Prague: A Novel

by Arthur Phillips

  He slept a great deal, often but not exclusively at night. Lee Reilly left him several messages, as did Karen Whitley. From Lee Reilly’s gravelly Deep South voice and ornate G.I. phraseology he tried to reconstruct the man himself; he crafted a bald, portly, squinting, mustachioed ex-marine (who resembled a television private detective now in dubbed syndication on German cable). He saw several different flesh approximations of this composite sketch on the streets of Budapest, and tried, always too late, not to make eye contact. It would be difficult to find her without running into Reilly or his men. How would he bear up under a beating? Would his assailants whisper hot threats or merely rely on the irresistible force of unincriminating wordlessness? Would they declare themselves or pose as Hungarian toughs, hopped-up club kids, Gypsies? Black eyes. Broken nose. Kicks in the ribs or the crotch. And then into Boris Karloff Memorial for some recycled stitches from a smelly, smoking nurse.

  Still she did not come home. When her bungalow door opened after a painfully long closure and he vaulted up from the wooden bench across the street, he only came upon an exiting Julie. “Hey, you! We haven’t seen you in ages,” she cooed, so entirely normal. “How’ve you been? No, she’s on a leave. Like, two weeks is standard, but I don’t really know. She didn’t say. But, hey, I’ll tell her you came by. But you should come out with us sometime soon, even though she won’t be there, hmm? Oh, I’m sorry, honey, that was mean, wasn’t it? Between you and me, I think you guys would be really great together. Well of course we talk about it, silly. But there’s no telling Emmy anything, you know? I’m sure you know. She’s like, well, whatever. Anyhow you should come. Julie and I are going out tonight, to the new . . .”

  He sat in the Gerbeaud—if not that same day, then a day very much like it. He had time to kill, and it was obediently lining up for execution. The days lazily refused to differentiate themselves. She might come to the Gerbeaud, maintaining fine old traditions.

  Reilly had stopped leaving messages and so, his collar high, John braved the embassy lobby again. A different marine (or the same marine with a different mask) said, “MissOliver’sonleavesiry’allwannaleaveamessage?” John shook his head at the metal speaker. He left the building as a discreet limousine was discarding its passenger onto the sidewalk. John recognized the ambassador, Robin Hood from Halloween, remembered her hands tightening the laces of his Lincoln-green jerkin. “Sh-sh-sh-she’s on leave, son,” he stuttered at John’s sudden sidewalk question as machine-gun-toting Hungarian police circled them, facing outward for potential attackers, a cocoon of blue-vinyl backs providing sudden and disorienting outdoor privacy for their impromptu interview. “Where did she go?” John demanded. “Y-y-you sound like the French am-am-ambassador’s wife. ‘Whe-whe-where is zee lovely Emilie, hein? We are weeshing to make a deen-air of ’er?’ But, son, as I t-t-told Madame Le-Le-Le-Le, leaves are pri-private matters.” Cued by signals too subtle for John to notice, the shell of policemen opened at one end and the ambassador was absorbed into his building. John watched the black wrought-iron trellis shut as the diplomat graciously acknowledged Old Péter’s creaky but formal bow. The police melted away into slim booths and around corners. The Andean band was somewhere close by, guitars and pipes, mountains and condors, love and vengeance, cassettes for sale.

  The doorbell rang, was ringing, had been ringing, would soon stop ringing—a spray of verb tenses showered his sleep until he stumbled blearily to the door. “Dummy, don’t you have an alarm clock?” Charles was dressed in sneakers, torn jeans, and a T-shirt of a rock band long out of fashion. “Wake up, dude. You can sleep in the van and smash it on your way home. Not my problem at that point.”

  The orange van, median hungaria painted in black on its flanks, held Charles’s possessions in its belly. Charles drove, hunched forward, his chin on his knuckles on the wheel as the radio crackled in and out of AM range. “You seem triumphant,” John said as they merged onto a highway indistinguishable from the highways of Ohio, California, Ontario, Nebraska.

