by Sue Gee
‘Six/eight. What does that mean?’
‘House number six, apartment number eight.’ Harriet felt sick. They were intruders, they were unwanted. If they had been wanted, he would have answered her letter. To turn up on the doorstep uninvited and unannounced –
‘Mum,’ said Marsha, giving the map back, ‘we’re visiting, that’s all. Don’t look so dreadful and doomy.’
‘Sorry. Do I?’
‘Yes. If it’s a problem we have a cup of coffee and go away again, okay?’ She took her hand in motherly fashion, and led her along the street.
Harriet smiled at her weakly. ‘How right you are. How wonderful you are. Of course. That’s just what we’ll do.’
‘And here we are,’ said Marsha.
They stood before the door.
It was dark blue, and needed repainting. Set into the wall alongside were the bells to ten apartments. Marsha looked questioningly at Harriet, reached up and pressed number eight. There was a buzz, a silence, a receiver lifted. A woman’s voice.
‘Yes?’ She sounded as though she were under water. ‘Hello?’
Harriet summoned guidebook phrases. ‘Good morning. Excuse me. I am from England.’
‘From England?’
‘Yes. From England. I am looking for Karel Miluvić.’
‘Karel is not here. He is –’
Harriet could not understand where he was.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘He is –’
Incomprehensible, beyond the guidebook. She said slowly: ‘I am sorry. I do not understand.’
There was a sigh, another unintelligible murmur. Then the buzzer sounded, and the door gave a click, and opened. Marsha and Harriet looked at one another, and went inside.
They found themselves in a chilly hall, beneath a winding stairwell. Doors to two apartments were to the right and left; light fell from a landing window. Far above a door was opened, and the woman’s voice came down towards them.
‘Come up, please.’
They climbed the stone stairs, their footsteps loud and echoing. The metal handrail was painted green; the air felt cold and damp, acrid with stale cigarette smoke. They came to the second floor, the third. On the fourth landing the door to a dark interior was held open.
The woman at the doorway was in her late sixties. She was thickset; she wore a wraparound print pinafore over a brown polo-neck jumper and drooping skirt; her grey hair was plaited round her head. She looked at Harriet and Marsha with sharp dark eyes.
‘Yes?’
‘From London,’ Harriet said again, panting after the climb. ‘Karel’s friend. I am Harriet.’ She gestured towards herself, and then to Marsha. ‘My –’ but she could not remember ‘daughter’, nor ‘child’. ‘Marsha,’ she said, recovering her breath.
Footsteps sounded in the dark interior. The woman regarded Marsha and said something. From behind her came a child’s voice in answer, and then a girl with long dark plaits and a bright, lively face appeared at the doorway. She looked at them, and they looked at her, and Harriet felt a quarter of a century tilt backwards and swing, like a great slice out of a clock, spinning her back to a summer’s day and a basement room, and a lean, dark, lovely face gazing at her, as his daughter – so like, so unmistakably, perfectly like – was gazing at them now.
‘Gabrielle,’ said the woman, and then, pointing at herself, ‘Hannah.’
Gabrielle smiled at Marsha.
‘I learn little English.’ She looked enquiringly up at her grandmother, who nodded. ‘Please to come in.’
They sat at the table in a cramped tiled kitchen, and Karel’s mother put coffee in a saucepan on the stove, moving slowly to a rack of shelves on the wall for cups. The kitchen was at the end of the passage and was unexpectedly sunny and light, with a large window taking up most of the end wall, overlooking the trees on Jindris˘ská Street, bordering the cemetery. Harriet, looking out, saw passing traffic, distant rows of graves. She looked back again, smelling strong, reheated coffee.
It was set before them, with a plate of fat iced biscuits. Hannah sat down heavily, saying something. Harriet caught Karel’s name again.
‘My father is working,’ Gabrielle translated. ‘His bureau is in Nove Mesto – New Town.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’ Harriet smiled at her. She was sitting next to Marsha, politely passing biscuits. Marsha regarded them with interest, taking a pink one. She looked at Gabrielle.
‘How old are you?’
‘How old? Eleven years. You?’
‘Ten. I was ten in Berlin.’
