The Museum of Broken Promises

by Elizabeth Buchan

  They were seated at a wooden table outside a cafe in a square close to the church with suspiciously vivid-coloured glasses of orange juice in front of them. There were a couple of cast-iron lampposts dating from an earlier age and the red roofs of the houses flanking the square took on a brighter colour in the sun. The tree at its centre, however, appeared to be struggling to survive.

  Petr followed Laure’s line of sight. ‘I’m afraid the air is not so good here,’ he said. ‘For the tree, I mean. But for people, the absence of war and division has been nothing but positive. People understand that. They want a good life with a strong family. They concentrate on domestic matters.’

  She stared at the tree. Its leaves were shrivelled around the edges and the bark was spilt in several places. One of its main branches had spilt almost in two, revealing a scaly epidermis. The pollution must be terrible, she thought.

  ‘But…’ Petr focused on Laure. ‘We do have to be careful about those who disagree. They can endanger stability. They are not reliable workers.’

  ‘“We”?’

  ‘Those people can lose their jobs and be detained for a period. But that can be beneficial all round because not only does it teach them a lesson but also everyone else learns as well. Or, if they are performers, they might be forbidden to perform.’

  She was watching an elderly man walk past pushing his shopping in a rusty pram.

  ‘Like your friend perhaps?’ he continued. ‘You will appreciate that he’s not considered a good worker. He neither grows food nor works in a mine. His work is superficial, and the State takes note.’ He leant back in the chair. ‘Have you ever talked politics with your new friends? If you are tempted, please don’t.’

  She noted genuine concern on his face. ‘May I ask you something, Petr?’ He nodded. ‘Do you really work for a pharmaceutical company?’

  Risky.

  ‘Did your new friends put you up to that question?’

  ‘I’ve never discussed you with them. Do you?’

  His reply was pleasant but held an edge. ‘What makes you think I don’t?’

  ‘You don’t go to the office very much and you ask me a lot of questions.’

  ‘One should always ask questions, Laure. I will answer yours. I work for Potio Pharma and have done so for many years. Pharmaceuticals is an important industry. Lives depend on it.’

  She looked again at the dying tree. ‘Will you excuse me while I go to the Ladies?’

  Inside the stuffy cubicle, she sat on the lavatory seat and took a deep breath. In a basket on the floor were copies of the official Party newspaper, Rudé Právo, torn into squares. At the marionette theatre, Milos had told her that it was the favoured newspaper for lavatory paper because it had the largest pages, was printed on high-quality paper and, because rival newspapers were blocked, it was obtainable most places.

  She should never have asked that question. Foolish Laure.

  When she returned, Petr had paid the bill. ‘You’re beginning to see that Prague is not Paris. And I think you think that I’m interfering. Or worse. But I’m not.’ He stood up.

  The strap of her rucksack had caught around the chair and he leaned over to disengage it. He held out the bag. ‘You’ve been very helpful to the family and I’m grateful. I don’t want anything to go wrong.’

  Because the sentiment was genuine her wariness melted a fraction. ‘Giving me the job helped me too.’

  ‘That’s good to know.’

  Eva had been in bed for nearly a week. Some sort of bug, she said.

  Laure struggled to keep the normal routines and was fully occupied looking after the children. Fetching and carrying, she learnt (with some dismay) she harboured a dark strand in her spirit. Helping Eva get to the bathroom and witnessing her gag over her food provoked a guilty contrast that she, Laure, was young, strong and fresh-skinned.

  On several occasions, Petr made a point of asking her to share the evening meal with him. It had almost become a routine. It seemed to please him to have Laure sitting across the table and to demand from her descriptions of life in England. Laure was happy to play along but, as the week progressed, she found herself wild with impatience to take herself off.

  At the first possible opportunity, Laure headed for the Staré Mĕsto. An unexpected, but brief, shower fell as she crossed the Charles Bridge and, in the few minutes before the moisture evaporated, the city glistened like a painting.

  Approaching the square, she spotted Lucia and Tomas up ahead. Tomas had a newspaper tucked under his arm and Lucia carried a canvas bag which had seen better days. They were talking intently. At the sight, a nasty feeling settled in her stomach.

