Gina Valentyn A novel

Gina Valentyn
A novel

This work is pure fiction

Part One

1 About Me

My favorite writer is Jack Kerouac. I read an extract from one of his books, in a travel guide for Brittany. Next thing, I was living near the French town of Languedoc, between that and St Martin’s, working for Philip and Sophie, taking care of their children.
My life until then was like that of the little bonneted lady, Anne Barnard, who travelled with her family in the Cape and wrote to entertain her friends in England. I have great respect for English writers, even Mary Poppins’ character, but her chimney sweep swept her away to places in ways only children can believe.

2 Find Katerin

Katerin is my mother, but I was raised by my grandfather, Fedor Valentyn. I called him ‘Papa’ at first, and later, his new name, just ‘Ted.’ When we left the country, he believed she would join us, and he kept on believing it for years.
There were several ways to leave- by car and travelling south to Yugoslavia, and otherwise directly over the border into Austria. I didn’t know at this time about the escape from detention, of my uncle Henri, a playwright who became too liberal for the government. It was the reason for leaving when we did; we left home like runaways, like escape émigrés, as we were called, late one night, around midnight. By the time we were in Vienna, I realized she wasn’t behind us. I was six years old.
Katerin became a myth to me, due to the way my grandfather spoke of her. At first, whenever someone suggested to him that he should stop building up my hopes - which they didn’t mean unkindly - he would say, “They don’t know her. If they knew what she is like, they wouldn’t suggest it.”
When I asked him to tell me about her, he built her into a story. Even when I knew he was making things up, I retained a set of images;
Katya could develop magical powers, she was a princess, she had wings on her feet, and she carried a magical potion. Katya didn’t age, she grew younger. He was afraid that when she was found, she’d be a little girl, and then he would have to look after us two, together.
“Who will be your mother then?” he said, shaking his head. “We’ll have to get a cook.”
The real Katerin stayed behind when we left our country, and she was connected with the leading political party. I had several arguments to defend Ted’s inaction, and still I had to wonder why he did not return to fetch her. Ted said, when I was old enough to try and understand that it was political.
“I wish I could go to her, and persuade her,” but he couldn’t. Thanks to emigration laws which outlawed anyone who left the Czechoslovakian country under communist rule in that time, he couldn’t return to look for her, and unless the Agency could help him, his hands were pretty much tied.
We lived on a farm in the Eastern Lowlands which now called Mpumalanga, meaning “Place of the Rising sun,” or just “East.” The friends we had travelled with had enough money to provide a home for us and also enough to start out in a business that would sustain itself with hard work, which is what they understood.
Letters were addressed to Fedor Valentyn at our first home and then to Mrs. Ella, who had befriended me when I was a child and took me in to her home during weekdays to help me with my English so that I could catch up with my class work, at a small school in the village nearby the Lodge where we lived.
When Ted wrote to cancel the contract without a reason, the Agency used Mrs. Ella’s address to write to me, but she moved to Knysna, to a place called Willow Tree Farm, and then returned to France. So Willow Tree farm was the last known address for me and Ted on the agency’s files.
The new owners of the farm did not - at first - recognize my name. ‘Gina’ is only a little less foreign sounding than Zeena: it was a long time since any notable Italians were in the region - since the 1940’s when prisoners-of- war were sent to help build up the roads, and work on the farms, but it was my mother’s choice of name for me.

3 The Agency

The Agency operated from Bratislava, behind a music shop, since the early 1980’s, to unite families in the case that someone had left the country, or whole families set out at the start of a holiday, to reappear in Greece, Italy, and countries as far as New Zealand, or the United States.
Leo’s not a real detective; he was helping his uncle in the family business. They started up when Leo’s father –a great soldier, some said, and friend of Joseph Tito- set out one day, around the time of his fiftieth birthday, and just didn’t return. Emil supported his family and paid for Leo’s education until he was allowed to enter university - thanks to changes in the country - and after graduation he became the Agency’s senior partner. He was then 22 years old.
In the first years, any information which Emil gathered about émigrés was confidential and, just in case the police came in asking questions, nothing was written on their files. He did not take any risks with his clients, and wouldn’t take on a client if the missing person had a criminal record, or if motives for disappearance were strongly political. He drew up contracts with several clauses to protect their privacy, and with other protocol to protect the agency and how much of it was written or where it was stored, Leo never found out, because by the time he was working for the Agency, they were working openly in Bratislava, now the capital of the Republic of Slovakia, as well as in Prague, in the democratic Czech Republic.
Emil had always had a good success rate in finding people, which- Leo explained- was due to his intuition more than anything else- but the new Agency had all the internet technology they needed and everything that was stored in boxes gathering dust was added to their new data base, with meticulous attention to detail.
He had to question if there was something he had missed, when their new office girl stole the file on Katerin- removing the actual envelope and everything in it. She disappeared, to reappear in South Africa, in Knysna, the closest city to Willow Tree Farm.
Shortly before that, she had received a gift, from a doctor in Prague, whose relationship to Henri Valentyn was already known, and which went back as far as they were able to trace- to earlier years in Prague when Henri was a student amongst other liberal writers and teachers. That’s how I met Leo Nikolensky.

When first we lived there, the Lodge in White River in the Lowveldt was a small tourist attraction offering trips to nearby reserves for game viewing, with ample wildlife in its own grounds.
Ted and his friend, Pavel Terekova, or Paul, were converting the farm to Macadmias. Sometimes we’d take a drive to a nearby ridge, where the view gave way to way to pine forests and rolling hills. Beyond that were wild buck and Leopards and sometimes a tame buck ventured up close.
Once we saw traces of a lion, which came from a broken section of the fence, because refugees from the east made their way through the reserve from their own border. Their leaving was not illegal, as it was for us to leave from Czechoslovakia, but their entry into South Africa was, and risky as well.
This contradiction had occurred to Philip – Mrs. Ella’s only child, a boy of a few years older than me, who considered himself my friend from time to time - and fascinated him for several years, enough to spark some interest in him for Africa, and although the interest of his father, in Algiers, some time ago, is what left his mother a widow, she encouraged him in it.
His father was remembered by friends in the church overseas and Philip’s mother’s correspondence with them kept alive their interest added to which was the political situation here, and by this Philip was persuaded to travel to Britain and graduate at a good theological school, and give up his love for Africa so as to advance in the church by studying further, which created a problem so he quit studies and began to drift a little, travelling and playing music- in the time that Philip was travelling, we became friends, as he enjoyed writing to me, and when he stopped, I knew he had met someone.
Sophie worked for a magazine as photographic editor and they were married at Chartres Cathedral. They lived for a year in Cape Town - after Barcelona - and moved to Brittany.
The correspondence that I might have received from the Agency could have been forwarded to Willow tree farm at the time of the changes, and that explains why I did not hear from them, but once-
I had read a letter, addressed to my grandfather, or glanced at it because it was written in Czech, which I could not read anymore. A photograph was included, of Katerin, with a group of performers in a travelling theatre, in the early seventies. She was a young actress and dancer. A look in her eyes seemed to be reaching out to me, in an appealing way, mysteriously, even on the beach, in t-shirt and summer shorts, down to the knees, and how young she looked, my mother- like a girl who at once to knew too much and still remained a child, such as children who grow up in the cities. I know she grew up in a small village but not more than that of her life, or how to compare it with or relate it to mine, with which hers was still inexplicably entwined. I spent many hours looking at the picture, the only clue I had to her identity at the time.
But Leo had confirmed why Ted – and his agency- had no success in finding my mother; if one left without permission, one couldn’t expect a welcome home, but rather, one risked being arrested, until 1989. The Agency had not been able to place advertisements. She had changed her name and all the records. Finally Ted who did whatever he could in the time after leaving, had to let go of the idea that Katya would return, and he couldn’t bear to lie to me anymore about the hopes he held, and we didn’t talk about my mother.
As Leo explained to me he added; ‘I’m sorry…Ted could be right; she had written the letter to denounce her family and keep her work at the theatre. We couldn’t look for her that hard, when the police were watching us, hoping to find her cousin Henri- he was wanted for several reasons. He is now welcome; anyone who left is welcome back home.’
It was a hollow sort of reassurance. The difficult part of speaking of her was admitting that she had written Ted a letter, and so she knew where we were all the time. He held my hand as we were walking, towards the car, setting out on a journey to find her, which helped a bit.
‘Everything has changed,’ he said, ‘we have an office in Prague now, and can search more openly. I am in communication with them daily, so can assure you of the hope to find Katerin more easily.’

4 No Parking

When Leo said goodbye at the airport entrance he did not want me to park the car and walk with him. I left him at the entrance to international departures. We had travelled together to Paris- Orly airport and Cape Town and then Knysna and he didn’t want to take up any more of my time. I didn’t understand why he was leaving so suddenly; best to just let him go without trying to discover a reason. He’d asked me to write to him and renew the contract with the Agency, but I was thinking at the time it was just an excuse to see him again.
Then I changed my mind. I wanted to tell him it’s alright and he hadn’t wasted my time, I was disappointed but I hadn’t expected we would discover anything new by travelling to the farm, in any case.
I missed him already, and wondered why I had just let him walk away. I could have walked with him. There was still time, so I stopped the car at the closest parking space and raced towards the airport departures’ lobby. Too late, he was past the passenger’s only gate. More steps outside the building, leading to a window that lighted it up, and from which one could wave.
Seen from above, he looked so small. The thick glass designed to shut out airport traffic noise, left me helpless, if he would not look up, there was no means to reach him. Here was this wall between us, of solid glass, impenetrable. At that moment, I thought I would never see him again.
He had no luggage to carry, just an air ticket, but he seemed to move as slowly as everyone else, who was more weighed down. They were moving sort of like a river, towards something inevitable. He was not even the same size as most of the crowd, with their large coats and suitcases. No one stopped to smile at him or say, “Hey, it’s Leo.” He was, like me, alone. It seemed so strange. I had thought we were different.
Several remarkable coincidences followed. The security at the airport was stepped up, due to some visiting diplomats. Someone had noted a 4x4 stopped a short distance behind the hired car - which was parked illegally - a silver Mercedes, dust covered, the yellow-red dust from Namibia, and a passenger stepped from the 4x4 and ran up to the car. She found a window open at the rear. Her movements suggested intensity and defiance, as she threw in a package. Shouting something over her shoulder, in the direction of the cameras, she returned to the 4x4. The driver had left the engine running, and they sped away.
A tow truck waiting behind the 4x4 pulled up alongside the car with orange lights flashing. I had not seen the Mercedes stop or leave, but I arrived as the truck driver tossed equipment on the ground, which would attach the hired car to his truck, and I began to run towards him, to ask him to stop. He had no intention of it.
“I am sorry I parked in the wrong place, but I am here now and will leave at once.”
He pointed to all the signs and to a depot in the yard below some steps, and said I should get there and pay if I wanted to take the car away. He attached it as quickly as he could, as if afraid I might prevent him, walked to his door- determined to hold onto his prize.
There was a locked gate in front of those steps, and he said I might take a shortcut through the airport lobby and turn left after the restaurant. “There’s a fire escape, so turn right.”
This surprised me. His original stare was so rude and annoyed, I didn’t expect a helpful suggestion, even directions, but I didn’t catch them. It had been a hot day, only now cooling down with a mild breeze. The difficulty I’d faced already on this trip, which Leo made light for me, rested heavily. The sight of another obstacle, the way he looked at me, the absence of Leo, made me feel sick- perhaps I made the truck driver feel sick; perhaps he hated people like me, who don’t obey the rules, and hoped to get away with it. Perhaps we were both thirsty- well, I was. Knowing that might be all, I kept quiet. His next comment through the window of the truck was less than civil.
“You are standing in my way.” His accent was strange. There was a queue, both at the ATM and the counter selling cool drinks. By the time I found the depot from inside the airport, which was not the way I was directed, someone had reported the camera- footage.
Getting busy at work, they scanned the entrances and exit roads all around and found the 4x4 had been parked at the domestic departures before turning into the strip of road that led to the international’s drop – and – go section, and it could seem as if they had been following us. It was evident to security that the car had been tampered with, as a window was open- I had forgotten to close it - and the truck driver had left it standing a little way further down the no-parking strip, at the other side of the airport entrance and out of view of the near cameras. That had security running towards it a few minutes later, and the 4x4’s first two passengers were seen in domestic departures. There were originally four passengers in it, two had checked in for a flight connecting the airport with Durban en route to Mauritius.
They had not left yet. One appeared sun burnt and travel worn; he had camped for most the time on a stretcher and had enjoyed every minute of it. The other, freshly shaven, had spent the last days of the visit in a hotel resort and he had wanted to be early, and he was irritable as he had collected some mementoes and he wanted to claim back vat on these already.
They were both American – Californians - in their late thirties, early forties. Both carried a change of clothing, desert- items, heavy boots, and travel maps, and cameras. Ordinary tourists, aside from traces of cocaine in a small case used originally for carrying some instamatic camera film, which was found in the director’s hand luggage. Nothing to justify searching everything. The cameras were expensive and needed careful handling, and they protested, they were on their way to a film- shoot, but they weren’t threatening anything, rather appealing to security to take care of their things. They had done nothing wrong. The driver of the 4x4 was the one who should explain. The size of the case did not match any of their equipment. The pictures they had were highly confidential material not released, and this was an infringement of their own rights.
I was not held for questioning, I couldn’t leave anyway, as the car was being cleaned up and the paperwork was not in order. The receptionist wrote an invoice for the fine and she was clearly in no hurry.
I had to spell my name a few times, as usual. It seemed a bit odd, surely I was not the only one anxious to get on with my life- the fresh smell of the nail-varnish on her half- lacquered nails suggested I was right. She was busy doing her nails, and she wanted to get on with that- some people have it lucky. Then their phone rang.
“Wait a minute please,” she said to me, and then, “we have already called the car hire company and we know that the name of the person hiring the car differs to yours, and they can’t release it to you, but someone is on his way to ask some questions, and maybe it is your lucky day. Our company manager is visiting here at the moment and he likes to improve the quality of customer care, is always lenient, more than the staff are allowed to be.”
The agreement was signed with Leo’s signature and he’d paid for another week so I could drive to Cape Town and still have the use of the car for another week.
The manager of the company was not suspicious by nature. He was thinking of his company’s image should anything go missing, from the car, and my suitcases, so he had been to security to make sure they weren’t searched- why should they be? I was not taking a plane. All they had to do was update the details.
The next morning’s news gave out mixed items, one being that an American director visiting a local production crew documenting the lives of the indigenous people in the Namib desert, were stopped at the airport, and he wanted to sue the airport for breach of confidentiality. Another, that the planned visit of the deputy- president of the Czech Republic who is here for a political convention was the reason for increased airport security, and that there was no need for alarm. Reports of a bomb in a car parked by the entrance were insubstantial.
Another that a suspicious package left in a car at the airport entrance had led to arrests of two suspects, but there was no reason for alarm. Another showed an ambassador of Czech shaking hands with two American tourists and inviting them to visit his beautiful country. The only definite item they had, but were not able to use, is that the tow truck had been hi-jacked to collect a car and plant a bomb in it, and offload it towards the depot, on the other side of the airport’s entrance. The bomb was found in the tow truck, which the hi-jacker had abandoned.
My conversation with the truck driver had prevented him from getting away unnoticed, his face was recorded on the security cameras. This wasn’t allowed to the public- the hi-jacker might still be found.
Alexei had known about it somehow, and he said they were working round the clock to find out who he was, and should be anyway, here and in Prague. It was maybe related to the visiting diplomats who had arrived that day.
He had collected the photograph of the car and given it to me, ‘for your privacy’ and he’d speculated about what went wrong with the planning of the whole incident; with my car being the one chosen, so long as the 4x4 was parked behind it, the hi-jacker was not able to park the truck where he wanted so as to collect mine, until I had seen him and with the event of the passenger throwing something into the car, the whole thing looked conspicuous and he abandoned the tow truck and ran.
With the risk of being identified by me, while the intention was to blame the bomb on some other political group, the purpose of it was lost.
As he parked the tow truck before leaving the airport the watchman for the yard who was coming on duty did not recognize the truck driver and had called security.
I had already been seen returning to the car from the airport window and I’d had a brief exchange with the tow truck driver, so they could not just let me go.
The cameras had captured me in a way that suggested my innocence to the car-hire agency’s manager. He thought of his wife at this time. What if it had been her? She sometimes came home with a parking ticket. She was a mother of two children, late for the hairdresser, enquiring at the bank whether she had left her purse behind – she parked illegally on occasion- she was not a terrorist. “That altered my perception of things.”
In time, he arrived, shook my hand, and wrote my details on his official form in a desk that was cleared for him to hold an interview: I still did not know what had taken place. My signature was “for insurance purposes,” and I “should have been named as the co-driver of the car,” He had the original application to compare notes. I thought of asking him for Leo’s forwarding address but changed my mind.
I gave him the address of Philip’s flat in Cape Town and something in him lightened. That seemed to ring a bell. He did not have a suspicious nature. “Are you living together?” he asked, reaching for a staple on the table to join the pages.
“No, I work for him as an au pair, taking care of his children.” Meaning Philip, naturally.
“Oh.” He looked at the original form that Leo had filled in, and put it down again. “It says here, unmarried.” He was smiling anyway and didn’t seem curious, not as curious as I was then. “So you stopped at the passenger drop- and go strip and said goodbye, then on impulse, pulled over to run up the steps to wave goodbye?
“By the time you realized it wasn’t likely he would see you and you began to walk towards your car, the tow truck was standing by the car. Did you notice anything else?”
“There were other cars but mine.”
“Yours was the one most recently parked, and you think it was unfair of him to take it firstly?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s an idiosyncrasy of the airport’s layout that the most recently parked car is often moved first, but the reason is that it’s the easiest for the tow truck to reach, so this is a regular complaint.” He added that there was a parking garage and even a service run by his agency that assisted clients to park on arrival at the airport, in allocated spots. Also, there was not much to be done about the unfairness of the penalty and inconvenience, unless the drivers themselves realized that was the risk they were taking, and obeyed the signs.
He said this all in a friendly way, adding that there had been a package thrown into the car window, and it would be best if I gave them a landline contact number, as it was still at the security desk. They would deliver me another car in the next half hour or so. I should wait here for it, and anything I might have left in the car- a suitcase? A backpack? I said yes, not realizing he meant both. My suitcase went missing at Willow Tree.
“The car is having a valet-service- inside and out- if you know of anything that’s left in it, can you describe it? I can make sure it gets back to you…sunglasses? Jewelry?”
“I can’t think of anything else.”
A lottery ticket. “Write to me if we win,” he’d said.

5 Leaving Brittany

For how long he was there, I can’t be sure; he appeared quietly, from the balcony, through a French window. I was clearing shelves from a wardrobe that smelt of lavender, and was filled with toys, picture books, and flat-rimmed canvas hats that gleam like white birds in the sun. Sophie had fallen in love with the château, and with the French impressionists. We couldn’t agree on things of importance like routine, and discipline, for her children –she said it was up to me to provide all those things but she, in between her busy schedules, wanted to make the most of her time with her own children, and stung me sorely by her words, because I wanted so much to like her. I felt as if she engaged in a kind of tug-of –war with me, to prove she held her children’s loyalty and love no matter how much I did for them, and because she would have preferred someone else, a bit older maybe, with more experience of children, or younger and easy to impress with her own experience, I wasn’t sure.
Philip had written to me just after Maya was born:

“I have seen through the illusion, but one must always keep faith. I don’t know why my parents did not warn me of life’s unreality. We are so arrogant, we think everyone needs us, no one needs us, only the creator, to fulfill the creation, and it needs no explaining away. I had to find out in India- but it’s not my home. Our tiny baby knows already, and she finds things for me to do, she believes she is a princess and that she has done us a favor by this visit.
I must return to the church because I had a sense of vocation which led me this far. I won’t be following my father’s footsteps. I hope that I won’t make my parent’s mistakes. That is why I called her ‘Maya’.”

