She was there, just as she had been the past two days. It was not as if she could be easily missed; apart from her stylish and expensive ensemble, there were precious few Eurasian women to be seen in Prague.
Or anywhere else in Central Europe, for that matter.
Same table by the window, with its view of the Prague Opera House. Same assured air, same enchanting smile for the waiters who served her. Same perfect combination of the Occident and the Orient.
Arriving in Prague, Nika found Sergei an Orthodox church then went to the Hungarian embassy and telegrammed Viktor confirming both assignments had been a success and wished for a week in Prague to relax. Viktor replied he had just read of Sanko’s mysterious and apparently unsolvable death in the late editions and she could take three.
Nika ordered a Viennese coffee and studied the woman she had fallen in love with. The years since her mother’s death had been lonely, loveless, and until recently, hard and ugly as well. She had allowed several men to flirt with her but never felt any desire for any of them.
Now, Nika felt feverish as she at thought of being with someone like that, to love someone like that and be loved by someone like that. She had wanted to approach her the day before but could not summon up the courage. She could poison an enemy, enjoy watching him die and next day rebuff the approaches of a French terrorist. Walking over to a table and introducing herself to a stranger who was the object of her desire was altogether too frightening.
She could not seem to make eye contact, and none of the felonious arts she learned from Viktor seemed even remotely useful. She looked down at the table and considered leaving when, suddenly self-conscious, she looked up and saw the girl she had been watching for so long looking straight at her.
“Hi! I don’t mean to stare,” she said, speaking French. “I noticed you sitting there for the third time, alone but sometimes smiling to yourself. It’s very cute. You must either be a very happy person or a very secretive one.” She paused. “I think I should like to find out. My name is Abrienda.”
Nika laughed nervously, replied in French that no harm was done, looked down, smiled again, then looked up. “You see! I can’t stop doing it! May I join you?”
Before she received an answer Nika rose and crossing to Abrienda’s table glided into the opposite chair which afforded her a clear view of both the entrance and the pavement leading up to it. She extended her hand across the table.
“My name is Nika Molnar. I’m from Hungary.”
Abrienda took Nika’s hand in hers and gave it a quick double squeeze.
“Abrienda’? That is…?”
“Spanish. It’s an old Castilian name, meaning ‘openings’, as in new beginnings. Our family was originally from Spain, and as my father had a taste for the exotic, he gave his half-Czech, half-Japanese daughter a Castilian name no longer in common usage. Shall we have a drink?”
Nika hooded her eyes to try to hide the excitement she was afraid they showed. She was indeed in love for the first time, as she had thought several months earlier.
“Your name is enchanting. And yes… a drink would be nice.”
Abrienda made a motioned to one of the waiters.
“Cognac, please,” Abrienda said.
The waiter turned his attention to Nika, who nodded and without taking her eyes off Abrienda rested her cheek against the thumb and finger of her right hand.
“I love this café. It is my favorite place in Prague, except possibly the Wallenstein Gardens. They have a wonderful pianist who should be…” and Abrienda shifted in her chair and looked about just as he took his place at the piano and began playing a popular song from a few years back by Cole Porter—a song Nika loved but could never remember the title as the waiter brought their two cognacs.
“My father maintained the best cognac came not from France but Armenia. No chance of getting any from there now.” Abrienda said in disgust.
She took her first sip and winced with pleasure.
“Motherfucking Bolsheviks!”
Nika had swallowed just in time; otherwise, she might have spat it out in surprise and laughed out loud instead.
“I shocked you?” Abrienda smiled wickedly.
“Yes… yes, you did!” Nika replied. She collected herself. “But I couldn’t agree with you more!”
“With your pageboy haircut, you look very much like Louise Brooks in ‘Pandora’s Box’. The style compliments you very much.”
Nika was very pleased. She had styled her look after the American actress after seeing the same film but thought she would look much more like the actress were there not a slight rise in the dorsum nasi of her nose. The pageboy had lost the prominence it enjoyed during the last decade but it was easy to manage and went well with hats so Nika paid that no attention.
The conversation turned to where they had travelled. Abrienda had visited most of Europe’s’ capital though never Budapest.
“I’ve been to Bucharest—‘the Paris of the East’. I didn’t think much of it. Romania might as well be called Ruritania. My father told me officers in their army were restricted to how much eye makeup they could use while on duty during the Great War and when I was there, I could believe it. The men all looked like male prostitutes.”
Nika laughed again. She loved it the object of her romantic interest was so opinionated. Nika replied she also didn’t care very much for Bucharest nor Romanians for that matter, and Abrienda said she could well understand that since they had taken nearly all of Transylvania from Hungary, but when Nika asked if she had ever lived in Poland, a faint blush came to Abrienda’s cheeks.
“Yes, my father was Czechoslovak consul in Krakow for three years.”
Nika suddenly recalled the significance of a woman in Poland giving a quick double squeeze to someone’s hand. It was a way to signal romantic or, at least, sexual attraction without drawing attention.
“My father had been Austro-Hungary’s consul to Japan,” Abrienda continued. “We lived in Yokohama. That’s where he met my mother. She died shortly after I was born. I never knew her.”
“I am very sorry,” Nika said and meant it and Abrienda smiled and thanked her.
“When Japan joined the Allies, we were put under house arrest, which did not differ very much from our normal life there except trips into the city were now limited, we were not permitted visitors nor could leave Yokohama. When the war ended and there was no more Austro-Hungary to represent, my father became involved in helping the Czechoslovak Legion leave Russia. We went to Vladivostok, where he arranged for ships to bring them home after having fought the Bolsheviks.”
“Motherfuckers,” Nika said and Abrienda laughed.
“My father tried to save Admiral Kolchak after the Legion traded him to Reds in return for trains to get them to Vladivostok, but it was of no use. Do you mind if I smoke?”
Nika answered it was fine with her, and Abrienda produced her father’s cigar case and lighter from the inside pocket of her suit jacket, took out a long, thin cigar, and lit it.
Nika was amazed by her elegant insouciance.
“Yes, you do look very much like Louise Brooks, though a little darker, which is nice.”
Abrienda noticed Nika studying her closely.
“What?” she asked with a wave of her cigar.
Nika shook her head. “No nothing… absolutely nothing. I’m just… impressed.”
She smiled and leaned forward, her elbow on the table and her chin resting in the palm of her hand.
“Please tell me more.” Nika said. “Being with you is like having a part in a movie.”
“‘In order to be irreplaceable, one must be different.’ That’s Coco Chanel. Or perhaps the music helps the effect?” Abrienda offered.
“No doubt about that,” Nika agreed. “The music, I mean,” she quickly added. “Plus, the cognac, even if it isn’t from Armenia. Please… tell me more.”
“That’s about all. We left Vladivostok for Shanghai just as the Reds were about to enter the city. We lived there for three years in the American concession in Hongkew. My father had a fondness for what could be called shady characters—the Chinese chief of police for the French concession, American soldiers of fortune who had flown in the war and now flew for various Chinese warlords and so on, while they in turn recognized a kindred spirit. Once we were settled in Europe, my father often invited his comrades from those days to spend time with us and I soon I became the youngest member of a very merry band of brigands. My father’s friend from his days in Russia, General Gajda, taught me how to fence—I had a terrible crush on him—and my father taught me how to shoot and ride a horse.”
