The Night of Wenceslas (7 page)

‘Certainly. Of course,’ she said impatiently. ‘It was merely a suggestion. Not that it matters. I have written you several letters of introduction to the people who count. And, of course, to Hana Simkova – you remember old Baba who used to nurse you? And now,’ she said briskly, seating herself beside me and taking my hand, ‘if Mr Gabriel could only be persuaded to respect the privacy of other people’s rooms, we have much to talk about.’

Poor Imre went presently. My mother’s high clear voice went on and on.

Imre got me on one side before I left, on Sunday. ‘Those letters,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t prevent her writing them. What was I to do? It made her happy.’

‘That’s all right, Uncle.’

‘Even to your old nanny, Hana. Hana is dead. She died two or three years ago. Of course, I didn’t tell her. Even the husband moved away somewhere. … She is very much behind the times, your mother,’ he said sadly. ‘You are very angry with me, Nicolas?’

‘No, Uncle. I’m not angry.’

‘Here, give me the letters. I’ll throw them away. I’ll burn them.’

He was so contrite and anxious to please that I did so.

I left after tea, and tooled back to Fitzwalter Square at half past eight. It was growing dark and quiet in the square. I sat in the car for a while in a mood of profound melancholy. I had no wish to see Maura. I had no wish to go up to my room. I sat and brooded, on Cunliffe, on Pavelka, on the trip to Prague. I wondered where I would be next week at this time.

Presently a few lights began to come on about the square and I got out of the car and walked to the Musketeers in the High Road. I had a drink there every Sunday. Mrs Nolan was in the saloon bar with a friend, transfixed by the television. I ordered a pint and drank it. She did not take her eyes off the screen.

I went into the other bar from which sounds of livelier activity were emanating and saw Val and Audrey, the couple who had given the party during the week. The ageing model girl waved at me, and I waved back, but I didn’t go across. I watched this group with some curiosity, noticing other familiar faces and wondering which, if any of them, had been spying on me. It was a profitless speculation. I left and walked slowly back to the car and put the covers on and let myself into the house.

It was a quarter to ten. The hall was dark. From an upstairs room there was the soft mutter of a wireless. Somebody listening to a Sunday night play. But nothing so strange as this play, I thought, as, with a feeling of the strangest detachment, I dropped the coppers in the box and dialled Cunliffe’s number.

He answered at once, and I said, ‘This is Nicolas Whistler.’

‘Yes, Mr Whistler.’

‘You asked me to ring.’

‘Yes. It is good of you to do so. I wished to be sure you had returned from Bournemouth. But I have already been informed of that.’

My scalp began a slow and unpleasant crawl. I said, somewhat breathily, ‘Are you still having me watched?’

‘One must exercise a little prudence. It is an important assignment you have undertaken. You are holding yourself ready to leave at ten on Tuesday?’

I did not answer, thinking of the noisy group in the Musketeers. Any one of them could have slipped out after I had left. Mrs Nolan, even, I thought, recalling suddenly the small, transfixed figure by the television. But Mrs Nolan had not known of the jokes about Bela. Only friends had known about Bela – friends of Maura’s and mine. Maura. Could it posssibly be. … But not Maura. How Maura? Maura did not know I was back.
Shamed and confused by this thought, I said loudly into the telephone, ‘I’m not sure yet. I haven’t made up my mind.’

‘I understand perfectly,’ Cunliffe’s wry voice grated in my ear. ‘Perhaps you could come and see me at eleven in the morning. Your visa has come through.’

‘I’ll see.’

‘It’s rather important,’ he said, and rang off at once. I replaced the phone and walked upstairs slowly in the darkness.

On the second landing I began to have an unpleasant suspicion. The muttering of the wireless had grown louder, but it had not come from the first floor, and it was not coming from the second. The only room on the third floor was mine.

I climbed the next flight softly and stood outside the room with my heart thudding. There was a crack of light under the door. The wireless was unmistakably on inside. I put my ear to the door. There was a small creaking from the divan and the rustle of paper.

I was not feeling heroic. I wondered if I should sneak just as softly right down the stairs again to get a poker or a policeman or a fire engine. I did none of these things. Reckless suddenly in the dark, I bent and took off my shoe and, holding it as a weapon, flung open the door, shouting gruffly at the same time, ‘Who’s there?’

‘I am,’ said Maura. She was sitting on the divan unwrapping a toffee. ‘I wondered how much longer you’d be.’

Her lopsided smile had acquired a faint roguishness of late. She said, ‘Who did you expect to find in your room?’

I licked my lips. ‘How did you get in?’

‘I rang the bell.’

‘Mrs Nolan’s out.’

‘An old man on the first floor let me in. He seemed a bit annoyed.’

‘How did you know I was back?’

