The Book of Blood and Shadow (41 page)

“That night,” he said. “With Chris. I’m glad it was her, and not you. Do you know what she told me, that night she was so upset?”

“No,” I said, now completely confused about where this was going. “You said it was private.”

“She told me how horrible it was not to remember. How she couldn’t stand having this huge hole in her memory—that
anything
could have happened. That she already feels empty because Chris is gone, but this, it’s like a piece of her is gone, too. She’s telling me all this, and she’s crying, and I was trying to
comfort her, telling her everything will be okay—but
she’ll
never be okay again. Not really. And all I could feel? Was relieved. I’m
glad
it happened to her. Because”—he swallowed again, his eyes wide behind the thick glass—“I couldn’t stand it. If that happened to you.”

“That’s it?” I said softly. “That’s what you needed to tell me?”

“Chris was my best friend,” he said. “You have to understand that. But—”

“But you’re relieved it wasn’t you. Of course you are. That’s normal.”

“I can’t think about you losing me, the way Adriane lost Chris. Or if something happened to you, and I was the one who—” He shook his head. “I can’t. So I’m glad. I’m
happy
it’s them and not us. That’s how twisted I am. Every time I look at her, I think: Thank god. She’s ruined, and I’m
grateful
. Because you and me, we’re still whole. We’re untouched.”

“Max …” I folded myself around him. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” he said, muffled, his face pressed to my shoulder. “I shouldn’t.”

“I promise,” I said, and tipped his head toward mine, and I kissed him, the way I had kissed him the first time, in the quire of the church, our lips tentative, our fingers clasped, our hearts pounding, and I let it all go, doubt, anger, jealousy, fear. I kissed him and I pulled him down on the bed beside me and we tangled ourselves together and forgot, for a moment, everything but warm skin and hot breath and soft lips and love, and need.

And for that one moment it was as if we really had been left whole.

39

Dinner was Max’s idea. Later, that seemed to matter. But none of us had argued with him, so maybe it didn’t. There would be no flight until morning, no need to hoard what remained of our cash, no doubt it would be our last chance for a long time to spend a night together pretending life was good, we were happy, the future was clear, no excuse not to eat. He was different, now that he’d finally let everything out. There was a new lightness about him, and it was infectious. Not that we were skipping down cobblestone lanes or singing in the misty rain. But it was the first time we’d ventured into the city with neither aim or fear, the first time we’d walked its streets without peering
through
them, as if, squinting hard enough, we could bring its ghosts into sharp relief. For one night, Prague was no longer a repository of secrets. Nothing had happened to us, we told ourselves, so maybe nothing would happen. We made up something to believe in: That we had escaped. That, for a night, we were invisible.

It was reckless, but maybe no more so than anything else we’d done, and we were allowed to be reckless, because it was the last night, and in the morning, everything would end. The cops would find us, and likely the
Hledači
would soon after. Then whatever happened would happen. I wasn’t going to spend my last night in hiding. The city was lit up, brimming with tourists and drunkards and lovers, Cinderella castles twinkling overhead. Its shadows remained; we ignored them. What could happen in the Magic Kingdom?

It was Max who selected the restaurant, a bistro along the water. It was tucked away from the street, across an empty piazza and then down a narrow alleyway, with only small, hand-painted arrows promising us that an outpost of civilization lay ahead.

We ate on the terrace, beneath sparking heat lamps and flickering candlelight, the perfumed wax, smelling vaguely of hotel shampoo, overpowering the fishy scent of the river. A low stone wall separated us from the lapping water, and across the river, a glowing skyline of churches threw golden shadows on the water. The Charles Bridge was so close we could have pelted dinner rolls at the dark figures crossing its span. There were white tablecloths, linen napkins, suited waiters who brought wine without asking questions and took our order with a congratulatory wink.

The sky was huge.

We ate quietly, at first. The restaurant was nearly empty, and there were few sounds to drown out the elevator music pumped softly from tinny, unobtrusive speakers. Only the clatter of silverware on plates, wine trickling into glasses, chairs scraping stone, distant traffic that whispered like the ocean, the unexpected splash and quack of a school of ducks bobbing beneath us, diving for food. But eventually, we began to talk, nimbly hopping from one safe stepping-stone to the next, avoiding the treacherous waters—the past, the future, the present—that flowed between. A movie that Adriane and I both loved, in defiance of reason and taste. Eli and Max’s shared loathing for organized sports. Parents and their belief that progeny were lumps of clay to be sculpted into whatever ugly pot or vase or teacup shape they so chose, a discussion that occupied Adriane and Eli while Max took my hand under the table and stroked his thumb across my open palm. I watched the bridge. Its stone guardians were saint-shaped holes of pure nothing in the sky, gaps in reality. I imagined getting too close, being sucked into the void. The spaces between.

40

The bridge. That was Max’s idea, too. Just once, a postprandial stroll, he called it, smiling, bemused, as usual, by his own pretension. Across and back again, to hear the street violinists and watch the lip-locked couples and gaze at moonlit Prague from the most famous point on its map. A final goodbye to the city that had, in an unexpected act of leniency, let us live.

Maybe we’d had too much wine, or just too much, because the night had left us fearless, and so we agreed.

