The Diplomat's Wife (26 page)

In the distance, a clock chimes nine. It is still three hours until my meeting with Marek, too early, I know, to leave for the park. But I’ve never been to Prague before, and once I deliver the message to Marcelitis, I will be leaving again. If all goes well, I might be headed for home as early as tomorrow. This morning might be my only chance to see the city.

The previous night, when she dropped me off a block from the hotel, Renata offered to drive me to my meeting.

“Marek told me to come alone,” I reminded her.

She waved her hand impatiently. “I can leave you at the edge of the park. Wait somewhere else, where Andek won’t see me.”

“Um, that’s very nice of you, but I don’t think it will be necessary.”

Renata looked surprised. “Are you sure?”

I nodded. “Alone means alone. I don’t want to chance him seeing me with someone else.”

“But the park is all the way on the outskirts of the city.”

“I’m from this part of the world, remember? I can still navigate the buses.”

“They may be the one thing the communists do well,” she replied, then shrugged. “Suit yourself. You can take the C bus from the corner on the far side of the hotel. The park is the second stop from the end.”

“Thanks. Does the same bus run through the Mala Strana?”

“No, that would be the sixteen…” Renata hesitates. “Why? Where are you planning to go?”

“Nowhere,” I replied quickly. “I mean, I just want to take a quick walk around the Old Town before my meeting. This might be my only chance to see Prague.”

“I don’t like it, Marta. The city is dangerous right now with all of the unrest.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“I don’t like it,” Renata repeated. “But I can’t stop you. Just stay in the central public areas, Wenceslas Square and such. And don’t talk to anyone.”

Remembering now the map I consulted in the hotel room the previous night, I turn left and begin walking in the direction of the Old Town Square. The narrow, winding streets around the hotel are humming with morning activity, deliverymen unloading wagons in front of shops, women walking with bags of groceries. At the corner, there is a man selling snacks from a wooden cart. I fish some of the coins Renata gave me from my bag, buy a coffee and two braided rolls. As I continue walking, I tuck one of the rolls into my bag for later. Then I take a bite of the other, washing it down with a sip of coffee.

At the next corner, I turn right, then stop. Across the street stand three policemen, watching the crowd. My pulse quickens. Easy, I think. They are not interested in you. I force myself to keep walking down the street, trying to look like I belong. As I pass, I sneak a glance at them out of the corner of my eye. Have they noticed me? On the next corner, there are two more policemen. Perhaps Renata was right about this walk not being a good idea. Still looking sideways at the police, I bump into something. “Excuse me,” I say in Czech, turning to find that I have collided with a woman exiting a bakery with a small child. I bend to pick up her package, which has fallen to the ground. Her eyes do not meet mine as I hand it to her. She looks nervously from me to the police, then back again before dragging the child down the street.

I watch the woman as she disappears around the corner. She is afraid. Just like we were during the war. I recall seeing the Gestapo drag a man from a store as I crossed the market square in Kraków on an errand. Caught stealing fruit, I gleaned from a passerby. People hurried quickly away from the commotion, not stopping or looking as the police pushed the man against the wall of a building. A lone gunshot rang out across the square. Later, when I passed the site on my way home and the police had gone, I crossed back to the site. The man lay motionless on the ground, his blood seeping into the pavement, still clutching the apple he had taken. Crowds continued to walk past his lifeless body, eyes averted, too afraid to acknowledge what had just happened. It is like that here, I realize. The people do not want to draw attention to themselves. They are terrified.

I continue walking, and a few minutes later the street ends at a large, open plaza. Tall, Gothic houses with ornate, sculpted roofs line two sides of the oddly shaped square. On the third side sits a larger stone building, the Old Town Hall. There is a colorful, elaborate clock on the front of the building. I study the design: a gold circle with numbers one to twenty-four run along its inner rim, a smaller circle, ringed with Roman numerals, inside it.

