A vague smile, as though she is tolerant of things the young will do, absurd things like cross the Iron Curtain on a whim. Somehow James expected more – an explosion of surprise, an embrace, a motherly welcome. ‘I remember. Yes, I remember.’
But perhaps she doesn’t even really remember them – just two hitchers picked up on the road and given a place to pitch their tent for the night. Nothing much. ‘The Bach,’ he says, as though to give her something on which to fix her memory. ‘You played that for us. In your music room.’
‘Of course I did. That is always my encore piece.’
Always my encore piece. Understanding dawns that, far from being spontaneous, an encore may be something practised, anticipated, given out like sweets to adoring children.
‘Ellie and I thought you played wonderfully.’
The woman shakes her head. She’s tired, bothered by all the fuss. ‘What do you know? I played poorly but only I know it.’ A bitter laugh. ‘I play poorly and the people applaud just the same. What do they know? Dvořák himself disliked the cello as a solo instrument, do they know that? He said the instrument’s middle register is fine but the upper voice squeaks and the lower voice growls. Did you know that? That maybe should be a lesson for you – it is quite possible for an artist not to understand his own art.’
She turns. There’s a photographer trying to get her to look his way. Flashes bounce around the room. She looks peeved. No she will not pose with her cello. The cello is for playing, not posing. ‘These people,’ she says, with a tired and colluding smile towards Ellie and James, ‘they are vulgar and they know nothing.’
VII
31
Meetings in the embassy safe room are daily. Rumours abound, throughout the city, over the airwaves, from one embassy to another. Leaders from various Iron Curtain countries drop in on Prague without notice. Troops are reported to be gathering in Hungary, East Germany, Poland and Ukraine. There are stories of late-night phone calls between Prague and the Kremlin, between Brezhnev and Dubček.
‘The Czechoslovak leadership,’ Eric Whittaker said yet again, ‘is walking a knife-edge.’
Someone asked, ‘What’s our own position, Eric? If it should all go wrong, I mean. If the Soviets decide to move in. What the devil do we do?’
Eric winced. ‘Heaven forfend. Of course we just keep our heads below the parapet. Strictly their own affair. Just like Hungary in fifty-six. We’ll get everyone into the embassy and batten down the hatches.’
‘And HMG?’
‘The official government position is that any such escalation would be a strictly internal matter for the countries concerned – in this case, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.’
‘It seems like another betrayal, doesn’t it?’ Sam said. ‘Munich 1938 and now Prague 1968. Do you see the pattern? Nineteen eighteen the state is created. Nineteen thirty-eight it is betrayed by the Great Powers, 1948 the communists grab power. And now here we are in 1968. It looks ominous.’
‘I didn’t know you were a numerologist, Sam.’
‘Just a pessimist, Eric.’
‘Well, let’s have a bit of optimism. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.’ Whittaker would have liked that lapidary sentence to be an end to the meeting, but someone – the head of consular services this time – was always there to ruin a good ending: ‘But are we preparing for the worst, Eric? What about the evacuation of British nationals in the event of an invasion? Since the place has become a magnet for every trendy socialist Tom, Dick and Harry we’ve got hundreds here. There’s even a bloody pop group due in a couple of days.’ He glanced at a typed sheet in front of him. ‘Apparently they call themselves The Moody Blues, although, God knows, it’s me that’s moody. And blue.’
Sam fell in beside Whittaker as they left the safe room. ‘I’ve just received this from the Russian embassy.’ He held out an envelope with his name written on it.
Whittaker glanced inside with a look of surprise. ‘Lucky you. That’d be a hot ticket in London.’
‘They’re from Gennady Egorkin himself. He seemed very insistent that I go.’
‘So what’s keeping you? Are you taking the young lady we saw you with? Madeleine was most intrigued. Found it better entertainment than the Brahms. I could barely drag her away at the end.’
‘I hope she doesn’t go shooting her mouth off to Stephanie. Not before I’ve had a chance to tell her myself.’
‘Is it serious then?’
‘It’s all a bit sudden, really. Not quite what I expected.’
‘Well, be careful. Playing away from home is not easy in these parts.’
‘Of course I will.’
‘And I won’t breathe a word of it to Madeleine. Mind you, she already thinks you’re a two-timing bastard.’
‘It’s not that simple, Eric.’
‘My dear fellow, it never is. Speaks an expert.’
32
It’s no longer Marienbad, of course, any more than Karlsbad is still Karlsbad. Once again, those are the German names lurking in the collective memory behind the Czech. Now the world-famous spa towns are Mariánské Lázně and Karlovy Vary. Karlovy Vary/Karlsbad may be the more celebrated of the two, but there’s no doubt which is the more beautiful. Mariánské Lázně is a baroque jewel set in green velvet, a belle époque fantasy couched among wooded hills, a courtesan reclining in her bed. This is where Goethe came to take the waters and found his last and unrequited love, Ulrike von Levetzow; where the King-Emperor Edward VII failed to lose weight, chased tail and also encountered fellow emperor Franz-Josef I. Here Chopin stayed with his fiancée Maria Wodzin´ska, Winston Churchill spent part of his honeymoon with the lovely Clementine Hozier and Franz Kafka passed ten agonising days with his fiancée Felice Bauer. Finally, this is where General George Patton, he of the ivory-handled revolvers and a tendency to slap combat-fatigued soldiers, turned up with the US Third Army in May 1945, a fact conveniently forgotten by the government of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, which acknowledged the liberation of Czechoslovakia by the Red Army alone.
The hotel Sam had chosen was in need of refurbishment, but beneath the faded paint and crumbling stucco you could see the elaborate wedding-cake decoration that had made the place so famous in its time. He parked the car in front of the main entrance. The Škoda that had followed them throughout the two-hour journey from Prague stopped fifty yards behind them, but he didn’t say anything about it to Lenka.
The receptionist checked them in with as much grace as the desk sergeant at a police station. ‘Chopin suite,’ he said, handing over a key that might have opened a prison cell. The lift was out of order. They carried their suitcases up the main stairs, out of the faded grandeur of the foyer into the drab functionalism of the upper floors where socialist ideals of uniformity and parsimony had long ago chased out any luxury that the nobility of Europe might have recognised. The door to the Chopin suite was marked with the composer’s name, framed by a treble clef and a selection of crochets and quavers. Within there was a sitting room with a plasterwork ceiling that gave only meagre hints of what once might have been, and a bedroom with a fanciful portrait of the composer himself over the bed. Full-height windows overlooked the spa gardens.
‘Did you see?’ Lenka asked as they unpacked. Already there was a kind of familiarity about their relationship, as though matters had been speeded up and domestication was the next step. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation.