Kitty listened to the slight snap as Lida closed the compact. More people were crowding the gate, and they carried an air of excitement.
Though Lida’s lips were slightly puckered, her tone had no trace of sarcasm as she said, “You know I don’t mind his staying at your house. We have more room for him, but—”
“But...?” Kitty waited. All of them, in addition to Thomas, expected her to have nerves of rope.
“Well,” Lida said blandly, “you were a nurse—you’ll know much better than I how to take care of him”
Kitty flared up, “I don’t like the way we were talking about him!”
“What was wrong with it?” Lida raised her scant brows. “Why in God’s name?”
“We talked about him as if he were dead.”
Lida’s eyes narrowed. Kitty was right, and there was something horrible in the idea. “Well, it was a surprise,” she said, sounding less determined than usual. “And he should have let us know sooner...!”
“He’s alive,” said Kitty. “He’s coming back. Why doesn’t this family get accustomed to it!”
“Don’t tell me you thought he would ever come back!”
“I never believed he was dead!” Kitty’s voice was unsteady, and she hated herself for having said anything.
Thomas and Petra hurried back from the stationmaster’s office.
“It’s coming!” shrieked Petra. “The train is coming!”
“Due any minute!” Thomas was hoarse with repressed agitation.
Joseph had stopped at one of the ticket windows to buy the little cardboard coupons which would entitle the family to admission to the tracks. On the street side of the station, a number of buses and a few ambulances drew up.
Joseph came into his own. He elbowed the way for his family through the crowd blocking the platform entrances. He shoved his fistful of tickets into the hands of the gate guard, who punched each piece of cardboard methodically. Then Joseph herded the Bendas down the stairs, through the passageway and up again to the platform at which the train was to arrive.
The siding was beginning to fill up. Men and women with Red Cross armbands clustered at one end; people with flags appeared from somewhere; a group of persons who looked like officials walked up and down importantly. Joseph was tempted to speak to one of them, but he gave up the idea—everything about the reception of the train was so obviously improvised, so in keeping with the temporary wooden sheds in which tools and signals were kept, with the worn-out cars standing on the other tracks, with the shabby look of missing panes in the glass roof.
Petra was saying again, “What will he look like?” and Lida was about to hush her when the long-drawn-out whistle of an engine sounded hollowly out of the tunnel through which the trains pulled into the station. The headlights of the engine blinked out of the dark only to fade as bright daylight hit them. The engine clanked forward, slowly pushing itself along the siding. Two small flags, one entirely red, the other the red, white and blue of Czechoslovakia, fluttered at angles to its funnel. The engineer leaned out of the cab and waved. And then came the cars, behind their windows the faces bunched like pale grapes. The train was still making too much speed for features to be recognized. People were running with it, motioning, shouting.
Petra pulled at Lida’s arm. “I’ve seen him!” she cried. “Which one is he? Where is he?”
Joseph was removing his cap, patting his hair, putting his cap on again. Thomas leaned heavily on Kitty.
With a final screech and clang the train came to a stop. The people with the Red Cross armbands distributed themselves alongside the cars—a thin, impersonal chain of welcome.
At the end of the train, one door was pushed ajar.
The Bendas stood rooted.
The man clambering down was haggard, his hair whitish gray. He wore an American battle jacket; it was unbuttoned and hung from his shoulders in awkward folds. He shuffled forward, searching the faces on the platform. He nodded to the men and women with the red crosses, he nodded to the officials. Whenever he passed the window of a compartment, the faces behind it pressed closer against the glass.
He slowed down.
He saw them: Joseph, Thomas, Lida, Kitty, and Petra—for no doubt it was Petra. How little changed his brothers were! He was conscious of the gray stubbles on his sunken cheeks, of his upper lip falling into the space where once his front teeth had been. He was conscious of his smell, the sweat and dust of long travel, and the smell of the sick which had somehow settled on him. He wanted to call out: Thank God you’re all here, thank God I’m here—but his lips were parched and hot, his throat dry, and his voice couldn’t squeeze past the sob he was controlling.
He stopped. All at once, exhaustion wore him down. He saw Kitty suddenly tear herself away from the stiff group that was his family. She broke past Lida and pushed Joseph aside and flung herself into his arms.
“Karel!”
He held her tight, but only for a second or two. Then his hands dropped. Over her head, he saw his brothers advance toward him, Petra running ahead of them; they were loud with, “Welcome home!” and “How are you?” and all the trite things men have invented to cover their emotions at such a time, and Petra was clinging to him, saying, “Uncle Karel! Uncle Karel...!” over and again.
The picture was so sharp that he could see himself in it; and yet it was unbelievable, it had the flatness of a photograph. All the years in the camp—first in the quarry, then in the stink of the laboratory, finally in the hospital—he had carried with him the dim, illusory hope of this moment. But as his stomach had been unable to hold the first solid food the Americans had given him, so now his mind could not grasp the warmth and sweetness of reality.