  “I only seem that way because I’m triumphant.”

  Charles was the first person whose elevation to minor celebrity John had ever witnessed (or helped effect). The young powerhouse who made his name in the Wild East was going home to a plum job with some New York VC firm or investment bank or hedge fund or something, some financial nonsense the details of which John could not trouble himself to bring into focus. Charles was hailed as the only hero-survivor of his old firm’s fast and self-inflicted decline, even in articles John hadn’t written, planted, or inspired. And now he was returning to his world, via Zurich, like a Crusader (a white crucifix on a tail fin gules) back from a conquered Holy Land, coming to reassure his people that their Gospel is true and powerful, the Red devils convert with ease. “Did you see Imre to say good-bye?”

  “Yes, Mom, I said good-bye. You know, his vaunted ‘communication skills’ ”—Charles released the wheel to provide visual quotation marks, and the van veered into the slow lane—“are greatly overstated. I mean, I asked him, ‘Imre, is it not true that, barring great fluctuations in the value of the forint—and interrupt me if that seems more or less likely to you than I’m assuming—then the value of the press’s Viennese holdings in relation to its Hungarian holdings will only steadily rise over time, even assuming Hungary were accepted into the European Union in the next ten years, or not?’ And, John, he blinked twice, which I’m told means yes.”

  The last of Pest’s buildings approached, passed, ceded the field to the steady hum of power lines and fences interrupted by eager emerald signs, each correcting its predecessor as to how far away the airport lurked.

  “Will you miss Budapest, considering your big triumph here?”

  “No.”

  “No, really. Will you?”

  “Really? No.”

  “Charles, please. Aren’t you sad to leave? You must have some feelings about, about . . .” John trailed off, and Charles honked and eloquently condemned another driver’s crimes.

  “I have to admit to being a little disappointed in you, JP. When I met you, I had high hopes for you, but listen to you now. You’ve allowed yourself to become one of those boring little beggars who goes around pleading with people to share their feelings. You’re a horrible little feeling-beggar, rattling your can. The world does not need more discussion of our feelings. That’s not a good route; it doesn’t work. Trust me. I’ve looked into this. I’ve given this some very concerted thought. The people who talk about their feelings are miserable. I’m not for repression, but really, you can’t possibly take feelings seriously. Trust me, this is the best advice I can offer you as your friend.” He tapped the wheel pensively in rhythm with the British pop pushing through the AM static. “You’re very much like me, you know, as much like me as anyone I’ve met in Hun country. Just without the focus and, and the willingness to pay certain prices. And the charisma, obviously. The fact is—and this is science, John—the less you talk about them, the less you even notice them, until finally, you can become a real human being and not some ball of feelings bouncing up and down all day staring at your own ass.” He looked over to John, and the van veered to the right. “But fine, my little beggar, fine, here they are then, my handsome feelings: I hates it here, I hates this filthy li’l town, I hates the Hungarians, chum, and all their shitty little half-baked corruptions and lazinesses and this attitude they teach their kids from birth that the world owes them salvation, because history has beat up on them so bad and they are always betrayed and all the rest of it. The whininess of these people just kills me. Hungarians are—to the last man—a pack of—”

  “You’re Hungarian. You. Are. Hungarian.”

  “That’s not very nice, John. After I just tried to help you.”

  John remained strapped to the van when they pulled into the Swissair cargo area, and Charles bounded out to begin his special brand of labor negotiations: He placed ten-dollar bill after ten-dollar bill into one of the aproned handlers’ open palms, sternly instructing a
s he paid. After a sufficient amount of cash filled the worker’s hand (the man even moved it up and down as if gauging the weight), all other work in the area was temporarily abandoned; the full team of four beefy luggage men (in scarlet aprons with white crosses on their chests) cracked open the van and gently cradled Charles’s possessions onto a wheeled cart. Labels were lovingly affixed and paperwork quickly processed. Handshakes all around. A few more Hamiltons.

