Fires in the Dark

by Louise Doughty

  Marie said gently, ‘This is Emil Růžička. You remember him, from the camp? Anna Růžičková’s son.’

  The woman’s expression did not change. Jan Malík’s face had no expression at all.

  Yenko turned to Marie. ‘They can’t stay here. I’m going to look at the flat upstairs. Are you sure the people who lived there were Germans?’

  Líba Malíková answered him by spitting on the floor.

  ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Marie. As they left the basement she turned back to her parents and said, ‘You don’t need to lock the door behind us.’

  From the hallway, a grand stone staircase swept upwards, keeping pace with the elegant line of a brass handrail, up to a heavy, oak door.

  The door had a brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. Yenko knocked it, hard, and they waited a moment or two. He stepped back from the door. ‘It’s heavy,’ he said. ‘I will need your father to help me, if he can.’

  ‘I know where there might be a key,’ Marie said. ‘I watched the woman go out one day.’ She led him down the wide, shallow steps, back to the hallway, where three terracotta vases stood in their own little alcoves, arranged diagonally in the wall next to the front door.

  ‘The top one, not underneath, to the side of the alcove somewhere. I couldn’t really see what she was doing.’

  Yenko felt around the cold stone until he found a small ledge with a tiny iron hook. On it, was a large, old-fashioned key.

  ‘Let’s take your parents with us,’ he said triumphantly, holding the key up. ‘Come on, even if we have to carry them up the stairs.’

  *

  As he opened the heavy oak door, the landing where they stood was flooded with light. Marie’s mother gasped. They stepped forward, into the light.

  They were in a huge drawing room. Immediately opposite them were three vast windows draped with heavy brocade curtains tied back with plaited golden ropes. In the centre of the room was a round table with an immaculate, shiny surface. A huge vase stood in the middle, with a raised relief pattern in turquoise-blue and red; Chinese dogs, begging.

  Marie’s fattier showed no reaction, but her mother stepped forward to look at the vase. She turned back to them, her face full of life. ‘This was above us, the whole time?’ she said, incredulous. ‘They lived like this?’

  They have always lived like this, Yenko thought, but he did not want to embarrass the woman.

  He opened his arms. ‘You are going to live like this, Mrs Malíková, for the time being.’

  She shook her head, but he said, ‘Get your things from the basement. No one will come. If they do, tell them this. Say, my son is the leader of a partisan unit and you must come back when he is here. Say that and look them right in the eye. Don’t smile.’

  As he said, don’t smile, Líba Malíková broke into a huge, gap-toothed grin, turning to her husband, who still stood expressionless, and then her daughter, who nodded and held out her hand.

  ‘Let’s find the bedroom, so you can see where you will sleep tonight.’

  Líba shrank back, shaking her head. ‘We will sleep here on the floor, near the door.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ said Marie, taking her by the hand and pulling her towards the double doors on the left. Líba looked back at Yenko as her daughter pulled her out of the room.

  *

  They left Marie’s parents in the grand apartment; her mother going from room to room, opening cupboards, her father sitting stock still in a leather chair.

  The streets leading to the bridge were crowded. Yenko took Marie’s arm. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Everyone is coming out of their houses. The whole city will be heading for Wenceslas Square, you’ll see.’

  Ahead of them was a group of young women who had put on traditional Moravian costume, red-tiered skirts and puffed-sleeved lace blouses. They were dancing along, arm in arm. Two young men joined them, waving bottles.

  At the far side of the bridge, there was a group of ten or twelve militia-men surrounding a handful of German civilians who were trying to cross the bridge in the other direction, to leave the city. A middle-aged man was at the front, clutching a leather bag to his chest. The Moravian girls and the young men stopped to watch and Yenko and Marie joined them. A small crowd surrounded the militia-men who were surrounding the Germans.

  The man clutching the leather bag was pleading with the militia, ‘Please, my wife and children have already crossed the bridge. If I don’t keep up I’ll lose them. Please.’ One of the young men standing next to Yenko stepped forward towards a large bundle which sat on the ground, next to the group. He drew back his foot, and gave the bundle a hard kick. It rolled away. One of the German women cried out as the man proceeded to kick the bundle to the side of the bridge. Ignoring the shouts of the militia, she ran to it.

