“Whoever did it had to know the watch hadn’t been taken somewhere else during the flood,” I reasoned aloud. “They knew it was still in this building.”
“And knew it was on the third floor,” Gustav added, leaning halfway out the window as if addressing the water below. “And knew which room it was in. And knew where inside the room it was located. An inside job. That’s what the police thought. I was one of the leading suspects for a time. Maybe I still am. Is that why you’re here? Posing as a journalist to see if my story still checks out?”
I gave a chuckle. Tried to smile but my face wouldn’t cooperate and my stomach went sick and twitchy. So I just chuckled again and it came out all wrong.
“I’m quite serious. You don’t work for any newspaper.” He turned to face me now, head tilting slowly back, eyes narrowing as if weighing the compositional merits of a photograph he didn’t particularly like. “You haven’t written down a word I’ve said. You carry no tape recorder, no notebook, take no pictures. You’re wearing a decent suit. Wrinkled and oversized, but not the suit of an expatriate journalist. And while I’m perfectly willing to believe an American could live and work here for two years without bothering to learn Czech, it seems you would at least be familiar with the phrase asking if you had. At the same time, I don’t think you’re Interpol. And you’re obviously not the local police. But maybe I should give them a call. They might be interested in who you really are. What you’re really doing here. I know I am.”
He took a phone out of his pocket.
I turned to leave and he grabbed for the sleeve of my jacket. I shook him off and was already hurrying away when I heard a stifled shout and his glasses clattering over the floor. As I got to the doorway, I glanced back over my shoulder.
The room was empty. The curator was gone.
I hesitated, then turned and bolted back into the room, inadvertently kicking his glasses and sending them spinning into the wall. I leaned out the window and looked down. The curator lay in crumpled heap on the pavement three stories below. He was less than a foot from the edge of the canal. His right arm was twitching, blood already pooling around his head in a red-black penumbra. I could hear him moaning. He still clutched his cell phone.
“Don’t move,” I yammered. “ Hang on.”
His one visible eye beaded on me, blinked and closed. I tore out of the room, hurtled down the stairs and out of the gallery.
The real problem started when I got outside.
With all the buildings jammed together, I couldn’t just run around the side of the house—I’d have to circumnavigate the entire block the reach the back. I headed one way but dead-ended into some little plaza dominated by a turquoise statue of two men pissing in a fountain. There were plenty of people around—I could have asked for help, but I didn’t. I had to get to him first, make sure he didn’t roll into the canal. I reversed course, headed back up the block, ran all the way to the waterwheel near the base of the Charles Bridge, then raced along the canal bank behind all the little Hansel and Gretel houses.
I stepped in his blood before I realized he was gone. Aside from what was smeared at my feet, there was no sign of him. Nothing in back but an empty watering can and an overturned wheelbarrow edged up against the building. The canal water moved with undisturbed lethargy, its surface brackish and opaque. If he’d fallen in, the current wouldn’t have carried him far.
I kicked off my father’s shoes and dove in.
I swam to the bottom, groping blindly in the silty darkness. I came up for air, dove down again. The third time I started panicking, and when I splashed back to the surface, I was gasping for air, dizzy and sputtering. A woman was leaning out a second-story window in a building on Kampa Island and yelling something at me. I wanted to yell back for her to call for help, that a man had fallen in the canal, but I could barely breathe. I hoisted myself back onto the bank and she kept yelling. By my estimation, the curator had probably been underwater for between three and five minutes now.
“Police,” I managed to croak. I made a thumb-to-ear, pinkie-to-mouth phone gesture. She made an ugly face and parroted the word back at me. I repeated it and she unleashed a stream of invectives. She thought I was taunting her, daring her to call the cops on me for taking an unauthorized dip in the canal. Then all at once her expression changed. She saw the blood. An instant later where she’d stood was only a yellow curtain fluttering in the breeze. All I could hear was a sloshing sound in my head. I put on my dad’s shoes and rose, taking one last look for splashes or bubbles or any sign of the curator upon the canal’s surface but saw only my own wavering reflection, hair plastered and dripping on my forehead, eyes blinking away thick drops of water. And then I was gone. The canal reflected only the sky.
INSIDE THE MIRROR MAZE–PART III
AUDIO RECORDING #3113d
DATE: September 26, 1984 [Time Unspecified]
Subject: Eliška Reznícková
Case: #1331—Incident at Zrcadlové Bludiště
Interview session #8
Location: Bartolomějská 10, Prague, Praha 1
Investigator: Agent #3553
AGENT #3553: Let us summarize what you’ve told us up to this point. A man you’d never met, calling himself Vokov, no first name given, arrived at the Black Rabbit just before closing time on the night of Saturday, September 22.
REZNÍCKOVÁ: I saw him only after we had closed. I have no idea when he actually arrived.
