06
1 Piseckého, Prague, Czech Republic
November 27
It was midday before Eva saw the peak of the church on Nepomucká, and it took another hour before it looked anything like the photo she’d carried in her wallet all these years.
Even when she got the angle right, the differences were striking. The sky today was a light grey rather than bright and blue, and Eva looked nothing like her younger self, wearing a University of Paris t-shirt, plump, with a hearty smile. The photo was creased and faded, looked worse for wear; but not as bad as Eva.
She rounded the corner to Píseckého, past a row of houses she only half-remembered, and paced quickly down to #1 with the kind of stiff-moving determination that only comes from a fear of the elements.
Sometime around dawn the weather had changed from a kind of rainy-cold to a winter-cold, giving Eva’s exposed skin a sharp, prickling sensation that she knew would feel like a blazing fire the second she got warm. If she got warm. The last of the mud had washed off her some time ago, but it took with it whatever insulation she might have had.
She leapt up the building stairs and pushed on the front door. It swung open eagerly, and Eva felt a tiny pocket of warm air blow past her, out into the rain. Beyond the threshold, she found it was colder inside than outside, so she dashed up the stairs to the third floor, down the hall to #303, and knocked with a reddened hand.
No answer. She tried again, as a shiver shot up her spine, eating away any lingering patience. She made a fist and pounded on the door, her teeth rattling audibly.
“She isn’t home, dear,” said an old woman from next door. She was peeking out of her apartment, shawl pulled around her short, thick frame. She wore glasses nearly a third the size of her face, yet her eyes were squinted like she couldn’t see.
Eva tried to control her breathing so she could speak clearly, but had little luck.
“How long has she been gone?” she called out feebly.
The woman cocked her head a bit, came out into the hall with a cracked fibreglass cane and wobbled towards Eva.
“I wouldn’t know, dear. I don’t like to snoop. But I remember that young fellow from this morning was knocking at the door like such a madman, I nearly called the police!” The woman paused a short distance away, inspecting Eva carefully. “You look cold.”
Eva closed her eyes, thought of warm places.
“I… I had to walk from… from the train station,” she said. “it’s raining.”
“Poor thing,” said the woman. “Here… take my shawl. You don’t want to catch a cold in a place like this.”
Eva put out a hand, smiled weakly.
“No… no thank you,” she said. “Too wet right now. I… I just have to get inside and warm up.”
“Inside? Do you know Mrs Kolikov? I didn’t know she…” The woman gasped. “Oh my… you’re not Eva, are you?”
Eva winced at the woman, nodded.
“Oh my dear… I had no idea… in the photos you always look so radiant and…” she trailed off, realizing what she was saying. Eva laughed.
“Been a hard few years,” she said.
“For us all,” the woman sighed. She reached out her hand, as if waking back into polite society. “I’m Bachida Novacek. I live next door. It’s so wonderful to finally meet you.”
Eva took the woman’s hand with icy fingers, shook gently.
“Hi,” she said, then pulled her arm back in a vain attempt to stay warm. Mrs Novacek rubbed Eva’s shoulder, the air of a kind grandmother about her.
“You must have been out there a long time to be this wet. Why don’t you come to my place and warm up?”
Eva shook her head. “No, really, it’s okay. I just really want to get inside. Did my mother leave a key around here, under the mat or s-s-s-something…?”
Eva collapsed against the door as a shiver swarmed over her, and she pressed her head down and shut her eyes tight, trying to ride it out. But before long the weight of the past few days slammed into her, and she started sobbing uncontrollably, one hand covering her eyes, the other desperately trying to twist the doorknob.
A warm hand rubbed her back, up and down, and she felt a comforting nudge under her arm.
“Come along, dear,” the old woman said. “let’s get you fixed up.”
Eva stumbled, head sunk low, into the humid, homey embrace of Mrs Novacek’s living room. She was guided down onto a too-soft sofa, between a pair of ochre-and-mustard knitted pillows, a warm blanket wrapped over her shoulders. It took her a full minute to control her crying.
“I’m all wet,” she said, keeping her eyes to the ground.
“Things dry,” Mrs Novacek said, digging under a pile of blankets, hunting for the second of a pair of thick furry slippers. “When did you eat last?”
“I can’t eat now. Too cold.”