  Walking several metres behind them was a man in a grey suit who, she cottoned on, was tailing them. Of medium height and so stocky that his jacket was threatening to give at the seams, he was having a job keeping up with his prey.

  Laure found the idea rather thrilling – as if she had been caught up in a novel. Then she felt ashamed. This was no game. Quickening her pace, she overtook him and, on drawing level with Tomas and Lucia, she said in an undertone, ‘You’re being followed.’

  ‘Without a doubt,’ said Tomas, smiling at her. So saying, he stuck two fingers in the air. Lucia grabbed at his arm and hissed at him. Pointing at Laure, she switched to English: ‘Go away. You make Tomas do stupid things and draw attention to us.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Laure defended herself. ‘He does that himself.’

  Lucia flushed. Without saying anything further, she pushed through the crowd ahead of her and disappeared. Laure watched her and turned to Tomas. ‘Am I causing you trouble? Perhaps I should go.’

  A shade of impatience crossed his face. ‘That doesn’t mean you should go.’ He drew her into the shelter of a doorway. The goon walked past. There were sweat stains under the armpits of the grey suit and his face was bright red.

  In a wonderfully tender gesture, Tomas swept his fingers over Laure’s cheek. ‘Things are changing, here, Laure. Will you be a witness to what’s going on?’ Unsure of what he intended, she nodded all the same. ‘Lucia is frightened, and she has reason to be. Her family have suffered. Her parents were once top civil servants. Now, they wash dishes.’

  ‘Like the waiter?’

  ‘Like the waiter.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘You probably don’t,’ he said. ‘But let’s go.’

  At the marionette theatre, preparations for the evening performance were going ahead. Laure went through the now familiar routines.

  Check floors and benches for litter.

  Check lights were operational.

  Check water was available for those overcome by heat. (A man fainted during the previous performance.)

  Check rudimentary first-aid kit which consisted of a packet of aspirin and a few sticking plasters (God help those who had a heart attack or cut an artery) was stowed in the correct place.

  Backstage, Milos was repairing one of Spejbl’s strings. He was looking battered. His nose required retouching and his trousers had seen better days.

  Laure watched Milos at work, his balding head gleaming with the heat.

  ‘Spejbl finds life difficult, doesn’t he? He’s slipped. It’s rather sad.’

  ‘Don’t talk about me like that’, said the puppet.

  Laure glanced at Milos who was working away with a secret little smile on his lips.

  ‘Spejbl, so sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you,’ said Laure.

  ‘I deny absolutely that I come from a bourgeois background,’ said Spejbl.

  ‘But Spejbl,’ said Milos severely, ‘your father was a well-known shop owner.’ He glanced at Laure. ‘You mustn’t tell lies in front of visitors’

  ‘Don’t you mean, don’t tell lies in front of people you know. Visitors won’t know if you are lying and, therefore, won’t care.’

  ‘I’m not a visitor any more,’ said Laure.

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re part of the team.’

  A small glow
lit up in Laure.

  ‘Earn your keep. Next time you come bring some coffee. This marionette is dying for a good cup.’

  Working calmly and methodically, Milos kept his head down.

  Laure recollected the kitchen in the Kobes’ apartment where packets of coffee were stacked in a cupboard. ‘I’ll try. I didn’t realize it was so difficult to get hold of.’

  ‘Foreigner.’

  It was said so affectionately that Laure grinned.

  Milos slotted the final string into place. ‘Is that better, old man?’

  ‘Jawohl.’

  Milos tapped the battered nose. ‘Wrong era.’

  ‘Don’t you give me history lessons.’

  Backstage, the atmosphere was building as it always did. Nerves and tension boiling together. The possibilities were many. A performance could soar. A performance could bomb.

  A performance could be watched, noted and reported.

  That uncertainty triggered a rush which Laure had grown to relish. Every day brought a new sensation, a new experience – exquisitely intense.

  She left Milos tidying up and went into the room used as a kitchen by the troupe to fetch the water for the backstage.

