The Prodigal Spy (29 page)

Molly said nothing, so Nick’s father answered for her.

“Somebody told them. That’s how it all started, all of it. That’s what I thought about on the ship,” he said, looking at her. Then he sighed, finished. “I still think about it.”

Dinner was roast pork and dumplings, whose lightness Anna demonstrated by slicing them with a string stretched taut between her forefingers, Czech style, but which then sunk back heavily in the thick gravy. Molly picked at her food, quiet and withdrawn, no longer interested in playing cat and mouse with his father. Instead she talked to Anna, complimenting her on the elaborate table setting, old china swirling with painted flowers spread across a stiff white tablecloth embroidered with gold thread.

“It’s all I kept from the house in Bubeneč. My mother had three closets just for the linens. And dishes–she prided herself on her china. All the women did. Of course, they had maids. So different then. You know, I never cared about these things when I was a girl. It was just the way we lived. Now it seems so beautiful–it reminds me, I suppose. Of that life. We had a large house, a villa. A music room, even. A greenhouse in the back–we always had flowers. But that was before the war.”

“Is the house still there?”

“Oh yes. But my father was killed, so we had to leave. The Germans took it. My mother lost everything–all those closets. But she kept these.”

They were still talking about the world before Munich, all parties and piano lessons, when they heard the car in the driveway. The rain had gone, leaving only the sound of water dripping off leaves, and in the quiet the engine seemed a roar, sputtering, then stopping, unmistakably there to stay. Anna raised her eyes, her fork stalled in midair, and Nick saw that she was looking at him in alarm. He would have to be explained. The day, so placid and ordinary, had become a guilty secret. Even here, safe in the country, she was always expecting a knock on the door.

His father, seeing Nick’s face, smiled. “Don’t worry, Beria’s dead.” He got up and went over to the window, peering through the curtain. “František,” he said. Then, to Nick, “A friend. It’s all right.”

“What does he want?” Anna said, still uneasy.

“A drink. What else?” his father said lightly, opening the door.

But František had already had one. He was a bear of a man, tall and bearded, and when he entered the cottage, stooping to get through the door, his eyes had the wild, shiny look of drink. He stopped for a minute, weaving slightly, disoriented by the unexpected strangers and the formal table, then spoke to Nick’s father in rapid Czech. Without language, Nick watched them as a silent movie, forced to follow the story through gestures. He didn’t mean to break up the party. No, no, it was all right, come sit. Was something wrong? More Czech. Anna’s hand flew to her mouth in dismay, like Lillian Gish. No, his father said, then more Czech, placing his hand on František’s shoulder. At this, the tall man leaned into him, a sentimental embrace. Anna got up, then went over and led him to her chair, as if he were too upset to find it by himself. He looked at Nick and Molly and Nick saw his father introduce them. “Friends from America,” he said in English, at once a courtesy and a signal to Nick. The man nodded, too preoccupied to be curious, and the Czech began again, a volley of questions, Anna shaking her head. His father slumped into his chair, placing his hand on František’s. Anna brought out a bottle, some kind of brandy, and put it before him with a glass. Then, noticing Nick and Molly, she said, “I’m sorry. His brother has died.”

“No telephone,” the man said to them in accented English, waving his hand to take in the cottage, apparently apologizing for having come.

Nick’s father poured him a glass, then some for himself.

“A suicide,” he explained to Nick, but the man understood the word and covered his forehead with his hand, and Nick saw his eyes moisten. When he spoke, in Czech, his voice was deliberate, almost without inflection, so that again only the gestures meant anything.

Molly got up and began to clear, motioning to Anna to sit down, and Nick, excluded from the low murmur of Czech, retreated into the solemn politeness of funerals, his eyes fixed on the emptying table, the painted china removed piece by piece until there was nothing between them but white cloth and the amber bottle. The drink made František moody, and finally silent, until he sat staring at the table too.

“I’ll make some coffee,” Anna said.

František answered, but Nick’s father said to him, “In English,” nodding toward Nick.

“English, yes. Excuse me. You don’t speak Czech?”

Nick shook his head.

“It’s better, Czech, for bad news. Very expressive. The Eskimos have the words for ice. But we—” He poured two more glasses. “What do you say, Valter? We have the words for bad news, yes?” A look of disgust. He took a drink.