What happened to the older-brother authority who sought me out, if only when there was not anyone else at home, to improve my mind and teach me logic and reasoning? He liked to ask me about my day and point out ways I could be kinder. He always knew better. Even now, but he’d become a dreamer. That is quite a name for a child to carry.
Sophie’s realism was a thing which saved the situation once the Chateau was re=opened as a guest house, with some debts to pay, she arranged the sale of Willow Tree Manor by subdivision of the original buildings, to some friends of hers, who were willing to renovate these and set up a small guesthouse and film studio, and of Willow Tree Farm, which belonged to Mrs. Ella as well, to the church community which had been running it for some time.
She changed all the taps in the chateau which was its biggest expense, and then packed and left for Paris where she joined a new magazine, leaving all three children in Languedoc, and returning whenever she could to run the guest house as well, by which I mean she made up a list of instructions for others to follow while she was away.
Philip couldn’t work –he was sulking in his office and spoke to no one. It was more a matter of life or death than their usual fights. Usually, Philip was so inclined to give way. I felt I should give way, but how? I was living Sophie’s dream, running the chateau, but she could arrive at any time and would want to know why she wasn’t consulted on something, so decisions were left unmade. Or she could arrive with her city friends and burden the chef with menu’s which were exorbitant or take them out for dinner in the nearby town and ruin her reputation because Philip refused to join them.
I knew it was wrong for me, a bad career move, to stay on but hadn’t decided what I should like to be doing with my life anyway.
Never mind my friendship with Philip; he didn’t like to show it, he was concerned about the local gossip, he fretted about Sophie’s feelings while she was away, what was said of her disloyalty to him- and while only he understood the language- that didn’t make sense to me. Nothing did. I didn’t have friends in Languedoc, I couldn’t speak the language, and night was falling, another night in the ‘desert’, stranded.
Aside from his dark good looks, Leo’s expression reminded me of the Little Prince so much so that if he had walked up any closer to me and held out a pen saying ‘draw me a sheep,’ I wouldn’t be surprised.
I cleared some debris from a chair and rang the bell that would bring a tea tray. It was Sophie’s idea to serve tea at four o’ clock and just on the hour, rather than allow guests to ask for it throughout the day. She tried to make a joke of it, saying this was her concession to routine, and added that I was the only one allowed to break the rule, and must do so, whenever I please, it would please her very much if I did.
The thought made me smile as I explained to Leo about tea- time. “Most people ring the bell and then find the front door isn’t locked. The window cleaner is always here on Wednesdays, and no one goes into the kitchen or near it after tea- time, just so you know.” He took it as vital information, smiling like an old acquaintance renewing a friendship, or seeing that I liked him then, but he had more important business at hand.
“I am happy that we met before you leave, I should ask you not to leave in a hurry, but speak no French at all, and the result may be the opposite.”
“Then you haven’t come to replace me as a tutor for the children, and-” I stopped. I was about to say that in that case I had no reason to stay, but he had said that already. How much he said already was still in my head, I couldn’t answer him.
“It’s Gina Valentyn- forgive me, I see it now. My name is Leo. So happy I found you in time; there’s a flight from Paris later tonight. If it hasn’t any seats, for us both, I will sleep on the floor – meaning the floor-of the hotel, and there’s another one early in the morning, from Orly airport, a flight. And a hotel room. What do you think?” in a language he knew only a little better than French, and then continued to tell me about Tessa, that she had information she shouldn’t have taken, from the Agency. She had used what she knew to gain access to someone’s home and was accused of blackmail, whether or not this meant she had new leads to my mother’s identity he couldn’t say.
My reasons for not asking enough questions were too much detail to explain to the car hire manager, but with what I learnt along the way, I suspected the package thrown it into the car window had something to do with Tessa. He told me it was just papers and a few stones to give them weight.

There was enough in Leo’s first explanation to justify a trip to Willow Tree, and I wanted to leave the chateau and he was sympathetic, and so we travelled together.
“Sophie knows nothing of guest house management, only magazines. She says I know enough to step in where needed most, as a friend, but it is her fault for upsetting the chef- he walked out.” Just in case she was needed, Mrs. Ella, Philip’s mother, was on her way. I was clearing this room because it was the best room in the chateau.
Sophie called it the morning room and it had some sun then, but was only relatively bright, compared to the dismal afternoons. I called it the warning room because it had so many reminders, wherever she was, that I was still answerable to her, and because when the sun left this room, the rest of the château was freezing cold. Why go out? The children loved it the best. Right then they were missing their mom and asking why Mrs. Ella was so late. I began to wonder if I would really be able to let go.
“If Sophie knew I was on my way to Paris, she wouldn’t ask why, and she would insist I take the car and bring the twins to her for a visit, she had asked Gerard to do so this morning.”
Leo’s look brightened at the idea of a car. His eyes gave me hope, and said, “Let’s try.” It was like my plane had collided in the desert but now the stars were bright and cold, and speaking of distant places.
“You did receive the letter from the agency, in response to yours?”
“No, and nor did I write to your agency. I don’t know the address.”
“But you wrote –no, then you did not write, to say, ‘The case should be solved by now, what is the delay?’ “
“I should not think of writing to you in that way.”
“My letter was addressed to Gina Valentyn, and you don’t receive mail.”
“I might have, I didn’t know to ask after letters.”
“It is your right to receive them regardless of what you thought, and I am here now.”
He smiled and I sensed his intention now was just to make a joke, but he remained serious at the same time. “For that reason, we may take it that you knew of my letters and are packing to travel with me, but best travel light.”
In case he didn’t believe I hadn’t written, I gave my answer in more detail.
“What does that mean- ‘what is the reason for the delay’-? It can’t have been me; I know why there were delays. My mother didn’t want to be found.”
His mild reproachful look had more meaning than his words. “Events occurred after my letter” – he began to explain, ending with, “I assure you that your mother will be found, after Tessa, and there is no reason for another delay.”
I felt as if my grandfather’s ghost was in the room, nothing eerie. He had made me promise I wouldn’t forget. “Don’t give up hope – don’t believe anything you hear- no -one knows Katya as I do, and you’ll find out how she is. Wait and see.”

6 Willow Tree Farm

Anything that would help Leo was still with Ana Terekova at the Lodge; the garage at Willow Tree was searched, we found only Margie’s old guitar. Leo bought new strings for it in town and aside from that and my suitcase, which was in the trunk of the car, and his backpack, which he had given me to replace my suitcase, as we thought it was stolen because we didn’t look in the trunk- why would we, neither of us had opened it at any time? - There wasn’t anything of value I could remember. A jacket.
When we met with the twins, Sophie did not have time to ask any questions. “The weather’s so changeable in Cape Town, and you didn’t pack carefully, we’ve made you work so hard and overtime. It’s just a jacket- and it suits you so well, I don’t have the complexion to wear it, please take it, Gina.”
She surprised me with this spontaneous gift. Leo said the family would realize they needed me as soon as I was away. I had explained as much as I could about Sophie’s kindness being a form of self-defense following on other actions, and he didn’t quite see it, but on the flight he was looking at the jacket, and it made him restless. Finally he took down his coat from the hand luggage rail and gave it to me, saying, “Here, you have no use for something that provides no warmth, it is just extra luggage, and we can leave it on the plane.”
The look he gave me then was calm and serene. Soon we were watching the sunset over Africa from the window.

“You drove quite a long distance over a dirt road?” Asked the car= hire company’s manager.
“We visited a farm and the driveway was muddy. It rained last night.”

When I arrived with Leo, at Willow Tree, Alexei was already there, and had been for some time. It’s no coincidence that he was there, I understand that now.
He was playing soccer with a few children on the lawn. He did not wave or walk over to greet us at first, but stayed away for as long as he could. Margie had called from the window a few times, “Mind the duck pond!” But no one paid attention, and the air had turned cold, but it made no difference, until one of the children had fallen into the pond, and the other almost had done so.
Margie was also edgy about Joel’s planned return at the time of our visit. He had called to say he would arrive, without saying when. She couldn’t look him in the eye as she said it. She kept looking out of the window- was it just habit? A window seat, with a view of the garden and pond, and the willow trees that gave the farm its name. “Can it be that Tessa has left town?” she asked. She wanted to ask, “with Joel—they left at the same time,” but that hung unspoken in the air.
“I hope she has left,” Lexey replied. “They almost set fire to the building she was living in, after a police raid. Tessa was planning to travel and see some of Africa, with a friend who works at the nearby farm, isn’t that so? You told me you had met them both.”
“But Sven left, weeks before Joel left.” Margie chided. It seemed like she was chiding him. She looked tired.
“Then Tessa had no reason to remain in town; if it were for Sven’s sake, she would have left. But she would, if she were planning to return, have left some of her things –if you want to know, ask at the farm, if she has collected them yet.”
Margie knew that Tessa was with Joel, but not what it should mean to her. He was showing some Americans the location of his planned documentary and they would be camping and they would have to have a girl to help with the cooking and things.
Her children were drenched in mud, and had finished removing their shoes on the porch. They were sent to take a bath, with a sharp reprimand and a command to behave better with guests around, and Alexei was barefoot and in wet t-shirt, shoes dripping with water, with a playful grin, which gave away his age. He retreated to the kitchen to make pancakes.
No one would think he had recognized Leo and spoke as he did because they couldn’t speak privately, just then, but Leo understood him well enough. Later, they exchanged words in Czech. He’d been travelling as a Russian, and a photographer, but Leo knew that he was nothing but the ‘boy next door’. His father could have been Russian, but they lived in the outskirts of Prague, he was a government official who’s rather mediocre position had worsened after more rigid soviet party politicians replaced Alexander Dubcek and his cabinet, in 1968.
As Leo began to tune Margie’s violin for her, his eyes met mine with a grateful look. He had been hoping to find Tessa. It was a guess that she was here, as the files she had stolen from the Agency would have this address. Alexei’ s presence was accounted for as well- Tessa was in trouble, for pretending to be someone she was not, and for paying a visit to one of Prague’s influential families. They would have sent someone to find her.

7 Leo at the Airport

“Alright,” said the car- hire company’s manager. Everything about his manner suggested that it was a privilege to go the extra mile, for someone like me- a customer- that I am worth it. I was still thinking of Leo. The more I thought of him, the clearer his image became in my mind, and I wondered what I had done to deserve meeting him. I should have parked the car and walked with him.
I’d given Philip’s landline number for his apartment in Cape Town, which we used before moving to France. The caretaker kept an eye on things; he would be able to let me in. He also would forward any mail that arrived; maybe he had kept some letters addressed to me, not knowing I was in France with the family. This would be a good time to return to the apartment.
Forty-five minutes later the manager returned with keys. I left with the advice to wait for their call first thing in the morning.
What I had said made sense to him. He thought about it- while it occurred often that the last car to stop there was the first to be towed away should there be more than two cars, there were seldom more than two cars. That means someone wasn’t doing his work for enough time for the offenses to accumulate.
So the hi-jacked tow truck’s real driver’s story and my story coincided. He picked up his file and returned to the main airport building, ready to face the music. One thing worried him, the staff at his office said that Leo was already on the plane when they first called him. He hoped it wasn’t true. It would not look good for him if he was mistaken, and he had let a primary suspect get away. A car bomb had been located on the other side of the parking lot, and they were pinning this onto the eastern Europeans, not a local group.

When I arrived at the apartment, it was dark, but not late. I could hear the sound of a child singing downstairs, a voice haunting and melodic, dogs barking, the pacing of someone upstairs, a sound of running water, and then things went quiet.
The quiet buzz of a city’s late night traffic in the far distance, with the murmur of the ocean not so far away, were the only sounds.
The plane which Leo was booked to fly on was just being cleared after a long delay. Some passengers waiting with him were asleep but most had collected themselves near the check=in and as the announcement was made that it was time, they sighed with relief.
He had noted earlier some officials in the uniform he recognized, and even the flag of his own country. He thought he had a book to read in his coat pocket, but he could not find it- perhaps Tessa had picked it up to read, and kept it.
That would be so like her, although she said she did not read. She had no concept of another person’s property. She had been in their room, and she was in a lot of trouble right now. The emails from the Agency confirmed it all.
He was mildly depressed. Airports can’t be depressing for long, if one looks around, if one waits in the right place, watching the next flood of frenzied passengers arriving, waving and kissing and hugging their loved ones. It was like an extension of his own work, which he enjoyed, but he felt too down to notice that, thinking of Tessa - she had betrayed his trust in her, again. What made him think she would give back something she had taken that didn’t belong to her? She was a bad egg, he decided. It was a word I gave him, but was not thinking about me at all, because it made him ask if he had done the right thing by leaving so quickly and he didn’t like to pursue the idea. It was Emil and the Agency who made the suggestion that he should review his action =and quickly= at the same time as quit the investigation; now he couldn’t even justify his time away.
They couldn’t deny that Tessa might use some letters written by Henri to uncover a scandal and sell it to an American magazine, but if Henri was afraid of that, he knew where to find her now. Emil understood the significance of the letters, and all he could do before Tessa was found was hope that she would return everything, so that they could rescue their own reputation along with the stolen jewelry belonging to the Dubanovic family. Otherwise, what she had done proved how easily someone could access information about a client.
Now getting on in years, his uncle had made an error of judgment, and to Leo it seemed like for the first time. Usually they had an advantage over any competition in spite of their not having any special training; they worked by intuition. Leo had to allow for his one weakness. He had taken pity on Tessa, and credited her with a good nature.
Emil had laid out the rules for Tessa clearly and explained to Leo her helpless situation. He was primarily interested in finding her own family for her and why she wasn’t with them. Tessa’s tasks were to make tea, and take calls and keep the office open when Emil stepped out for lunch or to do some work and there was no one else around. She was virtually destitute on the first morning when Leo found her sitting at the desk, to replace the previous assistant. A girl of no more than eighteen years, in a large coat, and scarf, which covered some the mess of her hair.
He began to allow her to sit at his desk sometimes and she learnt to use the internet to follow the latest trends in fashion, as if planning to make them up for herself, while she had reduced herself to wearing rags by the drug habit, and depended on the support of her useless boyfriend. Leo knew that she was making a pretence sometimes of a sketch of some latest fashion clothing range, somewhat pathetically, as her skill with a pencil was virtually nil. She looked as if she should be in school. Her stories were unbelievable.
He never believed for a minute that Tessa had a father and she learnt to stay out of his way. It was by the element of surprise that he had caught up with her. It was a risk to take his client along, but he knew that when he planned the trip. She surprised him as well, agreeing as she had to return everything and then doing nothing- he had really believed she would come to her senses, and return the missing items after he had explained to her the criminal nature of the offense. Now Emil had to decide if they would lay charges against her.
Intuition does not come after the fact, but… “au fait…” the word in French came to him, he wondered what it meant. Maybe he wasn’t learning the language quickly enough.
There was a newspaper lying on the table, with a picture of the senator who was currently the most popular candidate in Prague, for the upcoming elections, and besides him, the good looking, most photographed, doctor - not qualified to be politics, but with a known alliance to Jiri Slav. They were often seen together. Doctor Dubanovic’s good looks made up in some way (so people said) for Jiri’s rather rough looking countenance.
This was the morning papers. Jiri Slav was due to arrive that day- Milan Dubanovic had arrived some hours ago. The picture was not recent, but of both men meeting with Nelson Mandela, after the elections of 1994. Something about their country and this one having so much in common, that they looked forward to a healthy interaction in future, and they both hoped to return soon.
Why would Milan really want to create relations to a country so far from home? Would it be possible they could meet in person? If that is what he wanted, then why? Leo began to think of me suddenly, and then he looked up to the skylight.

8 Call Neil

Why was my suitcase in the trunk of the hired car? Leo wouldn’t have put it there, he would not change his habits and place anything in the trunk that we might need on the way- he lived as if he could at any time have someone following him.
I’d seen this in Paris when we made the detour to leave the car and take a bus. He was careful to explain that it was an extra precaution, because of the twins. They were giggling at him and pointing at interesting scenery. He was watching the rear-view mirror frequently and he’d asked, “You have friends behind us?” and then he said to the girls “Opsy daisy, we have engine trouble.”
That made them giggle again. They didn’t mind changing for a bus. “It’s what you call stalling for time.”
“But Philip’s car?”
He made a slight face. If they chose to follow the car, it wouldn’t be for long. As we were making our way to a hotel where he had left his luggage, he decided we should make a detour, because we were being followed, and so closely, that we took a side street, and ran, laughing, into a bar to get away from Gerard, the chauffeur. I recognized him as he walked by and called his name.
“You shouldn’t have done that” Leo said, but I was pleased to see him and hear that he had followed us from Languedoc, almost from the Chateau, by chance. It was his day off. He knew that Leo would not want to smoke a cigarette, that’s how he began to befriend him, by insisting on it, until Leo agreed. Gerard enjoyed proving he had some power of persuasion. Leo said he only smoked when he wasn’t working; it was the way he knew sometimes that he wasn’t at work, and kept his eye on the door most the time. From then on, he couldn’t be serious about anything, but as we boarded the plane, he began to change.
“You need not to worry,” he said. “You are in good hands with the Agency, we’ll take the most direct route to Willow Tree, and you will know if the roads are good.”
“Thank you.”
“When Philip finds out that he is on his own, he will treat his wife better, and his children, and you.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Is it really? So you would be distressed and tearful over nothing? I thought you had feelings for Philip and a fight with him, and it was difficult to leave.”
“I wish Sophie hadn’t changed so much. I didn’t even know how little she liked me.”
“She may be jealous – what if she could defend you to him, can’t you turn things around?”
“He doesn’t find fault with me and he doesn’t even know I’m there. How can I turn things around?”
“He pretends coldness to you for her sake, and yours. If he doesn’t notice you, then you are doing your job properly.”
Leo asked for his wallet, which was in his coat pocket, and began to show its contents. “Here, this picture was taken almost a year ago, to trace you.” It was taken from a distance, but I could see it was me, and the twins, in the park by Deer Park Café.
“How do you have that?” I asked.
“Here’s a picture of me- and here is something you have to have, I don’t give this out to just anybody.” He stopped. I had no answer to that, I was waiting. “Whatever happens or whatever you find out, use this card”. It was from a music shop in Cape Town. “If for any reason we are separated before this is over, and you need to call me, use this number. Ask for someone who can fix violins, from our country. Whatever he tells you, will be a message from me… trust me.”
Then his wallet contained also business cards, of people he didn’t contact, a notebook of information he didn’t need, and he began to explain these to me.
“We have only Tessa to worry about.”
“So she is a bad egg?” I was looking at the in-flight magazine with pictures of a Faberge egg. Leo smiled.
“We are the best Agency for this work, but at times there are reasons why someone might follow me, so I take care always, “ he said, when Gerard waved, and came over to say he was following us to tell us he had the car and there was nothing wrong with it. Seeing me with Leo just made his day for him, if I would introduce him, and we could have a drink together.
The bar was cheerful and friendly, but he led us to another one. It was no better but he was well known in it, and the girls all liked him, because he kissed them and would have them talk about their love lives. From what we could follow of it, he solved problems, and he created further problems. If we could follow the conversation, it would have been fun, and the best of it was, we didn’t have to, it wasn’t in our language.
Leo held my eyes whenever some idea he picked up amused him and he held my hand. Gerard wanted to drive us home, and asked what time we might leave, so I told him I wasn’t planning to return that night.
“Come, I show you the real Paris” he said quickly, but there wasn’t time. Our plane was leaving around ten am, the “real Paris” isn’t awake by that time, the guide book says, so Leo said. We couldn’t find the hotel we had set out from, and it was a race to the airport.

