Maybe Pavel should have taken her hand, gotten down on his knees and begged. The affair with the American could never last. Later she would want her marriage back, but how could Pavel accept her again? At least if she hadn’t told him she was cheating, he wouldn’t hate her. Grief would be better.
Just before she left, she said it would be okay. A stack of dishes sat on the counter, and before he knew what he was doing, he had swept a cast into them and knocked them to the floor. Ceramic flew everywhere. Her hand darted to her calf. But then she simply wiped off the blood, pulled on her boots, and towered over him. “You had to turn violent,” she said, “in the end?”
He’d said, “If we divorce, you’ll get nothing, since you’re at fault.” She’d said now she knew what kind of person he was. He’d said, “I’ll find you and get you back if it’s the last thing I do.” She’d said, “You really think I would get back together with someone like that?” She’d thought about getting back together. He’d made himself easier to dismiss.
He plunked out into the muddy yard. He pushed down one bare foot as hard as he could, as if to be sure he left a mark. The rain washed over the city, dirtying and distorting. The prints of Katka’s boots already faded in front of him. She had bought those boots after publishing a single art review, in a British magazine — the only money she ever made in her life. Maybe she’d planned ahead for this day. Under the mud was the charred grass where he’d kicked out the burning paintings. He dipped his casts into the mud until they were browner than Tee’s skin, and then he slammed them together. He clutched the casts tight to his chest, in pain. On an impulse, he pressed his lips to one cast, extended the tip of his tongue to the mud, and swallowed.
III
A week before the flood, Rockefeller had gone to Vanessa’s father’s flat to discuss the gallery in New York. Vanessa was the only one there. They’d started fooling around on the sofa, his pants thrown off and her skirt hiked up. That was how her father found them. Rockefeller saw the threat in the man’s curled lips, in his wide white teeth. Then it was simple instinct: in an instant he had one big arm against her father’s throat. He asked where Pavel’s paintings were. He had to save them. He would sell them himself or find another dealer.
Vanessa tugged at his elbow. He realized they must have been reckless on purpose. They must have both wanted to see what they would do if her father caught them. He didn’t feel bad about this. What he felt bad about was that for a moment, he kept pressing the bulge of her father’s Adam’s apple.
A few days later, Rockefeller asked Tee to come to The Heavenly Café—the name-to-be stenciled in black on the café windows, white sheets covering the glass from the inside, islands of concrete slabs and two-by-fours and scrap metal sticking up from the floor. Without Pavel’s money, the construction was on hold. Rockefeller kept listing his past business failures in his head: newspaper, gallery, bookstore, radio program, real estate, city tour.
Tee arrived full of confrontation. “I saw Vanessa the other day,” he said. “She said you guys broke up and Pavel’s deal is off? What the hell?” He closed his hands in his armpits, as if mocking Pavel. He didn’t seem to notice what he was doing.
Rockefeller pointed to the four paintings against the back wall. “You listen,” he said. The paintings of Tee were the last of Pavel Picasso’s unsold art. Rockefeller pulled Tee through the rubble until they were almost touching the canvases. “I could tell Pavel your affair, that you with Katka…”
Tee started to back away. Rockefeller held him gently but firmly. He could still feel the arch of Vanessa’s father’s throat.
A moment passed, and then Tee mumbled, “Why do you have those?” He reached for a canvas. Rockefeller knocked his hand away. “If you still want me to invest,” Tee said quickly, “I’ll give you whatever you want. Just don’t act like I’m the only guilty one.”
Rockefeller had considered Tee’s bribe, the café still a purgatory. Without more money, there would be no whine of cappuccino machines, no rustle of pages, no clink of cups on saucers, no conversation. The only options were to take Tee’s investment or to tell Pavel about the affair and hope that won back the artist’s trust.
Early the first morning of the flood, Rockefeller shifted his attention between his TV and the dark windows until the announcement that Karlín would be evacuated. On the news a scientist scratched his ear and said floods of this magnitude hit once every hundred years, and they were due. The scientist didn’t expect the rain to stop, or the river to stop rising, for days. Other cities had already flooded; the debris was washing downriver into levees. It would break into Prague with enough force to smash windows or kill waders trying to escape. A city official warned that the floodwater would rise through the sewage system and infect open wounds, cause serious illness if swallowed in excess. The water level would reach five to ten meters.
Rockefeller went across the hall to warn Tee.
Rockefeller could imagine the flood washing Tee out of Prague, the affair ended, Pavel saved from that pain — but then he would have no café.
When the door opened, Rockefeller stepped in ready to shake hands. In a few hours the sun would rise and Karlín would be underwater. Tee probably had no idea. Other expats had called earlier, seeking translation. They could go to the café together, revisit the blueprint Rockefeller had lost, make the best of things. He had Pavel’s art, Tee’s investment.
But there was Katka, soaking wet, at night and not with Pavel.
Rockefeller’s hand drew up as if reaching for a balloon that suddenly floated away. Katka stepped behind Tee. Rockefeller’s mind raced: she must have left Pavel. She stared at the floor, twisting her rain-dark hair over her ears with both hands. Her fingers netted at the back of her neck so her elbows stuck out like wings.
“We all must go,” Rockefeller said when he could speak. “The flood is coming. Karlín soon will underwater.”
“Flood?” Tee said. “What are you talking about?”
“Get out,” Rockefeller said. “You must go now.” He pushed other words back down into his lungs, and then he was whispering in Czech: Aren’t you ashamed? He straightened to his entire height.
Katka’s eyes flashed as blue as if the ground had blinked open to an underground river. Rockefeller turned, for a moment embarrassed. When he looked back, she had disappeared into another room.
His hands squeezed into fists, the balloon back in his grasp. “Forget it,” he called in Czech. “I didn’t see you.”
Tee glanced around. Rockefeller had to get the money now — before it could be withdrawn, the affair out in the open. His palm itched. An old proverb predicted violence. But as his breaths quickened, shallowed, he stepped back and closed the door behind him.
Outside, he imagined them in there. Those dark hands on that light face. Sweat beading on Tee’s forehead, Katka’s fingers in his black hair. Rockefeller sent Tee a text: Send her to husband. He hefted the phone like a rock meant for a window. Hours later, in Old Town, he would receive Tee’s reply: She has left him for good.
Rockefeller returned to his apartment to pack. He found the old camping bag he’d taken on kayak trips downriver from Česky Krumlov, with Pavel and Katka and their other friends from the old days, since lost. Pavel and Katka had once seemed an ideal. At their wedding reception, Pavel had stolen his wife away from their party, and when they returned, all the guests had gotten him to bend down and propose again, as if they could have the day twice. The morning after, Rockefeller had even proposed to the bridesmaid beside him.