by Pavel Mandys
Žižkov
What is that damn woman doing here again?
Felix saw her as he was smoking, leaning against the doorframe of his shop—Twenties & Thirties. His mood had been quite pleasant before she appeared. On his back he felt the cold breath of the spacious, unheated hall, with its high ceiling and concrete floor; from outside, a gust of warm air infused with the sun and spicy fragrances of the Indian summer sporadically caressed him.
The woman walked through the gate to the grounds of the old cargo station. She passed the old wooden train car where somebody had not too long ago opened a taproom, and walked on the broken blacktop road toward the former storage building that had been running to seed for years. But then, slowly, merchants had started to use the space—selling secondhand furniture and original pieces. Felix recognized her from afar thanks to her particular walk; she moved decisively, unwomanly. She wore the same trench coat that she had on her two previous visits. He rarely cared to notice what women wore, but her thin, light-brown double-breasted coat had caught his attention on their first meeting.
When he had first seen her in his store a few days before, he thought: She looks like a cop. He had the same feeling the second time. Not only due to the coat, which he—who knows why—linked subconsciously with plainclothes detectives; there was simply something off about her. The way she walked between the things on display but didn’t really pay attention to anything; the way she pretended to be taking a picture of a chrome-and-leather chair, but she turned her cell phone so that he was in the picture too. He tried to convince himself that he was simply being paranoid. Cops would come in pairs, right? And they would most likely be men, or perhaps a man and a woman. His imagination ran amok. Marty had been right when he asked him at the beginning: “Are you really going to do it? You won’t shit your pants?”
Simply put, Felix had never been the type of roughneck who’d think only about money. He liked the design of the interwar era, and so he had studied antiques. Then he rented this space and began selling antique pieces from his favorite time period. He was also offering trinkets such as ashtrays, vases, and wooden toys. People liked his cargo railway store and his design pieces, and he had built a devoted clientele base. Predictably, he never got his hands on all the truly valuable pieces—he was a small fish—though he did make a decent living. But since Alice and her son had moved in with him, he had started spending more and more money. To be precise: it was more than he could afford. He simply was not making enough to support two additional people—especially since one of them was an eight-year-old with a whole lot of expensive hobbies, and the other was an unbelievably demanding and lazy woman. How come this hadn’t occurred to him when he took them in? What did he expect? Originally, he didn’t even want to live with Alice. When she suggested that she’d let go of the sublet and move in with the boy, he thought: Out of the question! He was worried that their relationship would go sour, that soon they’d be at each other’s throats. At the same time, something (some sixth sense?) told him that if he agreed—if he allowed her to barge into his apartment with her million trinkets and clothes, with all of her divining rods and books about healing with crystals—he would eventually thank himself. In hindsight, his sixth sense must have been making fun of him, or it had decided to ruin him on purpose. Alice made her living by cleansing people’s chakras in a massage studio, but the money was far less than what she needed for herself and her son. And so he took one loan, then another one, then a third . . .
Over beers, Marty asked: “Listen, do you need money?”
A dumb question. Who doesn’t need money? Especially if it’s offered by a friend—a close friend from school.
Felix learned about the operation, then took a few days to think.
“You hardly have to do anything,” explained Marty, “you simply offer space and keep your mouth shut, that’s all . . .”
And so Felix had been doing exactly that for a few months. For Alice, and for the boy. Even if he grumbled, he was happy to have them both. If they went somewhere together, people thought they were a family. He was thought of as a father. A nice feeling. Warm. So what if Alice was funneling his money away? So what if her silly material needs were greater than her income? For the boy, he’d do anything. He didn’t want to lose him; didn’t want another man to bring him up, even if his life with Alice was—to put it gently—strange. And, most importantly, had no future.
* * *
While he was pondering all of this, the woman in the trench coat walked through the yard. Seriously—there was something wrong with her, but what exactly was it?
He stepped back into the shadows. She passed purposefully by all the other stores in the hall and was now nearing his. He started to distinguish her facial features—she was about thirty-five; her dark hair was up in a French chignon; she had an eagle-like nose, and along her mouth were two hard lines. Should he initiate a conversation? Ask her what had brought her to Twenties & Thirties, or what she was looking for? Usually, he didn’t mind his clients all that much; he let them walk among the furniture while he took care of his orders and accounting in the small, well-heated glass coop. It was his experience that if he followed them around his store and asked them whether they needed help, it would actually discourage them. If they wanted something, they would ask him. But now he was going to be more active.
The woman entered the store, greeted him with a nod, and continued walking among the furniture. The frilly hem of her skirt sneaked up her calves—a bit too muscly for a noble lady in high heels, it occurred to him. She had calves as well-defined as a professional athlete. Like somebody who worked out every day. Too hard. Slowly, she followed the aisle between a functionalist cabinet and cubist sofas deep into the hall. Again, she pretended to take pictures and aimed her phone at him.
He was, of course, used to window shoppers who never intended to buy anything. There were so many of them visiting his store. Most of the time he recognized them immediately: they’d usually come in pairs, and despite all the warnings not to sit on the furniture, they tested the upholstery on all the sofas with their bottoms; they touched every ashtray and paper weight and exclaimed to each other incessantly: Yeeey, look! or, Oh my god, this is beautiful! The woman in the trench coat was not doing any of that.
