‘Did I see what?’
‘Of course you saw. The car that followed us, the same as before. The same as we saw when we went swimming. They follow you everywhere.’
He watched as she hung her Munich dress in the wardrobe. ‘It’s always like that. You get used to it.’
‘I hate it. It is worse than we had before Dubček. At least we weren’t followed everywhere.’
‘But we were. Anyway, what does it matter as long as they haven’t booked into the room next door?’
She looked round and ambushed him with that smile – a flash of white teeth, a glimpse of naked gum, a creasing of her eyes. ‘I don’t care what they hear,’ she said.
Later they strolled in the spa gardens. Classical pavilions were scattered amongst the lawns, hiding within them the fountains that spurted life-giving waters whose details were specified at each spring – urinary diseases, locomotory diseases, gastrointestinal problems, gynaecological conditions, infertility, all were treatable. ‘If all this were true,’ Sam remarked, ‘you wouldn’t need doctors.’ He took photos, posing Lenka in the pavilion of the Karolina spring and snapping her as she walked through the arcade, alternately in shadow and out. One or two people paused to watch. At the Kolonáda a threadbare band played waltzes and polkas. On either side of the musicians the faces of Gennady Egorkin and Nadezdha Pankova stared out from posters as though expecting less levity, but Lenka ignored their disapproval, taking Sam’s hand and pirouetting with laughter while the musicians smiled and nodded. Sam took photographs of her spinning, her hair thrown out, her skirt billowing.
The recital that evening was held in a marbled hall decked out with neoclassical columns and naked goddesses. Just the two performers at the focus of the lights: Egorkin, dark and tense at the keyboard, and Nadezhda Pankova like a small, live flame (that crimson evening dress) beside him. As Egorkin had said, they’d chosen a demanding programme, opening with the Kreutzer Sonata and, after the interval, moving into the Slav world with Prokofiev and Janáček. The Prokofiev, vivid and melodic, was straightforward enough, but it was in the strange rhythms and echoes of the Janáček violin sonata that the Russian duo found their true métier, piano and violin throwing Janáček’s musical motifs back and forth, sometimes like children at play, sometimes like warring creatures snarling at each other, sometimes like lovers caressing. Melodies initiated by the violin were cut to pieces by the staccato piano, and then the roles were reversed, a lilting piano theme chopped apart by buzzing violin notes. At the end the whole piece reached a taut climax before drifting imperceptibly away into silence, like a person dying.
There was a stillness in the auditorium, breathing suspended, hearts stopped. Then a blizzard of applause. As the storm engulfed them, the couple stood, holding hands aloft, bowing in careful unison. It was only then that Sam noticed something, a glance between the pair, shared smiles hastily suppressed, a second glance that lingered after the smiles had been extinguished. It was that in particular that convinced him, the held glance like a hand clasp that neither wanted to break. The maestro and his protégée were in love.
Dutifully the two musicians settled down to play an encore – a quiet, melodic piece by Tchaikovsky – and while the second round of applause was filling the auditorium Sam and Lenka slipped out and found their way towards the back. At a gilded door, an attendant blocked the way in the impassive manner of a palace guard.
There were a few moments of one-sided argument – only authorised personnel were allowed through – before Sam gave up and took one of his visiting cards from his wallet. He scribbled on the back: Brilliant! And then on an impulse added the name of the hotel where they were staying. ‘Can you see it gets to Maestro Egorkin?’ he asked the attendant, adding a ten-crown note to help the thing on its way. ‘He invited us here and we want to show our appreciation. Do you understand?’
Did he understand? He seemed far beyond understanding anything much, viewing the card with rank suspicion before opening the door behind him and speaking to someone inside. The card disappeared. So did the ten-crown note.
‘Thank you,’ Sam said. ‘Thank you very much.’ Beside him, Lenka swore softly.
At dinner that evening they sat amongst workers who had exceeded their quotas, managers of farming collectives who had manipulated the figures to create an impression of surplus, factory managers who had passed their targets on paper if not in reality, party officials who had kissed the right arses. The men wore ill-fitting, shiny suits, their wives clumsy floral dresses. A pianist played Chopin remarkably well and a master of ceremonies commandeered the microphone to welcome a fraternal delegation from Poland to ‘our Bohemian beauty spot, in the hope that mutual respect and cooperation might always be the bond that ties our two peoples together’. There was scattered applause, but the Polish delegates really wanted to get on with the meal. Soup came and went, the usual thin broth with a dubious liver dumpling floating in it like a turd in a lavatory pan. It was followed by pork and duck weighed down with bread dumplings, each portion carefully defined in grams as though parsimony ruled in the kitchens and every ingredient had to be accounted for.
It was as they were starting their main course that someone came over to their table from the Polish party. Sam half-rose from his seat but the man had eyes only for Lenka. ‘Lenička,’ he called her. ‘My dear Lenička.’
She looked surprised and faintly embarrassed at his attention, but she accepted a kiss on one cheek. ‘This is my friend, Samuel,’ she said. There was a shaking of hands and an exchange of names. Pavel Rovnák, he said. He was slight of build with dark hair and a sallow complexion. He wore a moustache that might once have been a homage to Joseph Stalin but was now trimmed to suit the times. ‘I am an old family friend,’ he explained, ‘but Lenka and I haven’t seen each other for some time. Isn’t it strange how even in a small country such as ours it is still possible to avoid someone’ – he looked accusingly at Lenka – ‘and then to meet up in Mariánské Lazně of all places?’ He paused, as though expecting some matching remark from her, perhaps an explanation of what she was doing there with this foreigner who appeared to speak such excellent Czech. ‘You look well,’ he said to fill the void. ‘And your lovely mother? How is she?’ And then when Lenka had offered her scant information, he turned back to Sam. ‘You are American, perhaps?’
‘English. At the embassy.’
‘Ah, the embassy.’ Rovnák pursed his lips – the moustache twitched – and looked again from one to the other as though searching for further clues. ‘You speak good Czech for a foreigner.’
‘Not as good as Lenka’s English.’
‘She has been studying the language at university. I’m glad you have done so well, zlato.’
Lenka shrugged, as though it was of no account. ‘Are you staying in the hotel?’ she asked.
‘Sadly I have to get back to Prague this evening. In fact’ – he glanced round – ‘I must get back to my table. These Poles cannot be left on their own for too long. It has been good to meet you, Samuel. And Lenička, you must keep in touch.’
Lenka said nothing and went back to her meal. An outburst of laughter greeted the man’s return to his table. Sam waited. Lenka drank some wine then carefully replaced her glass. ‘That’s him,’ she said quietly. ‘I told you about him. The aparátník. Pavel Rovnák.’
Sam had always perceived her as tough – smiling, delightful, but tough. Yet now it was as though he saw her through a magnifying lens. He could glimpse her insecurities, imagine her as a vulnerable young girl, a lumpish fifteen-year-old uncertain of the vagaries of her body, possessed only of a distant memory of her father and subject to a rancorous mother. And there was this man with his amiable and enticing ways, a guarantor of present comforts and future success.