Complication (11 page)

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: Like I said, we decided on a plan. Vokov was to exit out the front of the tavern where he would, he was certain, be apprehended. Meanwhile, I was to take the accordion case and ascend to the first floor and take the back exit into the courtyard. By cutting across the open space and passing through the building on the other side, I'd eventually emerge one block over on V jirchářích Street, where with any luck, no police would be waiting. Early the next day, while Vokov was still in custody, I'd deliver the samizdat to a nameless man sitting atop Petřín Hill waiting with the keys to open the case.

 

AGENT #3553: Are you saying the case was locked? How was Vokov able to show you a copy of
The Defenestrator
?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: He'd taken it from his jacket. I told you.

 

AGENT #3553: But he didn't provide you with any keys to open the case yourself?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: My understanding is that only the unknown third man was in possession of the keys.

 

AGENT #3553: But how then could he have expected you to burn the documents, as he'd originally requested? Were you supposed to throw the entire accordion case on the fire?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: I don't know. Only after Vokov had limped up the stairs—

 

AGENT #3553: He walked with a limp? Why didn't you mention this previously?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: You never asked how he walked. And it was only after he'd gone and I'd closed the door behind him and picked up the accordion case and made it out the back, through the courtyard and safely to my apartment without being arrested, that I discovered the accordion case was fastened in three places by concealed locks. Even then, it wasn't until early the next morning that I realized Vokov could never have intended to burn the contents of the accordion case.

 

AGENT #3553: And you didn't find that sufficient cause for alarm? There could have been a bomb in the case, for all you knew.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: Unlike your sort, I don't immediately imagine the worst of people. Besides, in a few hours
The Defenestrator
would be in the hands of the other man and no longer my concern. Of course, I realized my worries didn't exactly end there. If Vokov had really been arrested without the all-important accordion case, it was only a matter of time until you people ferreted me out.

 

AGENT #3553: And that's when you began disposing of your writings, correct?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: My diaries such as they were, some poetic sketches, story ideas, incomplete novels. I tore them all up by the
handful and fed them to the sewers. I don't imagine they were politically sensitive. But I've learned such things are a matter of interpretation and the rules are always changing. Politics don't interest me. It's like the joke about the man passing out leaflets.

 

AGENT #3553: What joke would that be?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: A man is passing out leaflets in Wenceslas Square. The police approach to arrest him but are startled to find the leaflets he's distributing are blank, nothing written on them. The police ask why he's handing out blank sheets of paper, and he says, “Why bother writing it down? It's all obvious anyway.”

 

AGENT #3553: Was this then when you also got rid of the typewriter you were reportedly heard using at odd hours of the night?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: I got rid of that long ago, after nice old down the hall had mentioned hearing a
clackety-clack
at night and wondered whether I might be some sort of writer. An innocent enough question, except I knew no such thing exists. But I suppose if really was your
fizl
⁷
, he never would have asked. He would just have continued quietly reporting me. Perhaps he was even trying to warn me.

 

AGENT #3553: What did it feel like, we wonder, flushing away your life's work?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: What did it feel like? I remember next door,
the neighbors were arguing about someone named Jitka who owed them money. From upstairs, I heard the
Major Zeman
⁸
theme blaring from a TV. The idea of writing seemed suddenly ridiculous.

 

AGENT #3553: And yet you saved this Right Hand of God manuscript?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: It wouldn't flush.

 

AGENT #3553: What do you mean?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: I mean the pages literally wouldn't flush. I jiggled the handle. Tried a plunger. Took the lid off the back and mucked around inside. Nothing worked. Times like this it would be nice to have a husband, I suppose. The toilet would not refill with water, leaving the first page clinging dampened to the porcelain.

 

I flipped through the remaining pages, taking in a sentence here, a paragraph there. It wasn't terrible. Flawed, yes, and not the most original premise—but wasn't it Marx who said all property was theft?

 

AGENT #3553: Marx said no such thing.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: I just thought it was something that someone, somewhere might conceivably read. Though State Security wasn't the audience I had in mind. I gathered the Right Hand
materials, removed the back panel from my television, curled the pages into a tight roll, and crammed them inside and screwed the panel back on.

 

AGENT #3553: Why the TV?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: Because it was so old and beat up I didn't imagine the police would be tempted to steal it.

 

AGENT #3553: You then boarded a tram at Kosmonautů station.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: Yes, yes. I got there however you say. It's not important. When I arrived at Petřín, the tram ascending the grassy slope was temporarily closed. A sign at the station said it was being repaired. Signs like this everywhere and yet no one ever seems to be repairing anything. Why is that? Churches and cathedrals cocooned in scaffolding year after year, buildings left paint-flecked and buckling under their own weight. Have you ever felt like this city is a ghost town everybody forgot to leave?

 

AGENT #3553: You had to climb the hill because the third man would be waiting at the top.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: The plan called for him to be sitting on a bench outside the Zrcadlové Bludiště, the toy castle housing a labyrinth of distorted funhouse mirrors. Halfway up the zigzagging path ascending Petřín, I turned and gazed down the hill. The path was empty. Barren trees and grass, fog hovering white on the poisonous river. Frost-tipped rooftops, rising spires, and the bleached-out beyond. Parts of what I saw I could not really be
seeing, with my limited vision. Parts I must only have remembered from the days when I could see everything clearly.

