Legends (33 page)

“If you are frightened of flying,” she retorted, “you should entertain the idea of traveling by train.”

“Frightened of trains, too,” Martin said gloomily. He thought of the Italian girl Paura that Lincoln Dittmann had come across in Foz do Iguacu, the one who was afraid of her shadow. He wondered what had become of her. To this day he wasn’t one-hundred percent sure the woman Lincoln had accosted on the Janicular and the call girl in Brazil were one and the same person. There had been a physical resemblance, so Lincoln had claimed, but the two women had been a world apart in mood and manner. “Frightened of arriving at places I haven’t been to before,” Martin told his neighbor now. “Frightened of motion and movement, frightened of the going and the getting there.”

The English woman was eager to put an end to the exchange and formulated a cutting remark that would accomplish it. But she decided she might be dealing with an authentic maniac after all and kept her mouth shut.

Making his way through the crowded terminal following the overhead signs with images of busses on them, a thin Beedie glued to his lower lip, Martin found his path blocked by a slight young man with an ironic grimace pasted on his fleshy lips. He was dressed in khaki jodhpurs that buttoned at the ankles and a green Tyrolean jacket with tarnished brass buttons. For an instant Martin thought he had been spotted by the local constabulary, but the young man quickly made it clear he was freelancing. “Mister, no difference if you are come to Praha for business or pleasure, in both conditions you will be requiring a fixer whose honorarium will be conspicuously less than what you would find yourself expending on hotels and transportation and meals if you do not accept to employ my services.” The young man, anxious to please, doffed his deerstalker and, pinching one of the two visors between a thumb and two fingers, held it over his solar plexus. “Radek at your beck and call for an insignificant thirty crowns an hour, which translates into one lousy U.S. dollar.”

Martin was tempted. “What made you pick me?” he wanted to know.

“You look reasonably U.S. and I need to varnish my English for the year-end examinations that must be passed with floating colors to arrive into medical school.”

“Flying colors, not floating colors.”

The young man beamed. “Flying colors it will be from this second in time until Alzheimer’s sets in.”

Martin knew himself to be a poor judge of age, but Radek looked a little old to be thinking of going to medical school, and he said so.

“I am a late blossomer,” the young man said with a disarming grin.

Martin wasn’t so much interested in saving money as time. His instinct told him that he had to get into and out of Prague before Crystal Quest, whose operatives would not be far behind, informed the local security people of his presence; before the Chechens who murdered Taletbek Rabbani caught up with him. He produced a ten dollar bill from his shirt pocket. “Fair enough, Radek here are ten hours in advance. I want to take a bus into the city. I want to rent a room in a cheap hotel in the Vysehrad quarter that has a fire staircase leading to an employees’ entrance. Then I want to make a phone call from the central post office, after which I would like to eat a copious vegetarian meal in a cheap restaurant “

“I know definitely the cheap hotel. It is former secret police dormitory turned into a student bed and breakfast when communism demised. When you are checkered in, I will pilot you to a mom and pop’s Yugoslav eatery, not much grander than a crackle in the wall, all vegetarian except for the meat.”

Martin had to laugh. “Sounds like just the ticket.”

Radek tried the phrase on his tongue. “Just the ticket. I see the meaning. And for after the meal, what about girls? I know a bar where university students in miniskirts wait on tables to supplement their stipends. Some of them are not against supplementing the supplements.”

“We’ll save the girls for my next trip to Prague, Radek.” Martin took a last drag on the Beedie and embedded the burning end in the sand of an ashtray. “After the mom and pop’s crackle in the wall, I want to go to” he hauled out the envelope that Taletbek Rabbani had given him in London and looked at what the old man had written on the back of it “to the Vysehrad Train Station on Svobodova street.”

“The Vysehrad Station was shut closed by the communists. Trains pass there but do not stop. For a while it was an abandoned building where you could buy drugs. I am hearing it was hired to Czech people who buy and sell.”

“Buy and sell what?”

Radek shrugged. “Only God knows and He has so far not shared the information with me.”

“I want to know, too. I want to find out what they buy and sell.”

Radek fitted his deerstalker back onto his head at a rakish angle. “Then please to follow me, Mister.”

