The Museum of Broken Promises

by Elizabeth Buchan

  She disappeared and reappeared with a bowl of olives. ‘These are gold dust.’ She placed them on the table, along with a plate of sliced German sausage. Petr tossed an olive into his mouth and bit into it. The taste was bracing and astringent on the tongue.

  She sat down opposite him. ‘There’s something that haunts me. I need to know if I ever told you… stuff. Inadvertently? You know when we talked after Eva had gone to bed? Or when we took the children out?’

  He found it difficult to recollect those moments: what he had perceived as a growing intimacy, the fact of her physical presence.

  He remembered her suppressed excitement on the evenings she went out. Her radiance on returning from Anatomie’s chata. Any fool would have deduced there had been discussions. Sex and politics were a combustible mix, and it didn’t take much to work out their content. ‘A hint here and there.’ Laure bit her lip and sprang upright. ‘Anatomie were known to be dissidents. You were from the West.’ Drink in hand, he gestured towards her. ‘And, in the end, you didn’t trust me to help you get out of Czechoslovakia.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Laure topped up their glasses and screwed the top back onto the whisky so hard that the bottles rattled on the tray. ‘You had warned me that you wouldn’t. Remember?’

  He watched the movement of her mouth – today the lipstick was dusty pink – which so intrigued him. Employing Laure had resulted in his carefully constructed life tipping into jeopardy and it had been very nearly disastrous.

  By now, the lighting had come on in the street and he seized on it as diversion. ‘I can never get over how bright the lights are in the West. The West should be careful and not waste resources. We did better.’

  ‘What rubbish you talk.’ Laure sounded astonished. ‘The old days were awful. The Party was awful. Life was awful…’ A red-tipped finger was jabbed in his direction. ‘Could I point out you were clever enough to escape to Paris.’

  ‘And now, with the changes, I’m becoming a rich man. How’s that for irony?’

  ‘Nice.’ She swished the whisky around her glass.

  ‘I didn’t mean to become rich, but it’s happened.’

  ‘Do you enjoy it?’

  ‘I do.’

  She looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe it was always going to happen. You loved living in the West.’

  He wasn’t about to deny it.

  ‘What are you going to do with your new riches?’

  The sausage was a pinky-red and fresh-looking. He helped himself. ‘I’ll find something.’

  ‘Establish a fund to find out what happened to people?’

  She spoke without malice – but the implications stung.

  ‘I’m going to defend myself,’ he said. ‘In my work, I did my best to bring badly needed know-how back home. The West shouldn’t have a monopoly on knowledge. The Second World War brought terror, destruction, the collapse of order, and left the results for us to deal with. We wanted – needed – a system to heal our sore psyches, our dented political systems, our social myopias. Communism promised us that we were all in it together.’

  ‘“Sore psyches, dented political systems, social myopias”… Good God.’ Laure was laughing at him. ‘And don’t you mean the Russians?’

  He looked across to the face that had, for so many reasons, haunted him. ‘Are you taping this conversation?’

  There was a hint of smile as she replied, ‘Actually, no. But, if I’m doing the work you accuse me of, I could have been. Don’t worry. Your coming here has been OK-ed. You’re not considered a threat.’

  He appreciated the information. ‘I could take offence.’

  ‘See if the Brits care.’

  ‘Not cultural attaché speak, I think.’

  Laure gave a proper smile.

  Cradling the glass, he leant back against the sofa feeling that he could stay here for ever, swapping anecdotes, sharing a past.

  And, yes, they could sit in a neutral, perhaps satisfactory, silence.

  Laure broke it and the unexpected accord. ‘Petr, I must know who betrayed us. Was it you?’ She gulped her whisky down as if it was a rescue remedy. ‘I know Lucia and Milos wouldn’t have done. But, maybe, one of the others. I need to know. As you would do if something almost ruined your life. Perhaps did so? I know that I can put my life together again and what happened to me is nothing compared to what happened to Tomas. It was ten years ago…’ Ten difficult years, he thought. ‘And we are all learning to love one another.’ Her voice dropped a note. ‘Here’s the chance to tell me the truth. A good thing to do?’

