Letters From Prague (39 page)

And now she had found him, and later this morning would meet him, as they'd arranged, for lunch. For such a long time she had imagined seeing Wenceslas Square for the first time with him beside her, discovering what part he had played in events since his return. And perhaps, later in the day, she could come back with him. But now, walking from the metro by the Museum, the main railway station behind them, she turned to look up at the balcony and knew that this morning she must be by herself. Well – she was never by herself: Marsha, of course, was beside her, hoping, when they got to the post office, to talk to Hugh.

‘We'll see,' said Harriet. ‘He might have left for the clinic.' And she pointed out the balcony, and the statue of Wenceslas, taking refuge from her thoughts, disturbed and distressed, in the pleasing, familiar recounting of facts.

The fact that Karel had been amongst the crowd filling the square in the falling snow of the Velvet Revolution was the only thing that really took hold of Marsha's imagination.

‘I can't
wait
to see him again. And Gaby.' She swung along in the morning sunshine. Church bells were ringing everywhere, for Mass. ‘It's brilliant here.'

‘Good.'

‘Don't you think it's brilliant? Aren't you excited?'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘You don't sound it.'

‘I expect I'm just a bit tired.'

And confused, she thought. Horribly confused. She put out a restraining hand as they came to a crossroads, where a tram was running.

‘Look!' said Marsha. ‘It's made into a cigarette packet!'

So it was: a packet tipped on its side, with slogans in English and Czech. ‘A cigarette for when you are feeling good! A cigarette for when you are under stress!'

‘No health warning,' said Marsha, who had been given many health warnings at school. ‘Isn't that dreadful?'

‘Yes. I think this is our street. The post office is along here somewhere.'

They turned right into Jindris˘ská, and Harriet, as they made their way amongst the tourists, saw again that heavy, serious face, smoking, smoking, the tremor in his hand as he lit up.

The post office at number 14, open twenty-four hours, was at first sight daunting: inside, beyond the fax and telegram room, was a row of some fifty windows. Even mid-morning on a Sunday, there were queues at most of them.

‘There are the phones,' said Marsha, pointing.

‘Okay. But I also want to …' Harriet scanned the line of windows, looking for Poste Restante.

‘Want to what?'

‘See if there's a message for us. Leave one, maybe.'

‘What?' Marsha frowned. ‘I thought we were just coming here to phone. Who's going to be leaving messages?'

‘Oh Marsha …' Harriet found the window: number 28. She moved towards it, and stood at the back of the queue. ‘It's possible that Christopher Pritchard has left a message,' she said carefully. It felt extraordinarily difficult to say his name. ‘And even if he hasn't, I want to leave one for him …'

Marsha stood and looked at her. ‘Why?'

‘Just to let him know about Susanna –'

‘Why?'

‘Marsha –'

‘Why on earth should you have to let
him
know? He won't be able to do anything, will he? And she can't stand him.'

‘I'm not sure that's true.'

‘Yes it is, I know it is. And if you start leaving messages hell come back and bother us, and want to show us things. You said we'd be on our
own
in Prague.'

‘Marsha,' said Harriet, feeling an unexpected but all-consuming tide of grief and frustration and anger begin to rise and course through her, ‘please will you stop? Now?'

‘But you
said
–'

‘Shut up,' said Harriet. ‘Shut up, right now, and mind your own business.'

Marsha looked at her in astonishment, and then her eyes filled with tears, and she turned away.

Harriet shook. She stood there breathing and breathing, fighting to control herself.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I'm very sorry, Marsha, you didn't deserve that.'

A woman in the next queue was regarding them with interest. She looked at Harriet and shook her head: in sympathy or reproach? Harriet ignored her. She reached for Marsha's hand.

‘Please –'

‘Every time that man comes near us,' said Marsha bitterly, ‘even if you just mention his name, something goes wrong or we have a quarrel.'

It was true.

‘I'm sorry,' Harriet said again. The queue was moving forward; Germans and Americans and English and Japanese were collecting their mail. ‘Please will you forgive me? Sometimes I just need to be able to do things in my own way –'

‘I have never known you to do anything not in your own way. We had all this in Berlin –'

It was true, it was true.

