After the flood, he would wish she’d simply shown him the cut. Maybe she didn’t because she was afraid he would want to protect, or avenge, her. Or she thought showing him the cut meant letting Pavel into the room with them, her leg as clear a warning as a third eye. Maybe she wanted to avoid Pavel and Rockefeller as badly as he did.
He never understood why she didn’t say the one thing that would have made him focus and say, yes, they should leave, of course, his past had to wait.
As he watched her, his breaths matched rhythm with hers, and the rise and fall of her breasts mirrored something within him. Outside, he heard an explosion, but the danger was far off. Even the ghost was gone.
VII
Somehow, somehow, she’d fallen asleep. The flood covered the streets now, rubble washing into Old Town. She sat up and stared across the room at Pavel’s Golem. She’d bought it as a joke and he’d kept it as a good luck charm. She looked for his latest painting, but then her leg throbbed and she remembered where she was. Rain tapped at the window. Tee sprawled across the sheets, snoring lightly, a cute, predictable snore. Her toes were wet. It was the first time in a dozen years that she hadn’t slept beside Pavel. Where had Tee got the Golem?
She stepped slowly toward the bathroom. Out the window, Prague was a layer of water. Inside, the room was as small as her leg. Her calf stung. She wriggled her toes, and she wanted to get rid of the remaining rainwater from the walk over. She felt dirty, a part of the flood. On the couch, Tee’s phone rang. She picked up quickly, not wanting to wake him, and it was his father.
“Are you my son’s girlfriend?” his father said, his tone patronizing. She realized he must think she was a twenty-two-year-old girl. “Put him on.”
“Do you think you have got the right to ask me that?”
“Excuse me? Tee called me earlier.”
“You need to be a better father to him,” she said, and hung up. From the whine in his voice when he said Tee had called him earlier, she knew that his father would not call again. She felt sorry for Tee, but no matter what he said about accepting the past, she wanted him to think about her when he looked at her. America was too much on his mind. Maybe that was what Pavel had meant about Tee holding the door for himself, not even long enough to let himself through. Or maybe it was just about how Tee looked Korean but was American.
She turned the phone to vibrate. Tee had two messages. One was from a woman, Ynez. The other was from Pavel: You be sorry. In the bathroom, Katka ran the faucet over a facecloth, then wiped down her body. She was naked except for the boots.
The name Ynez was familiar, but she couldn’t think why. She sat on the edge of the tub and pictured a girl in a hotel. She wondered what Pavel had meant by You be sorry—you will be sorry, or you are sorry? It seemed a crucial difference. She eased off the boots, the right first, over her uninjured leg. When her right foot came out dry, her mind emptied of any other question. Not water inside. She didn’t want to see what was there, yet she wanted it away from her. She got the left boot off in the tub and a palmful of blood spilled out. The blood stained the porcelain red. She didn’t want to look, but she wiped the tub clean with the facecloth and rinsed the cloth in the sink. She opened the medicine cabinet. Empty. How young and unprepared Tee was. She wrapped some toilet paper around her calf and slipped the boot back on.
The leather rubbed the wound, and she bit down the pain. She hobbled back to the bedroom. Outside, a family at the end of the street stepped into a plastic raft, father lifting daughter. It was late afternoon now; the sky was already dark. She and Tee had slept through the entire day as the river rose toward them—she should never have fallen asleep. She should have convinced him to leave immediately. They should have gone to a hotel near the Castle, on high ground.
She shook Tee awake. “Potopa,” she said, gathering her clothes. She dressed, not wanting him to see her in only her boots, wanting to get out quickly. She would deal with the cut later. “Potopa.”
“What?” he asked. “Where are you going?” His voice strained.
She slipped her blouse over her head.
“Please,” he said. “Come back to bed.”
“We must leave.” She pointed out the window, at the water instead of the street. The family pushed down into Old Town in their raft. “We cannot get stuck here.”