AGENT #3553: This man then told you that he’d been followed by a plainclothes member of the police. He showed you an accordion case inside which were fifty copies of an illegal publication called The Defenestrator. He showed you a copy of this samizdat and said he was to deliver the accordion case to an unknown third party who would be waiting atop Petřín Hill the next morning. He then asked you to help him burn the copies in the tavern’s fireplace, as he believed he was about to be arrested. You not only refused to destroy them, but also volunteered to deliver the contents of the accordion case yourself.
REZNÍCKOVÁ: That is correct.
AGENT #3553: Remarkable. Let’s resume there.
REZNÍCKOVÁ: Like I said, we decided on a plan. Vokov was to exit out the front of the tavern where he would, he was certain, be apprehended. Meanwhile, I was to take the accordion case and ascend to the first floor and take the back exit into the courtyard. By cutting across the open space and passing through the building on the other side, I’d eventually emerge one block over on V jirchářích Street, where with any luck, no police would be waiting. Early the next day, while Vokov was still in custody, I’d deliver the samizdat to a nameless man sitting atop Petřín Hill waiting with the keys to open the case.
AGENT #3553: Are you saying the case was locked? How was Vokov able to show you a copy of The Defenestrator?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: He’d taken it from his jacket. I told you.
AGENT #3553: But he didn’t provide you with any keys to open the case yourself?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: My understanding is that only the unknown third man was in possession of the keys.
AGENT #3553: But how then could he have expected you to burn the documents, as he’d originally requested? Were you supposed to throw the entire accordion case on the fire?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: I don’t know. Only after Vokov had limped up the stairs—
AGENT #3553: He walked with a limp? Why didn’t you mention this previously?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: You never asked how he walked. And it was only after he’d gone and I’d closed the door behind him and picked up the accordion case and made it out the back, through the courtyard and safely to my apartment without being arrested, that I discovered the accordion case was fastened in three places by concealed locks. Even then, it wasn’t until early the next morning that I realized Vokov could never have intended to burn the contents of the accordion case.
AGENT #3553: And you didn’t find that sufficient cause for alarm? There could have been a bomb in the case, for all you knew.
REZNÍCKOV
Á: Unlike your sort, I don’t immediately imagine the worst of people. Besides, in a few hours The Defenestrator would be in the hands of the other man and no longer my concern. Of course, I realized my worries didn’t exactly end there. If Vokov had really been arrested without the all-important accordion case, it was only a matter of time until you people ferreted me out.
AGENT #3553: And that’s when you began disposing of your writings, correct?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: My diaries such as they were, some poetic sketches, story ideas, incomplete novels. I tore them all up by the handful and fed them to the sewers. I don’t imagine they were politically sensitive. But I’ve learned such things are a matter of interpretation and the rules are always changing. Politics don’t interest me. It’s like the joke about the man passing out leaflets.
AGENT #3553: What joke would that be?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: A man is passing out leaflets in Wenceslas Square. The police approach to arrest him but are startled to find the leaflets he’s distributing are blank, nothing written on them. The police ask why he’s handing out blank sheets of paper, and he says, “Why bother writing it down? It’s all obvious anyway.”
AGENT #3553: Was this then when you also got rid of the typewriter you were reportedly heard using at odd hours of the night?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: I got rid of that long ago, after nice old down the hall had mentioned hearing a clackety-clack at night and wondered whether I might be some sort of writer. An innocent enough question, except I knew no such thing exists. But I suppose if really was your fizl7, he never would have asked. He would just have continued quietly reporting me. Perhaps he was even trying to warn me.
AGENT #3553: What did it feel like, we wonder, flushing away your life’s work?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: What did it feel like? I remember next door, the neighbors were arguing about someone named Jitka who owed them money. From upstairs, I heard the Major Zeman8 theme blaring from a TV. The idea of writing seemed suddenly ridiculous.
AGENT #3553: And yet you saved this Right Hand of God manuscript?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: It wouldn’t flush.
AGENT #3553: What do you mean?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: I mean the pages literally wouldn’t flush. I jiggled the handle. Tried a plunger. Took the lid off the back and mucked around inside. Nothing worked. Times like this it would be nice to have a husband, I suppose. The toilet would not refill with water, leaving the first page clinging dampened to the porcelain.
I flipped through the remaining pages, taking in a sentence here, a paragraph there. It wasn’t terrible. Flawed, yes, and not the most original premise—but wasn’t it Marx who said all property was theft?
AGENT #3553: Marx said no such thing.
REZNÍCKOVÁ: I just thought it was something that someone, somewhere might conceivably read. Though State Security wasn’t the audience I had in mind. I gathered the Right Hand materials, removed the back panel from my television, curled the pages into a tight roll, and crammed them inside and screwed the panel back on.
AGENT #3553: Why the TV?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: Because it was so old and beat up I didn’t imagine the police would be tempted to steal it.
AGENT #3553: You then boarded a tram at Kosmonautů station.