The egg was garnished with gold and it had blue whirls in it. Yes, Tessa had stolen jewelry. Her intention was blackmail. The charge was of theft, but there was no connection between the hi-jacking of the tow truck and her appearance at the airport.
I woke suddenly after a bad dream. There was a car parked across the street with darkened windows -no reason to stop, as no one stepped in or out. It moved when I returned to the window to look from behind the curtain, a half an hour later, slowly, quite sinister in a way. That could mean nothing, but I dreamed of snakes crawling and creeping all over the kitchen. Some might interpret that differently, but I grew up in Africa and I know the meaning of fear of snakes. When you look at one you feel it. When you know the grass around you and where they hide, you can sense it. You begin to feel friendly with everything else around you, understanding daylight. The air above a snake quivers a little bit.
That’s when I called Neil. It’s the name given to me when I dialed the number which Leo gave me, saying I should ask for someone who mends violins in the city- in Cape Town. No use to make the pretence I was looking for a violin-maker at that time of night, I just dialed the number, without thinking and said I was sorry to call so late. I had begun to tell him my violin was broken and realized it was late. His reply was a silence, and then, “I will be in the shop tomorrow, bring it in with you.”
“I can’t.” I said, and gave my reason. “I have to wait by the phone.” I described quickly what happened at the airport, and that Leo had thought we were being followed before then, but had made light of it, and now I wasn’t sure. The same silence and I wondered if he thought I was crazy, or what - if I had a wrong number. Then he said briefly, “What’s your number, can I call you back in a minute- just one minute, that’s all, don’t be afraid.
“Don’t you have a cell phone?” he asked when he called, not hello or anything.
“No.”
“Why not? You could go out.” That was a relief; I thought he meant I was in danger. “Never mind about that now -- look out the window, there’s a white car, one of ours … tell me if you see it?”
“Yes.”
“I can call it off, if you prefer.”
“I will sleep better with it there, thank you.”
He said the car was sent after my arrival with Leo for a security measure and the driver thought Leo was with me as I had his back-pack. He called again in the morning to say that he had a message for me. Usually short with words and speaking quickly, Neil’s brevity changed now to a quieter tone. “I don’t know how to just give it to you, but your friend wanted me to just tell you, ‘Goodbye, my dear’.”
“Oh!”
“You should get a cell phone. You could go out, see an old friend. You won’t need to call me again, I am sure, but call me, don’t hesitate.”

9 Deer Park Cafe

A call from Philip woke me quite early. I thought it was the car hire company again, as he said my name as if he had not heard it before.
“Gina?” as if we were being introduced at a party, and he didn’t quite catch it. “What happened at the Airport?”
“I left the car in a no parking zone and they wanted contact details so I gave this number- and then I had to come here. I am sorry- it was so late, I meant by not asking first, not to wake you.”
“No problem, it’s why you have keys.”
“I didn’t. The caretaker let me in.”
“Margie’s heard some news from the airport and she called me because she’s worried sick about Joel.”
“He’s not here.”
“Some film crew in South-west has been mentioned as possibly implicated in a drug syndicate, and he was supposed to be on his way to her. He was seen in Knysna village, yesterday evening, but he didn’t arrive home.”
“I was with her yesterday evening; she had no idea at the time where Joel was.”
“No names were mentioned in the news, just the location of the film crew. It’s where he was supposed to be. She thought she had missed his visit, when in the village, and she hoped he met you at the gates and left with you and Leo.” So he knows about Leo.
“I will find out what I can.”
“Thanks. I was flying a kite, thinking Sophie could have given him keys but I can’t get hold of her this morning. You’re already half way home, does that mean you’re coming back quite soon?”
“Yes, I will.”
“I heard of the security and a bomb scare, that’s why they were searching people closely. Not much was said, excepting that there were visiting diplomats, your country’s leaders, and some attempt to pin a bomb on a local group, but more likely international politics.”
“It’s a coincidence they were there yesterday.”
“Are you alright? I hope they didn’t keep you for hours. Sophie dislikes the new chef and wants to come down next week, but he’s about to quit already because the children are in the kitchen all the time. Let me have your flight details, I will be sure someone can meet you.”
So all is well, I should return at once, they haven’t replaced me just yet. A delay would be inevitable with my missing passport. Life had become a series of ups –and- downs but I had only to think of Leo, and his cheerful courage. I began to wonder if he was still in the city, if Neil’s message was cryptical, it most certainly was strange.
“Goodbye my dear.”

Leo gave me a photograph of himself, it was in the dictionary, with the lotto ticket- what else? Chewing-gum. Suntan lotion. The car- hire manager company had made a list for me to sign which seemed meticulous attention to detail, more so in the light of significance of the real events of the day- but I didn’t know about them until I met Alexei, nearby Deer Park Café.
At the time I set out, I was hoping to meet Leo. There wasn’t a car anymore, just puffy white clouds, drifting as they do, in the sky just above Camps bay, and the sea breeze was gentle and sweet.

“We met on Deer Park Avenue.”
It sounds like something out of a novel. It’s also my favorite place. Not a single thing was moving. The tree-branches were as still as columns in a park of golden-green. No shadows, pure sunlight, filtering through leaves, early autumn.
Higher up the mountain slope there is a children’s playground, surrounded by cliffs as if it were a bowl or cup, over which the air of the mountains and scent of the pine trees and rugged grass pours in to mingle with city air and noise, until it overflows into the ocean, which shimmers at the rim of the cup. The view is broken up with buildings so the ocean between each one sparkles like jewels on a string.
Seeing that Alexey was following me, I stopped; Alexander Ivan from Willow Tree farm in Knysna. He stopped as well, to speak to a flower seller at the side of the road. Earlier that morning, I was reading one of Sophie’s books, “A Movable Feast,” by Ernest Hemingway. In this book Gertrude Stein describes with a word the conversational style of contemporary writers who use bad English- maybe is what happens in real life, but in writing should never happen; it is “irrecroachable.”
I said it quietly. What does it mean? As if Leo were saying it to me, and asking me. Sometimes he spoke a word in a way that was so fresh, I felt I was hearing it for the first time. He was teaching me English while he was learning it. He would not allow the word to pass, I am sure. He would ask me what recroachable means.
Alexey’s appearance reminded me of Gertrude Stein’s words, not his looks, just his being there at the time- not his use of English, which was good, just his being at Willow Tree a few days ago and here again now. He was carrying a small pocket pc, and if I wanted to know the weather report for Chicago or the size of waves in nearby Clifton beach, he could tell me, but if asked how and why, his eyes would glaze over slightly turning from light green of a forest haze in morning sunlight, to the color of almonds, impenetrable and indifferent- one couldn’t be sure it was indifference. For how long he had been following me, I couldn’t say.
He had grown up at the edge of a Czech village. Being of Russian origin, his family was regarded askance. So that accounts for his indifferent air as well as a kind of puppy playfulness he had, when he was with friends with whom he felt at home. I had no idea at the time how much he would have liked to tell me of what his life was like- which was connected to mine in a way.
Early evenings, the sea takes on color, a turquoise-blue. When I worked for Philip and Sophie, the park was in walking distance from their home, and when she was away, we could stay late, until Philip came to fetch the twins, who were in my care until then, and take them home and tell stories. In Brittany, things were much the same, except that it was cold enough to light a fire every evening. The fires reminded me of the trees on Deer Park Avenue. We left in mid-summer, a year ago.
Did Alexey know that as well? How did he know where to find me, I wondered.
I would have liked to get to know more from him about the world he grew up in, which could have been mine as well; sheltered behind the “iron curtain”, in a time when Russian sovereignty defied the west, the south, and the north, and maybe the east.
In those green mountains, where in winter the snow settled in for long periods, many homes were decorated with symbols that were carved above the fireplace and doors, to protect the household from evil spirits.
Myths and legends were told by similar woodcarvings in many places in Europe, which have nothing to do with the Christianity that became the ruling religion after the Romans gained power, and when Catholicism was frowned on, these legends remained. The Czech people allowed one day to the Christians under communist rule. All around the world on this day, in churches everywhere, the story of one of the world’s best-loved kings was told: Wenceslav.
Religion does not make one a better person on its own, but creates a wealth of stories and examples to reinforce goodness, which leads to charity, as does religion -were people to grasp this fully, there would be no need for a ritual and ceremony. There would likewise be no need for the king to leave his castle, and he would not be the only king. There would be so many castles.
There were two other saintly kings at least, behind “Praha” the gateway, the first one, charity, because the Christmas story tells of a visit of three wise men, and Wenceslav was one of them.
After the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Kingdom and India to the South, and then the Orient…I had been reading and thinking about this, while waiting to submit at the Consulate, and walking through the Gardens to Upper Orange Street- before I noticed Alexey.
The crowd in the café was buzzing, and the coffee smelt good. When our eyes first met, in the mirror behind the coffee machine, his eyes showed amused cynicism. He touched my hair as I sat down.
“You should tie it up,” he said- not “Hello, how are you?” or anything I would have to answer at once, as I was getting used to the idea of Leo not being here, and he being here in his place.
“You have heard of the Prague Spring?” he changed the subject.
“Tell me. It must be very beautiful. I believe the winter can be extremely cold.”
His reply was a quick smile, with some depth I did not know he had, and for the first time he began to talk a little about himself.
“It’s the year I was born, the year my father came to Czechoslovakia to work for the new prime minister, and he was excited about that. Thus my name- my real name is Alexander Ivan, but I don’t use it, I’m just Alexey Yeschensko. It is my grandmother’s name for me- it was her surname. Some people think that makes me Russian, and maybe its better that way.”
He gave me his card. “It’s called The Spring because the government had become more liberal, but it didn’t last. Some, like your uncle, just kept on growing, thinking it was summer- they were mistaken. Or the rest were mistaken.
Let’s put these in a vase. I would like to see where you are staying.”
“For how long have you been following me?”
His look was indifferent then. I could tell he didn’t want to talk about himself, just what was important to me. “I have a plane to catch this evening, I won’t stay for long- I will stay if you want me to, if you are afraid - but only in that case” he added, with a half smile, and then, “don’t tell me you are not hungry, I am. How do you exchange money without a passport?”
We shopped for bread and cheese, and fresh items. It was a short walk down the hill. The wind had picked up, and was sending the leaves scattering around like firebirds and golden kites, that spun in the air and chased one another along the pavement.
I couldn’t ask him if he knew anything of the violinmaker in Cape Town, or mention Neil’s name, that was between Leo and me, unless Alexei volunteered the information. Why couldn’t I just trust him? I knew that I wanted to feel safe; I didn’t know for certain that the hi-jacker of the tow truck was responsible for the bomb- scare at the airport, before Alexei confirmed it, and gave me the photograph of the car, that the media would have used if they could get hold of it- that was yesterday’s news.
He was more open with me than previously, appearing unaware of the effect he was having on the security of my own little world, full as it was of unknowns that were safely categorized in the right place; the idea that he might know more than he was telling me of my mother’s world, for one thing, troubled me. He talked as if he knew Henri, had met him socially, and he talked of a family who might help me find my mother, a Dr Dubanovic- the name should mean something to me, I was sure I had heard it before.
Sophie had turned one wall into a family portrait gallery. Nothing the matter with the quality of her work. There weren’t any pictures of Cape Town but one, in a setting of the kind of French one would see in a travel film, Gerard’s father with a black beret and riding a bicycle. Gerard was the family chauffeur mostly because Grandma Ella didn’t drive anymore, no one else needed his services, and his favorite pastime was gardening. The background of the photos was rich in herbs, a vegetable garden, and the roses.
The picture she had taken in Cape Town was of Deer Park, and with her children and Philip, and me. He had been restless the moment we entered the apartment, moving from the living room window to the kitchen and back to the living room and then he stopped, and looked at the pictures quietly. “You like it?” I asked him.
“I would like to meet Sophie. When I am in France, will you introduce me to her again? I hear everyone falls in love with Paris through the eye of a camera.”
“She’s not easy to work for.”
“I am sure of that- a perfectionist. I like this one best. Here, the one taken on your last day in Cape Town together as a family- she was intending to leave even then, wasn’t she?” I had to d look at it again, but I didn’t find any clues that he was reading, so I asked,
“Why did you say that?”
“Well here- look, at the bottom in small print, it says, “Cape Town, our last day together.” ‘
“No it doesn’t, it says ‘Deer Park, Cape Town.’ “
“That is the same- to a Russian. “Parka” means goodbye.
Sometimes people react to language subconsciously, or give out indirect messages, because language is universal in that realm, so it’s ‘goodbye my deer’.
But I knew that already. I was on my way to Deer Park Avenue hoping to meet Leo, because of the message from Neil, and instead I find I am being followed by Alexei. But he left in good time, and as if the visit was just a friendly one, excepting for his last words. “I think you should make another search amongst your things, and the backpack that Leo gave you has many pockets. It’s likely your passport may have been returned - everything else was.”

10 In the Studio

When Philip asked me what I knew, I had been honest. I’d only heard the sound of geese on the last night, or in the early morning hours. Leo woke and helped to chase them back to their enclosure. He spent most his time in town following up clues and making up conversations to find anything to help him reach Tessa, and writing or receiving emails from the agency. Alexei’s first words were the most helpful; Tessa was with Joel, in the Namibian desert -and the events at the airport proved him right again, as well as that it was Tessa who was hoping to return missing items to Leo via the hired car’s open window. His plans had changed so quickly and we left early, while the stars were brilliant in the sky, and on the horizon, a trace of the dawn and a clear day, good for travelers.
While Leo was in town, Margie filled me in with news about the farm workers and the planned guest house. I could see that Alexei had made a difference; there was a pathway to the outbuildings, the orchard was cleared of rubble and new trees were planted, the lawn was trimmed, and made a good-enough soccer field.
The cottages weren’t ready. She hadn’t told me that when I called her from the airport to tell her of our planned visit. But she didn’t want to, she wanted us to use a room in the main house, happy to have guests; any friend of Sophie’s is her friend. Joel’s friends liked to just arrive, some stayed for weeks- it was alright when he was there, but he was never there, and now she and the boys lived their own lives. She said that Joel was living in the desert. Friends came by to ask after him, they knew he was away, they tried to stay for free, and she wasn’t born yesterddy. So Alexei’s being there made sense in a way. Not too many reasons, all well explained, I knew she thought I might explain to Philip and Sophie.
He came into our room soon after Leo drove into town. “Here it is- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you. We usually get up early to play.” He stood up from the floor where he was pretending to reach under a bed for a tennis ball, which wasn’t in the room before. I knew that for certain, as we had moved things around and made a spider search. Leo had been warned of the dangers of Africa- street muggings, petty in- house thefts, but most his information came from those who stayed in cheaper hostels, so it wasn’t that we were paranoid, and we’d left the door open.
“You play soccer with a tennis ball?” I commented as I returned to the shower, because I’d left the hot water running. I had no idea that Lexey was in the room and stepped out only to collect my travel kit with soap in it. Margie had provided some, but I preferred to use my own. It’s just a habit. I’d hesitated briefly, seeing Alexei then, but then decided it shouldn’t matter- it’s my life, he was invading my privacy- if he’d noticed what I was wearing, or not, his look gave nothing away.
Leo had set some things out on the table by his bed, which he could part with easily and which meant very little to him. Alexei was finding that out; a notebook of names and dates that were made up, with business cards of strangers, with telephone numbers he never called. His smile suggested he knew that Leo was trying to divert attention from his real purpose. “What are you doing?” I tried to keep my voice polite, but he did surprise me, being so openly curious.
“I was testing the mattress- sorry.” He stood up quickly. “Mine in the studio is something they had obviously abandoned for a reason, and Margi says I may take one of these, after you go.”
He waited moment to see if I would answer that, and then threw in more bait. “I think not an improvement. I am to sleep on the couch as previously, but it is comfortable- there is space for two- come and try it out.”
I could tell he was trying to get my attention, and didn’t really mind how. Was he looking for sympathy, I wondered. His evasive answers to Margie’s enquiry after Joel made sense; he was trying to protect her from discovering that Tessa was with him. He certainly didn’t sleep on the couch in the studio. His things were all over their house, he had changed in her room from a wet shirt. He was supposed to be living in the studio, working for Joel, editing old footage, and he was edgy about Joel’s return as well. Not acting his age, and sometimes trying to act older than his age, I wanted to like him, and ask him what his life was like, growing up in a world I might have, also, but I decided that he was much too annoying.
He was trying to shock me a little, perhaps he found me a little austere, I don’t know. Strangers often look surprised when I tell them I’m an au pair, and for whom I work, I don’t explain that I wouldn’t even have to be Christian, if one reads the bible rightly, to belong to a Christian family. Due to the laws of our country at the time we left, my family was not- Philip would not have run a background check before asking me to join the family, and he knew it already. I’d learnt not to try to go into details, when asked, they only make matters worse.
“At least come and see my photographs. You can mention them to Sophie? I’d like to work for her in Paris, one day. You might be interested for other reasons.”
“When Leo returns.”
“I know that you didn’t stay home when he went out, for my sake, but because you’d prefer an early night.”
“That’s true.”
“We have internet here in the studio; he had no need to go into town.”
“I think it is more about manners, than secrecy. Why are you looking at everything? Put that down.”
“Is this aftershave? It’s so lonely. No electric shaver? No, nor a razor. I see, very expensive cologne. He keeps his travel bag somewhere else, and this is a gift, am I right, it’s never been opened. Not from you, I hope? I wouldn’t trust him not to lose his ticket.”
Leo had given me his air ticket and passport, to keep safe in a flat box we had placed at the top of the built in cupboards… safe. Alexei had noticed they were not to be found, so he really was a spy of a kind, but he wanted me to know. I had no idea what he was thinking, but he gave me a look that was close to pity. “You’re not falling for him, are you? Isn’t that shortsighted? He can’t stay with you after his work is done. I made that mistake- now look at me. I am as Petrarch said -what did Petrarch say of David and Bathsheba?”
“You have me there, I don’t know” I began to laugh; it sounded like the name of a city.
“Of course you do know.”
“Why would you even imagine I’d know?” Or a small town, same as Bethlehem, it’s a town somewhere between the Drakensberg and the Lowveldt, we passed by on a road trip, and there were two young shepherds with their sheep on hard, icy ground.
He unlocked a door to the garden, which led to the studio from that side of the manor house. The sky was a deep indigo, cloudless and without a moon, and the stars seemed to have fallen quite low, so clear was the night air. The croaking of frogs reminded me of the way, as we approached what had been the old stables, without a path, and a muddy section, he said “lookout” and took my arm, but there was no need for it. He made a sweeping gesture as he opened the door, and the lights went on but not too brightly. The separate compartments of stables was gone, nothing remained but the wall at the front, and foundations, to which a large room had been added.
Here now Alexei was comfortably installed in Joel’s space. Aside from renovations, the interior was well finished, and along the one side was a long yellowwood counter where they set up the computers, for internet and for editing. There was a glass-topped table built into the tack room and a kitchen counter, a fridge, some wonderful lighting arrangements, and some low couches with colorful cushions of Indian silk, and stacks of video tapes and computer equipment and old filming equipment took up space, but it was all neatly arranged, and compared to the rest of Willow Tree, unexpected. He casually took out some photo-portraits in black and white and said, “That’s Tessa. She hopes to be a model,” and then, rather humbly, not waiting for a response;
“Here’s your mother, Julia - Katerin-Valentyn, but she goes by another name now.”
He gave me the photograph, with her names written on the back, her old names, and I felt sad, thinking of her, because she was an actress, but there were only the two pictures of her that could be found.
“Why do you have this?” I asked.
“The family who sent me wants to reassure you that as far as they know she is still alive but can’t be traced, and that if Tessa tries to approach you, you are not to give her anything. I know you won’t, as Leo has told you about Tessa. I know much more than when I set out. For one thing, you don’t receive all your m ail. Who is preventing it?”
“Leo has my address; Tessa doesn’t, so the address Tessa gave to whoever sent mail, is incorrect. They had taken information that they shouldn’t, if she gave it to them.”
“It would not be their fault, if Tessa gave things out, unasked, and took things, she didn’t have the right to take. Olga is your mother’s age, and she did change her name, there are reasons why one might make a mistake in thinking there’s a connection, but Olga’s past is a secret due to her father’s errors in government. Honestly, the family believes maybe your mother does not know you would like to meet her, and has not tried to see you for that reason. If they can assist, now that they know of you, they would be happy.”
That was the first time I had noticed how his eyes change, they moved from dark to light in a few seconds. I remembered that Leo said he hated it when a rival organization tries to compete in the last stage of the enquiry. What would he say if he knew, but he must know that Alexei would try to talk to me, and he drove into town to give him the chance.
He began to tell me Olga’s story.
“This sounds like one of Henri’s plays- it is one of his plays that I have read,” I said assertively “by Hermann Boheme.”
He didn’t reply at once, he was restless, searching the fridge to see if he could offer me something to drink, from a variety in it for the visiting Americans, if they arrived with Joel.
“I know my mother’s cousin Henri was a writer, quite a good one, they grew up together and could have written plays together, would meet as adults and be closer than anyone is, and continue to make up stories, like the Brönte family.
“ ‘She was raised in a convent and then forced into marriage, the reason why is that she was seduced by a gypsy, and would have been left to die on the streets, but this seemed preferable to her when she realized she was trapped in a loveless marriage… but let’s find out what kind of man she is married to, before we sympathize with her.’ ”
I should have stopped, I know. I had not read it to the end. Why would anyone make up such a story?”
“Never read or seen the play, and it wouldn’t end well if Henri wrote it in that time, he was never sober, and writing for an audience he secretly despised, while at his heart sick with disappointment that his own country had not understood him.”
He began to gather up the pictures and looked out of the window towards the manor house, drew the blind, and looked at the time.
“I did make that part up. They fell out, because we left. My grandfather would otherwise have found her, he tried everything.”
“Why don’t you write to him?”
I did write to Henri from the city but my address was a place I shared with friends and the post was not reliable, but that didn’t seem important, we were discussing my mother. “Please say that you are here for another reason- to follow me, if you did, and to find out if I would like to meet my family?”
“If life’s a wheel, then why re-invent it? Do you think I was observing you? No one asked me to do that. I find you interesting, and different, not like girls back home, almost as pretty.” He’d been moving around the room, and stopped then, to place a hand on my shoulder. “When did you find out you have an uncle who is a celebrity, now, in Prague as well?”
“What a question. I’ve known it for as long as I can remember.”
“Which is?”
“Alright, I don’t remember when, but I grew up knowing—what is the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter, it wasn’t a good question. I believe Margie will be looking for us, and she will be wanting to know what we talked about.”
“Why wouldn’t she find us, if she wanted to know?”
“Know what? We should go.”
“Then I am right - even you can’t be sure if Olga is not only Solveig but also Jana and Katerin?”
“At least act your age, Gina- you don’t want her for your mother.”
“Why not?” My question was absurd, I knew, but he answered anyway.
“Henri didn’t recreate her character for a story. It’s likely that he met her in Prague only after he wrote it, still there is something between them- something close to hatred is possible.”
“They know one another?”
“She has otherwise turned almost all her husband’s closest friends against him.”
“So Tessa’s secret is related to this?”
“She hasn’t revealed her secrets, but anything of damage to Olga is useful to her enemies, I mean real ones. Henri is not the type of person who would take revenge if it be on a woman, if he were conscious of it. And it was so long ago.” He was referring to the Slovakian uprising against Germany in which thousands of patriots were killed in a short time.
“The Russians took over the farm belonging to Olga’s parents. It was used as a base to receive arms to fight against the Germans, but these went elsewhere, some say, to the German forces who strengthened their base in that region with the help of local families in collaboration with Germany. Her family weren’t German but they fled for Germany as they had been blamed for it, and then travelled south to Italy. She wasn’t born by that time, unable to control her future destiny.
“I don’t know if her marriage was contrived, or if she met her future husband in Italy, and he brought her back here. Her family’s place in the war was proved by the Russians who were happy to allow Olga to re-enter and no medals were given to her father or cousins, but the Czech people should not have that much to do with someone from a western place as a general rule, so there was some secrecy about her name, and they had been approached before by someone trying to extract bribes to keep the secret, trying to read more into it than is real. I knew someone was behind Tessa before she talked to me, and I’m quite sure of it now, but it isn’t Leo”
“So Leo’s from the South, but you find him innocent now?”
“My mind was made up already. She is frightened of him, and he isn’t had that sinister, so it’s true she had done him wrong. Emil admits that hiring her was a mistake. She arrived at the Agency after hearing a rumor that they could arrange passports, but they couldn’t help her.
I had to know if Leo had anything to do with it, and if I thought so I would want to tell, as you at once, believe me, Gina.”
“She could destroy everything Emil worked for, but why would Leo do that to his own uncle?” The files from previous clients were confidential and not even kept in writing and why should they be, as clients usually lived nearby or would visit the music shop.
My grandfather, Ted, was one of the exceptions; he was an early client, writing from South Africa, he sent a small ring. “She will recognize it at once.”
It was nice in the studio, the rest of Willow Tree bordered on chaos. He had music and soft lighting. The walls were a fresh color. No work cluttered the free space. “You said just now that Margie would be wondering where we are. Would she come here if she wanted to know?”
“Know what? We should go.”
“Why are you here still now?”
“I don’t work for anyone.” He said abruptly, and then, “Tessa was in town already, when I arrived,” and to end the conversation, “I’m sure of Leo’s innocence but the family who sent me weren’t willing to leave the search for Tessa up to the Agency on their own because of Henri.”
“Was there something between you and Tessa?” I asked.
But why did I want to know? It’s when his eyes glazed over. I regretted that, and it ended the conversation, but only because he wanted to end it and we had no excuse to remain in the studio. Then gave me another look, sanguine and with eyes full of light.
“Meg’s welcome here anytime, and has her own keys. Some guests left with them alone, but they came here looking for Joel. I’ll walk you to the house. We can talk again.”