“You’re panicking,” he said. He got off the bed and picked up her jean skirt. He held it away from her.
Then she realized. “You want to get stuck.”
He tossed the skirt on the bed and put his arms around her. She wanted badly for those arms to make her forget the rest of the city—but she refused to regret that forgetting later. She pushed him away.
“It’s true,” he said, his black eyes shining. “I want to be stuck here.”
She darted forward, twisting her leg. She got hold of the skirt and pulled it on, then rested her hand on her chest, breathing deeply. She brushed off her skin as if a bug had landed on her.
“Would it be so bad?” Tee said, frowning. “Just to stay here with me? Until the flood has passed?”
She turned and walked into the hall. “I am afraid of drowning,” she said, not wanting to fight. He followed.
“There’s no way you’re going to drown. We’re on the second floor.” He grabbed her wrist. “Please.”
“How can you be so sure it will never reach us?”
He leaned in, and kissed her neck, and she tried not to feel angry, like she’d only fallen asleep because of him. She reached for the chicken-pox scars on his chest, but then she dropped her hand to her side.
“The water’s not that high,” he said.
She opened the door, blinking, and stepped down the first few stairs. If it was not that high, they could still walk out. The throbbing was bearable.
“Stop,” he said. Below, the light in the hall reflected back at her.
He stomped down behind her and she imagined the splashes he would kick up as they left. Her eyes adjusted to the dark stairwell. Then she saw what made the reflection. Water. Already up to her knees, at least. Almost to her waist.
No, she thought. She kept descending.
“Whenever my dad left the house,” Tee said, “someone got hurt.”
She lowered her boot into the flood, testing its depth. But after weeks of climbing up to his door, she knew these stairs. His footsteps stopped just behind her. The water rose to her ankle, her shin, a couple centimeters from the lip of her boot, and he coughed behind her until he was choking. Like longing had caught in his throat. Or he had realized at last that they were not safe.
If she wanted out now, he would have to carry her. She knew enough not to let the water in her cut.
“Let’s go up to the roof,” he said. He stepped into the water, barefoot, and put a hand on her shoulder. “The flood will never reach us.”
“You promise,” she said.
“I promise.”
If it was between protection or rescue, she would rather be protected. She was tired of running into danger, climbing up trees with no way down. “Okay,” she said. “The roof.”
He turned and went up. Of course the roof would never flood. She couldn’t let him carry her. She took the steps gingerly. Tee’s black hair dissolved into the stairwell shadows. He was in boxers, as if stepping out to swim. She allowed herself a little hope. He could do that for her. When she was with him, even the history films she liked seemed still undecided.
“Slow down,” she said. Then she thought of something else. “Can we even get up there?”
“I am going slow,” he said.
On the roof they would only get a little wet from the rain. They’d forgotten an umbrella again.
“If worse comes to worst,” he said. “I can swim for both of us.”
“You will keep me safe?”
At the top, he tried the door while she waited bel
ow, her hand on the stairs and her leg raised slightly, trying not to gasp. For a moment the knob seemed to move in his hand, a trick of the light. Then he put his shoulder into it. Twice. It wouldn’t give.
VIII
At sunset they tried to turn on the lights, but the power had failed. He took down birthday candles from a kitchen cabinet, set them in shot glasses on the dining table, and lit one. He rubbed another over the tablecloth, a wax outline: a woman with a baby in her arms. He had never felt his birth mother hold him. The candlelight flickered on Katka’s face. She pointed outside and said, “My mum used to say the sunset was as red as a broken heart. She used to say each time you were very sad, you got a freckle.”
He had been thinking, he said. Maybe his mother had told him now, after so long, because she had to—something was forcing her hand. Maybe his father had said he would tell, or his aunt had threatened.
“We promised we would not pretend,” Katka said.
