"You have a degree in physics?" I asked.
"Of a kind," he said. "But when the radio goes wrong or the television, I am no use, and I have to get it repaired, like everybody else."
He laid the table with two sheets of felt and a cloth. "You are laughing at me now, because I’m so pedantic. But it’s got to be."
Half an hour later he carried in giblet soup, asparagus, boiled chicken, and rice. He poured red wine. "The wine is good," he said. "When I tell you, you can rely on me. Wine I do understand. I was brought up in a wine shop."
"But the asparagus," I said, "you shouldn’t have . . . It must be the first this year—it’s the end of April."
"One must eat something," he said, "and there are no run-of-the-mill vegetables just now, not even ordinary greens for the soup. Mismanagement of transport and distribution. Where are the carrots and leeks and parsley root and parsnips? It’s a disgrace."
"But what do the poor common people do?" I said.
He said, "You mean the people. There is a compote of apricots and cherries, homemade, out of the glass. Do you want it with the meat, or later?"
When we had coffee I said, "Now comes the painful and unavoidable question, the way Virgil put it, when he wrote about washing up, ‘venit summa dies and ineluctabile tempus.’ "
"Don’t worry about it," he said. "That will be seen to tomorrow."
I said, "Better get it over with now. I’m quite used to it from London, and shared misery is halved misery."
He said, "Maybe, but you forget we are in a workers’ democracy. Someone will attend to it tomorrow. I’ll only stack away the plates and dishes now, and you can’t help there either, because the kitchen is too small for two. The best thing for you, altogether, is to keep away from the kitchen."
I said, "For ever and ever, amen."
He was not amused, but nodded gravely. I thought that his utter lack of humor and irony was probably typically Russian, so different from the Czechs, who never fail to insert a bitingly disrespectful and sarcastic comment. It also occurred to me that I had never seen him burst into genuine openhearted laughter. Unlike most people, who have several kinds of laughter, he had only one kind, of the indulgently resigned sort, which was no more than a symbolic show of amusement. I wondered whether this lack of spontaneity was not due to his speaking in Czech, and I recalled the fire with which he had been aflame, in those first few minutes, when he had spoken to me in Russian.
There was yet another thing which made me wonder. On all those occasions when he had informed me that we were in a people’s democracy, he had stated this in such a way that it was impossible to tell whether he jeered or approved. Was he coming at me with butter, or with dripping? But soon I ceased to wonder. He had crowned an excellent meal with excellent coffee, and I was filled with the drowsiness of well-being.
When I told him that I would be going to the theater on the following evening, he said, "Then you will get back to the hotel by ten, and I’ll wait for you in the coffeehouse. But I want you to understand once and for all, I hate eating out and I hate eating alone, and I want you to eat here with me. I am limited in what I can do, but everything I do is first-rate, I promise you. And when the warm weather sets in at last, I’ll make you some cold supper dishes. I’ll make a brawn of pork and veal, and the aspic will be crystal clear—I pass it through muslin, you can rely on me—and with it I’ll give you a sauce tartare, but a proper one. When it comes to sauce tartare I can look anyone straight in the face and needn’t bow my head in shame."
"Is that the one with crushed egg and chives?" I asked.
"No, that’s rémoulade," he said. "And now you are laughing at me again because I’m so pedantic. But I don’t mind. Go on, laugh. Why have you suddenly turned serious?"
"Because I’ve just been thinking," I said. "When it turns really hot, I shan’t be here anymore. I leave the first week in June."
"Don’t leave," he said.
"I can’t stay on," I said, "and you know why."
"I do know," he said. "We had this the other day. You can stay here with me and get a divorce in absentia. And your husband can whistle for you. As long as you are here with me, he can’t get at you."
"You forget that I am British," I said.
He said, "You are British and you are wrong. A people’s democracy is beyond the reach of the capitalist states."
"There is a British consul in Prague," I said. "What is he here for—to pick his nose?"
"The expressions you use," he said. "But yes, that’s exactly what he is here for."
"How do you mean?"
"Because," he said, "you are here in the country of your birth. The British cannot protect their nationals if they happen to be in the country of their birth. If you were put in prison here, nobody from over there could interfere."
"I know," I said. "I was warned about that before I came out here. But I didn’t think you knew."
"You are a little fool," he said. "It’s no secret—it’s printed on every British passport."
"I can’t leave my husband," I said.
"Nonsense," he said, "you’ve left him already as it is."
"Don’t be ridiculous," I said. "I only came out here for six weeks. And what’s wrong with that? It’s my hometown, and to him it’s nothing—he would only be bored."
"You are exactly what I want," he said. "And you are not what your husband wants or he wouldn’t have let you travel alone. Do you think I’d ever let you travel alone?"
I did not reply.
"You needn’t decide," he said, "but I can take the decision out of your hands. Come to bed now."
