4

THE HUNGARIAN NYMPHETS tug shyly at Mister Dancho’s tuxedo jacket and giggle in Magyar — “Please, do us some tricks” — but he is determined to finish the story.

“So the man on the bicycle rides up and leans his bike against the Central Committee building, you picture it?” Dancho shakes off the Hungarians and hisses “Sssssssssscat” as if he is chasing alley cats, and everyone smiles. In a corner of the room a cork pops and champagne sloshes onto the floor. A woman leaps back, laughing hysterically. Waving his hand to dispel the cigarette smoke, Mister Dancho goes on:

“So the militiaman comes up to him and tells him” — Dancho tries to imitate the Tomato here — “ ‘You can’t park your bike there. A high Soviet delegation is due to arrive any second.’ So what does the man on the bicycle say?”

Dancho twists around and calls across the room:

“Dear child, could you turn that down?” Then back to his audience. “He says: ‘That’s all right, I’ II chain it up!”

The dozen or so guests around Mister Dancho roar and Dancho, who wanted to be a standup comic long before he wanted to be a magician, laughs happily with them. Only the Fat Lady, sitting with the Dwarf’s circus friends, looks blank.

“He’ll chain the bike,” the Lion Tamer explains, “so the Russians won’t steal it!”

“Of course,” shrieks the Fat Lady, “steal it,” and she slaps the Juggler so hard he falls over the chair he is lounging against, spilling champagne on Poleon’s ex-wife.

“Now see what you’ve done!” she cries shrilly. “Oh my god. Salt, somebody. Where’s salt? Somebody know where some salt is? Oh my god!”

Rolling the long stem of a glass half full of champagne between his fingers, Poleon stares though half-closed eyes at his ex-wife without moving a muscle. “I should have Lot’s luck,” he mumbles.

One of the Dwarf’s Hungarians slips a new Beatles record onto the phonograph and scratches the needle across the grooves until she reaches a band she likes. “Living is easy with eyes closed … with eyes closed … with eyes closed … with eyes closed … with eyes closed … with eyes closed … with eyes closed.”

“Can’t somebody fix that?” Tacho complains irritably. His knees are swollen and his calf still aches from a muscle cramp that brought tears to his eyes during dinner at Krimm.

The Rabbit goes over and edges the needle onto the next groove. The Hungarian, swaying dreamily in the embrace of one of her girl friends, sings along with the record. “Stror-perry fee-ulds fur-ever.”

Someone hands Poleon’s ex-wife a saltcellar and she covers the champagne stain with a layer of salt.

“That’s only good for wine, dearie,” the Fat Lady tells her.

“Come on, Dancho, make the stain disappear,” the Fire Eater challenges.

Mister Dancho takes Poleon’s ex-wife by the wrists and helps her step onto the chair so that everybody can see her. She once was a great beauty and is aging well, so she enjoys the limelight. Dancho takes the fabric of her long skirt in his fingers and studies the stain intently. Finally he shakes his head. “Too difficult,” he says. He turns away, leaving her stranded on the chair.

“Losing your touch, huh, Dancho?” scoffs Poleon.

“My watch!” shrieks Poleon’s ex-wife from atop her perch. “I’ve lost my watch.”

“You probably gave it to Poleon to carry,” Dancho plays innocent. He dips into Poleon’s breast pocket and extracts — a photograph of Alexander Dubcek. The crowd roars. Dancho produces a pocket scissors and makes an elaborate show of cutting the photograph in half. Then he carefully folds the two halves, passes his palm over the paper and, holding on to a corner, shakes the poster free. It is back in one piece again. For good measure, Dancho extracts the missing watch from the folds of Octobrina s shawl.

“Ah, Dancho — “

“You son of a gun — “

Laughing, Dancho starts up the stairs. Octobrina calls after him:

“What are you two cooking up this time?”

“Patience, dear lady,” Dancho replies over his shoulder.

Dancho is the life of any party he attends, and with him gone, even temporarily, the mix seems to curdle. Most of the circus people edge toward the bar to refill their champagne glasses. Four or five of the younger couples move into what was originally the dining room, which is littered with 45 r.p.m. discs and comic books, and start dancing to a Frank Sinatra record. Octobrina settles on a banquette in the bay window with the Rabbit, Poleon’s ex-wife and the Fat Lady. The Rabbit says something and Poleon’s ex-wife shakes her head no and says:

“I see people on the street talking to themselves all the time. What I try to figure out is whether they’re rehashing conversations behind them or rehearsing conversations ahead of them.”

