by Micah Nathan
The waiter set Art’s soda water down and walked away. Art plucked the lime wedge off the rim and squeezed it into the glass. The dining car was empty except for us, the light above our booth the only one still on.
“For his heresy, Johann Malezel was promptly excommunicated and imprisoned in Brasov, a small town in the foothills of the Transylvanian Alps. His punishment had little effect on his reputation—in fact, his fame grew, and scores of the sick and dying made the pilgrimage to his prison, where they left offerings and took anything they believed Brother Malezel had touched, from the waste-bucket slop to bits of stone chiselled from the prison walls.
“Finally, after years of this, rumors started to spread. The town priest claimed he saw an unearthly light shining from Johann Malezel’s prison cell, and there was word that the devil himself visited Johann every night. A mysterious man was seen in the woods, riding the back of a huge goat, wearing a dark cloak painted with mysterious symbols. The statue of Jesus in St. Helvetius’s church cried tears of chrism, surely a sign their lord was unhappy about something. And then a group of plague-ridden travellers came to Brasov to receive a cure, and the plague spread to the town, and that seemed to be when the villagers decided they’d had enough of Brother Malezel and his miracles.
“The villagers stormed the prison, planning to drag Johann Malezel from his cell and hang him in the town square. Only when they got there, he was gone. They found an empty cell, containing a blanket, a tattered monk’s robe, and a book. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. ‘To the Greater Glory of God’. The book describes all of Brother Malezel’s alchemical experiments, with detailed instructions for each process, written by Brother Malezel in three languages: pre-Vulgate Latin, Hebrew, and, strangely, enough, Coptic. No one knows how he wrote it, because prisoners were strictly forbidden to possess pen and paper, especially someone of Malezel’s reputation. So, naturally, it was decided Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam was the work of the devil, and the book was taken into custody by the church, until Jaroslav Capek somehow came into possession of it.”
“Where’s the book now?”
“St. Thölden Monastery,” Art said. “Some old Benedictine order has it in their archives. But we’ll see,” he said. “It might be a forgery. You never know with these old books. Sometimes the forgeries look better than the real thing…”
He stood up and stretched his arms. I looked around the dining car, ran my hand along the smooth, varnished edge of our table, felt the velvet curtains on our window and swished the melted ice around in my glass. Where was I last year, at this time? I thought. Sitting on the brown carpet in my Stulton tenement? Suffering through Ms. Goiner’s math class?
“I’m going to stay here, for a bit,” I said.
Art smiled. He got it, I think; he knew I didn’t want to sleep because I was having too much fun. He said goodnight and he left, a rush of cold air and metallic clatter blowing in before the door between the cars slid shut.
The waiter suddenly reappeared, corporalizing from within the dim glow over our table. He asked me if I wanted anything else. His eyes were tired but friendly. I noticed how young he was, almost my age.
“A deck of cards, if you have them,” I said.
He returned moments later with a sealed pack. For the next two hours I played my favorite solitaire game, Forty Thieves, supposedly Napoleon’s preferred pastime while exiled on St. Helena.
That night as I lay in my bunk, the gentle movement of the train rocking me into relaxation while we hurtled through the dark countryside, I obsessively replayed Art’s story in my mind. It was, admittedly, fantastic. To my sixteen-year-old sensibilities it was entirely possible, but even then there was an element of the mythological. The monk in search of immortality. The fall from grace. The nervous townspeople and their local priest invoking the requisite voice of religious hysteria. The mysterious disappearance and the enigmatic clues (a book, a grail) left behind.
But unlike most legends I knew of, fantasy was seeping into reality. It was like an archaeologist had unearthed Paul Bunyan’s axe blade, found lying near the massive fossilized femur of his blue ox. Perhaps it would turn out to be a hoax, a story more suited to Unexplained Creatures, Beasts, and Phenomena of the Ancient and Modern World. I put my mind to rest by deciding there was no way of knowing until we saw the book, and with that I fell into a peaceful sleep.