“That’s the Astronomical Clock,” a voice from behind me says. He is speaking Czech, close enough to Polish for me to understand. I spin around to face a tall man in a bright yellow jacket. He points up at the clock. “The outside ring is meant to function as a normal clock, with the inside circle showing the position of the earth in the heavens. It was built in medieval times and functioned for centuries, but it hasn’t worked since the Germans hit it during the war.”

“Oh,” I say, surprised at his friendliness, this spontaneous offer of information. He is young, not more than twenty-five, I would guess, with a thin face and brown goatee that remind me of Alek. “It’s beautiful.”

“I’m Hans, by the way.” He extends his hand.

I hesitate, remembering Renata’s admonition not to talk to anyone. Then I reach out and shake his hand. “Marta.”

“You aren’t from here,” he observes.

I shake my head. “Is my accent that obvious?”

“Your accent is fine. You just don’t see many people staring at the clock. Those of us who live here have grown immune to its charms. And we don’t get many tourists these days.”

I curse inwardly at having stood out, hoping that no one else has noticed. “I’m here on business,” I say slowly, trying my cover story for the first time. “A cultural project at the British embassy.”

“I see.” I study his face, wondering if he believes me. But he is looking over my shoulder, distracted. I turn, following his gaze to the far end of the square where a group of people have gathered by a statue. “I’m sorry, but I really must go. It was nice to meet you.” He strides off in the direction of the group.

“Wait…” I begin, but he is already halfway across the square. As he approaches, the group grows larger. People, mostly young men and women, come from all directions until there are several dozen assembled. They begin to walk toward one of the streets that leads from the square. I hesitate. I should head back to the hotel. But, curious, I start across the square, following the group. Ahead, I see Hans toward the front of the crowd, his yellow coat bobbing in a sea of darker colors.

The crowd makes its way down one narrow street, then another. Something is different here, I realize. The stores are closed, metal grates pulled close across their fronts. The windows in the apartments above are dark, shades tightly drawn. Other than the people who walk with Hans, there are no shoppers or pedestrians on the street. I remember again the passersby who ignored the man shot by the Nazis in Kraków. The people are afraid. They do not want to be a part of whatever is about to happen here. I should walk away, too. But I find myself pressing forward, part of the crowd now, compelled to see what this is all about.

A moment later, the street ends at another square, much larger than the previous one. It is rectangular, narrow at the base where we have entered, with two long sides running upward toward a large, gold-domed building. The National Museum, I recognize from the tour book in my hotel room I thumbed through last night when I could not sleep. This must be Wenceslas Square. As the group surges forward, they are joined by hundreds of others, appearing individually or in small groups. They seem to be mostly students, though I see a smattering of older people, too. Some carry crude homemade signs I cannot read from a distance. A political protest. The group swells and surges forward toward the museum building. At the top of the museum steps, a line of police stand shoulder to shoulder, forming a barricade.

I hang back as the crowd pushes forward around me. I cannot afford to get caught up in this, not now. “Democracy!” the protesters chant over and over. I inch forward, standing on the tips of my toes to get a better view. These are the very people we are trying to help, I realize, scanning the crowd. Perhaps Marek, or even Marcelitis himself, is here. But I do not see Marek, and I have no idea what Marcelitis looks like. They would be too smart to get caught in something so dangerously public, anyway. Someone a few meters in front of me starts singing the Czech national anthem. The song seems to catch fire throughout the crowd, until it seems that all of the protesters have joined in one enormous voice. Looking at the determined faces around me, I am reminded of our own resistance movement during the war. If only we’d had this kind of support from our people, things might have been different.

As the anthem concludes, the protesters surge closer to the museum building, pressing up the stairs. “No communism!” they chant in unison. “Democracy now!” The front of the crowd climbs the steps, reaches the barricade. Some of the protesters exchange heated words with the police. Though I cannot make out what they are saying, they seem to be demanding entry to the building. A policeman pushes a demonstrator roughly, sending the man flying backward down the steps onto the pavement. Shouts erupt in the crowd. Scuffles between the demonstrators and police break out. The rest of the throng, incensed by the conflict, presses forward.

