On the phone last night Maňásek’s mother said to Gábina, who Nick’s been staying with since Tuesday (Karolina’s out of town, and anyway seems to have cooled on him since learning of his imminent departure), that he should come by at four. The clock at Náměstí Míru was showing half-past three when he slid by it on the twenty-two. Her place is off the park, before Karlův Most. He doesn’t want to turn up early. Maybe in Amsterdam he’ll have to get a watch. Will there be meetings? Will he have to wear a suit from time to time? How can he think about these things with Maňásek not four days dead? His body will be in that very room where he and Angelika … This town is too small. Splat! There are three girls sitting on a bench, breath pushing out of them into the frosty air like — oh no, it is cigarette smoke. One of them must have a watch; he’ll ask them. They look like the Three Fates, wrapped in long black shawls and scarves. At least they’re not weaving …
The girls don’t understand him; they tell him so in French. He asks them in French for the time. It’s seven minutes to. Nick sparks a Marlboro up as he walks on, drawing the smoke into his lungs. Must phone Jean-Luc and ask him if he’s found Heidi’s glasses. If they take Maňásek’s insides, strip him like an old car, they’ll have enough diseased tissue for a whole semester. And Angelika snipping and cutting at it, too, eyes lit up with revenge: Bite my leg, motherfucker? He’s smiling. You’re sick, Nick, he says to himself — then says it out aloud, to ravens, broken statue, Fates:
“Sick Nick.”
It’s like a little maze just off the park. There’s even a canal here. Gábina knew exactly where the street is: right behind the John Lennon wall. She joined the vigils there each day during the revolution. Nick’s seen the photos: wide-eyed Gábina with candle in hand, peace bandanna round her head, a teenage hippy. The wall’s got a huge portrait of the great Beatle painted on it; below this, a hundred little messages scrawled out and folded, stuffed in bottles or wedged under stones. As Nick moves past these towards Maňásek’s mother’s, the tune those buskers were playing at Jean-Luc’s party runs through his head again, its lyrics vague: something about bad flights, disconnected telephones and unpacked cases, a broken-down country …
It’s an old building with a street door you walk straight through to a mews-like porchway Mrs Maňásková lives on the second floor, up an uneven wooden staircase. When Nick rings the bell, a dog barks on the far side of the door. Mrs Maňásková opens, holding the dog back with her legs. She’s hefty — reminds Nick of Dana at AVU. Around her orange hair she wears a handkerchief.
“I’m … My friend Gábina phoned … I’m very sorry …”
Before he can finish she’s stepped forwards, wrapped her arms around him and hugged him right into her chest. She holds him there, face pressed into her plastic apron, for what seems like a long time, then pushes him back so he’s at arms’ length from her and, with her hands still clamped onto his shoulders, scrutinizes him.
“You speak German?”
“Yes. I also …”
“You’re frightened of the dog? Don’t worry. He’s a good dog.” They always say that. “Come in. Sit down here.” A plate of nibbled chlebíčky is sitting on the table. Another person’s appeared in a doorway that leads off from the kitchen to a corridor on its far side, a tall man of forty-odd. He moves awkwardly forwards and they shake hands: Joost, the man tells him.
“Oh yes,” says Nick, switching to English, “we …”
“You are hungry, nein?” Mrs Maňásková cuts in.
“Me? Oh no, I’m fine. I wouldn’t want to …”
“I’ll just go and …” Joost slips back away into the other room. Mrs Maňásková’s opening the fridge. She turns to Nick.
“When did you last eat?”
“Well … late this morning.” Bread with lard: Gábina saves butter for special occasions.
“I’m going to cook for you.” She turns back to the fridge and pulls from it a slab of wet red meat. The dog, a shabby black mongrel of some kind, is sniffing at his thigh. In Prague’s streets they all wear muzzles; he never has to worry about being attacked. In London he used to get it all the time: they can smell fear, like sharks. Blood too: who was it said they know when girls are on? Heidi? Angelika? Maybe dogs in Amsterdam have to wear muzzles too. Mrs Maňásková’s pulled open a drawer and taken out a wooden hammer. She lays the slab of meat out on the sideboard and starts tenderizing it. On a shelf to the right of the cooker there’s a framed photo of a man who looks like Maňásek but can’t be him because the photo’s old, with a metallic brown pigment smeared around the figure. The photo vibrates as Mrs Maňásková slams the hammer down onto the meat. She spends a long time pounding it; when she’s finished doing this she slices it up and drops the pieces into a frying pan. She reaches for another shelf just to the cooker’s right that’s lined with large jars half-full of various home-pickled produce. There are twenty or so hard-boiled eggs in one: they look years old. Another has shredded cabbage, sauerkraut; another, sausages. She’s trying to roll the cabbage jar towards the shelf’s edge, tickling its side with her fingertips. Nick gets up.
“Can I …”
But it’s already toppled over and begun its fall. She catches it before it hits the sideboard, firmly, confidently. With her left arm still cradling it, she wrenches its lid loose, fishes out a tuft of white threads with her fingers and drops them into the pan.
“Five minutes now. You may go and place your possessions together. They’re in the second room through there.”
Well, no. The green trunk’s there, but it’s half empty. Where’s the Campbell’s Soup-can T-shirt Roger gave him? And the jeans he borrowed from Jean-Luc? A washing machine in this room’s corner has opened its stomach to strew sheets and socks across the floor, but none of them are his. It’s not really the time to ask her to locate missing things: he’ll just have to gather what he can. On the wall behind the washing machine there’s an old poster of the Soviet Union. Must have been for teaching her classes: all the states’ names are written in Cyrillic. It was compulsory, Gábina said: Russian, Soviet history, Soviet geography. Most of these coloured states must be gone now — gone, or going: veering apart like pool balls separating on the break, only Russia left …
After he’s packed the trunk Nick hears Mrs Maňásková talking to Joost in the other room. The corridor’s covered in hardboard, not the usual parquetry. He tiptoes — but it still creaks as he steps back into the kitchen. The dog straightens, then finds its feet, like one of those collapsed wooden figures that jumps to attention when you remove your thumb from its base. Nick steps towards the cooker, trying to ignore it — then changes direction and moves over to the window. What’s he supposed to do? A strange, stumpy tree is standing in the courtyard outside, with some kind of tin-and-string contraption wedged between its two forked branches. To encourage birds to nest? None seem to have accepted the invitation. Maybe they’ve migrated …
“Get off! Off!”
To do this now, of all times: the dog’s hips are pumping at Nick’s knee, its nose straining upwards to his crotch, tongue lolling out and throbbing as it pants, the front feet clawing through the trousers … How could anybody want to own a thing like this? …