a dark jumble of shapes. A big statue of a mermaid hung on the far wall, with long, turquoise ceramic hair and large breasts painted the color of a manila envelope. The room had a musty odor of old leather and mildew and stale smoke.
Albo plucked a spray can from atop a book and scanned the floor. He muttered something in Czech and aimed a plume of white mist at an insect scuttling from one stack of books to the next.
“Cockroaches,” Albo said. He sprayed again. “They eat the book bindings.”
Art stepped forward and looked at one of the books stacked atop a waist-high pile.
“Finellan’s Le Triple Vocabularie Infernal,” Art said, touching the cover delicately. He gazed around the room. “Are these books organized in any particular order?” he said.