“They’re trying to figure out who they are, dearie,” the Fat Lady declares. “Everybody’s always trying to figure out who they are.”

“They’re trying to organize their relationships,” says the Rabbit.

Octobrina sighs. “My mother and I had a perfectly wonderful mother-daughter relationship, only I was the mother!” She means it as a joke, but a certain amount of resentment seeps through in her tone.

The Fat Lady laughs until the rolls of fat around her waist quiver. The Rabbit laughs too and says that in her experience reverse parent-child relationships are common among artistic and academic types.

“I can’t stomach academic types,” observes Poleon’s ex-wife. “They’re always going around muttering about how someone is not very sharp. They’re always judging”

Atanas Popov wanders over and Octobrina pats the cushion next to her, offering him a seat. Popov is dressed in a prewar cutaway; he deftly tucks the tails behind him as he settles onto the banquette. Octobrina smiles warmly and asks him if his afternoon has been productive.

“Not bad for August,” Popov concedes modestly, producing his pocket ledger. He slips his pince-nez onto his misshapen nose and starts reading. “Let me see. Sssssssss. One brass birdcage without a bottom. One clay swan without a left wing. Half a love letter, written in the month of June, nineteen forty-four, torn vertically; from the half I have it seems clear that the lover is proposing something, though what it is I cannot say.”

“Maybe the lover was halfhearted,” the Fat Lady quips. “Maybe the letter was sent that way.”

Both Octobrina and the Rabbit silence her with angry looks.

“One cameo brooch without a clasp. One Book of Innocents, in Latin, containing the biographies of Innocent Roman Numeral One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Eight, Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen.” Popov’s eyes, but not his head, come up. “The last Innocent, Roman Numeral Thirteen, died in seventeen twenty-four. I doubt very much whether anyone would have the nerve to use that name again. Sssssssss. Ah, here’s a small gem. One porcelain praying mantis. One leather-covered travel clock, broken, with smaller faces on the back to tell the time in different cities. The small faces are labeled St. Petersburg,’ Smyrna’ and Constantinople.’ One Prague street sign, Krai Vinchrady Praha 12,’ with a typewritten note glued to the back which says, according to a comrade of mine who reads Czech, that the street sign was removed the day the Hitlerites invaded Prague, March fifteenth, nineteen thirty-nine, to prevent them from finding people they wanted to arrest.” Popov looks up. “Perhaps our Czech friends will have occasion to remove the street signs again.”

“It won’t surprise me,” Octobrina declares vehemently.

“Bite your tongue,” the Rabbit snaps.

“Let me see, where was I? Sssssssss. Yes, yes. One miniature plastic rainbow with a small painted pot of gold at the end; did you know that the ancient Hebrews took the rainbow as a pledge from god there would be no more great floods? Genesis nine, thirteen. I wrote a poem about the need for floods once, but I don’t remember it. Sssssssss. One lock, with a key that doesn’t fit, attached to it with a wire. One meter of soiled English white lace— “

“The Racer can’t stand white lace,” Octobrina recalls. “That’s why I always wear black shawls.”

“Do you know why?” Popov asks.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t think I do.”

“During the war, Lev led an attack against a German short-wave radio station. The station was protected by a tank parked in a field of snow. The tank was camouflaged with white lace stolen from a lace factory in the nearby town.”

“Were you there?” the Rabbit asks.

“No, I wasn’t, but Mister Dancho was. I heard the story from Mister Dancho. They crept close to the tank and fired a rocket into it at pointblank range. For a moment it looked as if the lace was exploding; it billowed up like a parachute before it disappeared in flames. Needless to say, the soldiers in the tank never emerged.”

“I never heard that story before,” Octobrina confesses. “Thank you for telling it to me, Atanas. Is there anything else?”

“Anything else?”

“On your list?”

“My list? Oh, yes, yes, my list. My last but not least is: one quill pen with the quill point replaced by a ball-point refill cartridge. That’s my last but not least. Sssssssss.”

“It’s a lovely list,” Octobrina assures him. “Perfectly lovely.”

There is a burst of laughter from the dining room. A crowd is forming around Valentine Barbovich, the opera singer, who is just back from Rome.