I awoke to the clanking of the train and the whoosh of brown and gray country sliding by. Art was awake on the bottom bunk and holding his glasses to the window, cleaning the lenses with the edge of his T-shirt. He looked like he’d been up for some time. He was clean-shaven, his bed was made, and his bags sat patiently by the door.
There were mountains in the distance, a jagged black edge on the horizon. Evergreens surrounded us but as we drew closer the trees thinned out, eventually becoming a bare, cold, rugged landscape of small, craggy buttes and scrubland. It was flat, like the American Midwest, but colored in shades of lead and tin. A river sat in the distance, slow-moving and black, winding without purpose toward the mountains, crawling by a small town that sat in a blurry lump on the horizon. Distinct shapes began to appear—smokestacks, some dormant, some secreting black smoke, jutting into the gray sky like the fingers of a buried hand. The remnants of communist industry, Art said. We passed by a town, and looking at the square buildings and squatty flat homes, all the color of institutional cement, I believed I’d never seen a landscape so forlorn. The American Midwest had been vital; however broad and dusty, there was a soul to the land. When you cut the earth it bled. We were traveling over land that looked scarred and beaten, like an old bone with its marrow sucked dry.
Our train rolled uphill, over a narrow pass that cut a swath through thickening forest, behind us the barren plains receding like a tide. We soon passed into highlands, pine and dormant oak shooting up from snow-covered ground. A flock of black birds swooped by my window, and the train slowed as we went farther up the mountain. Snow dusted the treetops and the dense thicket on either side, silent pines towering above like the legs of a dinosaur.
It started to snow, and the sky was now like cracked slate. The landscape shifted subtly; snow-covered brush outside my window sloping into foothills, frosted evergreens and bare ash, and then the land gave way to farms with small cottages, sitting in the middle of plow-furrowed frozen ground.
“There she is,” Art said, pointing out the window. Out of the snow-blurred horizon emerged the towering Gothic spires of the Hradcany Castle and the amorphous geometry of the cityscape below. Then there appeared the narrow swath of the Vltava River, perpendicular to us, running direct through the city’s midline and continuing north, toward mountain ranges covered in a dark gray haze.
“That’s her,” he said. His eyes were dancing. “That’s Prague.”
Chapter 11
Prague is a city of juxtaposition, the jumbled mess remaining after the mystic collided with the pragmatist and the pagan warred against the Christian. It has been home to the Knights Templar, Casanova, Mozart, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. Its blazon is an arm holding a sword, emerging from a castle doorway, its wielder hidden. It warns those who do not understand: There is danger in what you cannot see. Throughout its history the paradox has emerged; the 16th-century Czech philosopher David Gans attempted to reconcile Copernican theory with Judaic beliefs, while across the river the Rudolfine rabbi Judah Loew dabbled in cabalistic rituals to raise golems from the clay of the banks of the Vltava. Again the same patterns—hermeticist versus scientist, dark versus light, sacred versus profane. Celetna Street’s statue of the Black Virgin Mary, manifestation of the Egyptian goddess Isis, the Phrygian Cybele, the Greek Demeter. While Soviet tanks rumbled through the streets in 1968, old native Czechs, the ones who still remembered, prayed to the pagan prophetess Libuse, who sleeps with her army of knights in the catacombs beneath Vysehrad. Some people believe Prague is where the translucent fabric between the world we know and the underbelly of the unknown has ripped open. Art was a believer. It�
��s what led him back to the city.
From the train station we walked to the Charles Bridge, stopping at the mouth of an arched stone underpass, the snow-covered bridge spread before us. It was crowded with nondescript tourists, some leaning against the side and looking down at the slow-moving dark river, others flowing in a human wave. A statue of Jesus had been erected on our right, his body mounted to a cross next to a gas lamp. Beneath him street vendors stood by their tables, selling hats and small flags and postcards and unframed sketches. In the distance, like a brooding king surveying his domain, the Hradcany Castle threw its towering spires into the sky, dark and ancient, flanked on both sides by the more delicate fleches of St. Vitus’s Cathedral.