  A militia-man strode after her. He grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her roughly backwards, pushing her back to join the group. Then he picked up the bundle and tossed it over the stone balustrade into the river below, ‘Line up!’ he bellowed to the group, as he returned, waving his rifle in the air for emphasis.

  ‘Are they going to shoot them?’ Marie whispered curiously to Yenko. He shrugged. The Moravian girls were clapping.

  The man in charge of the militia pushed the eight or so German civilians around so that they were lined up on the bridge, facing the river. Then another man came forward with a tin of white paint. On the back of each one, man or woman, he painted a rough swastika with the paint.

  ‘Time to help clear up the mess!’ shouted the leader. ‘Follow me!’

  Yenko heard the man next to him say, ‘They are getting them to help dismantle the barricades, put the stones back where they belong. Let’s see how they enjoy a little hard labour.’

  ‘Come,’ Yenko said, ‘Let’s look down the river, the view from here is good.’

  They saw the group of Germans half an hour later, as they strode down Charles Street. They were lifting huge square cobbles from a pile by the side of the road and carrying them to a rough patch of destroyed ground. They had been joined by two young women who had had their heads shaved and their faces smeared with tar. The one nearest to them looked at them as they passed. She was wearing a long tweed coat. Her fingernails were bleeding. She was weeping.

  *

  It was strange to be back at the door to his apartment, unlocking and opening it on to the neat, square room; the single bed, the little enamel pan rinsed and upended on the wooden drainer. He seated Marie at the wooden table and made her coffee. When he put the small yellow cup in front of her, she stared down into it. Of course, he thought. She is hungry. He was hungry too, but in an ordinary way. He knew his hunger could not compare to hers.

  He took some stale bread, and the last two sausages, which he had saved from the packet he had taken down to Mrs Stropová – how long ago? It seemed like another age. Marie watched him intently as he unwrapped the sausages. He lit a flame under a pan to cook them, then served them to her half-raw, because he could not bear the intensity of her gaze while they were frying.

  He was still wearing his dirty clothes, so he excused himself and took a clean shirt and his spare, old trousers from the wardrobe, then went down the corridor to the bathroom, to wash himself and change. When he came back into the room, Marie’s plate was empty and she was staring down into her lap.

  ‘We have not dared to use our clothing coupons,’ she said, in a very small voice.

  ‘We will get you some, from somewhere,’ he said, reassuringly, wondering, what will happen now? How will all that work?

  They were descending the stairs, when the door at the bottom opened, and Mrs Stropová emerged. She looked up at Yenko, and he nodded a greeting, about to speak, when he saw her expression change. She had seen Marie, behind him on the stairs.

  She looked at him, then at Marie, then turned and went back into her room, slamming the door behind her.

  They stopped on the s
tairs. Marie was looking at her feet. ‘That woman …’ she said quietly, ‘she thought I was …’ She pushed past him, and ran out into the street.

  He followed her. She was half-running, half-walking down the road. When he caught up with her, she turned on him. ‘You have a life!’ she snapped, her voice low and furious. ‘You haven’t been just staying alive, like us! You have a home. You have a life!’ Her tone was accusatory. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  He grabbed her arm. ‘I haven’t,’ he said, ‘No, I haven’t. It’s just a room, that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything.’

  She was looking down again. She was so much shorter than him that he had to dip his head to try and see her face.

  ‘Nobody has meant anything to me, these last two years,’ he said, holding her upper arms. ‘Do you understand me?’

  ‘I should go back to my parents,’ Marie said miserably. ‘We have to decide what to do, where to go. My mother hates Prague. My father doesn’t say anything so God in heaven knows what he wants.’ She looked upwards, despairingly, as if importuning the sky.

