Adam and Evelyn (6 page)

“You’ve exchanged koruny for forints.”

“Did that a while ago in June. I’ll exchange the forints back.”

“What are you taking out?”

“Nothing, all the clothes are mine, some food, and eleven cigars. Personal use.”

“No presents?”

“No.”

After they had exchanged glances, the blonde stamped his papers, handed them back, and gave a perfunctory salute.

“Thanks,” Adam said and tucked his papers away in his shirt pocket. In the side mirror he watched the two curly-locked women in short
skirts stalk toward the red Passat. Michael’s face looked as if it were pasted to the windshield. Adam started his engine and drove on to the Czech crossing.

“Dobrý den,” Adam replied and handed over his papers. He adjusted the rearview mirror.

Adam repeated the border guard’s “Na shledanou.” The barrier ahead rose. As he looked back the red Passat was being waved out of the line. Michael got out. A cluster of uniforms surrounded him.

After the first curve Adam fetched the box from the trunk, placed it on the passenger seat, and opened it. The turtle didn’t budge. While still an apprentice he had sped on his bicycle down this same splendid asphalt highway with its serpentine curves. At the bottom he found a parking lot and a little grocery that was closed.

Adam spread the road map out on the hood, setting the thermos at the top. From Teplice he had to drive to Lovosice, then straight ahead on the E15, which was also Highway 8, all the way to Prague. Even in the city, it was the No. 8 that he needed to stay on. He would cross the Moldau twice. If he found the right exit he would end up at Wenceslas Square. He folded the map so that he could hold it in one hand, and slipped it halfway under the box.

Adam poured the last of the coffee into the cup. If they had agreed on a meeting place, then it certainly wouldn’t have been Prague, but somewhere in the area, at the train station in Ústí nad Lebem, that way they would have been reunited quickly. But since it might be hours before Michael arrived, he decided to drive on. On the other side of Terezin he picked up two women who weren’t much older than he, but had gold teeth that made them look like grandmas. Each held on her lap a huge tin can filled to the brim with dark cherries.

The women were crazy about the turtle. Adam gestured for them to stay nice and calm and leave the animal in its box. The word
ticho
occurred to him. “Ticho.” Which sent the women into gales of laughter, and they cried, “Ticho, ticho!” themselves. The woman in the backseat pressed the turtle to her breast. Then they sang a duet for
him, occasionally rubbed a cherry on their sleeves, and stuck it in his mouth. The turtle began to move its legs and stuck out its head. In Doksany they got out. The woman who had sat up front with him waved an open palm at the road ahead and cried, “Praha, Praha,” which set them laughing again, for no reason Adam could fathom. He spat a whole battery of cherry pits through the window onto the road, which inspired still more golden-toothed laughter before they finally walked away with their tin cans, but not a word of good-bye. He was about to follow them—the turtle was missing—but when he lifted the box he saw it. “Elfi,” he said as it drew its head into its shell, “there’s no reason to be afraid.”

He hoped to arrive in Prague not much later than Evelyn and Simone, but ended up in a detour at the edge of the city. He tried in vain to orient himself by the position of the Moldau and Hradčany Castle, but drifted through the city like a ghost, and noticed too late that he had passed Wenceslas Square. When he finally found a parking space it was already growing dark.

Adam scratched the turtle behind its head in an effort to calm it, put it back in its box, and tried to open Evelyn’s bag. After just an inch or two the zipper got caught, and he was afraid of ruining it, he advised all his clients against zippers—and was happy to be able to close it again without damage.

His shoulder bag with the camera under one arm, her gym bag over his shoulder, her hat on his head—he locked the car and set out.

It was a warm evening. He considered getting some ice cream, but wasn’t in the mood to stand in line.

Evelyn and Simone were sitting on the top steps of the monument’s pedestal—the horse’s head above them; suitcases, tent, and backpack in front—and gazing out over the square.

Evelyn looked at Adam as if she were trying to remember who he was. Simone had leaped to her feet. “How did you get here?”

“By way of the German Democratic Republic. They netted Michael.”

“Bastards, bastards, bastards!” Simone shouted.

“Where’d you get my bag?” Evelyn asked.

“Just sort of happened. I found—”

“What happened?”