I went to the theater the next evening, as I had intended to, and after that, several times more, and though his attitude toward art in general was one of respectful indifference, each time he tried to discourage me from seeing that particular performance. "You are going to the Viola tonight? Yes, avant-garde cabaret, I know. And avant-garde it certainly is, the avant-garde of expressionism, the way it was done in Berlin thirty years ago." Or, "Tonight it’s opera, isn’t it? Oh, yes, The Bartered Bride. I might have known. That’s a phenomenon for you. They play it year in, year out, at least once a week, and every performance is sold out. You haven’t seen it since before the war. You’ll be thrilled to see the eighteen-year-old Marenka sung by a well-preserved post-climacteric lady. Altogether, when one goes to the Prague opera nowadays, one gets the impression that all young women born in Bohemia and Moravia in the last twenty-five years were born mute. Of course, it may be better in Bratislava, for all I know. The Slovaks have more get-up-and-go, I believe. Why don’t you take a plane to Bratislava and have a look at what’s cooking in their culture pot?"
I said, "Oh, the Slovaks—I cough on them."
"I wish you wouldn’t use these expressions," he said. "But the way you said, ‘Oh, the Slovaks,’ with that hatred and contempt—now at last I know that you are really and truly from Bohemia."
"How do you mean?" I asked. "Of course I am really and truly—I told you so, didn’t I, the first evening I met you."
"So you did," he said pleasantly, "but I didn’t believe you."
"You didn’t?"
"I did not. I also didn’t believe you when you told me you had flown in from London the day before," he said, still with the same pleasantness.
"You didn’t believe that either?" I asked.
He said, "No, but I know now that it was true."
I said, "But if you had asked me, I could have shown you my passport. It’s written in my passport that I was born in Prague."
"I wouldn’t have wanted to see your passport," he said, "even if you had offered to show me."
"Why on earth not?"
"What is a passport? A passport doesn’t mean anything."
I felt deeply flustered. I said, "No, of course not. I hadn’t thought of it, but I suppose you are right."
He said, "You are a charming little fool, and the less thinking and supposing you do, the better."
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p; I felt my face turning hot under his glance. Though his voice had remained smoothly pleasant, his countenance had lost the benevolence of the lion at rest. Was he warning me not to try guessing why I should not enter the kitchen, or whether there were doors hidden behind the built-in wardrobes in the hall, or all the other questions which kept coming to mind? I forced myself to laugh, and said, "If I stay with you much longer, I’ll stop thinking altogether and become a complete cow. I’m well on the way already, as it is, what with you giving me these marvelous meals and coffee—and the rest . . . I don’t know how to explain it."
"You needn’t explain," he said, in the tone of curt finality he had used that first evening about the pumpkin. "You have calmed down beautifully. If I may be zoological, when I first met you, you were restless and questing like a goat, and now you are serene like a ewe."
"Now you are talking like Khrushchev," I said. "Once he made a speech about foreign countries, and he said, ‘This particular hen shouldn’t be cackling just now.’ "
"Oh, Khrushchev," he said. "I met him once and he shook hands with me. That was in Hungary when he came on a state visit. I happened to be a rather high . . . official at the time."
I noticed the hesitation and kept silent, adding it to the collection of facts about him which I had gathered. On the whole, ordinary conversation was not possible with him, because I could not ask him any questions. Mostly he expanded in monologues about the economy of the country and its mismanagement, and I soon stopped trying to follow his words and merely listened to the sound of his voice. He had a deliberate and decisive way of speaking, and owing to the shifts of his Russian accent, his full, hard baritone had a quality like the glitter of brocade. And yet I was not bored. I fell into a daze of well-being, of feeling secure and at peace, and I only roused myself from this languor when he said, "Now I’ll see about the dinner," or, "Now I’ll give you a last cigarette and then I’ll take you to bed." This feeling of being bewitched in his company never left me, and it was underscored by the fact that we were sitting in a room on the top floor, as though in a lighthouse or in a shepherd’s hut on top of a hill, each of us alien to the character of the room, each of us not belonging to the city beyond, and enjoying luxuries which were unobtainable to the common herd.
By then it was obvious to me that whatever his work, it was not an office job; he did not get up at the same hour every morning. Moreover, I could not picture him doing any kind of sedate work. I could never rid myself of my first impression, of seeing him as a balladesque shepherd figure observing his flock; this open-air look of his was due not only to his deep pink out-of-doors complexion but also to his powerful body, recalling that of a dockworker or wood-cutter.
A few days later he again asked me to marry him. He said, "Husbands can be left and I am free. I’m divorced; I got my divorce two years ago. One day at breakfast I get this anonymous letter. I pass it over to my wife and I ask, ‘Is this true?’ ‘It is true,’ she says, ‘and it’s been true for the last two years.’ So I took her to court. But she played her cards badly because the man left her three months later. She is doing very well, she has a job with the government; she is a Party member. And that’s why, when it came to splitting up, I had to let her have the car and I only got the country cottage. I’ve still got the cottage, but I haven’t been there for the last six months—it’s no use to me. I’m going to sell it now and get a car again. So now you know how I stand. I’m free to marry you."
"I can’t," I said. "I’ve got a child. And you haven’t, have you?"
"No, thank God," he said. "I used to wish for one, but as it turned out, it’s a blessing."