Abrienda reached into her purse and produced a small photograph. “This is a picture of my father taken in Yokohama… he looked quite the brigand, even then.”
Nika agreed. His eyes were deep and dark, the ends of his moustache turned up slightly, and he seemed to be suppressing a smile.
“Do you live in Prague?”
“Yes. I have a place a little way from here. It’s on a hill overlooking the river; very quiet. But my real home is in a town called Hradec Kralove, north and east of Prague. Two rivers run through it, the Labe and the Orlice. I love it there.”
Nika feared Abrienda was about to end the conversation. She cast the dice.
“So… does your father’s affection for soldiers of fortune and others of suspicious character extend to his daughter?”
Abrienda finished her cigar and looked straight into Nika’s eyes.
“Are you busy today?”
Nika slowly shook her head. “No. I am on vacation. There’s nowhere I need to be. You?”
Abrienda put away her cigar case and lighter. “I must go to Hradčany and pick up a birthday gift for a friend. Would you like to take a long walk with me?” Nika smiled. “Nothing could suit me better.”
“Yummy!” Abrienda said and finished her cognac in one swallow. “I’ll pay, we’ll go!”
The pair walked alongside the riverside towards Charles Bridge. The day was nicely cool, and as many people out for a walk Nika used this as an excuse to lock up Abrienda’s right arm in her left.
“I wouldn’t want us to lose each other in this crush of people,” she said, and noticed for the first time Abrienda’s characteristic sign of approval as she lowered then raised her head with a slight tilt to the right.
Knee deep in the waters of seduction, Nika decided it was time to stop improvising and determine what she wanted and how to get it. But first she had to find Sergei and inform him they would be staying in Prague a little longer. She hoped.
Finding him would be easy. Seeing the sights was not among Sergei’s favored past times, and Nika knew she would find him at any one of the more interesting establishments catering to White Russian émigrés, singing, reminiscing, and getting drunk with the rest of its invariably morose clientele.
“We’ll cross Charles Bridge and visit a shop just below the castle. I hope you don’t mind walking?”
“Not in any possible way could I mind,” Nika replied and received a squeeze of her arm in reply as they passed underneath the mediaeval towers guarding the bridge at either end. Nika walked slowly, wishing to prolong the experience as much as possible. She feared once Abrienda picked up whatever was waiting for her at the shop, there would perhaps be a final drink then go their separate ways. The thought was near to unbearable.
Abrienda stopped about halfway up the steep incline towards Prague Castle. “This is it!” and turning left, swept Nika along with her through the doorway of a small shop with a gold plaque overhead inscribed ‘Herr Bohm, Antiquarian.’
“Miss de Soza! I kiss your hand,” called a voice from a backroom.
“I am here as promised, Herr Bohm. And I brought a friend.”
“I kiss your hand, young lady,” Herr Bohm repeated “Welcome to my humble shop!”
Nika gazed upon a virtual treasure house of paintings, small, framed sketches, and manuscripts from Mediaeval and Renaissance Bohemia.
“They are waiting for you… come and see!” and he waved both women over to a small table where lay two drawings of the same size of men drinking in a tavern. “Drawn no earlier than 1400 and no later than 1450—the period of the Hussite Wars, as you requested, the era of great interest to your friend, General Gajda.”
Abrienda rested her hands on either side of the table and leaned forward to look more closely at the drawings.
General Gajda… interesting, Nika thought to herself as she, too, looked at the drawings. “These really are splendid works, Abrienda.”
“You may call me Abri,” she replied without taking her eyes off the drawings.
“You are from Hungary?” Herr Bohm asked in German.
Nika smiled and answered in kind. “Yes. How did you know?”
“Your accent is charming yet gives you away. Miss de Soza is one of my best, and certainly my most agreeable to look at customers.” He gave a slight bow. “Her friends are my friends.”
“Doesn’t your wife ever get tired of your outrageous flirtations?” Abrienda asked, still studying the drawings.
“About what she doesn’t know, she cannot complain!” said Herr Bohm. He turned to Nika. “I have something I think you will find especially interesting.”
Guiding Nika to a corner of his shop, Bohm opened the glass-paned front of a wall cabinet. She saw resting in a box with a background of royal blue velvet an exquisite cameo of an aristocratic lady wearing clothes and jewellery from the early Baroque. She was poised in a relaxed yet imposing manner in what appeared to be her bedchambers, right hand resting casually on the red velvet cover of her bed and left hand at her side holding what appeared to be a ladies handkerchief embroidered in light blue and white. She wore a straight, off-white colored floor-length dress with rose-colored trim and a fulsome white blouse with huge puffy sleeves under a tight, black bodice trimmed like the dress. Her deathly pale, oval face rested above a stiff white lace collar extending nearly to her shoulders, her golden-brown hair piled tightly atop her head, exposing her entire forehead.
It was the lady’s eyes that were most arresting—dark, seemingly depthless pools framed by arched golden-brown eyebrows. Her deceptively languid pose and the expression on her pale face conveyed a feeling of incredible sadness mixed with insatiable depravity. The whole inner life of the early Hungarian Baroque seemed to be depicted in that face, and Nika did not require the magnifying glass Bohm offered her to better read the Latin inscription next to the chilling heraldic emblem of three white-clawed fingers clutching a bloodred human heart with a dragon resting lazily on top.
“Countess Elizabeth Bathory,” she said.
“Exactly so! It is a copy made in cameo in 1618 of an earlier life-size portrait later destroyed in a fire and believed to be our only remaining copy. That makes it very rare, and very…”
“Expensive.” Nika’s eyes shone and the sides of her mouth turned up involuntarily as she gazed at the cameo within its gold and blue enamel frame. “And far more than I can afford.”
Bohm replaced it in the cabinet. “I understand. Still, should anyone offer to buy it, I shall certainly call you first, in case you’ve changed your mind.”
He turned and spoke to Abrienda.
“Will that be all for you today?”
“At the outrageous prices you charge, it must!” Abrienda answered as she handed him the payment. She took one of Bohm’s business cards from its cradle on counter, asked for a pen and scribbled four words on the back and gave it to him.
“But never fear. You shall see me again next week. Good day!”
“Good day, and thank you. Bring your friend again, please,” and Nika offered Herr Bohm her hand, which he lightly kissed.
Once they were gone, Bohm read the message Abrienda wrote on the back of the card, removed the Bathory cameo from the cabinet and locked it in his safe.
Abrienda took Nika’s arm. “I hope you’re hungry because I’m famished! I know of an excellent restaurant nearby; let’s eat!”
“Lead the way,” Nika said, now willing to go anywhere her petite companion suggested.
Abrienda briskly walked them further up the street until they reached a place appearing only a little larger than Herr Bohm’s shop.
“This is it—U Bonaparte! Yes, I know, but it’s bigger than it looks!” and she whisked Nika inside.
