The Darts of Cupid: Stories (13 page)
Read The Darts of Cupid: Stories Online
Authors: Edith Templeton
Tags: #Short Stories (Single Author), #Fiction
"That’s good news," I said, "as long as you don’t ask me which boy goes on top of which. Because in my time the fountain was dry, and there was complete equality, because both boys were on the ground. They were in the garden, in one of the hothouses. But I suppose the curator will solve the problem."
She nodded. "He will. But it’s got to be done slowly, because there’s only so much money to go round. We had a lucky escape some time ago, when the gents from Prague wanted to turn the place into an old people’s home. A convalescent home—I ask you! All because there’s fifty rooms standing empty here, and that’s not fair in a workers’ republic. The curator says we’ve got the workers’ revolution, and workers of the world unite—but not in the castle. We don’t want a horde of old dodderers wiping their fingers on the walls of the Austrian Room. In the end, the academy people said it was much too damp and unhealthy here—it’s true, isn’t it? There’s always the damp breathing in from the park—and sent them off to convalesce elsewhere, and I don’t care how they rot, as long as it isn’t here."
"Quite right, too," I said. "That’s what’s called a social conscience. My family was full of it, and I’m glad it’s still about."
She looked at me with approval and nodded her head. Then her expression changed. "How did you use the Austrian Room?" she asked wistfully.
"For every day," I said. "As an ordinary drawing room."
"And it was luxuriously furnished?"
"Certainly not," I said. "It had the shabbiest junk you can think of—all simple but in bad taste, the overflow from my great-grandparents’ town house. And in the bedrooms brass beds with broken knobs, and washstands with slop pails, and porcelain bowls and little pen trays that were used to hold toothbrushes."
She seemed crestfallen and gave me several probing looks, to make sure I was not making fun of her.
We went into the adjoining Saints’ Room. "And how did you use this?" she asked eagerly.
"We didn’t," I said. "It was too dingy and depressing. Only when we had visitors we weren’t keen on, they got shoved in here to cool their heels." Observing her disappointed face, I added, "Of course, it wasn’t like this. That painted ceiling was like potato soup, and you were lucky if you saw an odd arm or face sticking out."
I walked about contemplating the clean saints and angels on the ceiling, with memory and reality joining together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. For the first time, I saw that the greatest care, interest, and diversity had gone into the color and drapery of the garments; it was a celestial fashion show. "What a pity my mother never saw it like this," I said. "Who did it, do you know?"
"Navratil," she said. "Everything painted is by Navratil. He did it to show he could turn his hand to anything."
We went out onto the landing, where it formed an elbow. "Do you remember this?" she asked, leading me to the recess.
I was dumbfounded. It was like an inverted nightmare, where everything was better than it ought to be. The spiral stairs, which had been bleak, metal, mean, and ugly, were now entirely mahogany, of a superb dull finish. The spindle-turned railing was exquisitely fashioned, as though designed by Hepplewhite—a cabinetmaker’s masterpiece.
"This used to be beastly cast iron," I said.
"Fancy," she said. "The curator says they were meant for certain purposes, for slipping away unseen and nobody any the wiser, if you get my meaning, so he had them done as they must have looked in the first place. And it’s only fair, isn’t it? If you have romantic stairs, you must treat them romantic."
"How right you are," I said, thinking she was more and more like the cook. I added, "This is a castle and not a poorhouse."
She nodded approvingly.
WE WENT THROUGH the Gothic wing and the library, where she said longingly, "You must have had wonderful books. I can just imagine."
I had to disappoint her once more. "We had no books at all," I said. "Only old account ledgers and seed catalogues and out-of-date timetables."
The afternoon was drifting away. "And now," said my guide, "we’ll go down to the Garden Room and look at the parrots."
"They aren’t parrots, they’re crested cockatoos," I said.
"Never mind," she said. "We both mean the same thing. Do you know, I always think Navratil must have done the Garden Room at the very end, when he was good and tired, because it’s only got three walls."
I started to laugh, but I fell silent when we arrived there, and I gazed with enchantment at this last and most frivolous of Navratil’s creations.
"What did you use this room for?" she asked me. "For splendid feasts?"
"We had afternoon coffee in it," I said.
"And looked out on the rose parterre and the park? What a glorious sight it must have been."
"We never looked out on the rose parterre," I said. "We were too busy quarreling. Or complaining."
