“I’m thinking about what you said. I know I must have met people who aren’t living in legends, I just don’t remember when.”
“Legends, as in having different names?”
“It’s much more than different names; it has to do with having several biographies, several attitudes, several ways of looking at the world, several ways of giving and taking pleasure. It has to do with being so broken that the king’s horses and the king’s men would have a hard time putting you together again.”
“Listen up, Martin—”
“Terrific! Now they’ll know it’s me calling.”
“How can they be sure I’m not using a phony name to throw them off?”
“There’s something in what you say.”
“I lied to you the last time we spoke. I said if I joined you in Europe there wouldn’t be strings attached. If you let me come, there will be. Strings attached.”
Martin didn’t know what to say. He stifled the uh-huh and let the silence stand.
“You don’t know what to say,” Stella guessed.
“Strings are attached to puppets,” Martin finally said. “It’s not an image of you that I put much store in.”
“The strings wouldn’t be attached to me or you, they’d be attached to my coming over. Remember when we were going into Israel and I told that policeman you were my lover?”
Martin smiled to himself. “And I told him you had a tattoo of a Siberian night moth under your right breast.”
“Got one,” Stella announced.
He didn’t understand. “Got what?”
“Tattoo of a Siberian night moth under my right breast. A Jamaican tattoo artist on Empire Boulevard did it. That’s the string that’s attached when we next meet. I’m going to have to show it to you to prove it’s there, since it’s not your style to take my word for something as important as that. Then we’ll see if one thing leads to another.”
Martin thought of the whore Dante had come across in Beirut. “I heard of a girl who actually had a moth tattooed under her breast. Her name was Djamillah. Did you really get one?”
He could hear the laughter in her voice. “Uh-huh.”
“Stealing my uh-huhs,” Martin said.
“Plan to steal more than that,” she shot back.
He changed the subject. “I was scared today.”
“Of what?”
“Where I’m at I’ve never been to before. That frightens me.”
“Okay, here’s the deal. You better get used to being where you’ve never been to before. I’ll hold your hand. Okay?”
“I suppose so.”
“If this is you enthusiastic, I’d hate to see you reluctant.”
“Fact is, I’m not sure.”
“Ever hear the story of the Russian peasant who was asked if he knew how to play the violin? I’m not sure, he replied. Never tried.” She snickered at her own joke. “You need to try, Martin, to know if you can or you can’t.”
“I can see you’re right. I just don’t feel you’re right.”
She digested that. “Why did you call me?”
“Wanted to hear your voice. Wanted to make sure you’re still you.”
“Well, you’ve heard it and I’ve heard yours. Where does that leave us, Martin?”
“I’m not sure.” They both laughed at the I’m not sure. “I mean, I still have to find the person who went AWOL from his marriage.”
“Let it go. Forget Samat. Come home, Martin.”
“If I let it go, the person who came home wouldn’t be me. Aside from that, lot of questions are out trawling for answers.”
“When the answers are elusive you have to learn to live with the questions.”
“I need to go. Stella?”
“Okay, okay, go. I’ll replay the conversation in my head after you hang up. I’ll sift through it looking for meanings I missed.”
“Don’t worry, be happy.”
“Don’t worry, be happy? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a song from the top ten in the late eighties. Thought of it today—they were playing it over and over on a jukebox in Paraguay when a guy I know was there.”
“Was the they a girl?”
“A bunch of girls. Prostitutes working a bar who bought lottery tickets from an old Polish gentleman.”
“You depress me, Martin. There’s so much about you I don’t know.”
“I depress me, too. For the same reason.”
The plat du jour at the mom and pop’s turned out to be spicy Yugoslav meatballs served in soup dishes with vegetables that had been overcooked and were difficult to identify. Martin exchanged his meatballs for Radek’s vegetables and helped himself to half the boiled potatoes. The wine was a kissing cousin to Greek ouzo, flavored with anise and easy to drink once the first few mouthfuls numbed your throat. Radek sat across the small table from Martin, mopping up the sauces in his soup dish with pieces of stale bread and washing them down with gulps of wine. “My dream is to go to U.S. the beautiful before Alzheimer’s sets in,” he confided, sucking on a tooth to free the food caught in his gums. “Is it so that they pave the streets with Sony Walkmans when the cobblestones wear out?”
