Into the bag Rockefeller put his father’s collection of beer steins, the box of photos he’d long stopped adding to, the deed to The Heavenly Café. The radio repeated the evacuation orders. Rockefeller gripped his father’s favorite stein, made by a glassblower who’d turned out to be Secret Police, turning the glass over in his hand. He wondered where his parents were, in a cabin in the Alps perhaps, his father learning to ski, coming home from the mountains to his mother’s cooking. He imagined they thought of themselves as retired, too proud to work or to write to him, too proud to forgive their son for sending them away instead of trying to get them pardoned. Rockefeller had hoarded his connections, writing the names of people who owed him favors in a tiny brown notebook, only to lose those favors over time. At least he’d made his parents leave before they were arrested.
When he opened the box of photos to a picture of Pavel and Katka and him, on top, Rockefeller emptied the bag and packed survival gear instead. Tins of food, the bottles of water lying around in case of hangovers, extra pairs of shoes, clothing, a towel, bandages, first aid equipment. Out there, people would need help.
Then Rockefeller realized that with Katka gone, Pavel would need him, too, would need his last good friend to make him less alone. Maybe need Rockefeller enough to forgive. Rockefeller slung the bag over his shoulder and took an umbrella from the closet. He felt certain he would see Pavel before the flood ended. At the last moment, he repacked the deed to The Heavenly Café. Just in case. A streak of dark blue light loped along the sky’s border. He imagined Katka inside Tee’s apartment: saying, “I do not care about Pavel anymore,” saying, “Pavel does not care about me, only art,” in English, while Tee touched her greedily. But she had fallen for Pavel’s paintings and ideas, things Tee could never give her.
IV
In the morning, the rain still pelting down, Katka still gone, Pavel stood before his latest painting. He dripped on the hardwood floor. He listened to the slaps of the rain, and then he bent to the modeling clay, and with his teeth, worked the clay into the space between his casts and his wrists. The sour taste made him gag. He stepped onto the chair in front of the canvas, then dipped his arm into a bucket of yellow paint. He raised that cast above the curves of Katka’s body, the speckles made by the rough texture of the plaster, intimating dust — but he couldn’t destroy it. In that moment, he didn’t believe their marriage was over. He got out of that room, where Katka had lain naked, on the bed, in the dust, and he collapsed on their sofa, numb. With the point of his elbow, he switched on the TV, for the sound, any sound.
What he found was the flood. Immediately he hoped Tee would protect her and get her home. Then he banged his cheeks with his casts. He couldn’t even wipe his tears. There was no way he could let Tee get away with this. But how to stop the boy? Become like the Secret Police, drag him away in the night? On the TV, helicopters followed the river washing over sandbags into lower-lying streets. A cyclist sped out, water splashing his waist. The news said the flood carried sewage — Pavel would remember that, later. He fumbled the phone off its hook and, with a fingertip, dialed Katka. He bent his ear to the receiver. She’d turned off her mobile.
The news showed workers evacuating animals from the zoo on Císařský Island, in the north of Prague; a hippo dangled from a crane, black rubber wrapped around its belly. A zoo worker discussed where the animals would go, how they might handle the stress. The news showed water full of debris, furniture smashing bridges, wood paneling splintering into dangerous shards. An architect and a former construction worker talked about faulty bricks.
Pavel bit the clay out of his casts and dialed a taxi. He was crossing the city, from one image of his wife to another. He had to show her he could save her. Once, she’d believed he could save the country.
When the taxi pulled up, he was struggling with his clothes. He shouted for the driver to wait. He inched his sweatpants up his thighs, using the friction of his casts. The cab honked, twice. Pavel knocked his wallet over, squeezed some money between his wrists, and left the house as the car pulled away.
After calling another taxi company, he waited outside, wet and cursing. When the second car came, he knocked a cast against the handle until the driver understood. Though how was he to rescue anyone when he couldn’t open a door?
They drove north through Malešice toward the river valley. As they drew closer, the smell of dirty water made Pavel cough. He tried to remember what the news had said about the evacuation, but then the police blocked them off from Karlín. “That’s it,” the driver said. “We can’t go any farther.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Pavel said. “What are you getting paid for?”
“Excuse me?”
The cab screeched to a stop. Pavel fumed. But he didn’t say another word. He knew about the taxi gangs that sometimes formed.
In the street a young policeman looked Pavel over, wet sweatpants to wet casts. They had been sized up like this at anti-Communist rallies. “My wife is in there,” Pavel said.
“No one is in there,” the policeman said. “Everyone’s been evacuated.”
Pavel imagined the water creeping toward them, the buses headed out a different way, the flood carrying the bodies of people who ignored orders.
“This area will soon be underwater, too. Unless you’ve got a boat, you’re not going anywhere.”
Pavel tapped his painted casts together. “I’m Pavel Picasso,” he said.
The policeman laughed. “Do you have a boat, Picasso?”
V
Once, during the Revolution, Rockefeller and Katka had gone to a demonstration ahead of Pavel and had distributed his anti-Communist drawings on broadsides. People happily took them, but Rockefeller grew bored. Some of the protest leaders prepared to speak. Rockefeller said they should speak, too — he could get them on stage — but Katka refused, surprising him. He handed her the rest of the copies, letting go too quickly. As the broadsides spilled to the ground, she stooped and retrieved them. He hurried forward.
He remembered this now as a policeman walked an old woman toward a bus. “What will I do when I get back?” the woman said. “My nurse will come tomorrow and think my family took me.” The policeman led her by the arm. “I came to this building to die.”
Rockefeller started after them, but another policeman turned him around by the elbow. “Is there anyone else in your building?” the policeman asked.
“Tell that woman everyone knows about the evacuation,” Rockefeller said. “Tell her that her family will know she is fine.”
The policeman cocked his head. “Who are you?”
Rockefeller remembered how they’d acted under Communism, when no one knew who was Secret Police and who wasn’t. “Do it,” he said, and rushed off to help others.
He turned back once — the policeman was trying to find the right woman.
As he hurried west toward Old Town, Rockefeller pressed apartment buzzers and shouted into intercoms; he carried children to buses in one arm, and held his umbrella over them with the other. People stopped to ask about the flood, or to share news. “They say a tidal wave is coming,” a man told him. “A small tidal wave.”
A boy ran after his father with a dog in his arms. “Look at these scratches,” a woman said, revealing the tops of her breasts. “My cat refused to leave. I knew something was happening when she stayed up on a bookcase all yesterday. I think the scratches are infected.” Another woman said the police had forced her to leave her husband; he was sick and had kicked and screamed as they tried to get him out. “He’ll outlast them,” she said. An old man asked where he was supposed to go; he hadn’t left Karlín in two years and had forgotten the rest of the city. A boy waving a foam sword said the military was going to bomb a ship that might sweep downriver and destroy the Charles Bridge.