“Nothing of the kind,” Wittmann improvised back. “Has your Meta come up with anything more than what she first showed me and Karel?”
“I haven’t talked with her about it. I wanted to speak with you first.”
Each knew that the other wasn’t telling the truth, and that they were now forced to hedge in order to keep a semblance of peace.
“When do you intend to see her?”
“This afternoon.”
“Well, maybe it’s best for all involved that you take your meeting with her. Convey my best regards. Tell her that I intend to give her credit for the work that’s been done thus far. And then we can put our collective heads together.”
Mandelbaum said, “That sounds like an excellent idea. By the way, there’s no need to mention my name in any of your writings about this. Consider me an observer.”
“As you please. Meantime, you’d better run or you’re going to miss the tolling.”
“You’re off?”
“I realize I’m late for a student conference,” stealing a glance at his watch. “Being emeritus, you’ve forgotten all about the endless obligations of academe.”
Mandelbaum readily accepted the excuse. He had heard enough and needed time to think. They shook hands with an almost genuine amity. But as he turned to go, Wittmann added, “In all this splendid superfluity of determining acknowledgment, we haven’t spent a single minute talking about attribution. If, just say, it does prove to be a lost Mozart—”
“You know it’s not Mozart.”
“P. D. Q. Bach, Muddy Waters, whoever—”
Mandelbaum couldn’t help but chuckle before saying, “Neither of them is Czech.”
“—it’s a precious thing. The composer had a genius both for breaking rules of the period and for conforming to essential tropes.”
Wittmann’s statement was as simple and solid as one of the square cobbles beneath their feet. For all their joking and obfuscation—“muddy waters” pretty much summed things up—Mandelbaum suddenly wished he’d not acquiesced to Meta’s request that he bring the original of the sonata’s middle movement with him. She was the only person besides her mother who knew it was here. It had become essential that this remain their secret.
“See you soon, my friend,” Wittmann said, jutting his chin. “I’m glad you’re looking so well,” and strode away across the square as the clock began to chime, launching its painted medieval characters into pirouetting action from behind their carved and decorated doors.
How strange it had been not to spend the night with Meta after she and Sam Kettle went out for dinner with their mentor Mandelbaum. Or rather, how strange that it was strange, given the newness of their relationship. She had stayed in Vinohrady, saying she didn’t want to wake him if her dinner ran late, but his awareness of her absence made it difficult for him to fall asleep. He tried to calm himself with the memory that her body and his had intertwined right here, naked in these bedclothes the night before. But her scent and his own, the salty ocean scent of lovemaking, didn’t calm him. Just the opposite.
Gerrit had always been welcome at the Hodeks’ breakfast table, though he rarely availed himself of the standing invitation. Having gotten up at six after a few hours of vague dreams, he made coffee and sat at his desk working for a time, revising an article about the Czech Republic’s evolving emergence into the European economy. When he heard muffled voices downstairs, he decided that his deadline was well in hand and company among friends might clear his head. He dressed, finger-combed his hair in the mirror, and walked down the interior staircase that led from his flat into the Hodeks’ kitchen, knocking before he entered.
Mr. Hodek had left for work but Andrea and her mother were finishing breakfast.
“You not look very good” were the girl’s words of greeting.
“Nice to see you too. I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Love is good thing,” she continued, “but maybe not good for you.”
“Andrea,” her mother warned, and offered Gerrit toast and coffee before leaving the kitchen to get ready for the day.
“You’re wrong,” Gerrit said, sitting next to his young friend at the heavy refectory table. “Real love and I haven’t kept company in a while, if ever, is all. It’s very good for me. I just need to make sure it’s something I’m good at myself.”
A quizzical birdlike tip of her head preceded Andrea’s question, in Czech, asking him to explain what he’d just said. Rather than telling her that one day when she was older she’d understand, he spoke in the familiar role of her English teacher.
The power of the preposition, he said in Czech. Remember I told you the little words are the ones that carry the biggest weight? Prepositions such as for and at are like strong ants. They haul around heavy words on their backs, pronouns like me and it that are a hundred times their size and weight.
But me and it are little words too.
