Tomas crossed over to a cardboard box in the corner. ‘Are you there?’
Laure was startled. ‘Who?’
Tomas reached into the box and lifted up a tabby cat. ‘This is my true beloved. His name is Kočka, which means cat. He and I share the same spirit. He’s an old man now and not so well. But we talk to each other.’ He cradled the purring animal in the crook of his arm and ran a finger down Kočka’s spine. ‘He’s been my companion, I tell him things, he criticizes my songs, and I do everything I can to make him happy and comfortable. But he’s getting old. Very old, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.’
‘Don’t look so sad,’ she cried, almost jealous.
‘I don’t care what happens to me, but I care what happens to Kočka. I ask all my friends to remember if anything happens, Kočka must be safe.’
‘Safe?’
‘Taken to a vet. I’ve hidden money to ensure that he can be put down painlessly. When I took him on that was the promise I made. I would give him the best death and the best life I could. In return, he has loved me without a cloud. And…’ he dropped a kiss on Kočka’s head, ‘I have loved him.’
Feeling inadequate to deal with the coming calamity and, possibly, the rivalry, she watched Tomas ease Kočka back into his nest. He glanced at Laure. ‘OK?’
She nodded.
He stripped off his shirt, revealing his slight, sweaty torso which was covered with red marks and bruises. The largest bruise was forming on his back above his right kidney and she exclaimed over it.
‘No need to fuss,’ he said gently. He turned her to face him and his accent grew more marked. ‘I’m serious now. You ask me my reasons for staying. This is it. It’s from a banned publication. “No philosophical, political, scientific view or artistic activity that departs even by the merest fraction of official ideology or aesthetics is allowed…” Let me try to remember the exact words. “No open criticism is permitted, there is no right to a public defence, and the Ministry of the Interior busies itself monitoring the lives of its own citizens, tracking their movements, tapping their phones and apartments and arresting them without charge in the street.”’
Half-mazed with lust, she digested the implications. ‘Then you are telling me there’s no choice.’
‘I am.’
‘But you put your life on the line, it could become so difficult that it’ll be a sort of death.’
‘Who was it who said there’re many kinds of death? Giving in is one. Jan Palach chose his way. We must find another.’
Despite the heat, she shivered. ‘I can’t bear it.’
‘Is there a choice but to breathe?’ He backed her over to the mattress.
‘But how?’
‘There’s music. There’s the marionettes who mock ghosts and ghouls to make them bearable. There’s pricking goons like your employer but so cleverly they don’t realize it.’
But they do, she wanted to cry out.
Wincing, he made her raise her arms and peeled off her T-shirt. Like his, her skin was slick with sweat. He leant over and licked her shoulder. ‘Salty. Lovely.’ He drew her down onto the mattress.
‘If my life is in danger,’ he said, placing his hand on her breast, ‘I will remember this. And you.’ He gazed into her eyes and she read in their expression a glow of love, melancholy and lust. ‘The danger makes it all the sharper. You’ll find that.’
She had a terrible intimation that he was half in love with martyrdom. Or that it beckoned from a flower-strewn field. She reached down and cupped his head between her hands. ‘But your duty, your absolute duty, is to survive.’
Eva was not getting any better. ‘It’s the heat,’ she maintained. ‘It never agreed with me.’
The heat could be blamed. Over the last few days, its quality had changed. It was heavier, more pervasive. Stickier. It pressed down, soaking clothes and burning exposed skin.
The high temperatures were a challenge but, with Eva, more was at play. Anyone with half an eye could spot the bags under her eyes, her waxy skin and her struggle with any form of exertion. On a couple of occasions in the past few weeks, she had disappeared into hospital overnight and returned with bruised arms and a needle mark at her elbow.
At those times, Eva was forced to stay in bed and, if Petr was out, Laure sat with her after the children were asleep. The two women didn’t talk much apart from some exchanges about the children and Laure was far too occupied thinking and dreaming to be worried by the silences.
On this evening, she went to check on Eva who was lying flat on her back in the main bedroom, both arms flung out as if she was being crucified. Laure was touched to see that she was wearing one of her Parisian nightdresses, a confection of ivory silk and lace, over which Laure had laboured with the iron.
Laure sat down. The room was very tidy and, when she considered the effort that must have been made, she admired Eva’s determination. Neatly arranged on the bedside table were Eva’s medications and a pile of books, the top one being – from what she could gather – a political tract.
Eva opened her eyes and requested a glass of water. Laure poured it out and propped Eva up. She sat back down again while Eva sipped at it.
Her gaze drifted to the window and her thoughts to Tomas.
‘What does he tell you?’
She snapped back to attention. ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about.’ She took Eva’s glass and set it down on the bedside table.
‘Let’s not pretend, Laure.’
‘If you mean Tomas, he doesn’t say anything.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
Eva may have been ill but her mind was sharp enough. ‘You have it bad, I think.’
‘Bad?’
‘Your love affair.’
‘Oh.’
