The Museum of Broken Promises

by Elizabeth Buchan

  But no need to be gormless, lass. Her father’s sayings didn’t help much either, except to remind Laure that she did have another existence and that she could choose to return to it. The fall-back position didn’t help. Laure wished to be where she was. Here. Now. In the thick of it, entangled in the sticky strands of politics and passion.

  It was late on Sunday afternoon and Tomas was taking her for a beer in a dive by the river, run by one of his friends. His telephone still didn’t work – no surprises there – and he had taken to leaving messages at the marionette theatre when he wanted to make contact.

  As usual, they chose to walk through the hidden alleys and passages. Being acquainted with their intimacies, often rubbish-strewn and with broken cobbles, almost persuaded Laure that she had become an insider. They were part of the enigma of the city, and these out-of-sight routes had become one of her pleasures. But not today.

  Tomas led the way and she watched his slight figure with a hunger that grew sharper each day. She tried to put herself in the other woman’s shoes. Any woman – Lucia – must love the hunch of his shoulder, the thin hands, the thick brown hair in the passionate, ravenous way that she, Laure, did. Any woman – Lucia – would feel the combination of exquisite joy and pain as she did.

  Perhaps, in return, Tomas would see a softness in her (the half-French girl) that Lucia, who had been (of necessity) toughened by anger and suspicion, no longer possessed.

  Could he see instead in Laure someone in whom he could place his trust and imagine a bright, certain future?

  Tomas waited for her to catch up. ‘You do take care when you’re on your own?’

  Her lips were suddenly dry. ‘You do mind about me?’

  He looked at Laure. ‘What do you think?’ He seemed impatient with the question.

  Her senses swam, and she was electric with longing. ‘I hope you…’

  He cut through. ‘Laure, I have fallen in love with you. Very deep. Very intense. That you should know.’

  He had succeeded in taking her breath away. And the shock of it crackled through every cell. ‘I love you, too,’ she faltered, the words strange and new to voice aloud.

  Tomas shot a hand heavenwards. ‘My God, she loves me,’ he cried. ‘What more can I ask of life?’

  ‘Even if I am a useful girlfriend from the West?’

  He shot her a look. ‘Especially if you’re a girlfriend from the West.’

  The poisoned blister festering in her heart was punctured. What did it matter if she was the useful girlfriend from the West? It was a risk she would take. What was love but risk?

  Tomas added, ‘Listen, don’t worry about being followed. It gives you protection. There’re plenty of drunks and bandits around who would consider it their life’s work to rob a girl like you. Or worse. They won’t if there’s a goon around.’

  They had emerged by the river over which were sliding the reflections from the setting sun. Tomas steered them into a street flanked by walls behind which were tall-ish buildings. Where two walls met, they opened into a garden furnished with tables and chairs. The place was run by Radek, an old friend of Tomas’s who, in return for Anatomie’s occasional appearance there, ensured that Tomas got his favourite beer.

  ‘What do you mean “a girl like me”?’ she asked when they were seated on the grass down by the river and the beer had been served.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t get it, my loved Laure, do you? Then, I must tell you.’ He leant over and rubbed a lock of her hair between his fingers. ‘Beautiful and well cared for. Shiny. The product of a good hairdresser and years of using a good shampoo.’

  This was the most tender and seductive of love letters and she closed her eyes to listen.

  Tomas’s fingers rested on her cheek. ‘Your skin is full of life. It tells me that you have been well fed. It tells me that you have eaten fruit and vegetables and good meat all your life.’ He took up one of her hands. ‘Look at your strong nails and soft skin.’

  Enraptured, she smiled.

  ‘These little details tell the clever observer that you are worth robbing. They’re trained to spot the details.’

  Her smile faded.

  ‘Let’s forget about them.’ He wrapped his arms around her. ‘Is it too hot for this?’

  It was true that his body against hers felt like a radiator but she didn’t care.

