Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street

by Heda Margolius Kovály

  The dapper dans stuffed me into the back of a car waiting out front, one on my right, one on my left, and we sped off to Bartolomějská Street, headquarters of State Security. We got out of the car, one of them produced a key, unlocked a metal door on the side of the building, and shoved me inside. They followed me in and locked the door behind them. Then down a corridor to another door. Lock open, lock shut. Another corridor. Another door. Another lock. Mist ahead and to the rear. Five times in a row. I resigned myself to the thought that I would never see the light of day again as long as I lived.

  When we came to the last door, they just knocked, pushed me inside, and disappeared. I found myself in an office that seemed about the size of my hand, along with three men: one sitting at a typewriter, the second at a small round table, and the third standing in the corner by the door. Three pairs of eyes stuck to my face like frog’s feet. For a long time nothing happened. Then the one at the table nodded to me to sit down in the empty chair in the middle of the room. Then nothing again. Precisely one second before I opened my mouth and started to scream because I couldn’t breathe and it felt like the walls were collapsing in on me and the room was moving like an elevator, the man sitting across from me finally spoke. The typist tapped at the keys. The man standing by the door staring stood and stared.

  “Do you know Antonín Fišer?”

  Jesus, how long had those spooks practiced to be able to make that stony face? I paid close attention to these things. Even the blankest face betrayed some emotion when it spoke. A normal human being just can’t talk without moving his face. Except for comedians in silent films, who make people laugh out loud, and security police, who give people the creeps. What did they look like at night when they got off their shift, I wondered. You couldn’t just casually stroll into your neighborhood dive with a mask like that on and say, “Waiter, please, a glass of red.” My guess was they stashed their faces in their lockers before they went home from work, along with their service pistol, coffee mug, and bar of soap.

  “Antonín Fišer?” I racked my brains. “I went to school with a Tonda Fišer. Dark-haired, stocky kid. Good soccer player. He died six years ago in a motorcycle accident.”

  The typewriter rattled away.

  “No, not him.”

  I thought so hard my head felt like it was going to burst, but nobody else came to mind. “If you could at least tell me when and where I’m supposed to know him from. I’ve met so many Fišers, I’m having a hard time remembering.”

  “You have a cottage near the Sázava river.”

  “We do. But there are no Fišers there. On our right we’ve got the Růžičkas and the Lukešes, on our left the Nejedlýs . . .”

  “Antonín Fišer doesn’t own a cottage. Did anyone ever come out to visit you?”

  “Hardly ever. The cottage isn’t finished, we just started on it in the spring. The only people we’ve invited have been the Čeněks and the Zemans, once, to help us out with the roof, and since then . . . just my husband’s secretary, Jana Hronková—she was supposed to come, with her boyfriend. I never met him, though. I don’t even know his name.”

  The man who’d been holding up the doorframe suddenly turned and walked out of the room. I assumed he was there to evaluate the officer leading the interrogation. He must have received at least a satisfactory, I guessed, considering he hit a bull’s eye on the fourth question he asked.

  I was stuck there in that hole for almost three hours. Finally the typist got up and left. When he came back he handed me four single-spaced sheets of paper to sign. I pretended to read them, but what with my head pounding and the letters swimming before my eyes, the truth was I had no idea what they said. At that point I would’ve gulped down a cup of hemlock if they’d given me one. And gladly. My God, if I was that beat after three hours of basically courteous questioning, I couldn’t even imagine what Karel must have gone through!

  They made sure to remind me that by signing I agreed not to mention our little conversation to anyone, and then it was back to the corridors with the doors and the locks. Only this time, when the last door slammed shut behind me, I was standing outside. It was still light out, and people were walking down the street, talking and laughing.