‘Your car was outside the door.’

‘When was that?’

‘Well, really,’ she said, the roguishness departing swiftly. ‘I don’t know. About half an hour ago, I suppose. Aren’t you ever going to come in?’ she asked impatiently. ‘And why have you taken your shoe off?’

The return to her old asperity was some faint comfort, but there was still rather too much to take in here. I gazed at the shoe and at her, and licked my lips again. If she had telephoned Cunliffe would she have come up and waited for me in my room? I didn’t know. I didn’t know about anything. It was the first time she had done this. I bent down and put on the shoe and gazed at her in some bewilderment.

She said, ‘Would you like to stop looking like one o’clock struck and tell me what’s happening?

‘You caught me by surprise. I didn’t expect to find you.’

‘I thought I’d look in and say hello. I might not see you before you go off. You don’t mind, do you?’

‘No. No. Not a bit.’

She looked at me shrewdly. ‘The trip is still on, is it?’

‘Yes. Absolutely.’

‘I expect your mother was pretty pleased.’

‘Yes. Delighted.’

‘Well, good.’

‘Yes.’

A pistol shot suddenly went off on the wireless, and I jumped about a foot. Maura turned the wireless off and said, ‘Look here, Nicolas, what’s up?’

‘Nothing. I’m a bit tired, Maura. It was the drive back, I expect.’

She looked at me consideringly for a moment, and said slowly, ‘Well, I’ll leave you to get some sleep.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘No idea when you’ll be back?’

‘In a week or two, I expect. I don’t know for sure.’ I wondered if she did.

‘Right.’ She stood up and stuffed her sweets in her handbag
and slipped on a jacket. ‘Perhaps you’ll look me up when you come back.’ Her lopsided smile came on briefly.

I wanted to take her hand then, but desisted. ‘I’m sorry about this, Maura. I’m terribly tired.’

‘That’s all right. I can see myself down.’

I saw her down, but I made no offer to accompany her home. In the dark hall I felt closer to her than I had been in the light, felt suddenly that I should take her in my arms and get rid of the suspicion once and for all. But I knew it wouldn’t get rid of the suspicion. She said good night and went down the path without looking back.

I walked slowly back upstairs and smoked a cigarette on the divan and undressed and got into bed. Just for a moment as I swam light-headedly into sleep, it all seemed believable.

As we filed into the airport bus at Cromwell Road on Tuesday morning, I could see Cunliffe watching me from his car parked across the road, so to give him a little early-morning pick-me-up, I dropped the guide book I was carrying. It was a gesture of the merest bravado. I felt acutely frail, boneless, bodiless almost without the book.

The man behind me picked it up and gave it back to me and I thanked him, marvelling that I was not sick with hysteria all over it. This book – it now seemed to me unbelievably obvious – was the nub of my mission. Beneath its flyleaf when I returned would be Pavelka’s formula.

Cunliffe had explained the operation to me in endless and sickening detail. I must carry the book everywhere. I must allow it to leave my hand only once – in Pavelka’s factory where I had to ‘forget’ it on the desk in the manager’s office. It would be returned to me before I left.

‘That is really all you need to know,’ Cunliffe had said. One may claim without immodesty that it is quite a neat little scheme. It is entirely natural for you to carry a Norstrund about – indeed, it is the only up-to-date guide book on Czechoslovakia. You will find it invaluable. Prague is a beautiful city with many ancient monuments. Relax. Enjoy yourself. I am only sorry you have to know you will be carrying the – the bit of paper.’

I was sorry, too.

I got in the bus and it shortly moved off and I turned my head to see if Cunliffe was following. His car stayed where it was. I was glad of this. I had stayed awake half the previous night toying with expedients that might prevent my departure. These included throwing an epileptic fit at the airport, or locking myself in the lavatory until the plane had gone.

At the airport, although I could not quite screw up the gall to throw the epileptic fit, I did lock myself in the lavatory, staying there for longer than seemed humanly or technically feasible. The party was still there when I emerged. A minute or so later, the loudspeaker boomed an announcement and I found myself flowing nervelessly across the tarmac.

In four hours I was in Prague.

When you have left a town at the age of six and return eighteen years later, there is a certain quality of enchantment. The streets, the monuments, the church spires, set up a whispering in the mind. You know, with dream-like certainty, what is coming round the next corner, and the sensation of finding you are right is inexpressibly poignant.

All this was totally unexpected, and despite the terror in which I had stepped out of the aircraft and negotiated Passport
Control and Customs, I arrived at my hotel, the Slovenska, in a mood of swollen, if highly unstable, elation.