REZNÍCKOVÁ: Yes, yes. I got there however you say. It’s not important. When I arrived at Petřín, the tram ascending the grassy slope was temporarily closed. A sign at the station said it was being repaired. Signs like this everywhere and yet no one ever seems to be repairing anything. Why is that? Churches and cathedrals cocooned in scaffolding year after year, buildings left paint-flecked and buckling under their own weight. Have you ever felt like this city is a ghost town everybody forgot to leave?
AGENT #3553: You had to climb the hill because the third man would be waiting at the top.
REZNÍCKOVÁ: The plan called for him to be sitting on a bench outside the Zrcadlové Bludiště, the toy castle housing a labyrinth of distorted funhouse mirrors. Halfway up the zigzagging path ascending Petřín, I turned and gazed down the hill. The path was empty. Barren trees and grass, fog hovering white on the poisonous river. Frost-tipped rooftops, rising spires, and the bleached-out beyond. Parts of what I saw I could not really be seeing, with my limited vision. Parts I must only have remembered from the days when I could see everything clearly.
AGENT #3553: Who was waiting for you at the top of the hill?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: Nobody. Nobody waiting at the top, nobody climbing the hill below. I took a seat outside the toy castle, placed the accordion case under the bench as Vokov had instructed, and watched my breath unfurl in the cold morning air.
I must’ve dozed off, for when I woke, a little girl was sitting next to me. She was no more than seven or eight, underdressed in a thin red gown rippling slowly in the breeze. She was barefoot, shivering. She sat there staring at me for what seemed like minutes. Big black eyes, face pale, empty. A strangely adult face. Grown-up features on a child-sized head.
“Don’t you have any shoes?” I asked. She said nothing, just sat there, swinging her naked legs under the bench. I swiveled my head, looking for parents, a grandma, an older brother or sister. “You’ll freeze,” I said. “No shoes, no coat. Where is your mummy?”
She smiled. An ugly smile, her mouth like something cut with a knife. The girl had no teeth.
AGENT #3553: She was missing some front teeth?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: No, it wasn’t like a couple baby teeth had fallen out. She had the shriveled mouth of an old woman. I cursed and began taking off my coat to wrap around the child. Now what was I supposed to do? Take the little vagabond to the police? Risk missing my contact and walk into a police station carrying a case full of prison sentences? I decided I’d wait until after the exchange and then take the girl somewhere. But then how to explain what I’d been doing atop Petřín Hill when I’d found her? And besides, where had the little girl even come from? What if her parents came looking for her?
The girl suddenly spoke. “Someone is waiting for you,” she said. She motioned toward the toy castle. I stopped removing my coat.
“Inside,” she said. “Someone is waiting.”
AGENT #3553: The Zrcadlové Bludiště is not opened until 10:00 AM. Wouldn’t it have then been closed at this time?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: All I know is the door was wide open. I passed through and found myself in the labyrinth, a narrow passageway lined top to bottom with long mirrors framed by wooden columns. Not even the shivering child on the bench could’ve gotten properly lost in such a maze, but the mirrors were disquieting. Eliška now on the left, now on the right, in front of myself, behind myself, beside myself. Everywhere a multiplicity of Eliška, everywhere the blasted accordion case.
The maze ended in a small room walled with yet more mirrors, curved surfaces that elongated my chin, stretched my fingers, made my arms bandy and warped. Mirrors pressed my nose against my lip, squashed my forehead, ballooned my stomach. Here Eliška in monstrous caricature, taffy faced and leering, here Eliška as grotesquerie, caveman browed, giraffe legged, here Eliška growing from the head of Eliška. Eliška and Eliška, the Siamese twins.
At the end of maze hung an arrowed sign that read To the Battle on Charles Bridge. Another turn and the maze opened onto . . . well, I’m sure you’ve been there. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here, would I?
AGENT #3553: Tell us what you saw.
REZNÍCKOVÁ: After the maze you’re spit out into this somber little room featuring a diorama of the Charles Bridge under siege. A dusty model cannon, discarded muskets, and helmets sit foregrounded amid strewn rubble, while on the bridge in the painting beyond, the Bohemians fought back the advancing Swedes. Weird finding this at the end of a child’s maze. Like reaching the conclusion of a Hloupý Honza adventure story only to discover the last page had been replaced with text from a history book.
AGENT #3553: And this is where Vokov’s man was waiting?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: There was no sign of him. I put down the accordion case. My arm ached. My
hand stayed curled in a half-fist, and only then did I realize how tightly I’d been gripping the handle. I stood and waited, looking at the diorama. On the Charles Bridge, a decapitated Christ statue was perched on his cross. A bit heavy handed with the symbolism, I remember thinking.
AGENT #3553: And then what happened?
REZNÍCKOVÁ: Nothing. I stood. I waited. I grew nervous. I got scared. It was possible the third man had already been arrested. That even as I passed the time staring at this stupid diorama, he could be in a little room like the one I’m in now. Talking to a person like you, telling him where The Defenestrator exchange was supposed to happen. While I stood gawking at the decapitated Christ and wondering where the head went, the police could be encircling the castle, preparing a siege. Like the Swedes in the diorama. Then I started getting angry.
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