Letters From Prague (40 page)

A few dry leaves fell from the trees, spinning slowly in the dusty air.

‘What are we going to do now?' asked Marsha, swinging her legs.

‘I want to see where you stay,' said Gaby.

‘Oh, yes!'

‘We could have tea there,' said Harriet. ‘We could visit the castle. And the cathedral.'

‘That is a lot to do,' said Karel, and Marsha looked at him gratefully. ‘And it will be crowded. But still –' he got to his feet. ‘We can go up and look at the view.'

They caught the 22 tram across the river to Neruda Street and walked up the hill to the foot of the Castle walls. Now they were making the steep climb up the steps, going more and more slowly in the heat. But still. They were not on a route march, they could stop and rest, as others were doing, holding on to the handrail, listening to the birds, and it was, after all, ancient and beautiful, with this view over the city, this delicious combination of blues and greys and crimson and stone and shady green. And for Harriet it was, above all, distraction: from thoughts of Susanna and Hugh, from thoughts of Christopher, and when he might pick up her message, and what he might do when he did.

They came to the top of the steps; they walked along by the castle railings.

‘I thought that was the castle,' said Marsha, pointing to the towering cathedral behind it.

‘It is understandable.' Karel had taken off his jacket and carried it over his shoulder. He reached in his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his face. ‘This is more like a palace, I think. And the President has his office there –' He pointed out a section of the long neoclassical facade behind the railings. ‘You know about President Havel?'

Marsha looked mulish. ‘A bit.'

‘Quite enough, I am sure. He was in prison and now he is in a castle. It is a fairytale.'

In the baking heat, they turned to look down over the hill and the city. The orange rooftops of the Little Quarter tumbled away below them; beyond were trees, and the hazy afternoon blue of the river. On the other side were shimmering turrets and spires, chalky green domes and golden weather vanes. And cranes, everywhere.

‘Have I been up here before?' asked Gaby.

‘Not for a long while. When you were little, I think.'

‘When Mama was living with us.'

‘Yes.'

They walked on, seeking the shade of trees again, and Harriet looked at Gaby, who seemed to mind so little that her mother was not with them, while Marsha cared so passionately about her fatherless state. Well. Gabrielle saw her mother, relations between her and Karel were good, it was different. But still, but even so. Did Gabrielle never have outbursts? Did she and Karel never quarrel?

Tourists were walking through tall iron gates. ‘We could visit the apartments,' said Karel. ‘Now we are here. We could walk through and visit the cathedral, as you suggested, Harriet. It will be cool in there, and the Chapel of St Wenceslas is particularly fine.'

There was a silence.

‘Or,' he continued, turning to look down over the hillside again, ‘we could walk down to the orchards of Petrin – you see over there, to your right? Beyond the dome of St Nicholas? It's very pleasant there, almost like the countryside.' He looked at them all. ‘What do you think?'

Marsha looked back at him. ‘What do you think?'

Apples and plums were ripening; the grass was waving and tall, and wild flowers grew amongst it. The air was balmy, and a breeze like the one which had accompanied Harriet's walk through the cemeteries in Žižkov yesterday – was it only yesterday? – was stirring now, a gentle rustle in the leaves of the fruit trees, a caress on the grass, on their faces. Birds sang, there was the hum of bees. The city stretched out before them, but on this quiet slope of the hill it was, as Karel had told them, like being in the country. Marsha and Gaby were picking flowers. Their voices floated through the afternoon heat, to where Harriet and Karel were sitting, under an apple tree.

Harriet lifted her face to the sun, and closed her eyes. She let the warmth seep into her, and the sadness, unease and tension she had been carrying with her since yesterday evening all began, just a little, to dissipate. She was sitting on a hillside above Prague; it was summer; her daughter was happy. Beside her was someone she had thought she might never see again, who had given her the sweetest and most poignant moments of her youth. She opened her eyes and turned to look at him.

He was watching the children; he felt her gaze upon him.

‘So. How is Harriet?'

‘Well, thank you.' She stretched and yawned and smiled at him. ‘I feel, for the first time since we set out, as if I were on holiday.'

Was it true? It was true.

