“Yes!” Magdalena agreed. “That makes perfect sense. What should I do to reinforce the charm on this side will you are applying it to the other?”
“Come with me.” He pointed to the stairs. “I will give you the perfect thing to do it with.”
In his room, she saw the slips of yew standing in a glass of water on the desk near the window. George pulled his horsehair whisk from his luggage. He brought it to the desk, gesturing for Magdalena to join him.
“How will this reinforce the potion I used yesterday?” she asked, fascinated by the process she was watching. George sat at the desk chair and wrapped two of the threads of horsetail around his fingers, then snapped them off the handle of the whisk. He nodded at the yew in the glass and she retrieved a bundle of the leaves.
“We tie the yew with the horsetail,” he explained, shifting in the chair to face her with a smile. He nodded at the yew in her hand, which she dutifully extended toward him. He twisted the horsehair tightly around one end of the slips of yew and knotted the horsehair several times. He took the bouquet from Magdalena and brandished it toward the window, almost as if it were a sword. She laughed.
“Now you need to be one of those ‘flood tourists’ who want to get to the river,” he explained, handing the bouquet of yew to her. “You can use ordinary water, but water from the river would be best. Fill your chalice with it. Use the yew to sprinkle the water from the chalice along the streets. Try as best you can to match the same places where you smeared the extract yesterday.” He stood and retrieved her chalice from the closet, where it had been sitting on a shelf. She took it and set the yew in it.
“How does all this work?” she wanted to know.
“Horses and horse-goddesses are associated with the dead in the mythology of many cultures. And horsehair is often used in magic to communicate with the dead. Yew is often planted around the edges of burial grounds because the dead become caught in its branches, so it helps to keep them from wandering about to harass the living,” George told her. “Using water, yew, and horsehair will focus the charm you placed yesterday to drive away the specific hazards of death and water from the city.”
Magdalena examined the yew in her chalice and then smiled at George.
In the Kampa and Little Venice districts to the left and right of the stone bridge, soldiers went from door to door. Knocking, in some cases pounding, to rouse the inhabitants, they were under orders to evacuate these neighborhoods.
“Everyone must go,” the residents were told.
“But where? How?”
“Make your way as best you can,” came the instructions. “Family. Friends. Go up. Away from the river. Now!”
The elderly—many of whom had to be helped to safety through their windows by the soldiers and emergency aid workers because of the rising water—and others who had difficulty moving or no family, no friends, no one to take them in, were loaded into bus after bus and driven to schools away from the river, where each gymnasium and many classrooms had been turned into emergency campgrounds resembling the refugee camps most of Europe had not seen since the end of the Second World War. By the middle of the day, the fears of the city had become reality. Kampa was submerged under the roaring river and the portrait of John Lennon adorning the graffiti-laden Lennon Wall soon presided over a pond that had been a plaza.
“Sir? Ma’am?” Rough knocks pounded on the door of Dmitri and Sophia’s hotel room.
More knocking rang out along the hallway. Keys rattled in locks.
“The hotel is being evacuated. We must ask all guests to leave the hotel in as quickly and orderly a fashion as possible,” the clerk announced as his head protruded around the now-open door.
Dmitri realized what he was hearing and sat upright, shaking his wife’s shoulder. “Sophia! Wake up! The hotel is being evacuated!” Having heard voices from within the room acknowledging the occupants understood the gravity of the situation, the clerk moved on to the next room.
Magdalena stood before the pool that had blossomed at the base of the Lennon Wall. She had come this way hoping to find a place where she could reach the river without attracting attention and had nearly stumbled into the water. She stooped with the plastic jug she had gotten at her apartment to organize herself for her new assignment.
“The chalice is much too small to hold a reasonable amount of water to sprinkle in the streets of the city,” she had realized. “I’ll have to get a larger supply of water and keep replenishing it.” She left the chalice and yew in her kitchen and found a large plastic jug in her trash that had once held juice. She rinsed it out and set out for the banks of the river to fill it.
Now she was kneeling at the edge of the flood, holding the jug so that water could gurgle into it. When it was full, she twisted the cap back into place and stood. Glancing around, satisfied that no one had witnessed her odd souvenir collecting, she made her way back up to her apartment.
Theo was unsure of what to do next or where to go. He stood on the cobblestones outside his hotel, having hastily dressed and even more hastily repacked his luggage when the hotel staff had roused him from his deep slumber.
“Evacuation” was the one word he clearly understood in his waking stupor. Now he was downstairs, in the street, with the swelling crowd of displaced hotel guests. A multitude of languages swirled around him. “Where should we go? How far will the flood reach, do you think? Is anyplace safe left? Shouldn’t the hotel have made arrangements for us? Maybe we should get the next flight out? Haven’t you heard that the airport is closed and the flights have all been cancelled?”
Theo picked up his luggage, wincing as a flicker of pain danced up his shins, and trudged up the hill and away from the river.
