That Saturday in September 1936, Zdeněk had come up from Prague to spend the day in Libčice with Hans. Ella had wrapped some sandwiches in a basket for them, and they had headed for the promenade by the riverbank. They had whiled away their afternoon sitting on the grass, coming up with possible pranks to discuss at their next Recesistů club meeting. And they had chatted about novels and poetry—both Hans and Zdeněk loved poems and wrote verse. As they threw stones into the Vltava and tried to make them skip, they took turns reciting stanzas from a lyrical poem by Rilke.
As usual, they had lost track of time. Hans had taken his friend on the back of his bicycle to catch the train from a neighboring stop. Zdeněk had just managed to clamber onto the train, but the detour meant that Hans was late.
Dinner at home in Libčice, or in Prague, was always at seven-thirty p.m. As Hans raced back up the path to the house on his bicycle, he missed a stone in the shadows cast by the waning sunlight. He lost control. He fell off. He picked himself up, blew the dust off his glasses, and rearranged the chain. He had scraped his arms and legs, and reddened dirt had lodged in his cuts. Tomorrow, undoubtedly, the contusions would be obvious, but this was of no consequence. Hans seemed to be perpetually covered in bruises. He struggled with coordination and constantly walked into things, misstepping, losing his hat or scarf, or leaving his school books behind. He frequently fell off his bicycle. Organizing his body, his things, or his time was not a strength or, as he liked to clarify, a priority. As a result of the mishaps to which he was prone, his parents, with a mixture of pity and affection, had nicknamed him the “unfortunate boy.”
At seven thirty-four that evening, scratched and grimy, that unfortunate boy dumped the bicycle by the side door and rushed in through the kitchen. Ella, Otto, and Lotar were already sitting in the dining room. The stew and dumplings on the sideboard had been served. Jerry wagged his tail as he waited for crumbs beneath the table. Hans quickly sat down and stared at his father with defiant green eyes that seemed more olive as his face reddened with embarrassment. “Handa…” Ella sighed with resignation as he apologized for being late. Hans looked down and rubbed his muddied hands under the table. Before him he could see the elaborate pattern of cobalt-blue vines and flowers meandering across the white plate. This was visible everywhere except in the center.
There, in rebuke, instead of dinner, his father had placed his plain gold pocket watch.
CHAPTER 3 It Thunders Everywhere
In the late 1970s, when I was a young child in Caracas, my parents would wake at different times. My mother liked to sleep longer and then linger in bed. My father used to say that he needed to “stretch the hours” and, weekday or weekend, would rise no later than six-thirty a.m. and disappear into the study that connected with their bedroom. From there, he enjoyed watching the sky lighten.
I was not to disturb them in the mornings. I was allowed into my parents’ rooms only once either was awake and reading the newspapers. There were very few rules in our house, but my parents were strict about this one. Eager to please as the only child at home, I scrupulously obeyed. My parents would call for their breakfast through an internal intercom. My own bedroom was on the other side of the house, so I had no way of hearing the phone ring or the bustle of preparations in the kitchen. I only knew that my parents were awake because of the newspapers.
So I would wait patiently for my cue. The routine hardly altered. The night guard received the papers in a bundle in the small hours and handed them to the housekeeper in the kitchen when he collected his breakfast. She would cut the string that bound them and place them on the cream-carpeted floor just outside the closed white door that led to my parents’ room. She carefully arranged them in a half-opened fan so that the name and headline of each was visible at a glance. When the papers disappeared from the end of the hall, I knew that I was allowed in.
First, my father would take the papers from the floor and withdraw to his study for breakfast. It was then that I joined him. Often I brought my own breakfast tray so we could eat together. There was only room for one at the table by the daybed, so he would help me place my tray on an armchair as I positioned myself cross-legged on the floor. He would hand me the comic strip, the puzzle pages, and a pencil. He gently inquired how I was, but aside from discussing the crossword clues, the sporadic conversation would habitually revolve around the news that he read.
When he finished with the papers, he would carefully arrange them again on the hallway carpet for my mother. He would then go away for meetings, make calls at his desk, or vanish into the room where he repaired watches, leaving me to finish the puzzles on my own.
I would return to my room and wait for the papers to disappear once more, signaling that my mother was up. She ordinarily woke around nine or ten a.m. and had her breakfast in bed, elegant in a nightgown even then. My mother was not interested in puzzles, so I left those behind. I was allowed to usher in the three enormous dogs, and we all nestled in the bed around her while we listened to music or talked about her friends or mine. She worked in the arts and told marvelous stories about the quirks of conductors, musicians, and ballet dancers. Sometimes as she dressed, we would pretend that we were on a stage and dance around the room. On occasion, we sang at the tops of our voices, my mother melodically and I, unfailingly, off-key.
One morning in 1979, when I was eight years old and before I had found the false identity card in the box, my father woke much earlier than usual.
It was not yet dawn. The hallway lamp that was kept on, because I was afraid of the pitch dark, had not yet been switched off. I had heard a rustling and looked down the hall to find the papers gone. The garden leaves rippled in shades of black through the bars of the windows. Yet the lights were turned on in my father’s study. It was too early for breakfast, and I did not have my tray to bring in. I crept down the long hall, pushed gently at the half-open door, and peered through. My father sat, dressed in his navy cotton kimono decorated with white seagulls, lost as he gazed out the window. Outside, the garden was feebly patched with the promise of light. The newspapers lay in a pile unopened on the daybed. I installed myself in my usual spot on the floor. His hair seemed especially white in the shadows. The characteristic poise was absent, and he seemed somehow disjointed, unsettled. He did not hand me the comics or the page with the puzzles. Instead, he turned to me, profoundly serious, and announced that something odd had happened the night before during his dinner at the restaurant. As he had chatted with his friends, he had felt a sharp pain in his left leg.
“When we got home, I looked under my trousers, and I saw these.”
He lifted the edge of his gown slightly, uncovering part of his shin. He pointed at two small red wounds, one exactly above the other, that were clearly visible on his pale skin. “Do you see these holes in my leg?”
I did.
“What do you think they are?” he asked slowly. He seemed exhausted, as if he had not slept.
“Mosquito bites, Papi?”
“I hope you are right. I am not sure at all. They are very round, and their position is unusual. I think they’re something else.”
I was reminded of a news story that he had recounted a few weeks earlier of a Bulgarian dissident in London. The man had been poisoned by spies with a tiny bullet fired from an umbrella as he waited for a bus. The bullet had been shot into his leg and left a minute wound. My father’s meaning struck me.