‘No. No. That sounds reasonable to me.’
The woman’s direct gaze played over her with brazen curiosity. ‘Okay. You got yourself a deal. But I think I can save you some money.’ She picked up the telephone. ‘Which police station did you say it was?’
Tessa waited, listened to a rush of incomprehensible language, watched the woman put her leg up on the chair and gesture emphatically as if her listener could see her, watched her put the phone down with a bang and mutter, ‘Idiots.’
She turned to Tessa. ‘We’ll have to go down there. I’ll pretend I’m your lawyer or something.’ She grinned. ‘And I’ll give you a discount on the theology. I’ve had too much of it this week anyway.’ She stretched out her hand again, ‘My name’s Rachel Witzmanova by the way.’
‘Tessa Hughes.’
‘Hughes. Like your royal poet, eh?’
‘Just like. But no relation.’
‘Good.’ Rachel examined her for another moment, then swiftly penned a note, pressed a button on an answering machine and ushered Tessa out of the office.
It didn’t take long for Tessa to decide that Rachel with her slightly bow-legged stride and her inexhaustible lore was worth every penny of her fee. Each twist in the streets of the old Jewish Quarter sparked a new wisecracking story, of the medieval guild of Jewish fire-fighters who saved Prague from enemy flames, of the Chevra Kaddisha, an august funeral brotherhood who succoured the dying and performed acts of charity for the living, of the new Chief Rabbi of Prague who, much to the consternation of the reactionary elders, was a convert. By the time they had bundled into the dilapidated old Fiat which would take them to the Police Station, Tessa had begun to think of her as some Scheherezade with street cred. She also realised Rachel was working hard at cheering her. She hadn’t been altogether aware that she needed the cheering.
As they waited in a line of traffic, she dug in her coat pocket and brought out a watch. ‘I broke the strap this morning. It reminded me of this great joke.’ She winked at Tessa and pulled away with a screech of the gears. ‘About an old lady who breaks her watch as she’s walking along one of the streets of the Josefov and she sees this store with lots of clocks and watches in the window, so she goes in. There’s this old guy behind the counter and she says to him, “Do you fix watches?” and he shakes his head, so she asks, “Do you sell watches?” and he shakes his head again. So she’s getting just a little bit exasperated and she says, “So you make clocks?” and he shakes his head one more time and now she shouts, “So tell me, what do you do?” And the old guy says, “We do circumcisions.” And she stares at him and asks, “So why do you have all these clocks in the window?” and he says, “Enh. So what do you want we should have in the window, lady?”’
Tessa met Rachel’s warm eyes and giggled.
‘So, you feel a bit better now?’
Tessa nodded.
‘Good. Cause we’re here. Just act rich and pull out you’re wallet when I look at you. Be prepared to open it. We have a healthy respect for money these days. And its circulation.’
The station was as empty as it had been yesterday, but this time a new policeman lounged behind the counter, his legs sprawled atop a desk, his face bent over a newspaper. He sprang up at their footsteps. He was very young, his face pink where he had cut himself shaving.
Rachel approached him with a pronounced swagger, as if she had just parked her horse at the kerb and was bent on outmanning a gang of desperadoes. She let loose a volley of words at which his shoulders visibly tensed. The shake of the head seemed painful. Another barrage followed. During it, Tessa placed her bag emphatically on the counter.
The policeman glanced at her, then back at Rachel. With a shrug he ambled towards a large wooden cabinet and pulled out a tray of files. Out of this he picked a folder. With irritating slowness, he began to look through its contents.
Rachel winked at Tessa and gestured at her bag. Tessa took out some bills and handed them to her. The policeman she noted was now scribbling something down on a sheet of paper. He passed this to Rachel who nodded briefly and with a nonchalant gesture shook his hand, leaving the bills behind.
‘What did you tell him?’ Tessa asked as they climbed back into the car.
‘The truth, more or less. He wasn’t worth a story. I also told him you wanted to make sure they had done the right thing. And that he needed new shoes.’ She laughed and glanced down at the piece of paper. ‘This place is miles away.’
‘But you’ll take me.’
‘Sure. Said I would. If I can find it.’
The tiny car lurched into motion, clattered its way across tram lines, zigzagged through bumpy streets, wheezed onto a dual carriageway where the traffic was heavy. Every few minutes, Rachel bent forward to wipe a screen grown misty with their breath. Stately nineteenth century houses gave way to dingy high rise apartment blocks surrounded by scrubland. A vast redbrick factory with a towering chimney blew black smoke into the air. And then, for a while, there was nothing but bare fields and an empty stretch of road.
‘I think this is the one. I hope.’ Rachel veered the car onto a narrow country lane.
After a few moments, a drive appeared on their left, at its end an elegant stuccoed house with a dome at its centre and two gracious wings. Tessa stared at it in surprise. It was not at all as her Dickensian forebodings had led her to imagine.
Two men were raking gravel in front of the house. They wore identical caps and khaki-coloured overalls. Rachel stopped the car in front of them and shouted something. One of them turned a blank stare on her. The other started to gesticulate wildly.
‘Oops. A mistake.’ She backed the car from the drive with a splutter of gravel. ‘This is one of our, how do you say it, hospitals, a mental hospital. We have to go a little further.’
The further seemed to bring them back by some detour into Prague itself or at least some dilapidated outer precinct. They parked beneath a high spiked wall, found a gate which led them, after a ring and a long wait, into a yard filled with rubble. At its far side, stood a smallish old stone building with bars on its windows. Around it, there was a cluster of square, ungainly structures which looked as if they had been put up on a bad weekend by some do-it-yourself addict with a military imagination and little talent.
An orphanage, Tessa concluded, was worth less than an asylum.
As they opened the door into the main building, a smell of mingled cabbage and bleach and dank walls attacked the nostrils. A stout women, greying hair perched in a net, stared out at them from a dim corner cubicle and muttered a greeting. Rachel pounced on her with her usual brightness, only to turn back to Tessa.
‘What’s the baby’s name, by the way?’
Tessa stared at her with bleak apprehension. ‘No idea.’
‘So they probably don’t know either.’ Rachel’s manner was all reassurance. She started to talk to the woman. Tessa watched suspicion turn to hesitant acquiescence, the glimmer of a smile which never quite reached faded eyes, saw a shrug. And then the woman pointed them out, back in the direction from which they had come.
‘Doesn’t she know?’ Tessa asked. She felt her heart flutter oddly, as if she had just been told of a death.
‘Second building on the left.’
‘Oh.’ Tears leapt to her eyes.
‘Heh, we’re there.’ Rachel gave her an inquisitive glance. She put a steadying hand on her shoulder.
They walked through the gloom of the courtyard, turned down a narrow path past a teaming rubbish bin. A holly bush stood by its side, rampant berries hanging from leaves glossy with health. Tessa stared at it, took a deep breath, then stepped through the door Rachel held open for her.
A cacophony of wails greeted them, shrill cries, forlorn and demanding. Rachel grimaced, slapped a palm against her forehead.
‘I’m sorry. Would you rather wait for me outside?’
‘No, no.’ She gave Tessa her sardonic face. ‘I was just thinking, here I come with you so as not to go to the
synagogue and what do I hear? The same thing. Moaning, crying…’
‘Co si prejete?’ A woman in a thick navy blue dress emerged from a side door. She was wearing a bizarre headdress which gave her unadorned face a pale height of brow from which the wrinkles seemed to have been ironed. It took Tessa a few moments to realise that she might be a nun. After an exchange with Rachel, she directed a bland assessing stare at Tessa then led them through to what Tessa had already named for herself, the room of cries.
It wasn’t a large space, but it was grim, bleak with lack of paint and tawdry curtains. And every inch, apart from the narrow aisle down which they walked, was covered in old-fashioned cots with thick metal bars or bare mattresses. From between grey blankets of a thick, military cast, babies’ heads poked, dark and blond, their faces contorted with cries or wheezy in sleep. Tiny fists pawed the air. Toddlers sat in unnatural stillness and gazed towards an invisible space.