For Nika, dinner at U Bonaparte was an ordeal. The certainty that she was in love kept pace with the despair she felt that her feelings were not reciprocated. She had convinced herself that, having been given this brief window into her personal life, after they ate they would part amicably and never see each other again. Each passing minute brought that moment closer, and Nika had no idea how to stop it.
Abrienda took a cigar from its case.
“Are you free this weekend?”
Nika was so surprised and excited she could only stammer her reply. “Ah, well yes, ah, yes, I am—of course!”
Abrienda looked at her inquisitively. “Are you sure? I don’t mean to upset you. Because if not…”
“No… I mean yes, certainly I’m free!”
Abrienda nodded. “I’m returning home tomorrow for the weekend.” She drew on her cigar and slowly exhaled.
“Maybe you would like to come with me, if you have the time, of course?”
“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.” Mary and Joseph, she thought. What a stupid reply! She felt like a schoolgirl.
“There is a train that leaves at 10:25 in the morning and will get us there a little after noon. How’s that for you?” Abrienda asked.
“Fine. We will meet at the main station, yes?”
Abrienda shook her head. “I will come and pick you up. That will be easier. So, we now have… what would you call it… an assignation?”
Nika thought she saw something meaningful in her eyes when Abrienda said the word “assignation” and decided to press a little.
“Yes… I suppose we do. Our first assignation.”
Abrienda laughed and tilted her head again. “Splendid! I always wanted to have an assignation with someone.” She reached over and playfully grabbed Nika’s wrist. “Now, I’ve got one with Louise Brooks!”
“If I am staying, longer, I must tell my driver. Are you familiar with the White Russian community in Prague?”
“That sounds vaguely sinister,” Abrienda said as she relit her cigar. Nika laughed.
“I know it does but isn’t. My driver is Russian. By now he would have familiarized himself with every White Russian den in Prague. Can you tell me the name of the most—what’s the right word—celebrated one in the city? He will soon be breaking a table over someone’s head or asleep under one so must find him before he does either and tell him he’ll be staying in Prague a few more days.”
Abrienda smiled. “Sounds like dangerous company you keep. Maybe you’d better find someone a trifle more house broken.”
Nike returned her smile and shook her head. “I couldn’t be successful in my work without him.”
“Oh? What is your work, by the way? Mine is to spend the money I inherited from my father he stole from the Czech Legion who stole it from Admiral Kolchak so I can keep my country out of the hands of the Communists and Nazi Germany. You?”
Nika decided to again accept her challenge.
“I kill people.”
Abrienda paused, lips slightly parted, then burst out laughing.
“Oh, thank God! I was afraid you were going to say you sold beauty supplies to rich Jewish ladies or taught classes in Esperanto! Well, glad that’s out of the way!”
She asked the waiter for a pen and ordered two more cognacs. “I will pick you up at 9 am tomorrow so there will be chance of missing the train. If you can write down where you are staying, I’ll be outside with a cab waiting for you,” and handed Nika two of her business cards.
Nika wrote the hotel address on the back of one and slid it across the table. Abrienda did not pick it up but instead turned her head, looked at it while lying on the table, then smiled that enigmatic smile Nika hoped to see for a lifetime.
“Nice place,” Abrienda said and put the card in her purse. “I know you are eager to find your Russian bruiser, but hoped we could have one more drink together. I know I’m being selfish but hope you don’t mind my being so… forward? I am quite a reserved girl… usually.”
Nika smiled and gently shook her head. “No, not at all. I hate people who hold things back or keep secrets.”
Abrienda nodded slowly, then drew heavily from her cigar. “Me, too,” she replied through a cloud of smoke. “This dependable Russian you are going to rescue,” she began nonchalantly, then again looked straight into Nika’s eyes.
“Is he your lover?”
Nika was surprised by the directness, even brutality of the question.
“No. More like a strong, older brother. He works with me… it’s hard to define our relationship in conventional terms. He found me when I was in a very bad way, and probably saved my life. He is very… very…”
“Devoted?” Abrienda offered.
“Yes, that’s the word.” Nika replied.
“The establishment where your ‘devoted’ Russian friend is likely getting drunk or breaking someone’s neck is called the Black Baron, Prague 2. Any cabbie can take you there. When we finish our drinks, I’ll have the restaurant manager Pavel call one you who will wait until you’re done.”
“You are very kind… Abri,” Nika said, tentatively, using her familiar name for the first time.
“Not entirely without self-interest. I don’t want anything to prevent our rendezvous tomorrow morning.” Abrienda replied.
Half an hour later, a stockily built man entered.
“Someone needs a cab?”
“This lady here,” answered the manager motioning to Nika who was already standing and putting on her gloves. He gave her a slight nod and Abrienda asked him, “Do you speak Russian?”
“Yes, lady, I am Russian.”
“You see, Nika? Pavel thinks of everything.”
Nika smiled, then felt a sudden pang of fear—again the fear of never seeing her again. They talked a bit more until they finished their drinks. Nika rose and extended her hand to Abrienda, who remained seated. “This was a very… I mean, I had a lovely day, Abri. Thank you.”
Abrienda smiled and took her hand. “Tomorrow will be even nicer I am sure… see you in the morning. Goodnight!”
The moment Nika stepped outside, Abrienda called Pavel over.
“Get that krest’yanskiy back in here the minute the girl is in the cab,” and when Pavel returned with the cabbie, they found Abrienda relaxing in her chair, holding her cigar.
“Come closer, daragouy,” she said to the cabbie in perfectly accented Russian. “Are you married?”
“Yes, lady, I am.”
“With children?” and the cabbie smiled broadly.
“How many?”
“Three, lady. Two boys and a girl.”
Abrienda drew deeply on her cigar, then pointed it at the cabbie through the blue-grey cloud. He was expecting a tip and received two, of sorts.
“Should anything unfortunate happen to that lady tonight, you will never see your wife, two sons, and one daughter again,” Abrienda said in a steady, flat tone of voice. “Do you understand me? Do you believe me?”
The man stood speechless for a moment, then removed his cap. “With devil eyes like yours, lady? Yes… to both. She’ll be safe. I swear it.”
Abrienda nodded. “You are to stay with her until she is finished at the Black Baron, then see to it she gets to her hotel. Here is my card in case there is any problem, and two hundred crowns extra for your trouble. Do svidania.”
“Ochen spasiba!“ the cabbie replied warmly, and Pavel hustled him out the door.
Abrienda’s mood appeared to brighten. She turned to Pavel. “Well, that is that. Could you arrange for a cab to be at my home 8:30 tomorrow morning? It’s very important. He can be early, but must not late.”
“And since I know you are a man with great experience of the world, may I ask, do you believe in love at first sight?”
Prague 2 was located across the river and when they arrived at the Black Baron the cab driver escorted Nika to the entrance guarded by a veritable giant if a man dressed in the uniform of some long-disbanded Cossack regiment. They exchanged a few words and the doorman let them in. Nika told the cabbie she did not expect to be long but asked if he would kindly wait for her as she did not know Prague well and was not sure she could get another cab so late at night. She was surprised by the intensity of his reply.
“I’ll be waiting here, lady… you can believe that!”
