took the phone from her, and reeling out the long cord by which it was attached to the wall, went out and shut the door behind him.
It was dark outside now, and before Radka sat down she turned on a standard lamp perched in the corner below the photographs. She had changed her clothes, switching from the sweater and jeans she’d been wearing to a long white dress in some sort of crinkly material, which seemed to wrap around and envelop her body, giving her a comfortable, relaxed air, as if she had slipped it on to illustrate the fact that this was her province in which she was at home. She smelt of flowers – something with a lemony undertone which Joseph couldn’t identify. Citrus, but not lemon. Earlier on her hair had been bundled together into a bun on top of her head. Now she had let it down and it rippled in smooth flowing waves, over her shoulders and across her back. In the margin of the pool of light around the lamp, she glowed.
‘This is very important to George,’ she said. She gazed at him seriously, her eyes intent. ‘There was always something missing in his life. Just as his mother’s. Being with you is a great experience. Already he loves you.’
Joseph shrugged, too embarrassed to speak. It wasn’t so much the idea of what she was saying that disturbed him. It was the fact that she was saying it.
Suddenly he could hear George shouting, a ranting, angry sound. Radka’s expression didn’t change.
‘I put some photographs in the envelope with Katya’s letter,’ she said calmly. Outside the door George’s voice had risen to a roar without eliciting any apparent reaction from Radka. Perhaps it was the language, Joseph thought. To English ears emphatic German speech still carried the sound of a threat. ‘She wants to see him,’ Radka continued.
The door flung open and George strode in.
‘I have to go,’ he said without preamble. ‘Half an hour.’ He pointed at Joseph. ‘You wait? Okay?’
Joseph started to object, but before he could find the words George had turned and walked out. Radka got up quickly and went out after him, closing the door behind her. Joseph hovered for a moment, undecided about whether he should get up and follow, but then he heard their voices echoing in the hallway. It sounded like an argument, so he stayed where he was, and in a moment he heard the sound of the outer door slamming shut.
‘Where are you going?’ Radka asked George.
She had followed him out on an impulse which was something to do with Joseph’s presence. It wasn’t unusual for George to leave the house without explanation, and in normal circumstances she wouldn’t have asked. There had been a time when such questions would have seemed impolite or even suspicious, and the old habit of reticence about these matters died hard. But this was different. Seeing it through the eyes of someone who, like Joseph, knew nothing of the way they had lived, George’s departure seemed abrupt and strange. In any case, she also felt a sudden surge of resentment at his assumption that he could simply leave her with someone, his brother, who they were both meeting for the first time.
George’s hand was on the bolt of the door, but, halted by the tone of her voice, he stopped and looked round.
‘It’s business,’ he told her quickly. ‘I have two madmen at the garage who are about to fight each other. The customer is crazy and making a fuss, and the Roma is worse. It won’t take long.’
She nodded her head, accepting the explanation. Since the time that he and Valentin had set up business in the city, she’d become accustomed to the eruption of minor emergencies.
‘Can’t Valentin do it?’
‘I don’t know where he is.’
She gestured in resignation and let him go, but instead of returning immediately into the room with Joseph, she walked along the corridor to listen at Serge’s door. The sounds he made might have been imperceptible to anyone else, but she could tell that he was still awake, reading or playing with one of his toys. Usually she would go in and look at him, kiss him, perhaps, and pick up the toys and books which he left scattered around the floor. On this night she didn’t want to take the risk that he would wake up and detain her, so she merely listened. She had intended to go back to Joseph after a few seconds, but, instead she found herself walking on into the kitchen where she stood looking through the window. Her excuse was that she was about to make coffee, but the truth was that she wanted to be alone for a few minutes before facing her husband’s brother. She felt restless and disturbed, in need of a breathing space in which to calm the turmoil inside herself.
Reflecting on how she felt, she knew that it wasn’t simply to do with Joseph’s visit or George’s sudden departure. In fact it struck her that it was something to do with the game Serge had been playing as she gave him his bath. There was nothing extraordinary about what he had done, and although it sometimes annoyed her a little she was accustomed to seeing him stretched out in the bath tub, his arms along his sides, his mouth opening and closing. This was how he pretended to be a carp, floating in the water like the giant fish George had brought home just before Christmas and dumped in the tub. During the season there were people all over Prague taking home bundles of carp wrapped in wet paper, or stuffed in dripping parcels. Born and brought up in the city, Radka had found this custom unremarkable until she left it. So there was nothing astonishing about Serge’s little game, and he was just as likely to be converted, when she lifted him out of the water, into a roaring lion. On this particular evening, however, she didn’t know why, the sight had triggered a memory of her childhood in Prague, which darkened her mood.
It had been twenty years ago, when she was twelve, coming home from school; she had walked past one of the trestle tables which were laid out everywhere on the street corners. This one was on a busy junction and there was a crowd of people jostling round it. On the previous day there had been a heavy fall of snow and the mob of shoppers was like a herd of cattle, their feet stamping and their breath steaming in a cloud round their heads. Over the entire scene hung the raw smell of the fish, but Radka didn’t find this unpleasant. On the contrary all the activity gave her a feeling of excitement and anticipation that was associated with the coming festival – the smells, the look of the milling crowd, the tight freezing air. Smiling, she circled round the pedestrians, almost stepping into the road, and stumbling a little as an old woman pushed past her. A few paces further on, she felt something different about her right foot, a wet feeling as if she had sunk into a puddle of melted snow. She looked down and saw the dark stain of fish blood around the toe of her boot, and looking back at where she had walked, she saw that she was leaving a trail of bloody footprints. She scraped at the ground, wiping her boots on the thick carpet of snow, but the pink indentations refused to disappear, following her remorselessly as she ran down the street.
On the landing in front of the apartment where she lived with her mother she stopped and took off the boots before going in. Then, holding them at arm’s length, she rushed down the corridor towards the bathroom. The door was open a crack, and she could hear her mother’s voice. She’d heard her mother talking to herself before, and eager to wash the blood off her shoes, she shoved the door open. It seemed to stick a little, then it went back, but with difficulty, as if something was in the way. Inside the room, her mother was kneeling by the tub. For a moment, it seemed as if she was playing with the carp which had been floating in the tub for a couple of days, but then Radka realised that the obstacle which had been blocking the door was the same fish wrapped in a wet towel. At the same time she saw that it was her father who was sitting in the tub. As she came in he turned his head and smiled at her. It was a curious smile, tremulous and almost timid as if her entry had frightened him. That was how she remembered him in the period before