His father turned to Nick. “His brother was a writer.”

“A writer. Under Dubček, a writer. Then, poof, a tram driver, for Husák.”

“He was fired from the Writers’ Union,” his father explained, “so he had to work on the trams. That’s the kind of job they give you. An embarrassment, so people see.”

“They make you eat their shit,” František said. “To fill your mouth. No more words.” He glanced at his glass. “Then you’re quiet. So there is his brotherhood of Slavs. You remember that? He believed in that. We’re Slavs. They’re Slavs. Who else is there, the Germans? Now look at him.”

“A writers’ movement,” his father said to Nick, a text gloss.

“You like Prague?” František said suddenly. The opening, hopeless question.

“It’s beautiful,” Nick said, the expected answer.

“Yes, beautiful. For tourists. The Germans used to come. Not so many now.”

But what was he supposed to answer? That it was sad and dingy? That the crabbed, suspicious life inside the lovely architecture depressed him? A judgment no guest was allowed to make.

“America.” František took another drink and looked up at Nick. “You were in Vietnam?”

“Yes,” Nick said, embarrassed, expecting the usual arguments, the usual averted eyes, silent accusations. Aren’t you ashamed? Yes.

“Good,” František said, slamming down the glass. “Kill the bastards. All the Communists.”

Nick said nothing, too surprised to answer. Was that really how they saw the war here, a world away from America, turned now on itself? Maybe their suffering had brought them, finally, a simple myopia. There were no other politics but theirs.

“Franku, please,” Anna said anxiously, putting down a coffee cup. “Here, drink.”

But he had already turned from Nick, back in his grief. They took Miloš‘s book,“ he said to Nick’s father. The notes, everything. Do you know what they said? It must have affected his mind. Now he’s a suicide too. Just like Masaryk. The pigs. That’s what they said to me.”

“There must be a copy,” his father said.

“How? Something like that.”

“On film,” his father said simply. “It’s easy to hide on film.”

Nick looked at him, curious, but his father misinterpreted his interest.

“He was writing a book on Jan Masaryk,” he explained. “His death. It’s still a controversy here, how he died.”

“Yes, Masaryk,” František said. “You know about Masaryk in America?”

“Yes,” Nick said, to be polite, but in fact who did anymore? A forgotten name. Twenty years ago, a famous leap from the Czernin Palace that was the end of the republic. A national hero’s funeral. Pictures in
Life
. In the West, a murder no one could prove and everyone forgot. But here, evidently, still an open wound, a reminder of the world before, like Anna’s china.

“He couldn’t hide the book,” František said. “Everyone knew what he was doing. Last year, when they opened the case, even the police wanted to help him. Everyone wanted the truth about Masaryk. Last year. Now they won’t even let you go to Lány. No flowers.”

“His grave,” his father said to Nick. “The family grave. Not far from Lidice. We’re a country of symbols here. It’s a way to talk to each other. Last year people started taking flowers there. A shrine. Now that would be an embarrassment to the government, too Czech, so they put an end to it.”

“People remember,” František said vaguely, his words a little slurred.

“What did he mean, when they opened the case? Who’s they?”

“The Government–the old Government, Dubček. One of the first things he did was order an investigation into Masaryk’s death. It’s time to know the truth, he said. Of course, the Russians weren’t pleased. They knew what it meant. Another symbol, you see.”

“It’s twenty years ago.”

His father looked at him. “Yes. But a crime like that–to know the truth can be a political act.”

Nick looked back, reading the code. “Here,” he said.

“Like Masaryk,” František said again, lost now in drink.

“Is that how he did it?” Molly stood behind him, a dishtowel in her hand. “Like Masaryk? Out the window?”

“No, pills,” his father said, then to František, “he felt no pain. You just go to sleep. It’s the best way.”

František nodded. “The best way.”

“Such talk,” Anna said.

Nick looked at his father. Had he ever thought about it? Those years now were a story, a walk around the boat deck, but what had they really been like? Bad enough to wonder? A glass of water before bedtime. You just go to sleep.

“Masaryk said the window was the housemaid’s way out,” his father said. “A servant’s death.”