Entering the Black Baron, Nika’s senses were nearly overcome by the décor—a garish wash of red, gold and black that only a Russian sensibility could appreciate. The place was full, well past the hour the decently bourgeois Czechs tended to give up on their carousing and return home. The patrons were the kind she expected to find in an establishment catering to the White Russian community; dead souls who could not find a way to apply their sorrow over losing an empire to some useful purpose such as religion, studying dead or at least obscure languages or charitable works in Africa. Instead, they drank and let their martial talents atrophy as they wallowed in morbid self-pity.
A group of five musicians provided the evening’s entertainment and Nika saw Sergei seated at a table just to their right. She watched as he slowly began to sink in his chair until only the top of his head was visible above the white tablecloth then disappeared underneath like some Russian version of the Titanic.
She felt a hand gently touch her left arm, then withdraw. “Pardon me… are you Nina, by any chance?”
The person asking was an immaculately groomed gentleman dressed in black and white. Nika looked at him suspiciously.
“No… that’s the name of his dead sister.”
The man gave a short and impressively martial bow and clicked his heels.
“Forgive me. Captain Ilariy Dementyev, late of the Semenovsky Regiment, Imperial Russian Army.” He smiled wryly. “Very lately, I’m sorry to say. I’ve been with your brother much of the evening. We share something in common,” and tapped at an oval-shaped decoration pinned to his lapel.
“Are you perhaps his wife?”
“Not that, either,” Nika said and continued looking around for help as the captain smiled sheepishly.
“I seem to be making nothing but mistakes with you tonight.” “Could you help me?” Nika asked and went to the table.
“Thy servant unto death,” Ilariy replied, following close behind.
She grabbed the bottom of the tablecloth. “If you will lift this up, I’ll go and talk to him.”
The captain looked concerned. “Perhaps I should first…”
“No, it’s alright… I am used to it.” Nika said as she bent under the table.
“Don’t wait, I might be a while.” she called back.
“Not to worry,” the captain said. “I’ll be waiting.”
Nika crawled to where Sergei sitting on the floor and resting against a chair leg. She grabbed his ear and pulled hard.
“Sergei!” She had to call his name and pull on his ear twice more before he came around.
“Nina? Ninochka?” He reached out his hand, touched her face, and gently stroked her hair.
“I saw you dead… in front of our house… you’re really not dead?”
“No, Seryozha, you were just having another bad dream.” She spoke to him in French as her Russian was poor. “Come, I’ll take you home. You can’t sleep here; it’s too cold, you’ll get ill.”
She pulled at Sergei but couldn’t move him. “Dammit! Now I could use that insolent Russian son of a…”
“To hear is to obey, Aphrodite!” Dementyev’s voice answered from above, and two powerful arms reached down and raised Sergei up from under the table.
Nika climbed out and saw Sergei slumped in a chair. Captain Dementyev removed a decoration exactly like the one he wore from Sergei’s chest, fastened the pin to its clasp, and handed it to Nika.
“You will want to take care of this for him… he will never forgive himself if he loses it. They are somewhat rare.”
“Oh God… where can I take him like this?” Nika said.
“I’ll take him home with me. I have a car. You may come with us to see where he’s sleeping it off and where to find him when you need him. Does that suit you?”
Nika sensed there was some special bond between the two, and Sergei would be safe in his care. She sighed deeply.
“Thank you, Captain Dementyev. Sergei works for me… that is, he’s my driver and bodyguard. We were returning to Budapest tomorrow but there’s been a change of plans and needed to tell him we won’t be leaving for another three days. Maybe four.”
“He can stay with me… I have plenty of room.” Dementyev pulled Sergei up and onto his shoulder. “Having a drunken houseguest won’t disturb my wife because I’m not married.” He looked at Nika, then Sergei, then back at her.
“Shall we?”
“Alright,” Nika said and ran out of the restaurant.
Dementyev shook his head. “Hard woman to please, wouldn’t you say?” He asked his unconscious burden. “Ah well, here we go,” and draped Sergei’s arm over his shoulder.
He found Nika waiting for him outside with her cabbie, and the two men got Sergei into the back of the captain’s car.
“I think you can go now,” Dementyev said. “I’ll drive the lady to her hotel.”
“Sorry, can’t do that,” said the cabbie. “I was told to make sure she got to her hotel safely and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Okay, follow us to my place, then you can take her to the hotel. I need her with me in case he wakes up and starts asking questions, good?”
The cabbie agreed, and after a brief explanation, Nika got in the front seat with the captain and both cars headed off to Dementyev’s villa across the river in Prague 6.
Nika was not in the mood to make small talk. She had too many emotions to sort out so instead looked quietly out the window.
“You must care for him a lot to go through all this trouble,” Dementyev observed.
“It’s a case of enlightened self-interest. That’s all.” Nika replied.
Dementyev smiled and checked on his passenger in the rear-view mirror.
Sound asleep.
“Somehow, I don’t think that’s entirely true.”
“Thank you for your help, and I don’t care what you think,” Nika replied and instantly regretted it.
“I’m sorry, really. That was a stupid and ungrateful thing for me to say.”
Dementyev nodded. “Not nearly as stupid and boorish as I was making an observation that was none of my business to make, Miss…?”
“Nika Molnar,” she said and smiled. He was a very good-looking man, strong and confident without brutality or coarseness. Much like she imagined her father to have been, in fact.
Nika wanted to make amends for her rudeness. She reached into her coat pocket and produced the medal Ilariy took from Sergei.
“What is this? My father also earned a medal during the war. This one seems very important to you both.”
“It is, very,” he replied. He paused a bit before continuing “When the Red Army broke through our lines and took Omsk, we expected to fall back and recover, only to find the rear areas were in a shambles. Our Czech friends controlled the Trans-Siberian railway but they’d had enough of us and were making whatever deals they could to reach Vladivostok and sail home. The Japanese had seized the supplies the British and Americans stockpiled so when the Reds came at us again, we were done.”
“We retreated east in the dead of the Siberian winter along the TransSiberian. We tried to make a stand, but the Reds pursued us relentlessly. By January, we had reached Irkutsk, with a frozen Lake Baikal in front of us and the Red 5th Army close behind. By then, Admiral Kolchak had been captured and executed, but were lucky in one thing. Our commander was General Kappel, a good man but, more pertinently, a great soldier. We were devoted to him to the point that by the time we reached Baikal, we referred to ourselves as the ‘Kappelevtsky’. He led some 30,000 of us, soldiers and civilians alike, across the lake with temperatures 40 degrees below zero and nothing to shield us from the winds that blow across the Baikal. Thousands of our people froze to death—men still holding their weapons, women in fur coats, children—all of them looking like grotesque pieces of bisque statuary as we struggled past. When spring came and the ice melted their bodies dropped 5,000 feet to the bottom of the lake and where they rest tonight…”
“We arrived at Chita, a grimy, miserable little town founded by those great urban planners of the 17th century the Cossacks. It was the capital of the great Trans-Baikal Cossack Host run by a bloodthirsty maniac Kolchak in his wisdom thought fit to succeed him named”Ataman” Grigory Semyonov. Instead of hot soup, the first thing he gave us were copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Since most of our soldiers couldn’t read, I told them to use the books to start fires or wipe their… oh, sorry.”
