“What is seekin?”
“Co to je síkn?” Antonín translated the question for himself. “I don’t know,” he said in English. He thought a moment, then said, “There’s no such word in our language.”
“Aaah,” said Dr. Sukthankar. “I obviously must have misunderstood. It was some word the policemen kept saying to each other.”
“Would you mind repeating it?” asked Antonín.
The two men stopped walking and Dr. Sukthankar very diligently tried to reproduce the sounds of this unfamiliar language: “Sikkin. Seekin. Skahn.” Antonín listened, shaking his head. “Sink. Skahn. Skaahn.”
Suddenly it came to him. “Do you think maybe tsikahn?”
“Oh, yes,” said Dr. Sukthankar. “That’s it!”
“Now I understand,” Antonín said.
“If it’s something very rude, please don’t tell me,” Dr. Sukthankar said, seeing the look of hesitation on Antonín’s face.
“Cikán means ‘Roma’ in Czech,” Antonín said after a moment.
“So that’s why I was detained?” said Dr. Sukthankar. “Because I look like a Roma?”
“It seems that was the reason.”
“I’ve read a little about your country in the papers, but I haven’t paid too much attention. I trust it isn’t against the law to be a Roma here?” Dr. Sukthankar said with a laugh.
“I’m going to file a complaint,” Antonín said. “You were officially invited to attend our scientific conference.” Sukthankar noticed his grizzled old colleague was turning red in the face.
“Oh no,” he said quickly, “don’t do that. I’m just here on a little trip because I had a patient from here a few years ago, and I’d like to take a look round Hungary and Austria as well. I’m used to it. It’s just bureaucratic harassment.”
There was an awkward silence, broken only by a passing tram.
“Would you mind showing me how to get to Wenceslas Square? I’ve heard so much about it,” said Dr. Sukthankar after a while. They both realized he was only saying it to break the awkward silence, which had rapidly expanded to take on a variety of ornate and unanticipated meanings.
“Of course, I can take you,” Antonín said. “After that, we can sit down somewhere for a while, have a cup of coffee, and I’ll tell you about our conference, which starts tomorrow.”
“That would be very kind of you,” Dr. Sukthankar said.
Once his guest had taken a look around the square, Antonín found a café in one of the side streets, and they sat down and finally had a chance for real conversation. Dr. Sukthankar was a psychiatrist as well as a psychologist, and ran a psychiatric unit in a hospital in northwest London. The purpose of his trip was tourism. He declared this fact several times, with obvious pleasure. “All year long I plunge into the depths of my patients’ souls, but on holidays I always make time to relax, to be totally superficial and commit myself to a wholly consumerist view of the world.”
Antonín couldn’t tell if his colleague was being ironic or not, since he didn’t feel as at home in English, so just to be on the safe side, instead of laughing he asked: “So by the way, what should I call you? I have the feeling I’m not quite pronouncing your name correctly.”
“Just call me Vish,” Dr. Sukthankar said. “That’s short for Vishnu.”
“Vishnu, Vishnu, Vishnu,” Antonín repeated. “That’s the name of a god, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Sukthankar. “My parents are Hindu and so am I.” He noticed that Antonín was paying close attention, so he went on. “In our religion, Vishnu is the god who created the universe in three steps.”
“It’s a completely different tradition than in Europe,” Antonín said. “Completely different. Here in Europe, we give people names of saints, not gods.”
“I was born in England, just outside London in the county of Surrey, and went to Catholic school as a child,” said Dr. Sukthankar. “I’m British and European with Indian ancestry.”
“Oh, of course, of course,” Antonín said. The conversation was turning in a direction he wasn’t sure he wanted to go.
“So what was it that actually brought you here to see us, then?” Antonín asked.
“A few years ago I had a patient from the Czech Republic,” Dr. Sukthankar said. “He had been living in England a long time, he wasn’t allowed to go back, and he missed Prague terribly. He always said it was the most beautiful city in the world, so I decided I needed to come have a look.”
“So how do you like it so far?” Antonín said.
“Beautiful. Truly beautiful,” Dr. Sukthankar said. “So beautiful there are moments when it reminds me of places in India.”
“Is that right?” Antonín said, using the most reserved tone of voice he could muster.
Dr. Sukthankar spent one full day at the conference and the rest of his four-day visit in Prague playing the perfect tourist. He saw Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, Kampa Park, Old Town Square, sampled the beer, took in a few bookstores, and spent half a day in the University Library. On the eve of his departure to Vienna, Dr. Lukavský invited him out to dinner. As long as he had even a smidgen of energy left, he knew he had to keep up his foreign contacts at all costs. He asked again how Dr. Sukthankar had enjoyed his short stay.
“You know,” his English colleague replied, “that Czechoslovak patient of mine I told you about had a recurring dream: He dreamed he went down to the underworld and when he came to the gates he saw a giant man riding a giant bull. The man came to a sudden stop and the bull reared up, but the man kept control of him and said to my patient, ‘Eat these leftovers from my bull. Eat them, just as your father once did.’ My patient, we’ll call him Max, hesitated a moment, but then did as the giant asked. He passed through the gates into the underworld and came to a large square, like one of the squares in Prague, he said, with ordinary people walking up and down the sidewalks. He stopped a moment to get his bearings and suddenly saw a homeless man running toward him. The strange thing was, one second he was invisible, the next he was not. He ran into Max at one of the moments when he was invisible, and before Max could figure out what had happened he was gone. Then he discovered that the strange homeless man had taken his letter of safe conduct, stating his name and the purpose of his journey to the underworld, which meant he might not be able to get back. Nervous now, Max continued to make his way through the underworld, wandering off course and getting lost several times. He didn’t know which way to turn. After walking down several streets he found himself in a large garden on a tract behind a palace. There were two women there weaving fabric on a loom. One with black thread, the other with white. Nearby he saw a huge wheel being turned by four girls. The wheel had three hundred and sixty-five spokes and there was a man standing spread-legged in the middle who looked like the man on the bull Max had seen in front of the gates. Only this man was a little younger and smiled at Max. Finally Max found a way leading out of the city, and once he was outside the walls he saw a small lake with water lilies on it. He plucked one of them, and when he finally reached home he asked his father about what he had seen, and his father said: ‘Those two women were weaving the present, which will become the history of the future. The man in the middle is the Guardian of Truth and Lies, who sees to it that they remain separate. The wheel is obviously a representation of the year with its three hundred and sixty-five days, and the four girls are the four seasons. The leftovers from the giant bull that you ate were the elixir of immortality, which is what saved your life in the underworld after the stepbrother of the Guardian of Truth and Lies, whose name is the Defender of Myth and Illusion, stole your letter of safe conduct.’ And that’s it,” Dr. Sukthankar concluded.