On St. Cecilia’s Day, in late November, she sat down on a bench in the cemetery and didn’t wake up until after dark. She was chilled to the bone, and the stars spread across the sky looked magnificent, even if she didn’t know a single one of their names. She walked straight to the train from the cemetery, and when she got home she felt even sicker than she had initially thought. Even tea with rum and onion juice squeezed into it, Aunt Anna’s recipe that had carried her father through the trenches on the Italian front in World War I, didn’t help. When the local doctor came and examined her, she immediately ordered Květa to be taken to the hospital with pneumonia. Alice took over caring for Aunt Anna, dividing her time between work, the hospital, and her aunt. Aunt Anna was saddened, not because she didn’t trust medical science — in fact just the opposite, it was one of the things in which her faith had gradually grown — but because she could glimpse a hint of resignation and weariness in Květa’s eyes. Nothing can top the experience of a nearly hundred-year-old woman, she liked to say, although what she never added was that many of her friends had also had eyes full of resignation and weariness a few months before she had seen them for the last time. Everyone would like to be able to see into the future, she reflected. Or at least nearly everyone. But if the poor souls only knew what awaited them, some of them might wish they hadn’t. She was feeling lonely, so when cousin Jiří was given a car for work and offered to bring her over for dinner every other day, nobody was as grateful for it as she was. If she’d learned anything in all her years it was that nothing fends off death more effectively than the foolishness and reckless optimism of youth. And so several times a week the cousin came and picked her up in his car. Eventually he got used to her excruciating slowness, and it pleased her to no end having a bright red car parked in front of her building. One day after dinner, when Jiří was out of hearing, Aunt Anna boasted to Alice that she had discovered the last remnants of vanity in her dotage. After all those years spent nowhere but inside her apartment and in and around the neighborhood park, she was amazed at how the city had changed. New buildings. Repaired facades. So many cars and renamed streets. Eventually those rides became the highlight of her week. “You know, the strange thing is, Ali,” she said one day, “I noticed that your cousin inflames even me, an old lady, with lust. Of course not in any way that you would understand. You’re still too young for that.”
“So what is it like, Aunt Anna?” Alice asked.
“Well, for one thing, I stopped taking those pills the doctor gave me to help with my breathing. Whenever that boy is around I breathe fine. And I don’t seem to need them the rest of the time either, so I just keep them stored in a drawer for when he goes back to England. Now I don’t want you to think it’s him. I mean, it is, because he’s a young man. Men are a basic part of life. No woman should be without one, remember that.”
The conversation was starting to remind Alice a little too much of her aunt’s favorite topic, and as her mind raced, wondering how to change the subject, all of a sudden Jiří materialized out of nowhere. “So what about you, Aunt Anna. Did you ever have a man?”
Aunt Anna turned her wrinkled face to him, and to both his and Alice’s surprise she slowly broke into a wide smile. “Well, of course I had one, my dear boy. His name was Bedřich and he had the most beautiful mustache in the world. I’m sure you would laugh if you saw him now, but in those days it was the fashion. It’s been a good forty years since he passed away.”
Finally Aunt Anna had a chance to look at the collection in the display case as well. She had a small frame and couldn’t stand too long, so she asked Jiří to take the items out, so she could look at them under the lamp after dinner, before he drove her home. The first one that captured her attention was the medal. “They did a very nice job with it. Really very nice,” she commented after thoroughly examining it under a magnifying glass. Jiří realized it had been a long time since he had seen anyone study an object like that. Aunt Anna and her slow movements existed in a different time zone. One in which the careful examination of things and people still brought satisfaction. As she inspected the medal, she leaned against the backrest of the chair in a way that suggested she was thinking. She studied the moldavites and delicate Celtic agates. She was intrigued by the copies of castings of Indian seals, remarking that she had seen the animal depicted on one of them during a trip to Poland in 1934. “I believe they call it a bison. I don’t know what it would be doing in India,” she said, emphasizing her astonishment. One by one she scrutinized each item. Unlike Josef and Květa, who had collected the objects years ago, Aunt Anna was more interested in the future than in the past, and her attentive inspection was actually intended as a way of showing respect for Alice. Finally Jiří took out the two big sheets of paper pinned to the wooden rear wall of the case. As he handed them to Aunt Anna, she made a critical face at the arrowlike designs pointing in all directions. “How this fits in is a mystery to me.” She paused a moment, then added: “The nice thing is the drawing is big enough that I don’t need a magnifying glass, like I do for those stones or the medal, but on the other hand we don’t even know whether it’s right side up or not. It could be upside down and I wouldn’t know the difference.” She examined the two sheets covered with wedge-shaped marks until dinnertime. When Jiří drove her home that night, Aunt Anna said to him on the stairs: “I think Josef left behind a surprise for us.” Jiří’s thoughts had veered off in an entirely different direction, so it took him a moment to reorient. “What kind of surprise?” he asked.
“I’m not exactly sure,” Aunt Anna replied, “but I noticed he sketched the marks in pencil first and then inked them in afterward. So if Josef put that much work into it, I figure it might mean something.”
“So Mr. Černý did that?” Jiří asked.
“Oh, I’m positive. His signature is there, and on the other side it says something about a surprise and Květa. I can’t remember anymore what.”
“I’ll take a look at it with you next week,” Jiří said. They had reached their destination, and he had to keep running back downstairs to switch on the light, which was perfectly timed to keep going out whenever they reached the middle of the staircase.
“Good-night, my boy,” Aunt Anna said when she finally reached her door. “Drive safely, and by the way, do you have a girlfriend?”
“Well, I might still have one,” he said.
“Might? Do you know or don’t you?”
“She’s in Paris.”
“Paris? Well, you might as well not have one then. Either she’s here, or you’re there, or you find somebody here. I know what I’m talking about, boy,” she said, wagging her cane at him and shuffling through the door.