“Not at all, Captain,” Nika reassured.
“There was a lot of wool-spinning amongst my comrades. I had a pretty good idea what was what and left for Harbin which already had a sizeable Russian presence. I stayed in Manchuria then China for a while, fell into some luck and was able to return to Europe.”
“Two months before I left, there was a ceremony in Chita honoring those who survived the march from Omsk. We were awarded the Military Order of the Great Siberian Expedition. Some called it the Great Siberian Retreat Medal, but they soon repented of that and we now generally refer to it as the Great Siberian Ice March Medal.”
“You are a very brave man,” Nika said. “Did you know Sergei there?”
Dementyev shrugged his shoulders. “I may have. I don’t remember. I was not interested in making new friends after having just lost so many old ones. And thank you.”
Nika looked at Sergei’s medal carefully. It was fashioned like a garland made of tightly interlaced icicles through which a golden sword was thrust bottom left to upper right. Nika felt she was missing something, a subliminal meaning she could not divine.
She closed her eyes tight, looked again, and saw it.
“It’s a crown of thorns, fashioned of icicles!” she said at last. “Amazing.”
“Exactly. The Golgotha of the Kappelevtsy,” Dementyev told her and Nika wrapped the medal in her handkerchief and put it in her purse. “By the time we received it, there were not that many of us left. When I saw your friend wearing one I was honor-bound to help him.”
“And by extension, you, though I would have done that in any case,” Ilariy added parenthetically.
The Dementyev family had weathered the revolution in Russia better than most. During the French Revolution, one of Ilariy’s ancestors was part of the Anglo-Russian naval flotilla sent to aid the King of Naples against a French invasion, and after Naples was delivered from the Jacobins married into the Neapolitan aristocracy. Thus did the French Revolution ultimately provide the Dementyev family with a refuge from the horrors of a later Russian one. His natural inclinations led Ilariy to become an arms dealer but his sense of timing was poor. He negotiated an entirely legal purchase of small arms by the Emperor of Ethiopia from the Škoda Works in Czechoslovakia shortly before Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, found himself persona non grata in his homeland and decided to relocate to Prague until memories had a chance to fade.
The captain took a longer route home to extend the amount of time spent with his lovely Hungarian companion yet all too soon found himself parked outside his villa. The cabbie pulled up from behind and together they manhandled Sergei through the front door on onto a couch.
“Well… turned out to be an interesting evening all around,” the cabbie said, breathing heavily. “I’ll go wait for you in the cab, lady. Take your time.”
There was a moment of awkward silence before Nika extended her hand.
“Thank you, Captain Dementyev. I’m grateful… and I don’t say that very often.”
“I can believe that. But you know what the Czechs say, ‘Repetition is the mother of all wisdom.’ Anyway, it was my pleasure. I’ll look after him. When he’s sobered up, I’ll take him back to get the car. Here’s my card. Call when you are ready to return to Budapest. He’ll be here.”
Dementyev walked Nika to the car, and the cabbie got out and hurriedly opened the passenger door. “Goodnight, Miss Molnar,” he said and closed the door behind her and as the car started up and began to pull away, called out, “I think we will see each other again—even if you don’t care what I think!”
Next morning, Abrienda arrived a few minutes early to find Nika waiting for her in the hotel lobby. She explained she had had difficulty sleeping and came down early, quickly realized how that might have sounded, then finally resolved to stop constantly second-guessing herself as the cab took them to Prague’s main train station, named after the American President Woodrow Wilson who championed the creation of Czechoslovakia during negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles.
They arrived in good time and among the first to board the train to Hradec Kralove. As the carriage slowly filled, Nika was pleased to see no one had yet tried to share their first-class compartment.
“I hope no one will join us in here,” Nika said looking anxiously at a party of three coming down the passage.
“They won’t,” Abrienda replied nonchalantly.
“How can you be so sure?”
Abrienda reached into the purse and pulled out six tickets, holding them splayed in her hand like playing cards. “Because I bought the four remaining empty seats between here and Hradec Kralove.” She leaned back in her seat.
“Hope you don’t mind?”
Nika smiled and slowly shook her head. “No… not in the least.”
The conductor knocked and Abrienda handed him the tickets plus a hundred crown note. “For our privacy, thank you,” she said.
“My pleasure,” the conductor replied with a slight bow.
“I just love trains,” Abrienda said as they slowly pulled out of the station. “It’s my favorite way to travel. I like ships, too, even though I can’t swim. I don’t think I would enjoy travelling by aero plane very much, though I haven’t yet!” She paused and looked at Nika with mock suspicion. “Do you like trains?”
“Yes… I do,” Nika replied, again a bit puzzled. “Why?”
“Well, that’s good!” she replied with exaggerated relief. “I was afraid you might be one of those ‘Train Killer’ Hungarians like Szilveszter Matuska!”
“Not me! Besides, Matuska was a Communist, so that counts me out!” Nika answered. “A Communist and a madman. A distinction without a difference, don’t you think?”
Abrienda lit one of her cigars. “I do,” she replied.
The train soon left Prague behind and entered the Bohemian countryside.
“It is very beautiful,” Nika said. “The countryside looks like it was set up by a child on a tabletop… small forest here, open field over there, tiny village in between, larger forest beyond, then a hill with a chateau or abandoned castle on top. In Hungary and Poland, nature is not so well organized. Do you enjoy nature, Abrienda?”
“Yes,” she replied, lighting a cigar and smiling at her companion naughtily. “I enjoy looking at it through the window of a first-class compartment of a train travelling from one beautiful city to another.”
Nika feared her companion was making fun of her. She sat silently through the next two stops. She did not have many friends as a child and lived a mostly solitary life even before her mother’s death. Certainly, she had never experienced the kind of social life Abrienda knew, nor could the affection people display towards her in the short time since they met be alone attributed to her great wealth. She reminded herself she had never been in love before, while this one, she thought, had its own special kind of awkwardness. Nika decided since that were so she must give the object of her affection the benefit of the doubt and resist the urge to make a fool of herself.
Besides, Abrienda was unlike anyone she had known before. It was one of the reasons why she felt so deeply attracted to her. Despite Abrienda’s wealth, she was still an outsider, as Nika felt herself to be, though for different reasons.
Holding back from what she wanted to confess was beginning to twist Nika like a rag doll. Having been deprived of love her entire life she, Nika longed for it like someone lost and on foot in the middle of a desert longs for water.
The two continued to engage in small talk until Nika could no longer endure it. She waited until they were well and truly into the countryside and expected there would be no stops.
“Abri… there is something I need to tell you,” Nika said, leaning forward.
Abrienda looked at her calmly. “Please do.”
Nika breathed deeply. “I’m in love with you. I know but… please listen. I love you. I fell in love with you the first time we met… no, no, no, the first time I saw you, weeks before. You are to me so perfect, the way you sit, tilt your head, your hair, your hands, your eyes, the beautiful petiteness of your body. Then, when we finally did meet and talked and saw you were as I had hoped…”
Nika leaned across the compartment. “I had to tell you because, I don’t think I am a weak person, but it was killing me not to. Now, I’m afraid than before because I must ask you, do you… or could you ever… love me? Because, God forgive me, I do love you, Abrienda and… would do anything for you if you just could love me, too.”