‘He’ll be using you.’ There was a small note of malice. ‘Whatever sweet things he says.’ Laure frowned. ‘You don’t believe me, and I suppose that’s right. But don’t forget.’ Having said her piece, Eva tired of the subject and concentrated on her discomfort. She shifted painfully in the bed. ‘If I was in Paris…’ The tone was wistful.
‘Isn’t it possible for you to get there?’
‘It’s possible. But Petr has to be very careful not to annoy the authorities while he is negotiating. All of us in the family have to be careful.’ She shifted position and uttered a subdued groan. ‘If I was in Paris, I’d be getting better.’
‘You are getting better,’ said Laure. ‘The doctors say so. Petr says so. You must believe it.’
Eva laughed. ‘I’ve spent my life believing.’ She pointed to the framed photograph on the wall of Petr receiving a certificate of merit from President Gustáv Husák. ‘Belief is an art.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Loyalty is an art.’
Her elegiac tone frightened Laure and she cast about for a diversion. ‘Did you grow up in Prague?’
A hint of animation crept into the drained features. ‘No, in the country. To the north of the city. A beautiful village. Or it was. The air was pure. Not like here where it’s so awful. I’m frightened for the children breathing it. The Party should do something about it.’
‘How did you meet Petr?’
‘A delegation came to the village for a summer holiday. He was one of them,’ said Eva. ‘He was younger than me but I took one look and decided he was my future. It was as simple as that.’
Laure couldn’t resist saying, ‘That was some belief.’
Eva turned her head on the pillow. ‘I suppose it was. A big one. In your lifetime, you choose one or two of those and it’s important to stick with them, whatever your doubts. It took me a while to learn that. The sticking-with bit, I mean.’
Laure bent over to straighten the sheet, a thick linen one which must have been hot and propped Eva up on the bolster. ‘You must concentrate on getting better.’
Eva sank back. ‘Thank you.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Petr has promised me that I can be buried in the village.’ She looked up at Laure. ‘That�
�s a comfort to know.’
‘You’re not going to die,’ Laure said.
‘You never know. It’s as well to think about what happens if you do.’
As Laure left the bedroom, Eva said. ‘Thank you for staying to help look after the children.’ She paused. ‘Petr appreciates it. Not just the children.’
Laure grasped the door handle tight.
‘But,’ continued Eva, ‘I think you’ll be happy to go home when the time comes. Don’t you? Being far from home is not a good thing.’ Eva was making a point. ‘I will be frank with you. If Petr remains in Prague, then it’s better to get a Czech woman to help out. Or…’ This time the pause between the sentences seemed extra meaningful. ‘Or, to marry. You’re very nice and very good, but you’re young and you don’t know how things work.’
Astonished, Laure exclaimed, ‘What are you thinking? I’m not going to marry your husband. Nobody is.’
Eva sent Laure a half smile. ‘I’ve learnt not to be absolute about the future.’
It was as if Eva no longer considered herself to be part of the equation, which was almost as troubling as Eva’s suggestions about Laure and Petr – which she took to be sick and weary fancies.
‘Eva, I will help look after your children as long as I am here, and as best I can. But that’s all.’
That night, Petr and Laure ate supper together as usual, working their way through boiled potatoes and beans which they ate under the chandelier. Petr was deploying his trick of making Laure feel that she was the only person on the planet, to which she responded half-heartedly.
He noticed. ‘You seem preoccupied? Is there anything going on?’
‘No,’ she answered.
‘It’s very nice having you here,’ he said, gesturing to the room. ‘Otherwise, it would be very empty.’
He drank his beer and diverted her with questions about Brympton, squirrelling out details about local transport and the National Health Service. Laure described the train which ran cross-country between Leeds and York which she took on schooldays. ‘It was the only way to get there.’ She looked across the table, ‘Do you really want to know all this stuff?’
‘Trains are important. For example, it mattered to you that it arrived on time and was affordable.’
The meal over, Petr cleared his throat and said, ‘I’m afraid I have to discuss something that can’t be ignored.’
Something in the atmosphere shifted and she was unsure why.
‘Is it Eva?’
‘It’s been reported that you made an obscene gesture in the street to an official.’
The walls of the room seemed to creep in. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Well, yes. It does.’
‘The Ministry of the Interior busies itself monitoring the lives of its own citizens.’
‘We’ve had this conversation, if you remember. Foreign nationals are fair game.’
‘Tell me, who don’t you spy on?’
‘Laure, did you make that gesture?’
She was damned if she was going to lie. ‘I did.’
‘I’m not going to ask why although, as the person responsible for you, I’m entitled do so. What I must ask is that you never do that again.’
She was tempted to say: how dare you?
He spoke slowly, as if to a child: ‘It’s clear you don’t understand how to conduct yourself here. Or, how doing something like that affects our families.’
Why didn’t she have more practice in this sort of thing? ‘But you’re one of them and protected. What does it matter what I do? Especially, if it’s hardly worth noticing.’
‘What do you mean?’ Petr sounded icy.
She glanced up to the chandelier for inspiration. Its heavy glass drops were reflecting the evening sun and exuding pinpoints of light. A little less certainly, she said, ‘You’re close to the Party. You do things for them.’ He got to his feet and came over to her and the normally kind eyes were anything but. Laure’s attack faltered. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He picked up his cigarettes. ‘The authorities have put you on a list as an “oppositional”. They will refer to you as a “reactionary bourgeois” and when it comes to sorting out your visa there will be a black mark. Maybe sufficient to get you deported.’