Tessa stared at one face after another, her hands clenched tightly to her side. She hadn’t realised the sight of these hapless children would so distress her. She wanted to wrap them all in her arms, transport them to bright gaily-painted rooms where mobiles twirled from ceilings and friezes walked across walls and stuffed toys cascaded from every nook and cranny.
A pain she didn’t recognize tugged at her entrails and blurred her vision, so that she almost failed to recognize the little girl she had come to see. Only the sight of flailing stripes alerted her - the blue stripes of the pyjama she had bought.
She lifted the child into her arms, felt the face that had pursued her nestle against her bosom, snuffle. She stroked the tuft of dark hair, cradled the slight weight. Tessa smiled.
‘That’s her, is it?’ Rachel looked dubiously at Tessa.
Tessa nodded. ‘You can leave me here now, if you’ve got better things to do. I’ll be alright.’
‘You want me to ask if they’ve had any news of her mother?’
Tessa hesitated, then nodded. ‘Oh and here.’ She fumbled for her bag.
‘That’s okay. You can settle up with me tomorrow. I’ll see if I can find out anything.’ She paused uncomfortably. ‘You won’t go and do anything dumb. You know what I mean… They have rules.’
‘Nothing dumb, no. Maybe something smart. See you tomorrow. And thanks. Thank-you very much.’
‘Ya. Okay.’ Rachel made a self-deprecating gesture, ambled off with her quick, bow-legged gait. Tessa looked gratefully after and then turned back to the child.
As the baby’s soft hand curled round her fingers and dark, intent eyes met her own, a strange sense took her over. She didn’t know quite what words to put to it, but she felt … yes, that was it, claimed. A new power seemed to flow into her from that tiny form and at the same time an odd vulnerability, a dawning knowledge of the fragility of life. Maybe that was what love meant, Tessa thought. She gazed down at the child and in her mind, she gave her a name. Amy. Love.
The lobby with its array of polished mirrors and false columns thronged with people sporting plastic badges which bore their names beneath the starred logo of the European union. Laboratory chiefs who had long given up research for the more arduous business of raising and managing funds consorted with bureaucrats and practising scientists. There were Russians working on the genetic basis of alcoholism who would have their glasses liberally refilled with each genetically determined sentence. There were French working on HIV and British working on memory and Dutch and Germans and Hungarians. There were even a few lawyers and philosophers thrown in to keep a watch on the scientific community and tabs on the ethics of the flourishing biotechnical sphere. And there were journalists bearing microphones or notepads.
Ted Knight skirted an oncoming mic and strode towards the doors of the hotel. It was an excellent congress as congresses went. His notebook was packed with leads and there was one definite triumph. Scholti was prepared to come to California. That had been a good morning’s work. But his energy wasn’t what it should have been today. First there had been the news about Tessa. Then there hadn’t been the news he had expected at lunch time. On top of it all the lying woman had vanished, had failed to return any of his messages.
He pushed open the hotel doors. Cold air gusted towards him, bringing with it a flurry of powdery snow. He stood on the threshold and breathed deeply, considered a night-time sprint. Then, with a cough and a scowl he retraced his steps. The air was more polluted than LA on a hot smoggy day.
He peered round the lobby, the lights too bright after the interval in the dark. And then he saw her, all trim and self-contained, her hair slightly windswept and with that unselfconscious prettiness which had drawn him to her in the first place. She was standing off to one side of the crowd and talking to Jan Martin.
That was it. Jan Martin. Maybe she had fallen for him at that lunch he had sent her off to yesterday. Or maybe she already knew him. Of course. Caldwell’s wife. Talk of two faces.
With quick strides, Ted marched towards them, only stopping himself in time to put a pleasant grin on his face.
‘Hi there. Having a good day?’ He gripped Tessa’s arm so hard she sprang back with a barely concealed wince.
‘Ted, hello.’ Her voice was cool. She extricated her arm. ‘I was just coming to find you.’
‘Miss Hughes has had a very interesting day, I believe,’ Jan said in his unnervingly even tones. ‘She finds Prague to be full of surprises.’
‘Does she now?’
‘She does.’ Tessa gave Ted one of her ironic glances. Her lips looked very pink as if someone had been biting them.
