The Prodigal Spy (18 page)

They drove toward the cobbled streets of the Malá Strana, and Nick could see that beneath the dust and the scaffolding the city was beautiful. There was no color–no ads, no splashy shopfronts, not even the usual variety of cars in the street–so the buildings themselves became more vivid. Their Baroque facades of light mustard and green and terra cotta dressed the town. The architecture seemed to have been put down in layers, one period after another, until the unremarkable hills along the river had become an astonishing city, one of those places where Europe rises to its high-water mark, rich and complicated. Mozart had introduced operas here. In the afternoon light, the city was a painting, full of brushstrokes and perspectives and lovely forms. It was also falling apart. Up close, some of the wonderful houses were buckling, the lemon plaster torn with cracks. The scaffolding he saw seemed like a fingerin-the-dike attempt to shore up the years of neglect. The buildings, unmaintained, were slowly dying. How the Russians must hate it, Nick thought. The whole city was a beautiful reproach. The gifts of centuries were wasting away in a system that could not even produce salad.

They crossed the Vltava, past the imperial National Theater and the nineteenth-century streets of the New Town to the hotel on Wenceslas Square. To Nick’s surprise, there was a doorman and an old man to help with the luggage, a service class he thought did not exist. The room was heavy and ornate, deep red that wouldn’t show the dirt, wardrobes instead of closets. The old porter lingered, pretending to adjust the drapes, clearly expecting a tip. Their windows faced the street, and Nick could hear the tram bells outside.

“Did I give him enough?” Nick said after the man left. “He looked disappointed.”

“He was hoping for dollars. Technically, they’re not supposed to get anything, so don’t worry about it.” Molly started walking around the room, looking at it. “Well, here we are. God, I’m dead. Aren’t you? All that driving.”

Nick shook his head. “Now what? It’s still early. Should we call my—”

She put a finger to his lips, then raised it and pointed around the room.

“You’re kidding,” he said.

“I don’t think so. The Alcron was popular with journalists. They all stayed here last year. So we have to assume—”

Nick stared at her, not sure whether to laugh or be frightened.

“The phone too?”

“That for sure. How about a little air?” she said, moving toward the window. Traffic sounds floated in with the spring air. When he came over, she leaned close to him. “I’ll call,” she said to his ear. “Just be careful. No names. You’ll get used to it.” He felt her breath, warm and smooth, on the side of his face, and it startled him, as if she had just whispered an erotic secret. He pulled back. “What?” she said.

He shook his head, to make the feel of her go away. “Nothing.”

She went to her purse and took out a small address book, then started toward the phone. The tapping on the door surprised them both, as if someone had been watching them. But it was only a difficulty about the car, a few minutes of Pan Warren’s time, if he would come down to the desk. Nick followed the old man, feeling, crazily, that he was being taken away.

The difficulty turned out to be an extra fee for the garage–he could not park in the street. Nick was so relieved that he forgot to be annoyed. “I’m sorry for all these bothers,” the desk clerk said, and Nick found the English charming. He paid and looked around the lobby, imagining it buzzing with reporters just a few months ago. Now it was nearly deserted, an elderly couple having tea and a man hidden behind a newspaper, so obvious that Nick thought he couldn’t actually be a policeman. Outside some students were gathering in the street, walking in a half-march toward the university. He didn’t care about any of it.

She was saying goodbye on the phone when he opened the door, and he stood there for a moment, waiting and apprehensive.

“Dinner?” he said finally.

She shook her head. “Some other time. They’re busy tonight.”

Nick looked at her in disbelief, the tone of her voice, social and pleasant, making the moment unreal.

“Busy?” he said dumbly.

“Mm. A concert,” she said evenly, looking straight at him. “At the Wallenstein. We might think about that, actually. It’s pretty. What about it? Are you too tired?”

“What’s the Wallenstein?” They were going to see him.

“A palace in the Malá Strana. They give concerts in the courtyard. It’s nice. What do you say?”

“Can we get in this late?”

She pointed to the phone. “Try the concierge.” She raised her voice, taunting the microphone. “You have dollars. You can get anything you want with dollars.”

