He kissed your cheek and smiled. “Yes. Prague is clean. That’s why I love it. It’s pure, it doesn’t take liberties with your privacy. The city and its people are one there. Or at least that’s how it used to be. That’s why I can’t understand a place like Xochicalco. I can’t imagine that living men ever loved that frozen stone.”
“I think I understand. Maybe they didn’t love it but were afraid of it.”
“I don’t know. Lie back, Elizabeth. I don’t like your breath on my chest.”
“That better?”
“Yes. In the old days when I used to cross the Karlsbrücke, when I was about nineteen, whether it was winter or summer I always left the city behind me wrapped in fog. Fog in Prague is different in the morning and the evening. And in winter it’s gray, almost white. As if the breath from the statues on the bridge were condensing in clouds. In summer it’s yellow and seems to come from far away. From the headwaters of the river. I used to stand in the middle of the bridge in those days, going and coming from my classes, with the fog wrapped around me. I felt myself at the same time both in the city and away from it. The fog surrounded me and carried me away. Or it took me back, just as I willed. From the Karlsbrücke you can see the entire city but still be in the city.”
“Like taking the ferry to Staten Island and looking at Manhattan.”
“No, that’s not the same. There you’ve left the city. On the bridge, you see, it’s still all around you. You can reach out and touch the Mala Strana and Hradcany on one side. On the other, St. Mesto and the hills of Bubeneč.”
“Those are your names, Franz. They don’t mean anything to me.”
And from the ends of the bridge you can see the channels of the Vltava. They run beside yellow houses and from the bridge you look down on the grass of the river in the background, tones of green that change as the hours change and the season changes. There are barges anchored the length of the canals that flow into the river and under the bridge there are fishing skiffs. The walls of the houses that face the river are decorated with white figures on a dark ground. It’s a tranquil river, flanked by ocher-colored palaces. There are willows along the banks and the shores are pebbled and lined sometimes with fishermen, stubborn old men who use two lines and wear berets and canvas coats. Farther down, toward Hradcany, the castle of Prague with its heaped, asymmetrical roofs. Skylights and chimneys, church towers, Catholic spires, Byzantine domes, Protestant stained glass. The bells of Mala Strana are heard and you can smell the laurels and cypresses in the courtyards hidden behind the houses. You can also smell the stagnant water and the rotting leaves in clumps at the mouths of the drains, and the wild scent of the chestnut trees.
“I walked across the bridge every day toward Mala Strana, where Professor Maher lived.”
“Who walked with you?”
“No one. I went alone. Lisbeth, it’s very hot. Open the window.”
You got out of bed, nude and willowy, and walked to the window. You opened it and spread your arms. And with your arms extended like wands you turned on your heels so that Franz could look at you. His eyes moved up and down your body appreciatively. A slender body, curiously short without high heels, a little loose-jointed. Your ash-dyed hair and the graying hair at your pubis. The depression of the muscles between your chest and umbilicus, the pale blue line of your stomach.
“Don’t move, Lisbeth. Just stand there.”
“I think I can feel a breeze beginning.”
“You look lovely.”
“Do I, Franz? I like to show myself to you like this. It’s like a little secret voyage. Ship ahoy. It’s a slap in the face of these super-modest Mexicans. I play the bitch with these people as often as I can. Their hypocrisy about sex makes me sick. Do you know that Javier’s grandmother used to sleep in a nightgown down to her ankles with an embroidered hole in it for screwing? And before they made love, they would kneel down in front of a candle and recite a little poem Javier told me.” You knelt beside the bed and rolled your eyes up and struck your chest with your fist:
Oh it isn’t from vice,
It isn’t to fornicate,
It’s to make a child
Who Thy service will take!
You laughed and Franz, laughing too, kissed your neck. You went on: “And the old grandfather every time he would ejaculate would cry out, ‘Kyrie eleison!’ and his sainted wife would answer, ‘Christe eleison!’ God! I tell you, Mexico is the most morbid, puritanical country in the world. It disgusts me. Let’s get out, Franz. Tell me that some day we’ll take off together and leave it. Like Magellan or Gagarin. Tell me.”
You stretched your hands out to him and Franz took them.
* * *
Δ Gershon squeezed your hand and said bitterly: “In ignorance there is never justice. Never, Lizzie.”
“It doesn’t matter, Daddy.”
“And how do you know such wisdom?”
“I’m telling you, it doesn’t matter.”
Your father held his cup under his nose and looked at you half squinting as if he were trying to make the dim light clearer. You were in the coffee shop hidden in the mezzanine of the station. He put his cup down on its saucer of cheap porcelain and took out his handkerchief and honked his nose and then he laughed. He dried his eyes and went on laughing with his tongue pushed against his teeth. With the extended fingers of one hand he tapped his head, then immediately hit his head with the closed fist of the other hand. He repeated this several times, saying: “Head against muscle, nothing more, that’s what it is. That’s all it is.”
“Your cold is bad, Daddy. You should have asked off.”
“Bah. Shutting oneself up to nurse a cold is no medicine. Better one should go out and let it breathe fresh air.”
“You shouldn’t have drunk that coffee.”
“No? Tea I should be drinking?”
He touched his forehead, then his bicep.
“Brains against force. Always the same. Head against muscle.”
The waiter approached with an air of bored disgust. He brushed flies away from the stiff cinnamon rolls and sighed and moved his head from side to side. Your hands gripped the cushion. The waiter tore off the check and threw it on the table. Gershon contemplated it for a moment and then looked down and began to feel for his wallet in the lining of his coat. He sneezed and the waiter stared up at the low ceiling and you closed your eyes and smelled the stale watery coffee and the grease and the glue of the dangling flypaper clustered with mounds and craters of dead flies. A faint scent of rottenness came from the flypaper. And the too-sweet smells of chocolate and blackberries and rootbeer. Old bread, fermented sugar, corruption. Gershon pushed a dollar bill toward the check. You opened your eyes and said, so that the waiter could hear you: “So a dollar is a dollar. Whose it is doesn’t matter.”
Under the table Gershon squeezed your knee with your hand and you were silent as the waiter looked at you rather pityingly and turned his back without picking up either the check or the dollar. He murmured something that you and your father could not hear. You stared out at the people moving toward the platform gates of Pennsylvania Station.
“Maybe you want something else, Lizzie? Another drink? Maybe a vanilla soda?”