“Who is your favorite composer?” a woman in a long gown asks him.

“Mozart.”

She makes a face. “But everyone loves Mozart.”

“I love him for the right reasons,” Valyo replies evenly.

He leans back on the couch, his chin jutting at an imperial angle, his arms and legs flung possessively wide. Seeing him in this position, Octobrina once told him to his face that he reminded her of a country that covered more than its share of a continent. Valyo took it well. He chuckled and smoothed down his hair, which was combed forward in the style of a Roman senator, and stroked his “twin phallus” (Octobrina’s phrase) — the solid silver tuning fork that Toscanini had given him after his New York debut.

“But it is not at all true,” Valyo tells someone else, his lyrical voice wafting to the far corners of the house. “I adore mezzo-sopranos, even the ones that don’t sing well. They have the two physical qualities which one most admires in women: long necks and large breasts.”

“How were the mezzos at La Scala?” a man shouts.

Valyo taps his tuning fork against his knee (without apparent muscular reaction) and cocks his ear to it. “Four-forty — what a comfort in this world of ours to have a standard that never changes. La Scala? There was nothing at La Scala this season except music, friend. And the music has lost its edge; this is the price one pays for being a professional. Pieces that once reduced me to tears no longer move me. Only performances move me, and, then, usually only my own. La Scala, I tell you in all humility, was redeemed by my rendering of Verdi.”

“He’s delicious,” Melanie whispers in the Racer’s ear. They are standing together on the fringe of the crowd. “He looks more like a defrocked priest than an opera singer.”

“He almost became a priest once,” Tacho whispers back. “But he decided he couldn’t give up women.” Tacho raises himself on tiptoes. “Tell again about your audition at La Scala, Valyo,” he calls. “There are some here who have never heard the story.” And to the girl he whispers:

“Listen carefully.”

“Our Racer wants to hear about my audition at La Scala. Good god, one hardly remembers, it was so long ago. Dawn of history, practically.” Someone hands Valyo a glass of champagne and he sips it zestfully. “I was young then, of course; what they call a babe in the woods.” Valyo chuckles to himself. “They had never seen a Bulgarian before; god only knows if they even knew where Bulgaria was. When I said I had trained at the Sofia conservatory, one of them actually laughed. I stood on the edge of that stage and looked out at the maestro. He was wearing a black cape and sitting in the last row, off to one side, quite alone. And I called out to him that there was only one thing on trial in the hall: his ability to recognize a great talent when he heard one. When I finished singing, the old man came forward slowly. He tapped his cane on the floor and nodded and told me he had passed.”

“Did you get all of that?” Tacho asks the American girl.

She nods enthusiastically. “He’s quite a character, your Valentine Barbovich.”

“Try Valyo,” someone shouts.

“Yes, Valyo can do it if anyone can,” a woman adds, pushing a man out of the crowd. It is the Scream Therapist, the one who was at the table next to Poleon’s the night before.

Valyo leans forward. “Do what?”

“Scream,” the Scream Therapist explains. “I’m taking a kind of survey: I’m trying to see if I can get anybody in Sofia to emit that peculiar sound commonly referred to as a scream.”

“But scream for what?” Valyo inquires, puzzled.

“Well, actually, for love. I subscribe to the theory that it is the need for love, and not sexuality, that is supressed in children; that when the child is screaming, he or she (as the case may be) is screaming for love, if you follow my meaning. I’m trying to get adults to duplicate this scream. Would you, eh, care to try? I warn you, so far nobody in Sofia has been able to, eh, to scream.”

Valyo is clearly disconcerted. “But surely it is easy — “

“Not so easy as you think,” the Scream Therapist asserts. “For you it will be especially difficult. You’ve spent your life learning to control your vocal chords, and I am asking you to free yourself of control. Go ahead. Try. All you have to do is open your mouth and scream!”

Valyo looks around uncertainly. All right. Give me room.” Motioning everyone back with his hands, he fills his lungs, opens his mouth so that his soft, pink uvula is plainly visible and — closes his mouth again. “This is ridiculous,” Valyo decides. “Of course I can scream if I want to, but this makes no sense.” Valyo shrugs and laughs, and a few people, out of politeness, laugh with him.