Martin leaned back and treated himself to an after-dinner Beedie. “Where did you pick up that juicy detail?”
“It was written in a university satirical magazine.”
“Don’t believe everything you read in university satirical magazines. Can you ask for the bill.”
Radek studied the bill when it came, then got into an argument with the owner, who wound up crossing out two items and reducing the price of the wine. “I saved you sixty crowns, which is two lousy U.S. dollars,” Radek noted. “That adds up to two hours of my honorarium, Mister. So where to now?”
“A trolley to Svobodova Street.”
“How is it a rich U.S. like you does not hire taxi cabs?”
“I have a theory that you don’t really know a city until you’ve ridden its public transportation.”
Radek rolled his head from side to side in dismay. “Here all the people who take public transportation dream to take private transportation. You want to go to the Vyshrad Station?”
“I would like to get off a hundred meters before it and walk the rest of the way to work off the meal.”
Radek laid a forefinger along a nostril. “You want to case the joint first.”
“Where did you pick up case the joint?”
“So I am crazy about old U.S. movies.” He transformed a thumb and an index finger into a pistol and jammed it into the pocket of his Tyrolean jacket. “I have a gub in my pocket, Mister.”
“What movie is that from?”
“Woody Allen. Take the Money and Run.”
“Uh-huh. Let’s go.”
Sitting in the back of the trolley, listening to the sparks crackling off the overhead electric cable, Martin studied the faces around him looking for the one that was conspicuously uninterested in him. Normally he prided himself on being able to blend into a crowd even when there wasn’t one. Now, however, he was in too much of a hurry to take the usual precautions. His American clothes, especially his shoes, made him stand out in any Czech crowd and people, naturally curious, would inspect him, some openly, some furtively. Martin figured if someone were following him he would be careful not to look at him at all. In the long ride from the mom and pop’s eatery to Mala Strana, then queuing to wait for a trolley on another line, Martin, still an artisan of tradecraft, didn’t have the feeling he was being tailed. Which, he knew from experience, could mean that the people following him were very good at it. Radek noticed him noticing the passengers around him. “If you are not wanting girls, what are you wanting?” he asked. He leaned closer so the haggard woman on the aisle seat brazenly scrutinizing the American couldn’t overhear him. “Cannabis, ganja, hemp, hashish, bhang, sinsemilla, cocaine, crack, angel dust, horse, methadone, LSD, PCP, uppers, downers. Only identify it, Radek will find it for less lousy U.S. dollars than you pay
me a day.”
“I’ve never even heard of half these things,” Martin said. “What I’m wanting is to stretch my legs when we’re within walking distance of the Vyshrad Station.”
“Next stop,” Radek said, obviously disappointed that his procurement talents were not being put to the test. He plucked at the cord running the length of the trolley above the windows as if it were a guitar string. Up front a bell sounded. As the trolley ground to a halt, the doors scraped open. Once on the sidewalk, Radek pointed with his nose. In the distance, on the other side of the wide street, Martin could make out a shabby communist gothic structure trapping the last quarter hour of sunlight slanting in over the Vltava on its dilapidated roof, which was crawling with pigeons. He turned to Radek and offered his hand. “I won’t be needing your services anymore,” he announced.
Radek looked dejected. “You paid for ten hours, Mister. I still owe you seven and a half.”
“Consider the unused hours a gratuity.” When Radek still didn’t shake hands, Martin brought his own up to his eye and snapped off a friendly salute. “Good luck to you in medical school, Radek. I hope you find a cure for Alzheimer’s before Alzheimer’s sets in.”
“I kick myself for asking someone like you only thirty lousy crowns an hour,” Radek muttered as he turned and headed in the opposite direction.