  He knew this would be coming. ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Lucia had had a bad time, I know that much,’ she cut across him. ‘Her parents had been threatened. Like many, she lived on the edge. But she was a fanatic for the cause. I admired that in her. She was brave.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He closed his eyes for a micro-second and made a decision. He would tell her something. ‘But she informed on you, Laure.’

  ‘What?’ She sat bolt upright, eyes wide. ‘Lucia?’

  After the fall of the regime, he had made it his business to find out what the State had on him. The letter had been in his file in the archives. He quoted verbatim from it. ‘“Petr Kobes is employing a person who is spreading anti-communist sentiments and corrupting young children.”’

  ‘I can’t believe Lucia would…’ She bunched a hand into a fist. ‘Lucia!’

  ‘Motives are complicated,’ he said, with more than a touch of irony. ‘I learnt that, rather late but I have learnt it. Think of this. Lucia would want you out of the way because you attracted too much attention from the authorities. Better you vanished. It wasn’t personal.’

  ‘How did the police know about the meeting at the theatre?’

  ‘Who knows?’ he replied after a pause. ‘It’s possible we will never know the ins and outs.’

  Was Laure craving retribution or absolution?

  ‘Did you ever try to find out what happened to Tomas?’ he asked.

  ‘I did and got nowhere.’

  ‘And he didn’t contact you?’

  ‘No,’ she said pitifully. ‘No.’ Again, she sprang to her feet. ‘That last day… when I left you.’ She swivelled around to face him. ‘Turning a blind eye is a national sport in Czechoslovakia. Why couldn’t you have done the same?’ She stood directly in front of Petr. ‘Why?’

  He wanted to say: but I did for you.

  ‘Tomas wasn’t that important,’ she went on. ‘He wasn’t a politician. He didn’t matter.’

  ‘If you are worshipped by the young, you do matter.’ He sent Laure a wintry smile. ‘Even Eva lusted after him.’

  She was checked. ‘I’d forgotten that. Poor Eva.’

  Because he couldn’t think of what else to do, Petr helped himself to a second slice of sausage.

  ‘Am I prying if I asked what happened? I was fond of her and I would like to know.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me,’ he demanded of Eva when the situation became intolerable. ‘Because I wanted to be married,’ she replied.

  ‘Eva and I married within months of having met each other. She didn’t let on about the illness in her family. It was possible she could have been perfectly healthy all her life. The doctors told me that two difficult births probably triggered it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She was being treated at Sainte-Anne in Paris when you arrived. After I was called back to Prague, the treatment was different. The doctors wanted to give her ECT and Eva refused.’

  Taking about it gave relief. Even more so when – unexpectedly – Laure reached over and took Petr’s hand. It was light, noncommittal, but it had been a long time since Petr had been touched in that way.

  He looked down at Laure’s hand around his and remembered the time he had held hers in Kampa Park and began to talk. ‘She said she was living in a prison. One night she let herself out of the flat. I don’t know if anyone saw her. But she walked down to the river and threw herself from a bridge.’ Laure pr
essed his fingers. ‘She left behind a photograph of the three of us. It was the one taken in Paris by the Eiffel Tower. There was a message written on the back. She wrote she wanted to give us peace, and to forgive her that she had failed us.’

  ‘To say I’m sorry is inadequate. But I am sorry.’

  ‘Laure…?’ A tiny vein pulsed at his temple. She took her hand away, leaving its imprint, and he logged a rush of exhilaration through his body. ‘People don’t die until you forget them. Even if you are looking at a heap of their bones.’

  She gave him a fierce, hard stare. ‘Then you know.’

  This was the moment he had planned. ‘There’s a reason I’ve made contact. I have something for you.’ He got up and fetched the package and held it out.

  She made no move to take it. ‘A present?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought it might build a bridge.’

  ‘I don’t want to take anything from you, Petr. Ever.’

  Although it was not unexpected, the rebuke stung. ‘Think of it, then, as being from the theatre company.’

  ‘The company?’ She was startled. ‘This is from the company?’