We stepped out on the terrace, descended the stairs, and went across the dismal grass plot into the park. "There’s the opening of an underground passage at the end of the chestnut avenue," she said. "They are still working at it, digging it up. It’s four kilometers long, and connects with the former Sternborn place, in Sestajovice."
"What on earth for?" I asked.
"They went in for that sort of thing in the old days," she said. "So that the gentry could run for it if trouble was brewing."
"A good idea," I said, giving her a sidelong glance.
"Naturally," she said. "We want everything the way it was in the old days."
"That’s fine," I said. "It makes you feel the workers’ revolution wasn’t wasted, doesn’t it?"
She nodded. "The curator says if the gentry hadn’t built the castles the workers wouldn’t be able to enjoy them now."
"What do you call this now?" I asked as we passed the walled-in well. "We used to call it the Jordan."
"We call it the Jordan, too," she said, "but we still haven’t found out how deep it is, and where it goes to. Ah, this place is a marvel for mysteries. How you must have spent your days puzzling over them!"
"The only mystery we ever discussed was why the cook had such black hair, considering she was older than my grandmother."
We were approaching a long line of trees; their boughs, to my astonishment, were reflected in a glistening sheet of water. "In my time," I said, "not even an elephant could have seen himself in the lake. It was so thick with filth it was like pea soup, and we couldn’t get the gardeners to get down to it and clean it up. Your curator’s obviously frightfully good with servants."
"There are no servants," she said. "They are employees of the state."
"Like those birds in the Garden Room," I said. "We both mean the same thing. And you’ve got the bridge repaired, too. In my time, it was broken, and nobody could get to the island."
"But what’s the good of it?" she said. "There was this Chinese pavilion on the island. You knew it, didn’t you?"
"Yes," I said.
"It’s gone," she wailed. "And in Sestajovice, at the former Sternborns’, there is a Chinese pavilion. They’ve still got theirs and we haven’t. It isn’t fair, is it? Why should they have it if we haven’t?" She kept looking ahead of her, repeating, "It isn’t fair, is it?" in an offended tone of voice.
As we made our way back to the castle, she asked with avidity for the names of the vanished exotic trees. Trying to console her, I said, "But look at the lilac. That’s still the same, and it’s coming out beautifully."
"Ah, that—that’s nothing," she said crossly. "Anybody’s got a lilac."
This made me remember Kucera and his fits of bragging, and, quoting him, I said, "It’s not ordinary lilac, it’s Persian, double-filled, and if somebody tells you he’s got the same, anywhere up and down of Bohemia, then it’s a lie, because what he’s got is bushes, and ours is trees."
She grew cheerful at once. "Oh, really? I must tell this to the curator. He will be pleased."
We stopped at the foot of the ivied crenellations that circled the Gothic wing, where she showed me pieces of original lead piping which had been brought to light, and confronted me with the statues—the boy clutching the goose and the boy riding on the dolphin. I thought they did not make a happy pair, because the goose boy was as plain and discreet as the castle, while the other was as pretentious as the Gothic wing. My guide remarked, "The curator isn’t sure about them yet. He thinks there must have been a little artificial waterfall at the end of the rose parterre and that’s where the dolphin belongs. Do you have any idea?"
"No," I said, "but it’s quite possible. Kucera, the head gardener, must have known and kept it quiet, because it would have interfered with his roses. That’s the kind of man he was."
She gave me a probing, incredulous look. "He sounds like a Fascist to me," she said. "They’ve been stamped out now."
We reached the garden wall. "There’s nothing there worth looking at," she said, "unless you want to see some smashed-up hothouses. But you don’t want to leave without taking something alive away with you," and she stooped and picked three stalks of lilies of the valley.
"My mother’s favorite flowers," I said. "Thank you."
We passed through a door and came out on the gravel space, where we were met by the setter. "You want to be careful of that dog," she said. "He’s vicious. That’s why we keep him."
"We’ve met before," I said. "On the servants’ stairs—I mean the employees’ stairs."
"And he let you pass?" she asked, stopping and looking at me full in the face.
"Of course," I said.
She struck her forehead. "Now I understand," she said. "He knows you belong. He knows you are the family." But this time I did not find her ridiculous. I had to suppress my rising tears.
We crossed the gravel space and halted by the drive. "I hope I’ll catch the bus back to Prague," I said. "Do you know when it goes?"