“Hah. That’s good, the housemaid’s,” František said. “Those fools. Did they think we would believe it? That he’d go like that?” He took another drink. “He thought he could work with them. Like Miloš?”

“Our clothes must be dry,” Molly said, excusing herself.

The two men kept staring at their glasses. Nick listened to the sound of Molly on the stairs, Anna rattling the dishes in the sink. “Ach,” František said finally, out of words, tired of it all. He poured again from the bottle, clearly determined to pass out. Now Nick could hear the clock. Neither of them seemed to notice when he got up and left the room.

Upstairs, a low room under the pitched roof, Molly was brushing her hair, already changed. Finally alone.

“We should go,” she said casually, nodding toward his clothes. “He’s here for the night.”

“Look at me. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” A sharp tug of the brush. “Everything’s lovely. A perfect weekend.”

“Stop it,” he said angrily, then lowered his voice. “Why are you hounding him? What police report?”

She glanced at him, then picked up her bag. “Not now. Let’s just go,” she said softly. “I’ll help Anna finish up.”

Nick sat on the bed for a minute, frustrated, looking around the room. A heavy crocheted bedspread, like a giant doily. A few books. He picked up the picture frame on the night table. His father and Anna, younger, smiling shyly. He still had all his hair. They were dressed for snow, bundled up, standing in an empty city square. Moscow? He wondered what the occasion was, who had taken the picture, then put it back. Their life–still a blank to him.

When he went back down, František was laid out on the couch, not yet really sleeping but no longer there. His father was covering him with a blanket. “You’re leaving?” he said, seeing the changed clothes. “So soon.”

“We have to get back.”

“No, no, he’ll sleep now. One more drink.”

He moved unsteadily, a little tipsy. Nick glanced toward the kitchen, where the women were working, then shrugged and joined him at the table.

“No more,” Anna said from the sink.

His father winked and poured out a glass. When had the drinking started?

“
Na zdravi
,” he said, raising the glass slightly, and Nick drank, trying not to cough as the rough liquid hit his throat. His father said nothing, just looked at him, his eyes gentle, a little clouded. Then he reached over and patted Nick’s hand, his touch as hot as the drink. “I knew you would come,” he said, his voice low.

Nick nodded. A few hours ago he’d wanted to walk away, right through the woods, but he saw in the face, so like his own, that he could never do it. Upstairs, a stranger in a picture, and now, suddenly, a touch he’d known all his life.

“You see what it’s like here.”

His color had begun to drain, a sickly pale. What would he become, another František, sleeping it off on the couch?

“What I see is that you’ve had too much,” Anna said, coming over with some water and his pills. She put a hand to his forehead, shiny now with sweat. “How do you feel?”

His father placed the pills in his mouth, the movement deliberate and slow. “Perhaps a little tired,” he said quietly.

“It’s late,” Nick said, standing, eager now to get away. “You should get some rest. I’ll help you upstairs.” Anna moved toward him. “No, I’ll take him.”

“I’m all right.” His father waved his hand, a mild protest, but allowed himself to be lifted up and led by the elbow across the room.

Nick followed him up the stairs, then turned down the bed as his father began to undress. His body was bony, frail, and Nick looked away.

“You see what it’s like,” his father said again. “I can’t stay here.”

Nick faced him. “It may not be possible. You know that, don’t you?”

But his father grabbed his arm, clutching him. “No. It is. You think I don’t know what they want? I know. Something valuable. I can pay.”

Nick looked at him, dismayed. There was no talking to him. “Okay. But now let’s get some sleep,” he said, a nurse.

“We’ll meet tomorrow–I’ll come back early. The Národní Gallery.” He began to cough. “Go around noon,” he gasped, trying to hold down another cough, so that it came out a desperate wheeze.

He took off his shorts and moved to the bed naked, his thin legs and ropy behind as white and vulnerable as a child’s. Nick turned away, hanging things in the wardrobe to avoid the sight of his body, and when he finally looked back his father was under the covers, his eyes closed, his hands folded over his chest. In that instant, Nick saw him as he would be, lying in a coffin, and his own breath went out of him, an unexpected panic. He stood holding the hanger, utterly alone in the room, as if he’d been abandoned. It was only when he saw the blanket stir, a faint rise, that he could move to the bed and lean over to arrange the covers.