‘I think we need a break from each other.'

‘I think we do.'

A long silence.

‘Kiss and make up and start again?'

Marsha sighed. They kissed. The queue moved forward.

There was no message from Christopher. Of course not, why should there be? They had to go to another window to buy a postcard and envelope, Harriet in her anxious state this morning having forgotten to bring them with her. She stood to one side at the counter and wrote her message, conscious of Marsha hovering.

Susanna is ill: I'll explain more.
I should like to meet, if you would.
I hope all is well with you. Please
will you ring me?

She scribbled their pension address and phone number. It felt quite extraordinarily difficult to write his name on the envelope. They returned to window 28 and left the letter for him. And then they went to phone Hugh.

He must have already left for the clinic, but he'd remembered, today, to leave on the answerphone.

‘Hello,' said Marsha. ‘I'm sorry about Susanna, hope she's better soon. We've met Karel he's really nice. See you soon.'

‘Hello,' said Harriet. ‘I'll try again. I'm thinking of you. Ill come straight back if it'll help you –' She gave him, too, the pension number.

And then they went out into the sun again, and walked back to Wenceslas Square and up towards the narrow streets leading to the Old Town Square, where Karel would be waiting.

He was sitting with Gabrielle, reading the papers at a café table on the other side of the Hus Monument, and at first, because he was wearing glasses, they did not recognise him. Then he lifted the paper and folded back its pages with long slender fingers, and the movement, graceful and deft, identified him to Harriet at once. She pointed him out as they walked over the cobbles, and watched Marsha race towards the table and stop, suddenly shy; she watched them all greet each other, following slowly, suddenly shy herself.

‘Hello.'

‘
Dobry den
, Harriet.' He had risen, he kissed her hand. ‘My mother sends her greetings: she has gone to Mass. So – you are well, this morning? You look a little tired.'

‘I'm fine, thanks, I expect it's just the travelling catching up with me. I'm sorry we're a bit late.'

‘Not at all. We are well occupied, as you can see.' He gestured at the papers, the cups of coffee. Harriet greeted Gabrielle; they all sat in the sun, waiting for a waitress, and she looked at what he'd been reading.

‘It feels like a lifetime since I read an English paper.'

‘I am sure. For me, the papers are like a drug, you know; the day at the office has not begun until I have looked through them all. After so many years of propaganda it is a blood transfusion.'

What a pleasure, what relief, to talk of something neutral. Harriet sat looking through the Czech
Lidove Noviny
and
Telegraf
, the English
Prague News.
Amongst the news, advertisements for brothels and clubs – ‘all erotic services in very luxurious surroundings' – were brazen. Karel followed her gaze as she raised her eyebrows, and laughed.

‘A growth industry.'

‘I'm sure.'

‘
After forty years of being told what they couldn't have, people should be given what they want And if that's trash and pornography, too bad
–'

She turned the page.

A waitress came, they ordered more coffee, and Coke for the girls. She looked at another Czech paper,
Želežni.

‘What's this?'

‘Ah, that is
Green,'
said Karel, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘I was telling you yesterday, I think, of my involvement.
Želežni
comes out twice a week, but I have time for it only on Sundays. Today I have the pleasure of your company – I have hardly looked at it.'

‘I'm sorry –'

‘Please. I brought it because I thought it might interest you. I prefer the pleasure of your company, I am just explaining. Sometimes it is a little dry, but there is generally something worth reading. Recently there has been much about restoration –' He gestured at the richly decorated medieval houses round the square. ‘You understand that behind these nice façades is rot in many places. On Wenceslas Square they are ripping out the backs of buildings and putting in concrete and glass offices, and sometimes they are managing this without protest, without a finger lifted. After so many years of being unable to make decisions, we have forgotten how to. This is something of Danielle's field – tomorrow, if you have time, perhaps you will come to our offices and meet her. She can tell you more, if you are interested.'