  “You know what I will look back on fondly?” Charles asked as the orange van, much lighter now, squealed a U-turn and galloped down the frontage road to the passenger terminal. “Because you’re right. I will have one lasting memory of my time here. A memory that encompasses, oh, everything for me—my personal experiences, but also a symbolic meaning, what this country was going through while I was here. Even more, a picture of a whole era for my generation. The moment that summed up all of this”—his hands gestured grandly, vaguely—“what I will tell my children about, if I can do it justice. I mean, I know I’m not a great communicator. I’m just a businessman. But do you know what that moment was for me, John? It’s funny—to see it happen and to know that this is the moment you will hold dear, in your heart, forever. Do you know what it was for me? It was when those two incredibly ugly girls were catfighting over you. I’d never seen ugly women fight before. It was refreshing.”

  John twisted the radio knob in a vain hunt for a clear signal. An Austrian DJ’s voice cut through the fog, talking over a song. Charles tapped the steering wheel in rhythm as the van slowed and took its purring place in line. “I was considering not telling my parents I was moving back to New York. I was thinking about paying you to write them letters from me here, telling them how much I love it. That I’d decided to apply for citizenship. Marry a nice Hun girl. Settle into my dad’s childhood apartment up in the First. Send them fake pictures your bald friend could do of me and my Hun children picnicking on Margaret Island. All the while I’d really be home, lined up at Zabar’s like a normal person. Unfortunately, you made me famous and so now they’re going to sit on my couch and go on about all the glories of 1938 Budapest.” He drove a few feet, took the parking ticket, stuffed it behind the sun visor. He laughed oddly, sadly. “Did I ever tell you I was their second child? I was born after they had a boy who died. Mátyás. He was four when he died of leukemia, which is a long and hideous thing. There are still pictures of him all over the house. I grew up with that. I always felt like, I don’t know . . . like I was expected to . . .” Charles sucked his lip and pulled into the short-term parking lot, between two Trabants. He sat still, stared out the windshield.

  “You’re lying,” John said.

  “Yeah well, true. But still.” They walked toward the terminal. “I was a twin, though, and the other one, a boy, was stillborn—that is true.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “No, I guess it’s not.”

  Advertising posters papered the terminal walls: for consulting firms, accounting firms, public relations firms, computer networking firms, bilingual temporary placement firms, German condoms. The public address poured Hungarian onto comprehending and uncomprehending heads alike. The two Americans slouched in plastic seats. Charles’s boarding card flapped like a feathered tail from the back pouch of an extravagantly made black leather monogrammed briefcase (a sly sign that one shouldn’t judge the passenger in his T-shirt and jeans too soon). They swirled their espresso in Styrofoam cups, and Charles offered pensively, “You know, a case could be made that Imre got the best of this deal.”

  “Naturally. In that he’s almost entirely paralyzed.”

  “Funny, but no. There are those who would say he got more than he deserved.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Oh nothing. Forget it. I don’t agree with that old implication—slur—anyhow, so I shouldn’t spread it. He’s a good man, our Imre. He is. And he gave me a great opportunity. I’m glad I was able to make something of it, for both of us. And for my investors.”

  “Is this what he wanted?” John asked quietly, only slightly embarrassed.

  “To have a stroke? Yeah, I think so.”

  “Is this what he wanted?”

  “You do understand he was the biggest shareholder, don’t you? I made him more money than he’d ever imagined. I made Imre Horváth a multimillionaire after he couldn’t even run his own company. You do understand that, don’t you?”

  Out of earshot, Charles said something that made the Swissair hostess laugh before taking his ticket. He turned and sort of waved to John, a gesture that pointed out the silliness of waving farewell at airports. He stepped into the little wooden tunnel that led to New York. And he was gone. There were no windows to watch the plane taxi or take off. The whole thing could have been a hastily constructed soundstage. John shuffled outside, past the surly taxi ranks, paid for parking with the cash Charles had stuffed in his hand prior to boarding. Is that all? Is that how an era ends?