  –

  It took me two days to sort it all out in my head. That beau of Jana’s really had been from out of town—West Germany, in fact. And when they collared him, he had Karel’s map in his possession, showing how to get to our cottage. Those two big buildings Karel had so carefully diagrammed on the right-hand side after the bridge, before the turn to the left, well, it turned out they were military warehouses, or depots, or whatever you call them. Karel and I had driven by them almost every Saturday and it never even occurred to us—though it could have, since there was an army training ground in the woods that Karel had been so careful to include on the map, and who knew what else besides.

  So that little map that Karel made for a Sunday afternoon visit turned him into a spy and me into an usher at the Horizon.

  2

  At ten thirty every night there was a sudden rise in decibels on the streets of Prague. People poured out of the cinemas talking up a storm to make up for their two hours spent in silence. Usually it had nothing to do with the film. Every now and then some fat lady with a perm would turn to her overweight balding husband and say: “Cripes, haven’t we had enough of those war films already? Don’t ever drag me to one of those things again,” or, “Directors today are all over the place. They don’t have the faintest idea,” but most of the time they acted like people standing in line for customs after a trip out of the country: doing their best to talk about anything except what they had in their suitcase. Maybe tomorrow one of them would turn to their lover or spouse and say: “That was pretty good, right? How he set up that transmitter, right?” Or: “D’ja ever notice the legs on Bardot? Those are some fine-looking limbs, don’t you think?” But for now they were just focused on not getting bruised during the steep descent back into reality.

  The first usher to leave for home was Mrs. Kouřimská. As soon as the last ticketholder was out the door, she threw off her work smock, grabbed her handbag and dashed up the stairs, without so much as a glance in the mirror. Božena Šulcová, the salesgirl at the snack bar upstairs, was wiping down the counter with a damp cloth when Mrs. Kouřimská rapped on the glass with her ring. Looking up, the salesgirl saw her and came out from behind the counter, wobbling over to the door on aching legs.

  “I’m sorry, Božena,” Mrs. Kouřimská said, “but I don’t suppose you have any leftovers? I’m afraid I haven’t got even a slice of bread at home.”

  “Why, just look at you, Mrs. Kouřimská. You’re thin as tissue paper, I can practically see right through you. You wait right there an’ I’ll wrap you up somethin’. Sorry no sweet rolls left, just some bread an’, here we go, two frankfurters an’ a slice of meatloaf. An’ hold on, a little potato salad, toss that in a paper cup. That way you’ll still have a bite for a snack tomorrow too. There, gimme five crowns for the whole shebang. It’s all just scraps anyway.”

  Mrs. Kouřimská deposited the packages in her handbag and made her way out to the street. The sidewalks were as crowded as in the daytime. No one felt like going home in weather as nice as this. She didn’t look around, but not much escaped Mrs. Kouřimská’s notice. On a corner by the river, where the night air shimmered with the smell of the Vltava, a sharply angled silver head glittered beneath a streetlamp. The man stood on the curb, looking past her into the street at her back. She slowed her step and watched as the expression on his sun-browned face suddenly changed. Marie came running past and linked arms with the man. She twittered a few words, the silver-haired man laughed, and the two of them turned to walk down the stairs to the quayside. Reflected on the wall above their heads, as they sank lower and lower, a crooked-lettered inscription read: he who doesn’t love his neighbor deserves an ass-kicking.

  Mr
s. Kouřimská crossed the street to the bridge and quickened her stride. She came to a stop in a narrow lane, at an ancient building with a peeling façade. She climbed to the top floor, opened the door, switched on the lights, and set her bag down in a wardrobe in the entryway. She stepped into a six-cornered room with a dormer window affording a view of the city lights glimmering like the surface of the sea.

