The Darts of Cupid: Stories (17 page)

"You are crazy."

"I may seem crazy to you," he said. "I know full well that you think I’m suffering from ideas of persecution, but you haven’t lived here since the war. And I’ll tell you something more. When I get up to go now, I’ll be followed by somebody and trailed all the way home. Because I’m suspect now, just by sitting with you, and being your cousin makes it worse."

"I give up," I said. I looked once more in the direction of the Russian. He was alone now; I had not noticed the other one leaving. "There you are," I said to Ferdinand. "The cornflower has faded away. Been sent off to relay a message. He’ll climb to the top of the church tower wrapped in a scarlet cloak so that nobody will think him conspicuous, and signal with a torch straight to Moscow."

My cousin asked about the hour of my flight to London in two days. "I shan’t be able to see you tomorrow," he said, "because of my work. But I’ll fetch you from the hotel the day after tomorrow and see you to the airport."

While he paid, the waitress gave me a tenderly reproachful glance. I hoped my cousin did not observe it; I reflected that if the elderly kindhearted woman had not been on duty that evening, the whole scene with my cousin would have been avoided and he would never have known of the Russian’s existence. And yet, a few moments later I realized that the scene would have been unavoidable after all, because as we were leaving, the Russian rose from his seat. He caught up with us before we reached the door. "I kiss your hand, milostivá paní," he said. "Forgive me, I only wanted to inquire if you too are departing now?"

"This is my cousin Ferdinand—Mr. Blonik," I said.

The Russian barely gave him a look and bowed slightly.

"I’m only seeing my cousin out," I said.

"In that case," said the Russian, "may I hope you will return and give me the pleasure of your company for a while?"

"Of course," I said. "I’ll be with you in a minute."

He inclined his head toward me, then toward my cousin, and turned away.

Ferdinand gave me a significant look and raised his chin. I glanced in the direction he wanted me to look. The Russian was not returning to his table; he went out ahead of us, through the swinging glass doors, past the cloakroom, where the attendant was knitting behind her counter, and then he was out of sight. If he had gone down the stairs we would have seen him, so he must have entered either the washroom or the telephone booth. "What do you say now?" asked Ferdinand. I did not reply. My cousin added, "Whatever he is or isn’t, he certainly is Russian. That accent he can’t get rid of or he would have done it. It’s like a watermark on a banknote; it gives the show away every time."

After my cousin had received his coat—it was his old officer’s trench coat—we dawdled in the lobby, talking, neither of us admitting that we were interested to see from which door the Russian would emerge. He did not appear. After a few minutes we descended the stairs and bid each other good-bye in the foyer of the hotel with a show of exaggerated heartiness.

When I returned to the coffeehouse, the Russian was at his table. He rose, smiling. "Let’s go, shall we," he said, "unless you want another drink."

"I don’t."

"That’s splendid," he said.

"I’m sorry I kept you waiting so long," I said. "But after all those years, there is so much to talk about."

"Well, well."

"I’m awfully glad I did manage to find my cousin," I said. "At first I thought . . . I didn’t have a clue."

"You don’t look pleased, though," he said.

"Oh, that’s because . . . ," I said, haltingly, and looked searchingly into his face.

"Because he made a remark about me," said the Russian. He closed his long lips tightly. His countenance had the same expression as on our first evening, when I had observed him listening to that man, as though expecting to be told something with which he was familiar but which he did not care to hear, anyway.

I took a deep breath. I was overwhelmed by a desire to see him flustered, shaken, just for once to shatter his sober self-possession, to see the sparks of the same fire he had shown when talking to me in his own tongue.

"He thinks you are secret intelligence," I said without taking my eyes off him.

To my furious disappointment he gave his resigned laughter. He said, "Is that all? I’m used to this. Before I was in the habit of coming here, I used to go to another coffeehouse, and I noticed that nobody ever would sit at a table next to mine if they could help it. In the end I asked the waiter, and he told me, ‘They all think you are secret intelligence.’ I don’t know what it is about me, and being Russian doesn’t help either, of course. Never mind. Let’s go."

