“You knew, didn’t you?”
“No, I really didn’t.”
“Oh, come on, Ali …”
“I didn’t know, but I had a feeling.”
Her mother’s tears slowly subsided. “It smells so wonderful,” she said after a while. “At least you’re happy. At least my little girl is happy.”
“Aren’t I supposed to be the one crying on my wedding day?” Alice said.
Her mother nodded. “They may have taken away everything his family owned, but they still have their manners. So many roses, it’s unbelievable.” After another moment’s pause she said: “So he really didn’t tell you?”
Alice gave a noncommittal shrug. “Come give me a hand. We’ll put them in water, ’kay?”
Meanwhile a few more people arrived. Two of Alice’s friends, the best man, and another uncle and aunt, this time from Maximilian’s side. Alice changed into her wedding outfit and came out to greet them. A blue dress, a light blue blouse, and a hat with a veil. A white dress would have seemed out of place in those times of hope and progress.
After coffee, cookies, quick introductions, and a few sentences about the weather, the wedding party and their guests piled into their two cars, plus the one they had borrowed, and set off on the short drive to a small town outside of Prague. Alice’s father and mother each rode in a different car. A half hour later they came to a stop on the town square. On one side stood a small castle with faded sgraffiti and a priest sitting out on the bench in front.
Maximilian approached him, the two men exchanged greetings, and Maximilian introduced the guests, one by one. The priest shook everybody’s hand, then led them through the streets to a church where the sexton was changing the papers posted in the display case next to the main door. Holding the papers rolled up and tucked in his underarm, he too shook hands with everyone. He unlocked the door, waited for everyone to file inside, and was just about to lock the door behind him again when a group of tourists appeared.
The sexton tried to explain that they were closed, even though normally the church closed on Mondays and today was Tuesday, so it should have been open. The most energetic tourist of the bunch had on breeches and a bright blue rain jacket. He was arguing so loudly the priest, briefly reviewing the sequence of the ceremony one last time, could hear him all the way in the sacristy. Abruptly, without finishing the sentence he had begun, he muttered something that sounded like “pardon me” and dashed out of the church to confront the tourist whom he had identified as the one whose voice he had heard.
The tourist, stunned to find himself face to face with the priest, fell silent. The priest looked him right in the eye. “The church is closed today for a special event. Any other questions, young man?”
The startled tourist looked around at his companions, but they just stood there closemouthed, watching him. “We wouldn’t interrupt. We just wanted to take a look at the frescoes.”
The priest put his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. “If you can change into formal wear in the next five minutes, I will wait for you. Otherwise I’m afraid not. Do you have formal wear with you?”
“Formal wear?” the tourist asked.
“Formal wear,” the priest repeated.
The tourist looked down at his clothes, then at his friends behind him. “I don’t know.”
“I’m afraid you don’t,” the priest said. “Do I presume correctly?”
“Pardon me?” the tourist said.
“I suspect you have no clothes other than the loudly colored ones I now see before me.”
“Well yeah, that’s all we’ve got. We just came for the day.”
“So my fears are confirmed. Well then, seeing as you have no formal wear, I regret to inform you that due to the special event taking place in just a few minutes, I cannot allow you into the church. You are of course welcome to come back and tour our house of worship some other time.”
“So you’re not going to let us in, huh?”
“You presume correctly, young man. Nevertheless it has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said the priest. He spoke firmly but without a trace of irony.
The tourist turned around, and as he walked away, the sexton locked the main door. The ceremony could begin.
The priest gave the bride and groom a long speech whose recurring central theme seemed to be that the woman represents the body of the family, while the man is its head. Listening to his sermon, Dr. Lukavský, the family friend, wondered how much experience the priest had had with women, while Alice’s mother, Květa, hoped her eyes weren’t too puffy from crying. She was also glad the light in the church wasn’t too bright, so the shadows were soft and nobody could really see her eyes. Toward the end of his speech the priest noted that in 1716 the groom’s ancestor Jindřich had been elevated to the rank of count by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, and that shortly after, his son, Mikuláš, had purchased the local castle and added not only a chapel but this church. The priest said that although aristocratic titles were no longer recognized, having been abolished by the Czechoslovak state under its first president, Tomáš Masaryk, it wasn’t against the law to mention the days when not only titles and good manners were recognized but God’s word as interpreted by the Holy Apostolic Catholic Church. He spoke about the unity of the throne and the altar, an involuntary smile spreading across his face during the boldest passages of his long-prepared speech.
Alice and Maximilian exchanged rings and kisses, and signed a document confirming that the state of matrimony was primarily a contractual arrangement, which at that moment was of course the last thing on the newlyweds’ minds. After the ceremony, the priest invited the wedding party into the sacristy. Now, whether they liked it or not, Alice and Maximilian were on their own in the world. They answered everyone’s questions, chatting about the declining quality of sacramental wine under the communist regime. Alice joked and laughed with her friends, while Maximilian drank a toast with a bottle of slivovice, which, as usual on occasions like these, somebody suddenly seemed to pull out of nowhere, but through it all, the metallic lace of their new situation slowly began to envelop them, closing in on them, fragment by fragment. Slit by slit the lacework net descended on them, enveloping them, protecting them, sealing them off.
As the state didn’t legally recognize religious weddings, the bride and groom still had one more ceremony awaiting them. They had to make the trip back to Prague for a civil service as well. Along the way, Antonín thought some more about the sermon the priest had given. It seemed inappropriate in the emancipated era of the late 1960s, which believed itself to be, at least in substantial matters such as these, better than the ones that had come before. The time the priest’s speech took up hadn’t been useless. The objectionable nature of its content had been pushed just far enough that the moment when the bride and groom slid the rings on each other’s fingers was more than merely a fleeting moment of fluttering bliss. The rolling back of the veil, the kisses and the signatures, had been a reward for that stagnant mass of intolerant interludes from which the sermon had been compressed like an obstructive obelisk.
Finally Antonín couldn’t resist, and since he was sitting in the same car as the newlyweds and Alice’s father, who was driving, he asked what they had thought of the sermon. Maximilian said he agreed with Antonín, adding in a slightly apologetic tone that he knew the priest had been preparing his speech for a long time and was very much hoping they would like it. What Alice said surprised him, though.
“What, did you think that he was going to defend the hippies and LSD? He’s a priest, isn’t he? What did you expect?”