“What if she’s not such a fucking Sherlock Holmes, though?” he said. “What if she’s wrong?” But no, he was still pretending. “My dad always said he didn’t know my birth mom, that meeting her in the hospital was a coincidence.”
He lit another candle and it burned out as he talked. In the shadows, he thought he might see the ghost. Outside, the water rose. His hand sweated in Katka’s.
When the sun had set completely, they had nine more candles left from Rockefeller’s thirty-sixth birthday in March. They drank warm Krušovice. The refrigerator had sputtered its last cool breath when they opened it an hour earlier. They were hungry but didn’t eat. Tee imagined Korea, his birth mother in the bed behind his father, the smell of the beach where a hotel was building a spa to his father’s designs. The woman in that bed, touching the swell of her stomach, had been kicked out by her parents. She had put everything on the line for her baby, or for its father. Tee went to light another candle, striking a match that flared up in the dark with a sudden blinding light. A siren rang in the distance, and Katka winced and blew out the flame.
“Save them,” she said.
He felt for her in the dark. He elbowed over a bottle and the little beer left spilled across the table. When she lit another match, to clean up, they saw in the spill the wax shape he’d rubbed into the cloth.
IX
Near midnight she pulled him into the kitchen with their long-neglected hunger, and as they made sandwiches, he asked about her father. For a long time, she said finally, she didn’t know, or at least understand, that her father was hurting her mother.
Once, when she was eight, she had walked home from school with two girls who said they’d seen her father standing around in the square looking at birds. She told them he’d started collecting feathers instead of butterflies, though this was a lie. When she got home, she found her father scrubbing a stain on the bedroom doorframe. He wiped his eyes as she walked up. On the dark wood, the stain looked almost purple.
“Your mum spilled the wine,” her father said, scouring the spots with an old toothbrush. “She’s in a bit of a mood.”
“Can I help?” Katka asked. She was used to helping with chores.
“No, love,” he said. “I’ll have got it done in a second.”
She fetched two towels anyway and wet them with bleach as she’d seen her mother do. Returning, she said, “These will help, Daddy, won’t they?”
He stood. “What are you doing?” he said, fingering his whitening sideburns.
“I can help,” she said.
“You know you’re not to use bleach.” His nose wrinkled, and then the meanness was there.
“What is bleach, Daddy?” she asked. She only knew the word in Czech.
“Bleach,” he said. “In your hand, you stupid girl. Bleach. Bleach.” He pushed her away and began to cough.
“Stay away from here,” he called after her. “Just stay away from here. Please.”
When she looked back, his head was slumped against the wall.
She ran to find her mother but couldn’t, probably upstairs at their neighbor’s. Her father hated the woman upstairs, her gentle questioning.
Outside their neighbor’s apartment, Katka heard the woman tut-tutting and the clink of metal and her mother’s sharp breaths. When Katka knocked, her mother’s voice said, “It is him.”
There were scuffling feet and the neighbor’s voice behind the door. “It’s not him—it’s Katka. Should I send her away?”
“Yes,” her mother said, then: “No, don’t.”
Her neighbor said, “Poor girl.” The door opened, and Katka ran in.
Her mother held a towel to her face. When she spoke, Katka saw a tooth missing, an imperfection in her cold beauty. “What are you doing here?”
“Maminka,” Katka said, “I’m hurt.”
“Me, too,” her mother said. “Can’t you see? Me, too.”
Their neighbor took her arm. “Are you okay, Kateřina?” the woman asked.
“Maminka,” Katka said, “what happened to your face?”
“Your father,” their neighbor said.
Her mother said, “Hush.” She walked over and pinched Katka’s earlobe lightly. “It was an accident. You know he slams the door. I was chasing after him.” The edges of the towel were red. “Come here,” she said, bending down.
Katka reached up to her mother’s chin. “Does it hurt a lot, Maminka?” The towel shifted slightly and she could see a cut running from the bottom of her mother’s eye to the middle of her cheek, before her mother covered it up. “Daddy said you spilled your wine. Are you drunk?”