Art and I stood at the mouth of the bridge, cold wind ruffling our hair as we heaved our bags and began our trek across the bridge. Fat clouds, so dark gray they were almost black, rolled into position over our heads.
Where Paris had been a mix of cosmopolitan modernity and European history with leanings toward the former, the Prague I saw that wintry morning was a city of temporal stasis, with the occasional trace of Americana. Tourists in jeans and puffy ski jackets walked past us, seemingly oblivious to everything but the vendors positioned along the walkway. Random sculptures perched on the bridge’s walls; a caged Turk, Mary cradling Jesus, and a massive gargoyle with slitted eyes and wagging tongue. In every direction were Gothic, Baroque, and Romanesque towers standing beside simple stone cottages. Nove Mesto (New Town) behind us was filled with cathedrals and churches, domed and spired, and ahead of us, Mala Strana looked the same except for the imposing bulk of the Hradcany.
At the end of the bridge we passed under another archway, this one spanning between two Romanesque towers of unequal height. To my left and right, on the banks of the Vltava River, stood homes colored in pale yellows with maroon and red tiled roofs, dark windows closed off to the cold and chimneys trailing smoke into the morning sky. A man wearing mirrored sunglasses and a leather jacket walked up to me and shoved a nightclub flyer at my chest. A woman walking in front of us lost her hat in the wind and had to chase it across the street, her heels clacking on the cobbled stone. A small cab sputtered past, with a red tram close behind clanging its warning bell. Tourists passively stared out the windows like they were watching television. I heard the wind, Art’s long coat whipping and flapping, and the flat din of voices all around—English, Czech, French, German. My own footsteps clopping on the cobblestones, children running and laughing at the foot of a tower, one throwing clumps of snow at the other, who then screeched and ran past, red-faced and laughing.
Our path continued alongside tram tracks. The sky remained dark, but almost directly overhead there was a break in the clouds, through which a feeble shaft of sunlight shone. I had a powerful sense of déjà vu—surrounded by bastions and ramparts, closed in by the medieval vertical landscape, this was Europe as I had imagined it.
We walked uphill to the Mala Strana Square, past tightly spaced homes that towered on either side of the narrow street, and paused at St. Nicholas Church. People streamed from its open doors, Americans in blue jeans taking pictures, pointing to its green dome and cross-tipped minarets. We continued up and around a bend, where a small sign tacked to a black and patina-green gaslight read Nerudova.
“Mozart lived on this street,” Art said, buttoning his coat to the collar.
The snow resumed, quickly changing from light, airy wisps to heavier clumps of wet sleet, and then, amazingly, a flash of light arced overhead, lighting the bloated belly of the storm clouds. A crack of thunder followed, and I looked behind us, down on the Charles Bridge and the Vltava River, imagining the Hapsburg artillery raining cannon shot on the city. I leaned into the wind, following Art by watching his shoes.
We turned down another short, narrow street, and emerged from its shadows into another main thoroughfare, cars buzzing past. Ahead of us sat a huge, modern building, built in hideous imitation of the Romanesque and Gothic buildings surrounding it, with new brick and a freshly paved and painted parking lot below. Twin towers stood atop either side of its three-gabled roof, the façade a glittering sheet of windows, some lit, others a shimmering black. Attendants, dressed in gray waist-length jackets, moved about busily, rolling luggage into the hotel and out of it, their steps efficient and brisk, like well-trained soldiers.
“The Mustovich Hotel,” Art said. “Five years ago it wasn’t here. There was an old church, with a collapsed southern wall, all mossy and ruinous. Wild dogs had made their home under the arcade, and if you came around at night you could hear them howling. Over there, at the parking ramp entrance,” he pointed, “was the chancel. Tree trunks had busted through its wall. It looked like the Slavic gods came back to reclaim what Cyril and Methodius took from them.”
We checked into the hotel and Art collapsed on the bed while I stood at the picture window. Our room was huge—a master suite with two separate sleeping quarters, a kitchen, a cherrywood bar, a living room with work space, and a gleaming marble and brass bathroom. We had an amazing view of the city, stuck into the side of a hillock, the Hradcany Castle above and behind us. I could see the spires of St. Nicholas Church, and snow falling onto the black waters of the Vltava. Every rooftop was covered in white. Below, faint outlines of people walked about, heads held low against the wind. I opened the window a crack and heard car horns and tram bells drifting up through the snow-lined alleyways and streets.