She wondered if he was deliberately overdoing it. But why bother? She knew, and Petr knew, he would win this bout because the very thought of having to leave Tomas made her feel faint.
He grew cold and serious in a way that was new to Laure. ‘You’re thinking you could quit our employment and go and live with your lover. And I’m sure you accuse me of being the Party’s stooge. Maybe that’s true. Maybe it isn’t. But what is true is, if you didn’t have my protection, then you would be vulnerable. Very.’
Both knew he was speaking the truth.
‘Don’t you wish to say anything?’
Funnily enough, when push came to shove, she minded that Petr thought badly of her – and that was puzzling. Her relationship with him was, obviously, more complicated than she imagined.
‘It won’t happen again.’
CHAPTER 26
LAURE WOKE AT 6 A.M. THE CHILDREN WERE STILL ASLEEP and the interregnum between her waking and their waking was hers to possess.
Her nightshirt was bundled up around her hips. Shifting to adjust it, her hand brushed her stomach, which was satisfyingly flat. She let it rest on the bony part of her hip.
The days had come and gone, beads on a string, and each one she fancied as a colour. Red for her passion, blue to mark a second sun-drenched trip to the chata which Tomas so loved. Green, for the song Tomas wrote and composed while she lay naked in his bed and watched. Black, for the marionettes: the water spirits, the princes and princesses, the whack, slam and slap grotesques and their metamorphosis under her dazzled eyes into mysterious life.
The beads had been counted and the end of September was in sight. The nights were cooling and the sun less fierce.
Why did Tomas love her?
The question was always there, a pulse that beat along with that of the one at her wrist. A while ago, she had resolved it was a question that should not be asked, let alone answered but, like many such speculations, it was disobedient.
He loved Anatomie.
He loved his country.
‘We have to bring back basic freedoms.’
‘Artistic freedom is the right of every human being.’
She kept the best recollection to the last.
‘You’re different, Laure. Thank the deities.’
In the old days she might have shrugged that off as easy words but, in this country of writers and artists, she was beginning to look at words with a new respect. They were freighted and a source of power.
He loved her. And weren’t words everything?
At least, Eva was no worse and the drop in the temperature brought some relief. The children were preparing to go to their chosen schools. ‘Elite ones,’ Petr explained, with no hint of irony. ‘Otherwise, they have no chance of keeping up if we return to Paris.’
The new timetables indicated that Laure would not enjoy the same freedom to come and go as she had during the summer and she would have to renegotiate. She swung her legs out of bed. Nothing like the present.
In the late afternoon, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with a flower-patterned scarf tied around her head, she walked to the Újezd and caught a tram to the Kinsky Gardens.
The tram was crammed with workers going home. It gave her a slight cultural shock to realize that a couple of those who had space to read were absorbed by books of poetry.
More than one of the passengers was likely to be an informer and she wondered, if the regime ever fell, how were the informers and those informed on going to shake down together? She turned her head to look out of the window. Revenge? Vendetta? Spilt blood? Fear and loathing?
They were folded into everyone’s luggage.
Alighting at the stop, she joined the stream of people, mostly young, some of whom were clasping flowers, who were making their way across the Kinsky Gardens towards the Štefánik Observatory and she was struck how quiet they were.
Laure cast a look over her shoulder. Who were the watchers here? The girl with the long red hair streaming down her back? The man with a raincoat over his shoulder and the ubiquitous pork-pie hat?
The now familiar rough-and-ready stage had been erected outside the Observatory, dominating a grassy arena over which the electricians scurried like beetles. Rising from the earth were the aromas of grass and dried plants, sweet-smelling, hot-smelling – and unmistakeable.
Her rucksack, which held a precautionary bottle of water, weighed a ton and she slung it over a shoulder and made her way towards the stage, which wasn’t easy. People clung onto their vantage point and did not appreciate a foreigner shouldering past, muttering ‘Excuse me’ in bad Czech. Eventually, she reached the stage and exchanged a grin with Vaclav, the electrician. By and large, their relationship was wordless, but they got on fine. Reaching over a hand, he hauled Laure up.
A sea of bodies was building, lapping over the grass arena up to the shrubs and tall grasses which provided a natural boundary. The stage planking sounded hollow as she trod over it and jumped down at the back.
In a makeshift tent just behind the stage, Tomas was in a huddle with Manicki and Leo. He looked up as she entered. ‘About time.’ His smile was for her alone – and, for the hundredth time, she thought she might die of love.
He reached over for her. ‘Good day, bad day?’
Their manager was hovering, shouting in Czech and pointing at his watch.
Aware that the authorities had only given permission to hold the event provided the time limits were adhered to, she kissed him and said, ‘Go, go, they’re waiting.’
By the time the first chords were struck, the audience had worked itself up – shouts, snatches of singing, a fisticuff – but quietened as the opening numbers were played.
The Museum of Broken Promises Page 30