  The room did not merit the term, having only a sink, a tap and a rickety table in the centre. Someone had brought in a gas ring on which the kettle was boiled and a couple of cups, one of which was minus its handle.

  Laure filled a jug with water, wiped a tray decorated with a peeling transfer of the Charles Bridge and located the glasses. As she lifted the tray, someone grabbed her shoulder and she almost dropped it. Rattled, she whirled round.

  Laure was confronted by Lucia in her black subfusc and concealing black headscarf. ‘My English is not so good today.’ Anticipating a clash, Laure set down the tray. ‘But you must be told. You think he likes you? Think again.’

  ‘Tomas?’

  ‘Who else? He’s making use of you because of who you are. He does that.’

  At that moment, Laure discovered that being forewarned did not make dealing with a painful situation easier. ‘I know I’m not Czech, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘No, you are not.’ Lucia spun out the words. ‘And you won’t understand.’

  ‘Perhaps I don’t mind.’

  A flash of real fear went across the other woman’s face. ‘You come here with your foreign clothes and money. Yes, you have a job, but it’s…’ she was searching for the words. ‘Your job is stupid. Not real. You work for privileged people.’ She stopped mid-flow, glancing over her shoulder to the door, as if to assure herself no one was eavesdropping. The doorway was empty, and she renewed the attack. ‘You will never know what it’s like to live here.’ She tapped her chest. ‘Deep down.’

  The dramatic gesture irritated Laure. ‘This is silly,’ she said, and made to pick up the tray.

  Lucia blocked her. ‘Shall I tell you what happens when you have something nice in Czechoslovakia? Even the smallest thing.’

  Unsure of where this was going, Laure threw out: ‘You enjoy it.’

  Lucia thrust her face into Laure’s. ‘Stupid girl, it gets stolen. That’s what happens. You can hide it at the bottom of the river, but they find it.’ Her English stumbled. ‘That’s how we live here. That’s how we die here. That’s why we fight. For you… whenever you get fed up, you can go. We have to stay.’ She gestured to the room. ‘You think of this show as something amusing but it’s not. It’s where we make the future. Make ideas. Make the debate.’

  ‘Are you talking politics?’

  ‘Everything is politics in this country. You are too stupid to see.’

  Evidently, ‘stupid’ was a favourite word of Lucia’s.

  ‘Lucia, please get out of my way.’

  ‘You won’t steal him. You should go home.’

  ‘I’ve no intention of stealing him.’

  ‘You have.’

  The two women glared at each other until Lucia stepped aside. Laure picked up the loaded tray and made her way backstage.

  Watching Lucia manipulate the marionettes during the performance, Laure realized that she had missed something important: the power of memory.

  The puppet master had to memorize each rattling movement, each step, each interchange. One false move, and the show went wrong. One false or omitted move and the message was spoilt.

  If Lucia was correct and everything in this strange country was to do with politics, then life must be spent watching others. How exhausted they all must be and how their minds must run along a single track, which would explain, in part, Lucia’s attitude towards her.

  ‘Did I finish telling you about all the Seven Wonders of Czechoslovakia?’ asked Tomas when Laure mentioned that she and Lucia had fallen out. ‘It might help you to understand.’

  ‘How old is Lucia?’

  ‘My age.’

  Post-performance he had turned up. Hoarse from a gig near Wenceslas Square, eyes glistening with vodka and adrenalin, reeking of tobacco and fresh sweat. He seemed so frail, and yet his visceral impact on her made her knees buckle, her stomach lurch.

  They were standing in the passage that led from the stage into the kitchen and he had pulled her close. His lips were close to her ear as he murmured, ‘Although there’s nothing in the shops, we’ve got enough of everything. Although we’ve got enough of everything, everyone steals.’

  His mouth rested on the favoured tender place of her neck, a fraction under the jawline.

  ‘Although everyone steals, nothing ever goes missing anywhere.’