Another arc of lightning streaked across the sky. I moved away from the window.
“Get me a drink, would you?” Art pushed his shoes off and propped himself up against the headboard. “Preferably something with vodka in it.”
I found a can of orange juice in the mini-refrigerator and poured it into a glass with a healthy splash of vodka from one of those mini-bottles. “I figure we’ll take a stroll into town, grab a bite to eat, maybe do a little tourism,” Art said. He sipped his drink. “We’re meeting Brother Albo in about four hours. If we have the chance we’ll hit some of the bars later tonight. There’s this great jazz club, Reduta.” He closed his eyes and rested the glass on his chest, both hands wrapped around it. “Czech women go crazy for American men, you know. They think we’re all movie stars.”
Our plans didn’t work out—instead Art fell asleep after finishing his drink. We left the hotel just as the storm passed; the streets were now ankle-deep with snow. The winds had stopped completely and the city was remarkably still. There was some sun, a harsh yellow halo glaring through the snow clouds.
We ate at a corner café, ordering eccle rolls and cubed lamb with two pints of strong beer. After dinner we walked in the opposite direction of our hotel, down a twisting, narrow street lined with houses with tiny doors. We were going to the St. Thölden Monastery, Art explained. He said it was home to the oldest Benedictine order in Eastern Europe, and in addition to having the Malezel book, St. Thölden Monastery was reknowned for its large collection of medieval incunabula.
“When I told Dr. Cade that, he offered to pay for my flight,” Art said.
“And did you accept?”
Art nodded, shoulders hunched against the cold.
“His perpetually stocked bar pays for Howie’s nasty habit,” he said. “That’s Howie’s bonus. This is mine.”
We made our way down the narrow street and Art stopped at a low stone wall. Atop the wall was a black iron fence with rusted spikes, brown branches dangling over the fence like unkempt hair. Art and I peered through the fence.
“This is supposed to be it,” Art said. “Corner of Ostra and Berec. Do you see anything?”
All I saw was a flat tract of snow with yellow bulldozers and back-hoes dusted white, parked near mounds of dirt and stacks of lumber. Tall, gray buildings surrounded the empty lot. A dog loped into view, and it stopped and started sniffing around one of the bulldozers. Art whistled and the dog lifted its head, saw us, and went back to sniffing the bulldozer.
“Maybe you have the wrong address,” I said.
/> “I just spoke with my contact at the university, last month,” Art said. He turned around and leaned back against the wall. He didn’t look too upset but I could tell it wouldn’t take much to get him there. “Unless he gave me the wrong address but I don’t see how that’s possible,” he said. “How many St. Thölden monasteries could there be?”
A young man was walking by and he stopped and turned to us.
“You American?” he said.
I nodded. Art didn’t seem to notice him; instead he stared down at the street, deep in thought.
The young man smiled. He was wearing a bright orange ski jacket, and he had on headphones. He pulled the headphones off. I could hear a tinny blast of music, and then the young man reached into his jacket and switched it off.
“Cool,” he said. He sounded Czech. “You from New York?”
“Just outside of New York,” I said.
The young man nodded. His forehead was dotted with pimples that were as red as his wind-flushed cheeks. “I’m going to New York this spring,” he said. “Visit my sister. She’s at college. You two at college?”
“Aberdeen,” I said.
“You party at Aberdeen? Lots of women?”
“Lots of women,” Art said, slowly. He looked up at the kid. “Do you know where St. Thölden Monastery is?”
The young man shook his head. “I’m not Christian,” he said. “My parents go to church but not me.”
He smiled again and looked past us. “There was something there,” he said, pointing. “A church, I think. It burned last month. Whoosh.” He lifted his arms. “Big goddamn fire. My friends and I sat on my porch and smoked grass and watched the fire.”