"I don’t," she said. "But if you miss it, come back and we’ll put you up for the night. You don’t think we’d turn you away, do you? Not that I’d like it to be known, because we haven’t got any rooms to spare—not for anybody, and that’s a fact. I’ve got two rooms and a kitchen off at that side, as you come in through the door, and it’s cold and drafty in winter, you’ve no idea. But people always think—I don’t know what they think. They think, Because it’s a castle, and they don’t know what it’s like living in a castle. That’s true, isn’t it?"
"It is true," I said. "And good-bye and thank you."
"Good-bye," she said, hiding her hands under her apron.
Halfway down the drive, I turned and looked back, but it was stupid of me. I should have known that from there one could not see the castle anymore.
I walked back to the village, to the inn, where the innkeeper told me that the bus would arrive in an hour’s time. I asked for coffee and sat down on a bench close to the windows. There was a table of young men and a table of old men. They were all drinking beer, and the wireless was playing—a chorus singing Bohemian nursery songs that I knew by heart. The old men were discussing a tramway disaster in Prague, and they cursed the government for being too stingy to keep the tracks in good repair. The young men talked about motorcycles, and then they went outdoors and stood about looking at each other’s motorcycles. Then the innkeeper brought me a tumbler full of water to put my lilies of the valley in. But he did not ask me where I got them, or who I was, or what I was doing there.
A Coffeehouse
Acquaintance
The man is always different in the beginning from anyone else one has ever known. By the time one has sorted him out as belonging to a certain type, the end is in sight, and he has become fit to be ranged on one of the shelves in memory’s cupboard. But sometimes this is not possible. Despite a desperate search, the proper shelf cannot be found, and he cannot be stored away because one does not know what he is. One only knows what he was like.
On the first night of my arrival in Prague, I had dinner in the restaurant of the hotel where I was staying. On the second evening I would have liked to eat somewhere else, but when I saw that it was raining, I decided not to go out. The hotel was situated in a residential quarter, on a main road leading from a crossing at the nearby church along the ridge of a hill, running parallel to the course of the river below. It was a second-rate establishment of only sixty rooms, and part of a vast building which formed a whole block of the street, containing snack bars and beer cellars, a nightclub, banqueting halls, ballrooms for private hire, a wine tavern, a coffeehouse, and a restaurant.
At eight o’clock that evening the coffeehouse was half empty. The tables occupied were those close to the windows and walls, so that as I stopped by the swinging doors, the long room looked like one of those Brussels tapestries designed by several hands, where the richly wreathed surround has already been done but the center is still bare, waiting to be filled in. I walked down a path between the tables, toward the dining room, past a row of crescent-shaped blue-plush niches, each containing a group of guests. Only in the last one, nearest to the archway, there was a solitary man reading a newspaper. As I approached him, he said in a low voice and without raising his eyes from the paper, "Come here and sit down with me." It was murmured so casually that it sounded as though he were reading out loud a sentence to himself. As I moved past him, I heard his voice again: "Sit down." I entered the dining room, and only then, while pretending to look around to choose a seat to my liking, did I allow myself to glance at him. To my surprise, he was not looking in my direction, but was still bent over his paper.
I looked at him more fully and at leisure. He had large-waved, lion-colored hair which glinted like bronze in the light of the sconce above his head, and though he was not so fair, he had the deep, evenly pink skin of white-blond people who when exposed to the open air can neither freckle nor tan. He had a long full face, a long tip-tilted nose, and long straight lips, and he looked benevolent and dignified. Quite apart from his hair, this also made me think of a lion, who when at rest presents a deceptive picture of superb benevolence and harmlessness. At the end of the sleeve of his dark brown lounge suit, I could see the cuff of his orange shirt, and part of an orange sock between shoe and trouser leg, and these seemed a bizarre contrast to his otherwise conventional attire. But then his behavior too had been bizarre.
I sat down in a recessed bay from which I could not see any of the blue-plush niches, nor be observed by anyone occupying them. After I had ordered, I laid aside the novel I had brought with me and began to reread the menu, which I found astonishing. At the head of the impressively long list of fare, there was the information that the dishes had been chosen by Mr. Holub and approved by Mr. Dohnal, the prices worked out by Mr. Drobny and checked by Mr. Novak. Dishes marked with an asterisk were cooked in butter, nonmarked dishes in fat. The portions of meat served amounted to one hundred and fifty grams, but in the case of fowl, two hundred were provided. There is a Bohemian saying about a person one cannot make out: "I don’t know whether he comes at me with butter or with dripping," and as I now recalled it, it occurred to me that this phrase must have gone out of fashion.