He moved toward her.
“Can I help you? I’ve noticed this is your third visit this week . . . Are you looking for something specific?”
She was standing by a battered cabinet with a cherry veneer which Marty had used not that long ago to transport his merchandise. Why did she stop right there? Did she know what was being hidden in the cabinet drawers and what shortly thereafter was further transported under the fluffed pillows of a leatherette sofa?
“No, not at all.” She waved her hands around. “I’m just looking. Everything you have here is beautiful.” She turned and peered straight into his eyes. “I feel like I’m in the period of Hercule Poirot. Your store has an ambiance, Mr. Keller.”
“Do we know each other?”
“I know you. I read an interview with you in Living. Because I love the interwar period, I knew right away I had to come and see Twenties & Thirties.”
And she came to “see” it three times in one week? Only because she’s in love with the twenties and thirties? And why was she so inconspicuously taking his picture? He discarded the idea of asking her for an explanation; instead he asked: “Do you live nearby?”
She hesitated—only for a second, but still. She lowered her eyes toward the cabinet and then looked away toward the hall. It calmed Felix down. A cop would never become this unsettled. She would readily come up with an answer—anything.
Again, she looked into his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. Do you think that—”
Felix’s cell phone ringing interrupted her. She went silent and puckered her lips. Felix took the gadget out of his bag. Alice. Who else? She called him easily fifteen times a day. “Sorry,” he said to the woman, and turned his back to her. It was out of
the question to ignore Alice’s phone call. What if she needed something important? Even if she could get on his nerves, she still remained one of the two most important people in his life.
He left the woman among the various pieces of furniture and closed himself in his little office. Alice started to babble on about a blister on her foot—she was walking with the boy from a training session, she was carrying a heavy bag, every step hurt, and she really couldn’t walk anymore—couldn’t he close the store for a while and come pick her up? She would also need to buy something on the way. After a short exchange, he capitulated.
When he came back out, the woman in the trench coat wasn’t there anymore.
* * *
It was quiet for three days. He forgot about the woman. Marty used his truck to bring in an oak cabinet, its drawers filled with small sacral articles and a wooden sculpture—over one meter tall—of Saint Barbara, hidden in a rolled-up carpet. It was quite obvious there was something in that Persian carpet.
“It looks as if you’re transporting a dead body,” remarked Felix. Usually they carefully bubble-wrapped larger sculptures for transport and hid them in armoires, but Marty apparently didn’t have any handy and so he had to improvise. Felix, his stomach tight, was trying to figure out whether somebody was watching them—either from other stores or from the pub in the old train car—and if yes, then whether or not the bulge in the carpet piqued their interest.
“I’m going to make one more run,” explained Marty. “Probably a little before closing time, I won’t be able to do it before. Just wait here, okay?”
“Okay.” Felix helped him carry the goods to the hall. He put up a sign on the door that read, Merchandise delivery—which was, after all, true—and locked up. He unrolled the carpet. He estimated the Saint Barbara sculpture to be from the middle of the eighteenth century. It was an exceptionally nice piece; it wouldn’t last long in the store. And the cut he’d get would be decent. Lately, when he was unpacking stolen antiques with Marty, he’d forget from time to time that he could easily end up in jail. It had become routine. Everything was perfectly organized. Marty would identify a village chapel or a church, and the actual stealing would be performed by two thieves. The stolen sacral articles would then be transported by more than one truck driving through forest roads. Then Marty needed a dry, well-ventilated storage space where the antiques could wait until their sale abroad. Felix provided the storage. The stolen goods were stored in a small area in the back of the store. For every antique, they had a copy made—thanks to his contacts, this part of the scheme was arranged by Felix too. They thus obtained an official certificate that the piece was a new copy of an old piece. The buyer therefore had proof, in case of a customs check, that he was carrying something of no value. Yet what was sent abroad—most often to Austria but a few baroque sculptures went to the United States as well—were genuine, centuries-old sculptures of saints.
It was a genius plan. Flawless, claimed Marty. The masquerade was perfect too. After all, who would be surprised that there were trucks often parked in front of an antique store where desks and cabinets were being unloaded?
Marty left. Felix kept the door closed—it was near closing time anyway. He exited through the back door, onto the concrete cargo ramp above the long-unused rails, and lit a cigarette. Being alone, as per usual, brought on anxiety. No, it was not at all normal what he was doing! It would not run this smoothly forever. One day they’d be found out. Felix was not an idiot, and he certainly was able to realize that for all the money he was making so easily, he’d have to pay a price one day.
Alice called—the ATM refused to dispense money to her. Could she borrow money from him? Actually, uhmmm, she had already done that; she’d noticed that under Felix’s shirts in his dresser there were a few banknotes, so she’d taken one. When he got home, could he reserve plane tickets to Crete? She noticed they were dirt cheap right now.
He hung up. He lit another cigarette. Dusk was slowly enveloping the rusted rails overgrown with weeds and unused train cars. The pub and other stores in the cargo hall had closed up and all he could hear were the sounds of cars and trams on a busy street quite far away. A black-and-white cat ran across the rails, but otherwise nothing moved. Felix inhaled the cigarette and pondered whether he really wanted to live like that. That foreboding that a life with Alice would make his life better . . . what foolishness was that? Or was his life already better and he was not able to appreciate it? Was this a better life?
He looked up at the shoddy iron bench above the railways and swore under his breath. She was there. The woman in the trench coat. Right above him. He hadn’t heard her come, so she might have been standing there the entire time. Watching him from above. In the dusk he couldn’t quite see her face, though he thought she was smiling. That was the first time it occurred to him that she might not care about stolen antiques at all, but only about him. Did he have a stalker? Was it possible that a crazy person would fall platonically in love with him based on the picture printed alongside his interview in a magazine? He smiled—such silliness. Cigarette in hand, he waved at her, but she did not move. So he stamped out the cigarette, went back in, and locked the store. Should he call Marty to tell him not to come with the last load? Or behave as if nothing had happened?
As he was waiting in the quiet unlit hall, watching the contours of the furniture becoming more pronounced in the growing darkness, he made himself a promise. If all was going to end well, if that woman could disappear from his life without anything bad happening, he’d announce to Marty that he was done; that this lifestyle was simply not for him.
* * *
Things ran smoothly for the next few days, but Felix couldn’t shake the feeling of being an outcast. Maybe it was for real that cops were paying attention to him, and that woman worked for them. Her flirting around Twenties & Thirties could have been part of some sort of tactic. What did he know? Would she try to entice him, and then get information out of him? What if she installed a bug in his store? When he was driving to work, he kept checking the rearview mirror to see whether anybody was tailing him. A few times he thought a car was following him, and so he suddenly turned onto a side street and stopped, only to see, with relief, the car continuing on its way. He didn’t say anything to Marty just yet—after all, nothing had happened so far. But maybe he should tell his friend. And they should start discussing certain things in the washroom with the water running—not in the store, where the cops could hear their every word. Or should he inform Marty right away that he was done? He had decided already, after all. What was he waiting for?
One afternoon, he looked up from his office computer and saw the stalker woman enter his store, and it actually pleased him. He’d wanted to see her again. He needed to clear everything up. So he opened the door to his small office and walked toward her.
She was looking at a stone bird fountain. “My grandma had something similar in her front garden,” she said without any greeting, as if they were already friends. But she did not look very friendly, more pensive. “She had a beautiful villa in Vinohrady. I loved that house, you know? I felt home there. And in the end, I lost it.” It seemed like she was talking to herself more than to him, and the last sentence she hissed through her teeth.
“What happened to it?”
“My brother inherited it. He threw out my things. He changed the lock. We don’t communicate.”
She peered at him with anger in her eyes. A lot of anger, considering the situation. This could not be a cop, it occurred to him. Only if she were an excellent actress and this entire performance had a point—but what would it be?
“I am so sorry,” he said, though he could care less. “Maybe if you try to call him and ask him for a few things from your grandma—”
“That would only make him happy—that it still hurts me,” she snorted. “He always mistreated me. Even as a small boy. He mistreated me horribly. But why am I saying this to you?”
He would like to know too. “Well
then—at least buy yourself the bird fountain,” he suggested. “It’s from the garden of a first republic villa in Nusle.”
She shrugged. “No thank you. It’s exorbitantly priced.” And after a short pause: “Listen, would you have coffee with me sometime?”
In that moment, with great relief, he started to understand. Or at least he believed he understood. The woman was truly interested in him—only and exclusively in him, not in sculptures of saints in his back storage room. She might be a bit crazy, and for some reason she had decided to seduce the owner of the Twenties & Thirties antique store. Perhaps this was related to a bet she made with a friend? Or maybe she wanted to buy the furniture she was used to in her grandma’s house but she couldn’t afford it, so she was looking for a way to get a discount?
He didn’t really want to have coffee with her. He decided to stall. “I’m still expecting merchandise today and then I have a thing I have to go to, so I’d rather—”
His cell sounded. Alice was calling, surprisingly, for the first time that day. She talked for a long time: her throat had started to hurt and also her back, then one of her molars—lower right—joined in. And Felix would surely never guess what her colleague dared to tell her! That she’s a hypochondriac! So rude! Maybe it would be good if he closed the store for a while and went to pick her up from work. And he could also buy some buckthorn tea—she thought it might improve her mood—would he be so kind?
He agreed to everything—he was seriously starting to worry about her—and hung up the phone. He noticed that the woman in the trench coat had been listening in on the conversation. “Sorry,” he said, and slipped the cell into his pocket.
“Your wife?”
If he said yes, perhaps he could simply get rid of her, but he realized that only after he replied: “My sister.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You have a nice relationship. Well, it sounds like it.”
“We’re twins. She’s a single mother of a small boy, and last year another—probably the eighth—man left her . . . and I had just gotten divorced. So we live together, but it might be even worse than a marriage.” He smiled. “My friends keep telling me it’s perverse.”