At midmorning, announcements came that the public transportation system was available free of charge—where it was still in operation. More subway stations had succumbed to the inundation of the flood coming through the sewers and medieval, uncharted tunnels under the Old Town. Even stations that were still open often had no service, as it had been suspended at the closed stations. Yet any tram or bus that could make its way along the surface would take all passengers away from the growing disaster, free, if only they could reach the tram lines and bus routes.
Magdalena made her rounds through the crowded streets of the Little Town, sprinkling river water from her chalice with the bundle of horsehair-tied-yew onto the places she could recall smearing the toad-and-Eucharist paste the day before. People were too concerned with their own welfare to pay much attention to the young woman who was going about sprinkling water, though one or two older, more devout churchgoers clucked in approval.
“Sprinkling holy water. She must be,” they agreed. “Something to protect the city. Like when the holy Infant of Prague statue was carried in procession along the walls of the city. Good of that young lady to think of something practical to aid the town!”
“Come with me,” Victoria told Sean as they exited the hotel along with the other guests who had not gone out earlier to look at the flood and would return later only to find themselves unable to enter the hotel or retrieve their belongings.
“Come with me to my apartment.” Victoria pulled Sean from the midst of the dumbfounded, confused tourists. “I live far enough up the hill that it should be safe, at least for a while longer.”
At the zoo, the water continued to engulf the enclosures where the animals lived and to isolate the park from the rest of the city. More than a hundred people struggled to move the birds and big cats and gorillas to safety. Rifle shots rang out to put down a lion and a bear that could not be saved. Frightened gorillas attacked the would-be rescuers and jumped out of the inflatable rafts, back into the still-rising water. Elephants and hippos huddled outside their enclosures.
“Dmitri! Look!” whispered Sophia, setting down the suitcase she was carrying and pointing ahead of them with one hand, tugging on her husband’s arm with the other to get his attention.
They had finally set out from their ho
tel, following the crowds that meandered through the streets of the Little Town, looking for new lodging. Each hotel they stopped at had given one of two replies: “all full” or “evacuated.” Sophia was no longer sure where they were in relation to the river, the streets and lanes having twisted and turned so, but Dmitri seemed to be about to turn onto a side alley that would lead them further up the steep hillside toward hotels that might still have some accommodation available.
“Where?” he asked, startled, dropping the baggage he was carrying, looking to his wife, then n the direction she was pointing, and back again. “Look at…?”
“There! Don’t you see her?” Sophia whispered excitedly. “It’s Magdalena!”
Dmitri looked ahead into the crowd again and saw her. It was Magdalena, walking away from them with her silver chalice in one hand and a bundle of leaves in the other. She paused and stooped, dipping the tree cuttings into the chalice and then sprinkling water onto the curbside. A few people around her glanced and snickered at her strange behavior but no one seemed to take particular notice of it.
“What do you think she is doing?” Sophia asked her husband.
“I don’t know, but it cannot be anything good,” he whispered back careful to watch where Magdalena walked.
“We must stop her!” Sophia insisted. “What can we do?”
“We cannot start a fistfight in the street!” her husband insisted in response. “The police would be sure to stop the two of us from assaulting her!”
“There must be something we can do!” Sophia retorted. “Something that won’t attract the attention of the police!”
“An exorcism!” Dmitri’s face lit up as he thought of it.
“Is there anyone you know who can do one now? Here? That won’t attract any attention?” Sophia wanted to know.
“Yes, a very quick and simple one,” he answered. “In the medieval West, the priest would always read the opening of St. John’s Gospel over the congregation at the end of the Mass as a general, all-purpose blessing and exorcism.” He hurried to where Magdalena had sprinkled the water, crossed himself, stooped over as if to speak to the curb, and began to recite, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God…”
George, having never had any intention of smearing the toad-and-Eucharist mixture on the streets of the Old Town, was surprised that the live-chicken smell did not overpower him as he entered a low-ceilinged but long, rectangular cinder-block building in Ďáblice. The taxi, a small white boxy station wagon, with its back storage usually used to hold luggage for tourists coming from or going to the airport, had taken a very long and complicated route of back roads and small streets to avoid the swollen river and deliver George to the address indicated on the hotel clerk’s note. The driver was parked outside, waiting to bring George back to central Prague along the same slow tangle of back roads. Having been hired at a much-better-than-usual rate for the day, the driver was obviously in no rush to return. He lit a cigarette and closed his eyes to enjoy the day away from the noise and confusion of the flood in the older areas of Prague along the river.
Inside were towers of large cages stacked one atop the other, each filled with chickens, ducks, or other fowl. A few clucked or an occasional squawk would erupt from the cages, but there was none of the cacophony George had expected. “Are they all resigned to their fate?” he wondered.
A few cages even held snow-white rabbits waiting to be killed and skinned. A counter stood opposite the large glass doors George entered through, a scale at one end of the counter. Next to the counter was an office with a window looking out into the main area of the store. In the office, George saw file drawers, a desk, and an older woman hunched over a stack of invoices. An old-fashioned black telephone with square, push-button lights of a sort George had not seen in decades sat on the desk. At the end of the building, to his left, was a window in the wall through which George could see a number of butchers moving about, bright red stains smeared across their stark white aprons.