Abrienda went to speak but Nika up her hand to stop her. “Even a little would be enough for me, because copper from some is more than gold from others.”
Nika reached out and softly caressed Abri’s left breast through her jacket. Abrienda took a deep breath, held out her hand, and gently pushed Nika back to her seat.
Nika felt her world end.
“Oh God… you don’t love me; you don’t want me. You can’t… I understand only, please, please forgive me! I was so very wrong.”
Nika damned up her tears. She felt, humiliated, empty, damned, lost.
Alone.
“I am so sorry. I’ve ruined everything. I should not…” but Abrienda put a finger to her lips, rose, parted the compartment door curtains, checked the corridor and threw the door lock. She sat across from Nika and pointed at Nika’s right foot.
“Give that to me, please.”
“You mean… like this?” Nika asked, extending her right leg forward.
“Exactly,” Abrienda replied. She took the heel of Nika’s outstretched foot with her left hand, and with her right, loosened and pulled off her boot. She removed her stocking and laid it on the seat beside her, leaned forward, lifted Nika’s bare foot to her mouth, and gently glided her tongue over her toes. She carefully bit each one in turn and heard a soft moan. She looked up to see Nika’s eyes shut, pleasuring herself.
Abrienda gently put Nika’s stocking back on her foot and placed it on the floor of the compartment.
“Does that answer your question?”
Nika sat beside Abrienda, kissed her deeply on the mouth, and Abrienda responded. “No one has ever done anything like that to me before,” she said.
Abrienda laughed. “I never imagined doing something like that to anyone before. I was just… inspired.”
Nika hesitantly smiled. “Then… it must be love?” Abrienda reached across the compartment and took Nika’s hand.
“I wouldn’t know what else to call it,” she replied and kissed her again.
Nika’s body tingled as she stepped off the train at Hradec Kralove. Seemingly from nowhere cabbies offered to take their bags, vying with each other to drive Miss de Soza home.
“You must be a good tipper,” Nika said with a teasing smile.
“Without money, there is nothing left but God, and He doesn’t pay cab fares!” she replied.
What Miss de Soza called home was an entire four-floor building in Old Town Square. The third and fourth floors were maintained fully furnished for her frequent guests, the fourth reserved for her childhood friend Carton de Wiart whenever he came to call, which was apparently often. A rather dramatic portrait of General Gajda in his uniform as a general in the White Russian army in Siberia, the Order of St George hanging prominently around his neck, was displayed in the living room, almost shrine-like, on a finely made rosewood table with a photo of Carton de Wiart set beside it. Below them stood three silver framed photos of Abrienda as a young girl; the first with General Gajda in full fencing garb saluting each other with sabers, her father standing between them, the second of Abrienda and the general fencing as her father stood to one side to judge the contest, and the third of her and Carton de Wiart shooting game in the Pripet Marshes.
Nika shot a quizzical glance at the portrait of Gajda. “Do I have cause to be jealous of the good general?”
Abrienda poured them both a cognac. “No. There has never been… anyone, like that, in my life.” She handed Nika her glass.
“Those are very sweet,” said Nika pointing at the photographs of Abrienda and her father. “And you and the general seem very close.”
“Radola was a close associate of my father in Russia and afterwards one of his closest friends. I honor that friendship and happen to share his political views so we, too, are close friends.”
She ran her finger slowly between Nika’s breasts. “And that is all we were and are,” Abrienda said. “Just friends.” She kissed Nika softly but longingly and kicked off her shoes. “I want to freshen up. Turn on the radio, please. It’s pre-set to the best station.”
She picked up her shoes and with an accentuated swaying of her hips laughed and left for the bathroom.
Nika pulled off her boots, placed them by the door, and turned on the radio. If “the best station” meant one playing mostly French and American popular music broken by long interludes of world news, that was what now played over the radio. There was mention of the rising discontent among Germans living in the part of Czechoslovakia bordering the Reich, and the dire consequences to Great Britain’s if her new king was not permitted to marry his twice-divorced American mistress, Wallis Simpson.
Most of the news was about the failed army putsch in Spain and its descent into civil war, apropos of which there was a brief mention of the bizarre death of the Hungarian Communist leader Ferenc Sanko in the Barcelona opera house the night before the rising in Spanish Morocco, a death that was a complete mystery to the police.
Nika tapped out a salute with her fingers on top of the radio. “Well, Sergei, we’ve made the world news,” she said, then emptied her cognac glass in salute as the news ended. A full hour of Cole Porter music was announced, beginning with “Anything Goes.”
“Fun, but not my favorite,” Nika sighed, and took in her surroundings. The color scheme tastefully ranged from various hues of brown to cream and various original pieces of art deco statuary she supposed were originals. A collection of European cavalry swords grouped together inside a wicker basket and a Malay kris with magnificently crafted bronze handle hung on one of the walls.
She went to the bookcase filled with titles in Czech, German, French, Polish, Russian, and English. Those in Czech and German were mostly history, the Russian poetry and literature from the Silver Age. She noticed a copy of Mein Kampf in German, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in French, and another work entitled The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu by Maurice Joly next to it.
Was Abrienda an anti-Semite, Nika wondered?
Except for the book by journalist and adventurer Peter Fleming One’s Company about his journey from Moscow to Peking and The Book of the Sword and First Footsteps in East Africa by Sir Richard Burton, the volumes in English were all literature. Hajji Baba of Ispahan by James Justinian Morier, Washington Square and Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, several works by Edith Wharton, what looked like all the works of Joseph Conrad, The Little Yellow Book by Robert Browning, a book of Rudyard Kipling’s poetry. These were followed by Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Salammbo, A Sentimental Education, and many other literary works by French authors in French including La Comédie de Charleroi by Drieu de la Rochelle. She was curious about this one, as she knew of the author but never read hi and opened it. Written on the frontispiece were the words ‘To my most ardent fan and fiercest critic, Drieu’.
There was also a tableau of sorts within the bookcase of beautiful ancient bronze plaques along with other artifacts. One of the plaques bore the image of a menorah.
An anti-Semite who collected Jewish antiquities? It was not unheard of.
“The world has gone mad today
And good’s bad today
And black’s white today
And day’s night today
And that gent today
You gave a cent today
Once had several chateaux…“
Nika walked about the room. The atmosphere was rather subdued and somewhat masculine, what with the swords and some of the statuary. There was a table with more photographs in understated silver frames; a man in a white suit standing next to a pretty and petite Oriental girl, a bit darker than Nika imagined a Japanese girl would have looked, smothered in a heavy, white Western wedding gown and supposed they were Abrienda’s mother and father. Earlier in the century, photographers told their subjects to refrain from smiling, especially on occasions of great importance, as it distorted their features. Her father looked bold and confident, yet Nika noticed Abrienda’s mother trying to suppress a smile, making her appear charming and very innocent. Beside it was a photo of Abrienda as a little girl standing on what appeared to be the deck of a ship, surrounded by sailors in uniform and an officer in a frock coat, looking into the camera and saluting in deadly earnest. There was also a remarkable picture of Abrienda in bathing apparel sitting at an outdoor café on what appeared to be some Mediterranean island, sharing drinks with a small party of people. One of the people in the photo looked remarkably similar to Mrs. Wallis Simpson, while the man holding on to the back of her chair leaning over and smiling into the camera looked like the former Prince of Wales, now King Edward VIII.