  ‘Marie, it’s still ending. It’s too early for decisions. Please, come with me to Wenceslas Square. We have earned some time when we don’t have to think about anything, please. If you don’t come with me, I will have no one to celebrate with. The man I fought next to today, he was shot dead, before he had time to dance in the square, or drink. They were brave some of these people, really brave. That woman, she’s been kind to me. They haven’t all been bad. I’ll take you back home afterwards, I promise. Just come with me now.’

  She nodded.

  They crossed Celetná. The sun had come out. Gangs of men were still clearing the rubble. Amidst the chaos, the glass-seller had set up his wares, outside his shop. He had built two towers of rubble, then used planks covered by a cloth to make a table. Over the planks he had lain rows of lace place-mats, overlapping. His exquisite blue vases were set up on the place-mats, and he was seated on a chair by the display, smiling beatifically.

  CHAPTER 32

  The war was over. Yenko was staying with Marie and her parents in the grand apartment abandoned by the German family One day, two women visited and showed them identity cards. They were from the Resettlement Ministry. Their job was to take an inventory of empty properties in the Little Quarter. They would be re-assigned to their rightful owners, if the rightful owners could be found. Some would be requisitioned. The women were not unkind. It would take weeks, they said, months perhaps, for everything to be sorted out. In the meantime, they should make sure that their names were down on the waiting list at the Housing Department, so they would have somewhere to go.

  After the women had left, Marie said, ‘Do you think we should have told them we have been in a camp? I heard a woman yesterday saying that people coming back from the camps will get everything. Any Germans left are going to have to give them their shoes and live off the same rations that the Jews lived off.’

  Yenko shook his head. ‘What about when they ask which camp, and why? They will write it down. They will write down that we are “gypsies”. Since when has that been a good idea?’

  Marie and her parents were sleeping in the grand bedroom at the back of the apartment – her parents on the huge, tall bed, Marie on a chaise longue with a pattern of gold chevrons. Yenko was sleeping in what had been a boy’s bedroom, a small square room still full of wooden toys, with an annexe for a nanny.

  One day, when Marie and her mother had gone out to queue for the new food tickets – the system that was replacing the ration cards – Yenko and Jan Malík were left alone, sitting at the huge circular table in the drawing room. They were sipping weak tea – the women had made it for them before they left. Yenko missed his black-market coffee.

  He looked across at Jan Malík. Malík’s snow-white hair was fluffy, thin – it stood upright on his head as if he had just received an electric shock. There were deep hollows in the dark skin either side of his collarbones. His gaze was indirect. Even when he looked straight at you, his eyes never met yours.

  I suppose I had better make the situation clear to him, Yenko thought. It must be obvious, but who knows how much he is capable of grasping? He allowed himself a moment of small amusement at the thought of how timid Jan Malík would have made him feel, before.

  ‘Mr Malík,’ Yenko said.

  Marie’s father lowered his cup and looked at Yenko – that same, strange, indirect look.

  ‘I am going to marry Marie,’ Yenko said. There was no hint of interrogation in his words. He was not asking for permission.

  Malik’s wandering expression did not change. He lifted his teacup, paused when it was halfway to his mouth and said quietly, ‘Of course.’ He sipped his tea.

  *

  Marie and her mother were not back until the middle of the afternoon. They were smiling, each clutching two large bags made of brown hessian, one under each arm.

  ‘Liberated sugar,’ said Marie, with a flourish, dumping her two bags down on the shiny table, ‘liberated flour, and liberated bread. The biscuits are ex-army rations but they didn’t say which army.’

  ‘We were lucky,’ said Líba. ‘We were at the head of the queue. They came straight for us.’

  ‘They had seen our faces,’ said Marie, untying her headscarf.

  ‘My black skin. I thought …’ Líba raised her hands and let them fall on to her skirt, contorting her features.

  Marie turned to her mother, mimicking. ‘But they said, in front of everyone, Citizens! You are the thinnest people in the queue! You must have these!’

  Yenko shook his head.