Yet only on the following day, when I told him I had taken lunch in the Brussels Pavilion in Belvedere Park, he said, "That was my daughter’s favorite place. After every walk through the park, it was, ‘Daddy, now we’ll go to the pavilion and you will order a little plate with a little ham for me.’ "
"Oh."
He said, "I didn’t want to bring it up the other day; it’s too painful to talk about her. And do you know, there happened to be a party there once, of Chinese children, and they crowded round my little girl and she looked at them so bewildered, with her big blue eyes, and then she fed them the ham. It was touching. I see her from time to time, of course. She’s eight years old now and goes to second grade—primary. But I wasn’t soft with her. If she didn’t arrange her shoes and clothes properly at bedtime, there was nothing doing, I wouldn’t say good night. She’ll be spoiled now, and that’s the worst for me, not the wife."
He continued to resent my going to the theater, but once he took me out himself. This was only, he stressed, because it was a Russian show, the Alexandrovniks, a famous group of military performers who were internationally known and had not come to Prague for ten years.
It was on this occasion that I came to add two further items to my collection, and I found them the most interesting I had received. One occurred when he explained to me the military ranks of the performers. The tenor who was singing was a major; and the conductor, "He is pretty high. He is a general, but not a full general. I have a brother who is a very big gun indeed. He is a general in the Russian army, and he was a full general already when he was twenty-eight. At that time he was the youngest general in the Russian army." He gave his indulgently resigned laugh and added, "I haven’t seen him for ten years."
The other occasion happened during the interval, while we were standing in the foyer. A man passed by us and greeted him respectfully; he was obviously hesitating whether to stop or to walk on. Then, glancing at me, he bowed and went away. "Funny that I should run into him again," said the Russian. "I haven’t seen him for years. Of course, I might have known he’d be here. He’s on duty."
"How do you mean?" I asked. "He doesn’t look like a journalist. Is he the theater doctor?"
"No, you little fool," he said. "Nowadays it isn’t doctors who are on duty in a theater. He is secret police." And seeing my astonishment, he added, "That’s normal and proper. They have to walk about among crowds listening to what people say. Then they hand in their report on the mood and the morale of the population."
"Good God."
"It’s done all the world over," he said. "It’s funny the way I met him. That must have been . . . ten years ago, in the summer. I was staying in Moravia in a resort, for a holiday, and this man kept getting into conversation with me and tagging about after me on all my walks. He was quite pleasant, but I just didn’t want him. In the end he said to me, ‘I do like you so much, you are such good company. Don’t worry, you may talk to me quite freely, I am secret police.’ He was quite sincere, of course. He longed to be friends."
"And were you?"
"No," he said, smiling, "of course not. The fool. Czech secret police. The Czech idea of security. You drive out into the country, into the sticks, and you get out and there is a little gnarled wrinkled nut of a woman, and you say to her, ‘Little mother, I am looking for a certain special place, away from the village—a busy place, little mother, with soldiers running in and out like ants on an ant heap,’ and she says, ‘You mean the launching pad for the rocket.’ "
During my whole stay, there were only four nights I did not spend with him, and this was because twice he went away, each time for two days. About the first journey he said nothing at all; about the second he said, "I had to go to Bratislava, and I thought, Shall I take the plane? I’m such an unlucky person, if I take the plane it will crash. So I took the train. And unlucky as I am, the heating in the train broke down and it was chilly during the whole ten hours. And on top of it I lost my fountain pen. I’d had it for six years, drat it. It’s no use looking for it—it’s gold, unfortunately."
"How did you lose it?"
"I didn’t lose it," he said, "not exactly. I used it and put it down, and went out in a hurry because I wanted to speak to someone, and then I had to go off with him and couldn’t go back anymore."
"That’s awful."
He gave his indul
gent laugh. "I’m unlucky altogether," he said, "because I want you and nobody but you, and you won’t stay with me."
His "I’m unlucky altogether," though in utter contradiction to his usual "With me everything goes smoothly," did not astonish me. It was no more than the remark of a man who has every reason to be pleased with himself, and it served the same purpose as the tiny black beauty patch used by rococo ladies to enhance, by contrast, the fairness of their skin.
DURING MY STAY in Prague, I had been searching for my favorite cousin, Ferdinand. The last time I had heard from him, shortly after the war, he had still lived in the country, in my uncle’s manor house, but when I finally found him, he was living in Prague, in a house on the Vinehrady, which was one of the family’s former town houses, in a flat which belonged to Linda, his mother’s erstwhile lady’s maid.
I had visited him several times at Linda’s flat, and been entertained at lunch there, but I had never been with him in the evening because he worked as a night watchman in a picture gallery in the castle. Thus I had never had to tell the Russian of his existence.
On the third day before my departure, Ferdinand asked me to dinner; that night he was not on duty, and it was to be our last meeting. When I told him, the Russian was coldly angry. "It is just as well you are leaving," he said. "It is high time. A few weeks more and I’d be so used to you I couldn’t be without you. If you are serious, this is your last chance to get away."
I said, "You couldn’t keep me against my will."
The Darts of Cupid: Stories Page 15
