“See you soon in Parrsboro,” David said. They shook hands. “Then we’ll hear all about your visit with the Queen’s swankeeper.”
They took separate cabs, William to the Tower of London, David to his bank, where he transferred all but a little of his savings to a bank in Halifax. He ran a few other errands. By the time he got back to Durrants Hotel, it was 5:45. The instant his cab stopped in front of the hotel, he saw Katrine Novak entering the lobby. He was incredulous: although he might better have thought, Don’t go into the hotel, he actually thought, We should never have left Islay. Neither was quite useful enough. He paid the cabbie and went into the lobby, where Katrine was inquiring after him at the registration desk.
“Katrine,” David said. She turned and they stared at each other across the lobby. “What are you doing here?” David’s sour tone drew John Franco’s disapproving notice. David locked his arm in Katrine’s and steered her to the bar. They sat at a corner table.
Katrine was thirty-one, slim, as tall as David, with dark brown hair cut short, a beautiful complexion, cheekbones with wide-angled planes, brown eyes. An altogether striking woman. She was dressed in what David called, with dubious affection, one of her “Eastern European bohemian looks”: black jeans, buckled ankle-length boots, black cowboy shirt with silver piping. She spoke English with a noticeable but not thick accent. She was a freelance translator, mainly of mystery novels, “killer-thrillers,” as she called them, police procédurals like Ed McBain’s. Translation fees varied, and steady work didn’t necessarily mean the bills got paid on time. An acquaintance at the Tate once asked David to describe the woman he was seeing in Prague, and he said, “Beautiful and matter-of-fact.” But Katrine was more complicated than that. Like anyone is more complicated.
“I got your letter,” she said. “I take it David Kozol is married. Did your life work out this way?”
“Katrine, first, how did you find me?”
“Well—” She took a pack of cigarettes from her pocketbook, tapped one out, flicked her lighter and smoked for a moment. “You see, that question puts me in the position of humiliation. Because if I answer it honestly, I have to describe how I spent much precious time to find you, which is true. You didn’t have your telephone machine hooked up for months, right? Finally I called the gallery where you teach. Your friend there — someone, what’s his name, I forgot— said you were flying here to Canada, back and forth. Doing this a lot, he said. He said why not knock on your apartment door. I waited these months. I had my work. I accepted you wanted to end things. But then I asked myself, How do I feel dignified in this? Okay, so we were never to get married maybe. Fine and dandy, all right. However, you got to write your letter, but I don’t get to answer? I decided it’s best in person. So I called your gallery friend back. He gave me your landlord’s telephone, who I rang. And he said you just stopped in to pay some money you owed him. He said you were checked into this Durrants Hotel. Simple. I went to the airport and now I’m here.”
“I am married, Katrine. I married Margaret.”
“I’m happy for you. I’m not happy for you.”
“I understand.”
“Really? In your letter you wrote you hope to be married, but no letter after said you were married. That would have been useful, David.”
Katrine opened her small travel bag, took out a stack of photographs held together by a rubber band. She threw them at David, hitting him in the chest. They scattered on the floor. David leaned over and picked them up. “All these you took of me. I looked at them over the past months, my copies you gave me. They are every possible fucking cliché of Prague, every kind of not-original shit, David. Katrine at Kafka’s grave. Katrine at the Jewish cemetery. Katrine in this garden, Katrine in that beer hall. My God, what I let you turn me into. The city I was born in!”
“You came all this way to tell me I’m a second-rate photographer?”
“That would only be kind. No, I’m saying — and it’s just like you not to see it. I am saying you took photographs which associated me with predictable surroundings. Is this over your head? Maybe it is. So, it occurred to me you all along felt I was part of predictable life. Still, I liked spending time with you, David, even some of the nights. Some of them, my friend.”
“I—”
“Let me ask you something. Did you tell your Margaret about me? Did you tell this new wife about me? If you didn’t, perhaps somewhere deep down you haven’t really left me yet. Though don’t flatter yourself, it wouldn’t matter.”
“No, I didn’t feel any need to tell her.”
“Need. Want. Hope. All such bullshit. You know what I always thought? All those talks we had, when you spoke all that — how to say it? Self-deprecation. See, I’m not a translator for nothing, huh? I found the right word. All that self-deprecation you like so much, David. I’ve concluded it’s all actually a form of self-regard, ‘the wonder of me’ bullshit.”
“We had a lot of good conversations, Katrine. Come on, they weren’t all—”
“I think what I think.”
Katrine smoked and David stared off at the wall, out the window. “You know,” she said, “just now, I feel in my stomach it was bad fortune to see you again. Maybe a mistake. Except it was important to me — and my boyfriend Pavel agreed, by the way. Important to me to not send you a letter, but to look at your face. Not be the coward with a letter.”
“There’s probably a flight to Prague tonight.”
“No, I’m going to look at London a day or two. I thought it might take that long to find you. I have a room elsewhere.”
“I’m sorry you came all this way, Katrine. I meant well with my letter.”
“How can such a letter mean well? An idiot would say such a thing.” She reached into her purse again, took out David’s letter, along with other sheets of paper with Czech writing on them. “By the way, I’m publishing my translation of your letter to me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look.” She held up the Czech pages. “Yes, I got back to writing stories, like I used to before I started translating. A few editors asked if I had anything. This inspired me to try again. So, I took much of the summer to work on a story. A very good journal has accepted it. I was paid for it. Pavel likes it very much. It’s about a man and woman who fall in love, then fall hard out of it; his name is David Kozol. Hers is not Katrine. Anyway, she finally — how do you say it? Dumps this David. But he cannot take it, so he writes a letter — this is your letter to me, word for word. I translated it out on my typewriter. He shows all his friends this letter, to try and prove he is a very reasonable, nice man. They all never wish to see him again. That’s my ending. It should be published soon. December, I think.”
“You can’t be telling me the truth, Katrine.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no — what difference? You can’t read it anyway. Unless you pay me to translate it.”