THE STUDENTS WERE lighting candles in the middle of Wenceslas when they left the hotel. The crowd was small, a fraction of the old rallies, but the police were out in force, patrolling the long street and pretending to ignore the students. No one wanted any trouble. From the candles Nick assumed it was a memorial service, but the signs they held up, in Czech, might have meant anything.

“I wonder what it says,” he said idly, looking at the quiet group. Behind them the street rose up to meet the giant columns of the National Museum, still scarred from the previous year’s shelling.

“‘Be with us. We are with you,”’ she said.

“You can read Czech?”

“No. It was the slogan. You used to see it everywhere. It’s their way of telling the police they’re all on the same side.”

Nick wondered what they expected the police to do –drop their guns and walk off the job? But it was all, from the incomprehensible signs to the sad, divided loyalties, someone else’s problem.

They walked down toward Národni Street, past the
párky
stalls, then threaded their way through the narrow streets of the Old Town to the river. This was the tourist route, full of marvels and medieval towers, but Nick found himself hurrying, oblivious. The Charles Bridge, with its ornate statues, was full of couples looking down at the water, arms around each other, the girls all with bleached-blond hair that seemed to hang straight from poor chemicals. On the other side, the Malá Strana, there were thick arcades and cobblestones, lit by dull street lamps and the glow of passing trams.

The Wallenstein was not far from the river, and when they got there a crowd had already gathered on Letenska Street, waiting to get in. Most of them wore coats against the spring chill, and Nick saw that they had dressed up, men in ties, women in cloth hats. No one was young. The street door led through the honey-colored stone wall directly into the formal gardens. At one end of the central courtyard, musicians sat in front of the high arches of a portico, tuning instruments. Folding chairs had been set up on the pebbled ground, and people claimed them, first come, first served, then stood looking around for their friends, waving and chatting, just as they must have done when the palace was first built. Behind the walls, away from the tanks and the lines for carrots, Prague still had its evenings.

Nick found chairs toward the back, so he could look out over the crowd, and stood watching the people file in. What would he look like? Was it possible he wouldn’t recognize him? He would be how old now? In his sixties, like most of the audience. Gray? White?

“Don’t crane. It’s too obvious,” Molly said. “Maybe we’d better sit down.”

“No one else is.”

It was true. People stood talking, their voices rising over the violins and cellos being stretched into tune. Did they all know each other? A few people near them stared frankly at their Western clothes. Why so public a place? Why meet in front of an audience? The lights were being lowered now, people finally taking their places.

“What are we supposed to do, save seats?” Nick said.

“He just said he was coming to the concert. Don’t worry. He’ll find us.”

A couple sat down next to them and the man nodded at Nick, but it was just a concertgoer’s greeting, polite and vacant. The music started, a series of Mozart divertimenti, as formal and airy as the gardens. Only the portico was lighted now, and Nick looked around the dim courtyard at profiles and shapes of heads, waiting for someone to turn in the dark. How would his father find them? It was Nick who would have changed, no longer a boy. It occurred to him–a new thought–that his father would know him only because he was sitting with Molly.

At the intermission, while people smoked and drank beer, he stood near the bright stage, impossible to miss, but no one came up, and only a few people looked toward him at all, glancing at his shoes. Molly said nothing, but he could tell from the way she bit her lower lip that she was worried, that it should already have happened. Czech, fluent and guttural, surrounded them, making him feel isolated, not even free to eavesdrop.

When they sat down again, he knew his father wasn’t coming. Something had happened, or maybe he had balked, unable to go through with it after all. Nick stared at the Baroque walls, not hearing the music, and realized that he felt a kind of relief. It was better in so many ways to keep things as they were. His body began to sag a little, coming down to earth. The past wasn’t meant to come back. Except there it was again, the walking away. In the pretty courtyard, listening now to Brahms, he was at the back door again, being left.

“I’ll be right back,” he whispered to Molly, and when she looked alarmed he smiled and said, “Bathroom,” and slid out of his seat, crouching as he slipped farther back into the dark garden, trying not to crunch pebbles.