  He pulled off the frontage road and saw Charles walk again to the boarding tunnel, again offer his pass to the pretty Swiss stewardess at the gate, but this time John adds sense and proper closure: There is a noise, a booming rupture in the firmament, the frustration of a deity who will not tolerate events to fizzle out without meaning. And Krisztina Toldy—a glowing, pulsing, sexless archangel of retribution—screams his name, just his family name, as if she invokes with it all his ancestors, his nation, his Danube tribe: Gábor! He turns in the midst of priority boarding. His left hand holds his monogrammed black briefcase; his right hand holds one end of his boarding envelope. Out of its other end the stewardess is withdrawing his boarding pass, but now that stewardess is propelled backward against the dirty wooden door of the boarding gate, and her white, ruffled blouse is rapidly blossoming red, like the outline of a cartoon rose deftly filled in by an animator. As her head strikes the door, her pillbox hat falls over her eyes. The hat props comically against her nose as her convulsing form slumps to the floor, and the breasts that John was just admiring heave with a strange and shallow stuttering. Again the cracking, ripping blast of an angry God, again the smashing-glass sound of his name shrieked by the blood-gargling harpy, and now Charles’s T-shirt spreads red at the shoulder, the phallic tip of a guitar obliterated in the process, and at last a pure and unironic emotion flashes on the face of Charles Gábor, witnessed by dozens. People scream and hide under plastic seats, will remember forever the internal-organ look of the dried old gum they saw in that moment when reality burst through the artifice and irrelevance of every day and everything. The remains of Charles Gábor have no time to plead, to maneuver for position: The next shot tears the cheek from his face. He falls, and his last view in this life is of her standing above him. She fires twice into his neck, then, sobbing, turns the gun upon herself.

  John pulled into the lot behind the Median warehouse, where Imre Horváth had swept the floor the evening of October 23, 1956. He waited for his song to finish playing on the radio, which he had finally coaxed into FM. He asked at the rolling door for Ferenc, an office assistant, and tossed him the keys. He took the subway home. He was strangely exhausted. Sleep would not wait another minute. His head bounced against the plastic seat back.

  XI.

  He lay on his sofa bed. A breeze danced with the illuminated leaves outside, then with his thin curtain. Motors rattled the air. The remote control fit perfectly, ergonomically, into the line of his forearm and wrist, an extension of his will.

  If he could explain to her in real time everything that had happened to him—every single feeling and misunderstood action and distorted, grotesquely misconstrued intention—then in the passion and tears and apologies that must certainly follow there would come at last their connection, and she would be his and there would be a we. I walk all night long and think only of being us. She would fall asleep in his arms after, and he would stroke the soft skin under her chin and the curving line of bone that made her jaw such a splendor. He would spread her hair out behind her on the blinding w
hite and convex pillow. He would slowly parachute a billowing, cool sheet over her body, each of her limbs relaxed but perfectly straight, and her body would press against the shroud, outline itself in the merest hints. Rolled onto her side now: The line from the bottom of her rib cage to the top of her hip would curve through three dimensions like a living force, the dream line that haunted the troubled, unsatisfying sleeps of animators, automotive engineers, kitchen appliance designers, desperately lonely cellists.

  Young American males, dressed in the style of five years earlier, spoke German to one another through awkward lips and were rewarded with overwhelming laughter. He recognized the American sitcom, popular when he had been in high school and college, now dubbed and redelivered to German cable. He remembered with ease the characters’ names: Mitch, Chuck, Jake, and Clam. The four men—now Fritz, Klaus, Jakob, and Klamm—wisecracked auf Hochdeutsch in a TriBeCa loft apartment, in a SoHo bar, in Kafkaesque offices in midtown Manhattan, in Brooklyn parks, until John recognized this very episode. He dimly remembered a couch in his freshman dormitory, remembered slouching with three slouching friends (one whose name escaped him entirely). They had watched this very episode. The four characters had made a bet, he recalled: The first of them to meet a girl and manipulate events so that she invited him to her apartment to prepare him a “good home-cooked meal” would win one hundred dollars from each of the other three.