He said: ‘A great deal has happened to you on this journey.'

‘Yes.'

‘And some of these things have distressed you, I think.'

She clasped her knees; she looked down at the uncut grass, where insects were clambering.

‘You mentioned this yesterday – you said that the cemeteries had made you unhappy. Or made you think of someone else who was unhappy, is that correct?' He was tugging at a long tough stem, bending it this way and that. ‘Do you want to talk to me about this, or is it something private?'

‘I –' She wanted to tell him; she knew that to talk here, on this flowery hillside, of the darkness and despair which Susanna carried within her, and what it had led her to do, would help to dispel some of her own grief and confusion. But it also felt like betrayal: to tell someone to whom Susanna meant nothing, before she had told someone who understood her, to whom she had once been everything. And also: to tell Karel about Susanna would mean telling him about Christopher, and that she could not do. Not yet. Perhaps never. Nothing had happened, and yet, and yet –

Karel had broken off the stem of grass, and was running it between his fingers. The air was full of birdsong, the summery drone of bees, and children's voices. A couple of feet away a grasshopper leapt suddenly, and vanished – such a joyous, spontaneous sight.

She said: ‘It's perfect here. I don't want to spoil it.' It was true. ‘And anyway – I'm feeling better.' That was also true. How, in such company, in such a place, could she not feel better?

He smiled at her. ‘Good. But even so – if you feel you would like to tell me …' He ran finger and thumb along the grass stem, a graceful, repeated movement. ‘I will listen.'

‘Thank you.'

The children were coming towards them, bare legs brushed by the long thick grass. They carried bunches of wild, unfamiliar flowers, yellow and white and mauvey-pink, and more grasses, heavy with seeds.

‘Happy?' asked Harriet, as Marsha drew near.

She nodded. ‘It's the best day of the holiday. Here.' She held out her flowers; the stems in Harriet's hands felt warm and damp and crushed. She buried her face, brushing insects away.

‘Lovely; thank you.'

‘You have picked the whole hillside,' Karel said to Gaby.

‘No, we haven't.' She flopped down beside him and leaned against his shoulder.

‘Gaby wants to see our room,' Marsha told Harriet.

‘Yes. Well – we can do that. Let's just stay for a little while, shall we?'

And so, for a little while, they went on sitting there, under the apple trees, watching the sun begin to sink over the city once more, and the air grow rich and golden and still. A little funicular railway ran up and down the hillside. Bees murmured; invisible grasshoppers scraped and rasped and occasionally leapt into view and were gone again. The bells of St Nicholas began to ring.

Marsha said: ‘I'll always remember this.'

And then, after a while, they got up from the grass, and began the walk back down the hill, and into the shady streets of Mala Strana.

Harriet and Marsha, guides for once, led the others through to their own, particular street, to the blue-painted door in the wall which opened into their cramped little courtyard.

‘But you have found the nicest place in Prague,' said Karel, as Harriet closed it behind them.

‘Is that true?' She led them up the winding back stairs to their bedroom, turning the key in the lock. The door swung open: the room, as it had been on the afternoon of their arrival, was very warm, smelling of dust and wood. She crossed to open the window, and a pigeon on the tiled roof below flew away, startled, and came back at once. Behind her were murmurs in English and Czech as others looked round.

Harriet leaned for a moment on the worn and rotting wood of the window frame, looking out across the orange tiles, hearing the Sunday evening bells. She thought of the star-filled night which had passed, of how she had stood here shivering, filled with sadness, and how the afternoon, and Karel's company – his solid engagement with the world, his gentle humour, easy kindness to Marsha, and sensitivity towards her own state of mind – had warmed and helped to calm her.

She turned. Marsha had sunk on to her bed in exhaustion; Gaby, perched beside her, was looking at the unread English children's books on the bedside table.

Karel was leaning against the door, looking round him. She watched him take in the high iron beds, rush chair, suitcases, chest of drawers. The setting sun streamed in and touched, as it had touched on the afternoon of their arrival, the small wooden box she had placed there.

She said: ‘Those are your letters.'