‘Berlin?’ Hannah frowned. ‘London?’
‘Yes, but –’ Harriet stopped. How to convey it all? To say that she had been making a kind of pilgrimage across Europe in search of Gabrielle’s father? It wasn’t possible. ‘We are on our holidays,’ she said simply. ‘Travelling. We just wanted to see if perhaps Karel –’
Gabrielle translated. Hannah looked carefully at Harriet.
‘How – how you know him?’
‘A long time ago,’ Harriet said slowly, drinking her coffee. It was bitter, and very hot. ‘A long story. I wrote to him to tell him we were coming, but perhaps he did not get my letter.’
Hannah turned to Gabrielle, who was clearly enjoying her role. She translated, then said to Harriet: ‘I speak little English, my grandmother tiny, tiny.’ She held up finger and thumb.
‘And my Czech even smaller,’ said Harriet, putting her own finger and thumb even more closely together. They all smiled: agreeably, feeling their way with strangers.
‘My father’s English is good.’ Gabrielle spread her hands wide. ‘But I do not think a letter came.’ She shrugged. ‘You would like to telephone the bureau?’
‘I –’ Harriet took a moment to think about this, and Marsha seized it.
‘Where is your mother?’ she asked Gabrielle.
‘My mother? She is at the bureau also. They are working together, they are both –’ She frowned, her English failing her. ‘Wait, please.’ She pushed back her chair and went out to the long corridor.
Harriet and Marsha looked at one another, and although Harriet was concentrating hard on keeping her own face neutral she remembered for a long time the expression on Marsha’s: an unguarded moment in which sadness and disappointment were clearly visible, quickly wiped away. Had she really hoped for so much?
Gabrielle was back again, carrying things.
‘Lawyers,’ she said, thumbing the pages of a dictionary, stumbling over the pronunciation. ‘They are both.’
‘Lawyers,’ said Marsha, having a look.
‘Yes.’ From underneath the dictionary, carefully held, Gabrielle withdrew a photograph – small, in a brown frame. She set it up on the table. ‘My –’
‘Parents,’ said Marsha flatly.
‘Yes. Before I am born.’
Harriet and Marsha, on opposite sides of the table, leaned across. They looked at the photograph and the young couple there looked back at them, smiling radiantly. He, in a jacket and tie, was tall and dark and lean, his hair rather long, as if in the Sixties; she, leaning against his shoulder, had shining fair hair in a bob. She wore a cheap-looking white suit, and lipstick; she carried a bunch of flowers. They were outside a modern building which must be a register office.
‘Their wedding day,’ Harriet said slowly, looking at this different version of Karel, with his would-be western hair, a decade after everyone in the West had been to the barber. ‘Very nice. When?’
Gabrielle tried and failed, she found a pen on the cabinet and wrote it down inside her dictionary, in neat continental writing.
‘1980,’ read Harriet, and smiled at her. ‘It’s a very nice photograph,’ she said again.
‘Thank you.’ Gabrielle picked it up. ‘They are divorce now,’ she said calmly. ‘They divorce when I am six.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see.’
There was a silence. Well. Well, then. The morning lay ahead.
Across the table Marsha said: ‘My parents ar
e divorced, too.’
‘Yes? They are friendly?’
‘No. I never see my father.’
‘Marsha –’
‘Mine are friendly,’ said Gabrielle. She translated all this for her grandmother, whose expression was unreadable. She turned back to Marsha. ‘You come to see my room?’
‘Yes.’ She looked at Harriet. ‘Yes?’
‘Of course. And then perhaps –’
Marsha glanced at her watch as she got down. Gabrielle asked if she was in a hurry.
‘No. I just like looking at it. It’s my birthday present, we bought it in Berlin.’
Gabrielle admired it. They went companionably out of the kitchen.
Well. How nice.
Harriet finished her coffee. Hannah offered more, with a gesture. She offered biscuits. Harriet shook her head.
‘No, thank you. You are very kind.’
They looked at one another.
Hannah was like Karel, just as Gabrielle was like him, mostly in the eyes: dark, intent, expressive. The build was very different: height and leanness must come from his father. Harriet didn’t like to ask about his father.
