The Darts of Cupid: Stories (16 page)

A few days later he again asked me to marry him. He said, "Husbands can be left and I am free. I’m divorced; I got my divorce two years ago. One day at breakfast I get this anonymous letter. I pass it over to my wife and I ask, ‘Is this true?’ ‘It is true,’ she says, ‘and it’s been true for the last two years.’ So I took her to court. But she played her cards badly because the man left her three months later. She is doing very well, she has a job with the government; she is a Party member. And that’s why, when it came to splitting up, I had to let her have the car and I only got the country cottage. I’ve still got the cottage, but I haven’t been there for the last six months—it’s no use to me. I’m going to sell it now and get a car again. So now you know how I stand. I’m free to marry you."

"I can’t," I said. "I’ve got a child. And you haven’t, have you?"

"No, thank God," he said. "I used to wish for one, but as it turned out, it’s a blessing."

Yet only on the following day, when I told him I had taken lunch in the Brussels Pavilion in Belvedere Park, he said, "That was my daughter’s favorite place. After every walk through the park, it was, ‘Daddy, now we’ll go to the pavilion and you will order a little plate with a little ham for me.’ "

"Oh."

He said, "I didn’t want to bring it up the other day; it’s too painful to talk about her. And do you know, there happened to be a party there once, of Chinese children, and they crowded round my little girl and she looked at them so bewildered, with her big blue eyes, and then she fed them the ham. It was touching. I see her from time to time, of course. She’s eight years old now and goes to second grade—primary. But I wasn’t soft with her. If she didn’t arrange her shoes and clothes properly at bedtime, there was nothing doing, I wouldn’t say good night. She’ll be spoiled now, and that’s the worst for me, not the wife."

He continued to resent my going to the theater, but once he took me out himself. This was only, he stressed, because it was a Russian show, the Alexandrovniks, a famous group of military performers who were internationally known and had not come to Prague for ten years.

It was on this occasion that I came to add two further items to my collection, and I found them the most interesting I had received. One occurred when he explained to me the military ranks of the performers. The tenor who was singing was a major; and the conductor, "He is pretty high. He is a general, but not a full general. I have a brother who is a very big gun indeed. He is a general in the Russian army, and he was a full general already when he was twenty-eight. At that time he was the youngest general in the Russian army." He gave his indulgently resigned laugh and added, "I haven’t seen him for ten years."

The other occasion happened during the interval, while we were standing in the foyer. A man passed by us and greeted him respectfully; he was obviously hesitating whether to stop or to walk on. Then, glancing at me, he bowed and went away. "Funny that I should run into him again," said the Russian. "I haven’t seen him for years. Of course, I might have known he’d be here. He’s on duty."

"How do you mean?" I asked. "He doesn’t look like a journalist. Is he the theater doctor?"

"No, you little fool," he said. "Nowadays it isn’t doctors who are on duty in a theater. He is secret police." And seeing my astonishment, he added, "That’s normal and proper. They have to walk about among crowds listening to what people say. Then they hand in their report on the mood and the morale of the population."

"Good God."

"It’s done all the world over," he said. "It’s funny the way I met him. That must have been . . . ten years ago, in the summer. I was staying in Moravia in a resort, for a holiday, and this man kept getting into conversation with me and tagging about after me on all my walks. He was quite pleasant, but I just didn’t want him. In the end he said to me, ‘I do like you so much, you are such good company. Don’t worry, you may talk to me quite freely, I am secret police.’ He was quite sincere, of course. He longed to be friends."

"And were you?"

"No," he said, smiling, "of course not. The fool. Czech secret police. The Czech idea of security. You drive out into the country, into the sticks, and you get out and there is a little gnarled wrinkled nut of a woman, and you say to her, ‘Little mother, I am looking for a certain special place, away from the village—a busy place, little mother, with soldiers running in and out like ants on an ant heap,’ and she says, ‘You mean the launching pad for the rocket.’ "

During my whole stay, there were only four nights I did not spend with him, and this was because twice he went away, each time for two days. About the first journey he said nothing at all; about the second he said, "I had to go to Bratislava, and I thought, Shall I take the plane? I’m such an unlucky person, if I take the plane it will crash. So I took the train. And unlucky as I am, the heating in the train broke down and it was chilly during the whole ten hours. And on top of it I lost my fountain pen. I’d had it for six years, drat it. It’s no use looking for it—it’s gold, unfortunately."