 

AGENT #3553: Who was waiting for you at the top of the hill?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: Nobody. Nobody waiting at the top, nobody climbing the hill below. I took a seat outside the toy castle, placed the accordion case under the bench as Vokov had instructed, and watched my breath unfurl in the cold morning air.

 

I must've dozed off, for when I woke, a little girl was sitting next to me. She was no more than seven or eight, underdressed in a thin red gown rippling slowly in the breeze. She was barefoot, shivering. She sat there staring at me for what seemed like minutes. Big black eyes, face pale, empty. A strangely adult face. Grown-up features on a child-sized head.

 

“Don't you have any shoes?” I asked. She said nothing, just sat there, swinging her naked legs under the bench. I swiveled my head, looking for parents, a grandma, an older brother or sister. “You'll freeze,” I said. “No shoes, no coat. Where is your mummy?”

 

She smiled. An ugly smile, her mouth like something cut with a knife. The girl had no teeth.

 

AGENT #3553: She was missing some front teeth?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: No, it wasn't like a couple baby teeth had fallen out. She had the shriveled mouth of an old woman. I cursed and began taking off my coat to wrap around the child. Now what was I supposed to do? Take the little vagabond to the police?
Risk missing my contact and walk into a police station carrying a case full of prison sentences? I decided I'd wait until after the exchange and then take the girl somewhere. But then how to explain what I'd been doing atop Petřín Hill when I'd found her? And besides, where had the little girl even come from? What if her parents came looking for her?

 

The girl suddenly spoke. “Someone is waiting for you,” she said. She motioned toward the toy castle. I stopped removing my coat.

 

“Inside,” she said. “Someone is waiting.”

 

AGENT #3553: The Zrcadlové Bludiště is not opened until 10:00 AM. Wouldn't it have then been closed at this time?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: All I know is the door was wide open. I passed through and found myself in the labyrinth, a narrow passageway lined top to bottom with long mirrors framed by wooden columns. Not even the shivering child on the bench could've gotten properly lost in such a maze, but the mirrors were disquieting. Eliška now on the left, now on the right, in front of myself, behind myself, beside myself. Everywhere a multiplicity of Eliška, everywhere the blasted accordion case.

 

The maze ended in a small room walled with yet more mirrors, curved surfaces that elongated my chin, stretched my fingers, made my arms bandy and warped. Mirrors pressed my nose against my lip, squashed my forehead, ballooned my stomach. Here Eliška in monstrous caricature, taffy faced and leering, here Eliška as grotesquerie, caveman browed, giraffe legged, here Eliška growing from the head of Eliška. Eliška and Eliška, the Siamese twins.

 

At the end of maze hung an arrowed sign that read
To the Battle on Charles Bridge
. Another turn and the maze opened onto . . . well, I'm sure you've been there. Otherwise I wouldn't be here, would I?

 

AGENT #3553: Tell us what you saw.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: After the maze you're spit out into this somber little room featuring a diorama of the Charles Bridge under siege. A dusty model cannon, discarded muskets, and helmets sit foregrounded amid strewn rubble, while on the bridge in the painting beyond, the Bohemians fought back the advancing Swedes. Weird finding this at the end of a child's maze. Like reaching the conclusion of a Hloupý Honza adventure story only to discover the last page had been replaced with text from a history book.

 

AGENT #3553: And this is where Vokov's man was waiting?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: There was no sign of him. I put down the accordion case. My arm ached. My hand stayed curled in a half-fist, and only then did I realize how tightly I'd been gripping the handle. I stood and waited, looking at the diorama. On the Charles Bridge, a decapitated Christ statue was perched on his cross. A bit heavy handed with the symbolism, I remember thinking.

 

AGENT #3553: And then what happened?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: Nothing. I stood. I waited. I grew nervous. I got scared. It was possible the third man had already been arrested. That even as I passed the time staring at this stupid diorama,
he could be in a little room like the one I'm in now. Talking to a person like you, telling him where
The Defenestrator
exchange was supposed to happen. While I stood gawking at the decapitated Christ and wondering where the head went, the police could be encircling the castle, preparing a siege. Like the Swedes in the diorama. Then I started getting angry.

 

I decided I was finished. I'd done my part and it never had anything to do with me anyway. I left the accordion case sitting on the floor and walked out of the castle.

 

[Silence—duration 5 seconds]

 

AGENT #3553: What of the little girl on the bench?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: She was gone. No sign of her.

 

AGENT #3553: Weren't you curious where she went?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: I imagine her parents had found her. Maybe they'd been at the nearby lookout tower or maybe wandering the rose garden. I had my own problems.

 

AGENT #3553: You're saying you never saw her except outside on the bench atop the hill. That you did not encounter the little girl in the maze.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: There was no one there but me. Me and my reflections. Eliška and the Eliškas.

 

[Silence—duration 4 seconds]

 

AGENT #3553: Comrade Reznícková, it's in your best interest to give up this foolish story about some samizdat and tell us what really happened on Petřín. With the little girl. We might find our way to understanding what caused you to do what you did.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: I don't know what you're talking about.

 

AGENT #3553: We never arrested any man named Vokov. We never followed any man named Vokov. There never was any Vokov. Nor was there any samizdat called
The Defenestrator
. Certainly not in the accordion case.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: Then I suspect it's as I've been saying all along. We're talking about two different accordion cases. That's the only explanation for what you're telling me. Vokov is a real person. I sat across the table from him, just as I'm doing with you now. Except him I could see because no one had broken my glasses.