Giggles came from along the corridor.
‘Nice girl,’ Hannah said with difficulty.
‘Dekuje. Thank you. Gabrielle also. Very nice.’
Another silence. Now what?
‘Karel …’ A struggle. ‘Bureau. You …’ Hannah made telephone gestures, looking at Harriet enquiringly.
A rush of adrenalin. Well – yes. Why not? ‘Please,’ she said. ‘If you give me the number –’
Hannah rose; Harriet followed her out of the kitchen. They went down the dark corridor. Kilims hung on the walls; there were brown-painted doors. More giggles: they looked into Gabrielle’s room.
‘Hello.’
‘Hi.’ Marsha, looking happier than Harriet had seen her all holiday, was curled up next to Gabrielle on a bed pushed up against the wall. They were sharing a comic. Posters of pop stars were on the wall, there was a crowded bookcase, with more photographs on the top, a desk at the window, a rug on the floor.
‘How snug.’
‘Snug?’ asked Gabrielle, and her accent made the word sound so comical that they all burst out laughing.
‘Snug?’ mimicked Marsha.
The two girls clutched at each other.
Harriet left them to it, following Hannah to a sitting room at the far end. The room was neatly kept, furnished with a mixture of what looked like Fifties armchairs and shiny sideboard, and rugs which might have come from Habitat. Enormous house plants stood at the balcony window, an ancient black telephone stood on a spindly table, with a worn address book.
‘I speak.’ Hannah picked up the phone and dialled, and Harriet, now, was no longer trying to suppress a tide of nervous excitement. Hannah was answered, she asked for Karel; she explained the situation. Harriet needed no Czech to understand: visitor from London – a little girl like Gabrielle, yes – her own name, with a heavy accent, an astonished silence. Yes, yes, it was Harriet. Hannah passed the receiver with a smile.
‘Hello?’
‘Harriet?’
‘Karel?’
‘It is really you?’
‘It is really me. I –’ she stopped, overwhelmed by nerves. Hannah was quietly leaving the room. ‘How are you?’ she asked. ‘It’s a very long time –’
‘It is for ever.’ He was laughing, he was delighted. ‘What are you doing in Prague?’
I came to look for you – No.
‘I’m on holiday. I’m a teacher, we have a long summer break. I brought my daughter.’ She swallowed. ‘You didn’t get my letter?’
‘Your letter? From university? I remember. You gave me –’ A hesitation. ‘The brush-off? The boot? I have the right expression?’
‘Oh, Karel –’
Since it is so hard for us to communicate, perhaps it is better that we do not try … I shall always remember you with affection …
How could she have done that? Hurrying across the campus, dropping it into a letterbox, forgetting all about him –
‘Not that letter. I wrote to you quite recently, early in the year, when I was planning this journey –’
‘I did not receive it. If I had received it I would have replied, naturally. So –’ She could sense him glance at his watch. ‘I am working now, but we must meet.’
‘Yes, yes, I’m sorry to disturb you. What – have you got time to tell me what you are doing now? You are a lawyer, you finished your studies. I’m so pleased.’
‘Yes. I shall tell you more when we meet. The telephone is not always such a good idea –’
‘Of course. Well –’ Should she go to his office, or was that an intrusion? Would his friendly ex-wife mind a visit from the past?
‘Listen. If you stay there, my mother will look after you. I come home for lunch on Saturdays.’
‘That would be lovely. Thank you.’
‘And your daughter? She and Gabrielle are friends?’
‘They seem to be.’
‘What is she called?’
‘Marsha.’
‘Marsha. It is a diminutive?’
‘No. It’s just Marsha.’ She hesitated. ‘Her father chose it.’
‘And he is with you now, your husband?’
‘No, no. We separated a long time ago.’
‘I see. Well – I shall finish here at just after one – I’ll be home by two. Yes? That suits you? Or perhaps you have other plans for this afternoon?’
‘No. No other plans. That would be fine.’ She looked at her watch. Perhaps, in the intervening hours, she could visit Kafka’s grave.
‘You can visit Kafka’s grave,’ said Karel. ‘Would it interest you?’
