The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) (33 page)

“The Malá Strana,” Dani sighed.
Pointing to the strange little cars parked along the streets, she added, “And
the tireless Trabant.”

None of the cars had drivers. The only
people I saw were shadows behind thin curtains. Dark shapes preparing for bed,
smoking a cigarette. Golden bulbs burning from the end of the heavy iron
lampposts perched on the corners created infinite darkness down every side
street.

Stanger than the Trabants and the
emptiness, were the large military trucks I saw at the ends of some of the long
streets. They looked black against the orange glow of the city, and were always
surrounded by several grumpy soldiers who talked and smoked. One of them took a
piss on the black and white checkered sidewalk as we passed. A small cloud of
fog rose from the stream of urine.

On the far side of town, on the other
side of a river, an enormous tower rose above the city, like a giant tripod
walking across the orange rooftops. Its red lights penetrated the rich
blackness.

“Žižkov Tower. It’s new,” Dani said
when she saw me looking. “Fairly new, but the people hate it as if they’ve
hated it for a hundred years. Too much the party and Moscow, they say. Too much
like a Soviet rocket. Perhaps to remind us they have something we don’t? Some
say its only purpose is to jam Radio Free Europe, but I don’t believe them.”

I nodded, even though I didn’t fully
understand. “What do you think?”

She ignored me.

“Fuck.” A trio of soldiers wearing
high black boots that disappeared into long grey coats stepped around the black
chains that lined the sidewalk. She slowed to a stop and they surrounded the
car.

“Where are we?” I said.

“Quiet.” She rolled down her window
and reached for her purse.

One of the soldiers shined a
flashlight in my eyes.

Dani said something I didn’t
understand and shoved a wad of American cash at the soldier standing at her
door. She whispered, “I told him ‘
kakoj kurs obmyen
’
—
what is the
rate of exchange?”

He gestured to the one standing on my
side of the car and shoved the wad into his front pocket. “
Pasport
?”

Dani said, “Preston, do you have any
cash?”

I had the rest of our per diem in my
pocket, but I didn’t want to give it to her. “No.”

“Don’t play games.” She shoved her
palm at me. “You don’t have papers. They will arrest you.”

“Are you shitting me?” I couldn’t make
sense of her words. “What the hell are you getting me into?”

The soldier standing to my right
tapped my window with the barrel of his assault rifle. His eyes were just
slits.

“Preston!”

The soldier motioned for me to roll my
window down.

“This is so fucked up, you know that?”
I reached into my pocket and gave him all I had with me. About seventy dollars.
“Fucking bullshit. Another one of your fucking games.”

He counted it then stared at me for a
long time. I looked up at him, trying to figure out if he wanted something more
from me. My heart raced. He would not look away. So I finally lowered my eyes
and stared ahead. With that, he laughed and banged the hood twice. Dani put the
car into gear. In the side view mirror I saw the three of them converge in the
red glow of her tail lights.

“What the hell? Danicka—”

“An
úplatek
. Like a
shakedown.” She said it with a casualness that made me embarrassed for even
asking. “Ritual is very important to these people. Even for something little,
like trying to drive across town.”

I watched for another minute to make
sure they didn’t follow. “Yeah, well if the ritual is so important why am I out
seventy bucks?”

“They want you to be submissive and
scared, even if it’s a bluff. They only have power when you have something to
lose. That is the most important thing to remember—not everybody has something
to lose.” She looked at me very earnestly when she said it. “People with
nothing to lose have all the real power. The rest, like us… But they can’t come
right out and demand the bribe—that defeats the purpose. You have to recognize
that you stand beneath them because they have guns. There is always noise and
lights and weapons and uniforms, right? Elaborate pomp and music and thunder
and fireworks. The party has its flags, the church has its cross. Symbols to
help the powerless make a decision.”

She slowed to a stop in front of a
grand cathedral. White columns topped with green domes and golden crosses
stretched a hundred feet into the air. I counted the statues of at least nine
different saints perched on the corners that faced the street. Each held a
cross or some other ornament made out of gold. Two more saints and a bunch of
smaller statues looked down on a pair of red doors.

“That is why the ritual matters. It is
part of the system designed by those with the power to keep the powerless from
getting exactly what they want. They slap your wrist for skipping a step, for
not following procedure. Submission is created by ritual.”

A group of children descended the
stairs from the church’s front doors. All young girls, all wearing grey coats
and red scarves. Some held hands. Some of the smaller girls were carried by
nuns in heavy black habits. Danicka said, “We always arrived early to pray the
Rosary. Always the same pew, always next to
Christ’s face is wiped
by Veronica
.”

I knew then why she’d brought me here.
She wanted me to see her as a person, to realize her motivations were the same
as mine. More than anything, I wanted to see her as that person. But the way
she spiritually held Pauly captive, the way she’d hurt me, made it hard to not
be blinded by her gesture. Her ritualistic game.

None of the young girls looked like
Danicka, and for a second I thought she’d meant for me to see something else.
The scarves and red cheeks were exactly as she described back in her apartment
last year. Small, round faces breathed heavily in the cold air. Danicka smiled
as they walked past by the car, one by one. Her eyes followed each one until
they passed and just as quickly she looked for the next. If I thought I’d seen
her happy back at her little apartment, I was wrong. Here, in the car watching
the girls pass, she radiated joy.

“Is this your home? Prague?”

“It is.” That I remembered made her
smile. “Very beautiful, yes?”