The Hotel Slovenska stands three-quarters of the way up the Vaclavske Namesti – Wenceslas Square. This thoroughfare, despite its name, is not a square but a broad avenue. At one end is a large grey Victorian museum standing in its own gardens. At the other end, crossing it like the top bar of a T, run the town’s main business streets, the Narodni Trida to the left, the Prikopy to the right.

I stood outside the hotel and gazed about me, remembering it all. It was a scene of vitality in the hot sun, the pavements crowded, the little one-decker trams clanging up and down the wide cobbled street. At the far end, Wenceslas, beloved figure of my childhood, glittered from his iron horse in the middle of the road. Even the hotel itself, I thought, was familiar, and after a moment realized why. Here, under another name, was the Wartski’s where my mother used to take tea, the big sash windows open now to the pavement in the heat.

I was grinning at all this in a somewhat loose-jawed way, recollecting intimately the plushy darkness of the interior, the racks of newspapers, the heavy velvet curtains, the old ladies dabbing their mouths with little handkerchiefs. It was inconceivable that I should be back.

There were, however, no old ladies present when I went inside. The place was abustle with open-shirted men in sandals. At the reception desk a centre-parted woman, not at all unlike Bunface, was engaged in some intense calculation over a ledger. I waited two minutes and said in English, ‘I have a reservation.’

She looked up sharply and flicked quickly through a pile of cards.

‘Pan Whistler, Nicolas?’

‘That’s it.’

‘There is a letter for you. Your room is quite ready. One-forty,’ she said in Czech to the porter who had come to stand by my bag.

I took the letter and followed the porter into the lift. He was a bent little ancient with an immense adam’s apple and a
prominent stud in his collarless shirt. He gazed at me with in terest, grinning and shaking his head.

‘The
pane
has been to Praha before?’ he asked in Czech.

‘Not for a long time.’

‘Many changes,’ he said, and hawked politely behind his hand. ‘Once we used to be full of business men. Not so many now.’

‘No, well. Times have changed.’

He hawked again. ‘Still, Praha is the same city, very beautiful. I’ll bet you haven’t seen many cities as beautiful as Praha.’

I was no longer listening to him. I had been examining the envelope and, as we came out into the corridor, had seen the small inscription,
State Glass Board
. It was evidendy my programme. My stomach turned rapidly to water again, and I was thus not able at first glimpse to appreciate the magnificence of room one-forty.

When the porter had deposited my bag, however, and departed, grinning, I stood in the middle of the room and gazed about me. It was, no doubt about it, a handsome apartment. It was tricked out in green and gold. A large bed, curtained all round, stood in an alcove. There was an adjoining bathroom with a shower compartment There were easy chairs and a chaise longue and a writing desk. Double french windows stood open to a broad balcony. Cunliffe was doing me proud.

I sat down on the chaise longue and opened the envelope. There was a booklet and a two-page letter. The letter, signed
L. V. Svoboda, general manager, State Glass Board, read
:

The second page of the letter, headed
Visit of N. Whistler,
representative of Bohemian Glass and Bijouterie Limited
, read:

As L.V. Svoboda had said, brief but quite comprehensive. The visit to Pavelka’s old plant was on Thursday. That meant, all being well, that I would have the formula within forty-eight hours. It also meant I would have to carry the bloody thing around for a further forty-eight. Unless, as Cunliffe had suggested, I could cut short my stay.

I had read the programme rapidly. Now, lighting a cigarette to try and control the shaking of my hands, I went through it again. No point in arousing suspicion by asking to leave immediately after visiting Pavelka’s factory; especially since they had only laid on two glassworks to be visited. The Saturday free day, then.

I inhaled deeply, pondering this. A terrifying thought had struck me in the aeroplane that there might be some mess-up on the actual day. Cunliffe had not allowed for this. I was to ‘forget’ the Norstrund; someone would pick it up; it would be returned to me. Fine. But what if some ill-starred maniac refused to allow me to ‘forget’ it? What if it somehow weren’t returned to me? I might be very glad of that free day with its wise provision for
Return Visits
.

As Cunliffe had said, it was natural enough for a visitor to carry a Norstrund around with him. So long as I put it promptly into service and carried on that way, all might be well. All things considered, the programme was best left as it was. L. V. Svoboda should be advised of this. I should also book my return flight for Sunday.

I put down the programme and realized I was still clutching the Norstrund. It had not left my hand all day and was now sticky from the perspiration that had flowed freely. I thought I might have a shower first, and also a bottle of beer. I went to the telephone and ordered the beer, and then stood under the shower for ten minutes.

I seemed to be washing off more than the grime of travel.

When I emerged, refreshed and relaxed, the room was in green semi-darkness. A striped awning had been lowered on the balcony. The beer was waiting on a tray. I had heard no one come in.