Suddenly a shot rings out in the air, then another. The scuffling ceases and the protesters freeze. The police must have fired into the air to stop the fighting, I think. Then, at the top of the stairs, I spot something bright yellow on the ground. Hans’s jacket. He lies motionless, arms flung above his head as though surrendering.

“No!” I gasp. I hold my breath, stifling the urge to scream. The crowd, stunned by the shooting, stands motionless. But the police, having caught the protesters off guard, now take the initiative. They leap forward, brandishing nightsticks. I watch, horrified, as a number of young men are beaten to the ground. Others are dragged away by the police. A cloud of smoke rises from the front of the crowd. Tear gas, I realize, as some of the protesters begin to clutch at their eyes. The crowd begins to flee, police in close pursuit. I have to get out of here, I think, as the protesters stream back past me in the direction from which we came. If I stay here, I am going to be arrested, or worse. I turn around. A police truck has blocked the street from which we entered the square. We are trapped.

I scan the far side of the square, spotting an open alleyway. Quickly, I make my way toward it, expecting a policeman to grab me at any time. When I reach the shelter of the alley, I begin to run, crossing blindly through the backstreets, feeling for the Old Town Square. My lungs burn. At last, I reach the square. Slowing, I look up at the Astronomical Clock as I cross, thinking sadly of Hans.

But there is no time to linger. The chaos of the broken demonstration has begun to spill over here, too. Protesters, their eyes watering from the tear gas, dart across the square alone or in groups of two or three. One man clutches a bloody wound on his temple. In the distance, police sirens wail, as if to remind the protesters that the crackdown is not over. I make my way hurriedly from the square.

A few minutes later, I reach the block where the hotel is located. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a shop window. My cheeks are flushed from running and my curls have sprung free from the knot. I should go upstairs and freshen up. I look at the clock above the hotel entrance. It is eleven, one hour until my meeting with Marek, and I have no idea how long it will take to reach the park. There is no time. I walk quickly to the bus stop at the corner.

A few minutes later the C bus arrives and I board. It is empty except for a few schoolchildren clustered in the rear. I drop into a seat a few rows behind the driver, then look out the window. As we wind our way through the Old Town, I think about the ruthlessness with which the police tore apart the demonstrators. A shiver runs through me. I had known that the Soviet-dominated communist regimes were oppressive, silencing ideas that were contrary to their own. But I had not imagined that they would actually open fire on their own people. They are no better than the Nazis. I grasp my bag more tightly. Suddenly my mission seems more urgent than ever.

The bus turns away from the Old Town, stopping every few minutes as it follows the river south. At the next stop, the schoolchildren get off the bus and two women board, talking rapidly in Czech about the price of potatoes. One carries a basket only half full with groceries, the other a small pail of coal. The road grows bumpier, the buildings farther-spaced as we make our way from the city center to the sprawling outskirts of Prague. The houses here are smaller, more dilapidated. The bus stops again and the women get off, trudging slowly down a dirt road. An underfed cow stares forlornly out over a fence.

I look around the now-empty bus as it begins to move again. “Riegrovy Park,” the driver calls a few minutes later, as though speaking to a large group. I walk to the front of the bus as it slows, looking at the driver out of the corner of my eye. Does he wonder what I am doing here? But he does not look up as I step off the bus. The door closes behind me and the bus drives away.

I pause, surveying the park. Flat fields stretch endlessly in all directions, the grass dead and brown. Several hundred meters off to the right sits a thatch of bare trees. I spot a stone fountain beneath them. Drawing my coat more closely around me, I walk toward the fountain. Closer, I can see that it is made up of several statues of small children, their hands reaching upward toward the heavens. Dead leaves lay in drifts in the dry marble basin below. I look around. The park is deserted, except for a cluster of crows, picking at the ground beneath the trees. Where is Marek? He looked so nervous last night. Part of me wonders if he is going to come at all.

It is early, I tell myself, walking toward the trees. The crows watch me with disinterest, not moving. On the far side of the trees, there is a children’s playground with swings and a metal slide. Two boys play on the swings. A few meters away from them, on the edge of the playground closest to me, a woman stands by a bench, watching them.