  He handed Laure a package. It was wrapped in stained brown paper and secured with string and he watched her tackle the knot. The wrapping peeled back to expose a flat, shallow box. She lifted the lid to expose an inner wrapping of yellowed newspaper. Dust sifted from it as she pulled it aside.

  She glanced up at Petr with a question mark. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  With a cry, Laure eased a female marionette puppet out of the box. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Have a look,’ he said, with a cast-iron certainty that he had walked a path to the edge of a precipice from which there was no return.

  The marionette’s strings were neatly knotted down the back and the control bar tied up with ribbon. ‘That’s Milos’s work,’ she said tenderly. ‘He was meticulous about putting the marionettes away properly. Always. Always. His life’s work.’ She touched a wooden hand. ‘You know they’re carved out of lime wood and some of them are very valuable?’ Her voice trembled. ‘It’s Marenka. I know her. I would know her anywhere.’

  CHAPTER 22

  ‘IT IS MARENKA,’ HE SAID.

  Laure gave a cry and, lifting the marionette onto her lap, she cradled her as if she was a child. ‘I’ve dreamt of her all these years. Of them. Of that time.’

  He watched as she struggled for calm.

  ‘After I met you here, I knew you should have her. The company was disbanded and their stuff confiscated. I got hold of her and she’s been in my storeroom ever since.’

  Laure stroked the wooden head. ‘Did you wait patiently to get your life back, Marenka? Or did you howl in your agony but nobody heard?’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Petr. ‘Please.’

  ‘They have a soul, you know. Marionettes, I mean. They have life, too. They grieve.’

  This was a side to Laure he had not seen.

  ‘No,’ he contradicted. ‘We grieve. Not them.’

  She shook her head. ‘Marenka, the Prince, Pierrot and the others are alive. Perhaps you don’t see it.’ She smiled at him, politely, as if she was sounding out a new acquaintance. ‘A good puppeteer knows they live in a parallel existence to us. If they are to connect, then he or she must love them.’

  This Marenka had a scarlet mouth, heavily lashed eyes, one blue, one green, and a crack running up her right ear. Laure traced the crack with her thumb. ‘She was damaged when Lucia dropped her. We were having an argument and I always think it was deliberate.’ She searched in the box. ‘I wonder if… yes.’ She exhumed a square of folded material which, unfolded, became a bride’s veil. ‘It’s still here. Lucia made it from an old family heirloom. She showed me.’ She stroked the lace with a fingertip and placed it over Marenka’s head. ‘I was horrified.’

  Laure’s romanticism touched him. ‘They’re certainly part of our culture,’ he said.

  She glanced up. ‘I didn’t understand then. The power they have, I mean.’ She unwound the ribbon around the control bar. ‘I can see Milos tying this,’ and checked over the frayed strings. ‘Marionette strings should be attached to the head, the back, the hands and just above the knee.’ She looked up. ‘The lessons are not forgotten.’

  Holding the control bar taut, she lowered Marenka down until the wooden feet touched the floor and manipulated her, ineptly, along the length of the sofa.

  ‘The different eyes were meant as a message,’ said Petr.

  ‘Were they?’

  ‘There’s no need to pretend any more, Laure. It was so easy to spot.’

  ‘Well then, you know how effective it was.’ Marenka shuffled to a halt. ‘You and…’ her voice hardened, ‘your colleagues might well have interpreted the special meanings in the performances. But so did others who took so much more from them than you possibly could. Comfort and laughter. Truths that couldn’t be spoken out aloud. The company was brilliant at that,’ she said. ‘Did you ever watch the Pierrot when you were snooping?’

  He suppressed a flash of anger. ‘I did.’

  Her eyes had grown huge. ‘It always made me weep. But it was a miracle. A marionette is technically dead but also alive in a way we cannot explain. The Pierrot suffers and we with him. He was the most tragic, most wonderful thing. You will never see the like. He refuses to be manipulated by the master. He knows the worst. He showed us that we could make choices and we could accept death.’ Tears now spilled over. ‘Because he was always about love, and loving life so much that he refuses to accept the compromise.’ She wiped her cheeks with her sleeve. ‘That’s why he plucked out his own strings.’ She added in a low voice, ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’

  He thought of Jan and Maria batting through the leaves at the Kampa Park that summer’s day and of Eva stealing out of the apartment and hastening to her death. He thought, too, of the moments after the man from the Party in the pork-pie hat had taken away his freedom.