Yes, except when you start thinking about what they stand for. It is love. Me is Gerrit. And I can’t honestly tell you I fully understand either of those things, but I’m working on it.
He spoke in a tone meant to convey that they should change the subject, but Andrea wasn’t finished. Is she going to live with you here now?
You’re moving us along pretty fast, aren’t you? Meta already has a place to stay, Gerrit said, sounding more like an exasperated parent than he meant to. She’s probably going to be leaving Prague pretty soon to look for the other missing part of the music.
Where will she go?
I don’t know. Maybe London. She needs to try to follow where the lady went who owned it many years ago.
Andrea’s mother returned to the kitchen, asked Gerrit if he wanted more toast, maybe a pear or some grapes, then tapped her wristwatch, frowning at her daughter. Thanking the woman, he took an Anjou pear from the wooden bowl in the center of the table.
The girl switched to English when her mother turned away. “If she go, you leave Prague too?”
For all his thoughts about Meta, this simple question hadn’t dawned on him. “I’m not sure. We haven’t talked about it.”
“I miss you bad.”
“I’d miss you, too, Andrea. But I think it’s premature to worry about such things,” he said, knowing she probably didn’t understand the word premature and hoping she wouldn’t request a translation.
She didn’t. Instead she plucked a purple grape from the bunch in the bowl, set it on the table before her, and meditatively rolled it back and forth from one forefinger to the other.
“When she come here next?” she asked in an abruptly tiny voice.
“I’m meeting her professor friend, Dr. Mandelbaum, for lunch. After that we’re heading back here so he can see the manuscript.”
Andrea didn’t look up, but continued her finger-hockey game in contemplative silence. She wasn’t herself this morning. First adolescent case of moonstruck jealousy?
“Andrea, you know what? You don’t look so well either.”
The girl sat unspeaking for another moment, then brightened. Smiling at Gerrit, she said, “No. I am very well, very, very,” and popped the grape into her mouth, then left the kitchen to pack her things for school.
A few hours later, Gerrit himself left for the Indian restaurant where he had agreed to meet Meta and her mentor. He and Mandelbaum greeted each other with a kind of friendly awkwardness, but quickly found their way to warmer banter. Mandelbaum reminisced about Prague’s fall skies leaden with “coal smoke and the cumuli of angst,” and he and Gerrit compared notes on whether Mandelbaum happened to be in Prague when Gerrit was a boy.
This was, to Meta, a propitious start. Sitting close beside Gerrit, fingers interlocked with his, eyes lingering on his face whenever he spoke, she displayed a quiet, ardent affection the likes of which her mentor had never seen in her before. If nothing else, he thought, she’s finally found happiness after a youth stunned by disappointment.
Lunch finished, Mandelbaum said, �
��That korma was delicious, but I’ve come a long way to see a certain manuscript. Shall we go or would you rather sit here and drink tea?”
Outside, the day was brisk but the coal-smoke-and-angst clouds had parted, so that the finials on all the spires in town twinkled in the sun like innumerable copper eyes. They decided to take a tram to the river and walk the rest of the way.
Despite his unsettling dialogue with Wittmann, Mandelbaum couldn’t help feeling exhilarated at being here. Meta had discovered half of what she came looking for. Last night at dinner, Sam had struck Mandelbaum as a man enviably at peace with himself. And Gerrit seemed a strong match for Meta. Not a subject came up during lunch that the journalist didn’t show himself informed about. Even when their talk turned to music, he was able to keep up. Mandelbaum couldn’t put a satisfactorily defining word to it, but Gerrit seemed to be one whose spirit was senior to his years. During his own time overseas he had never once met an expatriate who didn’t bear the cross of some turbulent, unfortunate past, but Gerrit, a survivor of the Prague Spring, seemed not to be your everyday American abroad.
On foot, passing by a rococo palace on Jánský vršek, Mandelbaum paused and said, “You know this joint, I assume.”
Gerrit said, “Bretfeld Palace. It’s called Summer and Winter, the pub is.”