I took the beer out on the balcony, and drank it, looking down on the Vaclavske Namesti. The street was a-crawl with people. In the hot sun, a queue waited outside an Automat cafeteria opposite. The little trams clanged up and down. Far down the street, Wenceslas glittered in the hard light, and at the top end, by the Prikopy junction, an enormous picture of Lenin looked down, inscribed with the words, ‘Every hand, every brain for the building of socialism.’

It seemed suddenly a very long way from London, from the Little Swine and the Princess May and Maura.

Far down the street, the trees began to move in the museum gardens and a moment later the awning above my head fluttered as a small breeze swept the street. I finished my beer and lit a cigarette and went in to phone Svoboda.

I took the Norstrund out for a walk that night There had been a few spots of rain but the Vaclavske Namesti was warm still and noisy. The lamps were lit, the trams clanging. I crossed the cobbled street at the Prikopy junction and cut through into the old part of the town and could remember as clearly as if it had happened yesterday holding my mother’s hand as I had made this same journey.

There had been no home for me since leaving here, no real security. All this was bedded firmly in my childhood, and as I
walked in somewhat emotive silence, a loose smile twisted my mouth from time to time.

I walked round the dark bulk of the Karolinum and across the Staromest square to the lovely grey sleeping Klementinum. I crossed the long, stone-figured Charles bridge with the Vltava liquid and winking below, and up, by the steep Mostecka, to the palaces on the Heights: the Czerninsky and the Loreta, the Schwarzenberg and the great pinnacled Hradcany.

There was a little desultory singing and the hum of talk as I passed the lighted entrances of the kavarnas in the narrow medieval streets, and the loose smile tugged at my lips. I could never have seen this in the dark before and yet I seemed to know it in my bones, and my feet found their own path.

It was cooler on the Heights. Below, through the trees, Prague glittered in the dark. I stood and looked down and remembered the shape of it and the smell of it and the places where I had played and was extraordinarily moved. Presently I walked down again and crossed the river by the three islands at the Smetanov bridge.

There was dance music coming across the water and I recognized, twinkling with lights, the old stone tower by the Manes café where often I had gone with my parents to have tea on Sunday and to bathe from the large rafts moored alongside.

I had meant to look down the Prikopy to find the office Maminka remembered with the little lift with the golden gates, but I found myself suddenly tired and lost. A policeman was walking along the embankment, alien in high boots and broad flat shoulder tabs. But his face as he passed was young and boyish with that peculiar steadfastness of the Slavs.

He put me right for the Vaclavske Namesti, and I found myself back in the broad, brightly lit street in an exceedingly curious state of mind. The crowds were still there, noisier, more vivacious than London crowds. Open necks, open faces, a new breed. They seemed to be streaming down the road together, millions of them. At the end of the street the monstrous picture of Lenin looked down, illuminated now. ‘Every hand, every brain for the building of socialism.’

I felt oppressed and bruised by these hardy hands and brains. The town of my childhood had been taken over. It lay asleep beneath their vigorous sandals.

I badly wanted a drink, but the lounge was full of them, open necks, open faces, forward together. I went upstairs instead.

The floor-waiter, a plump, immaculately tail-coated character, whom I had already encountered, was prowling about the corridors. He saw me coming and stopped to wait. He had glossy black hair, a blue chin and a gold-toothed smile.

‘You have been out to take the air,
pane
?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s cooler now. We’ll have a storm, I think. I have closed the shutters but left the windows open in your room.’

‘Thank you.’

He seemed disposed for a chat, smiling with darkling fervour and rubbing pale, plump hands. ‘You plan to make a long stay?’

‘Just till the end of the week, I think.’

‘I hope you make good business. We need the business men back here.’

‘You seem pretty full already.’

He shrugged and shook his head sadly. ‘Delegations. A different class of business. It’s not like the old days.’

‘No, well. Times change.’ I felt I was repeating myself, tired as hell suddenly in the airless corridor. I put my key in the door.

‘Perhaps you would like something?’ he said wistfully. ‘A glass of beer?’

‘No thanks.’ I wanted only my bed now.

‘Well then.’ His gold tooth winked. ‘If you should require me, I am Josef.’

‘Right. Good night, Josef.’

‘Good night,
pane
.’

By six o’clock the following evening, my apprehension was dispersing fast. Svoboda and his acolytes, Czernin, Stein, and Vlcek, seemed to be business men like any other business men, if somewhat
overgiven to Discussions. Svoboda himself, a kindly old character with spaniel eyes and a Mikoyan moustache, remembered my father, and this was certainly all to the good. In my service with the Little Swine I had picked up a little glass lore, but by no means enough to be a young master out buying. Any bona fides that came my way were more than welcome, and as he called huskily into the telephone for glasses of tea, I assiduously searched my memory for the names of old retainers who had worked in the warehouse. I actually recalled one or two.