Much more real was the flood of people engulfing the island of himself and his family, the Red Cross workers opening the compartment doors, the sick he had attended straggling onto the platform. Much more real was the eddying of friends and relatives rushing to find their loved ones, of the detraining men spreading out to hunt for familiar faces. And though he sensed the closeness in space of his family, he almost felt as if he stood with those of his patients who, isolated from the laughing, embracing, crying lucky ones, had been met by no one and were waiting without purpose, lost, huddled.
“Dr. Benda! Dr. Benda!”
Perhaps the call had come from one of the officials to whom he was to hand over his charges; perhaps a liberated prisoner, accustomed to his leadership and care throughout the days of travel, was looking for him.
“I must go,” he said, and knew he had said it too eagerly. He noticed Joseph’s hurt expression. “Where to?” Joseph was asking. “Aren’t you coming with us? We’ve arranged everything. My car’s outside....”
Kitty said, “Aren’t you free, yet?”
Yes, he was free. He was cut loose, released but for a few formalities—no more barbed wire, barracks, squads, wards, obligations, ties—and yet the limbs of his soul went jerking on as the legs of a wind-up toy will keep moving even after its spring has uncoiled.
He must make them feel that he loved them, that he was glad to be home, and how grateful he was to them for being here and opening their arms to him. But a man cannot change so fast from camp to family. His hadn’t been a weekend excursion.
“You must go?” Thomas was leading his finger along his wilted collar. “Why must you?”
They wouldn’t understand. They needed time. He needed time. “Didn’t you get my letters?” He buttoned his jacket which stood off his gaunt body like a bell from its clapper. “I wrote you three times. We had to have doctors to look after the worst cases, after men who couldn’t be sent home. We took them to a sanatorium in the mountains of Thuringia. That’s where I’ve been since May.”
“We got no letters,” said Lida.
He nodded slowly, his eyes troubled, his tongue pushing against his caved-in lip. “I’m sorry. I probably worried you....”
“Still the old Karel! Still letting every stray take advantage of you!” With
a constrained laugh, Joseph pointed at Karel’s charges who were being gathered along the platform. “Haven’t you done enough for them?”
“It won’t take long....” In his mind, Karel counted the hours remaining to him and to his past before he had to step into family and future. “There’s some reception center here. I must take these people there and see about their final check-up—who goes home, if he still has any—who goes to a hospital....”
“Then we’d better plan on staying in Prague overnight.” Lida approached the matter practically, and Karel appreciated it. “You’ll be dead tired when you’re through. Of course, we had counted on having you back in Rodnik tonight. Kitty has a room ready at her house—”
“It’s the upstairs room,” Kitty said gently. “You remember it. You used to say you could reach out of its window and touch the mountains. It’s quiet—and you can be alone there when you like.”
“Yes, I think I remember....” He looked full at Kitty. She seemed to grow out of the picture, to become three-dimensional. “Of course I remember!”
“Uncle Karel,” said Petra, “I love you.”
He turned to the child, the deep lines around his mouth twitching. He put his long, emaciated fingers on her head; the skin of his hand was almost white against the rich, dark brown of her curls.
“I must go now,” he said.
Joseph called after him, “We’ll be waiting for you at the Esplanade. I’ll have a room with bath for you!”
Karel didn’t answer. It was to him as if he were still moving outside of time, yesterday over and today not yet begun. Then there were hasty steps next to him, and Thomas’s breathless, “I thought I’d come with you. You don’t mind?”
“No—” Karel said hesitantly.
“You’re sure you don’t mind?” Thomas repeated, leaving all other questions unspoken.
“You can help me with the paper work.” Karel glanced back at the others and saw them still waiting where they had met him. “I guess I shouldn’t have sent the telegram,” he said.
CHAPTER TWO
JOSEPH took four rooms at the Hotel Esplanade. It was not as pretentious as the Alcron; it was quieter, more dignified, more in keeping with his idea of family living. The rooms faced the park. Across the square of green he could see the biscuit towers of Wilson Station, and the classic façade of the former German Theater, now hastily renamed Theater of the Fifth of May to honor the date when the Prague citizens took to arms and fought the SS. He could see the iron gray block of the Stock Exchange in which neither stocks nor shares would again be exchanged, either over or under the counter—it was said that the Provisional National Assembly was to move in there.
Joseph had not quibbled over the price of the rooms. Not that he threw money around—but as a businessman he knew that the value of the Protectorate crown, still in circulation, was questionable; the sooner the colorful chits were converted into tangible properties or services rendered, the better he liked it.
All in all, he had done very well in the two months since June, since re-establishing himself in Rodnik. It had been an uphill struggle to get the Benda Works going, but now the furnace was rebuilt, workers had been hired, the gas generator was patched up, coal and glass sand and soda ash and potash and burnt lime and litharge had been scraped together with pleading and bribing and the filling out of numerous forms.
He was ready again to make glass.
He was ready, work was being resumed, contacts with former accounts; were being renewed—and yet, he was not even sure that he owned the factory which his grandfather Zdenek Benda had built, which his father Peter Benda had made into an enterprise, and which he had taken over and tried to secure. There were the courts, courts of the first and second instance; and even the courts didn’t know whether they had final jurisdiction or whether some ridiculous district national committee, or the new association of glass factories, or a Ministry in Prague, had the deciding word.
