The man drew on his cigarette. Sam watched his fingers, the same fingers that had known Lenka. How had they been? Probing, insistent, shameless. Rovnák shook his head. ‘She had no business to be there in the Old Town.’
‘She had no business there? For Christ’s sake – what about the fucking Russians?’
He went back inside after that and sat next to Lenka’s mother, while Rovnák stayed out on the balcony. They waited. The woman smoked. Her breathing was harsh, as though she had obstructions deep inside her chest. Time moved with glacial slowness. Noises beyond the room seemed to come from another world where people did things – calling, talking, hurrying along corridors, pushing trolleys – yet in the waiting room time appeared suspended. This gave each trivial movement an enlarged significance, as though it was observed through a magnifying lens. Such as when Sam reached across and took hold of Kateřina’s hand and she grasped his in return. The faint smile she gave him. Her skin was tough and dry; her finger joints swollen by arthritis. She swallowed, moving her lips as though contemplating speech. She said nothing.
How many minutes passed before steps sounded in the corridor outside? Ten? Twenty? But then there was a footfall outside and a man appeared in the doorway. He was robed in white like a priest and wore a white surgical cap. A cotton mask was pulled down below his chin. Kateřina got to her feet. Rovnák came in from the balcony. The man looked at them with an expression that was curiously neutral, as though he had done this many times before and had become indifferent to the task, whether it was good news or bad.
‘Paní Konečková?’
Sam stood up, watching the slow interplay of people – the man in white, the woman with the broad hips and brassy hair, the man with the moustache who had just come in from the balcony with a lit cigarette in his hand. Time seemed dilated by the gravitational fields of events around him, stretched out on a rack and close to breaking point, close to confessing all its secrets. One day, he thought, all this will be past. It will be consigned to memory, twisted into different shapes, given that patina of age that will hide most of the pain. Perhaps it will be taken out once in a while and wiped free of the dust of forgetting, so that for a few minutes it may shine bright again; but it will be past, whatever happens.
52
They’ve walked away from the border as far as the village. There was so much going on at the border – military, radio and TV crews, journalists all milling around like flies at an open wound – that no lifts were forthcoming. So they walked, and now they’ve found a Gasthof on the edge of the village – Gasthof zur Grenze, with Biergarten and Gaststätte, whatever that is, and rooms, a dozen of them, tucked under the eaves. The place is full of that slightly dodgy Bavarian cosiness, manifested in wood carving and wrought ironwork and paintings of lads and lasses dancing round the maypole, that they even have a word for: Gemütlichkeit. Ellie might not be able to speak German but she produces that word from somewhere. Enveloped by this Gemütlichkeit, they’ve been served beer and plates of pork and sauerkraut by a middle-aged woman in a dirndl. Enriched as they are by the Wareham bloke’s contribution to their funds, they can afford it all. James’s head has almost stopped singing and his hearing is less muffled, but still there’s a sensation of unreality about the last ten days, as though everything happened to other people, Fando and Lis, perhaps. They discuss it all in the abstract – Jitka, Lenka, Zdeněk, even the embassy guy, Samuel Wareham – as if somehow the people no longer exist in the round but have faded into two dimensions, identified only by what they might have said or done. And in this bucolic beer garden, in the slanting August evening sunlight, the whole vision of Russian troops in their helmets, their uniforms, their massive tanks, seems something of a fantasy.
‘I just hope Lenka is all right,’ Ellie says.
‘She will be.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
What makes him so sure is that he is too young to have witnessed much in the way of death. A couple of ancient grandparents, neither of whom he saw very often; that’s about it. His beer finishes and is replaced by another. ‘You fancied her, didn’t you?’ he says.
The conversation trips. Ellie’s expression changes. She’s suddenly caught between emotions, embarrassment and excitement in clumsy juxtaposition, battling for command of her expression.
James sips his beer through the foam. ‘I saw you after the swim. You went off to dry and I saw you touch her.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing’s wrong. I saw you, that’s all. You touched her shoulder and then her tits and she laughed. And then you kissed her. On the lips.’
‘You dirty pervert. Peeping Tom!’
He laughs at her embarrassment. ‘You did, though.’
Ellie says nothing for a while, but she’s still thinking about it. ‘I’ve never touched a woman like that before,’ she says eventually. ‘Never really wanted to. But she…’ She gives a small, humourless laugh. ‘Do you think I’m a lesbian, Jamie?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It does if I’m going to start wearing tweeds and a collar and tie and cutting my hair short.’
‘And smoking a pipe.’
‘And wearing brogues and talking in a gruff voice and calling myself Elmer or something. One of our dons is just like that. Dr Sappho we call her. She’s really Safford.’
‘Somehow I don’t think you’ll be like that.’
‘Have you ever felt anything for a man, Jamie?’ She has never called him Jamie before.
‘I haven’t. But there’s a bloke in college does. Fancies me, as a matter of fact. Asked me if I was interested.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I told him I wasn’t. But if I ever changed my mind, I’d certainly let him know.’ She laughs. He has always been able to do that, make her laugh. ‘And hey, what about the Russians? Egorkin, and what’s her name?’
‘Nadia Pankova.’
‘Sam got quite peculiar about it. Official Secrets Act and all that. But it’ll be all over the papers tomorrow, won’t it?’
They speculate a bit, their ideas getting more and more absurd. They should sell their story to the highest bidder. They should write a novel. They should… More beer. People at a nearby table ask if they are American. ‘Everyone asks if we’re American,’ James tells them. ‘But unlike the Americans, we speak proper English.’
There’s laughter.
Ellie points at James. ‘He doesn’t. He’s from oop North and speaks a strange dialect.’
More laughter. Gemütlichkeit, that’s what it is. Jolly laughter and contentment. After a while the English pair bid their German interlocutors good night and make their way upstairs. The floors creak beneath their feet, the door creaks as they shut it, the bed creaks as they lie on it. ‘Do you want to?’ James asks.
Ellie hesitates, and then says, ‘Yes, OK.’ So they do it. It’s brief and not very skilful, but at least it’s companionship of a kind, and no tears.
Early next morning there’s a feeling of renewal, that they still have a journey to make, although where they might go remains undecided. Tar has been dispensed with. Do they continue south as originally planned? Or?
Arguing about where and what, they sling their rucksacks and head towards the main road. There’s little traffic but they expect that now. This border area is a wasteland. Empty fields and woods. Fences and military patrols. But after a short distance they do pick up a lift, a local farmer who speaks unintelligible German at them and laughs at what they say back to him. He and his battered NSU take them to a junction near his destination, where the road branches left and right.