  Líba took her bags into the kitchen and returned. When she saw that Marie had put hers down on the shiny table, she rushed forward. ‘Daughter, daughter, what are you doing? What will Mr Růžička think about the way you were brought up? Do you want me to die of shame?’ She snatched the bags from the table and then flicked its surface with the side of her hand. She gave Marie a despairing look, then disappeared back into the kitchen. For a woman who had spent two years in constant fear of capture, Líba had acquired the habits of the house-proud with impressive rapidity.

  Marie turned to Yenko and pursed her lips comically. Yenko smiled back.

  ‘Where is my father?’ Marie asked.

  ‘Lying down,’ said Yenko, taking his jacket from the chair by the door.

  ‘You are going out?’

  He sighed. ‘I’d better go to the Housing Department. We can’t leave it any longer.’

  Marie ran her fingertips over the shiny table. ‘My poor mother.’

  ‘We’ll find something.’

  Marie looked up sharply, when he said we. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve only just got back. Aren’t you tired?’

  She shook her head, stubbornly.

  *

  The Housing Department had become one of the most crowded places in a crowded city. As they turned the corner, they saw the queue stretching down the wide street; a thick, fat queue that filled the pavement and spilled on to the road. As they walked to the front, to see what was happening, a group of four men jeered at them without enthusiasm. Two women turned and remonstrated with them. The first group waiting at the open door was a large, emaciated family, the mother comforting the children, the father holding a baby and staring fixedly at the desk just inside the door, waiting for his turn. Glancing at the man’s thin, set face, Yenko thought, he looks like a man who is rehearsing his name, who is afraid that, when his time comes, he won’t be able to recall it.

  As they passed the head of the queue, an official emerged from the door and began handing out leaflets. ‘It’s too hot for this!’ he said to a man nearby.

  Yenko recognised the voice. It was Josef Kuklak, the head waiter at the Lagoon on Strosmeyer Square.

  Yenko said to Marie, ‘Go and wait at the back of the queue. I’ll join you in a minute.’ He waited until Kuklak had turned, then went up and took his elbow, saying softly in his ear. ‘H
ey, Kuklak, so you’ve turned civil servant on us. I was hoping to do a little business …’

  Kuklak turned. His immediate expression was one of dismay but he disguised it quickly beneath a broad smile. ‘Jan, Jan Michálek, how’s it going?’ They shook hands.

  Yenko shrugged. ‘Very nicely, under the circumstances,’ he said with an air of modesty. ‘Got myself a nice place in the Little Quarter. How about you?’

  ‘I heard you’d left the Old Town. Hauer at the restaurant thought you’d left Prague altogether. We heard Blažek ran out on you.’

  Yenko shrugged again, as if the matter was of no concern. He pulled out a packet of cigarettes and held it out. He was restricted to rations like everybody else now but it wouldn’t do to let Kuklak see that. ‘So what’s going on here then?’ he asked, as he leaned forward to light Kuklak’s cigarette.

  Kuklak gave a tight grin. ‘Why, putting yourself on the list?’

  Yenko shook his head. ‘Looking for something for a friend of mine.’

  Kuklak shook his head. ‘Can’t help you, friend. It’s chaos in there. You wouldn’t believe it. Suddenly everyone claims to have owned a palace before the war. Nobody has any documents. We get women who turn up with three children and lie down on the floor refusing to go until they’re given somewhere to live. Yesterday, one of them died in there, just rolled off her chair. She’d been queuing for days, her friend said. They’d walked all the way from Poland after they got out of the camp, and then she dies just as they get to the head of the housing queue.’

  Yenko looked back along the queue, the assorted clothing of the people waiting, their blank, resigned faces. ‘Are they mostly from the camps?’ he asked.

  ‘Some of them,’ said Kuklak. ‘Some of them have been in hiding, they say, others in prison, others left Prague for their own safety at the beginning of the war to sit it out in some nice little chata, and now they think they can waltz back in here and get their old places back.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘They’re mostly Jews, of course, even the ones who don’t want to admit it. I know the Germans did some really bad things to the Jews but I don’t believe all these stories about gas-houses and ovens. Just look, take a look,’ he gestured with the hand that was holding the cigarette. ‘There must be at least three hundred people here. If they were killing them all, then how come so many of them have come back?’