Her mother stiffened. “Let’s go,” she whispered. She led her out as their neighbor sighed behind them. They descended the stairs until the door closed.
“Were you drunk, Maminka?” Katka asked again.
Her mother walked down ahead of her until they were at eye level. “Do not say things like that to me,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Katka said, not meeting her mother’s eyes, that shared blue.
“Look at me, Kateřina. Daddy didn’t want to tell you he hurt me, right?”
“I’m sorry,” Katka said again, and her mother cupped her two cheeks. She locked their gazes.
“Right?”
Later Katka lay in bed with the wooden doll her father had carved from a branch in the spring, holding the doll’s face the way her mother had held her, her hands dwarfing its head. She shook the doll and said, “Bleach. Bleach,” as if the word were a curse.
People always said she took after her mother: their eyes, their quiet defiance. But in the end, long after her father killed himself, she left her mother and their secrets behind.
X
The candles blinked out one by one. They could do nothing but wait. He took a candle into the kitchen. They made sandwiches. She offered to cook, but in his refrigerator were only fish sticks, spaghetti sauce, hard-boiled eggs, peanut butter, jelly, half a loaf of bread, shredded cheese, leftover French fries, beer, and milk. They drank the beer. “What are you getting me into?” she asked. “How did you expect to last through the flood?”
“This is what I always eat,” he said, then flushed.
They drank a bottle of Krušovice each before another candle burned out. He hadn’t expected her to talk about her father’s violence. His hands darted over the table. In the dark, she said, “Pavel is not outside the door.” She mumbled, as if to herself, but he knew she was talking to him.
“If we were out there,” he whispered, “we would have nowhere to go but your house or the café. His house.”
“We could go to a hotel,” she said.
He remembered the college the policeman had mentioned. “You don’t believe I could take care of you.”
They stood in the kitchen blindly. Then there was a crash outside, followed by a metallic creaking, and they rushed to the window. Barely any moonlight shone throug
h the clouds. Their eyes adjusted slowly—until they could see a lamp pole hunched over in the water, what looked like a metal bench clinging to the bend.
She turned away. He pressed his forehead to the cold glass.
XI
What if—he said in the dark—in the morning, we see a yellow raft float to the wall and we climb down into it? Years from now, the flood is the beginning of our story. We live in the countryside and grow cabbages and cook gulaš and dumplings and visit your mother.
Katka left the kitchen, in the shadows, her gait unsteady, and he worried he’d upset her. Had he mentioned her mother because of his birth mother? When she returned, she had the pewter Golem he’d stolen from her house. Another double legend, a creature that had killed either by nature or because of lost love. Tee trembled, though he had left it out on his dresser. She placed the figure on the counter. “Pavel has one just like this. We can use it to tell the future, if your hob still works.”
She lit the stove with the candle. The gas worked. She took his hands and said this fortune could replace the one in his palms. She kissed the Golem’s fat belly. “It is the wrong metal,” she said. “It should be that metal they used to think could turn into gold.”
“Lead,” he said, still trembling.
She wiped a pot with a towel, placed it on the burner, and rested the Golem inside. He reached for it automatically and she knocked his hand away.
“I took it,” he said. “I didn’t mean to. It was just there, in my pocket, when I got home. I meant to give it back.”
“And now,” she said, “you cannot.”
When the pewter had melted down, she asked for a bowl of water. He turned the faucet on and it sputtered weakly—the water, like the power, would soon fail. She poured the liquid metal into the bowl. The pewter swirled in the water in beautiful gray patterns. He held the candle and waited for her to tell him what she saw. But she was choking back tears. “An early death or a coma,” he said, reminding her what was in his palms. “Deep loves.” She weighed his hands as if they carried the heaviness of his fate. She, too, she said, could picture them with a garden, though in a different country, far from Prague, with flowers instead of cabbage.
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