She only turned her head when a young
nun passed. Danicka looked for something in the sky far away and did not turn
back again until they’d all turned the corner behind us. She said, “A
sestra
is not a
suitable mother for a child of the revolution. Sometimes I believe I have lost
more love than you could have ever known.”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“It’s fine. Love is not just like a
hat you can change as the seasons change. Maybe it has been much longer than I
remembered since I’d been in love. Maybe I didn’t love you, Preston, but I
thought I could.” She put her hand on my knee. “Knowing the dreams I had about
you would always only be dreams hurt most of all.”

“I’m sorry. I truly am.”

“It’s fine.” She slid a cigarette out
of the pack and stared at it for the longest time. Her lips pursed with
concentration as the little diesel engine idled into the night. Finally, she
slid the cigarette back into the pack and said, “You are free to live as you
please.”

The words rattled around my head. It
took a moment for them to slow to a complete stop. Seeing a shift in her tone,
I made a move. “Is Pauly? Can I go back now, and tell him he’s free? That he
doesn’t have to worry about the promise he made under all that stress?”

“Preston,” she sighed. “There are
rules to follow. Rituals, just like military rituals and church rituals. You
can tell him that he is free, that I will pursue him no more, but they are just
words.” She said all this while continuing to watch the dark corner where the
orphans had gone. She looked very sad all of a sudden, then put the car into
gear

and drove.

“So what do I have to do to clear
everything up with Pauly, officially? Surely we can work something out, right?”
I tried to hide the excitement in my voice.

But she didn’t reply. Her eyes
narrowed as she pushed the car through dark alleys toward a rounded arch built
into a high, pointed tower. Up in the windows lonely figures stared from dimly
lit apartments. This city had too many dark corners, too many dead ends to ever
feel like a place I could grow to love, yet seeing it with Danicka made me want
to remember every little detail. She made a right onto a lane that curved
slowly to the left. Finally, she slowed beneath a patch of naked trees, next to
a graffitti-covered wall. “I thought you might like to see this.”

I tried to read the spray painted
words, but there were too many. Looking for a place to start, my eyes drifted
toward the top, and when I saw
All we are saying
…I smiled. His
face floated there, right above the lyric. An
Abbey Road
-era John,
with the round glasses and long hair, but older.

“Husák hates it. He calls the students
that deface the wall with their anti-party protests
Lennonistas
. He says they
are all sociopathic drug addicts.” She read the slogans and phrases while she
spoke. “But this is where the revolution starts, and we will do it our way. No
violence. No guns.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because it has already happened.”
Danicka put the car in gear and talked to me like one would talk to a child.
“Preston, there are informers all over. In a few weeks one of them will report
the
Lennonistas
. Students and
StB
will
clash on Charles Bridge. The party does not yet know this, but their days are
numbered. I just wanted you to see this before we return.”

“Thank you.”

She pushed the gas pedal to the floor.
“What if you could know everything you‘d ever forgotten—every sound, every
scent, every little detail about the home where you were born and raised? What
would your mind do with so many warm memories of family feasts and laughing
with friends every waking second? Think about it, Preston. Everything you’d
ever known in your mind at once? How do you think this storm of detail would
affect the way you live right now? Do you believe the past would not be as bad
as you remembered? Or would you lie awake every night reevaluating every single
one of your prejudices and transgressions?”

Once again we were speeding along the
narrow streets. She said, “For me, the memory makes it all worse, and every
morning upon waking up I stare down the same path I’d struggled down
yesterday.”

I didn’t know how to respond at this
point. We were former lovers turned reconciled enemies. So I chose to not
reply.

“As a girl I made a promise—a
deal—under great duress. Under pretenses that never existed. But it’s easy for
a young girl to make such a mistake. I let love go when I should’ve fought to
hold onto it. All the crying has made me angry, bitter and very sad. I don’t
want to be sad anymore, and I want to die with a man who will love me without
pretense. But I can’t do any of that because I am bound by an agreement I made
with a party that refuses to negotiate.” She drove faster as the main part of
the city fell behind us. “It’s a debt I can never repay even though I have
money, so to speak.”

The buildings got plainer as the road
got wider. Instead of curves and waves of gold and plaster, every straight line
met at a right angle. Row after row of apartments with windows in straight
lines, both up and down, like air holes poked into a cardboard box.

I took a moment to process everything
she said, and still none of it made sense to me. After what seemed like an
appropriate amount of time, I said, “That doesn’t mean you can’t let me find a
way to repay Pauly’s debt to you, right?” I secretly patted myself on the back
for staying focused and doing right by him like I’d promised.

“That could be a bit of redemption
right there,” I added.

“Do you wish to settle debts? Or erase
them? Because that is what you are asking. Either way, you must go to the
crossroads before dawn on
Voskresenie
—Sunday
morning. We will resolve the situation then. For everything there is a ritual,
Preston. Can you do this exactly as I tell you?”

I listened very closely, trying to
keep an ear open for deception. “I guess. But you sort of said the ritual isn’t
really necessary?”

“I said it is symbolic! Not
unnecessary. Do not confuse the two.” She accented each syllable by jabbing the
steering wheel with her finger. “Preston, you asked. Do not waste my time if
you are not willing to follow my instructions.”

I smiled, because for the first time
it felt like the more she talked, the more power shifted. “How do I know you’ll
even show up?”

She smiled. “You want a promise from
me? My word?”