“How about you?” the Scream Therapist demands, looking directly at the Flag Holder, who is sitting quietly on a stool in front of the bar. A full glass of cognac, untouched, stands before him. A cigarette dangles from his lips. He looks gray, preoccupied, angry almost; his friends, sensing his mood, have steered clear of him at the party, and with good reason. For the Flag Holder has detected, on his way to the Dwarf’s house on Vitoša, a certain uneasiness in Sofia: people talking quietly in knots, all the lights burning after working hours in the Ministry of Defense, twice as many militiamen as usual on the streets. “What’s the matter with you?” the Rabbit whispered early in the evening, and when Lev didn’t answer she turned irritably to Octobrina and told her so that he could hear:

“He has a low threshold of pleasure; he can’t take too much without feeling guilty.”

Now the Flag Holder looks back at the Scream Therapist and shakes his head once.

The Scream Therapist doesn’t ask him again.

“I’d like to try,” volunteers Poleon’s ex-wife. She thrusts through the crowd until she stands facing the Scream Therapist. “What’s the prize? What do I get if I do it?” she laughs, playing to the audience.

Poleon leans against the bar next to the Flag Holder. “If anybody can do it, she can,” he snickers. “She’s had a lot of practice.”

“The trick is to think of someone you hate,” the Scream Therapist advises Poleon’s ex-wife.

“Oh, that part’s easy,” she calls over her shoulder. The crowd applauds in delight.

“Close your eyes and imagine that the person you hate the most in the world is in this room now.”

“I don’t have to imagine,” she throws at the crowd, giggling wildly.

“You feel anger and resentment welling up inside you. Now open your mouth and scream and expel the anger. Go ahead, scream.”

Poleon’s ex-wife shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath. Her breaths come faster. Her mouth contorts in anger. Her nostrils flare. Suddenly her facial muscles sag. She starts to say something, then shakes her head. “I need a drink,” she mutters, moving off toward the bar.

“Would anybody else like to try?” the Scream Therapist demands.

“Could you do it?” Melanie asks the Racer. “Scream, I mean?”

“I suppose so,” Tacho replies.

“Go ahead, try. I dare you!”

Tacho laughs off the dare. “Let’s get some air.” He takes a firm grip on her arm and leads her into the garden.

“This place is enormous,” Melanie gasps. “How did the Dwarf get a whole house to himself? I thought you were limited to so many square meters a person?”

“You forget he has fifteen Hungarians living with him. He had himself declared their legal guardian. All of them together are entitled to this much living space.” Tacho looks up at the house. “Angel says it was built after the turn of the century for a mistress of our King Ferdinand. Did you notice the inscription over the wrought-iron gate when we came up the path? Free your mind — move your ass.’ Angel swears Ferdinand had it put there, but a lot of people think Angel did it himself. Ferdinand fled the country after the First World War, and his mistress disappeared soon after. The house was used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the summers for a while; Sofia gets quite hot this time of the year, but Vitoša stays cool. Sometime in the nineteen thirties — does all this interest you?”

“Yes, please.”

“Sometime in the nineteen thirties it became a house of prostitution; Angel says it was run by the Foreign Ministry for foreign diplomats, but I think he’s inventing that; it was probably private enterprise. At any rate, when the Communists came to power in nineteen forty-four, we expropriated the building and divided it into apartments, which were sold at low prices to retired workers. When Angel began making a great deal of money, which was in the early nineteen fifties, he started buying up the apartments one by one. Each time he bought an apartment he brought in another Hungarian and had himself declared her guardian. When they grow taller than he is, usually when they’re thirteen or fourteen, he sends them back to Hungary and brings in a substitute.”

“But your government isn’t fooled by all this?”

“What can the government do? Angel is known all over Europe!”

“Still, there has to be a limit to what he can get away with.”

“Of course there’s a limit. It’s just that the Dwarf hasn’t reached it yet.” The Racer laughs out loud. “None of us has.”

Tacho leads the girl around to the front of the house. “Look — you can see all of Sofia from here.” The front lawn slopes away toward the city. “There’s the TV tower; see the blinking red light? And you can just make out the gold dome of the Alexander Nevsky — see there?”

They stand for a time in the cool, dark shadow of the crest of Vitoša, the soft damp earth underfoot, Sofia spread out at their feet. The city seems like a model in the window of a department store. Streetlights dance, the headlights of cars flow through the thoroughfares, but no sound of traffic reaches their ears.