“Nika?” Abrienda’s voice called from the bathroom. “Just make yourself comfortable; be out in a minute.” Suddenly, she knew how she would receive Abrienda when she came from the bedroom. If only the station would oblige her by playing that Cole Porter song which she loved so much… it was very long with complicated lyrics and when she heard it always made her want to cry… francba, what was it called?
Abrienda came out of the bathroom barefoot, wearing a dull silver-grey colored silk robe; Nika had positioned herself next to the radio, right arm stretched forward, left arm held akimbo.
Abrienda gave Nika one of her questioning, head-tilted looks.
“Would you care to dance, Miss de Soza?” Nika asked.
“Umm-hum,” she replied, and blended herself into Nika’s arms. The fingers of Nika’s right hand intertwined with Abrienda’s left they and they began to slowly dance around the room.
The song ended and the radio went silent. Nika thought, If only now… and took it as a sign when the radio miraculously obliged her.
“When they begin the Beguine
It brings back the sound of music so tender…“
“How I love this song,” Nika whispered.
“I love it too… more, now,” Abrienda whispered in return, pressing her smaller breasts against Nika’s.
“And there we are, swearing to love forever.
And promising never, never to part.”
“Can you tango?” Nika asked.
“Umm… I took lessons, but never tangoed with anyone but the instructor,” she replied, then looked again into her eyes. “Because, I have no partner.”
Nika held her even closer. “This is crazy.”
Abrienda sighed. “And wrong. Very, very wrong. But today, the whole world is going both crazy and wrong. Why should we be left out?” She brushed her cheek against Nika’s breast.
“I have been so lonely.”
“And now when I hear people curse the chance that was wasted I know but too well, what they mean.”
“I knew I loved you the moment I saw you,” Nika answered. “I have been lonely, too. Very, very lonely. My whole life. And I don’t care that it’s wrong.”
They continued dancing until the song approached its end. Nika whispered, “Ready, Abri?”
“Oh yes!” she replied, tensing her body as Nika’s right arm gave way, Abrienda fell back, and Nika pulled her up again.
“Oh yes, let them begin the Beguine!
Make them play till the stars that were there before return above you.”
Abrienda was laughing so hard that they had to stop dancing. “Mary and Joseph!” she cried, catching her breath. “That was marvellous!” She breathed in and sighed deeply. “Now, dance me that way,” she said, nodding to the open door of her bedroom.
Nika looked at her with feigned surprise. “Why, Miss de Soza! What kind of girl do you think I am?”
“Till you whisper to me once more,
“Darling, I love you!”
Then we’ll suddenly know,
What heaven we’re in,
When they begin the Beguine!“
Abri reached up and ran her fingers along Nika’s cheek. “My girl,” she said softly and motioned again towards the bedroom.
“That way, please.”
The two lay beside each other in bed, Abrienda starring at the ceiling. She breathed deeply, sighed and shook her head.
She leaned over to the side table where her cigar case and lighter lay. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Never,” Nika replied. She rose and rested the side of her head in her hand. “In fact, you can offer me one.”
Abri extracted two thin cigars from the heavy silver case and handed one to Nika.
“Now I will show you a trick my father taught me when we started smoking together.” She put down the lighter and grabbed a box of wooden matches. “Here… put the cigar in your mouth and lean forward until the tips of our cigars are almost touching.” Nika complied, and Abri sat up, leaned forward, and with a single flurry of her right hand, lit the match and both cigars at the same time.
“That’s amazing!” Nika said. “You could have a future as an illusionist!” She drew on her cigar and immediately started coughing.
“My God, Abri… where did you get these?”
Abrienda laughed. “They were specially made for my father by an old Greek named Koufodimos in Alexandria. When he died, his son Alaster took over the business. Now he makes them for me.”
Abrienda puffed on her cigar and exhaled in small smoke rings.
Nika seized the opening. “I saw some Jewish artefacts in the bookcase. Are those from Egypt?”
“No, British Palestine.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I meant Eretz Yisrael. My father took me there when I was fifteen. We dug them up together in the middle of some ruins near the Dead Sea.”
She rose out bed. “I’m hungry and Czechs eat dinner at absurdly late hours. How about we leave here at five and walk to an outdoor restaurant I love. I adore dining outside, and the weather in Hradec is only bad weather four weeks out of the year. We can sit there, eat and drink… and talk.”
“Yes, good,” Nika agreed. “I want to talk.”
Abrienda rolled over on her stomach. “Before we do, I need to take a little trip. I devote money to restoring Marian shrines. There is one outside a village about an hour’s drive away and the village priest will officiate at its restoration and I must be there.” She sat up on the bed. “Care to join me?”
“Of course, I do!” Nika replied.
Abrienda extinguished her cigar, then gently took Nika’s, snuffed it out, and laid it next to hers in the ashtray.
“But now… to quote Napoleon’s second wife Princess Marie Louise of Austria on their wedding night, ‘Let’s do it again!’”
The ceremony took place just outside the village, with the priest and a hundred or so of his parishioners. Nika found the shrine itself subdued and tasteful, a stone crèche with a statue of the Virgin Mary inside and a place for votive candles. The people were grateful for the shrine being restored and the priest blessed Abrienda before they left.
“I think you are a very complicated person,” Nika said as the cab headed back to Hradec. “But then, I thought… hoped you would be.”
“I am not… I am painfully transparent, obvious, even banal,” Abrienda replied, taking out her cigar case and offering one to Nika who declined. “Someone took a sledgehammer to the shrine and the village didn’t have money to properly repair it. I was passing by, saw it had been desecrated, so…” she shrugged her shoulders.
“Who would do such a thing?” Nika asked then felt foolish. Shrines in their hundreds, perhaps thousands, had been vandalized during the Hungarian Soviet Republic with the occasional pitched battles between armed villagers and the men sent to destroy them with many deaths and atrocities. Much the same was happening that very moment in those parts of Spain controlled by the Republican regime in Madrid.
Abrienda inhaled and blew the smoke out through the vented passenger seat window.
“Who would such a thing? The usual—Communists, anarchists, someone trying to make himself interesting to himself. Religion has not had a very happy history in our country. Still, I am not going to let someone decide he knows best how to save people he secretly despises from themselves by permanently taking a little beauty out of a life hard enough as it is.”
Nika sat silently for a moment as the calm and well-ordered countryside of Bohemia again unfolded before her. “It might happen again,” she said. “Pity you didn’t find the person who attacked the shrine.”
Abrienda inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out slowly.
“I did.”
It was around five when Abri and Nika set out for dinner. They stopped midway across the bridge over the Elbe that led to the restaurant. The sunlight shined golden off the town museum and private apartment houses, most still painted in traditional Hapsburg Imperial yellow, and the river flowed smoothly underneath, creating so seemingly tangible one felt you could reach out and grasp it between your fingers.
