‘I hated that moustache,’ she said, reaching for her glass again.
Rovnák was as good as his word and left when the meal had more or less come to an end and toasts were being drunk. He passed their table on his way out and lifted Lenka’s hand to his lips, renewing his exhortation to keep in touch. But he was very sorry, he just had to be back in Prague by that evening. Otherwise he would have asked Lenka for a dance.
‘His wife keeps him on a tight lead,’ she suggested when he had gone. It was difficult to interpret her tone. Was there some hint of regret there amidst the bitterness? The pianist had exhausted the possibilities of Chopin and begun to feel his way into a few popular numbers – ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, ‘The Continental’, that kind of thing. The Polish trades unionists and their wives took to the floor. Sam and Lenka followed. For a while they shuffled round amidst the insidious smell of sweet floral perfume and sour body odour that hung around the dancers before Sam suggested they take a breath of fresh air.
The spa gardens were beautiful at night, touched with a glimmer of their former glory. You could almost imagine the ghosts of the pre-war demi-monde encountering phantom crowned heads amongst the fountains and the colonnades. ‘I thought you might be angry to meet my first lover,’ she said as they walked. ‘I have heard that Englishmen can be very jealous.’
‘Not at all. He seemed very polite.’
‘He was wondering if I have become a prostitute.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I could see it in his eyes. And he was calculating what my price might be.’
It wasn’t particularly late when they returned to the hotel but the Polish group had gone and the dining room was shut. Only the disgruntled receptionist remained on duty in the foyer. As Sam took the room key the man handed over an envelope with grim ill-will, as though even passing on a letter went far beyond the call of duty. Sam pocketed the envelope without giving the receptionist the satisfaction of seeing him open it. Through pools of feeble light they climbed the stairs to the first floor. Sam unlocked the door to the Chopin suite and pushed it open for Lenka to go through into the sitting room.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Probably the bill. Just the kind of thing they’d do, in case we go off tomorrow morning without paying.’
But the envelope did not contain the bill. It was a simple one-line note, written in English. Perhaps a stroll to the Kolonáda tomorrow morning? Eight o’clock? It was signed Egorkin.
He smiled. In the more relaxed atmosphere of Mariánské Lazně the man clearly had a way of evading his escort. Lenka had gone into the bathroom. ‘It’s nothing,’ he called to her. He went into the bedroom and looked round, as though hidden microphones might reveal themselves to his gaze. Hotels in which foreigners might stay were notorious for being bugged. You didn’t wonder about it, you assumed it. But all he saw was the broken plasterwork of the ceiling, the heavy velvet curtains, the wardrobe with its poorly silvered mirror, the chest of drawers whose veneer was lifting away at the corners. He waited for her to come from the bathroom, her face scrubbed of makeup and as vulnerable as a young girl’s, before handing her the note and putting his finger to his lips.
She looked at him enquiringly. ‘You will go?’
‘I think so.’
She reached behind her to unzip the dress, the outfit they had bought in Munich, and let it slide to the floor. Then she dropped her slip around her feet and stepped out of it as though stepping out of a pool of water, holding his eye and smiling. ‘Do you like what you see?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘And are you thinking of that man, Pavel Rovnák? Are you jealous of him?’
‘You asked me that already. I’m jealous of what he took from you. But more than that, I’m angry that he used you.’
She unfastened her brassiere and dropped it as carelessly as a child discarding sweet papers. ‘And I used him. So it was on both sides. And it was a long time ago. The past.’
But their love was entirely in the present, a slow, deliberate act, as though they had been lovers for years rather than weeks; at her climax convulsions racked her body in ways that couldn’t be contrived, couldn’t be anything but the ecstasy of the moment. He’d never known this with Steffie, never this intensity, never this incontinence. Anything else might be a lie, but this was not. Yet in the aftermath he looked at her lying there, spent, damp with sweat, and wondered about the hard core of her, that part which had accepted, even welcomed, the attentions of Pavel Rovnák.
Things were different in the morning. The morning was fresh and cool – the town lies six hundred metres above sea level, out of the smog and heat of the lowlands – and Lenka was lying on her back in the chaos of sheets. Sunlight from the open windows caught the froth of dun-coloured hair between her thighs and turned it the colour of honey. She smiled at him, and seemed, with that smile, entirely and delightfully vulnerable – and part of him in a way that he had never imagined a woman might be.
That moment could stand for ever, preserved in the fixative of memory.
At breakfast she seemed put out at the idea of his meeting Egorkin. ‘Why does he have to steal our time?’
‘I can’t very well ignore him. Maybe you should come as well. To offer your congratulations on his performance.’
‘I’ll wait for you here.’
‘You’re going to sulk.’
‘Sulk? What is sulk?’
‘What you’re doing now.’ He made a face, pouting.
She laughed. ‘Trucovat.’ And her laughter meant that she wasn’t. So she went back to the room to wait, while Sam, with that morning’s copy of Rudé Právo tucked under his arm, took a stroll in the spa gardens. A few drab figures wandered the paths, but it was early for the crowds and the magnificent wrought-iron Kolonáda was almost empty, like an elaborate stage set waiting for players.
What, he wondered, did the Russian want? Surely not just to thank him for coming all the way to his recital in Mariánske Lazně. He chose a bench and sat to read the paper, a task he had every morning at work, to deliver a digest of the morning’s news for Eric Whittaker to review. Today’s front page announced that the East German leader Walter Ulbricht was visiting Karlsbad with his sidekick Erich Honecker – an unforeseen event that stirred the commentators to a frenzy of speculation. Sam scanned the reports, pausing to read whatever caught his eye – in this case, Dubček meeting the unexpected guests at the airport and a young girl from the Pioneers dutifully presenting the East German leader with a bouquet of flowers and receiving an ill-aimed kiss on the neck in return. There had been a stony silence from the crowd that had gathered to watch. Ulbricht was hated in Czechoslovakia just as he was hated in his own country. But the question uppermost in Sam Wareham’s mind was, what was the man doing here? Leafing through the pages and loathing the newsprint that stained his fingers, he felt like a soothsayer trying to read the entrails of some sacrificial animal and thereby foretell the future. One thing he knew for sure: a visit from Ulbricht was like a knock on the door from the grim reaper himself.
‘Dobrý den.’
He looked up with a start. Egorkin was standing over him. Seen close and in the clear light of morning he looked older than previously. There were hints of acne scars on his cheeks. He’d cut himself shaving and there was a dab of cotton wool on his neck. Sitting down, he glanced at Sam’s newspaper and said, in Russian, ‘It looks as though we made the right choice to come here rather than Karlsbad. Of course, I am joking. I have no choice in such matters. They decide for me.’ He took out a silver cigarette case and held it out. ‘They’re American,’ he said reassuringly.