‘Well, I guess she can tell me all about it.’ Ted met her irony. ‘You’ll excuse us, won’t you, Dr. Martin. I’ve had quite enough of the leisure of the theoried classes for one day. And Tess and I haven’t caught up with each other for a while.’
‘Of course.’ Jan considered them for a moment, seemed about to say something else when he was dragged off by a journalist bearing a microphone.
‘Come on. You and I need to talk. Quietly.’ Ted manoeuvred her through the crowd.
She shook off his hand and thrust ahead of him towards the elevators.
‘Don’t want to be seen with me now. Is that it?’ He caught up with her.
She gave him her cool, appraising look as the doors hissed to a close behind them. The look both excited and infuriated him.
‘What’s the matter, Ted? Bad day?’
‘Not great. Where’ve you been?’
She looked past him. Her expression grew soft, the eyes moist, dreamy. He lifted her chin roughly and made her face him. She wriggled away, slid out the door as soon as it opened.
‘Don’t worry,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll pay for my own room.’
‘Will you, now?’ He clutched at her as they walked down the corridor, wrapped his arm firmly round her waist so that she couldn’t evade him, as he propelled her into his room. Maybe she had guessed he knew. ‘Is that all you have to say to me?’
She took her coat off and went to stand by the windows, stared out at the flickering lights of the distant castle, pressed her face to the glass so that a circle of mist formed.
Headlights shimmered into water. A car hooted, its blare contagious, picked up by its kin.
‘Well?’ Ted came up behind her.
She turned towards him suddenly, her bosom brushing his hand. ‘I don’t really want to talk about it.’
‘Don’t you? Now there’s a surprise.’
She shrugged and started to move away. He clasped her wrist hard and brought her back to him, kissed her roughly, pried those resisting lips open. He didn’t mind the resistance. No Ma’am. It roused him. He could play different games too. He kneaded her tight little butt, yanked her hair back, forced her to her knees, unzipped his trousers. She was looking up at him, her pupils wide. Suited her, really. Mrs. Stephen Caldwell on her knees.
‘Take it.’ He ordered, jabbed his penis towards her mouth.
With a shiver of fear, Tessa stared up at what had su
ddenly occurred to her was a brutal face. She forced her gaze to that bulky object, the criss cross of veins, heavy, almost purple. Like something from that butcher’s window she had gazed at in Paris.
Funny, how everything had changed. Yesterday, she had thought their bodies were perfectly attuned and now…
‘Take it,’ he repeated, pressing hard on her head.
Tessa closed her eyes, felt that hot musky penis pushing against her lips, filling her mouth. She would gag, she thought, and tried to get her tongue out of the way as the penis grew slippery with her saliva and moved, too slowly, in and out and round. Above her, she could hear his sharp intake of breath.
Pleasure, she made herself think so as not to think, what an odd thing it was. She tried to wonder at it, tried to think of something pleasant, the soothing scent of warm chocolate, the crisp pages of a newly printed book - anything but the trace of that dangerous face which wasn’t the Ted she knew and that vengeful object in her mouth.
From somewhere she heard a bleep and a whirr and a mechanical clack and for a moment before she could place the sound it seemed to her that the thing in her mouth had become motorized and was about to take off and propel her into a space where she didn’t want to go. When she recognized the fax, she also recognized that Ted was at home with all the buzzes and beeps and pings and peals and hums and drones and whines and screeches and bangs, too, which made up the discord of everyday life. She was tempted to see what kind of sound he might produce if she bit down hard on his penis.
He had taken her hands and pressed them against his buttocks, so that she seemed by some absurd unwanted motion to be responsible for the jutting which choked her. She tried now to imagine a tree ripe with autumn apples, the smell of freshly mown grass, the soft scent of Amy’s skin. But, for all her attempts, she couldn’t obliterate that waxy bulging thing alive inside her mouth. Or the presence of that bullying hand straining against her head. She dug her fingers into his buttocks and hoped they hurt and as she did so, a warm sticky stream invaded her throat, a pungent, gagging taste like the raw egg she had once been forced to swallow as a child.
The Things We Do For Love Page 22
