Before (29 page)

TWENTY

Jiri has his arms fixed around the waist. There are blows to his head, as if a board is being swung at him repeatedly. He shuts his eyes, hunches his shoulders, squeezes into bone; it is like holding a desperate, wild spider.
Just hang on, goddamnit,
he tells himself,
just don't bloody let him go.

There is a guttural scream from the man above, a hard cracking behind Jiri's ear.

They are at the edge of the stairs. Then they are falling.

*   *   *

Now there is a heavy sound of crickets in the weeds. Jiri can hear them from where he is, at the foot of Tika's stairs. The medics have just lifted him onto a gurney, an odd, cool feeling of swooping and then solidity, and the blue-white-red lights of police and rescue squads make steady explosions in the leaves nearby. The medics, Jiri realizes, think he is unconscious.

“—doused her place with gasoline and was going to set it on fire,” one of them is saying, quietly, as he carefully straps belts about Jiri's torso. “They think he killed someone in Medford tonight, and that he was the one, like a year ago, who murdered those two women a few miles away in Somerville and burned them in their houses—”

A black man above Jiri, gently fitting foam about Jiri's head, gives a low whistle. “God forbid. I remember that. These people are lucky.” Jiri sees the dark skin, nostrils, large hands moving.

“This guy, here,” says the first medic, “he held him until the boyfriend and the police came.” Then, realizing Jiri's eyes are open, he says more loudly, “Hey, fella. Rest easy. You're quite a guy. You're gonna be okay. How are you feeling?”

But Jiri cannot speak. The eyes of the medic show a quick concern, and then the face is smiling again. “Just rest easy, fella.”

But there is something I need to know,
Jiri tries to say. It comes out a moan.
Goddamnit.
Now Anna's sweet head is above him, against the lights of Tika's house, and her head lowers and she is kissing his fingers. And Jiri wants to tell her not to worry but the words do not come; he tells himself to be patient and just then his father is here, on the other side, holding Jiri's other hand. Behind his father's form Trowbridge Street is a spectacular jungle of the leaves and red light of the fire trucks, the crackling of police dispatches.
What is this place, Jiri?
his father says. His father is in silhouette against the red, and when Jiri cannot answer him, he presses Jiri's fingers as if in prayer. It is so startling—so breathtaking—to see his father that Jiri feels he will weep and tries to raise his head but he cannot move it.

One of the medics is telling Anna that she can ride with him and they are making sure his head is stabilized and the gurney is moving now, branches running above, and Jiri wonders where Tika is, but when they raise the gurney, a strong clicking of metal, he can see that she is right here, where his father was, saying, “Jiri, oh, Jiri,” and she is all right, and
That is what I needed to know.
The musician with the glasses is behind her, holding her shoulders, good boy. The boy was tough and fought with the man when Jiri no longer could.

The raising of Jiri's body brings the cool sensation again and there is pain in his head and neck. They take in the legs of the gurney, and trees over Jiri are sliding, becoming the white ambulance ceiling.

“We'll meet you guys there,” Tika says.

“Yes, honey,” Anna says.

Jiri feels suddenly that his back is horribly strained and he tries to say so and Anna is next to him and there is a sharp smell of alcohol and Jiri sees the medic looking at Anna. Then the doors close; they become a distant pair of windows, distant leaves glittering, vibrant—
is he a boy, looking at the leaves of Bohemia?

Anna speaks in Czech to him, very close, and far beneath them the wheels of the ambulance roll, moving over the familiar surface of Trowbridge Street. Streetlights whisk through the windows, then steady in a turn, and the ambulance accelerates again, the siren starting up, and they are on Cambridge Avenue, rushing fast through the September morning, Anna holding Jiri's hand tight between her own.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to my editor, John Parsley, for his empathy and patience and wise eye, and my agent, Maria Massie, of Lippincott Massie McQuilkin, for helping put these pages into print.

I was blessed in the revising of this book by Carl Beckman, Kerrie Clapp, Richard Fleischer, Emily Hamilton, Jack Herlihy, Stacy Howe, Ruth and Josef Hůrka, Kristin Livingston, Linda Martin, Sean McKenna, Conan McKye, Mark Morelli, Cristina Mueller, Marwa Othman, Carol Thomas, Enid Thuermer, Frank Reeve, Vĕra
perl,
Freddy Sullivan, and librarians at the Tucker Free Library in Henniker, New Hampshire, including Helga Winn, Lori Roukey, Betty Rood, and Jill Stearns. Ken DeStasio, a speech language pathologist at the Rutland Regional Medical Center in Rutland, Vermont, helped me determine the course of this story, and we lost him far too early. All of these people helped me with research, read my work in progress, and gave me hope.

Others, in a very difficult time, gave me the strength to keep going with this manuscript and lifted me onto their shoulders: Bill Cantwell, the family Dubus, Margit and Wayne France, Matt Miller and my brother, Christopher Jan Hurka, and his family—Caryn, Ian, Nick, and Noel. Dr. Montford (Bunny) Sayce has somehow kept his faith in his student all of these years.

I thank Dr. Peter Paicos and his team at the Winchester Wound Center in Medford, Massachusetts, and the administrators, nurses, and medical teams at Winchester Hospital in Winchester, Massachusetts, for their unfailing kindness to my family and my father.

Dr. Jerome (Jerry) Zacks, of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, was a true angel of mercy for my family and gave my father extra time with his loved ones. Heather Heckman-McKenna kept close watch on my heart—thank you so much, wonderful Heather. Ellen Nickel-Stone held me and showed me the stars.

And my father, Josef Hůrka, worked tirelessly on this book with me until he went to those stars—revising, translating, making sure of the accuracy of the work, particularly regarding intelligence and Resistance information. So Dad, thank you, as always: We are forever soldiers together.

J.H.

ALSO BY JOSEPH HURKA

Fields of Light

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin's Press.

BEFORE.
Copyright © 2007 by Joseph Hurka. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote from
The Poetics of Space
by Gaston Bachelard, translated by Maria Jolas, copyright © 1964 by The Orion Press, Inc. Original copyright © 1958 by Presses Universitaires de France. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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First Edition: May 2007

eISBN 9781466880009

First eBook edition: July 2014