The next evening, when we met in the coffeehouse, I said, "I shan’t come to your place tonight. My flight is at nine tomorrow, which means I must be at the airport at eight. I just couldn’t manage it—I’d be too nervous."

"I understand."

We sat on till eleven. I said, "Now, I think, it must be good-bye."

"Yes, but not here," he said. "There is something more I want to tell you, and it had better be said outside. Walk down the street with me, no further than the church, and I’ll walk you back to the hotel. I believe the rain has stopped just for once, mirabile dictu."

"Not mirabile at all," I said. "Now that I’m leaving, the good weather will set in."

"I’d rather have it rain and you stay on," he said.

It was mild outside; the sky was evenly clouded and it was still wet underfoot. I was walking down the street by the side of a man with whom I had spent most evenings and nights for six weeks, and of whom I knew the following: he was Russian and forty-two, brought up in a wine shop of poor parents, had worked previously in Romania and Hungary, had a degree in physics, was divorced two years ago, had a daughter of eight and a brother who was a general in the Russian army.

We were silent as we passed the length of the hotel building. Then he said, "You have been very good all along. You’ve never asked me a question about myself. Now, as you are leaving, I will tell you what I am. I am a physicist and I work for the army. I am a full colonel. They wanted to put me in uniform, but I managed to be spared that, at least. I cough on them, as you would express it, but I have no choice. I am on secret stuff, though I’d much rather be working on something else, and if I ever leave the army I shan’t be allowed out of the country for five years. I don’t want you to write to me; I shan’t write either. If you ever want to come back to me, I’ll be here for you—I’m strictly a one-woman man, that’s my unfortunate nature. I’ll always want you, you can rely on me."

We halted. "At least kiss me good-bye," I said. As soon as I had said it I knew it was a mistake. Like all good lovers, the Russian had never wasted time on kisses. Besides, with his sober bearing he had always abstained completely from any show of affection in public.

He bent down rigidly and with ill grace, and I put my arms around his neck and touched my lips on his cheek. I said, "And I never even learned how to pour out Turkish coffee because you always did it for me."

We made our way back without speaking. A waitress came out of the snack bar flanking the hotel entrance, carrying a tray with a mayonnaise salad, and at that moment there came to us the music from the radio outside, playing the bars of the song which says, "You wait, I’ll tell how you went after me, you wait, I’ll tell what you wanted to get. In the garden a rose, under the window a kiss."

"Drat these folk tunes," the Russian said.

I RETURNED to Prague in 1968, three years after I had left, on a Friday in the first week of June. On the first night I was given a room in a good old hotel behind the gunpowder tower, in the center of the town. On the next day I was told that no accommodation of any kind could be found for me, not even in the second-rate hotel where I had stayed previously, and I was sent to a room in a private flat behind the national museum.

The owner’s family was ill pleased at my moving in at such short notice; they had intended to leave in the afternoon for a weekend in the country. I assured them that I would be able to make my own breakfast, would turn off the gas, would double-lock the front door when going out, and would write down every call I made on the telephone. By then it was not necessary to continue with my enumeration of a lodger’s virtues; they told me that they would bring me back some cherries and strawberries, and that in the meantime I could have the run of the flat.

On Sunday morning I could not wait any longer. I took the tray with my milk and coffee into the dining room, poured out a cup, set it on a chair by the telephone, and opened the directory.

I had never had occasion to call the Russian by telephone, and had never looked up his number. It was easy to find. There was only one Blonik in the book, and the address was still the same. The only thing which struck me as not being right was the first name. It was not Konstantin, but Antonin, which is the Czech form of Anthony. He’s got two Christian names, I thought, and he doesn’t want to use the Russian-sounding Konstantin.

While I dialed I conjured up a woman’s voice answering, or his own, embarrassed and constricted, informing me that he was now married, saying brightly, "Of course I’ll be very glad to see you," and adding in a murmur, "but my wife must never know of this."

The call was answered on the first ring. "Blonik here," said a man’s voice. It was a baritone, and softer and weaker than the full hard voice that I recalled. Probably I had awakened him.

"It’s Edith," I said. "I only arrived from London the day before yesterday. How are you?"