Damn it, it was not his fault that the Nazis had marched in and forced Lida to sell at a price too humiliating to mention! And all this while he had been fighting the battle of the Blitz, sending up his good Czech crews over London, being responsible for the technical details of each mission, waiting for the familiar angry sound of the planes returning to the field, counting anxiously, feeling the dying out of his last flickering hope that a long overdue machine might still limp in, signing the roster with the names crossed off daily. What more did they want of a man before giving back to him what was his?
“What are you staring at?” Lida called from the chaise longue on which she was resting.
Joseph wheeled around. “I was thinking.”
He went to the salmon-colored telephone on the night table. He sat down on his bed and took out of his pocket the neat, red leather notebook in which he kept his important addresses. He picked up the receiver and asked for a number.
“Whom are you phoning?” asked Lida. “You’ve been driving all night. Lie down!”
Half of her body was hidden from his view by the common footboard of the twin beds. The other half shone pink from the light reflected on her satin slip. Her shoulders were bare, and the shadow between her breasts disturbed him.
“I’m calling the Minister,” he said, and listened to the faint crackling of the phone as the current tried to get through the war-worn wires.
Lida shifted slightly, supporting her chin on her wrist. “Do you think he’s sitting there waiting for your call? You should have phoned him from Rodnik. But your mind was so set on Karel....”
Crackles were still the only sound coming over the phone. Joseph was inclined to put the receiver back on its cradle. After all, he had come to Prague to meet the brother returned from the dead; one didn’t mix business with that kind of thing.
“I couldn’t very well call Minister Dolezhal at midnight,” he said belligerently.
“You won’t even get him on the line.” She stretched herself languidly. “Nothing works here.”
He hung up, came to the chaise longue, sat down next to her, and began to stroke her shoulders.
“I hope Petra doesn’t come in,” she said. “She’s developed a habit of coming in without knocking.”
Joseph removed her shoulder strap. “She’s with Kitty. Probably fast asleep, poor kid.”
The telephone rang. He jumped up; Lida pulled the strap back on her shoulder and covered herself with the blanket.
The hotel operator’s voice said, “Have you been trying to call Minister Dolezhal’s office? His secretary is on the wire.”
With half-closed eyes, Lida listened to Joseph’s end of the conversation: Yes, he was formerly Major Benda of the Czech contingent of the R.A.F....Yes, he and Minister Dolezhal had met quite frequently in London, at Lord Sitterton’s, at Kinborough House, at other places....No, he was staying in Prague only this afternoon, but he would like to see the Minister urgently....
Then there was a long pause.
Finally, Joseph spoke again. “Three o’clock will be fine. Thanks awfully. Good-by, sir.”
Lida got up and reached for her dress.
“I thought you were tired,” he said to her. He was not smiling, but his face had assumed the broad peasant slyness that had come down to him from Peter and Zdenek Benda and the Bendas who preceded them.
“I want to have lunch before we go to the Minister,” said Lida from under the flowered print she was slipping over her head.
“You can’t just come along!” He laughed uneasily. “This is an official matter, just Dolezhal and myself.”
She powdered her flat, straight nose and carefully applied her lipstick. When she was ready, she said, “You’re good friends, aren’t you—you and the Minister? So why should it be so difficult?”
“Not difficult.” He searched for a cigarette, fumbled, lit it. “It’s simply not done.”
“You forget that I’m the person from whom they stole the Works. You want the Minister’s support. I should think you’d want him to get the sto
ry firsthand.”
There was something to that. But the idea was preposterous.
“Look here,” he said, “I’m back, now.”
She checked herself in the mirror, adjusted her belt, and came up to him. She gave him a slight kiss on the cleft of his chin, and her fingers reached behind his ear.
“I’m happy that you’re back,” she said.
He withdrew slightly, not sure of where she was leading.
“And I’m happy that you’re working again and are back in business.” She took her hat out of the closet. “But keep in mind that the firm of Vesely has been setting you up in it.”
He sat down. He managed to give his voice a ring of authority. “Now let’s have this out, Lida!”
“Well?”
He was feeling for the right words. It wasn’t much money he had needed—half a million crowns to rebuild the furnace, another half million for raw materials and minor repairs and to get started—nothing that couldn’t be paid back within three or six months if things went tolerably well; but without Vesely’s Cut Glass, which was in operation and was producing and which had been in production throughout most of the war, the bank would hardly have given him the loan. And Vesely’s Cut Glass was Lida.
“You act as if you deserve credit because your father died and left you the refinery.”
This was so patently unfair that Lida didn’t even answer.
“I’m sorry,” said Joseph. “He was a good man. And you may be sure I’m grateful to him.”
“You should be. Without him, your own child wouldn’t have lived to greet you!”
“I know,” he said, dutifully patient. “I know where the money came from to bribe the police. You’ve told me more than once.”
Lida remarked acidly, “My father didn’t inherit anything. He spent the whole of his life making Vesely’s into what it is. When he died, last March, he died alone, and I didn’t even know it. I owned Vesely’s, and I didn’t know it. I was starving in that one bare room in Prague, bringing up your child.”
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