"How did you lose it?"

"I didn’t lose it," he said, "not exactly. I used it and put it down, and went out in a hurry because I wanted to speak to someone, and then I had to go off with him and couldn’t go back anymore."

"That’s awful."

He gave his indulgent laugh. "I’m unlucky altogether," he said, "because I want you and nobody but you, and you won’t stay with me."

His "I’m unlucky altogether," though in utter contradiction to his usual "With me everything goes smoothly," did not astonish me. It was no more than the remark of a man who has every reason to be pleased with himself, and it served the same purpose as the tiny black beauty patch used by rococo ladies to enhance, by contrast, the fairness of their skin.

DURING MY STAY in Prague, I had been searching for my favorite cousin, Ferdinand. The last time I had heard from him, shortly after the war, he had still lived in the country, in my uncle’s manor house, but when I finally found him, he was living in Prague, in a house on the Vinehrady, which was one of the family’s former town houses, in a flat which belonged to Linda, his mother’s erstwhile lady’s maid.

I had visited him several times at Linda’s flat, and been entertained at lunch there, but I had never been with him in the evening because he worked as a night watchman in a picture gallery in the castle. Thus I had never had to tell the Russian of his existence.

On the third day before my departure, Ferdinand asked me to dinner; that night he was not on duty, and it was to be our last meeting. When I told him, the Russian was coldly angry. "It is just as well you are leaving," he said. "It is high time. A few weeks more and I’d be so used to you I couldn’t be without you. If you are serious, this is your last chance to get away."

I said, "You couldn’t keep me against my will."

He said, "You are a little fool. You don’t know what you are talking about. Don’t provoke me."

I burst out laughing. I said, "You mean, this particular hen should not be cackling just now?"

Soon after dinner I said I wanted to leave, and Ferdinand, as a matter of course, saw me home. It had stopped raining and we walked all the way to the hotel. By then a new storm was rising and the first heavy drops began to fall. "Come upstairs and have a last drink with me," I said.

It was about ten o’clock. We took a seat on one of the blue-plush benches facing the arch with the naked statue and gave our orders to the headwaiter. When the elderly waitress arrived, she murmured while setting down our glasses, "Begging your pardon, madam, but the gentleman over there has been sitting alone there for the last hour and looking very sad."

"Never mind," I said, "let him sit and look sad." And glancing sideways I saw the Russian sitting five empty tables away from ours, with his back turned to the door and not facing us directly. He was reading a newspaper.

"What’s all this about?" asked my cousin indifferently.

"Oh, it’s just ...," I began, still watching the Russian, and paused when I saw a stranger greet him and join him at his table. He was a conspicuous-looking man, not only because of his cornflower-blue suit but because of his striking appearance; he had thick white-blond hair and a handsome lean face, as though carved with a few strokes of a hatchet.

"It’s only . . . ," I started again. "There is a man over there ..." I halted with embarrassment. "I happen to know him. I sometimes meet him here and we talk."

"Good God," said my cousin, who had been following my glance. I was taken aback at the sound of his voice. It was very low and sounded as though he had gone pale with fright. "What is he?" he asked.

"He is a Russian."

"Good God," he said once more.

"What’s so dreadful about him?" I asked. And then it occurred to me with great relief that it was probably the handsome striking white-blond stranger whom he had meant. I said gaily, "Which one of the two do you mean? If it’s the cornflower, I’ve never seen him before."

"Oh, that one," said my cousin impatiently. "Who cares? It’s the other one I mean, for heaven’s sake. How long have you known him? How did you meet him?"

"I met him here in the coffeehouse," I said. "You know how it is. And if you are going to tell me that I am a married woman with a husband and a child, I am going to scream," and I forced myself to laugh.

I knew quite well that my cousin had not spoken with moral indignation, and that as a former cavalryman he treated amorous irregularities of any kind with careless amusement. I had made the remark as a desperate attempt to ignore the fear which so obviously had seized him.