Willow Tree Manor was subdivided from the farm, which was a project which, jointly with the church, engaged volunteers to help set up a school and Sven was living with them when Tessa first met up with Alexei. Margie worked three mornings a week in town, offering color therapy and crystal healing, and she had a small market stall in Knysna alongside of the farm-stall and so enjoyed the idea of the simple, rural, almost Franciscan life.
She had lived in a more fashionable world once but still kept her Irish tendency to just be natural, and not make a fuss of what she was wearing. Sometimes she regretted her choices, and this explains why she wanted the jacket so much that Sophie had given me. She must have talked with Sophie on the telephone since we arrived- she knew I had it. “Thank you for bringing it back, Sophie promised to send it but she never did.”
Leo and I had to exchange a look, as we had almost given it to a charity shop but couldn’t find one along the roadside, so she took out an album to show us the evidence, a picture of herself, with Sophie and Philip, in London, by the Thames, with protest banners, high heels, in miniskirts and dangling earrings- and the jacket, she was wearing it then. It belonged to her. This wasn’t even about whether or not she wanted to wear it now, but about ownership, I could tell, so her attitude to a bracelet that might have been hers would appear strange to anyone who knew her.
The visitors from the Farm had found it in the room of one of the worker’s children after he had joined a soccer game at the Manor. It was the same room which Sven was using, until he moved away, which is enough to explain the appearance of the bracelet, it could have fallen from Tessa’s wrist at any time – so Alexei told Margie, and they make too much fuss over nothing. That was a few days ago.
The boy could hardly speak English and burst into tears when questioned, saying he found it on the grass. He was accused of theft but no one knew the rightful owner, because Margie had not seen it before. It was extremely precious, with sapphires and some blue stones and rubies, each set in gold, with each jewel forming a link in a chain.
The guests were two young women who had in fact, been hoping that Joel was at home, and stayed anyway. Dylan was strumming a folk song and no- one was in a hurry to leave, although they knew that Joel wouldn’t arrive that night, but might arrive any day, with Tessa- they wanted to clear things up, before Tessa began to ask for her things, including a suitcase belonging to her. They had no idea where that was either.
Alexei greeted them politely on his way into the kitchen. In spite of the chaos the atmosphere was nice, and no one was in a hurry to leave, although they knew that Joel wouldn’t arrive that night, but might arrive any day, with Tessa- they wanted to clear things up, before Tessa began to ask for her things, including a suitcase belonging to her. They were rolling a joint and Margie didn’t mind.
But she was troubled about something, I could tell. Was it the bracelet? She wished to protect boy whose life was turned up-side down by this incident, sure he wasn’t a thief, and would gladly help to find the owner. She had seen Tessa wearing it, when she met her in town, with Sven. Alexei had come up with a good solution to the mystery; the bracelet had a weak clasp, and could have fallen from her wrist at any time.
The visitors weren’t sure. Margie was coerced until she told them that she had left it in a safe at the bank and would fetch it the next day and see if the clasp was weak- he was probably right. They protested that it didn’t matter, and she argued it did matter and when they left, she went to the kitchen to make tea, and she was there for some time.
When she returned, I could see that she had been crying. She had the bracelet and held it out to me. “There’s nothing the matter with the clasp and Alexei would know that if he had seen it but I never showed it to him. It’s part of a collection that he is after, and Leo as well. Is Tessa a thief? Is he protecting her? I know that Joel and he are good friends and why they came to visit this evening, they expected Tessa to be here with him. I am frightened, Gina. I love him. I shouldn’t, should I?”
No use to ask him who she was referring to, Alexei or her husband, I understood completely- she loved them both, and neither of them could be trusted with it.

11 Missing Items

As he returned from Knysna that first night at Willow Tree, Leo had seen that Margie had guests and did not feel like taking, so used the side entrance, for which he was given a key. He was in our room and almost asleep when I asked him if he had found news of Tessa. “I was reading emails from the agency, which I could have done here.” He replied, as if he had heard my conversation earlier with Alexei, and then “Did Alexei try to talk to you on your own?”
I said yes, and he said he knew it, but he wasn’t against it, and, “What did he say?”
“Something about that Russian- I don’t like him”
Leo sensed that. “Is his behavior despicable?”
“He’s just here because of Tessa, isn’t he? When you talked to him earlier, I didn’t understand a word.”
“It is a friendly place but not for everyone, they resented him taking some business in town when he arrived, setting up a stall to trade, and not paying as much rent as the shop-owners. He was trying to make a living taking portrait and identity pictures when they shut him down, and he had befriended Joel by this time, all of which he said to me and I have confirmed is true. So what else he said may be true. I believe he is honest.” Leo smiled.
“What else did he say?”
“That he’s a talent scout, and he said that to entice Tessa here.”
“So he needed to meet Joel and set up a proper studio, photograph Tessa, send the proof that she’s been found, get some money for his work, and continue, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he had her trust, if he introduced her to Joel.” I said, remembering then how quickly he overcame any resistance I had to speaking to him without Leo, even after I was warned about competition, refusing to take “No” for an answer, setting out his case in such a way as I wanted to trust him, flirting with me from time to time, and all the while Margie was learning from the neighbors the things which would break her heart.
Leo was reading again, glancing my way and smiling, as if he knew then how happy I was that he was there, and with the decision to share a room, and at the same time willing to challenge me to try and like Alexei a little bit. He should have spoken with Leo before sending him to town to find news of Tessa, he knew something he didn’t want to share with him, and that he hadn’t told me yet, I was sure of that, after thinking over our conversation quietly.
“Margie found a bracelet belonging to Tessa in the studio, and can’t work out if her Alexei was using her, or if Tessa visited here, I am sure she did, if he was pretending to be a talent scout. I couldn’t tell Margie that. She is better off knowing that she can’t trust him.”
“Why can’t she trust him?” Leo asked. I couldn’t say. “I hope he didn’t take your picture,” he teased.
“What if he just fell in love with Margie, and decided to stay?” Leo didn’t reply. That worried me, for her sake. “Is it really so unlikely?” I asked him.
It was so quiet outdoors; one could almost hear the stars. Not even the geese were making a racket. “Totally despicable-from a professional viewpoint, but that is the correct word? He finds her useful at this time- he could leave her easily as soon as he does not need her anymore. In the meantime, he has to make himself indispensable, so that she can’t decide whether or not to ask him to stay or go. Joel’s always away and she feels safer and happier, having someone else who fixes things and plays with the boys.”
“Joel loves his boys.”
“He isn’t here to show it, only returns when he has no money, but that may be taken as a sign of love, who knows? So why is Alexei here? His behavior makes no sense, if that is what “despicable” means.”
I couldn’t answer straightaway.
“Or is that indespicable?”
“There are better words. To despise someone there must be a reason. If you don’t despise someone, you don’t have to say so, or give a reason why not.”
“That’s what I mean- his behavior is inexplicable. We should ask him to be explicable, right?”
“There are many words that could be but aren’t used in English.”
“The language offers so many choices, so one wouldn’t know which it is, unless one had learned the culture as well. It is by far a superior culture in some ways. For one thing, women were always given equality in Celtic tradition.”
“Not really, just more options.”
“No, true equality, and very superior. I have been told that other cultures have much to learn from the Celts and so must learn to speak English to get by, especially in the western world, and especially superior to the Vikings and the Romans- that in a time when others were still trying to separate the men from the boys. They were the ones who invented monogamy, for one thing- or the Romans- or the Celts, in any case, between the two, it is Alexei who behaves the most ineptly”
“Are you reading from a dictionary?”
“Not anymore.”
Was he mocking me? He could be, and I wouldn’t even know. Was Alexei treating me like a child? He liked to act older than his age. He wasn’t much older than I was, but as Leo pointed out, he liked to appear superior in his knowledge- maybe knowing I didn’t have a father, he could mean well by it. He liked to act as old as my grandfather, actually. I missed Ted as well. He had passed away when I was in Cape Town in the first year. He had tried to keep me from knowing of his illness for as long as possible, so I could learn to live independently without worries. He left Willow Tree to return to the Lodge promising to return after the winter and then wrote to me when he heard from the hospital about the diagnosis;
“I won’t be able to visit, I’m sure you understand- or can you? I have a lady-friend, she would be jealous” was his excuse. “I’m not sure how it happened- it’s nothing like the romance of one’s youth- but we get along fine- a kiss and a cuddle, and next thing, it’s as if we’re engaged. I can’t break it up now, I’m sorry, Gina. I will miss you and I hope you will think of me sometimes.”
At the time I had wondered what he meant by writing to me about “the Romance of one’s youth” as I had not even been in love, other than an infatuation with Philip from time to time, which we both knew wasn’t anything ideal and so I did try to go out with boys sometimes, without much purpose, seeing them as friends rather than anything else. Still I understood what love is, and Margie’s tears struck me the most. But was it possible that Alexei wasn’t the one at fault? Could he not have fallen in love with her, without thinking; oh how convenient?” It was all about a bracelet, nothing he had said or done- I had not thought so much of his using her, before then, they were equals, in that sense- but later- it’s not his fault. No one can say it is- I had only to look at myself to see how easily it happens; I should know better, but I was “falling” for Leo, I wasn’t thinking of it so much at the time, we were travelling together, and that would account for my high spirits. Life’s an adventure, but I loved every moment. I was not thinking ahead, I had not paid attention to any warning signs. That’s how it all starts.
Seeing how playful Alexei was, with the boys, and even with Margie, teasing her until she began to pummel him with her fists, and her boys stepped in to help, so there was a pillow fight in the lounge, I couldn’t see him as using anyone, not really. Perhaps I resented him a little because he knew so much about the life I didn’t have? Or, he just made me feel uncomfortable, as if he was looking at me too closely, and wouldn’t tell me what he was thinking, he knew more than he was telling. Leo knew more than he was telling, but that’s different, he was learning the language.
“What do you know about the things taken from the dragon chest?” I had to ask.
“Pretty jewels, nothing to interest a pretty girl, not worth another thought, try to sleep. You are with Leo now, and don’t worry about the Agency. The stories I could tell- but I don’t. We don’t tell stories where I come from, it isn’t just me, and that isn’t the Czech Republic, or the decadent West.”
He turned off the light. “He might like to learn why Tessa had the opportunity to steal, how she was let into the house, and how she knew so much to be pretending to be the daughter of your uncle Henri, next thing he will make an introduction, or offer to introduce you to these people.”
What his meaning was, I couldn’t be sure, in the dark, unaccustomed to that tone of his voice, and unable to see his face, and I had no idea how to reply. The silence felt awkward. Then he switched it on again.
“Not made up your mind yet if its love or hate? Didn’t you make the choice once, long ago? Anyone can look good or bad, depending on the light,” he made a face. “Show me the picture that Alexei gave to you. It may well be a different picture- or person, to the picture that the Agency has; it could easily be just enough of a resemblance.”
I had forgotten that I had it, but it was in the room, so he had seen it, but waited for me to show it to him. It was in the flat box with our air-tickets. I had to fetch it down.
And why would I resist the idea of showing it to him? Because it was just the one picture, the same one, always. To conceal how little I had of my mother. To have some small space of my own because he was good at asking questions which get inside my mind? Because he didn’t tell me enough about Tessa and I had to hear things from Alexei- that I was beginning to doubt if Leo had a right to exclusivity if Alexei knew more and there was a family in Prague who could help me? He was on my side, of course he must ask questions and want to know if I would show him the picture, never mind if he had seen it already.
I could tell how important it was when I fetched it down, and how sleepy he was, rubbing his eyes, it would be the second night without much sleep, who knows how far he had travelled before then to find me, he didn’t say. Why did he care anyway? And not care- why did he not tell me about Tessa, in the way Alexei had, so I could understand – would I be jealous? Why would jealousy even come into the picture then?
“What world do you come from?” I wondered, drifting to sleep, still in a strange mood, and knowing that I loved him- everything about him, by this time, and in a way which made life without love such a compromise. How do we survive, as human beings, being made up one part love, and the other part hate, almost equally?
Best not to say anything, why give words to something that is as real without them, I felt I could hear his thoughts, his answers to unasked questions, but he spoke aloud. “It doesn’t matter, Gina,” he said, thinking the thought would keep me awake. He wasn’t referring to Alexei, I knew, but I replied as if he had been.
“I feel as if I know him so well, already- life’s a game to him- he can have anything he wants, and so he just goes after it.”
“When you wanted something, didn’t you go all out- what about moving to Brittany? You don’t even speak French, but you wanted to be with Philip, so you made friends with Sophie, you taught her to trust you and depend on you, and did you resist and struggle with the idea that perhaps you should not go for any reason?”
“Yes” I said, not having to win every conversation. The last thing I would like to discuss and he raises it anyway. “I did it for Sophie as well. I don’t mind that she is ambitious, how can I?”
“I thought you were Sophie.”
“Were you looking for her, or why did you think so?”
“It was the photograph of you and Philip and the children, in Deer Park Avenue, in Cape Town. You looked so happy then, and I thought in that case you were Sophie, and never mind what I thought. Goodnight, my dear.”
“I do mind what you thought.” I do mind what you ask me.
“She was on the outside, and she wanted to be inside. I take back everything I said then.”
Sophie seemed to have liked him at once, as well. She was different to her usual, when we arrived with the children. She didn’t mind that we exchanged the car for a bus or even that I was leaving with Leo- his smile was enough to persuade her to accept it and she even gave me a jacket. It was a rare spontaneous gift, which meant something because I had thought at times she resented me, and I didn’t say so, because I resented her as well and Leo knew it, but he didn’t say anything, he took my side, finding fault with the jacket, and replaced it with something better.
“What did you say” - his voice interrupted my thoughts -”that takes so long to take back if you are still doing it?”
“I was just thinking about the jacket. I don’t believe Sophie remembered it belonged to Margie. I think she just wanted to give me something.” ‘
“You were right to “just think” about the jacket, because it’s just a jacket, she no longer used.”
“No, she wore it often- she had to give me something, just when you were there. And people seem to just want to be friendly, and tell you things.”
“It is true that you do.”
Because he encouraged me at first saying that anything I could tell him may help in the search for my mother and teased me until I had to stop talking, but only so he could talk as well- I don’t recollect how high we were, how many thousands of meters or kilometers above the ground, what we talked about, just for the sake of it.
I don’t remember when we began to find it more difficult, and now, since Alexei “s visit, and finding that the suitcase was returned to me, by some means, Margie perhaps had placed it in the car and it had a stack of items known to be missing from Prague which Leo was looking for, and answerable for- if Alexei was right about that- a ring, that must have been taken by Tessa, of diamonds or sapphires, both pink and blue, set in gold, and a necklace and a brooch that looked antique, of different precious and extremely valuable stones, a letter opener with ruby and sapphires inlaid- wrapped in tissue paper and stuffed into a pocket between the lining of the suitcase and my clothing, made for carrying travel documents, some printed copies of the Agency’s files as well, I could tell by the letterhead, neatly kept in a sealed envelope, and other side pocket of his backpack, the letters, nine altogether, each of which were longer than four pages, in Henri’s own writing, addressed to a Dr Milan Dubanovic, from Vienna, from Boston, and New York….how can I now take it back again?