‘Yes. I was just thinking that.’
‘Naturally. It is like this always. No one comes to visit me, they come only for Kafka.’
She smiled. ‘It’s in the New Jewish Cemetery, isn’t it? Will I find it all right?’
‘There are signs in five languages.’
‘Ah. And Palach?’
‘He is in the Olsanska Cemetery nearby – you have a map for all this sightseeing? Good. There are janitors, they will show you Palach.’
‘Good. Thank you. I shall visit them both.’ She could hear another phone ring in his office. ‘I must let you go. I’ll look forward to seeing you.’
‘And I you, also. Now if you will kindly pass me my mother –’
Harriet went down the long dark corridor to fetch her. The girls in the bedroom were quietly content, she could feel it. As Hannah returned to the telephone, she put her head round their door.
‘Snug as a bug in a rug?’
They were helpless.
‘Listen,’ said Harriet, as they rolled. ‘Marsha. Listen, please. I’ve spoken to Karel –’
‘What?’ She stopped laughing and shot upright. ‘What happened? What did he say?’
Harriet explained things. ‘And until Hannah is kind enough to give us lunch, I thought I’d go for a walk, if she doesn’t mind, and visit the cemetery.’
‘That sounds fun.’
‘Kafka,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Everyone comes to see this grave.’
‘Would you like to come with me?’ Harriet asked. ‘Marsha – would you like –’
Marsha looked at her. ‘Do I have to?’
‘No, but –’
‘I can stay here.’ She turned to Gabrielle. ‘Can I?’
‘You do not know this writer?’ Gabrielle looked at her with mock severity.
‘What did he write?’
‘The Castle –’
‘The same castle near where we are staying,’ Harriet put in, hearing the telephone being put down, and Hannah returning. ‘Up on the hill behind us.’
‘The Trial,’ continued Gabrielle. ‘Metamorphosis.’
‘What?’
‘You do not know this story? It is about a man who wakes in the morning and finds he is a fly.’
Marsha looked at he
r. They almost fell off the bed.
‘Idiot,’ said Harriet, with affection. Hannah was beside her. ‘Gabrielle, your services, please. Will you be kind enough – listen – will you be kind enough to explain to your grandmother? And thank her very much for having us?’
Gabrielle explained. Marsha spluttered.
‘You’re hysterical,’ said Harriet.
‘And you’re historical.’ She wiped her eyes.
‘Very funny. So. I shall leave you to it?’
‘Please.’
Out in the corridor, Harriet, on impulse, took Hannah’s hand. ‘Thank you. You are very kind.’
‘Please. Nothing. We eat –’ she pointed to her watch, indicating one o’clock.
Harriet nodded, and went to the front door. For a moment, as she closed it behind her, and began the descent of the echoing stairwell, she wondered: was it all right? Leaving Marsha with strangers, people they’d barely met? Well, yes it was. They did not feel like strangers.
‘Mum?’ A voice from above, a sudden dash of footsteps. She stopped abruptly, turning. Marsha came flying down towards her.
‘Hey –’
‘It’s all right. Just – you don’t mind, do you? Going off on your own?’
‘Oh, Marsha –’
They stood on the stairs and hugged.
‘My dear companion,’ said Harriet. ‘Thank you. Yes, I’ll be fine. I’ve dragged you round quite enough for a bit, haven’t I?’
‘So long as you’re okay.’ A pause. ‘She’s nice, isn’t she?’
‘Gabrielle? She’s lovely, yes. Go on, off you go and enjoy yourself. I’ll see you soon.’
‘And then we’ll see Karel.’
‘And then we’ll see Karel.’ She felt light with anticipation.
‘Did he sound nice?’
‘Very nice.’
A last hug, and Marsha raced back up the stairs.
Harriet continued her descent, passing closed doors, smelling the cold, unpleasantly acrid air. The windows on the landings were grimy, cigarette butts lay on the stairs. Everyone smoked in Prague.
‘They’re sexy as hell, and they kill you – what do I care?’
She pushed away the memory, going out into the street.
‘What have I in common with the Jews? I have scarcely anything in common with myself.’