Читать книгу Partner in Three Worlds - Dorothy Duncan - Страница 8

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SHE walked slowly along the narrow, snow-crusted pavement, and for every step she took the small boy at her side took three. Occasionally I skipped in an extra one to help my short legs catch her stride. One of my fists clutched two fingers of her left hand in its shabby glove. My own left hand was a knobby ball in the pocket of my tight brown coat. We said nothing, but each of us was very much aware of the other.

She began to walk more slowly within the folds of her long skirt, and we bordered the shop windows for warmth. Whenever I was jostled I pressed against Mother’s thigh, taking comfort from the rhythmic flexing of her muscles. Then the spired tower of the Karlův most loomed before us in the dusk. I raised my eyes from hip level to look at it, but why we were here I didn’t know. We were a long way from home. I didn’t realize that it was the only bridge across the Vltava which charged no toll.

The sky was a softer shade of gray over the Karlův most. The city seemed to be cleft in two, held apart by the dark, churning river. When we neared the middle of the bridge Mother stopped and I drew close to her skirts again. She looked down, but instead of picking me up so that I might sit on the stone balustrade, as she sometimes did, she stared at me and her face was as blurred as the dusk.

“Please,” I said.

She looked away, staring at the point of an island upstream, and I stood beside her silently.

“Very well,” she said at last. Her voice was beautiful, but very tired. “Here ... lean against Sainte Ludmila.” She placed me on the parapet beside the imposing statue. We were apart from the passing streams of people. No one noticed and no one cared how long we stayed like this, or which direction we might take when Mother chose to move on.

Far above the city on the Hradčany the twin spires of St. Vitus’ Cathedral held a fresh frosting of wet snow, and the green dome of the Church of St. Nicholas was covered with it. Feeble yellow flames began to glow one by one in the wake of shuffling lamp-lighters, and the bridges across the Vltava were necklaces of light. Mother stared out at the ice floes on the river as they poured away and disappeared into the darkness, and over her shoulder I watched a stream of faces as they drifted along. There were two officers of the Imperial Army, their tall caps covered with gold braid. Behind them was a bakery vendor, his tray half empty. I caught the odor of spicy frosted gingerbread, heart-shaped wafers and cakes painted with poppy seeds. For awhile there were only the black coats and black hats of clerks and merchants and artisans, and then there were three countrywomen with lace caps and embroidered aprons showing beneath heavy shawls. They were laughing together with deep-throated voices.

It was quite dark now and I felt there was something strange about Mother’s silence. A curly-bearded Jew touched his dirty cap as he bumped into Mother, but she paid no attention, seeing only the dark water pouring northward through the city, hearing only the rumble of ice crunching against the great stanchions below. The cold of the stone had found its way long ago through my patched breeches, but still I made no sound. Mother knew I was there. I understood no will or desire separate from her.

Suddenly my small heart became terrified. Fright began to race through my body until I trembled with panic. Something was happening beyond the range of my understanding. I was a baby animal consumed with an unnamed terror. Mother was going to leave me.

With a wrenching sob I reached toward her, though she had never been as much as an arm’s distance away, and threw myself upon her with all my weight. I flung my arms about her and buried my face in the folds of her soft neck. She held me quietly so, and after a little the trembling began to ease. I didn’t cry, and neither of us spoke. Then my arms broke their grip and one hand reached for her ear, dropping down to trace the line of her chin until it found the warmth at the base of her throat.

“All right, Jan,” she said. Her voice was strange and empty. “Your will to live is strong. Let’s go.”

I slipped from the parapet, thrust my left fist into the tight coat pocket, and we set off to retrace our way across the bridge and back to Smichov. Mother’s voice reached down to me in the darkness. “When you’re much older I’ll explain this night to you,” she said. “You’re too little now to understand words like suicide and despair. This is the fourth anniversary of your father’s death. There’s not much left in the world for either of us.”

