Letters From Prague (38 page)

‘Anyway, there's the rural calendar – all the months.' She peered at painted figures on gold, looking for ice, and falling leaves.

‘What's the dial on top, all those wheels and things?'

‘That's the actual clock. It's much older than the zodiac dial; it shows the time, the movement of the sun and moon round the earth – that's what they thought, whereas in fact, as you know well –'

‘The earth goes round the sun.'

‘Exactly. There's the phases of the moon, the rising and setting of the stars, and I don't know what else. Look – quick – the hand's just coming up to the six. Watch those two little windows, quick –' She picked Marsha up, something she could hardly do any more. ‘Can you see? Now listen.'

The crowd was waiting, talking, pointing things out in accents mostly German and American. And then it came, the first rich chime sounding out over the square, and everyone went quiet.

One – two –

The doors on either side of the angel opened, the twelve Apostles went past him, one by one.

Three – four –

A hush had fallen.

Five – six –

The sun was sinking, the last note sounded, and faded, and died. The doors on either side of the angel closed, and then, into the quietness, came the sound of a bell, as Death, far above them, rang out his warning.

Harriet felt a long, deep shiver run through her.

‘It must be so strange,' said Marsha, as the crowd thinned, and they walked away. ‘To live all your life believing the wrong thing.'

Harriet looked at her. ‘What do you mean?'

‘I don't know exactly, but I was thinking about what you said about medieval people – believing the clocks made the hours, and the sun went round the earth. I mean – imagine believing things like that, and dying, and never knowing the truth. Or coming back again, centuries later, and finding you'd been
wrong.
I mean, like in Victorian times, believing your child had died because God willed it, and all the time it was just because there weren't any antibiotics.'

Harriet listened, trying to shake off a sense of unease. ‘Every age has its own beliefs. Those are very grown-up thoughts, you know, Marsha. You do think about things, don't you?'

‘I do. I am quite grown-up. Ten's
old.'

Harriet put her arm round her. ‘What do you want for supper, ancient one?'

‘Lots.'

‘After all those dumplings?'

‘I'm
starving.'

The familiar cry. They wandered into the path of the setting sun, feeling its warmth on their faces. ‘We could eat by the river,' suggested Harriet.

‘Yes. I wish Karel and Gaby could have come with us.'

‘We did rather land on them – we can't expect Karel to drop his arrangements for the evening.'

‘Why can't we go out with him, too?'

‘Sssh, that's enough. Now, shall we telephone Hugh and Susanna?'

‘Oh, yes. I'm dying to talk to them.'

A yellow phone stood in a booth on the corner, but that took only single koruna, for local calls. Discovering this, Harriet realised she didn't know Karel's phone number. She must ask him tomorrow.

Finding a phone box for an international call proved difficult. She looked in her guidebook.

There was the main, twenty-four-hour post office on Jindris˘ská, off Wenceslas Square – that was the poste restante address Christopher had given her. No. She didn't want to think about him now. There were a couple of modern, stress-free digital phones on Wenceslas Square itself, but visiting the square was a pilgrimage to make in its own right, with Karel tomorrow; she didn't want to walk down there this evening. The thing to do, it seemed, was to find a grey phone and, unless you had a mountain of five-koruna coins, reverse the charges.

They found a grey phone outside a nearby restaurant. Harriet made her request in stumbling phrase-book Czech. The operator replied in perfect English.

‘One moment, please.'

Harriet waited. She smiled at Marsha, but was suddenly filled with nervous apprehension. Could she do it? Could she skim smoothly over Berlin, and everything she had learned there? Who might be more difficult to talk to – Hugh or Susanna?

There was a series of clicks, and then she could hear the phone begin to ring. That lovely, sad apartment. She pictured the early evening light at the balcony windows, the quietness of the drawing room, Susanna sitting on a corner of the sofa beneath her portrait, waiting for Hugh's return: turning the pages of a book, trying to concentrate, putting it aside. She rose, and began to pace: up and down, up and down, thinking not of Hugh, but –

The phone rang and rang.

