Саймон Моуэр - Prague Spring

‘Do you want?’ she asked. She could see that he did. There was no disguising what was happening. But time was pressing. ‘I’ve got a meeting at nine.’

‘It’s Saturday.’

‘Her Majesty’s envoys work tirelessly to protect the realm.’ He didn’t know how to do that in Czech or Russian without it coming out like a piece of Stalinist propaganda rather than the irony he intended, so he said it in English, which meant Lenka rather missed the point. He sat on the edge of the bed and put out a hand to touch her, just her face, the line of her chin, almost as though to define it.

Where, he wondered, do we go from here? And then he turned the thought into words before he had a chance to censor them. ‘Where do we go from here?’

She sat up, pulling the pillows behind her, unashamed of her nakedness. Her gaze was narrow, as though she was trying to see right through his eyes and read what was going on in his mind. ‘You’re worried about your girlfriend?’

‘Not only.’

She reached for a cigarette from the pack on the bedside table. ‘Ah, you think maybe I am an informer. Maybe I work for the StB ?’

He smiled. ‘I doubt it, but you might . Diplomats always worry about that kind of thing. Should I be doing this? Is it a set-up? In the proximity of women we’re worse than priests.’

‘If you’re a priest, then I’m a nun.’

Was that a joke? It was difficult to tell. Her manner was strange, oblique at times, startlingly direct at others. Perhaps it was just her unfamiliarity with spoken English. She put her cigarette to her mouth and lit it. A skein of grey smoke appeared between her lips. He had already discovered many of her tastes, and that was one of them, the faint, acrid flavour of tobacco on her mouth.

‘You can’t be a nun. Nuns don’t smoke in bed.’

She laughed now, real, smoky laughter that took a moment to disperse. ‘So, if I am not StB, you ask where do we go from here? But it is not we , is it? It is you . Where do you go from here? Because you are thinking of your girlfriend whose name you have not yet told to me.’

‘Steffie. Stephanie, actually.’

‘That is Štěpánka in Czech. It is beautiful name.’

‘Better in Czech. To me it sounds very English.’

‘And is she very English?’

‘Very.’

‘But I am not, and you are wondering about the difference. Did Stephanie sleep with you the first evening you spent with her? I expect she did not. So, does that make me, what? A prostitute?’

No misunderstanding there. One of the universals. Prostitutka in both Russian and Czech, and probably every other language under the sun. ‘Don’t be absurd. I don’t think like that at all. We both did it, me and you together. Our choice.’

‘But that is how men are, you are thinking. And women aren’t. They should be saving themselves, like Štěpánka did.’

They were hovering on the edge of their first argument. ‘Rubbish. You’re putting words into my mouth.’

‘Ha! Then everything is all right. If we want to stay together, we stay together. If we want to go to bed together, we go to bed together. If we want to go away, we go away. Is that all right?’

‘It seems logical.’

Logic appeared to satisfy her. Logic was good. She sat there in his bed, on his side of the bed, looking as prim and determined as it is possible to be when you are entirely naked. ‘So, are you going to tell me about Štěpánka?’

He tossed the sheet over her knees to cover the disturbing sight. ‘Some other time. Now I must get a move on. Make yourself some coffee if you want. There’s stuff for breakfast. Cereal, toast, anything you find.’ He went to the bathroom to shower and shave and clean his teeth, trying, and failing, to rid himself of the thought of her. When he came back she was in the kitchen, laying out breakfast things, pouring coffee. She was wearing her shirt from yesterday and nothing else: bare legs, faintly dusted with golden hair, bare feet and, as he discovered as she reached up for something from a top shelf, bare arse. She’d made toast. There was butter in a dish and she had discovered a pot of Frank Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade. ‘This is very English breakfast, isn’t it? But I cannot find sugar.’

‘The maid hides it. She thinks there may be shortages and we should keep it hidden.’ He opened the cupboard under the sink and took out a carton of sugar.

Lenka had stopped what she was doing. Her expression was transformed to that of angry primary school teacher – a frown, lips pursed. ‘You have maid ?’

‘Goes with the job. Like the flat itself. She only comes one day a week. To clean the flat and take my laundry. ’

‘That is very bourgeois.’

‘We are pretty bourgeois in the Foreign Office.’

‘I’ll bet this služka she works for StB.’

‘She probably does. It’s better always to keep your enemy close, where you can see him.’

‘ Close ? Do you fuck her? Once a week?’

‘Certainly not. They tried an attractive one but I had to send her packing. She didn’t know how to iron shirts.’

‘So what is this ugly one’s name?’

‘Svetlana.’

‘There!’ Her tone was triumphant, as though the matter was certain. ‘You cannot get any more Russian than that. She is maybe KGB.’

Half an hour later he let her out of the flat, making her take the back way, out through the courtyard and the abandoned garden at the back of the building, where there was an ancient wall twelve feet high with an anonymous door that gave on to one of the alleys running down to the river. Once she had slipped away, Sam strolled through the Malá Strana to the palace that crouched warily beneath the Castle and housed the British embassy.

In the secure room deep within the embassy, an exclusive little group took its seats at the conference table. The secure room was not a cheery place. Windowless bare white walls, bleak fluorescent lighting, metal and plastic furniture. It was known as the mortuary.

‘Heard from the lovely Stephanie?’ the Head of Chancery asked Sam. Eric Whittaker had that knack, bestowed on high-flying diplomats, of being able to talk trivia while preparing for matters that matter. ‘So sorry to see her go.’

‘I had a card from her – Greetings from Cologne, wish you were here sort of thing. She was staying with friends at Rheindahlen but she should be crossing to England by now.’

‘We’ll miss her. Easy on the eye. You two still’ – a moment’s hesitation – ‘together? Madeleine always said you were perfect for each other.’

‘I used to think so too. Steffie has always had doubts.’

‘Frightened of becoming an embassy wife?’

‘Enough to put anyone off.’

Whittaker laughed, glancing round the meeting. There was a distinct feeling of Saturday morning. One member of the group was even without a tie. Whittaker coughed in that apologetic manner of his, to bring the meeting to order. ‘I’m afraid,’ he announced, ‘that H.E. cannot be here this morning – hobnobbing with the Yanks, I believe – so I’m in the hot seat. And’ – he glanced at the papers before him – ‘hot it certainly is.’ He tapped the paper. ‘So, what is this place, Čierna? Never heard of it myself.’

‘Čierna nad Tisou,’ someone said. ‘Eastern Slovakia, right on the Soviet border.’

‘Anyone been there?’

The fluorescent lighting of the secure room hummed thoughtfully. People waited for someone to contribute. Rather diffidently, Sam offered his own experience. ‘I have, as a matter of fact, Eric. Back of beyond, really. Little more than a rail terminus.’