One woman was already being waited on at the counter, holding two small children by their hands as the attendant placed the rusty-brown chicken she had chosen on the scale and wrapped a long wire around the hen’s feet. A large tag with a number emblazoned on it hung from the wire. The woman paid the clerk, who then delivered the hen through the window to the back room. The woman and the children stood to one side for their selection to be returned to them, ready to become dinner. The children became engrossed with examining the rabbits lying all together in a heap. Pointing and laughing, the youngsters seemed to be telling a story in which various rabbits were the principal characters.
A man in a clean white coat and a bushy mustache came up to George and said something in Czech.
“Good morning,” the Jesuit replied, in English. “I am interested in a black rooster. I was told you have such a bird available?”
The man smiled broadly and shook George’s hand, calling over his shoulder to the woman in the office beside the counter. She looked up, saw George through the window, and bustled out to greet her customer.
“Good morning,” she greeted him, bobbing her head and shaking his hand. “How we help you?” she asked in heavily accented English.
“I believe my hotel spoke with someone here yesterday,” George explained, being sure to speak slowly so the woman had a chance to translate his words in her head. “I am looking for a black rooster and was told you had one for me.”
The woman studied his face a moment and then burst out into a broad smile. “Yes, yes. One of last phone calls we get before flood… damages all phone lines. Radio only from small towns, not Prague. No television. We not know what is happening now. Your driver tell us, maybe?” She gestured towards the man outside in the car but quickly realized George was not interested in her communication difficulties. “Yes. Black rooster.” She spoke in a rush of Czech to the man who had first greeted George as she stepped behind the counter. The man, who probably had never before had an English-speaking customer come into the store, made his way to a cage in a corner of the building. Pulling heavy gloves out of one pocket, he pulled them on and reached into the cage in which sat a lone coal-black rooster.
The rooster bellowed and cackled as the man grasped the bird’s feet, pecking at the gloved hands that encircled its scaly talons, but the bird fell silent as the man drew it out of the cage. It hung upside down, its eyes darting about the room and looking at the world in perplexity. The man delivered the rooster to the scale on the counter.
“This rooster… you want us should dress it for you?” the woman asked George.
“No, I will take it with me as it is,” George answered. “Alive.”
“You want it… live?” the woman repeated, unsure of understanding him correctly.
“Yes, live,” George told her again.
The woman looked at the man in the white coat and raised one eyebrow, explaining something to him in Czech. He looked back at George, snapping his thick neck back as if struck in the face. He asked the woman a few questions and she repeated her instructions. He made his way back to the corner of the building and retrieved the cage he had pulled the rooster from. He hoisted it up onto the counter next to the scale.
“The price… much more with cage,” the woman warned George. She wrote several figures in a column on a pad of paper she pulled from a shelf below the counter, making rapid calculations, and showed George the total.
“I understand.” He nodded. “That is not a problem.” He pulled several brightly colored Czech bills from his pocket and offered them to the woman. He eyes grew wide with surprise, having obviously expected an argument. She took all but one of the bills from George’s hand and gave him a few small coins in return.
“Thank you. Thank you, sir.” The woman bobbed her head again.
George gestured at the door of the building. “Could you help put the bird in the car?”
The mustachioed man nodded, understanding George’s request before the woman translated for
him. He grunted and lifted the cage as the woman hurried to open the door to the street.
Having deposited the cage in the back of the taxi, he pulled off one of his work gloves to shake George’s hand. George added another bill to the man’s palm.
“Thank you.” Both men nodded to each other and George slipped into the taxi’s back seat. The driver and the fowl dealer looked at each other and grinned sheepishly, shaking their heads with amusement.
“… full of grace and truth.” Dmitri concluded the gospel verses and crossed himself once more. He turned his attention to Sophia, who had brought their luggage to where he stood.
“Did you see where she went next?” he asked.
“That way,” Sophia pointed. “I’ll stay here with the suitcases and wait for you. You follow her, find where she sprinkled the curbsides, and recite the gospel passage to exorcise whatever she is doing with the water and the leaves.”
The priest kissed his wife on the cheek. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised and hurried after Magdalena as Sophia adjusted the suitcases to sit atop one and wait for her husband to return.
Volunteers continued to fill sandbags in the Old Town Square beneath the Astronomical Clock, the hands of which crept forward unsteadily. Strange whirrings and clanking had been heard periodically from the clockworks since sometime on Monday, though most of the volunteers were too busy to notice. The complaints and moanings of the clock had become more frequent and more difficult to ignore. The rumbling of trucks, some bringing more sand while others took away the bags already filled, distracted some of the volunteers, masking the sounds of distress as the gears of the clock slipped out of position. The hands jerked ahead, paused, trembled, then moved forward again smoothly for a few minutes.
Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 109