About half an hour later, when I went back through the coffeehouse, the man who had spoken to me was no longer alone, but was listening to another man, who was standing in front of his table. He was not looking benevolent anymore either. He had his head tilted back and his eyes cast down, and he wore the expression of one hearing something he had been expecting but which he did not care to hear.
I went further down the room, past the glass doors, and sat down on a blue-plush bench close to a window and jutting into the room at a right angle, so that my book was turned to him. I ordered a black coffee and opened my book.
When a shadow fell over the page, I looked up. He was sitting down at my side. As I turned to him, speechless, he began to talk to me in a Slav tongue. I thought it was Russian, because I vaguely know the sound of it, just as I vaguely know what Polish sounds like. He was smiling all the time he talked, his teeth gleaming like freshly peeled almonds, and looking at me in a determined and cheerful way, as though convinced he would gain my approval. I waited till he stopped, then said in Czech, "I didn’t get a word." He laughed and glanced at me as though unbelieving, then spoke again in the same tongue, still smiling and still more insistently. The sound of his voice, with the words rushing past, made me think of a horse in full canter. At the end of his speech he looked at me with such expectancy and encouragement that I started to laugh. "Sorry," I said. "I haven’t got the faintest."
"Come on," he said, answering in Czech too. "Don’t tell me you don’t understand Russian."
"I don’t—not a word."
"How is it possible?" he asked. "Then you really have no idea what I was telling you?"
I shook my head. During this exchange I had noticed that he was speaking Bohemian with the marked accent of the foreign Slav. Though he pronounced each word with ease, there was a shifting of emphasis, a derangement of rhythm, similar to the way Scottish people talk, who say "realize" instead of "realize."
"What was it you were telling me?" I asked.
"There is no need to repeat it," he said, "in any language. You know it anyway."
I did not reply.
"You needn’t tell me anything," he added. "I know you are a lady; I know you did not come here to pick up a man." I continued silent. I half turned my head away from him, raised my eyes, and looked ahead of me to the narrow wall a few tables away. It was, I now saw, not paneled like the two long walls which held the windows and the niches, but set with an arc of pale green iridescent tiles, on which the reflected light shone in rainbow-colored streaks. In front, on a pedestal, stood a heroic-sized statue of a naked woman with mournfully bent head, as though she were inspecting the floor for cleanliness and not finding it to her liking. I was taken aback by the sight and turned toward him.
He was watching me. "You didn’t know it was there, did you?" he said. "Disgusting, isn’t it?"
"Amazing," I said. "Not exactly the decor one expects to find in a coffeehouse. But I wouldn’t mind if it weren’t so ugly. Still, I suppose there is something to be said for it. It is safe."
He said, "You mean a naked woman is a naked woman all the world over—is that it?"
"If you insist."
"I don’t insist," he said, "and you are wrong. What if I chose to tell you that she represents Bohemia crushed under the Communist Russian yoke? It would make her highly objectionable, wouldn’t it?"
I did not reply. Was he coming at me with butter, or with dripping?
"Or she could be Eve," he said. "In which case she would be acceptable. Because Adam and Eve were Russian— nothing to wear, only one apple tree between them, and being told they were in Paradise." He looked at me with an indulgently amused smile. I could not tell whether he was jeering at those in power or warning me not to do so. "Anyway," he continued, "I can tell that you haven’t been around for quite some time."
My coffee was brought and he ordered a beer. "You should take Turkish coffee; it’s much better," he said.
I said, "I had it yesterday and it was a dreadful fiasco. It has this crust on top, and when I poured, the crust dropped into the cup and the coffee splashed all over the place. And the beastly grounds floated about and nearly choked me."
"Let me show you," he said. "With me, everything goes smoothly. You can rely on me." And he gave the order as the waiter brought his beer. He took a sip and said, "The beer they give you here is Budweiser, and I come here only when I feel lazy, because farther up the street, at Soyka’s, they have pilsner."
"I never heard of Soyka’s," I said, "but then, we didn’t live in these parts."
"I live near here," he said. "I have a flat only two hundred yards away. I’ll write it down for you. Give me your notebook." Seeing my hesitation, he added, "Of course you have a diary. Every woman has a diary."
I blushed and reached into my handbag and gave him my little notebook. I was annoyed with myself for not having refused his request, and sensing his amusement at my confusion, I could not gather my wits.