“Right you are. That’s where we can toast the reunification of these movements this evening. I’ve always loved raising a glass where Josef von Bretfeld hosted Casanova and Mozart at his all-night bashes. The boozing and carousing were legendary.”
“Mozart partied here?” Meta asked.
“If trompe l’oeil walls could speak, right?”
The group ambled uphill, turned onto Jánská, and Gerrit opened the door. They went upstairs, Meta leading, Gerrit behind her, Mandelbaum catching his breath on the landing.
“You all right?” Meta asked him.
“Fine, fine, my dear. I just forgot one needs a mountaineering license to get around this part of town.”
When they entered Gerrit’s flat, Meta felt a visceral thrill pass down her spine. Count von Bretfeld may have entertained his profligate Casanovas and prodigal Mozarts, but her needs were simpler. To now be able to play two of the sonata movements for both her lover and her mentor was beyond anything she’d imagined when she arrived in Prague.
The sun shone calmly on Gerrit’s books and chattels. The room seemed so familiar to Meta, though she’d only been here for a matter of some sublime hours.
“Mind if I open it?” she asked, though she knew she needn’t.
“You’re the one with the key.”
Meta pulled off her silver necklace, to which she’d attached the skeleton key, went to the secretary, let down the lid. She lifted out the handsome leather briefcase and removed it to Gerrit’s desk. With Mandelbaum at her side, and Gerrit peering over her shoulder with a look of warm pride on his face, she opened the briefcase to discover there was nothing inside.
7
WHEN JANE BURKE, FORMERLY DECKER, wrote back, wildly excited by the prospect of her wartime bosom buddy coming out to Texas to visit, maybe finding a job and a place to live, Otylie was torn. Mr. and Mrs. Sanders would want to let her go sometime soon. Their children were growing up, and though it had been home for more than seven years, she couldn’t stay in the maid’s room on East Eighty-Sixth Street forever. Yet despite having reached out to Jane, the prospect of pulling up roots and reinventing herself anew was a daunting, exhausting idea. She made a telephone call to her secretary friend in Manhattan and, in something resembling a final effort at making a go of it here, she agreed to attend the next dance at the club they’d spoken of in the bistro that night.
“Good for you, kiddo,” her friend enthused.
The band was loud, the crooner creepy, the room smoky, the atmosphere desperately festive. Otylie was dressed to the nines, as her girlfriend put it, and threw herself into the dance with all the abandon she could muster. The problem was, she quickly understood, abandon wasn’t a state one mustered. Either you gave yourself over to all the fun, fully and openly, or you faked it, which was far worse than sitting on the sidelines.
She was surprised by how many gentlemen found her attractive enough to invite her out onto the floor. She’d learned some of the dance steps popular with these Yankees when living in London, although there she only danced with other gals. But none of it meant anything to her. She went home more dejected than ever, feeling like a fraud. It was as if happiness was way over there, Otylie was way over here, and between them stretched an impervious membrane.
When she gave notice, Adele Sanders told her to take all the time she needed. Grace was more upset than Otylie might have expected. The poor girl promised to play Schubert every day, to spend more time with Otylie, to take her out with her girlfriends to the soda shoppe. All of this, Otylie wrote to Jakub in her diary, only makes me miss you more.
Late winter, 1955. Jane had scouted out a one-bedroom efficiency apartment that would become available for Otylie to rent on the first of May if she wanted it. None of the standard first and last months’ rent would be required, since Jane’s husband, Jim, was a childhood friend of the owner. There were all sorts of odd jobs available, Jane assured her, but if she wanted to pursue her music teaching, they could rent a piano and get her set up. She had a few acquaintances who had children of the right age to take lessons.
Otylie wrote back saying yes. Privately, she wasn’t sure about the teaching scheme, recalling that she had been able to tutor Grace only so far before having to give her up to a seasoned piano teacher. If only she had learned to speak French or, God forbid, even German, some tongue these Americans might be interested in learning, she could have become a language instructor. She was sure nobody, but nobody, in Texas gave a hoot about learning Czech. Still, it was time she moved on, and if taking on music students was the best way for her to make ends meet, so be it. Besides, with practice, she could become more seasoned herself.