A burst of laughter comes from the house behind them, and someone turns up the volume of the phonograph again. Half a dozen figures spill onto the lawn and begin dancing wildly. A few of them take off their shirts, but it is too dark to see if they are men or women.

“Come,” Tacho says, and he leads the way to an octagonal white structure on the rim of the property.

“Angel’s gazebo,” the Racer explains. “This is where he spends most of his time in the summer. Here” — Tacho snaps on an overhead bulb, throwing latticework shadows onto the grass around the gazebo.

“Oh, it’s a child’s room!”

“No, it’s the Dwarf’s. And the Hungarians — don’t forget they are children. Everything is scaled down to size. Look how low the light switch is.”

Wide-eyed, Melanie takes in the gazebo from the threshold. It is filled with children’s things: dwarf chairs and tables, potted Japanese dwarf trees, a beautiful painted rocking horse, even a doll’s house filled with miniature chairs and tables. On one latticework wall of the gazebo hangs a framed color photograph showing the Dwarf, in full clown regalia, standing before a bleacher packed with laughing children. His back is to the camera, but he is looking over his shoulder directly into the lens, smiling as if he knows something that everyone else can only guess at.

The Racer settles onto the floor with his back to the wall and his knees drawn up to his chin; his knees feel better when they are flexed. Melanie tries out the rocking horse. “Cow-boy,” Tacho says in English, and Melanie laughs at his pronunciation. She wanders around the room fingering the toys strewn about, and finally sinks down next to Tacho.

“It’s funny,” she says. “My father never wanted to be a bike racer. He wanted to have money, and racing was the only way he could think of to get it. What about you? Did you always want to race?”

Tacho leans his head back against the wall. “There was only one paved street in Melnik when I was a child. I spent most of my time riding up and down it on an old bicycle my father got for me. For a long time I thought he stole it, but then I found out he paid for it by guiding pilgrims up into the mountains to a monastery on his days off.”

“But did you always want to race?”

Tacho kneads his knees with his fingertips. “As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a bicycle racer. But I wanted the racing to be something more. I wanted to get someplace.”

“But you are someplace — “

“No. Wherever I am, I have the feeling I’m passing through. Atanas says the present is a small village through which we are passing on the way from what was to what can be. I don’t know. I’d like to be someplace, instead of in transit.”

The girl leans over to touch his hand. He takes her hand in his and holds it and looks at it, as if he is making up his mind about something. Then he looks up and reaches awkwardly for her breast and twists around to kiss her. She stiffens at his touch; she tries not to pull away, but she can’t help herself.

Tacho leaps to his feet.

“Please — “ Her voice is softer than a whisper. “I’m not used … you must understand … it’s not that I don’t want … please.” She holds her breath and says, “I’m sorry.”

Melanie sits still after the Racer leaves, listening to the crickets, listening to her pulse, trying to sort the thoughts from the feelings, trying to place them in separate piles and assign some weight to them. After a while she gives it up and starts to think about leaving Bulgaria.

There is the rustle of steps coming toward the gazebo; for an instant Melanie thinks that Tacho has changed his mind, has understood, has come back. But it is the Rabbit who walks in. She settles herself sidesaddle on the rocking horse and regards the American girl.

“Did Tacho send you?” Melanie asks.

Elisabeta smiles. “He told me you were here, yes.” She studies Melanie and sees the contrast between the passivity of her face and the intensity of the fear in her eyes. “He likes you, you know,” she tells her suddenly. When Melanie doesn’t respond, she says again:

“Tacho, he likes you. He could have the pick of Sofia. He is very famous.”

The American girl says nothing. “Do you understand my Russian?” Elisabeta asks. “I speak it with difficulty.”

“I understand you very well.”

“Then how is it you don’t answer to me?”

“I don’t answer because you didn’t ask a question.”

The Rabbit runs her thumb under the bra strap on her shoulder. “I envy you — not having a brassiere. I don’t have the nerve.” Then:

“The Flag Holder is very famous too. More famous than the Racer. You have seen his photograph? There, a question for you.”

Despite herself Melanie smiles. “You can hardly be in Sofia and miss it.”

“Yes, that is so. It is also in the textbooks of our schoolchildren. It is also displayed on huge banners on nine September, which is the anniversary of our liberation. The man on Lev’s left in the photograph is the Second Secretary of our Party, The man on his right is our Prime Minister.’’ Elisabeta pauses, as if gathering herself for a leap. ‘Did the Racer tell you that he and I were lovers once?”

