“Sorry, Dr. Hruska, I’ll…I’m… J have to…” And I shouted over my shoulder, “Be right back.”
The K Museum. The Altneushul. The girl in the blue beret. Sometimes I put third things first. Straight out the door I ran, not even turning to see the expression on the director’s face. With balletic agility — I’m a good dancer, remember? — I pirouetted and turned a quick right. Crowds of tourists, a group of Italian high school students singing and walking ten in a row, their arms around each other, a panoply of strollers block my view. The cascade of people so thick and swift it was like a horizontal waterfall. But I charged forward like a linebacker through the rush-hour crowd, stepping to the right here, veering and weaving to the left there, holding that imaginary football, racing to the one-yard line, one hand out stiffly, ready to thrust aside all tacklers who stood in my way, seeking the moving ad for the concert.
Aside from talking to the girl in the blue beret, I wanted to thank her for the message she and the unnamed fellow next to her brought me, bringing me closer to K. Even if Karoly Graf was not K’s son, it still would make an exciting addition to the film. And I would include the museum too, without commentary. Let the viewer make his own decision on that insignificant little space.
I caught up to her, pretended to be deeply interested in the details of tomorrow night’s concert printed on her placard. She smiled again. It wasn’t the smile of a hostess at an outdoor café luring customers with a smile that started and stopped with her teeth. From within came the smile of the girl in the blue beret. That smile affected me. Yes, I admit, it did. I held that smile in the palm of my hand and later glanced at it from time to time.
“Hi, do you speak English?”
“Yes.”
“How much are tickets for tomorrow night’s concert?”
She pointed to the fifteen kroner price.
“But if you buy now, it’s only twelve kroner. At the door, fifteen.”
I looked at her face, noted a little wave of black hair peeking out from under the beret.
“You have an interesting accent. Where are you from?” I asked.
“Georgia.”
“Atlanta?”
She smiled, chin down, looking at me over glasses that weren’t there. “No.”
“Macon?”
“No.”
“If y’all come from Joe-ja, how come ah doan heah a Suthen accent?”
“’Cause I come from northern Georgia.” And now she laughed.
“Ah, then you must be from Augusta.”
She gave a happy laugh.
At once I had the entire scenario. She had migrated from some European country to America and was now studying in Prague because tuition was much cheaper and was working to pay for her college costs.
I looked around at the other placard holders. No one else looked quite like her. Nobody wore a beret. The others had Slavic faces, either from here or Slovakia, high cheekbones, flat noses, wideset eyes. But she looked different. Maybe she wanted to call attention to herself with that navy-blue beret. Then again, maybe she just wanted to keep her head warm.
“You’re a college student, right?”
“Okay,” she said noncommittally. “So would you like to buy a ticket?”
Why didn’t she ask me where I came from, what accent I had, what I was doing in Prague? I wanted to tell her that she and her coworker had been instrumental in giving me a positive message. But I decided to hold back. If she was all business, I would keep still too. For a moment I also thought of sharing with her whom I had just met outside the K Museum. But just because Karoly Graf blurted out sensational info to me didn’t mean that I had to do the same. That’s how rumors spread.
True, I liked talking to her, but since I had impolitely left Dr. Hruska practically in mid-sentence, I thought it would only be decent to return.
“Maybe I’ll buy one later,” I told her. “I have to rush back to the K Museum. Will you be here in fifteen, twenty minutes?”
“In the vicinity, yes.”
“Okay, I’ll look for you.”
I don’t know why my heart was racing as I entered the museum. Was it delayed excitement from speaking to the girl or guilt that I had rudely broken off talking with Dr. Hruska just as he was answering my question about K’s son?
The receptionist sent me upstairs to his little office.
“Ah, you’re back. Good,” the director said. “I thought I had insulted you when I asked you if you understood international sign language.”
“No, not at all. Please forgive me. I saw someone I knew…if I didn’t catch…”
“It’s okay, it’s okay.”
“Forgive me for running out so abruptly.”
“Quite all right. So, kindly have a seat, make yourself comfortable, and we shall continue. In response to your declaration that the visits by the so-called or self-styled son of K to our museum are a plus for us, I asked you if you understand international sign language.”
“To which I was going to ask: What do you mean?”
Dr. Hruska tapped his right temple three times, then circled his right index finger clockwise around his ear a few times. I nodded, I understood. Then I took out Karoly Graf’s visit card and showed it to the director. He took it and looked at it. He waved the card several times as he spoke, brought it to his chest, teasingly close to his pocket as though he would take it from me for bringing an illegal or false document into the museum. Perhaps he had worked for the previous regime — lots of people continued in posts they had had under the communists — before the political turnaround and was used to doing just this, confiscating false documents. For a moment I feared he would do just that, for it’s hard to shake off old bureaucratic ways. Lips pressed, Dr. Hruska nodded knowingly.
“Now do you understand?”
“I see,” I said, my heart sinking. “Oh, my. He’s…”
“Yes, absolutely, I regret to say. The poor man, otherwise a decent, knowledgeable fellow, is deluded with this ridiculous idée fixe… He comes here often, and because of his age we give him complimentary admission. I’m sorry to disappoint you…but I must tell you”—here he returned Graf’s visit card—“don’t waste your time.”
“Is he Jewish?”
Dr. Hruska, who very likely was not a Jew, looked at me. I thought he would say, What difference does it make? But he said:
“He claims he is, but I cannot confirm that.”
I saw the director looking quickly at his wrist. He was too polite to lift his hand up and openly glance at his watch. But I got the hint. I shook his hand, thanked him, and said I had to be on my way.
“Come back soon,” Dr. Hruska said.
3. Again the Girl in the Blue Beret
Maybe I will buy a ticket from the girl in the blue beret, I thought as I walked out of the museum. Then I’ll ask her if she wants to join me, and if she says yes, I’ll buy another ticket. Again I made my way through crowds in the Old Town Square looking for her. The girl in the blue beret was right. She wasn’t in the same spot she was in before.
When she saw me she raised her eyebrows in a gesture I thought was welcoming. As if to say, Ah, hello, you are back. You said you’d come back and you did come back.
“So, then, which part of Georgia,” I said as if there had been no break in our conversation, “do you call home?”
Again she laughed, closed her eyes for a moment, and shook her head.
“Actually, I’m from Gruzinye, the other, the real, Georgia. From Tbilisi.”
As soon as she said she was from Georgia, I had a rush, a high, call it inspiration. That’s what pretty girls can do — in the Middle Ages inspire feats of knightly valor; today, feats of wit in middle age.