“He was a little edgy about it, so I took it. They’ve got a nose for fear.”

“You’ve lost me,” Evelyn said.

“Before the border, a quick pit stop, and I took over the bag. What a couple of cuties, the women who did the once-over. Plus those pouty faces, as if it was our fault they have to run around in those getups.”

“Will you just tell it like it happened.”

“I waited, but thought it’d be better if I got here sooner, so that you’d know what’s up.”

“Did they arrest him?” Simone asked.

“Don’t think so, they’ll just frisk him.”

Evelyn took the bag. Adam tried to set the hat on her head. She dodged it. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, and hung the hat on her knee.

“Did they send you on ahead to track us down, Adam?” Simone stepped between him and Evelyn. “Is that your assignment?”

Adam hoped Evelyn would say something. She held her bag and hat on her lap and didn’t respond.

“ ’Course I’ve been assigned to you two. But especially you!”

“This is no time for jokes, so don’t make them.”

“Be glad I’m joking, because otherwise I’d slap your face.”

“You have no right to follow us, Adam. Isn’t that so, Evi? He has no right. Besides, you’re just making it all that much worse.”

Evelyn stared straight ahead.

“You can talk to me at least,” Simone said, crouching down beside her.

Pigeons landed on the hand of a man feeding them breadcrumbs. Simone made a disgusted face.

“How long does it take to drive from Bad Schandau to here?”

“We crossed at Zinnwald.”

“Why Zinnwald? Was that your idea?”

“What do you mean, my idea? I said I was going to cross at Zinnwald. He was happy that all he had to do was follow me.”

Simone shook her head. Adam sat down below Evelyn, but a little to one side. After a while he got to his feet and walked back to the ice-cream shop. He returned with three bottles of Pepsi and three vanilla-and-chocolate cones.

“Just leave me alone,” Evelyn said without even getting up. Simone took one of the cones. When Adam had polished off the other two, he opened the Pepsis with his pocketknife.

“Don’t make such a face,” he said, after toasting them both. “Nothing awful has happened. If you like, you can spend the night in Heinrich, Elfi would like that.”

“Elfriede,” Evelyn said.

“Elfi suits her better, comes from ‘elf.’ There’s nothing to worry about. What have they got to hold him on? Nothing! They’ll harass him a little, that’s all.”

Adam stepped out in front of the monument and opened the leather case of his camera. But before he could even choose a stop, the two women had sprung to their feet.

“Don’t you dare!”

“Are you nuts, Adam?”

“You can’t just take our pictures!”

Adam lowered the camera. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t want you to. We don’t want you to,” Evelyn said.

“Put that thing away!”

Adam snapped the leather case shut and returned to his spot.

He was suddenly reminded of those two women with gold teeth and how they had brushed his lips with cherries. Behind dark blue streaks of clouds, the sky was bathed in a deep red glow, promising dry roads for the day ahead.

ADAM FELT CHILLED
. He had already been checked out by the police and been asked to join the singing by a couple of kids who had made themselves at home beside him, one even handed him the guitar.

When they finally left, Adam stood up, a bottle of beer in each hand, intending to fetch a sweater from the car. Then he saw Michael in a car’s headlights, he was carrying a suitcase.

Adam ran toward him. “Well, finally!”

“Where are the other two?” Michael’s voice sounded dry, almost brittle.

“They’re asleep in my car.” Adam opened the second beer and handed it to him. “Was it nasty?”

“They stripped me down to my shorts.”

“The two cuties?”

“They even looked up my ass.”

“That’s standard procedure with traffickers. Prosit!”

“Why didn’t you wait?”

“I thought, better for one of us to get here instead of no one. So prosit again!” They clinked bottles. Adam thrust his chin toward his parking spot farther down the square—“Just a few steps.”

“But we’d agreed that you’d wait.”

“Then the two of them would still be sitting here, thinking you’d had an accident or been arrested because of the gym bag.”

“I was almost in Pilsen.”

“How’d you manage that?”

Michael set his suitcase down and took a gulp.

“Want me to carry it?” Adam asked.

Simone was scrunched up in the passenger seat. Evelyn had stretched out in the back, a forearm across her eyes, her legs pulled up, the open box with the turtle on her stomach.