Harriet turned to distract herself, looking across the square again, to the golden path of the sun on the cobbles, trying to keep calm. Pigeons were fluttering, someone who looked a bit like Karel was lighting a cigarette, putting the lighter back in his pocket. Everyone smoked in Prague.

‘They must be out,' said Marsha. ‘Let's try again after supper. I'm
starving.'

‘Sssh. Wait.' Something wasn't right. If they were out, the answerphone would be on. Marsha moved restlessly away from the booth and went to watch the pigeons.

Harriet waited, her stomach in knots. There was a click, an answer. Hugh, curt, out of breath. The English-speaking operator made her request. Yes, yes of course. Then –

‘Harriet.'

‘Hugh? Is everything all right?'

‘No, not really – let me sit down. I've only just walked in – I forgot to do the answerphone. You're in Prague –' He drew breath. ‘Is Marsha with you?'

‘Sort of. She's wandered off – I mean, I can see her, we're in the Old Town Square, but – Hugh, what is it? Can you tell me? Shall I ring back?'

‘No. No, I'll tell you, it's such a relief to talk to you.' Another breath. ‘Susanna's taken a massive overdose.'

Harriet leaned against the plastic dome of the phone booth, and everything around her – the golden light, the fluttering pigeons, the tourists at the tables in the square – all fell away into darkness.

‘No. No –'

She closed her eyes, and in the darkness listened: to yesterday's discovery, and the note:

All my life I've been looking for
God, and this is the only way I can
find Him.

The window of the pension bedroom was open to the night. Harriet lay turned towards it, looking at an infinity of stars.

Behind her, Marsha was sleeping deeply. She had been given an edited version of the phone call: a smooth, emergency version from adult to child. Susanna was in a clinic, recovering from a nasty stomach bug; Hugh had just returned from visiting and was tired. He sent his love.

‘Poor Susanna.'

‘Yes. Not very nice. But she'll be home soon.' Harriet walked on trembling legs across the cobbles. ‘Now, where shall we eat? Down by the river?'

They wandered through the narrow streets of the Old Town, heading towards the Charles Bridge. The evening was warm, the streets crowded, the air full of music – Mozart in cafés, rock pounding from beer cellars beneath medieval arches. German and American accents were everywhere. Amongst the press of people, Harriet began to feel faint.

‘You okay?'

‘Just a bit – I think I need to sit down.'

They bought mineral water; she drained the bottle. They glimpsed a little square through an arch, a church on the other side.

‘There?' Marsha suggested.

Inside, in the coolness, a string quartet was playing.

‘A concert. Like in Brussels, the one we went to with Susanna, remember?'

‘Yes,' said Harriet.

They found chairs at the back, behind the crowded pews, and sat listening. Dvorak, mournful and tender, went straight to the gut. There wasn't another sound, only the strains of violin and cello rising, rising –

All my life I've been looking for God
–

After a while the performance ended; after a while they left the emptying church and found a waterfront café. They ate looking out at the path of the setting sun on the river, the black-headed gulls wheeling above the silhouettes of saints all along the Charles Bridge, the slow drift of swans through the arches.

‘Just think,' said Marsha. ‘This time yesterday we were on the other side of the river, wondering if we'd find Karel. I'd never even met him.'

‘Just think of that.'

‘And now –'

And now a shadow had fallen, and night approached.

The canopy of stars above the rooftops brought some comfort. Susanna had not died. She had been brought back from a dark frontier, retching and heaving, to a white bed, an open window, daylight. Hugh, who had found her, had been beside her. Her parents were flying from England.

Was that what she had wanted? People knowing, despair made public, everyone crowding round? If it wasn't, Harriet could not envisage her being able to say so.

Susanna doesn't allow herself to hate anyone – she turns it all in on herself –

That was Christopher, in the candlelit dining room in Berlin. He knew her. Perhaps he knew her better than anyone. Was her howl of anguish for him, to come back and reclaim her?

I have watched you and watched you: at last you are mine –

Harriet slowly got out of bed and went to the window. The streets of the Little Quarter below the Cathedral were starlit and gaslit: looking down over the descent of tiled rooftops she could glimpse, through a gap between houses, softly illuminated cobbles, and somebody walking down the hill. It was very late.