"Yey-yey. Edith from London, it sounds like a blooming fairy tale," said the voice, a voice without the glitter of brocade, and to my consternation it spoke in the slangy way and dialectically colored speech peculiar to the inhabitants of Prague.

"But aren’t you Mr. Blonik?" I asked.

"Sure, but I don’t know any Edith, let alone an Edith from London, as sure as the cat crawls through the hole and the dog jumps over the fence."

"But I don’t understand," I said. "I used to know a Mr. Blonik in this very flat you are in now. He lived there."

"When was this?" he asked.

"Three years ago."

"That’s not possible," he said. "Because I’ve been in this flat for the last ten years, and I’m sitting tight on it, with both cheeks of my behind, don’t you worry, because this is a flat with all the comforts laid on, and there’s some who would trade a flat of four or five rooms in an old house for a small place like this. You have it mixed up with someone else in this house."

"Your flat is on the sixth floor," I said, "that’s the top floor, and as you get out of the lift, it’s the only door on the left. There is a roof terrace, not beautiful, but good for hanging out the washing."

"Holy sacrament!" he said. "Forgive me for swearing, will you, but this is getting sacramentally complicated. Forgive me, Miss Edith from London, but what was the name of this friend of yours?"

"I told you," I said. "Blonik, Konstantin Blonik."

"Oh, Kon-stan-tin," he said, sounding relieved, rolling the name out in its full splendor. "Konstantin, the Russian."

"Yes, yes," I said eagerly.

"But he’s not Blonik. What rubbish are you serving me up? He’s Konstantin Biyelogradov."

"I never heard that name," I said.

"You must have," he said impatiently. "His brother is General Biyelogradov, and there is even a street in Prague named after him."

"Hold on," I said, "that’s him. Of course. He told me his brother was a general in the Russian army."

"And you knew him three years ago?" he asked.

"That’s right."

"And he lived in this flat?"

"He did."

"But how is it possible?" he asked. "Where was I at that sacramental time? Do you know, I can’t remember." There was a pause. "I’ve known him for ten years," he went on. "You see, we got together because we were both getting a divorce at that time. Weeping cheek by cheek into our beer."

"Oh," I said. "He told me he was divorced, that’s true, but only two years before I met him. I mean, that makes it five years ago, now."

"No, no, you got it wrong," he said.

"And he has a daughter," I added.

"That I can’t say, he never mentioned her," he said. "Of course, we never did have much in common. I’m a plain man, I’m a printer, and he’s a highly educated person."

"He certainly is."

"There’s something, though, about his career that’s clouded," he said. "He did study law, that I know, but I’ve always had the impression that he didn’t work in a legal job, that he didn’t get his degree."

"Law?"

"Yes, law."

"That’s not at all what he told me," I said. "He was an academician, yes, certainly, but—"

"What did he tell you?" he asked in a tone of voice that was not merely keen with curiosity but had a sharp edge which I found menacing.

"He told me something entirely different," I said and paused.

He continued silent.

I added, "I shan’t tell you, though. Because he told me in confidence and I don’t want to break faith."

He said, "I understand that. That’s very fine of you." I had imagined he would be disappointed, but to my surprise he sounded relieved. "Now look here," he said. "I see you are genuine, all right, and we must get you organized. I’ll give you his address and phone number—I’ve got it, only I don’t know where. This flat is so sacramentally small that you’d think it’d be easy to lay hands on anything. But no fear. Where are you staying? Give me your full everything and I’ll ring you back as soon as I’ve found it."

I drank my second cup of milk and coffee. It was barely lukewarm; I must have had a longer talk with Mr. Blonik than I had realized. Despite my consternation, I was grateful for the man’s existence. Here was the explanation of his "Married Love? That rubbish? No, of course I haven’t read it," and that vulgar pair of ladies’ slippers.

I was still in the kitchen tidying up after my breakfast when the telephone rang.

"I got it for you," said Mr. Blonik’s voice. He sounded matey and cozy. "Got a pencil? The flat is near where I live; he’s had it for the last eighteen months, I should say. By the way, when was it that you met him three years ago? In what month, about?"