Michael rapped on the hood. Simone banged the passenger door against the car beside them as she jumped out. Evelyn tugged her skirt down over her knees, the box with the turtle slid down against the back of the front seat. Michael held his arm out as if Adam was supposed to take his beer, bent his knees a bit, and pressed Simone to him.

“Everything okay?” she asked after a while.

“Everything okay,” Michael said.

Michael didn’t need to bend down to give Evelyn a hug. He gave her a little kiss at the side of her mouth.

“I’m so happy you’re here,” Evelyn said. “And you’re not mad at me?”

“For what?”

“For giving you the bag?”

Michael ran his hand through Evelyn’s hair. “They’d been tipped off, who knows who did it, at least they acted like it,” he said and set his beer on the curb. “They poked a light into the gas tank.”

“Wipe the grin off your face, Adam,” Simone shouted. “It’s revolting!”

“They unscrewed everything that could be unscrewed. A newspaper, an ancient newspaper from a couple of years ago, that was stuck in the spare tire—that’s all they took. And you guys?”

“Nothing but a lot of stupid questions,” Evelyn said.

“But they collared a family in the next compartment. They had to unpack everything, and I mean every stitch.”

“Somebody know a hotel around here?”

“Hotel Heinrich,” Adam said.

“Well then let’s go,” Michael said, picking up Evelyn’s suitcase. “Andiamo!”

Evelyn shook out the sweater she’d been using as a pillow, threw it over her shoulders, and knotted the sleeves at her neck.

“Elfriede’s out of water,” she said, tucking the tent under her arm and picking up the gym bag, which she now held up briefly. “Thanks for this,” she said, without looking at Adam.

“Glad to be of service, good night,” he replied, and gestured as if he wanted her to go first.

“Good night,” she said, “and have a safe trip home.”

Simone had been waiting with her rucksack on her back, and now grabbed one strap of the gym bag. They walked quickly to keep from falling too far behind Michael. The bag fishtailed and sashayed up and down between them.

Adam stowed the turtle back in its box and then began to slink along behind them.

The three of them suddenly disappeared into the entrance of the Jalta Hotel on Wenceslas Square. Adam hung around outside for a while. When he entered the lobby it was almost empty and still pleasantly warm. Several keys were hung behind the man at the reception desk, there were passports in a few cubbyholes.

“Dobrý večer,” Adam said. “How much for a single room?”

The man smiled. “Eight hundred koruny, sir.”

“For one night?”

The man nodded.

“
Děkuji
, thanks,” Adam said and left.

He walked to the top of Wenceslas Square and then turned left toward the train station. In the men’s restroom a stocky man was shaving at the washbasin and humming loudly; his black chest hair spilled out over his undershirt, his belt buckle was undone. Adam squatted on the toilet. He listened to catch the melody and then to the other sounds
the man emitted as he washed his face. The faucet was turned off. The man called out something, repeated it as if waiting for an answer; then suddenly he began to sing—and left the restroom singing.

When Adam stepped up to the washbasin he found a little bar of soap lying on the rim, still in its wrapper, just for him.

Michael’s bottle of beer was still standing in front of the Wartburg. Adam held it up to check if it was empty, and poured what was left in the gutter.

Pulling his legs up, he lay down on the backseat and stared directly down at Evelyn’s straw hat, which lay on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Although he was tired, he couldn’t fall asleep. He was amazed at how loud it was. Faces were constantly appearing at the windows, peering inside, “curious about an old-timer,” as one of them said. And every time they jumped back, startled to see him in there.

The next morning he was awakened by a loud bang. He sat up. A street sweeper was making its way along, morning traffic was already picking up.

The hotel door was wide open. But instead of the man from last night, a young woman with wispy pale blond hair was at the reception desk. She glanced up briefly and did not return his greeting.

He sat down in one of the clunky chairs in the lobby. When the blond woman barked at him in Czech, he said, “I’m waiting for someone,” and crossed his legs. He raised his head only when the elevator doors opened or people came out of the breakfast room. There was the aroma of coffee. He watched the woman water the plants in the tubs next to the reception desk and snip off dead leaves with her long white fingernails.