“Yes,” I said, comforted by the sound of her voice. My eyes were hunting landmarks in the dark to tell me how much farther we must go to the room we knew as home. When the street gave a sharp lurch to the left we followed it and began to walk faster, for the lights in the shop windows of Palacký Street were ahead.

It was the sausage shop that drew us. But when we reached the door Mother stopped. With her hand on the knob she drew back, and her face took on again the expression I had seen on the bridge. I clutched tighter at her fingers and drew her to the lighted window of the shop. Behind the panes lay rows of black sausages, liver sausages, blood puddings, garlic sausages and sausages of truffle. In the center of the showcase was a bowl of liver pâté, flanked by round, mauve hams, and overhead were festoons of swollen meal-colored links interlaced with ropes of slender pink ones.

“Please,” I said, tilting my head far back in order to look into Mother’s eyes. “Please,” and I began to tug her toward the door.

Inside the shop, warm, spicy odors seeped into our nostrils and into our lungs, and both of us knew just how hungry we were. The fat proprietress behind the counter was tying a parcel for the only customer, and when he had tipped his hat and left the shop she beamed on us.

“Good evening, paní Riegerová,” she said. “I thought you were never coming. Three days I have been waiting. I have a message for you.”

“I know,” Mother said. “We’ve been ... I had plenty of food to last ... we ...”

“Yes, of course,” said the sausage woman. They were both Czechs and their individual prides must be kept intact. Another customer entered the shop and a small bell tinkled musically at the back. “If you don’t mind ... just a moment. I’ll wait first on this lady.”

We moved to the side of the shop. I was quite still, but my fingers loosened and renewed their grip on Mother’s hand spasmodically. The smells of the shop were becoming torture to us both, and saliva kept forming in my mouth. My eyes went from plates of salami to fat hams and back again. Mother tried to look above them, until her eyes rested on a large calendar on the wall. It showed a single date—February 7, 1900. After that she kept her eyes fixed unmoving on the bare wooden counter.

Finally the customer made her choice and the long, sharp knife cut through a round sausage loaf and left a thick slice to be wrapped in brown paper and tied with a red string. Money clinked in the drawer and then we were alone in the shop once more, and the fat woman behind the counter was still smiling.

“Look, Jan,” she said. “This piece of bologna I have been saving for you. The kind you like. What should I have done if you hadn’t come in this evening?” She held out the plate with thin, circular slices of pink sausage in the middle of it. My left hand came out of my pocket and began to reach for the meat. Then I put it back and looked at Mother. Her lips were only a thin line now and her eyes were hidden under wet lashes.

“But it’s yours,” said the proprietress. “It’s paid for. That piece of embroidery you left with me last week. The meat is yours. You must select more ... enough for several days.”

“I can’t,” Mother said. “Except for Jan. You know that embroidery paid for meat we’ve already eaten ... long ago.”

“Oh, my dear paní Riegerová.” The proprietress was pushing the thin slices of food into my hand. “You don’t understand. A very wealthy lady from across the river came in today. She likes my sausage best in all Prague. Her coachman brings her here. She saw your work ... I’ve been keeping it there, on the table where it could be seen. She wanted it, and I asked for it three times what you have taken in food. She paid for it gladly. And she wants you to do some more for her ... much more, just like it. Her daughter is to be married. I have her address here, somewhere ... in the Malá Strana ...”

I had stuffed the last slice of meat into my mouth, and tears were running down Mother’s cheeks. But the proprietress was busy hunting for a small slip of paper in untidy drawers and by the time she found it the tears had been wiped away.

“Thank you,” Mother said, with her usual quiet dignity. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take a thick slice of spiced sausage, please. And you must add what the boy has just eaten to the bill.”

With the wrapped parcel in her hand and the door open, she turned to smile at the fat sausage woman. “I’m truly grateful to you,” she said. “I think you must know that.”

“Thank God instead, my dear,” came the answer. “You’re in His hands. Good night, Jan. Come back and see me soon.”

The faraway sound of a tinkling bell echoed as the door closed behind us.