Part Two

12 Milan Dubanovic

Spring was never waiting for us girl,
It ran one step ahead
as we followed in the dance. *

“Will you come this way, please?” A distinguished looking man with dabs of grey in his neatly trimmed beard and hair stepped up to Leo at the checkout point. It was more a command than question, stated politely. With the same manner, JJ was able to prevent a crowd of cameramen following them. A gesture called up two security guards as more reporters were standing by a staircase at the end of a long corridor
Were they heading to the VIP section? His uncle knew that Leo was delayed, and about the arrival of Milan Dubanovic, and had confirmed their strategy by emails, in the case that Leo was questioned.
“It’s just that we say “no”. It is against protocol to take on clients with either political interests or criminal records, which amount to political interests. Nor can we share information with such persons, even as members of a family of a missing person.”
“Protocol” to Emil was something that was asserted only when required, when it was useful to the Agency. They had kept their side of the agreement, not because they had to, but the principle of the matter; they wanted to find Tessa as well.
Now if Milan was requesting an interview with Gina after reading the information given to him by Tessa, which could have led him to Cape Town, Leo had to agree with his uncle, it was not the Agency, but the Dubanovic family, who were stepping out of line.
The gold trimming on the automatic sliding doors, the insignia engraved into the glass, the intricate patterned carpeting on the floor were all good signs, they were taking him to meet someone important. The reporters had disappeared, nothing was newsworthy enough to allow them in, and they didn’t have permission to enter. It was a quiet oasis with deep leather couches and glass tables near the window.
There was an American film director, and his assistant, and Milan Dubanovic - Leo recognized him from the morning newspapers. All had seen the airport’s video footage, of the hired car that Gina was driving, when it was approached by the 4x4, and of a bomb that had been found at the far side of the airport.
“We have all the co-driver’s details and she was free to go home with a new car.” JJ said when Leo asked after Gina. Not “home” specifically, but it was a long day, he was tired.
The package had been scanned but the results were not shown. The Americans were impatient to be on their way; it was Tessa who had thrown the package into the car and they had already denied knowing why. They wanted to know what it contained, but this was confidential information. It wasn’t a security risk, is all they needed to know. They ran the video tape again for Leo’s benefit.
It didn’t seem strange to the film producers that they had come from the Namib desert, from observing the life of the remaining locals, to discussing the revolution with one of Czech’s “foremost leaders of it,” as the papers said- which had been inspired by an American Band created by Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground - so Tessa had said. It was all in a day’s work.
Clementine Kennedy had spent several nights sleeping under the stars, contemplating life- that was what was rare. “We have too much history of aggression in our supposedly free country and too much belief that institutions and progress will make the difference,” he said, remembering his parent’s hippie wedding of which they had a photo, which took place in central park, and that the police had bust up rudely. “I find that here, in South Africa, and in your place as well, a consciousness amongst individuals who live almost isolated from the mainstream, by far surpasses what can be taught, although our country had at first the most progressive constitution in the world, as yet unmatched.”
“Yes, the Americans were always held in high regard. In 1945, the news that the American army was on its way had been enough motivation for a handful of citizens in a city occupied by the Nazi invaders to create a resistance and very nearly defeat Germany in that time, but they didn’t quite manage, and had to surrender, before Stalin’s army arrived, from the other side, to their aid.” Milan Dubanovic looked at Leo and smiled, thinking of the older Nikolensky, Leo’s father. “They were not as fiery as in the south in their resistance.”
Leo was supposed to be watching the video tape again but he was listening to the conversation.
Milan had seen the video and he knew the name of the original driver of the car, which the Americans might have, if Tessa had used his name at the time, instead of all the names she was making up... Frodo, deek, dyke, whatever, and he knew that she meant Leo. He waited for the young man to say his name. The Americans, who were more direct, didn’t wait, and both asked him, “Do you have the package?” and, “Do you know what’s in it yet?” Without accusing him, they wanted to know.
It had been so important to Joel, that he had driven Tessa in spite of all her protests and almost had to tie her up to prevent her taking over the wheel, as she had changed her mind about giving it to him, but Joel knew that she must. She needed his help, he needed the Americans, more than a few times, as he wasn’t used to asserting himself over anyone when it was almost a physical fight. They had managed to prevent it getting to that, they had been woken earlier than planned, to leave earlier for Tessa to meet her deadline, and they knew she wanted to give something to Leo, or had agreed to, and Joel had made sure she did it.
“It is the Americans who saved the day, for Tessa. Tell us, Leo, what made it such a race to reach you and then so disposable that it could be thrown into the car nearest to the airport entrance, by her, before she left again- without waiting to see if you had it?” Milan said, creating a picture of how the airport security could have made the original mistake of thinking it was a bomb, for the sake of the Americans, who were not sure if they were going to sue for all costs of the delay.
Leo shook his hand, feeling almost lost in the calm and gentle eyes, set in a symmetrical face with dark hair, fair skin and a healthy complexion. He noticed mostly the tranquility in his eyes, with long dark lashes, that accentuated a penetrating gaze that was deliberately turned on him in a kindly way. It made sense of what he had read-
“A manner that would have maybe won him his popularity in the previous elections as well as the next one, if his qualifications did not give him the means on its own…if Jiri was not the better prospect, more of an all-rounder.” Milan wasn’t in the senate, how could he win the elections?

Information he’d requested from the Agency began to crowd his mind. He did not follow the details of politics, and it was not processed, nor were any claims made of accuracy. Usually Leo preferred it that way. He could draw his own conclusions, but his head was reeling.
“Although not a young man or that progressive, Jiri Slav was seen as one of the most important new political candidates. Milan could also have a future in politics if Jiri came into leadership. Some of the most liberal families, and wealthy Czech’s had supported this new alliance to the hilt. It wasn’t even so much that the people had wanted to vote for Jiri but rather that they felt they should want to if they knew better. Not only Milan stood by him, but also anyone he could impress with his reasons for it, including Henri Valentyn, the writer.
“Henri’s journalism provided enough for the public to be sure of the qualities inherent in Jiri and of his shortcomings, which was reassuring to them, as those he aligned with had excess of liberal views. His may be a more healthily conservative, but still futuristic, democratic, and pro- European alliance approach. Dr Dubanovic had previously been hardly known- he wasn’t active in the foreground until the crucial years of 1998 and 1989. His popularity grew quickly.
“His exile wasn’t voluntary, he was forced to leave after he was dismissed from the register, accused of having falsified several medical reports and giving assistance to political detainees to leave the country, sometimes with foreknowledge of their intention to undermine the country’s leadership, and this includes those wanted for other crimes, even an assassination, as in the case of Henri Valentyn.”
So their relationship goes back a long way.
“Milan’s knowledge of Henri’s life was useful in having his name cleared, on his return to Prague in 1989, and brought him into the limelight as well, as a hero of the revolution and underground. The doctor played a leading role in implementing better health care at government level as well as being a signatory of charter 77.
“Now, when the senate had been “weeded” of local heroes who were without much background in economics and government, to be replaced by properly educated politicians, there is place for a new spirited group, comprising such as Jiri Slav’s brother in law, Milan Dubanovic. The questions being asked about him were whether he was not less, but more qualified than those with a political education on paper, as he had lived politics from day to day, and proven his leadership qualities and commitment to relevant issues that are discussed in parliament and if not, should be. He had proved his loyalty to the people by remaining a party member and trained medical professional who was able to mediate and work together closely with others and withhold any difference of opinion for the sake of the result.
“Something written by Henri Valentyn himself; ‘Knowing his socialist tendencies were proven by the old government, would he gain favor with more liberal leaders, only to let them down? Or was he more likely to stabilize the country than better-qualified economists and planners, with his proven record of loyalty in action, to principles and ideals, with his understanding of the shortcomings and traps of socialism, could he represent the leadership of the country with full knowledge of its background? Who would not want to test him, and allow him to prove again his ability to act according to principle, in upper government level, to implement what he knows is best for the whole country?’ ”
Leo was surmising; if Milan was popular as a personality, how did that increase Jiri Slav’s ability to run the country? Clearly Henri Valentyn was promoting his friend, to the benefit of both men, and why not?
The man himself seemed alright, from the agency’s viewpoint, but what about his motive? A relationship between Henri and Gina Valentyn was the most obvious one, but why would Milan be interested on behalf of a friend, at this busy time? His uncle was determined that it did not matter why; they must refuse him, without having to know why, any speculation or half –understanding would only cloud the issue.
Henri’s activity as a playwright had disqualified him as a client in earlier times, now, he was no longer considered a criminal, but his name hadn’t yet been cleared of certain rumors.
It was Emil’s decision to continue to refuse any information and even the certainty that Gina was a client on their files. Whatever was on the files that Tessa was reading had been nothing Henri need worry about – Tessa’s accumulated crimes happened out of their offices. Let Henri rave as he pleased, they would not use anything they did find against him or anyone else.
“On the less than positive side, and without regard for Henri’s opinion, or that of other knowledgeable political biographers, there are rumors about Milan that you should know are circulating. Some say that he was not born a Dubanovic and his parentage was unknown although he was raised by a family of Russian-Jewish origin who did not originally live in Prague. He has been linked to a Jewish woman of the same name in a small town near st Petersburg, but there is no real relationship here, and to the Russian liberation party, also some accusations that he was recruited by the special police, which are denied, and,
“Contradictorily, it’s said that the doctor had conveniently forgotten his communist party values to marry into wealth; the marriage was virtually purchased for their daughter by his future in-laws, and Milan inherited shares in a business operation in the west, while working for the government which disallowed connections to the world outside.
“One writer states that one can’t trust the media in regard to his loyalty and affiliations, it was clear that he was capable of loyalty and commitment to no one and nothing but what suited his family and himself. Worse, in a direct attack- his wife Olga’s family had pretended support to the partisans, to trap them into disclosing where they were planning to store weapons that were to be used against the German occupation in 44-45, and betrayed everyone around them. After Germany was defeated the partisans began to take revenge and her family fled, leaving their workers to fend for themselves.
“We don’t know if this is true. We know his ancestry on the Dubanovic side is established, his relatives took him in, after the loss of both his parents in an explosion in Prague which was aimed at the Liberation underground, with a women who was a servant to his family since before the war. His mother’s family origins can be traced back for centuries as a Moravian.
“Outwardly, he did not show any interest in liberalism or politics, and was only interested in medicine and medical research until his license was withdrawn, and that has not been returned to him. No wonder your uncle Emil threw his arms up in the air.”
They always referred to the grapevine, but here were too many wild cards at once. After clearing the rumors, stories remaining were of actions that are commendable. The search on the Agency’s files, regarding the missing Katerin Valentyn, could not produce information that Tessa could use against him.
There was nothing about Olga Dubanovic on their files until now. The history was brief, her family were originally a mix of Finnish and Rumanian, but lived in Slovakia since the previous century. She was born outside of the country and lost her father at an early age, and her mother’s second marriage gave her a step-brother, Jiri Slav.
Whatever Tessa knew of her, she was not related to Henri Valentyn. There were workers at the house in Prague who were brought in from Slovakia, most likely at Olga’s request, and Tessa could have been friendly with them.

Milan had spoken of the package as if he knew its contents were worthless, but without letting the Americans know. They were sure that it meant a lot to her, from the way they spoke of the drive to the airport. Tessa, for some reason, had also been betrayed.
Leo remembered his uncle’s advice, “Don’t ask why”, and he was right when he said, “It’s no coincidence” and that he could be right by saying “Don’t say anything at all.”
With the package having produced nothing, the 4x4 episode was incidental. Milan had clearly sent for him because he wanted to negotiate, and he was willing to do so in front of others. Did that matter? He must make a stand. How close they were to having something for Milan, if only Tessa - but it was not her fault anymore. If she was “only a pawn in their game,” that must mean something to the Agency, but not at the expense of their client. What the game could be, he had no idea as he faced the doctor, who gave no sign of anything he was feeling. He spoke to Leo as one would to a child, and Leo felt his age suddenly, he felt like a child.
The forgiving look was what affected him the most. Usually he found it best to be direct and outspoken, if tactful, with others, but now he found it difficult to hold his ground, and when asked if he were traveling in the country on his own, in spite of the video film giving proof that the co-driver was a young woman, he answered, “Yes,” with no explanation or excuse.
Surprisingly, Milan accepted that. “There are questions about whether we want to invest in the African continent, but aside from a pharmaceutical product I have recommended could be made locally, I can’t speak for others, and the media find me disappointing. Here we have good news, at least, Cape Town may easily be the next Hollywood, and also, Tessa has found her conscience and tried to return something to me. It is the principle of the matter, thank you Leo,” but the eyes didn’t change, with their silent searching enquiry.
“That Tessa, she badly wanted to get it to you, we had one joy ride to hell,” Clem said sweetly, sensing a need for more information all around. People always smiled when he used the cliché. Leo shrugged, still amazed that Milan didn’t know how much he was asking of the Agency. The contents of the package were not valuable jewelry, which was evident.
No one commented on the address on the envelope of the package- it had been addressed to Milan at his address in Prague. It was in a standard postal services envelope that one could purchase anywhere in South Africa. Tessa had intended to post it, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, as it was so valuable, she told Leo when he talked with her at Willow tree. She would give it all to him, but did not intend returning a bracelet, given to her by Milan.
She admitted that she had given Milan some files from the Agency. How could he now ask to see Gina? He did not mention her name, all he said was,
“I would like to meet her again…. one day - but you are Leo Nikolensky.”
No one missed his meaning; it was a request, directed at Leo. He couldn’t mean Tessa. He would have asked airport security to go after her, or Alexei to do that. He added quietly and graciously, considering his request had been ignored, “I knew your father, when he was not much more than your age.”
Leo felt the creeping in of some petulance along with everything else. Milan was not old enough to know his father; he had been over forty when Leo came into the world. That made Milan a child when his father was Leo’s age.
As far as the reports go, he was living in Prague, in a ghetto. Why would he speak of it, he had come up in the world, studying in Moscow, travelling in the west, marrying Olga, from an old family that had some wealth and culture- - never mind recent events. How, in the communist rule? Did he play cards on the side? Leo would have liked to ask him, but he didn’t.
“Give your uncle my regards.”
Last boarding calls were given out and as quickly as when a plug is pulled, the conversation had ended, and there was almost a race to get to the doors, as there were
“Planes to catch, bills to pay,
I learnt to walk when he was away…”

“In a few short weeks the question has been changed, why is Milan not at this time standing for the cabinet?” It was an ironic question. The first democratic representation of the new Czech Republic had been created with several unqualified ministers whose enthusiasm for the future was sufficient but after a few years, many were sure that the future would be secured by a person with a proper political background, knew how to hold his ground, and work with others. Not everything about Dr Dubanovic was straightforward. Some suspected he had worked more closely with Russia than need be, and gained favor by this, while pretending other things, and was perhaps even a spy. Not everyone wished him well. Some sensed he had more power than he should have and he should not have stepped down, nor should he remain in the background.
“His wife’s intention to divorce him left him free to go against his brother in law, and Milan should run for it now, or run to the west again, before he finds himself without support of Jiri Slav should their alliance be broken.”
The journalists were having a day of this news item. Wherever it came from, the doctor had denied any reason for his wife to divorce him.
He smiled at the idea of the mouse insisting there was no thorn in his paw, to the outraged lion, who felt the stab of it every moment. The mouse may think not, because he had not put it there himself- but was able to see it now.
Henri’s love of the theatrical gave him his name in the States as a man who brought the Slovakian gift of story-telling alive. Driven by the impatience his youth, in a race to give out his work to the west, he sometimes wrote a very bad play. There was no excuse for the way he aggravated his own circumstances by not being more careful of what he said, when he had things to say that could get him into trouble, he also had the skill to say them in a different way, and get past the authorities, but he chose rather to become a hero. He must have wanted to break out of the mould, and be forced to do it.
Nothing wrong with his political journalism. Here, he sidestepped every issue that was controversial, but he could also knock his opponents out cold. They wouldn’t even know he had done so, and he had done it again. Olga’s right to be her own person even in this time was asserted as a new discovery. It would follow that he held the same rights, and his relationship with Jiri was unchanged.
“Some political writers have the view that it is to his advantage if his wife divorced him and returned to the south, others query this. We know it is clearly to her advantage;
“ ‘One more Slovakian liberated from Czech rule,’ “ with a picture of Olga on a horse with her new lover, the racehorse owner who had three young children and had lost his wife in a riding accident. The caption added that Olga could not have children of her own. This human element is what had stopped Leo for a moment, in the corridor outside the VIP lounge, where one could also wait and read the papers. He glanced towards the entrance.
Milan was just leaving himself, and he stopped to look at the news. He recognized Henri’s work – there were no further obstacles, and it was well done. It was also a good idea to lay low for a bit, he must write to Henri and tell him that he should take his vacation, as planned, and never mind the election stories. Jiri would not mind Olga’s decisions made in free will, he was too solid for that, but he would resent any tactless comments that Henri was capable of making, especially if under pressure. If Milan came under attack, Henri defended him, and someone must, as writers and journalists create the perceptions that are possible.
It was almost twenty years since Milan’s intervention had saved Henri’s life, and he was a man of his word. “I won’t forget,” he had said, “you say you wish you didn’t know me, sometimes, for the trouble I have caused you, but one day, you will be glad to know me, and then our relationship is equal.” (This last item was not on the internet search files.) True, when he was a young playwright, Milan wanted very much to know him, and he even used his connections to make himself invited to the theatre and attend gatherings after a show. He had access to a record collection, for one thing, and he was willing to bring it to gatherings after the theatre was closed if he was invited.
Emil was aware of some relationship to the Valentyn family and in 1989 had asked Milan if he knew where Katerin might be found, or how it was that she had managed a name-change to Julia Vanova, and then vanished. Was she still alive? Emil forwarded the letter which Ted received, in which she denounced her family in South Africa. The doctor was not much use.
“Either Katerin carried out her threat to conceal herself from her family, or she did not live long enough to make it,” his letter concluded dryly.
Henri Valentyn was released from police custody at this time, and his wife Alyonka, living in a nearby town, and all the Valentyns of the world, vanished. The possibility they had allowed, that Olga could be Katerin, and that Tessa had found it out, had seemed a bit shallow, but Leo still had to test that. One of the things she had taken from the agency was a ring, too bad he did not have it to show to Milan- even a moment’s hesitation would have given him a clue.
Aside from having evidence to clear Henri’s name, the doctor had spent almost a year at the hospital near the town of Gina’s origin, where important research was under way, but also, where he could have visited Katya and her family. “Fedor had sent a ring saying was Katerin’s, and Tessa’s a girl, a romantic- she may have thought it belonged to you.” Leo said.
“It’s an old engagement ring then?” He smiled, glancing at the newspapers.“Olga’s still my wife, you know. Anything Tessa may invent could be enough to change things, when it is so sensitive a situation. At a different time it would not matter. She must return the letters to Henri.”
When the Agency opened it had given out contracts with many clauses to protect clients from and most of these applied to a previous government, but Milan had read them all. He gave no sign of interest in continuing the conversation; rather, he stepped back, with a polite gesture to the door, standing wide open, which JJ responded to at once, taking Leo’s arm and racing to the departures lounge, shouting as they reached the airline desk.
“Don’t let the plane leave without its passenger.”
Milan left the Cape Town airport after meeting with Jiri and others and then checked into a different hotel to the one reserved for them, glad of the escape from the constant stream of cameramen and news reporters. He was on his way to a health conference in Durban, when everyone else returned to Prague.
Leo had changed his mind as well, he found, when Alexei gave him a transcript of a fax showing Leo’s travel plans. He had taken a flight from Johannesburg to Nelspruit and would not be returning to Vienna. He would be meeting with Paul and Ana Terekova, although he had been called off the search by the Agency. Alexei also confirmed for him that Gina was the co- driver of the car, not someone pretending to be her. He had found her easily.

