The Secret Wife(90)
His favourite part of the tour was the long train rides between cities when he could gaze out the windows at farm workers bringing in the harvest, at small villages with bustling marketplaces and churches that had lost their steeples in the war, at vast forests on the lower slopes of mountain ranges that already had snow-crusted peaks although it was just early October. It was a time for contemplation.
He had no desire to live in Europe any more. America had welcomed him with open arms and he hoped their constitution and ethnic mix would prevent any extreme political parties taking power as they had in Russia and Germany. He’d noticed some anti-Russian sentiments in the press – mostly comments on the territory they had grabbed in the post-war scramble and fears that Communist sentiment might spread across the Atlantic – but it did not worry Dmitri as he agreed with them. His hatred of Communism was stronger than ever.
He was concerned about the last stop of the tour, in Prague, because the previous year the Communist Party had won thirty-eight per cent of the vote. What were the Czech people thinking? he wondered. Had they not heard of the Soviet show trials and mass executions, of the Siberian prison camps with forced labour, of the secret police who arrested you for nothing but a sideways glance at the wrong moment? Why had they invited him, a known critic of the Soviet regime, to speak there? Could it be a trap?
His Czech publisher met him at the train station and seemed nervous as they took a taxi to the hotel.
‘There will be spies from the Interior Ministry at your speech this evening so I suggest you steer clear of politics. We don’t want to have a famous American author arrested while in our care.’ He gave a little laugh, as though trying to make light of it, but Dmitri saw the nervous dart of his eyes and recognised it from Russia in 1917, when you could never be sure of the allegiance of anyone you spoke to.
‘I don’t plan to discuss politics but my audiences have invariably asked my views at previous stops on this tour,’ Dmitri said.
The publisher nodded. ‘I think you’ll find they won’t here.’
The talk that evening was in the Café Slavia, an Art Deco establishment on the banks of the Charles River with a view towards the castle. It was famous as a meeting place of Prague intellectuals, such as Franz Kafka and Karel Capek, but Dmitri’s audience seemed composed of a mixture of down-at-heel students and elderly ladies, one of whom had a miniature dog on her lap. Dmitri hoped it would not interrupt him by yapping. To the side of the hall stood two men in long dark coats. He could tell from the hostile way they regarded him that they were secret police. Unwanted memories came flooding back and he hurried to the lectern to begin his speech. He was booked on a train to Istanbul the following morning and suddenly couldn’t wait to get on board.
He talked about the Russian literature that had shaped his literary tastes, about the way his own life experiences fed into his writing, and about the influence of America with its movies and fast food and ubiquitous advertisements leading to consumer culture and a generation who were no longer satisfied with the lives their parents had led.
When he finished, the questions flooded in. How many drafts of each novel did he write? There were gasps when he replied ‘Around twenty.’ Had he started a new book to follow Toward the Sunset? ‘Not yet,’ he replied, explaining that he could not write on demand but had to wait for inspiration. The men in the dark coats stood expressionless.
When the last questioner had taken her turn, Dmitri announced that he would sign books at a table in the corner. A waiter brought him a glass of sweet wine and a cream cake, and he signed twenty-one books – rather more than he had sold at any of his other European events. The Czechs liked their literature, he mused.
The last book had been signed, and Dmitri was sipping the wine, waiting to say goodbye to the publisher, when a shadow fell over the table.
‘Hello, Malama,’ a soft voice said.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Prague, October 1947
Goosebumps broke out all over Dmitri’s skin and the hair stood up on the back of his neck. He looked up and it was her. Tatiana. Utterly herself after all these decades.
He couldn’t speak, but tears welled up. He pressed his knuckles to his eyes in an attempt to stop them.
‘We had best get out of here,’ she said in Russian. ‘Come with me.’
When Dmitri stood, his knees almost gave way beneath him. Tatiana took his arm and led him down a side street into the Old Town. Neither of them spoke, but Dmitri breathed the cold night air deep into his lungs in an attempt to compose himself, surreptitiously wiping his eyes. She turned down a short flight of steps that led to the wooden door of a cellar bar. It was dark and quiet inside, with only three other customers. They took a corner table and asked the waitress to bring two glasses of red wine.
‘Is it really you?’ Dmitri breathed, gazing at her face. She looked almost exactly the same, apart from a deep furrow between her brows and little grooves, like symmetrical scars, on either side of her mouth. Her long hair was pinned into an old-fashioned bun at the back of her head.
‘I brought something so you would be sure it is me,’ she said, and fumbled in her pocket before producing the jewelled dog tag she’d commissioned Fabergé to make for Ortipo.
‘How could you think …?’ he began, a fist squeezing his heart.
‘I heard there have been many people pretending to be my sisters or brother and couldn’t bear it if you hadn’t believed me.’ Her voice was the same as ever, soft and low.