‘In here?' He crossed the bare floorboards, bleached by the sun; he picked up the box, looked at her questioningly, lifted the lid. He took out the bundle of thin, airmail envelopes, with their hesitant, Biroed capitals, and stood looking at it, shaking his head. And as on the afternoon of their arrival, Harriet thought again of the film she had seen once, in another lifetime, down at the NFT on a winter's evening: an old man in a clean white shirt, taking off his wedding ring, putting it side by side with his wife's, in a little open box on a chest of drawers. A whole life together.

The room was full of quietness.

Karel put the letters back in the box, and with long graceful fingers closed the lid. He crossed the room and lifted her hand to his lips.

On Mondays the tourist attractions of museums and galleries were closed.

‘Thank God for that,' said Marsha, as they breakfasted out in the courtyard. Pigeons cooed on the gables above them, walking back and forth, and a feather or two drifted down, landing on the table. She blew them softly away again, reaching for a roll. ‘So today we're visiting Karel's office. Good.'

‘And meeting Danielle, perhaps,' Harriet leaned back in her chair, slowly drinking her coffee.

‘I wonder what she's like.'

‘So do I.' She was filled, all at once, with apprehension.

After breakfast, they walked through the streets towards Malostranske Square again. The shops were not long open, and shopkeepers were pulling down the awnings, setting out baskets of vegetables and fruit on the pavements. The air was still cool, the streets were not yet crowded; they walked companionably down the hill towards the great gateways at the entrance to the Charles Bridge.

The river gleamed and sparkled in the early morning sun. They leaned on the parapet between two stone saints, and looked down at the swans, at the barges. Men were throwing ropes, and calling; when they crossed to the other side they could hear building work: banging and hammering, the clang of scaffolding poles coming down, and whistling.

Karel's office was in a street not far from Charles Square, in the heart of Nove Mesto, the New Town. Harriet took out her map.

‘It's such a beautiful morning. Why don't we walk? We carry on along the river, and then cut through, after a couple of bridges.'

‘Okay.'

The houses along the waterfront were tall and gabled with decorated façades. Havel's family apartment was somewhere near here, not far from an old bomb site, ripe for redevelopment. They passed long islands, thickly planted, and a low white 1930s art gallery, straddling the water. They stopped to look up at the golden finials piercing the sky on the roof of the National Theatre, at the foot of the Legií Bridge. They were on a long riverside road once named after Marx and Engels: their names had vanished, and Harriet was taken back to graffiti-covered statues in windswept concrete plazas in Berlin, the bitter scrawling out of the past.

She looked at her map again, checking how far they had gone. ‘Here we are.' At the end of Jiráskuv Bridge they crossed into Resslova, walking towards the long narrow park which was Charles Square, once a cattle market.

Nove Mesto was business Prague, commercial and administrative Prague, a medieval city with a modern city added, during the industrial revolution, on to its original plan. The broad boulevards, streets and open squares had been built by Charles IV: to link the Old Town with the fortress of Vysehrad, further south; to cater for the monks and merchants pouring into the new capital of the Holy Roman Empire, and to house workers and craftsmen away from the peaceful university atmosphere of the Old Town. But the workers and craftsmen went to hear radical Jan Hus, preaching passionate sermons in the Bethelem Chapel in Czech, not Latin. The area became a hotbed of reformist discontent; it became rundown, neglected. Many of the churches remained, but in the nineteenth century a great swathe of slum clearance cut through the houses. Now, the district was bustling, full of office blocks, bars, department stores and cinemas.

Harriet and Marsha walked along the filling pavements, and up through the park. Karel's street was off Vodic˘kova, running to the north; they stopped to look at the shops, and a vast McDonald's.

‘Can we have lunch there?'

‘Certainly not.' They came to his corner. ‘Here we are.'

Karel might live in a tenement, but his office was modern and smart, an open-plan floor on the fourth storey of a block through whose large windows you could glimpse the river. Marsha and Harriet took the lift, and coming out on the landing walked through swing doors and were at once amidst a hubbub: ringing phones, a chattering fax and printer, desks piled high with documents. They stood looking around them, at red filing cabinets, maps and posters, computer screens. A busy lawyers'office, where people came and went and ignored them. There was a reception desk, but no receptionist. A phone on the desk rang and rang.