  ‘I want to relish each moment,’ he said in her ear. ‘When you live with systems as they are here, it’s a requirement. Every cold beer, the sun on your back, every bar of music. Every mouthful of good food. The smell of summer.’ He nuzzled her ear and the increasingly familiar sensations smartly awoke. ‘And sex. Especially sex.’

  A beer later, she got up the courage to pose the question: ‘Is… was Lucia your girlfriend?’

  Tomas was not at all put out. ‘She was once.’

  To Laure’s distress, her hand holding the glass began to shake. ‘Oh.’

  He rescued the glass and its contents and wedged it down into the grass. ‘I thought it was only films that were black and white,’ he said, and she recognized a reproof. ‘Lucia and I have a long history. We grew up in the same area of the city. Both sets of parents have suffered. We owe each other a lot and, unless our dear leaders decide to shut us up in prison, we will know each other for the rest of our lives.’

  ‘Did she believe Tomas? She all but told me that you were getting married next year and I should bugger off. She looked like she meant it.’ Laure’s tooth probed at her bottom lip. ‘She looked like she still wanted you.’

  ‘Did she now?’ He was amused. ‘Lucia has other plans.’ He took up a lock of hair, bent over and kissed it. ‘But you must remember you will go.’

  ‘Christ,’ she said, a word that never passed her lips but, in her agony, it arrived.

  He peered into Laure’s face and what he saw checked him. ‘Laure, Laure, don’t look like that. What did you expect?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s impossible,’ he pointed out. ‘You can’t stay here.’

  She could see the situation from Tomas’s point of view. From all points of view. A well-nourished English girl parachutes into a country that has been struggling with deprivation and lives under a tyranny that is slyly dressed up as paradise. A rock musician fancies her. Maybe something more? But she, on the other hand, is poleaxed by her feelings. Everyone knows, and she reluctantly and late to the party, that her love affair is only a summer’s lease. They know, as she knows, that when she leaves, it will be as though she had slipped into the river and the waters had closed over her head.

  They will forget. She won’t.

  She felt herself flush. ‘Tomas, I’m the outsider. Of course. But it doesn’t make you and me any less important. You must see that. Understand. Deep down understand.’

  She tried to scramble upright but he pressed her back onto the grass.

  ‘It hurts me too,’ he said. ‘Very much.’

  ‘If you say you feel… strongly about me, if you say you love me.’

  ‘You’ll be in my songs. That I promise.’ He took one of her hands in his and stroked it. ‘Don’t spoil it, Laure. We have too much sadness in this country. Accept what we have for what it is. I love you very much. You are, remember, a woman from the dreams. A lioness from the African plains.’

  ‘From Yorkshire, actually.’

  He grinned. ‘From Yorkshire, and you’re clever and funny and brave and I want every bit of you.’

  Stupidly, she asked, ‘Would you go back to Lucia?’

  ‘Stop it.’

  Puzzled, she tried to pick her way through the raw, angry places that this conversation had exposed to find the flaw in his argument. ‘But that’s to be how the State wants you. Acquiescent. I thought rebellion took place in the heart, not just the streets. If you want me, you must do something.’

  ‘I’m tempted to say that you don’t know what you’re talking about. But, then, you do.’

  He continued to stroke her
hand, taking care over every joint, exploring the lines running down her palm.

  She could disagree. She could be angry. She could beg… but, in a revelatory flash, she saw a way through, using politics. ‘You’re on record as saying you want a new Czechoslovakia, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, free elections, a market economy, social justice… and, as a result, you could be arrested at any moment?’

  ‘True,’ he seemed indifferent. ‘Although things are happening, the movement is gathering, it’ll be years before the system cracks.’

  ‘Are you in danger?’

  After a moment, he nodded reluctantly. ‘Probably. The warning about the telephone was a clue.’

  A flicker of cramp went through the big toe of her right foot as she scrunched it down. ‘Then you must get out. I’ll help you.’

  He flung himself back on the grass and slotted his arm across his eyes. Destabilized by the impact, dust sifted towards the river. ‘How do you say in English? Don’t go there?’

