He told Katka he’d made his birth mother, in his mind, into a woman who wished to leave Korea; he’d made lives for her in which she met foreigners and fell in love. He said, “I wanted my birth to be planned, I guess. I wanted to be born out of love. Even if that meant my birth father had broken her heart by the time I was born.”
He held Katka’s hand over his chest again. “Now I know I had nothing to do with love. I found out today — yesterday. My mom sent me an e-mail. She didn’t even call. My dad never adopted me. He slept with my birth mother.”
He rubbed his face on his shoulder. “How could I not have known?” he asked. “We look similar. Mom said I used to ask about my adoption when I was a kid, and later, I just stopped.”
Katka swerved her boots across the floor, and grimaced. “Go on,” she said when he paused. He shook his head.
“I don’t have anything else to say,” he said. “Dad used to say the instant he saw me, he knew we were family. He used to say that all the time. I thought his love was a choice.”
She said, as if reading his mind, “Your life is your own.”
“Yes,” he said. “But only if you admit what you’re doing. I went to the same college as him, I left my mom behind, I got into an affair. I didn’t even realize, until now, that I was replaying my past.”
“You have not got into an affair,” she said, her eyes red. “I have done. And it is not an affair. I left him.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “It’s not the same.” But the words died in his mouth.
“You are an asshole if you think you are just replaying something with me.”
A feather caught in his throat. The rain echoed around them, drumming on as the sun rose. He lay with his back flat on the floor, and after a while, she rested her head in the crook of his arm. The hardwood was cool as he smoothed his hand over it, but there was nothing to hold or stow or take.
IV
She listened to him talk about affairs as she pictured the progress of the flood, how high and how far into Karlín, and where they and her husband and Rockefeller were in it. It would have been easier for his father to abandon him, but she didn’t say this. He shifted over and knelt above her. He felt the same desire she’d felt, to lose himself in making love. He kissed her and slid his hands under her. Her skin tightened. She would forget, eventually, the times Pavel had lifted her in his arms — on their wedding night; out of the Bay of Angels, on their honeymoon in France; up from the dust, her fingers around his casts. Tee laid her down on the bed and tried to take off her boots, but she brought his hands to her chest.
When they finished, it was day. The sun shone through the window and her hips ached pleasantly. She tried to think about the flood, but she couldn’t concentrate. He slept with such whimpering relief that she couldn’t keep her eyes open, either. She knew she should wake him and say they must leave, but she longed for sleep. She longed to sleep beside him.
V
He pretended to sleep until she slept, and then he slept lightly enough to hear the knock on the door. He dressed and went to answer it, not wanting to wake her and still in his dream. He’d been running through his parents’ house and had fallen between the slats of hardwood into a strange land he knew was Korea but which looked like the half-formed set of a movie, full of uncompleted machines.
At the door, a policeman spoke firmly in Czech. Tee wondered if he was being arrested, before he remembered the flood. A train rumbled in his mind. He felt in his pocket for his cell and saw the message from Rockefeller: Send her to husband. Tee remembered being brought home by an officer, once, when he was seven, for shoplifting. His father had said, “He’s not my kid. Better take him to jail,” and Tee had felt lost and drifting, as if he really was at the wrong house, instead of how he should have felt: confined, like a prisoner.
He heard a sound in the hall behind the policeman, but nothing was there. He hadn’t seen the ghost once since — when? Since he knew Katka was his alone? If the water did rise and cut them off from the rest of Prague, they would be unreachable, even from text messages, even from e-mail, even from their pasts.
“Nerozumím,” Tee said, waving his hand. “Nerozumím.” What did he look like to the policeman? A half-white foreigner who couldn’t be bothered to learn Czech. Tee kept the door closed enough so the policeman couldn’t get a foot inside.
The man lowered his hands to the floor, saying, “Vltava, Vltava,” and lifted them, faster and faster, up his body. He pointed to Tee. “You.” He drew the level of his hands up over Tee’s head and blew out his cheeks as if to hold his breath before he drowned.
“Nerozumím,” Tee said again, though he understood.
The policeman jabbed his finger down the stairwell and Tee heard the word for water. The man took out a cell phone. “Moment,” he said, dialing. Tee tried to think of a way to get him to leave. Then a voice said, “Hello? Hello?” The man held the phone through the crack of the door. When Tee took it, a voice said in broken English that it was the police. The flood had gotten into the first-floor apartments and he must pack a single suitcase and evacuate to government housing at one of the selected universities.
Tee pushed the phone back through the crack. The danger of the flood was nothing compared to the danger of someplace Pavel could reach them. As he searched for a way to avoid evacuating, he realized he hadn’t said anything yet in English. Before he could change his mind, he bowed a deep Korean bow. “Annyeong haseyo,” he said.
Now the policeman was the one who said “Nerozumím,” faltering.
Tee took the opportunity to throw his weight into the door, afraid of Katka waking but more afraid of Katka waking before the policeman left. He surprised the man, and was able to get it shut. He shifted the dead bolt, locked the handle. He held his breath as he imagined the policeman breaking down the door.
From the other room, Katka whimpered with sleep, and he made himself wait to go to her. Outside came a frustrated huff, and then footsteps.
Still he waited. The morning sun shone brightly. In the end it was clear Tee wasn’t worth the trouble.
VI
Later Tee would wish he had pulled off Katka’s boots as she slept that day. He watched her chest rise and fall, the curve of her body the same as in Pavel’s painting. She had kept her boots on as they made love, and now she slept in them. He wondered if she planned to walk out again so soon. The wet boots should have felt awkward, but they thrilled him. That pornographic trope.