13 The Bracelet

For Milan, it was easy to imagine that Leo’s uncle could be innocent, and taken in by Tessa, as the family were known for their gentle natures, such as Emil possessed. Leo’s father was an exception; he had described himself as something like a cliché in reverse “not a lover but a fighter.” Milan was a child but he never forgot the name of the old soldier in Prague, whose reputation spread around him, not just as a friend of Joseph Tito but a fighter of great courage. The old man-whom they called Nikolai Nikolensky - had a woman he was friendly with, maybe even living with at the time. That part he could not tell Leo, not at their first meeting at the airport. He visited the Josefsky quarter, he was heading for St Petersburg to join the Russian liberation army, he reappeared- he was on an early pension for a slight injury, he was more shell-shocked than physically disabled. “So what, he would show them!” Or on a long pilgrimage to the end of Russia and all the way to Japan, and he was to be seen sometimes with a group of boys following him in case he would begin to tell a story, some of whom were listening, others waiting, as he was inclined to tear the buttons from his coat and give them away.
Those shiny ones from his soldier’s jacket were treated as medals. If he was on his way somewhere, he didn’t make it then; he was knocked down by a tank in ‘68 and most likely returned to his family, to father Leo.
Emil operated quietly and discreetly, and they did not give chase after Tessa at once, although Henri had threatened to sue them. She might not be able to bring down legal charges, but there was still a risk that she would put him out of business, and what do they have to fall back on, but mending violins?
Milan wrote a brief note to be sent to his wife. The jewelry had not been returned and charges would have to be made to begin an insurance claim. The letters, he felt sure, were in the package, but no one was allowed to open it. At least they were safe. He wanted to believe that Olga had no idea what Henri had written, and her interest primarily with the jewelry was reassuring. Milan knew that they could be more personally damaging than anything said of her parents background or knowledge of her real identity, as Henri had found time in one of them to apologize for what he said of Olga in one of his plays, and justify what he had said - this would draw attention to his comments.
She certainly did not deserve the treatment dealt out by her enemies, since the time of their marriage. It was entirely his fault; he should not have married her and then lived such a public life. It was not his intention to do so; he was trying to live a private one. Her parent’s world was destroyed by the war as much as anyone else’s, their farm had been occupied, no more or less than the Nazi= claimed town and villages nearby. Whatever ties they had to the fascists was prior to the war- and strictly commercial, when they were just Italians, just a car- producing company.
Olga’s father was killed on his return to the south. Even that didn’t escape comment, her mother was accused of replacing him very quickly, of making a very good marriage. Then Olga’s life was talked about, not just before, but after they met, but Milan refused to listen. He knew the story already. She was raised and educated in a convent, seduced by some young Italian and with a result that was to be expected; pregnancy, rejection, termination. Her spirit did not bow to guilt for anything, and she wanted to rebuild the farm, and held onto the hope that they could clear her family name. It was difficult to return there once he was installed in the North.
He was not supposed to marry someone living in the west. His superiors were aware of it, and that Olga was outside of the country not by choice, but her family left as refugees, although not from Russian rule, and they had welcomed her home to contribute to the country’s future. Many people were incredulous and found this story hard to believe, even in 1989, and the doctor had, in earlier times, been advised to not to spread it around too much, in fact, there was always some secrecy around Olga’s name, but not for the reasons one might suppose.
Things were out in the open now, or could be- they had nothing to hide anymore. They’d had nothing to hide at any time.
If Tessa ever thought of his place in politics he doubted. She was not that much of a thinker, but she could have acted better, she wasn’t without her own mind. The drugs and alcohol she used were not enough to place her in the mire to the extent that she was, rather, there must be someone behind her. From what he gathered from their meetings, someone who frightened her more than a little. It could not be Leo; his mother and the gentle Emil had raised him.

Bratislava is where Milan first met Tessa – he had a lunch date with an old friend who owed him money, and wished to begin repayment of it -so Fabian said -the previous week. Tessa followed him into the restaurant and he had no idea she was dangerous. His friend was late- or he was early, and his mind was troubled over a bracelet he had just collected from the jeweler where Fabian had left it, after he had found in a nearby pawnshop. He’d called Milan to tell him of the purchase, a spontaneous decision he made when he recognized it as being Olga’s, and on sale for much less than its value.
Olga wore it frequently and cried when she lost it, so it shouldn’t surprise Milan that his friend recognized it. They had agreed to have lunch together when Milan came down south, so the jeweler would have time to strengthen the clasp, in case that is the reason why it was lost. The jeweler did not think it was the reason. He showed Milan the repairs he had made, saying it would not now come loose on Olga’s wrist for some years, but even at the time he tested it, it hadn’t been weak enough to just fall undone. He parted with it sadly, saying he would have liked to melt it down for the valuable stones, and design a new setting for them.
Milan was tempted to make the sale at once. This would prevent a confrontation with Olga.
Tessa made up some conversation with him, out of nothing- building a picture of her life to suggest she was the daughter of Henri Valentyn. She asked his help to get away, before her boyfriend caught up with her- she said her father was too angry and wouldn’t answer her calls- but she was very scared when he was angry.
The image of a man striking out at Tessa flashed through his mind and he knew it was not Henri but he couldn’t just turn a blind eye, and she could have made that up and still be his daughter. He let her talk, he couldn’t see any reason why she would make up so many things he might believe excepting how naïve she was.
She was pretty, he was bored, his friend was late, and he didn’t mind Tessa being there, even after Fabian appeared.
It wasn’t a business meeting that she could interrupt.
When at first he heard Fabian’s voice on the phone, he thought his friend was calling to ask for a further loan, but had been happily informed that he was now “off the tables”. This was a token of his gratitude and a sign of what it meant to him to have a friend like Milan, who had helped him when he was in difficulty due to his gambling habits, and not judged him. The memory of the conversation of the week before made him smile as he passed it over to Tessa, so she could admire it closely. It is likely that Olga had been to the casino- and even the pawnshop- during a brief affair.
It could be something that Fabian was about to confess, and had set out to do, by returning the bracelet, but by the time Fabian appeared, the bracelet had already been given to away.
“So now I know how much value you are willing to place on our friendship,” he said to his friend, in a generous way, suppressing an internal reaction of sympathy for his wife, who was so easily betrayed by the action.
When Milan gave Fabian the loan of money, he did not see it as Alexei might, that he was purchasing the man’s resolve to stay away from his wife, as much as to stay away from the cards. He knew his friend would have done the same for him, if the coin had fallen on the other side, and admitted to himself some kind of spite in his action, as much as charity, or a purely spontaneous gesture, or idleness- he did not want to return home with the bracelet or even return to the jeweler. Tessa’s enthusiasm was interesting to him-he knew as he watched her expression that she wanted to have it, and Olga would not even know. She made a fuss of it, tried it on, and seemed to regret everything that led her to this moment, and swore she would never go back to that man, who had set her up to be there, and seemed to mean it. Milan didn’t know what she meant exactly anymore, sure now that she wasn’t Henri’s daughter, but the sale of the bracelet, if she returned to the jewelry shop, would give her the means to get away.
Milan was surprised the value given to it, and it was part of a collection which was a gift from his ‘adopted grandmother’, a great-aunt or second or third cousin who had taken him in, and raised him as their own –she and her husband. They were an elderly couple at the time with but one child, who was “incommunicado”, he had returned to Russia to take up some position there while leaving his wife and child in Prague, and had once or twice written to Milan.
This relative had offered him the jewelry knowing it was his grandmother’s wish that Milan marry the girl of his dreams. Strictly speaking, it belonged to his own wife by that time, and then again, his wife did not want to live in Russia with himself, so take it that he had no wife.
Milan inherited more than he would have counted on by this default, which agreed with his grandmother’s wishes, so there was no question of his having a right to the jewelry given him. He knew that his adopted brother had a grand-son as well by now, so he preferred not to see Olga wearing anything that she might become attached to, in case of a new situation. He could afford to buy her things if jewelry is what she wanted from him.
Tessa had distracted him from his worries for an hour, and his friend had something to think about after meeting her with him, and might stop feeling guilty, she had done them a favor. He gave her his card and asked her to come back when she was ready to be helped. It was an afterthought. That was the beauty of the moment; she had appeared in the right time. There was nothing else behind the gift of the bracelet.

When Jans saw it, he said, “That’s it?” and she said,
“Yes” and he said, after hearing how easily he gave it to her. “There must be more.”
He had been asked to come up to Prague to work on the Dubanovic home, which was never repaired properly after the war, just bricked up all along one side, and agreed, because Tess was able to move north and keep her job at the agency. She had protested about following Milan, but agreed because it meant so much to Jans, when he convinced her that it would be easy, because the doctor had paid bribes before to suppress Olga’s family secrets, almost like paying tax, when coming south.
Now he was on a different tack- he had not been that sure that it was the right thing to go after Olga, because she had treated him quite well, in fact. The husband was the dodgy bastard. Tessa protested, she didn’t like to have to go into the files. Leo would get angry- Jans did not believe that- but Leo had made it clear to her in the beginning that he only allowed her there because his uncle was still running things.
Leo didn’t scare her much but sometimes, she couldn’t help being afraid- it kept her from arriving at work late, and it prevented her from a whole range of excesses and sins. The idea that he might turn a dark look her way, he who she wanted so much to please- much more than she realized, he understood how much more, when she had lost the chance to do so.
Jans first had the idea to find information on the Dubanovic family when Tess confided in him that the owner of the house he was fixing had stepped into the Prague office and been denied as a client.
When Milan appeared she recognized him, and hid in the tiny alcove with a kettle and cups for making tea, until he left, and he left very quickly. Tessa had a gist of the conversation, which made her ask why Emil said he could not help the doctor, and mentioned Henri’s name. She knew they wouldn’t refuse a client, so why Doctor Dubanovic - as everyone still called him. Jans heard enough to have an idea they might find a secret, but Tessa could also keep a secret do so; the reason for refusing Milan, which Emil was willing to allow her to find out, was a relationship to Henri Valentyn.
Who was Henri to him? What little she knew of him gave no clues, but was enough to awaken her curiosity.

14 Henri

The year was 1992. Henri had hoped that Milan would allow him to tell the whole story, as he still remembered hearing of his heroic part in the actual escape of Gina and Ted Valentyn, whom Milan had rescued from the guards, and what with his being now a member of the newly elected first senate, of their new Democratic Republic, he was hoping to write a little play on it. It was the sort of thing that might even go down well in the United States, the “other side of the story” to the one that he usually told. He had not said much that was good of the communists in Czech without receiving intense criticism, and accusations of living by a double standard.
Milan had proved they could behave well at times. He should correct the impression that others have; he knew there were many like Milan Dubanovic but none so personally. Aside from that, the play would become known to Katerin, and she might realize it is part of her story. There must be some way to make it up to her.
He had met her once, nearby a theatre, and he had managed to persuade her to have a late lunch with him, although she said she was in a hurry to get home. Her husband was coming to fetch her- she could not talk then. She told him she was living in Stuttgart, but had come over to perform in a small role in the play; that she had two small children at home, and that is why she commuted every day, after work. The distance was no problem, her husband sold cars for Mercedes Benz. That is why they drove a better car than he, a famous writer, and a Czech celebrity.
“I still want to write a play for you,” he had said, and she laughed.
“I named my second child after you, Henri,” she said. Adding quickly, “As promised. You said you’d name your daughter after me. Remember? To keep the spirit of the renaissance going- Henry and Katerin Medici, of France and Italy?”
“I am flattered; only it’s quite a name to burden a small child with, or a man, in the west. He would be ‘Hank,’ like the actor, Tom Hanks. You have not a boy called Thomas, I hope. ‘Hanks, Tom,’ – ‘don’t mention it,’.”
“We aren’t planning to go there” she replied, in perfect English, instead of laughing.
“Why not?”
“I don’t hear much to speak of.”
“You should come and see for yourself what it’s like.”
Seeing that the play she mentioned was running for two weeks, Henri was in no hurry to have Katerin tell him more about herself, and for opening night, sent some flowers with a note, but there was no response. He called the theatre, and even returned and stayed to watch the play. She wasn’t in any of the shows on their program, but had travelled the distance for an audition, he realized, after asking enough questions of the theatre staff.

Many emigrants who left Czech in the later 80”s had to take whatever work they could find. Some wished to return, others didn’t think things were any better at home than here, where the grass had been greener for a time.
He didn’t even know if Katya was married, and she had been too quick to volunteer information about a child, secretive about everything else.
His note was written the next morning, and posted to the theater for her. It was a brief one, to ask her to contact a friend of his at least, who was looking for a cast for a wonderful play. Alphonse was also in Vienna, he’d remember how well she could act, he would be sure to put in a recommendation.
Another note followed the next day;

“I did not seek you out after we met by chance but came here to look for you because at last I had the chance to, after so much time.
“Nothing troubled me as much as that we had not parted on good terms, unless it was that you still might wish not to see me again. I thought at first it was enough just to know that you are alive, and still beautiful as ever, whatever you are doing with your life. I don’t ask to know anything of your life, I don’t deserve to know, if any of your circumstance were caused by me I was not aware of it, and I thought you would rise above it with your strength to prove yourself wherever you are in the world. I didn’t want to tell you about my own success, I am that well known here now that I can help you to establish your career the moment you appear, that is not boastful- it is up to you after the first play.
“Don’t believe that you will not be able to compete, or feel unwilling to let me help in that case. .Alphonse knows already that you might arrive, and I will allow you the choice, I know you can make it, you don’t need us, but when you are ready to-and in-between, come home, for my sake”
He added, “My very dear Katya.”
This was one item which Milan had placed in the dragon chest, as Henri had shown it to him on an evening after spending the day scouring the local schools and directories, only to learn there was no one by the name he had for Katya, and both the notes he had sent to the theatre were returned to him.
Henri had shown Milan the notes to ask if his friend thought it was he who had written badly rather than well. He was willing to face the consequences of his earlier writing and be humble about his future aspirations, and whether or not Katya even considered him worth a moment, now.
“I can’t sleep or rest sometimes, thinking of what it must be like for her to be without her first child, now that I have my own children I don’t always see them- it is justice, isn’t it? I should have acted differently” he said to Milan.
He had left the country again by then, and his letter of explanation came from Boston.
“Meeting Katya again had helped him to understand his own people and the mistakes they’d made…” he didn’t compare her to American women, and he wouldn’t want to- he could see her innocence now in a world that didn’t make women secure or give them equality. “American women believe they are treated as equal, and it is because the men are such persuasive liars. It’s true that their rights are recognized more easily- but that is what the socialist ideal represented to our own kind, although it failed. They should most of all not lose their femininity, intuition and quality of perception.
“All she wanted was to be safe and protected, not equal. It was a mistake to think that women must want equality if that means to be treated in the same way as men. I will write a new play for her, this time will show the things she had to experience, and how she survived and remains beautiful…but I regret, I don’t myself know how to penetrate the mystery. Find her for me, Milan, if you can.”

With instructions further to assist him, he signed off. This also, was placed in the dragon chest. It was as if Milan didn’t want to talk about or forget the correspondence, but what could he do? The next letter was overlong, by a few pages. Perhaps Henri was drunk again, or perhaps he was inspired.
“I don’t really believe the country would be better off with a western identity than with an eastern one, but I believe the country will be better off only with individual autonomy, and that is up to the country’s real leadership –its artists and thinkers.
“America? There is no such thing as Nation on the planet. One takes the praise intended for another, and the other takes the blame for others onto himself and is hurt by it. If we were better friends, I would not encourage you to engage in politics, I would encourage going to the theatre more often. Not to my own plays, the name of Herman Boheme is a disgrace to me. I am ashamed of him, I disown him completely.
“I resent being a representative of the ideal known as Bohemia. How can I support such a thing, which is insidious, and a reflection of American patriotism. Why would I uphold it? There is no way that a single culture or group can address something beyond cultural perception, which is universal, and living in the minds of all.”
Henri’s mind was directed very much towards what is beyond politics and principles, towards a true ideal, which Marxism had imitated, the writing of Schopenhauer, Schiller, even Plato, and others –but Henri felt that even all of these things, and any form of education, fell short of the ideal, insofar as it was outwardly imposed.”
He had said as much in his letters.
“A person can be subdued and still not lose sight of the ideal. A young heroine who is all forgiveness, such as Katya, knows the ideal beyond the events. Her life story would be the place to begin a play, it would show up what was taking place to women at the time, and justify her- and all the women she represented- loyalty to the party, which had promised them something better, but couldn’t allow for the essential ingredient: free will and free exchange of ideas. This is what is happening everywhere in our time.
“There are no divisions when it comes to reaching the highest of thoughts, no east, nor west- and truth is not something that only the strong or the foolhardy recognize, but anyone can, who has courage to recognize that they live in the light when they are truthful, and with lies and fear when they are afraid- with lies to protect themselves from knowing even what it is they fear. Fear darkens perceptions and we no longer know ourselves- that’s how all can share the same ideal, but stand facing one another from opposing sides. I will never believe the mind has no real substance, because I know how it feels when applied in the negative. The mind is in fact crippled by this fear that sets us apart.
I gave it a voice sometimes. You know the play I wrote on the subject of another Hamlet, the jilted lover –
“ ‘Come out, come out, or I will kill you at once.’ He waves a pistol in the air, and then, ‘but what would a toad do if one had squashed it, but croak- whereas he could still be useful for something- no, if one is to kill a man, let it be an honorable death. I will challenge him to a duel. But what if he outlives me?”
“Always made the audiences laugh. It’s the worst thing I have written. And how egotistic I was on arrival here. But it’s not because I am weak that I love my cousin. I had seen something in her, since childhood, and I love all women because of it.
“Thanks to knowing of Katya’s courage and beautiful spirit, in the face of things we don’t even realize women face, almost every day. Her example to others is worth mentioning, because of her resilience, she is not a victim of some tragic event, but remains beautiful as ever and I don’t feel sorry for her. She had faith in something that did not have to be identified, was present in everyday life- humanity itself.” And his writing in future would be directed toward that.
Milan’s view of the past had been different. In his mind, the situation was one of a reversal of roles, he, the so-called selfish male, thinking he was equal to them, was the one who believed their lies, or the lies that he chose. He would never be equal to this artistic temperament, fire and water don’t mix that well in the ordinary human soul- changeable as it is, he found the one inclined to put the other out. Their friendship was not of a sort that was based on this level of personal intimacy, but Henri seemed not to have anyone else to talk to.
By this time he was heading for the same sort of situation as Henri - a sudden divorce from his wife, who he knew quite well was saving things against that time, such as the jewelry she had collected in the dragon chest. This discovery was a surprise and set him back for a moment.
Behind the secret drawer was another one- this no one knew of but himself, he was sure. It required the use of a secret key. It had been his game as a child to hide things in one of the places where no one could find it. No one knew of or spoke of how it came to be in the house in Prague, or why he was allowed to use it for his childish games.
If Olga had her own key made, and time to find the hiding place, there would be a problem, but otherwise, she wouldn’t know. He had planned to confront her about the jewelry, in any case, but it had slipped his mind again. Even then, he was thinking of Henri more than he was thinking of Olga.
His alliance with Olga’s brother- in -law was a solid one and a good thing, but should they divorce, if Milan did anything to cause it, he might have to stand on his own. Farming was not an option then. Even his friendship with Henri jeopardized his marriage- Olga could not stand him. The letters would provoke her to ask a few questions he couldn’t answer to her, and Henri would not like to find out she had read them.
His friendship could not be taken for granted. He was too inclined to changeable moods, both of self recrimination and anger against the world, more an outrage than real anger, more outwardly damaging. As a young student he had regretted mostly that he left Prague when he did, because he liked to watch every single one of Henri’s plays. Aside from this, and their having the same history to live through with similar ideals, they did not have much in common- so the relationship was tenuous even in better circumstances.
There wasn’t anyone else he could reach, who knew Katerin as well as Milan. Henri had introduced his beautiful cousin, and he had been protective and proud of her, charged with the task of caring for her, while she was living in Prague. It must have disappointed him that she wished not to see him- even now, although her reasons were not as before.
Milan did not know how to answer the letters from Henri, but he began to forgive him, and the Valentyn family. He could argue that Katya didn’t at any time have equal status with the men of her family, adding his discovery that her father wanted her to have nothing to do with himself, although at this time they hadn’t met, that she lived happily in a limited, and judgmental world. Their reasons for disliking him proved it- Katya had hinted at these, in a naïve way- firstly, because he was a student in Moscow he was “too conservative and would come home thinking like a Russian,” and then later, because he was “too liberal”.
His heart went out to her and he longed to be able to explain to her what it was he disliked about her choice to be an actress, (which was the role in which she was cast by the wrong director) but he couldn’t give words to it, without siding with the opinion of those artists whose ideas had been suppressed for being too liberal- or rather, as Milan saw it then, wishful.
Henri had sought him out as a friend again, but he had already fallen from grace. He could see now how things really were; considering the depth of Henri’s feelings for Katerin, and also in an uncanny way, Henri was able to give words to Milan to describe Katerin and how it was not he, but the theatre, which had let her down. True, he also exaggerated a little. No one was good enough for Katerin, and Henri himself did not feel good enough for her.