  Mrs. Kouřimská opened a baroque chest, reached inside, turned a knob, and the sound of violins came soaring out like a phoenix. Circling her head as she entered the bathroom, with its cast-iron tub on lion’s claws, the bird accompanied her as she reemerged, hair brushed and flowing down the back of a pink kimono embroidered with silver thread. She walked through the entryway into the kitchen. Opened the fridge and took a painted porcelain plate down from the shelf. Arranged a slice of truffle pâté, a dollop of crabmeat salad, and a hunk of French cheese on it. Stacked a few pieces of bread in a silver basket and removed a bottle of wine from the fridge. Sniffed the cork and poured some into a heavy baroque goblet. Spread a pink lace napkin on a tray with silver cutlery and carried it over to a small table beneath a lamp. Sat down in a pink brocade armchair that offered her a view of herself in a Venetian mirror adorned with glass flowers hanging on the opposite wall. Reached for the goblet, then suddenly stopped and got up. Went to the entryway and pulled the sacks of food that Božena had packed for her out of her handbag. Went back to the kitchen and threw them in the wastebasket. Finally, she settled back into the armchair, smiling at her reflection as she raised the goblet of wine. The windup clock on the console next to the window ticked away the minutes, the voice of the violins bubbling through the room. Mrs. Kouřimská laid her head against the chair’s backrest and shut her eyes. The clock’s little hand, wound round with metal decorated to look like lace, touched the Roman numeral one. The knocker on the front door clinked three times. Mrs. Kouřimská opened her eyes, smiled at the mirror again, inserted her toes into her silver slippers, and went to open the door.

  3

  “How many times’ve I thought,” Marie said, stretching. She clasped her hands behind her head and shut her eyes. “How many times’ve I thought, It isn’t right, the two of us hookin’ up like this. What with the circumstances and all . . . Poor Žofie’s never gonna be the same again . . . She’s like a body without a soul. And here I am with you . . . It just seems so wrong sometimes.”

  “Ah, c’mon. Grow up! What about all those people that got together during the war?”

  “I know. It’s just I’m so emotional . . . You know you shouldn’t smoke so much, Václav . . . But isn’t life just one big booby trap? You can’t escape your destiny, even if—”

  “Nah, I don’t think so. Everyone decides his own—”

  “Oh, gimme a break. What did Žofie decide? That two years after her wedding her husband would fall off the scaffolding and bust his neck? That some twisted madman would come along and murder her only child? Didn’t you ever notice how some people got all the luck and the rest of ’em can’t even catch a break if it falls right in their laps? How one day everything’s comin’ up roses and the next day it’s bad news from the minute you get outta bed?”

  “It’s just coincidence.”

  “Coincidence, right. I remember back in school there was this girl, Alena Formánková. She’d only bone up on one page out of the whole book when we had a quiz, but you could bet money that was the one she’d get asked about. One time she just skipped the whole thing, didn’t learn a word, and guess what? On her way to school the teacher sprained her ankle and had to go to the doctor’s, so the test got canceled. Then my best friend, she had rotten luck from the day she was born. Her mother came from some backwater out in eastern Slovakia and loved romance novels, so she named her daughter Lionella. With a name like that, your life’s bound to go off track. She was a great girl: nice-lookin’, polite, always with her nose in the books, really knew her stuff. But she’d always get asked the one thing that slipped her mind, or came from some page her book was missing. Used to puke all over the bathroom, she got so nervous before every test. Now Alena’s got a hunk of a husband, two perfect kids, and she’s swimmin’ in dough. Meanwhile Lionella’s a teacher, lives with that wacky mother of hers, and I bet you she’s still a virgin.”

  The man with the silver crew cut raised himself up on his elbow and with the other arm turned Marie to him. He glared at her so hard she flinched.

  “Now you listen to me for a change,” he said. “I’ll tell you how it works. And no interrupting, got it?”

  Marie nodded. He stretched out on his back again and stared up at the ceiling like the story of his life was being projected onto it.