"A coffeehouse acquaintance," he said slowly, as though pronouncing a monstrosity. "What does he do?"

"I don’t know exactly; he never told me," I said. "It’s something with a laboratory."

"It wouldn’t matter even if he had told you," said my cousin, "because they always have a genuine job of work as a cover."

"How do you mean?"

"How dim can you be?" asked my cousin.

"How do you mean?"

"But don’t you see," said my cousin, "the fellow is a typical secret intelligence man? He belongs to what we call the obscure force."

"And how dim can you get?" I replied heatedly. "He’s got a degree in physics and he’s worked in Hungary and in Romania. He sometimes travels because of his work, and he’s divorced and has a daughter—"

"Stop it," he said. "Of course he’s told you his story. They all have a story—they can’t just say they’ve dropped from the sky. And the claptrap about divorce and daughter fills it in and makes it less fake."

"He isn’t fake," I said. "He’s highly educated, he’s simply dripping with Latin and Greek. You can’t fake reeling off the prepositions governing the dative and the accusative, the way he did once to exasperate me, and then he recited the rules about the forms of the aorist till I felt like screaming. And he’s not a Party member—he won’t join. He’s not even a Communist, so there."

"Not even a Communist," repeated my cousin. "Not even a . . . Of all the— Can’t you see that’s part of his story, to put you off your guard? And you really believe he is not a comrade, only because he said so?"

"You are being idiotic," I said. "The only comrades you know were your horses, and you’ve told me yourself how in the war you wouldn’t eat horse meat because it would have meant eating your comrades. And there is nothing to put me off guard with him. Just to show you how wrong you are, he is the soul of discretion, and he’s never ever asked me a single question about myself."

"Naturally," said my cousin. "That’s because he’s found out all he wants to know about you from his sources. Don’t you see, even dumb as you are, that this again proves it? How long have you known him?"

"All the time I’ve been here," I said. "I met him on the second day I arrived."

"Good God," said my cousin, in a voice blanched with fear. "That clinches it. You get here, and straightaway they put him on to you."

"You’re as daft as a brush," I said. "He talked to me because he liked me. What’s so unusual about that? Let me tell you, when I got out of the number seven tramway the first evening, a man accosted me and wanted to go along with me. And when I had lunch at the Praha, a man followed me out to the cloakroom and tried to pick me up. And when I had coffee at Berger’s, a man left as soon as he saw I was paying, and waited for me on the stairs and wanted to go off with me. They all were secret intelligence, of course."

He gave me a reproachful, exasperated look. "It sticks out a mile," he said. "But you haven’t been through what we have been through here, so you can’t know. I have learned how to pick out the plainclothesmen in public places. But this is worse, much worse. Of course he’s highly educated, as you say—that I don’t doubt. He’s got to be; he’s washed with all waters."

For a while we continued silent, and because I found my cousin ridiculously pitiful, I decided to stop protesting. I said reasonably, "If you were right, why waste him on me? I am nothing and nobody."

"You haven’t got to the end yet," said my cousin. "You don’t know what use he will find for you. Just before you leave he will put the pressure on."

"Make me earn my keep," I said, and burst out laughing.

"And to think," said my cousin, pointedly ignoring my merriment, "that I had to come here with you and that he has seen me."

"So what?" I said. "There are worse sights than you. You know how we used to tease you that you looked exactly like the Prince of Wales? Now you look like the Duke of Windsor."

"Look over there," said my cousin. "The oldish couple. He’s smoking. And the old girl has turned her chair away from the table. She’s been like that all the time, they got here shortly after us."

"I didn’t notice," I said.

"All the time she’s been watching us," he insisted.

"She’s looking at my dress," I said. "Everybody here notices my rags. To them they are simply heaven. It’s pathetic. And you yourself—I don’t know how you do it, but you still manage to live up to your former legend. You stick out a mile with your English tweeds."

"She isn’t admiring us," he said. "Do you know what she is doing? She is too far away to overhear what we are saying, and yet she is listening to every word. She’s lip-reading."