Sucking on a Beedie, Martin strolled down Svobodova Street in the direction of the river. He passed a row of apartment buildings, one with the date “1902” etched over the door and a “Flat for Sale” sign in English on the inside of a ground floor window. Across the street loomed the Vyshrad Station in all its communist-era decadence. The station consisted of a central carcass and two broken wings. Dirty white stucco peeled away from the facade like sunburnt skin, exposing the dirty red bricks beneath. The windows on the Svobodova side were boarded over, though there were hints of fluorescent light seeping between the cracks in several of the second-floor windows that weren’t well jointed. The pigeons, in twos and threes, were fluttering away from the roof in search of the last rays of sun as Martin made his way back up Svobodova, this time on the station side of the street. Trolleys clattered by, causing the ground to tremble underfoot. Behind the station a commuter train sped past in the direction of Centrum. Dog-eared posters advertising Hungarian vacuum cleaners and reconditioned East German Trabants were thumb tacked to the boards covering the ground floor windows. Near the gate leading to a path around the side of the left wing of the station, someone had chalked graffiti on the wall: The Oklahoma City bomb was the first shot of World War III. Martin eased open the gate on its rusty hinges, climbed the brick steps and walked around to the back of the station. The passage was obviously in daily use because the weeds and vines on either side had been cut away from the brick footpath. Making his way along what used to be the platform when the station had been in use, Martin glanced into one of the wings through a sooty window shielded by rusting metal bars. Inside, two young men whom he took to be gypsies, wearing vests and corduroy trousers tucked into the tops of leather boots, were emptying large cartons and setting out what looked like packets of medicines on a long trestle table. Two young women dressed in long colorful skirts were repacking the items into smaller boxes and sealing them with masking tape. One of the young men caught sight of Martin and gestured with his thumb toward the main station doors further down the platform. Martin nodded and, a moment later, pushed through the double door into the station’s onceornate central hall, fallen into dilapidation and smelling of wet plaster, evidence that someone had tried to patch over the worst of the building’s wounds. A broken sign over the door read “Vychod—Exit.” The tiles on the floor, many of them cracked, shifted under his feet. A wide stairway curled up toward the second floor. Painted on the wall above the stairway were the words “Soft” and “Shoulder.” A squat dog with a blunt nose stood on the top landing, yelping in a hoarse voice at the intruder. A handsome, elegantly dressed woman in her fifties peered down from the railing. “If you are looking for Soft Shoulder, do come up,” she called. “Don’t mind the dog. His bite is worse than his bark, but I will lock him up.” Reaching for the dog’s leash, the woman pulled him, still yelping, into a room and shut the door. With the dog barking behind the door she turned back toward Martin, who was leaning on the banister to take the weight off his game leg as he climbed toward her. A half dozen thin Indian bracelets jangled on her thin wrist as she held out a slender hand. “My name is Zuzana Slánská,” she said as Martin took her hand.
He noticed that her fingers were weedy, her nails bitten to the quick, her eyes rheumy. He suspected that the wrinkled smile on her gaunt lips had been worn too many times without laundering. “Mine’s Odum,” he said. “Martin Odum.”
“What African country are you buying for?”
Figuring he had nothing to lose, Martin said the first thing that came into his head. “The Ivory Coast.”
“We don’t often deal with clients in person, Mr. Odum. Most of our business is mail order. As a matter of record, who sent you to us?”
“An associate of Samat’s named Taletbek Rabbani.” He produced the back of the envelope with Rabbani’s barely legible scrawl on it and showed it to the woman.
A shadow passed over her face. “News of Mr. Rabbani’s death reached us earlier this week. When and where did you meet him?”
“The same place you met him—at his warehouse behind the train station in the Golders Green section of London. I was probably the last person to see him alive—not counting the Chechens who murdered him.”
“The small item in the British newspaper made no mention of Chechens.”
“It may be that Scotland Yard doesn’t know this detail. It may be they know it but do not want to tip their hand.”
