Holy Fire (22 page)

“I feel good today,” Emil declared, as well he should. “I’m going to create a new piece just for you, Maya. A piece to capture your unique qualities. Your generosity. Your goodness.”

“I’m not your clay vessel, you know.”

“Of course you are, my dear! We are all clay vessels. Why contradict Scripture?” Emil chuckled merrily and started pounding clay.

Maya found her way downtown and rescued her luggage from the storage locker. Klaudia’s backpack and garment bag were gone. Klaudia had left her a note. In Deutsch. Maya couldn’t read Deutsch, of course, but to judge by the angular scrawl and the forest of exclamation points, Klaudia had been furious.

Maya found a public netsite. She plugged in her camera and wired her photos to Therese at the shop. Then she had lunch.

When she had finished dutifully nourishing herself, she called the shop in Munchen.

“Where are you?” said Therese.

“I’m still in Praha. How is Klaudia?”

“She’s back. Mad. Worried. Hung over. Humiliated. You’re not being helpful, Maya.”

“I picked up a guy.”

“That’s exactly what I thought.… When will you be back?”

Maya shook her head. “Therese, if I don’t look after this one, he’s going to throw himself out the window.”

Therese laughed. “Have you lost your mind? That’s the oldest art-boy scam in the book. Show some sense and get back right away. I’ve brought in a lot of new stock.”

“Therese …” She sighed. “You were right. The Tête is a scene. I’m very taken with these artifice people. They’re going to teach me to be vivid. I’m not coming back to Munchen.”

Therese was silent.

“Therese, did you see my photos?”

“The photos are not bad,” Therese said. “I think maybe I can use the photos.”

“They’re awful. But I’m going to take lessons. In photography, in spex work. I’m going to get better. I’m going
to get better equipment and I’m going to really work in artifice. I’m going to make myself into one of these people.”

“You’re not happy here at the shop, darling?”

“I don’t want to be happy, Therese. There’s not enough of me to be happy. I’m not my own woman yet, I have to learn to be more like myself. These artifice people, I think they can help me. They have my kind of hunger.”

“You sound very certain very suddenly. What changed your mind for you? One night in bed with some man? Why don’t you get on the train and come back here? Trains are very easy.”

“I can send you lots of photos, if you want them. But I can’t go back to the shop.”

“If you don’t come back to Munchen, I’ll have to get someone else. There won’t be a welcome for you anymore.”

“Get someone else, Therese.”

“My poor little Maya! Always so ambitious. And artifice people are so chic.” Therese sighed. “Cleverness doesn’t make them nice people, you know. You’re very innocent, and they could hurt you.”

“If I wanted safe and nice, I’d have stayed in California. My life is risk. I’m an illegal. I’m on the drift, the wanderjahr. You were very good to me, but Munchen’s not my home. I had to leave sometime. You knew that.”

“I knew that,” Therese acknowledged. She lowered her voice. “But still: you owe me. Don’t you owe me?”

“That’s true. I owe you.”

“I fed you, and I clothed you, and I sheltered you, and I never turned you in. That was a lot, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. It was a lot.”

“I’m going to ask you for a big favor in return, darling. Someday.”

“Anything.”

“You’ll have to be very discreet for me.”

“I can be discreet,” she promised. “I can specialize in discreet.”

“When the time comes, you’ll know. Just remember that you owe me. And try to be careful.
Wiedersehen
, darling.” Therese hung up.

T
hough he couldn’t be bothered to feed himself properly, Emil very much liked to eat. With a woman in reach, he complained bitterly if not methodically fed, as if this were some fracture in the bedrock of the universe.

Emil had a little money. He was too confused to properly manage the funds he had acquired; there were half-drained little cashcards stuffed in nooks and crannies all over his studio. So Maya went shopping for them, and began eating with more regularity and determination than she ever had before. Czech medical chow, such as noki. Chutovky. Knedliky. Kasha, and goulash. It was solid and enticing food and it made her cheerful and energetic.

Once Emil was properly fed, he generally became lively. It was sweet to be Emil’s lover, because he was never blasé. Whenever he ran his agile and dexterous hands across her flesh, there was always an element of shocked discovery to his caress. Sex made him all surprised and pleased and reverent and grateful.