A long arcade led back to an ornamental pool, and he stopped for a cigarette near one of the pillars, away from the crowd. Phones were tapped. Maybe he had had to change plans at the last minute, to keep the secret. Who knew what his life was like now? Maybe he would be idling on Letenska Street when they came out, a chance meeting. And maybe not.

Nick went into the bathroom. Damn him, anyway. He wasn’t going to do it twice. Molly said he lived here; she’d spoken to him. What did it matter if Nick called? Who cared who listened? He was still taking precautions, and in America nobody even remembered his name. Old politics, all forgotten, as dated as a hemline. But his son was here. How could he not want to see him?

Nick came out into the soft light of the arcade and stopped. The man near the other end was walking carefully, as if he had forgotten his cane in his rush to get to the bathroom. No, not that old. The waves were gone, thinned to a dusting of hair across his scalp, and his body had thinned too, so that the suit hung loosely, the sleeves too wide for his wrists. He kept coming. Nick couldn’t move. There hadn’t been years to watch the change, just this one minute. An awful mirror. He was looking at himself old. This is what he would be like, bony, almost bald, shoulders slightly drooped. And the face. It was coming into the light now, as inevitable as a ghost. Paler than before, the skin still tight over the cheekbones, then a little slack, a gravity pull. His own face. But the eyes. The shine of liquid full to brimming over, catching all the light, so full Nick thought he might drown in them.

“Nicku.”

The voice seemed to touch the back of his neck like a shiver, drawing him nearer. Voices didn’t change. The same sound, wrapping around him, his earliest memory.

“Nicku. My God.”

And now the eyes did spill over, a wetness at the corners, as he raised his hands, putting them on Nick’s arms. Nick thought of the day they had left Washington, when his heart had literally hurt in his chest, a kind of practice death. He felt it now. Take a breath. He had wondered what it would feel like, this moment, and now he saw that it was like falling. His stomach was light; the ground had slid away. But his father had taken him in his arms. He could feel his cheek, the head leaning into his shoulder, the arms circling his back, holding on to him for dear life.

They sat by the ornamental pool in the dark, his father clutching Nick’s hand, holding down a balloon that threatened to get away. Without the light of the arcade there was only his voice, so that Nick slipped back into it, not distracted by having to see him.

“So tall,” his father said, his voice shaky, “so tall.” And then, patting his leg, he said simply, “You came.”

“I got your message.”

“So you knew. I wanted you to be sure it was me. I thought maybe that’s why you didn’t answer before. You couldn’t be sure.”

“Answer?” Nick said, lightheaded again.

“My letters.” His father paused. “I see. You never got them.”

“You wrote to me?”

“Of course. In the beginning. I should have known they would stop them,” he said, his voice suddenly older. “But I thought–never mind. You’re here. Look at you.” Touching him again.

Nick wondered if he could see in the dark; maybe just the shape of him was enough.

“Who stopped them?” Nick said. “Mother—”

“No, no. My friends.” An edge of sarcasm. “How is your mother?”

The question itself seemed absurd, as if everything that had happened to them could be reduced to a polite inquiry.

“She’s fine,” Nick said, at a loss. “She’s married.”

“Yes. To Larry. You took his name.”

Nick glanced up at him, trying to read his face in the faint light. “She thought it would be easier, I guess. You were –famous.”

“Famous,” he said, almost pouncing on the word. Then he edged away, conversational again. “But you didn’t have to be. Yes. I suppose I should be grateful to him. He’s been a good father to you?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, then looked away, to his own thought. “Is she happy?” he said, but when Nick didn’t answer, he brought himself back and sighed. “Well, what a question. How do we talk? There’s so much—” He put his hand on Nick’s knee. “You came. You don’t know what it means. I thought, what if he never wants to see me again?”

“No,” Nick said.

“But I had to try. It was a chance.”

“Why now?”

“And not before?” He stood up, looking toward the music. “I’m not sure. I suppose I thought you were better off. Maybe I was afraid you wouldn’t answer, like with the letters. But then, when I heard you were working with Wiseman–oh yes,” he said, answering Nick’s expression. “I keep up. I have your graduation picture.”