‘Yes,' said Harriet, ‘I should like that.' She looked through the pages of the journal, at photographs of demolition sites, hydroelectric power stations, sulphurous clouds of burning lignite, cooling towers. She listened to Karel, soothed, after yesterday's distress, by this reference to issues in the public domain.

I seemed to hold two lives: the life of thought, and that of reality
…

‘It is possible that your brother sees this journal,' Karel was saying. ‘We must talk again about the visit you wish to make. I must make a day free.' He smiled, anticipating her demur. ‘And that is not a problem. So.' He looked at his watch. ‘In a few moments you will hear the clock strike twelve.' He nodded towards the Old Town Hall, where people were gathering.

‘We heard it yesterday,' said Marsha.

He bowed. ‘My apologies. You are a seasoned traveller.'

She blushed. ‘I didn't mean to be rude.'

‘You were not rude. But it is something rather special, don't you think?'

‘Yes. My mother went on and on about it.'

‘Ah. To have a history teacher for a mother – this is a great burden.'

They all laughed, and then the clock began to strike, and, as yesterday, a hush fell over the square. The chimes rang out and the tourists beneath the tower looked up at the steady procession of figures, passing the open windows, passing the angel's wings. Eleven – twelve – silence. The doors of the windows closed. And then, far above them, Death: warning, waiting.

Harriet covered her face.

‘Mum?'

‘Harriet?' Karel, beside her, was all concern. ‘You are unwell?'

‘No, no.' She shook her head, lowered her hands, reached for her coffee cup. It was empty.

‘You would like a glass of water?'

‘No, no, thank you. I'm fine, I expect it's the heat –'

The midday sun shone brightly; bells were ringing all over the city.

Karel gathered up his newspapers; he signalled to a waitress for the menu.

‘Perhaps you will be better with something to eat.'

Perhaps she would.

‘And this afternoon? What would you like to do?'

The steps up to the castle at Hradcany were broad and shallow, patterned in a herringbone of grey and dusty blue, following the course of a high stone wall dripping with vines and creeper. In late August, the leaves were changing colour: rich and gleaming crimson trailed down pale stone between wrought-iron lamps; the steps were dappled with shade from trees in the gardens alongside.

Harriet and Karel climbed slowly, followed by the children. They had eaten lunch, and Harriet had felt better, and then, as the square had begun to fill with tourists looking for a second sitting beneath the parasols, they had wandered away, down to Wenceslas Square again. Walking in the shade of the plane trees all along the pavement, Karel indicated buildings under wraps of heavy plastic sheeting, and they listened to the intermittent sound of hammering. Puffs of brick dust rose into the air, cranes swung over the rooftops.

At Harriet's request, he pointed out the place near the National Museum fountains, below the statue of Wenceslas, where Palach had stood with a can of petrol.

‘It is something of a shrine – there are usually candles and flowers.'

They looked. There were.

She said: ‘I had a poster of him above my desk. I must still have it somewhere.' They walked on, feeling the heat grow more intense; the pavements grew more crowded. The girls were flagging; she said, ‘Perhaps we shouldn't try to do too much. I made that mistake in Berlin.'

‘You have told me almost nothing of your time in Berlin.'

‘No.'

Couples were wandering hand in hand beneath the trees ahead of them, stopping every now and then for a drink, a kiss, a cigarette. Everyone smoked in Prague.

She said: ‘It may sound silly, but this is a kind of pilgrimage for me – to come here and see all the places we saw on television.'

‘To make a piece of history come alive. It does not sound silly.'

‘Yes, but it's more than that. I looked for you, amongst all those crowds in the snow –'

‘Of course. If London had been on the television here, I also should look for you. It is natural to look for someone you know.' He smiled at her. ‘Naturally, you never see them.'

Harriet smiled back. They came to a wooden bench; they all sank on to it, watching the traffic go by. Harriet thought: he makes it sound as if I could be anyone – ‘It is natural to look for someone you know.' Was I just ‘someone'in those distant, happy days? Am I just ‘someone'now?