Emil became very productive under this hearty regimen. He kept firing up his kiln. The kiln wasn’t a microwave exactly, it was a specialized potter’s resonator. Like most modern gadgetry, Emil’s kiln was foolproof, very clean, extremely quick, and altogether eerie. He’d pull out a freshly zapped pot with a monster pair of padded tongs. The irradiated clay would give a ghastly crystalline shriek as it hit the air and began to cool. The pot would gush heat like a fireplace brick. The whole studio would steam up and get very cozy. Maya would saunter around in slippers and an untied bathrobe, naked under her diamond necklace. Hair almost long enough to fuss with now. It
was rather stiff and scruffy hair, but the speed of its growth was impressive.

If he liked the way the work had turned out, he would throw her on the bed to celebrate. If he didn’t like it, she would throw him on the bed to console him. Then they would tiptoe down the hall and wedge into a hot bath together. When they were clean they would eat something. They spoke English together, and a little guttural Czestina in Emil’s more intimate moments. Life was very simple and direct.

Emil hated time stolen from his work. From Emil’s subjective point of view, any day spent in keeping up life’s little infrastructures was a small eternity lost forever. With a permanent magic supply of groceries and electric power, Emil would have slumped into solipsism.

It was impossible to manage Emil in the morning, because he was always so startled and intrigued by her unexpected presence in his household. However, after a week, a certain visceral familiarity with her seemed to be seeping into Emil below the level of his conscious awareness. He seemed less surprised by her intimate knowledge of his desires and routines, and he became more trusting, more amenable to suggestion.

One evening she sent him out to buy new underwear and get himself a proper haircut, carefully noting the shops to be visited and the exact items and services to be purchased. She wrote them down on a cashcard and strung the card on a little chain around his neck.

“Why not tattoo it on my arm?”

“That’s very funny, Emil. Get going.”

She felt much better without him underfoot. Maybe it was that steady and nourishing diet, maybe it was the unceasing intensity of their relationship, but she was very restless today. Irritable, almost ready to come out of her skin. She felt as if she needed to be contained somehow, and dressed in tights and a sweater.

There was a knock at the door. She assumed it was Emil’s dealer, an obscure gallery owner named Schwartz who dropped by every couple of days looking for product, but it wasn’t. It was a portly Czech woman in a powder blue civil-support uniform. She carried a valise.

“
Dobry vecer.
”

Maya quickly tucked the bird-nest translator into her ear, a reflexive habit by now. “How do you do. Do you speak English?”

“Yes, a little English. I am the landwoman here. This is my building.”

“I see. I’m pleased to meet you. May I help you with something?”

“Yes, please. Open the door.”

Maya stepped aside. The landlady bustled in and looked the studio over sharply. Slowly, a pair of the lighter stress marks disappeared from between her much-furrowed brows. Maya took her for seventy-five, maybe eighty. Very sturdy. Very well preserved.

“You go in and out for days now,” the landlady said briskly. “You’re the new girlfriend.”

“I guess so. Uhm … 
jmenuji se
Maya.” She smiled.

“My name is Mrs. Najadova. You are much
cleaner
than his last girl. You are Deutschlander?”

“Well, I came here from Munchen. But really, I’m just passing through.”

“Welcome to Praha.” Mrs. Najadova opened her valise and thumbed through a series of accordion folders. She produced a fat sheaf of laminated papers in English. “This are your support documents. All for you. Read them. Safe places to eat. Safe places to sleep. This is important medical service. Maps of Praha. Cultural events. Here is coupons for shops. Schedule of train and bus. Here is police advice.” Mrs. Najadova shuffled the documents and a little stack of cheap smartcards into Maya’s hands. Then she looked her in the eye. “Many young people come to
Praha. Young people are reckless. Some people are bad. The wanderjahr girl must be careful. Read all of the official counsel. Read everything.”

“You’re very kind. Really, this is enormously helpful.
Dekuji.
”

Mrs. Najadova removed a gilt-embossed gilt smartcard from her jacket pocket. “These are church services. You’re a religious girl?”

“Well, no, not actually. I’m always pretty careful about drugs.”