In the winter of 1916, Kafka used to write all night not far from here, in the little house in Golden Lane his sister had rented. As dawn broke, he walked through the deserted streets and through the massive gateway to the Charles Bridge, drawing his coat about him as the chill rose from the river. His footsteps sounded on the cobbles; there was hardly a soul about.

I am a memory come alive
–

In each of the three cities Harriet had visited on this journey, a spirit from the past had in some measure taken possession of her. Here it was Kafka, travelling deeper and deeper into himself. In Berlin, Rosa Luxemburg: passionate, political, meeting a terrible end. In Brussels, where Susanna lived, a fictional creation, a mirror of Charlotte Bronte's own torment: Lucy Snowe, pacing the walled-in garden and schoolhouse on the Rue Fossette.

I'm the one who has
–

Craving a letter, enduring loneliness, creeping through the rain to the sanctuary of a church. A woman on the brink of breakdown, showing such a cool face to the world, but filled with emotion, with longing –

The interview would be short, of course: he would say to me just what he had said to each of the assembled pupils; he would take and hold my hand two minutes; he would touch my cheek with his lips for the first, last, only time – and then – no more. Then, indeed, the final parting, then the wide separation … Pierced deeper than I could endure, made now to feel what defied suppression, I cried
–

‘My heart will break!'

Was it Christopher, who understood Susanna, who should be with her now? Was death, without him, preferable?

I have built a wall around myself
–

That was not a line from a novel, but that was Susanna.

The summer night was growing cooler. Harriet leaned on the windowsill, thinking of Susanna; of Lucy Snowe in a walled-in garden; Rosa Luxemburg, face down in the waters of the Tiergarten; Kafka, walking alone. There was, she must acknowledge it, something in her own spirit which identified with all this intensity and sadness, something which in a life filled with work, and duty, and activity, she had not begun to know until this journey.

Should she seek to understand it? Or push it most resolutely away?

Looking out over the starlit rooftops she began to shiver. There were aspects of Susanna she understood, and others she could not begin to. It was probably foolish and misguided to imagine that Christopher, with his own dark and destructive side, was the person to help her now.

And yet. It felt terrible to think that he did not know what had happened to her, how close she had come to death. Should I tell him? Harriet wondered. Should I let him know?

I'm sure you won't want to meet, but if you do, you can leave a message
–

He was standing in the hall of the Hotel Scheiber, heavy and tired, taking out his fountain pen, writing an address.

Wenceslas Square, like many of the so-called squares in the city, was in fact a boulevard, half a mile long, broad, tree-lined and gently sloping. Once, when the New Town was founded, it had been a horse market. Now it was crossed by trams and full of activity. Neon signs flashed above restaurants, department stores, hotels and cinemas. The National Museum, with the statue of Wenceslas on horseback before it, stood at the southern end.

Harriet, in Berlin, had felt awed by her first sight of the Brandenberg Gate, recalling scenes watched on television on a grey afternoon in London: euphoric students scaling the wall behind it. Here, similarly, she felt herself making a pilgrimage: in this arena the greatest scenes in modern Czech history had taken place: the outdoor Mass which began the 1848 revolution, when Marx had returned to Berlin from Brussels; the independence demonstrations of 1918; the crowds of 1938, when the Nazis invaded.

Here, in the summer of 1968, the Soviet tanks had come to a halt. Crowds had surrounded them, sobbing and shouting; a little boy had been shot for sticking a Czech flag down the barrel of a gun. Here, in bitter weather the following winter, Jan Palach had set himself alight. In the November
masakr
of 1989, riot police had violently broken up a student demonstration, and found the world against them; days later, Dubcek and Havel stood on the balcony of the National Museum, looking down on the hundreds of thousands crammed below, ringing their handbells in the falling snow. Harriet, watching by the fire in London, had got up and gone to her desk, looking for the little packet of letters Karel had written to her, taking them out of their box. Her journey had in some ways begun that night.