The students were lighting candles in the middle of Wenceslas when they left the hotel. The crowd was small, a fraction of the old rallies, but the police were out in force, patrolling the long street and pretending to ignore the students. No one wanted any trouble. From the candles Nick assumed it was a memorial service, but the signs they held up, in Czech, might have meant anything.
“I wonder what it says,” he said idly, looking at the quiet group. Behind them the street rose up to meet the giant columns of the National Museum, still scarred from the previous year’s shelling.
“‘Be with us. We are with you,”’ she said.
“You can read Czech?”
“No. It was the slogan. You used to see it everywhere. It’s their way of telling the police they’re all on the same side.”
Nick wondered what they expected the police to do — drop their guns and walk off the job? But it was all, from the incomprehensible signs to the sad, divided loyalties, someone else’s problem.
They walked down toward Narodni Street, past the parky stalls, then threaded their way through the narrow streets of the Old Town to the river. This was the tourist route, full of marvels and medieval towers, but Nick found himself hurrying, oblivious. The Charles Bridge, with its ornate statues, was full of couples looking down at the water, arms around each other, the girls all with bleached-blond hair that seemed to hang straight from poor chemicals. On the other side, the Mala Strana, there were thick arcades and cobblestones, lit by dull street lamps and the glow of passing trams.
The Wallenstein was not far from the river, and when they got there a crowd had already gathered on Letenska Street, waiting to get in. Most of them wore coats against the spring chill, and Nick saw that they had dressed up, men in ties, women in cloth hats. No one was young. The street door led through the honey-colored stone wall directly into the formal gardens. At one end of the central courtyard, musicians sat in front of the high arches of a portico, tuning instruments. Folding chairs had been set up on the pebbled ground, and people claimed them, first come, first served, then stood looking around for their friends, waving and chatting, just as they must have done when the palace was first built. Behind the walls, away from the tanks and the lines for carrots, Prague still had its evenings.
Nick found chairs toward the back, so he could look out over the crowd, and stood watching the people file in. What would he look like? Was it possible he wouldn’t recognize him? He would be how old now? In his sixties, like most of the audience. Gray? White?
“Don’t crane. It’s too obvious,” Molly said. “Maybe we’d better sit down.”
“No one else is.”
It was true. People stood talking, their voices rising over the violins and cellos being stretched into tune. Did they all know each other? A few people near them stared frankly at their Western clothes. Why so public a place? Why meet in front of an audience? The lights were being lowered now, people finally taking their places.
“What are we supposed to do, save seats?” Nick said.
“He just said he was coming to the concert. Don’t worry. He’ll find us.”
A couple sat down next to them and the man nodded at Nick, but it was just a concertgoer’s greeting, polite and vacant. The music started, a series of Mozart divertimenti, as formal and airy as the gardens. Only the portico was lighted now, and Nick looked around the dim courtyard at profiles and shapes of heads, waiting for someone to turn in the dark. How would his father find them? It was Nick who would have changed, no longer a boy. It occurred to him-a new thought-that his father would know him only because he was sitting with Molly.
At the intermission, while people smoked and drank beer, he stood near the bright stage, impossible to miss, but no one came up, and only a few people looked toward him at all, glancing at his shoes. Molly said nothing, but he could tell from the way she bit her lower lip that she was worried, that it should already have happened. Czech, fluent and guttural, surrounded them, making him feel isolated, not even free to eavesdrop.
When they sat down again, he knew his father wasn’t coming. Something had happened, or maybe he had balked, unable to go through with it after all. Nick stared at the Baroque walls, not hearing the music, and realized that he felt a kind of relief. It was better in so many ways to keep things as they were. His body began to sag a little, coming down to earth. The past wasn’t meant to come back. Except there it was again, the walking away. In the pretty courtyard, listening now to Brahms, he was at the back door again, being left.
“I’ll be right back,” he whispered to Molly, and when she looked alarmed he smiled and said, “Bathroom,” and slid out of his seat, crouching as he slipped farther back into the dark garden, trying not to crunch pebbles.