Melanie’s expression doesn’t change. “No,” she says evenly. “Isn’t it awkward for you, the two of them being so close?”

“It is no problem for me, loving at various times the two of them. They are opposite sides of the same coin.” She hesitates. “Did you know that Tacho was married once? There, another question!”

“He hasn’t told me much about his personal life.”

“I will tell you then. It came about soon after he set the record of two hundred kilometers an hour. He was young and beautiful and all the people were in love with him. We are a small inconsequential country, and Tacho gave us the gift of feeling important. He married our most beautiful actress. She was older than he was, a queen and a crazy lady. A few months after the marriage she took off her clothes and walked into the Black Sea. The fishermen on the beach saw her write in the sand before she swam for the horizon. But the tide came in before someone with the ability to read could be brought to the beach. And so Tacho lost the message too.”

The story creates a bond between them; they meet in the no man’s land between the listening and the telling. And so the silence that follows is not at all awkward.

After a while the Rabbit suddenly smiles. “From now, perhaps you will answer my questions without my having to ask them.”

Melanie nods gravely. “I’ll try.”

There is a commotion at the back door of the house. “They’re starting,” a woman shouts in an excited voice.

“I’m coming,” a man calls back, and another woman begs, “Button this for me, will you?”

“Hurry up or we shall miss the fun,” Elisabeta urges. Together they run across the grass and crowd into the large front room on the main floor, the Rabbit alongside the Flag Holder, Melanie alongside the Racer. Their shoulders touch and he looks down at her and she slips her arm through his.

The over head lights dim. Talk dies down as if before the opening curtain of a play. There is the amplified sound of wind blowing through a tunnel; someone is blowing the dust off the phonograph needle. Then the solemn notes of “The Wedding March” fill the house. An array of spotlights bathes the long flight of steps leading from the first floor in cruel white light. The houselights go off completely and a mildly pornographic film is projected, from behind, onto the movie screen that has been set up near the bay windows. The film shows the Dwarf’s Hungarians, naked from the waist up, fondling each other. They keep giggling and looking at the camera out of the corner of their eyes.

“Good camera work,” Poleon mutters, but he is drowned out by a chorus of “Shhhhhhhhhs.”

Popov starts down the stairs. On his arm is the Dwarf’s “bride.” She is dressed in white voile, through which her gangly legs and a sparse patch of pubic hair and her nipples are visible. Her face is heavily rouged; that plus the high-heeled shoes make her look like a little girl dressed up in her mother’s clothes. When Popov and the girl reach the movie screen, they turn and, using the screen as a backdrop, face the audience.

Behind them a title card, the old-fashioned kind used in silent films, flashes on the screen. It says:

“We live in a fool’s paradise.”

The music fades. There is a scraping sound at the top of the stairs. Then something steps off into the white light. First the feet, and then the body of a puppet come into view; it is the spitting image of Mister Dancho. Behind it, manipulating the strings of the puppet, comes the Dwarf. He is dressed in white leotards which emphasize the deformities of his body — his bulging chest, his broad hunched shoulders, his foreshortened torso. A bright red sash circles his waist. His face is grotesquely made up with false eyelashes and blue eyeshadow and rouge. As he slowly descends, all the time working the puppet down the steps ahead of him, it becomes apparent that he has black strings attached to him. And behind him comes Mister Dancho, holding high the crossbar to which the strings from the Dwarf are attached, working Bazdéev down the steps as if he were a puppet too.

The audience bursts into applause. “Bravo, bravo, bravissimo,” cries Valyo.

They are halfway down the long flight of stairs — the puppet of Mister Dancho, the Dwarf and Mister Dancho — when a figure leaps out of the darkness onto the landing on the ground floor. He is dressed in black and wears chalk white pancake make-up on his face. For a moment everyone assumes he is part of the Dwarf’s act.

The trio on the stairs freezes.

“It’s him again,” the American girl whispers.

Tacho turns to the Flag Holder. “Now you will believe me. Do you recognize him?”

“I’m — I’m not sure.”