  ‘You can. You can fight ideology and isms by escaping.’ Her confidence stuttered into life and the way forward seemed clear. ‘You know the right people who forge papers?’

  ‘I do. Not easy and people have been caught. And what happens when I get out?’

  She heard her own voice: warm, cajoling, determined. ‘You marry me and then you can get British citizenship.’

  He shifted his arm and squinted up at her. ‘I’m doing what I’m doing here. I’m not a deserter.’

  ‘True desertion is to give up on your country. Whether you are here or there.’ Love had sharpened her insight into him. He would be doubting himself, his future. ‘You’re thinking that, if you came over, no one would know who you are. A rock star with no audience. A nobody. That’s hard after being a somebody here.’

  A boat with a lantern at its prow glided across the water, barely breaching the surface, and Laure caught her breath at the sight. ‘But you can, and would be, somebody elsewhere.’

  The accumulated warmth from the day sifted up from the grass sward. She lit a cigarette and smoked reflectively and recollected a conversation at the chata where Leo had explained that at the election the previous May, 99.39 per cent had turned out to vote and 99.94 per cent of them had voted for the carefully selected government candidates. Then she thought about the marionettes back at the theatre, hanging on their pegs waiting for their call to life, subversive or not. Fighting for a cause could be addictive. . . and she was beginning to see this picture.

  ‘You think a revolution is going to happen? In the future? Never?’

  ‘Difficult questions. But revolution certainly won’t happen if people like me leave.’

  The boat was joined by two others and the trio sat serenely on the water in the evening sun, casting starbursts of light.

  She felt him drawing away into a place where she was not welcome.

  ‘You said yourself there were cracks. You’ve told me about the opposition to Soviet troops in the country when they invaded in 1977, and you’ve talked about the resistance going on now. But you also said getting rid of the regime is a long way off. You have a life. Shouldn’t you give yourself the best chance to lead it?’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ Tomas said, sharper than normal.

  ‘Are we quarrelling?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  Carefully, she ground out her cigarette, wrapped it in a scrap of paper and handed it to Tomas. He glanced down at the pathetically small package. ‘We’ve made a Czech in you, Laure.’

  ‘Of you.’

  ‘Of course, of you.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Why are you trying to teach me English?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  He laughed. ‘Shall we go back to where I live?’

  Tomas had never invited her to his place before. ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not comfortable. Will you mind?’

  They walked back up from the river, turned into the street that ran parallel to it and headed for the bridge. A couple of cars came up behind and they stood back to allow them to pass. Suddenly, Tomas gripped Laure’s arm so hard that she almost cried out.

  ‘Do you see that white building ahead? Get there and turn into the courtyard and wait for me. Do as I say,’ he hissed into her ear. ‘Don’t ask questions.’

  With that, he turned and walked back the other way. Obeying his instructions, she walked briskly towards the white building, one of the older ones by the river, and did not look back even when she heard a screech of tyres and inhaled a whiff of burning rubber. Car doors slammed.

  Fear almost made it impossible to move. What if Tomas was picked up? What if she was?

  Turning into the entrance, she found herself in a courtyard, similar to the one the Kobes occupied, surrounded by three-storeyed apartments with ironwork balconies. It was an unexpectedly peaceful place filled with plants.

  Not that Laure paid much attention. Struggling to bring herself under control, she perched on the edge of a stone trough and smoked another cigarette. How did Czechoslovakians manage to exist in this way? With such continual anxieties?

  A few minutes later, Tomas walked in through the courtyard entrance. Pale, sweaty and clutching at his shoulder. She uttered a cry of distress and ran over to him. ‘They’ve hurt you.’

  He flinched at her approach. ‘The goons were after someone who probably got away. That puts them in a bad mood and I didn’t want to give them the pleasure of spotting me. But they did and decided to give me a beating up to prove how much love they feel.’

  ‘Lean on me.’

  His features were drained from the shock. And pain? ‘It’s not too bad. Probably only bruising. I sent you in the other direction because I didn’t want you involved.’