“You were right,” Nika said. “This place is lovely, Abri.”
“I love Hradec. Prague always feels vaguely sinister to me. Maybe it’s the dark history, the pious, dour, fanatical, unlovable Hussites, people thrown out of windows to a waiting mob, Wallenstein, mass executions in the town square, all against a backdrop of Gothic architectural grimness. I have always been happy here and cannot imagine living anywhere else.”
She took Nika’s arm and squeezed it. “I am so glad you like it, too. I’m famished; let’s go eat!”
Abrienda’s restaurant of choice was close to the River Labe, one of only two in the town where one could dine alfresco.
“You know, Nika, I can’t remember the last time I ate dinner with a woman. I usually eat dinner alone or in the company of men.” She smiled and looked away towards the river.
“It feels strange but nice.”
Nika felt deeply in love with this unusual woman, but certain a harder upbringing meant she knew more than her about how things worked in the real world was busily sorting out in her mind how their relationship should be conducted. Nika didn’t think in such terms as “affair” or “romance,” however. It never occurred to her to do so. From the start, she expected it would be permanent.
“You told me you were lonely, Abri. How is that possible? Everyone we meet seems to love you.”
Abrienda looked down and away. “It’s very possible. I have friends, close ones, but they live in other countries. They are busy with their own lives, and they have families. All but two are men, by the way.”
“You told me you were lonely, too, yes?”
Nika closed her eyes and nodded. “I can’t remember being anything else. Today, for the first time, I don’t feel that way.” She opened her eyes and smiled. “So… what now?”
“What now? I pay the check!” Abrienda answered breezily, then immediately reached out her hand and touched Nika’s arm. “I’m sorry. It’s just… it’s that I’m nervous.”
Nika smiled and shook her head.
Abrienda bit her lower lip with her small, perfect teeth. “We can stay here and talk until they call the gendarmes to throw us out, or we can walk along the bank of the Orlice, which is what I hoped we would do. There’s a view from there I would like to share with you, so let’s may we please do that?”
Nika had no intention of disagreeing. Had Abrienda suggested they jump into either river fully clothed; she would have been the first.
They strolled arm in arm back through town until Abrienda suddenly veered them to a bench outside a small restaurant.
“I just thought of something… can you wait here for five minutes? I’ll be fast, so don’t go away!” and eyes sparkling, Abrienda walked quickly into the restaurant and came out exactly five minutes later carrying a half-corked bottle of red wine.
“I almost forgot to get us this!” Abrienda said, putting the bottle under her left arm like an umbrella and again linking arms. “This way, sahib,” she said and resumed guiding Nika through town.
They entered Old Town Square where Abrienda lived, with its cathedral and the beautiful buildings turned into homes with the occasional small private businesses at street level. “How do we get to the other river from here?” Nika asked, and Abrienda pointed straight ahead.
“Through there… you see? It was cut through the walls on the orders of Archduke Charles when he was visited in 1810 to make it easier for those living in the countryside to get into Old Town on market days. He paid for it out of his own pocket and named it the Bono Publica—‘for the good of the public’.”
“I’ve been labelled a fascist. I call myself that from time to time to take some of the sting out of the accusation. In fact, I’ve become a monarchist. Charles paid for the Bono Publica to help the common people whose votes he didn’t need to buy. He didn’t name it after himself, either. Let’s go!”
There were only a few people out and about, so Abrienda and Nika could continue walking arm in arm down the steps.
“I’m enjoying this,” Nika said.
“Me too. There are exactly seventy steps and five landings. Whenever I need to lose weight, I run up and down these steps five times every morning until I do. That’s why I can tell you the exact number.”
“You are fatally cute, Miss de Soza,” Nika said as they stepped out of the passageway towards the river. “Anyone ever tell you that?”
“Never,” Abrienda replied. “Nor anything close to it.” They passed the old Austro-Hungarian cavalry barracks on their left, and just before the bridge, Abrienda steered them right along the riverbank. Dusk had settled and the lamplights along the river walk produced a seductive, amber hue under which people strolled and dreamt of the future.
“Come and sit with me for a moment, under the light,” Nika said, gesturing to one of the benches set along the path. She opened her purse and took out a piece of paper. “Recognize this?” she asked and began to read:
“He did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.”
Abrienda nodded. “Yes. It’s Flaubert… Madame Bovary.”
Nika swallowed hard. “Everything I want to tell you, maybe you heard before from someone else. I’m not able to do any better than they did… I’ve never been in love before. Maybe they thought they meant what they said to you when they said it, I don’t know. What I do know is I thought I could never love anyone, and never the way I love you. I felt deeply wrong about it. Now, I don’t think I could ever not love you and not need to be with you the rest of my life even though, an important part of my live may be destroyed by it.”
Abrienda remained silent for a while until, as they walked further away from the town and the stroll way grew darker with fewer people, Abrienda stopped. “Nika, I noticed you watching me at Slavia. Sometimes I stayed longer just so you could and never left before you did. I enjoyed you watching me. I enjoyed it very much but didn’t think I knew why.”
Abrienda saw a man and a woman step out of the darkness towards them. “This is as wrong and as bad a thing as I have ever done but, God forgive me, it is what I want now more than anything else in the world. I hope I will always want you, until I die.”
The man and woman said, “Good evening,” most pleasantly as they strolled past and Nika and Abrienda replied in kind. Nika nodded towards the couple. “Perhaps we don’t know as much about each other as they do, but I know I will always love you, Abri, no matter the cost.”
Abrienda squeezed Nika’s arm. “We are almost where I want to take you… come on!” She hurried them along then stepped off the path through a heavy copse of trees. “This is the place… look behind you!” Nika turned saw in the distance the beautiful White Tower rising from the hill that was the foundation of the Austro-Hungarian fortress of Königgrätz. From their vantage point, the tower was framed by trees along the bend in the river and hid every sign of modernity.
“This is how people saw it a hundred, two hundred years ago, exactly as we are seeing it now. It’s so beautifully evocative!”
“Yes… eerie but beautiful,” Nika replied as she looked down the river towards the tower and the shorter spires of the church beside it, black and foreboding in the moon and lamp glow.
Abrienda said. “Reach into my handbag please!” and when Nika did feel the stem of a wine glass. “We can sit by the river because the grass is dry… soooo!” she said playfully, holding up the bottle. “Let’s have a drink!”
They were at a spot where they could hear the river and see the tower yet were discreetly out of sight to passers-by.
Nika held the glass and Abrienda pulled out the cork.
“Only one glass?”
“One’s all we need,” Abrienda said and filling the glass gave it to Nika. She took a sip and handed it back to Abrienda who turned it so her lips touched the rim of the glass where Nika’s drank. “More?” she asked and crawled over to where Nika sat, handed her the glass and laid her head in her lap.
“I want us to keep our private life just that, private. I want only to share it with you and have no desire to make a spectacle of myself. But…”
Nika looked around then kissed Abrienda lightly on the lips. “I understand and agree. There is no reason anyone should know.”
“Well, nearly no one,” Nika thought.