“Poor girl, you are missing the true fine part of life.” Mrs. Najadova shook her head mournfully. She set her valise down, and deftly removed a telescoping dust-mop handle and a sterile packet of adhesive sponges. “I must sample the room now. You understand?”

Maya put the documents on the new bedspread. “You mean for contagion sampling. Yes, I’ve been wondering about that. Do you have some tailored subtilis or maybe some coli? Something I can spread around to knock back any pathogens. That corner under the sink smells kind of yeasty.”

“From the medical support,” said Mrs. Najadova, visibly pleased. “You report for official checkup. They will give you what you need to keep good house.”

“Isn’t there another way to get those microbe cultures? I’m not really due for a checkup just yet.”

“But it’s free checkup! Gift by the city! It’s all written on the documents. Where to go. How to report.”

“I see. Okay. Thanks a lot.”

Mrs. Najadova assembled her mop and began methodically creeping about the studio, scraping and dabbing. “The potter has wild mouses.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“He has bad hygiene. He leaves food and insects come.”

“I’ll watch for that.”

Mrs. Najadova, having reached a decision, looked up.
“Girl, you must know this. The girlfriends of this crazy man, they are not happy. Maybe at first a few days. In the end they always cry.”

“It’s very sweet of you to be so considerate. Please don’t worry, I promise you I’m not going to marry him.”

The door opened. A neatly hair-cut Emil came in with a shopping bag. A violent argument erupted at once, in blistering Czestina. There was shouting and stomping and vile condemnation, charge and countercharge. It seemed to last forever. At last Mrs. Najadova retreated from the studio, with a shake of her mop and a final volley of vitriolic threats. Emil slammed the door.

“Emil, really. Was all that necessary?”

“That woman is a cow!”

“I’m surprised you could even remember her name.”

Emil glowered. “To forget a lover is very sad. A tragedy. But to forget an enemy is fatal stupidity! She is a
cop!
And a
spy!
And a health inspector! And a gerontocrat! She is a bourgeoise, a philistine! A fat rich rentier! And on top of all that she is my landlord! How could she be worse?”

“It’s true that combining landlady with all those other social functions does seem excessive.”

“She spies on me! She reports me to hygiene authorities. She poisons the minds of my friends against me.” His brows knotted. “Did she talk to you? What did she say?”

“We didn’t really talk. She just gave me all these free coupons. Look, I can rent a bicycle with this one. And this chipcard here has a Praha net directory in English. I wonder what it says about photography studios.”

“It’s all rubbish. Worthless! A commercial snare!”

“When was the last time you actually paid the rent here? I mean, how do you
remember
to pay the rent?”

“Oh, I pay. Of course I pay! You think Najadova runs a charity? I’m sure she reminds me.”

She cooked. They ate. Emil was upset. The loss of his morning and the quarrel with the landlady had put him off his feed. His hair looked much nicer now, but Emil
was a congenital challenge to grooming. He spent the evening paging through his catalog of works. This was not a good sign.

She seemed unable to shrug off the argument—the fight had shredded her nerves. As the night advanced she grew ever more irritable. She was jumpy, short-tempered. She felt bad—a strange internal tightness.

Her breasts grew swollen and achy. Then she realized the truth. It had been such a long time that it almost felt like an illness. But it was womanhood. She was about to have her first period in forty years.

They went to bed. Sex chased his bad mood away, but left her feeling as if she’d been sandpapered. The night wore on. She began to realize that she was in for a very hard time. No mere lighthearted hiatus in the month’s erotic festivities. The event stealing over her body was something vengeful and postwomanly and medical. Her eyelids were swollen, her face felt waxed and puffy, and an ominous intimate ache was building deep within the pelvic girdle. Her mood was profoundly unstable. It seemed to rocket up and crash down with every other breath.

Emil tumbled into sleep. After an hour she began to quietly weep with bewilderment and pain. Crying usually helped her a lot nowadays, it came easily and would wash any sadness away like clear water over clean sand. But weeping wasn’t working that way tonight. When the tears gave out, she felt very sane, and very lucid, and very, very low.

She shook Emil awake as he lay peacefully slumbering.

“Darling, wake up, I have to tell you something.”

Emil woke up, coughed, sat up in bed, and visibly reassembled his command of English. “What is it? It’s late.”