The Mime’s eyes demand silence. He pivots on his heel and bows deeply to the three figures on the stairs above him. The puppet of Dancho, and then the Dwarf, and then Dancho bow back. Then the Mime turns toward the audience and takes it in with a deep bow. Some of the people in the front row bow back. The Mime looks around angrily and bows again, insisting. This time everyone responds. As the Mime takes a single step forward and begins his performance, the only sound in the room comes from the projector throwing its pornographic pictures onto the screen.

With his hands the Mime creates pieces of cloth billowing out of the sky. Vehicles of some sort are climbing over mountains. Planes are landing at an airport. There is a sense of urgency and organization to what he is describing. The pieces of cloth, the vehicles, the men from the planes are converging now, have come together, have become like a wave in the ocean. Others watch its progress from the side with fright, with amazement, with a sense of betrayal, with a feeling that this is the end and the beginning of recorded history. Some of the younger ones in the path of the wave argue with it, pry up bricks from the pavement and throw them at it, put their bodies in its path. But they are swept away. Nothing can slow it. There is a great surge of people into the streets. There is shock, panic, dispair, a sense of having lost something. Two or three men have their wrists handcuffed behind their backs and are led away, far away. A small boy pasting posters on a wall crumples to the ground. The body is covered with a jacket and loaded into an ambulance. Someone places a bouquet of flowers on the spot where he fell. Flags come down and others are hauled up. Clocks stop. People weep. Night comes, but not calm.

The Mime assumes his impassive face, signaling the end of his performance, and bows.

And then he is gone.

The Dwarf’s guests look at each other uncomfortably. The same thought occurs to everyone.

“What he is describing — “ The Racer begins, and the Flag Holder finishes the sentence:

“ — is happening now.”

The puppet of Mister Dancho collapses with its head on its chest, and the Dwarf, black strings dangling from his hands and elbows and knees and head, climbs back up the stairs. He returns almost immediately with a large short-wave radio, which he places on the landing. People turn their backs on the pornographic film and huddle around the radio. The dial skids across a band of static and words and notes and comes to rest on a male voice speaking Russian with an American accent. Occasionally the voice fades, but it always comes back again.

“… reports that occupation troops approaching the radio station are firing tracer bullets and live ammunition. They are a few dozen meters from the building now. A barricade has been erected facing Wenceslas Square. Several hundred people are trying to stop the advancing tanks with their bodies. The radio building has been hit by dozens of shots and is being buzzed by aircraft of the Antonov type. Czechoslovak Radio asks the people to try and engage the troops in conversation — it is our only weapon, they say. Now the broadcasts of Czechoslovak Radio are coming to an end. The national anthem is being played. A voice announces over the air that the staff is remaining in the studio and will continue broadcasting the news as long as possible. But the speaker warns: when you hear voices on the radio you are not familiar with, do not believe them!”

The overhead lights come on. Some of the guests are already leaving.

“Goddamn Bolsheviks,” Mister Dancho exclaims disgustedly. “They’re a bunch of gangsters.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Poleon whispers, pulling his ex-wife toward the door.

“But my coat — “

“Forget your coat, damnit.”

“For god’s sake, turn that thing off,” the Racer snaps. The pornographic movie is still playing. The Dwarf says something in Hungarian and the girl who was to have been his “bride” ducks behind the screen and pulls the plug out of the wall.

Octobrina sinks onto the landing. “I told you hope was a luxury,” she says bitterly. She buries her face in her hands, sobbing softly.

“They are what the Romans called lacrimae rerum” Popov remarks. Almost shyly, he explains:

“That means, tears of events.”

The dozen or so people left in the room gather around the Flag Holder.

“Oh, Lev,” the Rabbit gasps, near to tears too.

“There is only one thing to do,” Valyo declares. “The Czechs must defend their integrity like the pupil of one’s eye.”

“How could they do it?” the Racer wants to know. “How could they betray us like this?”

The Flag Holder’s hands are shaking as he speaks. “Our condition—one of utter subservience to corrupt ideas — is a judgment on us. What we must understand from all this is: We, by our inactivity, are the invaders of the human spirit.”

The Rabbit settles down next to Octobrina and takes her hand. “A group of students once asked Dubek, ‘What are the guarantees that the old days will not be back?’ And he told them, You are the guarantee. There is only one path’ “ — Elisabeta’s voice breaks — “ and that is forward.’ “

Lev Mendeleyev looks into the faces of his friends. “He is more of a Flag Holder to his people than I am to mine.” After a while, he adds:

“For us too there is only one path.”