Marija Peričić - The Lost Pages

There came a knock at the door. I knew by the characteristic percussive sequence that it was Stephanie, the stenographer from the adjacent office, a vapid girl whose skin strained to contain her plumpness. I straightened myself and adopted a serious expression, the briefcase and papers hidden from view in my lap. But instead of Stephanie’s blonde head at the door, I was surprised to see Franz enter.

He seemed to flow around the door like an eddy of water around a stone. His lean, flat body moved with a fluidity that made me conscious of the smooth muscles surging under his skin, effortlessly controlling the levers of his bones. He seated himself opposite me with the nonchalance of a regular visitor.

‘So, did you get the story I sent you?’ he asked, not even bothering to greet me. ‘Is that it in there?’ He pointed at the papers in my lap.

Blood flowed to my face. ‘No, ah… these are something else,’ I said as I stuffed the pages back into my briefcase, fumbling with the clasp.

Franz’s appearance in my office disoriented me. How had he discovered my place of work? And he spoke to me with such casual familiarity, even using the informal method of address. It was almost as though he had mistaken me for someone else.

‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘never mind about the stories now. I’ve come to impart a fantastic piece of news.’

I sat with the briefcase still on my lap and tried to compose myself. Although I was by no measure happy to see him, I remembered my resolve to make a friend of him. I forced my face into a smile.

He took an envelope from his jacket pocket. ‘Yesterday, I got this—’ he paused and held it up in the air—‘from your old friend Theodor. He wants some of my stories for a collection, an actual book.’

He leaned back in the chair, radiating satisfaction, and the leather squeaked to accommodate him. He slid the envelope back into his pocket.

Even though I could not say that I was surprised, Franz’s news gave me an unpleasant shock, and it was an effort to keep my face fixed into the friendly expression of encouragement that I had conjured. I felt betrayed by Theodor. Franz, harmless though he looked, loomed large and threatening; it appeared that he could, with a flick of his finger, destroy everything that I had taken years to build up. My impulse was to order him from the room or to leave the room myself, slamming the door. But this would be unwise.

Questions swarmed up in my mind. How much of Franz’s work had Theodor seen? The fact that Theodor would go to such efforts to hunt Franz down and secure him seemed to indicate that he must also have read the stories that Franz had given me. What would this mean in regards to my own position? Had Theodor and Franz already met? The fact that the proposal had come in a letter allowed me the hope that they had not. And had a contract been included; was it already signed? I was desperate to know, but I was aware I had to be careful not to betray my anxiety. I breathed out slowly and clenched my fingers into two tight knots in my lap. I felt the muscles in my forearms straining with pressure.

Franz sat there like a snake in the chair, his unblinking eyes on mine, waiting. I had to keep him close, I knew, either to destroy him or to save myself somehow. I stood up and offered him my hand, and we shook hands across my desk.

‘Let me invite you for a drink to celebrate,’ I said.

We made for the beer hall in the cellar of the Gemeindehaus. As we walked along Wenzelsplatz to the Konigshof, Franz shared his ideas for the stories he was planning for the proposed collection. Listening to him, there was a numbed, hard feeling in my breast—fear, I suppose—which emerged and was then smoothed over again, like a jagged stone lying below the surface of the sea, covered and uncovered by waves.

As he talked, his plans became more and more ambitious, and he mentioned that he was also working on a longer piece, of a kind never seen before, which would forever change the face of literature. I listened with half an ear while I thought of ways to casually question him about the nature of Theodor’s offer. Perhaps it was only an offhand politeness of Theodor’s. If only I could take a look at the letter. Surely I could ask him to show it to me if I framed my request as friendly interest. After a few beers, perhaps. Or else, if he removed his jacket when we were inside, I could quickly take a look while he was in the bathroom.

The beer hall was packed and noisy. Everywhere men sat crammed against one another on the bench seats, the tables in front of them covered with empty glasses. We ordered our beers and squeezed in side-by-side at a crowded table in the middle of the room. Franz had removed his coat, but kept his jacket on. He drank steadily and, wishing to keep a clear head, I allowed him to outpace me. Franz was relaxed and voluble, and talked as though we two were old friends. I kept waiting for a gap in his monologue so I might steer the talk to the letter, but he never paused.

It was hot in the cellar, the humid heat of a roomful of drinking men, and I took off my jacket, hoping that Franz would follow suit—which, to my joy, he soon did. He laid it between us on the bench, beside mine. The breast of his jacket was folded back on itself, and I could see the tantalising edge of the envelope inside. I tried not to stare at it as he talked on. After some hours of speaking, he excused himself to use the bathroom. Now was my chance.

As soon I saw that he had left the room I grabbed for the jacket, but in my haste I pushed it to the floor, right under the table. I had to bend awkwardly into the tight space between the bench and the table to retrieve it and when I rose was met by a shout.

‘Hey! You!’ A red-faced man sitting on the opposite side of the table was pointing a fat finger in my direction. ‘Gimme back my jacket! Are you trying to rob me?’

‘This isn’t yours,’ I said, holding Franz’s jacket up for him to see.

‘I think I know my own clothes!’ he shouted. He stood up and made a grab for the jacket, knocking over my empty beer glass as he pulled it towards himself over the table. I wanted to protest, but the man was a huge, hulking creature, apparently formed solely of overlapping layers of muscle.

‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I do assure you, that jacket belongs to my friend,’ but my voice was just a thin little quiver in the noise of the hall. The man ignored me. I was conscious that I had only a little time before Franz returned, and I could hear the loud ticking of every precious second as it slipped past.

The man’s fleshy face was like a pink cabbage, contracted in concentration as he bundled the jacket this way and that, searching the lining for identifiable markers. His fussing had attracted the attention of his two friends, who sat on either side of him, and they both scowled at me across the table. I could not help risking a few nervous glances towards the door to see if Franz was coming back.

‘What are you looking so antsy for then?’ the friend on the left, a raw-skinned redhead, asked me.

But the fleshy-faced man gave a roar of laughter. ‘It’s alright, Karl. The gentleman’s right.’ He stood up and bowed, handing me the screwed-up jacket along with many apologies, but it was too late. Before I could sit down again, Franz was there beside me once more. He saw his jacket in my hands and absent-mindedly took it from me and put it on. I could have cried with frustration.

‘So,’ Franz asked, ‘how was the Hyperion party?’ His mouth was set in a smug line: he need not even make an appearance to have half of Prague chasing after him with publishing offers.

‘It was fine,’ I said. I breathed slowly in and out. ‘We all wondered where you were. Especially Theodor.’

‘I gathered as much.’