  “There were four of us kids at home and Pop was a baker. His whole life he looked forward to retiring and bein’ able to sleep in like normal people do. Went to bed every day at five in the afternoon and got up at one-thirty in the middle of the night. But it wasn’t enough to keep us fed, so my mom did people’s laundry. We had a ramshackle cottage, down by the river in Bráník, where my mom scrubbed clothes on a washboard and bleached ’em out on the lawn. I was the oldest boy, so I helped her make deliveries. We’d pile the laundry in wicker baskets, load ’em onto the hay wagon and off we’d go. Uphill, I pushed. Downhill, I was the brakes. When we came to a customer’s house, I’d grab one of the handles, my mom’d grab the other one and we’d lug the basket up the stairs. The lady of the house, or usually the maid, would take the clean laundry outta the basket, load the dirty in, and we’d lug it back down to our wagon. Then afterwards we’d hurry straight home, since one time we got jumped by some punk who took all our dough.

  “Sometimes the ladies would slip me a piece of chocolate, which I’d just take and throw straight in the gutter, and their fancy-pants little boys would all come out and gawk at me like I was some circus monkey.

  “But the worst part was my mom didn’t even notice. She was just proud of how beautiful and white the laundry was and how satisfied all her customers were. But I made up my mind, back then, that someday I’d show ’em all.”

  The man propped himself up on his elbow again and turned to Marie.

  “And look at me now,” he said, almost menacingly. “Now I’m a somebody. Destiny’s got nothin’ to do with it. I made it happen. Work like a horse, follow orders . . .”

  “. . . serve the people.” Marie couldn’t resist.

  “Damn right I do. You serve the people right, they stay in line and don’t go gettin’ ants in their pants . . .” The man paused a moment, seeming confused, then let out a hearty laugh. “Guess what happened the other day?” he said, then went ahead without waiting for an answer. “I ran into one of those highfalutin brats—if he lives to be a hundred, he’ll always be a brat to me—anyway, he was one of the ones my mom used to do laundry for, and guess what he does now? Bustin’ his hump in a bakery! Same one my dad worked at! Guy’s got a PhD, I don’t know what in. You should’ve seen the look on his face when I told him how far I’d come.”

  The man laughed again.

  “It just takes a strong will. You gotta go for the goal and not muck around . . . Course,” he added, “for a broad a lot depends on her looks. Good-lookin’ broad’s got everyone eatin’ out of her hand.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” said Marie. “A pretty gal, I mean really pretty, doesn’t have it easy. Other gals treat her mean ’cause they envy her looks, and guys treat her like a slut, since they’re too jackassed to realize that just ’cause a gal’s good-lookin’ doesn’t mean she wants to make it with them. So they get all jealous and make her life a livin’ hell. Besides, looks don’t mean a damn thing if you got rotten luck. Take Helena, from work. Tall redhead? Don’t try to tell me you never noticed or I’ll smack you one in the jaw. Pretty as a picture, and educated too. And what’s she got to show for it? Measles and smallpox. Hubby’s in jail . . .”

  “What for?” the man asked, reaching for ano
ther cigarette.

  “What do I know? Some political thing. She never talks about it. It’s even worse than bein’ widowed or divorced. People steer clear of her, she’s got no one to talk to . . .”

  “How do you know? She might.”

  Marie snuggled up to him, wrapping one arm around his neck and pressing her lips to his muscular if overly hairy chest. Then she stretched out on her back again and said:

  “Believe me, I know. You can’t keep a secret at the Horizon. Anyway, if she did find somebody new, everyone’d badmouth her for runnin’ around on her man in the clink. Meanwhile if the shoe was on the other foot and she was the one locked up, her husband would find another gal in a week and people’d say, ‘What do you want, you can’t expect him to be alone all that time.’ Nobody expects a man to sacrifice. Pretty lousy deal, if you ask me.”

  “Well, woman is born to suffer, they say.”

  “Thanks a lot, you bastard. You should be ashamed of yourself. You don’t even take me seriously.”

  “Don’t I? You’d be surprised. I take you deadly seriously. I take everything seriously. It’s an occupational hazard,” the man said, stubbing out his cigarette on the glass top of the night table next to the overflowing ashtray.