The hotel in the Vysehrad quarter turned out to be spotlessly clean and inexpensive if you didn’t formally register and paid two nights in advance with American dollars, which Martin immediately agreed to do. And the narrow fire staircase led, four floors down, to the kitchen and a back door giving onto a courtyard that gave onto a side street. The central post office, reached after a short ride on a red-and-cream double trolley, had a window for international calls. Martin jotted the Crown Heights phone number on a pad and waited his turn and squeezed into the empty booth that smelled of stale cologne when his ticket was called.

“Hello,” he cried into the phone when he heard Stella’s voice breasting the static on the other end.

“Why are you shouting?” she demanded.

He lowered his voice. “Because I’m farther away than the last time I called.”

“Don’t tell me where you are there’s been a bizarre echo on my line the last few days.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Martin said. “They’ll take two or three minutes to figure out it’s an international call. Then they’ll need two or three days to find out which city it came from. And another week to get the local spooks to determine I’m calling from the central post office in Prague.”

“Now you’ve gone and told them.”

“They won’t believe me. They’ll think I’m planting phony clues to throw them off. What did you do with yourself today?”

“Just came back from the dentist he’s making me a new front tooth.”

“Money down the drain. I liked the chipped tooth. Made you look

…”

“Finish what you started to say, for God’s sake. Every time you get personal you let go of the end of the sentence and it drifts off like a hot air balloon.”

“Breakable. That’s the word that was on the tip of my tongue.”

“I’m not sure how to take that. What’s so great about looking breakable.”

“For starters, means you’re not already broken. People who are broken have several selves. Estelle is your real name, isn’t it?”

“The family name, Kastner, was assigned to us when we came to America. They wanted to change my first name, too, but I wouldn’t let them. Estelle is me.” When he didn’t respond, she said, “You still there?”

“I’m thinking about what you said. I know I must have met people who aren’t living in legends, I just don’t remember when.”

“Legends, as in having different names?”

“Its much more than different names; it has to do with having several biographies, several attitudes, several ways of looking at the world, several ways of giving and taking pleasure. It has to do with being so broken that the king’s horses and the king’s men would have a hard time putting you together again.”

“Listen up, Martin “

“Terrific! Now they’ll know it’s me calling.”

“How can they be sure I’m not using a phony name to throw them off?”

“There’s something in what you say.”

“I lied to you the last time we spoke. I said if I joined you in Europe there wouldn’t be strings attached. If you let me come, there will be. Strings attached.”

Martin didn’t know what to say. He stifled the uh-huh and let the silence stand.

“You don’t know what to say,” Stella guessed.

“Strings are attached to puppets,” Martin finally said. “It’s not an image of you that I put much store in.”

“The strings wouldn’t be attached to me or you, they’d be attached to my coming over. Remember when we were going into Israel and I told that policeman you were my lover?”

Martin smiled to himself. “And I told him you had a tattoo of a Siberian night moth under your right breast.”

“Got one,” Stella announced.

He didn’t understand. “Got what?”

“Tattoo of a Siberian night moth under my right breast. A Jamaican tattoo artist on Empire Boulevard did it. That’s the string that’s attached when we next meet. I’m going to have to show it to you to prove it’s there, since it’s not your style to take my word for something as important as that. Then we’ll see if one thing leads to another.”

Martin thought of the whore Dante had come across in Beirut. “I heard of a girl who actually had a moth tattooed under her breast. Her name was Djamillah. Did you really get one?”

He could hear the laughter in her voice. “Uh-huh.”

“Stealing my uh-huhs,” Martin said.

“Plan to steal more than that,” she shot back.

He changed the subject. “I was scared today.”

“Of what?”

“Where I’m at I’ve never been to before. That frightens me.”

“Okay, here’s the deal. You better get used to being where you’ve never been to before. I’ll hold your hand. Okay?”

“I suppose so.”

“If this is you enthusiastic, I’d hate to see you reluctant.”

“Fact is, I’m not sure.”

“Ever hear the story of the Russian peasant who was asked if he knew how to play the violin? I’m not sure, he replied. Never tried.” She snickered at her own joke. “You need to try, Martin, to know if you can or you can’t.”