15 Katerin

It was as if fate had wanted to throw them together, when he was transferred to a hospital near the village of Mkliv. By this time he was married to Olga, who was studying in Russia and he knew better than to try to see Katya again.
He felt that he was not yet accepted by her family into their inner circle, until Henri’s letters proved that was a mistake, on his part. For that reason he kept them- he had always felt in Henri’s world, things were not as cold, as in his own, and the touch of the pages brought memories to life.
“Let’s find Katya and try to make it up to her,” he suggested to Milan, one evening, and he spoke as if he didn’t know if the subject had interested his friend, as his letters received no replies. He had almost felt ashamed for having written, as he was in a different state of mind again, lonely, finally parted from his wife, firmly resolved not to drink again, still writing plays but not yet his best one. He wished to see his family whom he had not seen since they had left Mkliv. Its true he visited only occasionally before they left- once, arriving there unexpected, had found Katerin’s mother- his aunt Vanya, had fallen on the steps, and Gina, poor thing, playing in the snow. Milan remembered the episode, or a similar one, as she had been admitted to hospital with pneumonia, and they passed some time trying to remember on which day, so they could wonder at how much time had passed, and how closely they missed one another sometimes.
If Tessa had followed him some years previously- but she was then a child -she might have had something to report to Jans - to the agency, and to his wife. It was early 1993. Milan had shared a car with friends on a trip to Munich for two nights. He was walking on his own, when he saw her leaving a new theatre building.
He called out to her but Katerin turned her head, waved as if to someone across the street, and slipped away, ignoring him completely. He returned to watch the evening play, on his own, but she wasn’t in it. There was an afternoon rehearsal, of a different play and cast, but she was not in that either. He waited patiently and sure enough on the third day, she returned. He saw her from a distance. She wore a blue dress, it was late spring and all the trees were rich in leaves and still had blossoms, and she was walking in the sunshine, carefree.
He waved; she smiled also, and waved. They walked in the park a little way and he asked where she lived, could he walk her home?
“That would be nice- I had not brought any bus tickets, and I have to walk quite a distance, but I am not going home until much later.”
He realized suddenly that he wasn’t at work and he didn’t have to be on his best behavior with her, never mind her tone of voice- they had once been friends- more than just friends.
“I am so glad then that you did see me, yesterday is out of my mind already, and your cousin Henri would be happy to know I passed my time observing the theatre, it what he recommended me to do.”
Katya knew quite well she had snubbed him and it was still on his mind, so she was happy to keep things light.
“I don’t act anymore, I prefer dancing, and I am a teacher, now late.”
“Yes, he told me that as well- but I think it suits you- and it seems to me as if you like something about Germany, after all?”
He meant it as he said it; so many well meaning theatre directors and entertainers, in the changed atmosphere at home, were being replaced, and many would struggle to find work again.
“Didn’t you promise me that you would ‘save the last dance for me’?”
He realized his mistake in talking so freely- the last time he had seen her, attending a play with Olga, his wife- to be, she didn’t want to look at him, not out of pride, more like pain. Katya had seen him first, with Olga but without knowing of their relationship, and she ran to him to greet him, with that open face, it was terrible to watch her expression changed as she discovered her mistake.
He had no idea what to say and he couldn’t chase after her to explain, what was there to explain? Then her pride followed- it wasn’t anything he could change. It would have been better to have listened the first time she asked him not to try to see him again.
Then she surprised him.
“I may well save the last dance for you, but right now, I have a husband who adores me, and two children who look up to me, and you will be the death of me, if they find out why I took a walk in this direction again today, I did see you yesterday.”
Milan felt as if he had missed his life somewhere, and had no means to know what on earth was on her mind, as she talked freely for a bit. She was hoping to be in a Spanish story- it was as if she might work a miracle, if she returned to the theatre, and performed that play in South Africa, Ted and Gina would know of it and attend.
Something about the spring air, it felt like they were breathing pure light. Just as quickly a cloud appeared and the moment was lost, but Milan was familiar with clouds, and knew he must find a way to see her again. It was his next question that changed everything.
“How is Ted now?”
“He is fine.”
“Gina’s almost old enough to visit you on her own, and it would be safe to invite her here.”
“I have a new life and a new family, and I don’t speak about my past.” But then she did, reminding him of one of her first acting roles in a play, a Spanish story- she had played a child in a story written by the South African writer, Uys Krige, and was hoping for a part in it again, as an adult, in the back of her mind hoping somehow miraculously, Ted and Gina would hear of it. Just auditioning for the part awakened in her things she didn’t want to feel, and she was looking forward to meeting her daughter, and then who should she meet on the day, if not Henri’s best friend Alphonse.
“We had lunch together,” she ended.
Walking with her, pretending nothing, she made it easy, but she was not that good an actress. If it meant the world to her to know that Henri was innocent of charges against him, Katya would never let on, she would make up something else about him- and she did.
“He never wrote to me to tell me how he was, or made contact, not even once. How would I know his reason for avoiding me all this time? Don’t tell me it was for my sake, that I had no longer to be associated with him, the damage was done.”
“Yes, that is true, but it would be a reason for not trying to write to you, from the outside. You still had a sympathetic ear. Your children would still have a good education.”
“Exactly- and would they be ungrateful, I don’t think so. Was Henri ungrateful, did he think he would have preferred to grow up laboring on a farm? He said as much.”
“That is the artistic temperament, he may have regretted that he couldn’t just be satisfied, and was less happy with his decision to be a writer than with his subject material. I am sure he felt he owed his country something. That is why he only left when he really must.”
“There is nothing exceptional about a tiny little bit of loyalty.”
Milan was surprised and tried not to show it. He had forgotten how well Katerin knew him, and understood that her words were a bit pretentious. She of all people knew that he was not ashamed of his association with the communist party, how could he be, after he was educated by them, given an opportunity he would not have had, while at the same time sheltered from the reality of what it meant to some of his own countrymen.
This was an ideal they shared, but perhaps she had seen through him as well, even then, and knew his future. What a pity they did not stay together, so she could have followed his reasons for changing his mind, when he began to realize he did not owe anything to anyone and at the same time had a vocation to serve.
But how much did it matter now? By 1987 –ironically soon after his arrival in Moscow, with a contact in Finland, he began to work in an underground, which gave information to the west and called for change internally. This led to a new discovery; if he owed anything, he owed his life to one person. A man he could not remember and whose name he would never know.
Not many people knew the story of his parent’s death and Milan was too young to remember it. But there was a man who recollected it- he had been present at the time, a soldier from St Petersburg, who was about to be promoted in the Russian Army.
It was in the winter of 1955. A small threat was reported of the growing liberation movement in Prague and he was posted, which meant that he heard the news of his wife having given birth to their second child while away, and he and some friends were celebrating, even while the bomb that wrecked a few houses- and half the home in Prague where the Dubanovic family were living = and they didn’t even look up, but later that night, he heard a child crying- a boy, no older than this captain’s first child would be, if he had survived, and in fact so similar in appearance that he felt he was seeing a ghost at the time.
The boy was beside his parents, neither of whom was alive, and the soldier picked him up and carried him to a nearby home, and asked the people in it, to find someone to whom the boy belonged. They agreed to do so in the morning.
She gave him details and the family name, and he swore he would never forget it.
It was a name which re-appeared when Milan was accepted into a university in st Petersburg. They were determined to educate him and make a leader out of him, so long as his father’s affiliations were not known to him- and nor would Milan ever know the name of his benefactor, or be sure that he had one, until he received advice to leave the country, and how to do it, from one friend left in the Soviet Russian Government, because he went too far at this time. They had been observing and following him for some time, and discovered irregular activity since before he left Mkliv.
The result of the enquiry was that, a year later, when the country changed hands, Milan became a hero to his own people, almost overnight.

“Having an education is not everything.” He said it lightly, but then added, “Having someone you love and can talk to about anything is as important. Your husband is lucky to have you. I suppose he is very loyal to you, but underestimates and undervalues you and you forgive him, as you have a good nature.”
“Do you never take me seriously- you take everything else seriously. Why isolate me?” she was laughing.
“I think my wife wants a divorce. Is this the time to take you seriously? Nothing but work keeps me happy, but when I think of the things I love best, I become miserable. She may have met someone else”
“Who treats her as well as you, I don’t think so. It will be forgotten by tomorrow- shall we dance?”
“What, here, in the street, or by the river?”
“No, I know of a place we can go, and I have to go there anyway.”
“It will be forgotten by tomorrow- as you say, and I never dance.”
“Now I feel sorry for you” she said, and ran.

16 Soccer Weekend

The air was chilly and the chateau in Languedoc was quiet with a fire blazing in the morning room. It was Gerard who met me at the station. “Something’s in the air, and if it isn’t love, it’s close to it,” he said. It was “soccer weekend”. He explained again, as the chateau was empty, but for us, but then a little car pulled up, and his sister Suzette stepped out, with a friend.
They had a large suitcase they were sharing, which he was trying to take from them, but they seemed not to want his help, and were talking all at once. Gerard showed them around with laughter and a lot of turning of taps and I wanted to go out.
Philip’s call delayed my joining them. “You are home safe! I knew you would be. It’s raining all over. That will not stop the match, it is in Barcelona. Even I am looking forward to it. I’m adapting to the lifestyle” he said. So we were not going to watch the game itself, we would get out and watch it at a local pub, I realized- how little I know of soccer games. Suzette and Marie Elise were changing to colors of their favorite team.
He hung up before telling me where he was, or where Sophie might be, and the children, and I sensed that he wouldn’t have wanted to answer me then, but it could wait- just one of many questions I had unanswered then.
I added the new picture of my mother and the picture of Leo to a journal I was keeping, with the files that were in my suitcase that Tessa had been travelling with, in that plain envelope, the colors of which I could see in my mind’s eye only.
The suitcase containing everything he was sent by the Agency to find (aside from my mother Katerin) was something he should know I had. Neil didn’t answer my call, and then the rain prevented me, or rather, brought Alexei to my door again, and we found a temporary solution; the safe in the apartment was a good enough place for the letters. These were more important than the jewelry because of the damage they could do, and not even Leo should be allowed to have them, they were written to Milan Dubanovic who was in transit between Cape town and Durban as we were speaking, which for some reason Alexei found painful to even have to point out.
Milan had laid charges of theft of them from his home in Prague, and before he added theft of jewelry to the charge, I should leave the city, and take it with me so that I could give it all to Leo. He wanted nothing to do with any of it.
He had missed his flight to Mauritius to give me a passport that was issued by the Czech government at the request of Jiri Slav, so I could leave Cape Town as soon as possible after the hi-jacking episode and return home safely, and this included entry to France. Alexei had not once yet mentioned the name of Milan Dubanovic other than to clarify his real name was something different, and he took advantage of the weather to keep what knowledge he had to himself, but I didn’t even guess it then- it was raining and there was a power cut that left only street lights. Only in the distance could we see lights in the harbor sparkling brightly, until rain fell down hard and obliterated the sky and finally, relented.
He made a game of not wanting to tell me where he found the umbrella he was carrying, looking at it for the first time in the half-light, as he dripped water on the floor and waited while I searched for more candles.
“Why are you still here?” I asked. “I thought you had left already.”
“Something more important,” he handed me a small envelope with the new passport inside it.
“How did you manage this? Thank you- you missed your flight to give me this, you know how much it means to me?” He smiled weakly, pretending a little mystique and nonchalance to make up for what he supposed I thought of him at first, and I knew that I had mattered, and he did care what I think.
Then I showed him the jewelry, hoping for a response, as I had no idea still then what to make of it. We could both see that Tessa had removed some precious stones to sell, one by one, and it looked as if she had used some clumsy pliers and did not care about the damage. Alexei told me then that charges had been laid against her already, in far away Prague, because she had not returned them to the agency, and Leo was also implicated, but now everything looked different. He knew about the hi-jacking episode before anyone and had been given a photograph of the car, so he knew also about the contents of the package which Tessa had thrown into the car, and said, when I showed it to him, that it was easy to guess who had made the exchange of items; stones and gravel from the walkway beside the studio at Willow Tree - and some advertising for Timber-log homes and TV repairs in the classified section of KNYSNA HERALD; it was Margie, but why?
The caretaker had the only key I knew of for the safe, and I left the letters there after opening the first one, seeing the name of Olga and Herman Boheme, it was enough to remind me of Alexey’s advice. He had warned me that what I knew might be dangerous. What was it about their lives? What was it about Alexey’s life, that he kept so secretive, why did he not say anything of the package or Margie’s betrayal, was it out of a sense of loyalty to her? Did he really only care to speak of what was important for me to know? I tried to get something out of him, but that only made him leave, before the rain had stopped. He relented a bit at the exit.
“I was on my way to Mauritius to meet Joel and the Americans, but I heard Tessa is still with them. I don’t think I want to see her now.”

I wasn’t surprised to see him, some time into the soccer match, when we moved to a new pub, in a corner near the bar, amongst some locals.
The girls noticed him first, and encouraged him to join them at a table, in a crowd playing a hand-held soccer game. He guessed my relief to see him and, usually so quick to make his presence known and with something to say, he didn’t even look my way, for a time. Then he waved but said nothing.
Was this his means of revenge, would he travel all this way on purpose to ignore me, I asked myself, stung by his first look which was almost scornful. But then he smiled- was he enjoying the game and unable to interrupt it to say hello? Or afraid that people would notice us talking the minute he sat down- which is what happened after the end of the match. Gerard sat with us as well, and fell to silence, and asked everyone to quieten down, they were playing his favorite song. I could barely make out the words, but what I heard, reminded me of Leo. I wanted to deny this: I wanted to tell Gerard he was mistaken, it seemed to me like Gerard had chosen it on purpose.

Shine another glass let the hours pass
Love is nothing new
And still I can’t forget…

as they’d seen the sign, it said room to let..

And wanted a place, a small hide-away
A place of their own, if just for a day..
The walls were so thin, and the carpets so bare…

But then others shouted towards him and finally someone changed the music. A girl came up to kiss him, saying she knew why he liked the song, and asked him to rejoin the soccer games at the board table.
He left with her to play again, lost twice, then said he would like to go home. Alexei didn’t want to talk to me in the crowd, although he had travelled this way to see me, I felt sure, by the look in his eyes as he stood up to leave, and with the girl who had kissed Gerard, mostly so that his being there to see me wasn’t obvious to anyone, I realized. He and the girl went to another bar; he said we could talk later.
We left at the worst moment, there was explosions which set a car alight in the streets and a Gerard, a little ahead of us, was knocked down by someone running from it. He had slugged back, I recollect seeing his arm going out and then the ground shook as he fell, next thing someone pushed me over, and when I opened my eyes I was seated on the grass by a kerb. Alexei had picked me up to carry me there, and left me there to find out what was happening, and joined the crowd around Gerard, until an ambulance arrived. Then he returned, and asked. “You left the letters in the safe, didn’t you?”
I’d heard and could follow most of the noise around me, “No one is going to hospital, no one is badly hurt,” and someone had a car to drive him to the chateau, everyone was relieved and a few people laughed. I realized, with my mind empty of all other thought, how the recent events had pre-occupied my mind, and felt dizzy and light headed.
“If anything happened to you, I’d have to ask Sophie for the keys,” he said.
“Yes, and I am safe, even though I travelled with all that jewelry” I replied, and then, “is it all you ever think about?” but more into his shoulder than anything, as he put his arm around me again for a moment.
“It is all you thought about, and I’m sure you didn’t mind. I am sure it became jealous, for nothing detracts from pretty jewelry like a beautiful smile.” He said, meaning to tease me and I knew as he kissed my cheek then that he was trying to provoke me, just for fun, so that I could push him away a little, but at the same time, I didn’t say what I meant to say quite right.
“Do you never think about it and have you any intention of explaining to me?”
“No- yes, but it can wait, so long as you are alright.” I felt like I was blushing then, and he knew how glad I was to see him, but mostly in need of some clarity. He understood that. “I am also here out of my own conscience” he said.
“I wonder how on earth Tessa managed to steal it- where was it, how did it get to be there, and why? And how valuable is it?”
“The dragon chest was in the living room, I had helped to carry it downstairs myself. The chest had been in Olga Dubanovic’s room, for many years, one could tell, by the discoloration on the wall when it was moved. She believed that Milan wanted to move it to his study, so as to prevent her from taking the jewelry back again. It’s value was not even known to them, most of it was from his Russian ancestor, quite antique. She had fled the revolution, settled in Sweden, and then moved south again, that is why he still visits Bremen sometimes, his only real business ties are in Bratislava now, where he met Tessa, and gave her the bracelet. It was all she was allowed to have, and if she could just have known it in the time, but then I wouldn’t be here now.”
Alexei slowed down to wait for the Cyril and the girl from the bar, and we walked mostly in silence, Cyril with us, playing a harmonica, a dark skinned man with very round eyes, and long hair in dreadlocks, originally Rwandan, he seemed to have some sort of mystical side to him, and was shaking his head, saying “righteousness” and “Aweh” and not much else, because it was but a few minute’s walk to the chateau.
Before long there was a party in the morning- room, with locals arriving to enquire after Gerard, asking if they could wait for him, talking about what happened, looking at Sophie’s pictures, playing music on an old record player, drinking beer and liqueur from their bottles, and dancing. Just as suddenly everyone left but Cyril, Suzette, Alexei and me, and that is when he began to tell his story, the reason for his being here, in Brittany.