She had one final encounter in New York to live through, anyway, as fate would have it. One morning in April, the first that promised an end to the wintry snow and brash wind swirling down the city’s corridors, Otylie saw Irena Svobodová walking on the opposite side of Park Avenue around Sixty-Fifth Street. She was wearing a red knee-length coat and a black fur hat, and she strode with Irena’s unmistakable gait. The lights were against Otylie, so she paced along, parallel to her friend, on the west side of the avenue. She would have crossed, running through traffic to reach the island median, and darted again through uptown traffic to the other side, but the lanes were thick with cars and taxis. Careful not to lose sight of the woman, she became more convinced with each step that she was in fact following Irena. She even caught a distant glimpse of her familiar profile as the woman glanced to the left before crossing the street, continuing uptown.
The lights finally changed and Otylie ran, colliding with a man carrying a briefcase as she dashed across Park Avenue.
“I’m so sorry,” she mumbled, reaching down to retrieve his fedora, which lay on the pavement. He reprimanded her for not looking where she was going, but she didn’t hear his words. Running up the sidewalk past the Armory, she was frantic at having lost sight of Irena. She pushed her way past other pedestrians, apologizing as she threaded her way along. At the corner of Park and Seventy-Third she bounded into the crosswalk against the red light, barely dodging a car, brushing up against a bicyclist who shouted at her.
Then she saw that red coat again. Slow down, Irena, she thought. The figure was nearly two blocks ahead of her. Otylie broke into an open run now. To avoid jostling others on the sidewalk, she ran alongside the curb, stepping out into the gutter when necessary, hoping not to be struck from behind. She was within a block of her friend when a car honked. She swiveled about, jumped back on the curb, buffeted by the hard breeze of the vehicle as it swept past her barely a foot away. Her heart was thudding in her breast. When she turned, facing north again, Irena was nowhere to be seen.
Must have dropped down a side street, she thought, and continued to hurry uptown. For the next two hours, she walked up and down every cross street between Madison and Lexington Avenues, over to Third, from the Seventies up into the Nineties. Her search proved fruitless. No Irena was to be found. And though she went back to the same neighborhood day after day for the better part of the next month, having searched the telephone directory in vain for an Irena Svobodová, the woman in the red coat and black fur hat never turned up again. Desperate, she confided to Adele what had happened.
“Irena. Wasn’t that your daughter’s name?” she asked.
Otylie had nearly forgotten her pathetic little fabrication during that first interview with Mrs. Sanders. Her first impulse was to say, simply, that she’d named her daughter after this friend. Instead, she confessed.
“I have never lied to you or anybody in your family since,” she said, holding back tears. “I hope you don’t think I’m a bad woman.”
“That’s the last thing I’d ever think about you,” Adele Sanders said, cupping her hand on Otylie’s arm. “I do have to admit you had me completely convinced. But, you know, we all bend the truth now and then, and you meant no harm. So let’s just let it go, all right?”
“Thank you, Mrs. Sanders.”
“About your friend, Irena,” she continued, and suggested they run a classified ad in the Times and other local newspapers.
It was a good idea but produced no results. As the days passed, Otylie began to doubt what she had seen. After all, she thought, it wasn’t as if she recognized her old friend’s face absolutely, without any shadow of a doubt. Grace and Billy’s father offered to hire a private detective to search for her, but Otylie gratefully declined. She convinced herself that any investigator would be chasing a specter, a dead idea rather than a living woman.
The entire Sanders family accompanied Otylie to the Port Authority Terminal, where she caught her bus to Texas. Another departure, another schism. This time, however, was the first in which she experienced anything approaching feelings of joy, bittersweet as they were. Seeing Grace and Billy and their parents waving to her as she boarded the bus was utterly novel. Every other leave-taking in her life had been accomplished by herself. No one had ever said goodbye to her at a train station or ship pier. And in times past, whoever awaited her at the far end of her journey was someone she had never met before. The thought of Jane standing in an Austin bus station at the end of this long ride gave rise to a sense of wary hope. It fluttered in her body like a palpable, living thing. Like a rare little bird, or an exotic dragon whose wings were both vigorous and invisible.
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