§137

Jiří’s box room was less than six feet by six. Into this he had fitted a pitifully narrow mattress, just leaving room for a desk and a chair. When the door was opened it banged into a corner of the desk—as it did now, when Nell stuck her head around it to ask if he wanted a hot drink.

“It’s freezing outside.”

“I know,” he replied. “I’ve been out in it. Not been home long at all.”

Why he had been out was obvious.

The stencils for “Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast” and “Remember What the White Queen Said” were pinned to the wall above his desk, still wet, dripping red paint down the colourless wallpaper.

“What does ‘Remember What the White Queen Said’ mean?”

“It’s Lewis Carroll. Surely it doesn’t need explanation?”

“I suppose not.”

Nell paused, wondering how much she could ask before he clammed up or exploded.

“Jiří, why are you doing this now?”

“It was too dangerous to do much before Christmas, or have you forgotten the night we met.”

“No, I haven’t. But … the old guard is gone. Or if not gone, going.”

“Meet the new guard, same as the old guard.”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

“What does one expect from an old guard?”

“I don’t know. What does one expect from an old guard?”

“That they be old. What does one expect from a new guard?”

“I don’t know.”

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything. And what do we get?”

“Whatever I say now will be wrong, so …”

“We get silence. Six weeks of Dubček in power and six weeks of silence. He has to say something or the change of leadership means nothing. We’re drowning in Dubček’s silence.”

A grin spread across his face. When he thought of something, a word or phrase he might drop like a bomb into conversation, the boy was uncontainable. For all that he lied he was a poor liar. His face betrayed him.

“You must have seen those sausage stalls? They’re everywhere.”

“Of course.”

“You know what utopenci are? Pickled sausages, in big jars, they sell them with gherkins. But utopenci translates as Ertrunkene—drowned men. We’re all drowned men, until he speaks.”

This was undeniable. Petr had said much the same thing only days ago. Brandt had sent her, tongue-in-cheek, a Disney postcard of the Pekinese dog from Lady and the Tramp wearing a muzzle, over which he had scrawled the initials “A.D.?”—Aleksandr Dubček.

“And what’s that?”

Nell pointed at a collage on Jiří’s desk—letters cut and pasted. Several discarded attempts littered the floor.

“I’m designing the masthead for our newspaper.”

“Whose newspaper?”

“Ours … us students … the Pranksters.”

“What does it stand for?”

“Skřitek Škatule—Goblin Box. We are a country of demons and elves, water sprites and goblins. Czechs are very superstitious.”

Another Czech tradition.

“Yes,” she said. “I had noticed. And where will you get the paper?”

“Oh … such German practicality. I dunno … behind the first office door I find that isn’t locked.”

“You’d steal it?”

“Nell … please! I’d liberate it. Now, are you going to call me a hooligan again?”

“No. I’m not. You don’t need to steal, Jiří. I run a foundation to foster the arts. I can give you paper.”