We’d stayed late at the restaurant, late enough to watch the waiters sweep beneath the tables while getting drunk off stolen swigs of pilsner, and with a few exceptions, the bridge’s couples and musicians had already gone off to sleep. Stragglers groped in the dark niches between the saints, and a lone violinist played Pachelbel’s “Canon” on an endless loop. Mounds of dirty wool blankets marked territory up and down the bridge span. The mist had condensed into a chill rain. Clouds blocked out the stars. Beggars formed supine flesh statues beneath the stone martyrs, oblivious to the fact that their paved beds were turning into puddles.

Though probably not oblivious, I supposed. Just resigned.

We stopped midway across the bridge, leaned against the ledge, watched the water below and the castle above. St. John of Nepomuk watched over us, expression cheerier than you’d expect from someone who’d been tossed overboard just for doing his job. The statue had looked cleaner on Max’s postcard. Airbrushing: It would be nice if they could develop a technique for applying it to life.

“Imagine never going back,” Adriane said, low enough that only I could hear.

“Stay here forever?”

“Feels like here is all there is.”

I knew what she meant. Chapman, with its tiny buildings, tiny population, tiny aspirations, seemed like something I’d read about once and hadn’t quite believed in. The only piece of home that seemed real anymore was Chris’s body, Chris’s blood. That was home, now. That was waiting for me.

“You think you’re different?” Adriane asked suddenly, under her breath. The boys were absorbed in the view or their own midnight wonderings.

“Than what?”

“Than before.”

“I don’t know. I guess.”

She didn’t ask how. I wouldn’t have known what to say. More frightened? Angrier? Braver?

Alone.

“I should be different,” she said.

I didn’t ask her how, either.

“Better,” she said. “But I’m not.”

I shivered.

“Is chivalry dead?” Adriane asked, rousing the boys from their stupor. “Someone give this girl a coat.”

Eli had already thrust his into my hands before Max finished fumbling with his buttons. I took it with a weak thank-you.

“Milady,” Max said, offering his to Adriane instead, with a shallow bow.

It was all too awkward. I looked away. Down, at the rain-slicked stones. And saw the black heap of blankets rise up.

Not blankets, not beggars, but robed men, rising around us, like monsters awoken from slumber, closing in from all sides, their glinting blades warning us not to scream.

Hledači
.

One of them pointed at me. “You come quiet,” he said, in a gravelly voice, “and your friends live.”

It was framed as a choice, but then a robe was flung over my head and their hands were all over me, holding me in place. An arm curled around my throat. It squeezed, tight. I thrashed my head, tried to whipsaw at the waist, tried to punch, to kick, anything, but the arm was a vise. Pins and needles tingled up my arms and legs, legs made of twigs, of Jell-O, useless and weak and then numb and then gone. All of it gone but the pressure at my throat and the stars behind my lids and the tiny gasps of a losing struggle to breathe. Floating away. I screamed soundlessly into the black.

Somewhere, far away, voices, please no and we have what you want and don’t fight them and I’m sorry and just let go and this is your fault, this is what you get, this is where it ends, but that was Chris’s voice and Chris was dead and I was on the ground and why was this taking so long I just wanted it to stop I wanted to sleep and Chris was waiting.

“What the hell?” That was Adriane’s voice, sharp and real, cutting through the fog, and suddenly air was rushing down my throat, into my lungs, the pressure blessedly gone. I gasped, sucking it in with abandon, blissed out on oxygen. And then there was a scream, and then there was a splash, and then there was a silence. Someone pulled the thick wool away from my face. It was Eli, and Eli’s arms around me, dragging me to my feet.

“Go!” he shouted. “We have to go!”

The robes whipped in the wind as the men inexplicably backed away from us, and in the distance, sirens, and the one with gravel in his voice pointed at me again, calling out, “Destiny will find you. You are
vyvolená
!”

Adriane put an arm around my waist, slung my arm around
her shoulder, but my legs were working again and I allowed myself to be pulled away, running along the slippery stones, across the bridge, into the alleyways of Malá Strana, into the safety of the dark, and it wasn’t until we were huddled under a cold, damp archway, shivering, Adriane and I pressed to each other, Eli sheathing a knife I hadn’t known he had and wiping a smear of blood from his neck, the night too quiet, our breath too loud, that I let myself ask the question, not wanting to hear the answer, not needing to hear it.

“Where is he?”

I already knew. I knew when I opened my eyes to the suddenly bright night, and saw Adriane’s pale, terrified face, saw Eli’s wild rage, saw the cowards hidden behind their robes and hoods, saw what was no longer there.

I knew when I heard his scream. And the splash.

And after it, the nothing.

PART IV

Twilights of Dew and Fire

Menschen, die über dunkle Brücken gehn
vorüber an Heiligen
mit matten Lichtlein
.
Wolken, die über grauen Himmel ziehn
vorüber an Kirchen
mit verdämmernden Türmen
.
Einer, der an der Quaderbrüstung lehnt
und in das Abendwasser schaut
,
die Hände auf alten Steinen
.

People who walk across dark bridges
,
past saints
,
with dim, small lights
.
Clouds which move across gray skies
past churches
with towers darkened in the dusk
.
One who leans against the granite railing
gazing into the evening waters
,
His hands resting on old stones
.

Franz Kafka