He opened the notebook unhesitatingly at the month of April, turned to the date of the day, the twenty-seventh, took a gold fountain pen from his breast pocket, and wrote, in a hand so large that it covered all four lines reserved for each day, "Konstantin Blonik" and the name of the street and a number. The letters were so boldly written, with curls around the K and the B, that they made me think of an aria embellished with coloratura trills. "Now you’ve got me black on white," he said.
"I don’t care one way or the other," I said, still looking at the open diary he had returned to me. But I did care. The very Russian, noble, large-limbed Konstantin was ill matched to the Blonik, of vaguely Slav origin, vulgar, undersized, like a mongrel. And it occurred to me that in his manner of speech, there was the same split. At first, when he had been speaking Russian, he had been aglow with a barely restrained fire. Ever since he had been Czech, he had been dull and sober.
"Now you are disappointed, aren’t you?" he asked, watching me.
"Not disappointed," I said. "It’s just . . . the Blonik doesn’t sound Russian at all."
"I can’t change my name just to please you," he said. "Would you rather have had me less truthful?" I shook my head. "And here is your Turkish coffee. Allow me." I watched as he seized the stem of the brass pot, tilted it slowly, held a spoon against the crust floating on top, and poured till the pot held nothing except the thick layer of grounds. "And now you have clear coffee and can stir to your heart’s content."
As I took my first sip, he picked up my book. I had forgotten about it; I had not even realized that I had laid it on the table when he sat down. "Let me see what you’re reading," he said.
"It’s an English novel."
"I know hardly any English," he remarked. "Just what I learned at school. And the same with French. I speak Romanian and Hungarian fairly well, but that’s nothing to be proud of, that’s all in the day’s work. Now let me see." He opened the book, looked at the flyleaf, shut it again, and said, "That’s not an English-language edition. These paper-backs are not allowed to be sold."
"Aren’t they? I didn’t know," I said. "And I bought it in London just now. I flew from London yesterday. I only arrived in Prague last night."
"Did you?" he said. "Let me have another look at it. It’s called
The Pumpkin Eater.
‘Eater’—that’s from ‘eating’; ‘eater’ is a man who eats, that I do understand. And ‘pumpkin’—"
I said hastily, "A pumpkin is a kind of large—"
He stopped me by raising his hand. I expected him to say something like, never mind, who cares? Instead he said impatiently, "You needn’t explain. I know."
I was too startled to speak.
He laid the book down.
"Milostivá paní,”
he said, using the most respectful mode of address, which means "gracious lady," "I would like to continue this acquaintance in a way which is not possible sitting here and talking. But I cannot entertain you at my place tonight. I left it to friends, a man and his wife; they came from outside and were stranded. I’m like that; I can never say no to anybody. I moved to a room in the apartment of some people I happen to know. It isn’t as comfortable as my own flat but it is decent enough. Now I suggest you go up to your room and fetch your coat while I get mine from the cloakroom here, and I’ll wait for you downstairs."
"How do you know I’m staying here at the hotel?" I asked.
"Because you are not the kind of woman," he said, "who would dine alone and sit about alone, in ordinary circumstances. But tell me, why are you staying here? It is a bad hotel."
"I couldn’t get in anywhere else," I said. "For six weeks the travel people in London kept me hanging about, dithering, and in the end they couldn’t find anywhere decent for me. They said I’d better try my luck when I arrived here."
"I’d never stay in a hotel like this," he said. "When I travel I only stay in first-class places. I don’t pay, of course; they pay for me. Now let us go."
When I came out of the lift he was nowhere in sight, but as I handed in my key at the reception desk, I saw him through the glass doors, standing in the street under the roof of the entrance, his back turned to me.
I went outside and stopped, still behind him, and observed him while I was slowly drawing on my gloves.
He was wearing a silky dark blue raincoat. The tall-crowned, wide-brimmed felt hat made him appear doubly outlandish, used as I was to menswear in London, and in contrast to the hatless men I had seen in Prague. He was leaning slightly forward over his furled umbrella, clasping the crook of the handle with both hands. As I watched, I saw that he was not gazing idly into space. The movements of his head betrayed that he was following the flow of the streetcars, automobiles, and passersby. This calmly alert stance had a balladesque quality, bringing to mind a shepherd on the crest of a hill, leaning on his staff and observing his flock, the distant valley below, and the sky above.
As I stepped soundlessly to his side, he said without turning his head, "It’s only drizzling now, but I’ll put the umbrella up for you. Let it earn its keep."
I laughed uneasily. I wondered whether he had sensed that I had been watching him. I said, "You are taller and broader than I thought. If you are ever out of work, come to London and join the police."