  Uncertain how to respond, she pressed her body against his, registering his slightness and thinness with a kind of terror. He pulled back an inch in order to look down into her face. ‘It’s Czech humour, Laure. We have a way of laughing at ourselves, at the system, at the idiocy of the universe. We don’t expect outsiders to understand it.’

  She laid a hand flat against his chest, seeking to feel his heartbeat, all too aware of his separateness and longing to bridge it. ‘Everyone is very concerned to tell me that I’m an outsider.’

  ‘We also cry at ourselves. Particularly at the big paradox.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Which is understanding that the world is a terrible place because you have to choose between the homeland that promises suffering and the suffering that afflicts those who choose to renounce their homeland.’ He grinned. ‘What is one to do?’

  She said uncertainly, ‘So, the paradox is to choose between two sufferings.’

  ‘Which one do you choose?’

  It was a rhetorical question and he didn’t expect Laure to answer it. Her exhilaration tripled. Somehow – how? – she had been thrust into a circle that treated subjects like this as important.

  ‘Come to the chata this weekend and I’ll tell you. The boys will be there. You’ll like it. It’s where we are at our best.’

  She knew perfectly well what the invitation really was.

  CHAPTER 18

  LATE-ISH ON A HOT SUMMER FRIDAY AFTERNOON WAS NOT the best time to take the train out of Prague’s main station.

  There was a long queue at the ticket kiosk where she met Tomas who was wearing his linen waistcoat and had his hair tied back with a black shoelace. ‘We’ll be lucky if we get a seat,’ he said.

  The corridors in the train were packed. ‘Which do you prefer? Death by proximity in the corridor or in a compartment?’ They squeezed into a compartment, which was already fully occupied and stifling. ‘Sorry,’ said Tomas cheerfully to the occupants. He lifted Laure’s rucksack and stowed it in the luggage rack and balanced his guitar on top. ‘Very sorry.’

  The passenger by the window raised his head and Laure was amused by his startled look as he recognized Tomas. Tomas favoured him with one of his smiles that could charm a monkey from a tree and shook his head when the man made to give up his seat to him.

  Fortunately, the journey was a short one. The train ground through Prague’s suburbs which gave way to countryside dotted with birch and ash, t
hrough which threaded streams and rivers.

  Not that Laure could see much. She concentrated on keeping her balance and tried not to mind the reek of the meat sandwiches that the woman in front of her was handing out to her family.

  Apparently, chata was the name given to huts and cottages in the country to which every man, woman and child decamped whenever possible. ‘If you can get around the building-licence racket,’ said Tomas, ‘you can build. Depends on who you know. If you can’t, you rent. As decadent musicians, we have to rent.’ He went a little moody for a minute or two. ‘But no goons,’ he said. ‘No restrictions. No propaganda.’

  Laure watched the sandwiches being consumed, anxious that she had packed the right clothes. Jeans. A cotton skirt. The dress that had aroused so much comment? She was no longer as fond of it as she had thought. It seemed, somehow, inappropriate.

  From the station, it was the matter of a twenty-minute walk to a hamlet outside where Tomas ushered her up the path to a one-storey, clapboard building with a red roof. ‘We bribed the owners into letting Anatomie take it for the season.’ He was extra wry. ‘Which wasn’t easy. We’re marked men and nobody much wants to do business with us.’

  Her rucksack strap was digging into her shoulders and she shifted it. Tomas reached over and took it from her. ‘Have you been arrested?’ she asked.

  ‘Twice. Each time you lose a life.’ He observed her appalled expression. ‘It’s how it is here.’

  Rubbing her released shoulder, she asked, ‘Do you ever think of escaping to the West?’

  The words had not left her lips before there was a subtle alteration in his demeanour. A shuttered expression replaced the smiling ease. ‘Why do you keep asking?’

  She was bewildered. ‘I— sorry. Have I offended you?’

  ‘Don’t ask those questions, Laure. Just don’t.’

  He turned his back and banged on the door.

  Manicki opened the door and it was obvious he was drunk. ‘Sorry.’ His hot, alcohol-laden breath almost knocked her back. ‘I had to keep up with the others.’ He led them into a sitting area which had a stove and rooms opening off it.