  Relief gave her daring. She reached up and pulled his head down to hers and kissed him passionately. ‘You taste of tobacco,’ he said.

  ‘And you of beer.’

  They stood apart. Of the two, it was Laure was trembling with the shock of it. ‘They beat you up for no reason?’

  Above, a window banged shut and a trickle of mortar slid down the wall.

  ‘Do you want to sit down?’

  He shook his head. ‘Let’s get out of here’ He put his good arm around her shoulder and they walked into the street, Tomas stumbling ever now and again.

  ‘I’m going to give you some advice, Laure. If you’re taken, be prepared. They know the answers before they put the questions. It’s an old trick.’

  ‘And?’

  He was talking more to himself than to her. Rehearsing what lay ahead of him, she realized with a new terror.

  ‘I would be asked what I believe in and I would reply that I believe in peace and equality and whoever is questioning me will almost certainly laugh. And you can see why. Their isms are not mine. The trouble is they reserve the right to make you agree with theirs.’

  Apart from a woman with a bulging string bag, the street was empty.

  ‘They will ask me about the songs and I’ll reply that I’m not prepared to answer as I do not consider the questioner to be a representative of an enterprise that creates my sort of music. They will also put it to me that the music creates anti-social agitation and I will again reply that I have nothing to do with agitation as I find it repellent.’

  ‘I think I understand.’

  He glanced down at her. ‘I’ve been arrested more than once. Each time it’s trickier, but I am also wilier. But it’s a risk.’

  ‘Then what are you doing with Anatomie?’ she asked. ‘Why?’

  ‘Proving to myself that, despite your sly insinuation, I’m not inert, which was what Jan Palach accused us Czechs of.’ Laure didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘1969. A bad year,’ he said.

  ‘Palach?’

  ‘Palach was a student and set himself alight in Wenceslas Square, which was his protest at our failure to resist. By burning himself to a shrieking cinder, he was pointing out that taking refuge in cartoons, opera and depression, which the Cze
ch people do, was not good enough.’ He sounded strained. ‘So help us, Palach was right.’ He reflected for a moment. ‘Leo and Manicki feel the same as me, though we don’t talk about it.’ After another pause, he said, ‘It’s both a good and a terrible story.’

  Pain. Smell. Dying in a violent, excruciating way for a cause. She found it too terrible to say anything.

  ‘He left us a challenge to prove we are not inert.’ He pulled Laure to a halt and, leaning against the wall, kissed her again. Eventually, he drew back and said, ‘And you’re not.’ His teased her bottom lip. ‘Inert, I mean.’

  The vision of Palach routed (for the time being), Laure sighed with relief and happiness.

  ‘But, really, what are you doing?’ she repeated later as they slowly made their way across the Charles Bridge towards the house in the Můstek quarter where Tomas lived with a bunch of musicians, which included Manicki.

  ‘I’m a rock soldier making war on the system.’

  A couple of girls in frayed cotton trousers passed them on the bridge and stared and one of them sent a filthy look at Laure.

  ‘A rock god, you mean,’ said Laure.

  Where Tomas lived had once been expensive and desirable but was now rundown and, he told Laure, its basement so damp only a duck could survive.

  ‘Careful,’ said Tomas as they entered the front door and pointed to the stone corbels flanking it. ‘Mrs Pigeon is bringing up a large family.’

  Sure enough there were guano splashes on the stone floor and a mighty susurration of young, hungry birds sounding from a nest on the ledge.

  The facilities were shared, including a cracked lavatory that did not look as though it had long for this world. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Tomas as he pointed it out.

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Laure.

  His hand on her back propelled her up the stairs to the first floor where Tomas had his room. ‘When the snow comes, I share it with Manicki because the roof leaks. But today it’s all mine.’

  There was a bedstead, minus its mattress which was on the floor. The reason was obvious as the bedstead lacked a workable leg. There were piles of clothing, Anatomie posters tacked up on the wall, an ancient-looking washstand with a blue-and-white bowl that looked antique and valuable, and Tomas’s guitar stacked in a corner.