“Tea, then,” and she shuffled off into the kitchen, cane creaking with each step.
The living room was packed, but tidy. There were countless photo frames lining every available surface, showing a full range from glossy colour to dusty black-and-white. There were a handful of frames lined with wilted flowers, set aside from the rest, a single scented candle burning before them.
Above the fireplace was a large painting, done in oils, from Place de l’Alma in Paris, looking over the Seine. The sky was a rusty colour, not the merciless, bright orange that came in more recent days. Eva knew the image intimately.
“You have one of my paintings?” she called out.
“Your mother gave it to me. She’s very proud of you, dear. It’s not every child who’s so gifted in the arts! My late sister had two of your paintings in her dining room, she loved them so much. When they unseal the house, I’ll see if I can’t spirit them away.”
“How bad is it here?” Eva asked. “News is hard to come by on the outside.”
“The Old Town Square closed last month. The vandals had run wild for too long. It was necessary, but it… it took the spark out of us. The radio said the old clock’s keeper has fallen ill. His son, too. Only the daughter seems safe, and who knows for how long? Sometimes you wonder… when is it too much? When do we stop being who we are?”
“I hope it takes more than that,” Eva said.
“But it can’t be as bad as where you’ve been,” the old woman replied. “Paris must have been terrible. I know your mother has been worried sick about you.”
“I know,” Eva said, lowering her head, “I know. I made a mess of things.”
“Why did you stay out for so long, dear? Excuse me for saying, but why didn’t you come back home, come back and take care of your mama?”
Eva shook her head, bottom lip trembling.
“You know that feeling you get, riding a bike down a steep hill? You know it could go so wrong for you… it should go wrong… but you still hope you’ll be okay? You’ll survive unscathed?”
Eva ran her fingers through her hair, gripped her head, tried to control the shivering. All the shivering.
“I guess I thought I could survive the trip,” she said.
“You did survive, dear,” said Mrs Novacek as she paced back into the room, a pair of tea cups rattling on their saucers. She handed one to Eva, who took it with trembling hands. The warmth made her fingers prickle, but it was a good pain to be feeling, after all that cold.
“Drink slowly,” Mrs Novacek said, lowering herself into a chair across from Eva. “You’ve got a lot of cold to undo, and it will take a while.”
“Thanks,” Eva said, sipping the camomile quietly. Her host blew into her own cup and looked out the window.
“It’s colder this year than it has been since I was a girl,” she said, grim. “They say it never snows in Prague until February, but I think this year is different. There was no autumn at all. A parched summer to a bitter winter.”
“It’s like that everywhere,” said Eva. “They say it’s the lack of cars on the roads, messing up the ozone layer. Or… or the other way around, maybe.”
“They say a lot of things,” harumphed the woman.
Eva looked out the sliding glass door, into the pale water-colour sky over the city. A few browned leaves, untouched by the rain, blew across the balcony to the left, and under the divider to—
“That’s it!” she gasped, and quickly put her tea down on the coffee table. Keeping the blankets wrapped tight around her, she scurried to the balcony, and leaned over the edge, peering down the row. A smile grew on her face, and she looked back at the confused Mrs Novacek.
“My mother never locks the balcony door!” she exclaimed, just before the cold air brought her shiver back full-force. “If I can swing around this partition, I can get in through the back!”
Mrs Novacek observed the situation through her thick glasses.
“I think you ought to wait for her to get home,” she said, but Eva had already handed her back her blanket, and was climbing up on the balcony ledge, holding the partition tightly with reddened fingers.
She glanced down below herself as she straddled the two sides, as the wind bit her re-exposed skin. There were gardening tools down there: a rake, push lawn mower and an assortment of pruning shears, half-buried by a scattershot pile of leaves. Three storeys down. Eva’s sneakers slid slightly on the ledge.
She moved herself enough to be able to swing around the rest of the way in a quick motion, and she landed on her mother’s balcony and toppled to the ground.
“Eva! Eva, dear, are you all right?” cried Mrs Novacek from the other side.
Eva got up awkwardly, brushed the grime and dirt off her knees, and gave the sliding glass door a little nudge. It slid open easily.
“I’m great, Mrs Novacek. No trouble at all. I just…”
Her voice trailed off into nothing as she looked into the apartment, and saw the blood splatter on the kitchen wall.