  ‘What happened to Milos and Lucia?’

  Petr knew, sooner or later, Laure would ask him. Using his contacts, he had arranged for the relevant records to be opened up. ‘It’s an old Czech custom to gang up on public enemies,’ he said. ‘You probably know. Everyone feels safer. Lucia and Milos were associated with Tomas and Anatomie and, once Anatomie were arrested, they were known as public enemies.’ He brushed some dust from the newspaper off his sleeve. ‘It calmed down in the end. Things weren’t as bad as the sixties. If it had been then, undoubtedly, they would have disappeared. They are probably living quietly somewhere out of Prague.’

  ‘Aha…’ Marenka’s wooden limbs clicked and clacked as Laure eased her upright.

  It was a sound to summon the past. On his ninth birthday, his mother took him to the marionette theatre where a demon chased a capitalist across the stage. Strings taut, teeth chattering, painted face as white as chalk. Afterwards, his mother complained that he had crushed her hand in fright.

  ‘I’m out of practice,’ said Laure.

  Petr laughed.

  Laure adjusted the strings and fanned out the bars and Marenka rose quivering to her full height, the veil modestly covering her face. Beneath it, a brown plait hung down her back.

  ‘It’s coming back to me.’ With a twitch of the bars, Laure turned the marionette to face Petr. ‘Like riding a bicycle. She’s asking questions, Petr. Such as, why are you giving me to this woman?’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘I think you do know why,’ Laure said. ‘Guilt.’ She busied herself with the strings. ‘I’ve learnt one thing. If you’re guilty about something you don’t want to let it go. That’s what I found. You like to prod it.’ She corrected herself. ‘You need to prod it. I did.’

  It was a debate so painful that he could not enter into it. ‘I felt you should have her.’

  She looked up. ‘You always were generous.’ She tugged at the strings and Marenka tottered drunkenly towards Petr. ‘The other questi
on, the big question, she’s asking is, “Where’s my Prince? Where did he go?”’

  A reply was necessary. ‘Not a good, or sensible, question.’

  ‘What will I do with you, Marenka?’ Laure laid the puppet down on the sofa and stowed the bars in a way that Milos had taught her. ‘She ought to be in a Czech museum, particularly as she was in Prague at the end of it all, the end of an era.’ She touched a wooden hand. ‘She has historic value.’

  ‘Will you thank me?’

  She faced him directly. ‘Thank you.’ She said it so simply that his heart turned over. ‘Now, please. About Tomas.’

  He looked at her. ‘Always Tomas.’

  ‘Yes, but this is about you too,’ she said. ‘Look on it as your salvation?’

  Their eyes met.

  A clumsy realigning of morality, grief and political observance? Of deep-boned desires? Of regret?

  A bargain negotiated?

  She took an audible breath – as if she was readying herself to dive off a high board. Reaching over, she undid Petr’s tie. ‘French, I think,’ she said, then glanced at the label. ‘How did I guess?’

  Dropping it onto the floor, she took his hand and led him towards the bedroom.

  Within seconds, he realized how skilled she was in dissimulation. What Laure felt for him was far removed from what he felt for her. Indeed, he sensed beneath the compliant body a deep contempt.

  Sliding her arms up over his bare torso, she shivered. Putting his arms around her, he bent over and pressed his mouth against her shoulder as he had done so often to Eva.

  ‘This has been a long time in the making,’ he said.

  She tensed. ‘It wasn’t yours to have.’

  He cupped her head in his hands and bent to kiss her, long and tenderly. But, just as she was beginning to respond, she broke away. ‘Don’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She closed her eyes. ‘It’s too intimate.’

  She waited until she had lowered herself on top of him before she said, ‘Tell me about Tomas.’ The beautiful skin had flushed over the cheekbones and, for a few seconds, he wondered if, despite herself, she was enjoying the encounter just a little. ‘Is he… dead?’