Smiling nervously, the woman led Martin into a large oval room lit by several naked neon fixtures suspended from the ceiling. The three windows in the office were covered with planking, reminding Martin of the time Dante Pippen had followed Djamillah into the mercantile office above the bar in Beirut—the windows there had been boarded over, too. He looked around, taking in the room. Large cartons with “This Side Up” stenciled on them were stacked against one wall. A young woman in a loose fitting sweater and faded blue jeans sat at a desk, typing with two fingers on a vintage table-model Underwood. At the edge of the desk, a scroll of facsimile paper spilled from a fax machine into a carton on the floor. A loose-leaf book lay open on a low glass table filled with coffee stains and overflowing ashtrays. The woman motioned Martin to a seat on the automobile banquette against the wall and settled onto a low three-legged stool facing him, her crossed ankles visible through the thick glass of the table. “I assume Mr. Rabbani explained how we operate here. In order to keep our prices as low as possible, we do business out of this defunct station to reduce the overhead and we only sell our generic medicines in bulk. Is there anything in particular you are looking for, Mr. Odum? Our best sellers are the Tylenol generic, acetaminophen, the Valium generic, diazepam, the Sudafed generic, pseudoephedrine, the Kenacort generic, triamcinolone. Please feel free to thumb through the loose-leaf catalogue. The labels of our generic medicines are pasted onto the pages. I am not aware of any particular epidemic threatening the Ivory Coast aside from the HIV virus—we unfortunately do not yet have access to generic drugs for AIDS, but hope governments will put pressure on the drug conglomerates …” She gazed at her visitor, a sudden question visible in her eyes. “You didn’t mention your medical credentials, Mr. Odum. Are you a trained doctor or a public health specialist?”
Another commuter train roared by behind the station. When it had passed, Martin said, “Neither.”
Zuzana Slánská’s fingers came up to touch the small Star of David attached to the chain around her neck. “I am not sure I comprehend you.”
Martin leaned forward. “I have a confession to make. I am not here to buy generic medicines.” He looked directly into her rheumy eyes. “I have come to find out more about Samat’s
project concerning the exchange of the bones of the Lithuanian saint for the Jewish Torah scrolls.”
“Oh!” The woman glanced at the secretary typing up order forms across the room. “It’s a long story,” she said softly, “and I shall badly need a brandy and several cigarettes to get me through it.”
Zuzana Slánská leaned toward Martin so that he could light her cigarette with a match from the book advertising Prague crystal. “I have never smoked a Beedie before,” she noted, sinking back, savoring the taste of the Indian cigarette. She pulled it from her mouth and carefully examined it. “Is there marijuana mixed with the tobacco?” she asked.
Martin shook his head. “You’re smelling the eucalyptus leaves.”
She took another drag on the Beedie. “I am wary of the experts who argue so passionately that smoking is dangerous for your health,” she remarked, the words emerging from her mouth along with the smoke. As she turned away to glance at the two fat men sucking on thick cigars at a nearby table, it struck Martin that she had the profile of a woman who must have been a stunner in her youth. “There are a great many things dangerous for your health,” she added, turning back. “Don’t you agree?”
Concentrating on his own cigarette, Martin said, “For instance?”
“For instance, living under high tension wires. For instance, eating fast food with artificial flavoring. For instance, being right when your government is wrong.” She favored the old waiter with a worn smile as he carefully set out two snifters half-filled with three-star Jerez brandy, along with a shallow Dresden bowl brimming with peanuts. “I am speaking from bitter experience,” she added, “but you surely will have grasped that from the tone of my voice.”
She had led him on foot across the river to the salon du thé on the top floor of a gaudy hotel that had only recently opened for business. From the window next to the table at the back of the enormous room, Martin could see what he’d spotted from the plane: the hills rimming Prague and the communist-era apartment buildings spilling over them. “My husband,” the woman was saying, caught up in her own story, “was a medical doctor practicing in Vinohrady, which is a district of Prague behind the museum. I worked as his nurse. The two of us joined a literary circle that met once a week to discuss books. Oh, I can tell you, it was an exhilarating time for us. My husband was fearless—he used to all the time joke that old age was not for the weak of heart.” She gulped down some of the brandy and puffed furiously on her Beedie, as if time were running out; as if she had to relate her life’s story before her life ended. “Tell me if all this bores you to tears, Mr. Odum.”