“I can see you’re right. I just don’t feel you’re right.”

She digested that. “Why did you call me?”

“Wanted to hear your voice. Wanted to make sure you’re still you.

“Well, you’ve heard it and I’ve heard yours. Where does that leave us, Martin?”

“I’m not sure.” They both laughed at the I’m not sure. “I mean, I still have to find the person who went A.W.O.L. from his marriage.”

“Let it go. Forget Samat. Come home, Martin.”

“If I let it go, the person who came home wouldn’t be me. Aside from that, lot of questions are out trawling for answers.”

“When the answers are elusive you have to learn to live with the questions.”

“I need to go. Stella?”

“Okay, okay, go. I’ll replay the conversation in my head after you hang up. I’ll sift through it looking for meanings I missed.”

“Don’t worry, be happy.”

“Don’t worry, be happy? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a song from the top ten in the late eighties. Thought of it today they were playing it over and over on a jukebox in Paraguay when a guy I know was there.”

“Was the they a girl?”

“A bunch of girls. Prostitutes working a bar who bought lottery tickets from an old Polish gentleman.”

“You depress me, Martin. There’s so much about you I don’t know.”

“I depress me, too. For the same reason.”

The plat du jour at the mom and pop’s turned out to be spicy Yugoslav meatballs served in soup dishes with vegetables that had been overcooked and were difficult to identify. Martin exchanged his meatballs for Radek’s vegetables and helped himself to half the boiled potatoes. The wine was a kissing cousin to Greek ouzo, flavored with anise and easy to drink once the first few mouthfuls numbed your throat. Radek sat across the small table from Martin, mopping up the sauces in his soup dish with pieces of stale bread and washing them down with gulps of wine. “My dream is to go to U.S. the beautiful before Alzheimer’s sets in,” he confided, sucking on a tooth to free the food caught in his gums. “Is it so that they pave the streets with Sony Walkmans when the cobblestones wear out?”

Martin leaned back and treated himself to an after-dinner Beedie. “Where did you pick up that juicy detail?”

“It was written in a university satirical magazine.”

“Don’t believe everything you read in university satirical magazines. Can you ask for the bill.”

Radek studied the bill when it came, then got into an argument with the owner, who wound up crossing out two items and reducing the price of the wine. “I saved you sixty crowns, which is two lousy

U.S. dollars,” Radek noted. “That adds up to two hours of my honorarium, Mister. So where to now?”

“A trolley to Svobodova Street.”

“How is it a rich U.S. like you does not hire taxi cabs?”

“I have a theory that you don’t really know a city until you’ve ridden its public transportation.”

Radek rolled his head from side to side in dismay. “Here all the people who take public transportation dream to take private transportation. You want to go to the Vysehrad Station?”

“I would like to get off a hundred meters before it and walk the rest of the way to work off the meal.”

Radek laid a forefinger along a nostril. “You want to case the joint first.”

“Where did you pick up case the joint?”

“So I am crazy about old U.S. movies.” He transformed a thumb and an index finger into a pistol and jammed it into the pocket of his Tyrolean jacket. “I have a gub in my pocket, Mister”

“What movie is that from?”

“Woody Allen. Take the Money and Run.”

“Uh-huh. Let’s go.”

Sitting in the back of the trolley, listening to the sparks crackling off the overhead electric cable, Martin studied the faces around him looking for the one that was conspicuously uninterested in him. Normally he prided himself on being able to blend into a crowd even when there wasn’t one. Now, however, he was in too much of a hurry to take the usual precautions. His American clothes, especially his shoes, made him stand out in any Czech crowd and people, naturally curious, would inspect him, some openly, some furtively. Martin figured if someone were following him he would be careful not to look at him at all. In the long ride from the mom and pop’s eatery to Mala Strana, then queuing to wait for a trolley on another line, Martin, still an artisan of tradecraft, didn’t have the feeling he was being tailed. Which, he knew from experience, could mean that the people following him were very good at it. Radek noticed him noticing the passengers around him. “If you are not wanting girls, what are you wanting?” he asked. He leaned closer so the haggard woman on the aisle seat brazenly scrutinizing the American couldn’t overhear him. “Cannabis,