17 Alexey’s story – Prague, 1997

“Home was a place that Tessa didn’t remember anymore. It hadn’t been for some time. When she woke in the morning in a tenement not far away from the Prague home of the Dubanovic family near the riverside, she wanted it not to be day, but Jans was standing by the window watching her and she could not open her eyes without seeing the contrast of his dark shape against the brilliant light. Her protector from the daylight?
“Perhaps she preferred it to be day. He was complaining about something one minute, and then trying to persuade her to accept a gift. ‘I’m sorry- I can’t help but feel that you don’t love me anymore- I’m afraid to lose you,’ he’d said, ‘that for you, it’s about having a place to stay.’
“ ‘Of course it’s not.’ She had thought of packing and leaving but it wasn’t a clear thought yet-she’d sleep on it, but morning came too soon. Jans was smiling and he was showing her a dress he bought for her. It was very pretty, and stylish.
“ ‘I forgot to give you this yesterday- it’s for you to wear, when we go out- as soon as I have my next pay check. It’s to go with the bracelet. You will look like an heiress.’
“He was of the belief that life owed him more than it was paying out, and if things were fair, then Tessa would want to stay. He had taken care of her quite well and his plan had been simple. She also deserved a better deal. Tessa didn’t much agree to most of what Jans wanted her to agree to, but she had promised to find out why the doctor visited Bratislava, and she had followed Milan, and returned home with a bracelet. He was sure she was able to find out why he gave it to her, if she followed him again. He knew of this next trip because he’d heard an argument when he arrived for work earlier than usual.
“He had an excuse to be upstairs, on the landing, at the time, but Milan was already leaving. After that, she came downstairs, still in her dressing gown, and one of his workers was sent out of the kitchen so that she could speak privately to me.
“He couldn’t follow the conversation as we moved to an adjoining room, and kept our voices down, but he must have heard enough to know that Milan was on his way to Bratislava, again.
“ ‘There is so much work for him here, I hardly see him,’ Olga said to me, and I had replied that when the house was done, things would come right. She wanted me to follow him and discover if he really was meeting old colleagues, find out who they were, make sure they were at the Esplanade Hotel, and where they went afterwards- so Jans knew his movements, exactly, and he thought:
“ ‘What if it was so- what if things come right once we are gone- then I have wasted this opportunity- and what if it were true that he is having an affair?’-as his mind did not reach beyond the commonplace to other dealings which the doctor might have, that were not straightforward but profitable.
“ ‘You go to Bratislava, Tess,’ Jans said that evening. ‘I can’t get away, but I have the itinerary- where he is staying, it’s sure to be easy.’ She had found nothing at first, when they were in Bratislava, but that Milan didn’t particularly want to return a bracelet to his wife.
“ ‘There aren’t any secrets that are well kept at home- only those that happen outside,’ Jans said darkly, making a face, as if the man were already found guilty. He was now sure that they were discussing a sinister affair that must be exposed for the good of all. It had built up slowly as an idea in his head, an “ideal”, and was at the same time, a means to get some more money from the family. No use to protest these were different approaches, Tessa owed him money. She did try.
“ ‘I know too much, and he knows where I work and when he came in, I ran out through the back door. He was asking Emil about someone, so he is almost a client.’
“ ‘Oh, really? Did he sign any contracts with you, engage any services? No, his wife has engaged me, and if he is doing something he should not, she should know, she would reward us. Are you in love with him now, or what? Tell me honestly.’
“ ‘No, my Lordy,’ she laughed at the idea. ‘He was making enquiries about a cousin of the man I told him I knew in Boston which is actually true. A woman who went missing.’
“ ‘Oh, Jesus Christ and mother Mary!’ He swore. ‘When will you wake up, girl?’
“Tessa did not pay much attention to his scornful manner. She did have something to share with him; it was a letter, one of those written by Ted Valentyn. Jans did not know what to make of it but he calmed down and Tessa managed to get away without having to promise further.
“ ‘Whoever wrote this letter knew much more - it looks as if he bloody killed her himself!’ He had shouted, jubilantly, but Tessa gave him a look; remembering the man he was accusing, it was not likely. “And I don’t mean the doctor, I mean her father,” he said, and Tessa looked away this time. He calmed down and she managed to get away without having to promise further.
“To Tessa’s mind, anything was possible, anything but another day with the anxiety of this day, when she was searching for files and without permission, afraid that Leo might step in, and her pulse had been racing, she now felt sick. It didn’t matter to her what Jans might think, she knew he wouldn’t come up with the real solution to the disappearance of Katerin but she would have liked him to. The letter was from Fedor Valentyn.
“ ‘Dr Dubanovic will remember Katerin as the cousin of Henri, still a student, for whom a part in a play was written, as she described the meeting with Milan and other of Henri’s friends to me later.’ More recently, a note was added- again, about Milan Dubanovic, written by the Agency for the files. “Mostly his relationship was to her cousin Henri Valentyn, left for the USA, hailed as a hero on his return. Thanks to his previous activity, the Valentyn family had all either left the village or changed their identities.’
“ ‘Henri didn’t ever really get to go “home” and has no idea where Katerin is now or what name she uses.’ Tessa ended sweetly. Jans had no answer for that. It was difficult to have no one to share her thoughts with.
“Leo’s Uncle Emil was writing a note after the visit from Dr Dubanovic, and she had glanced at the page quickly, remembering the names. He noticed her interest and said, ‘I’m concerned for the rights that apply to all cases related to a minor. If he is looking for Katerin and finds her, that is good for us, we would like him to tell us where she is. If she knows he is, and her cousin is, looking for her, she must have a reason for staying away. If our client learns of her mother’s reasons, or anything that is hurtful to her and inexplicable, from a stranger, it can be damaging. We can’t make the introduction, unless she asks us to contact him for her, but we can’t influence her, unless we know it’s the right move, but we don’t know what it’s about, and we shouldn’t raise her hopes’. The files had not been updated for almost a decade, and Emil had forgotten Gina was by now not a minor in any way.
“He’d had the case for as long as he could remember, and he knew the parameters he would set to it, inside out. He knew well enough that the police were looking for her uncle Henri and that Milan was in the village at the time the Valentyns left. He might want to know if she remembered what happened. This fired Tessa’s curiosity, but Emil shouldn’t guess that, and she had to keep quiet.
“When the Agency first opened, finding people was more thoughtful than a game of chess. In most cases, when emigration occurred illegally, the enquiries were made discreetly, but families tend to want to hear from one another and are not difficult to unite. A person went missing because they were in trouble, had caused some damage and were afraid of vengeance, or been abused, threatened, or made threats. If they didn’t wish to come forward, they were “not found”. No one in as much trouble with the law, as Henri was, qualified as a client, nor would their immediate family be taken on by the Agency, but he made an exception for Ted, who had emigrated legally, if records were correctly shown.
“Emil had visited their village himself. Vanya was still remembered, but no one had much to say of her that would lead to discovering her daughter.
“Tessa had time in the office on her own as Leo was away and his uncle always took lunch. She began collecting pictures, of Henri and his wife Alyonka, and Vanya, an artist, her parents came from a peaceful Slovakian village. Tessa identified with her, excepting that she died of cirrhosis of the liver, an alcoholic. Ted was more an upright person, a factory worker.
“Katerin was educated in a nearby school till high school age and Henri was able to keep an eye on her in Prague. Vanya would have wanted to keep the child, she had been a schoolteacher.
“She printed out the information on the computer system and began placing things in an envelope. She thought she remembered how to delete the record of recent activity and then she was sure that she went too far. She had taken out the entire file, and it was too late.
“Emil didn’t scare her, he had written the note and placed the files in archives to gather dust for a few more years, until someone else came in to make an enquiry, she felt sure of that, and no one would, unless it was Doctor Dubanovic, again.
“Tessa closed the office early, and left the keys next door, telling them she would be away for a few days, to visit a sick relative. She had found the ring, she was satisfied that she had removed the case from the agency’s files and she took the ring to ensure it, but he didn’t miss a thing.
“She didn’t like doing it, rather confront Milan, place herself at his mercy- whatever, she hadn’t quite decided- so long as she didn’t have to return to the office with the same uncertainty she had when she left it. She knew she had done wrong, and that she would eventually have to see Leo at work. Along the way, she had her story made up for him, she would own up in part, and tell him that a man came in – Milan, himself, and asked about something. She would say that she began to call up the files, when she realized the information was confidential. In her rising panic, she had deleted it while trying to hide it from him.
“ ‘It’s so nearly true. How does that sound?’
“ ‘Fine,’ Sven agreed. ‘No problem.’
“Funny how she had confidence in telling the whole story to a complete stranger she had met on the train. He said he would wait for her at the bus station, all night if need be.”

18 Unexpected Guests

“The Agency had been given some notes from interviews that were written by a social worker; ‘According to the medical report, there was no injury other than a cut in the forehead with superficial bleeding,’ but he had written the report himself.
“What was it about the files that made them important enough for Tessa to bring them to him? Milan opened an older envelope, which showed correspondence with Ted. Here, concerning dates and events, Emil was meticulous about details, which were added over time, and his mind went blank, momentarily.

“Henri’s letters spoke of his cousin so frequently, as if he was trying to say something, and Milan couldn’t set her out of his mind after he had read them. He was curious about the way her records were altered, and decided to take on his own investigation, after Henri’s return. He confronted Dr Ales Karasova who was by then head of the hospital.
“The old doctor had asked him why he was reading files of patients he did not treat himself, but realized that Milan was personally interested and he told Milan that he had treated Katerin previously but was reluctant to tell the whole story.
“She was in a dangerous condition after taking some herbs to induce early labor, and could not give anyone her name or family to contact. There was a doctor on the staff at this time, who had worked with cases like this before at a hospital in Omsk and he managed to save her and the child. Perhaps because this doctor was not a frequent visitor to that ward, and they made a mess of the paperwork later, when she returned, with something not more serious than influenza—it seems here.
“‘So that’s how a daughter was born to Julia Vanova.’
“ ‘But the paperwork was altered, surely- and years later?’
“Ales wouldn’t take responsibility. He said Milan should have to file for an investigation of the staff and explain his discovery or consult their colleague who was no longer in the country. ‘Why would he stay at this time?’ Ales was upset over the change of government because it was creating chaos in his office. He reminded Milan again that they had also saved Katya when her chances were one-in five of recovery, and that of the child was one in a thousand. He beamed a smile as if that settled the matter, and they shook hands.
“ ‘Wait- before you leave,’ he waved some papers in the air. ‘I just want to thank you for this. We have made progress in the research. I am sorry you didn’t confine your activity to this, you would be very useful to us if you still had your license.’

“In his hotel room in Bremen, Milan replaced everything in the Agency’s files, thinking of the old white- haired doctor, a father of four. No doubt, he had left Katerin with a guilt complex.
“Thinking of the old man, Ted, whom he had seen out walking sometimes, who would have given as much love to her as to his own daughter, he felt his heart would break. His mind couldn’t get around the riddle of the events, what had really happened, what was she thinking of?
“Milan read again and again the notes written by Emil, who had his own thoughts about the name change; he suspected there was still a young man in her life, with a temperament of which she was afraid, or who’s family could have had made some claim to Gina, of which Katya was afraid; ‘If there was a family who had a claim to Gina aside from the Valentyns, can’t be certain, one might even say the opposite, because of the way the rumor was spread, which served so much of a purpose.’
“‘What purpose?’ Milan wondered, but he didn’t know.
“ ‘It’s really late.’ Katya answered almost immediately. ‘How did you find my number?’
“He didn’t want to say. It was enough to dial the number he knew he shouldn’t call. “I’m being followed by a girl who has some knowledge of your family, steals from me and gives me things, and runs from me - I can’t set it out of my mind. How do I know what she wants, why she is here? She knows about the Agency and has files on the search for you on Ted’s behalf, who has been trying to find you since he left.’
“ ‘I can’t be talking to you right now …are you being for real?’
“ ‘It’s all here in front of me- without any question.’
“ ‘You can’t give us back our lives.’
“Her words made sense at once. Of course, there was no possibility that Tessa was here in Bremen looking for her mother, but once he had the idea of Katya’s having made a mistake she needed help with, he couldn’t let it go.
“ ‘Had I no right to know what might mean something to me? I would have done anything to help you, even if you just needed a friend to talk to. I was more than just a friend to talk to.’
“He half- believed by this time that Gina was his own child, after reading the agency’s notes, or that he would have married her anyway, excepting the time of her birth was …a month before he married Olga, ironically. It wasn’t as if he had anything to offer a child in the way of security in those earlier times, as he was living a double life, half in Russia or wherever they sent him, and then giving information to the world outside, that would finally cause his arrest if it were known, but there was no imminent danger now.
“ ‘What color are her eyes?”
“ ‘Green, or brown- more like yellow- like yours- and she is as pretty- that’s the thing.’
“ ‘I’m going to hang up the phone now, but this girl you mention doesn’t have Gina’s eyes, because she isn’t my child, they are not like mine, and you don’t know the color of my eyes anymore’
“ ‘She has her father’s eyes, perhaps?’
“Either there was someone else in the room of whom Katerin was still afraid, or she was about to cry.”

“So you went to Bremen?” Cyril asked. It must have been after three in the morning, the fire had burnt out and the air had a chill that comes before dawn, just before the promise of sunrise- we felt it, even with the windows closed.
“Yes, I knew how to follow someone unnoticed, but I am not much of a spy. It is true that at first I concealed my real identity from Milan and his wife. I was introduced to Olga by a friend and she enjoyed the idea that she could tell me things. If she knew of a relationship to Milan, she wouldn’t have talked so much about herself. I knew about the bracelet, because it worried Olga all the time, but there was more to the story, and more jewelry. She was collecting whatever Milan gave her over some years.
“ ‘He didn’t exactly ever give anything to me. Not in so many words.’ Olga explained the reason for her subterfuge. ‘I know that our marriage could end at any time, and I’ be left destitute, unless I had something saved. I can’t save in our joint bank account.’
“Jans had a small team of workers who had been doing renovations for a few years in the south, some of whom were from her original region. She felt she owed them something, that’s why Olga wanted to employ them in Prague.
“Funnily enough, he felt that somebody owed him something as well, and was keen to gain wealth, but at the same time, paradoxically, despised men like Milan who could afford to employ him, and Milan especially, who had a habit of giving away as much information as he thought someone would like to have, sometimes rather too much, so the person making the enquiry was not able to ask further. He wove a fantastical web of mystique around the things he said, which was deceptive. In this way, it had been difficult for Jans to even define what the family wanted done with the house, as not-answering the question was habit by now. Finally, he had to go over everything and find someone to make a sketch.
“That’s how and where I entered the picture. I was called to make it and then ensure the work was done, as Milan wanted it. Jans believed the contract was cut down to half of what it originally was intended to be afterwards. This was one more outrage against himself, and reason to find a means of “normalization” of their economic status. He was very noxious that day and so I left the house. Perhaps he’d overheard Olga asking me if I would follow her husband and find out if he really was on a business trip. She was afraid that Milan might take revenge on her, but had very little reason for her suspicions, other than a story about a missing bracelet.
“I visited Henri firstly, because he invited me to visit him anytime. That was the first time I heard a little bit of his earlier life, and noticed the bitterness in him. Then I did something then that I can’t explain. On the first day I arrived in Prague, I bought some records from a music shop and one of these was by Elvis Presley. I thought I would start a collection, but records are quite rare from this time, and I paid for it dearly. Still, I wanted to have it- not anymore.
I went up to my rooms to find it, to see how well it skimmed across the lake.

I’m caught in a trap, I can’t walk out,
because I love ya too much baby…oh yeah
………..no nohhwwwww” *

“I did mean to travel and I hadn’t decided where, when I stepped into the office of the agency, and I just bought a ticket anyway. Tessa was struggling with the computer and didn’t show much interest in selling me a bus ticket. She said it was late, that it was past closing time, and she was planning to be away for a few days, and whatever else I have given as information. I helped her with the computer and locking up the office, and waited while she gave the key to the neighbors , because I thought she might let me walk with her a little. I’d seen her sometimes, with Jans, or alone. She walked down some streets that I wouldn’t like to see her walking down alone, and now was my chance to accompany her, but she wouldn’t let me, so I followed her, and left her to visit Henri, but after Milan asked me to travel with him to Bremen and I thought about Tessa, I realized that I should just go there. I had no idea there was any coincidence at this time, but I do believe there is a spirit at work in coincidence, and the evidence of it struck me again later, quite powerfully, because I saw Tessa at the same hotel and I knew she had followed Milan.

Bremen is Milan’s favorite city, being close to the icy north on a major trade route, but not so cold rather, colorful, and its where his elderly aunt still lived, with whom he had a partnership in an antique business. He visited at least once a year, to help her make audits, and around the time of her birthday.
“When I saw him he asked me, ‘Are you planning to travel further north? I wish we could travel together, but I’d rather you return to Prague, and keep an eye on things. I would have preferred to employ some locals and not do everything at once, but it was my wife’s choice- they did some good work on the farm- so she says. I haven’t seen it.’
“ ‘I won’t be able to as I’m not returning to the house,’ I said quietly. ‘I would like to travel and see more of the world.’
“I had no idea what to say to him. ‘I can’t keep it from you any longer that I know about the dragon chest being a treasure cache-‘ but he prevented me saying anything further.
“ ‘If you wanted to claim it, you certainly may. I don’t mean the chest, specifically, but everything. Your grandfather renounced his claim to these things but that’s a detail. It isn’t Olga’s concern and she’s begun to trust you, and develop some affection for you- perhaps she wants you to have it, and finds it safer in the chest than anywhere else. It is something we can talk about when I return.’
“Although the drawer he used was hidden from view, Olga had discovered it, and could at that time have been reading the letters and I told him what I thought. ‘She was afraid she would be destitute, if you wished to allow her to be, and that you would-’
“ ‘How so? I’ve managed to support her all this time.’
“ ‘I think she does wish to divorce you, that’s why she asked me to follow you, in case she might find a reason.’
“ ‘She wakes up to the same reason every morning, and nothing prevents her from leaving. I am not as bad as she allows you to think.’
“ ‘What will you do?’
“ ‘You should return to Prague, and keep an eye on things until I return. I am sorry we moved the dragon chest, now that you mention it, as the workers may also be curious as to its contents.’

“Aside from myself, and Tessa, Milan had another visitor the next morning. How did she know where he was staying? She was pale and almost trembling, had been to every hotel in the city. Tessa wouldn’t know this, or the reason for the visit, but she watched them from the breakfast room a doorway and windows that opened onto the lobby of the hotel with disbelief. It seemed she was crying and ran to his arms.
“ ‘Don’t, please, think I do things like this all the time. I’m not good at it- I’m useless at it! I don’t even know why I am here, but I wanted to know—what did you find out? You should have called me back, you had some time to think it over, Milan, please tell me you know already, one way or the other. I can’t stand not knowing. I would not have asked if you hadn’t called me, but now I have to know.’
“ ‘I am sorry,’ Milan did not let go of her, but he wasn’t planning to be made a fool of by her again, he hadn’t led her to believe anything, it was she who led him to disbelieve things, and her mind was running away a little.
“ ‘I can’t tell you anything, until I know what I’m not allowed to know- you have kept so many secrets from so many people- you should have been the writer of the family. Do you know that Henri wanted to write a play about our lives? Tell me now, why would my life interest him? I’m not the one who went missing; I have always been here where anyone can find me.’ He led her to the alcove in the lobby where they could talk privately.
“The guests around them having breakfast and checking in or out and didn’t see Tessa. If he had, he wouldn’t have cared. They had coffee and then went upstairs. Tessa was already on her way home. She didn’t stop after seeing Milan’s visitor arrive at the hotel; she was afraid to stay, as she was there under false pretences, but she was also full of a self- righteous hate for him, after what she suspected.
“Olga told me that she received a mysterious phone call and invited Tessa in. I found her there was I returned. I came in as she was leaving. It was surprising to see her there, just the silhouette of her through the colored glass of a door dividing the living rooms. Before I arrived, the servant had brought in a tray of biscuits and sherry with glasses, and placed these on top of the chest. The key was in the lock. Tessa opened it and examined each piece, and then sat down with the sherry.
“The story is a simple one and an old one. She intended to do one thing and did another, after she became angry, and had been tempted by the jewels, gleaming and dangerous to her, almost like little snakes that slithered into her hands coiling around her fingers, and she felt she deserved them in a way that was self-righteous. She wasn’t conscious of any attraction to him, it wasn’t about that, but rather she sensed he could help her, but he didn’t, he was too busy, meeting someone else, the unfaithful husband, just as Jans had surmised.
“I much prefer to be on the side of women, and it is only that they themselves persuaded me to change my mind. That’s how come I could agree with Olga to follow her husband and then tell him why I was there- in Bremen , and deceive Tessa and then befriend her, and even deceive Margie, while staying on at willow tree farm, for reasons that had nothing to do with missing jewelry at all.”
“You told me you worked only for yourself?” I said, to prove I was still awake.
“At the time I said so, I had already found Willow Tree, and you, and it’s all Milan asked me to do, and then he asked me to do one more thing, which is to make sure that Tessa didn’t find you, with whatever stories she might have to tell, with that look she has, of an angel- and a voice to go with it. I judged her more harshly than I judged Olga, I know, for a reason. She was trapped and couldn’t be free, but Tessa was free at that time and she could have made a different choice.
“It doesn’t matter if the trap was one of kindness and concern, she didn’t know if that would change, if she was to change, and try to gain her freedom. But what do I mean by freedom exactly? I had to reconsider, as Milan’s views of life are maybe better than mine, and he spoke of things like gratitude and he didn’t feel he wasn’t making a choice every day, to love the person he was sharing his life with. He only had to make it once. So I could also choose to stay away from those girls, who would lead me astray. That is why I wanted to stay with Margie. It wasn’t as if we were in love… don’t look at me that way, I have never been in love, in my life. Do you find that so hard to believe?”
“Aweh,” Cyril answered for me in the silence that followed.

If Alexey was trying to give me a picture of another world, and slowly introduce the people in it that I wanted to know, he began well but I couldn’t stay awake anymore. He gave me a push and a light punch on my shoulder, and I could see that Suzette had made some tea for us and the fire was almost gone - but the dawn outside was lighting some window panes. I asked Lexey,
“What if Olga knew what you say of her, and of Henri? You deal with her very differently to others, no one else carries blame or your reproach, but I have the wrong impression of Olga, I am sure, thanks to earlier information from you.” I reminded him of what he had said of Olga in the studio, at Willow Tree Manor. “You said that I wouldn’t want her for a mother.”
The look he gave me was a blank one, and then he blushed. In the meantime, Suzette had found the song he referred to earlier, and Cyril began to play an African drum with the music,
“Oh dry the tears from your eyes..
Let’s don’t let a good thing die
and baby you know, I’d never ever, ever lie to you”*

“It’s a different viewpoint. People just talk, it means nothing. But there is quite a bit more I have to tell you, I was only just beginning the story.”

19 Joel and Tessa

“Joel arrived at Willow Tree quite late, the second night of your visit. The director had given him the 4x4, to use in the desert and then to keep. No one heard him, as the doors were closed against mosquitoes and music was playing in the studio. He parked in the garage, going directly into the house, with half an idea to wake the boys, and take them out at once, as he had promised, when he first showed off the 4x4 because at the time he made the promise he was much too busy unpacking the old van, now parked beside the studio and some willows.
“I had closed off the doorway there to make a window, so he had to walk around to the front door, and hearing voices, he decided to return to the house, take a shower, and change, and reconsider the situation. If Margie and I didn’t want to come out and meet him, so what. The last thing he could face now was any further humiliation. It was bad enough coming home whenever he needed money, and worse, he had and almost made a fool of himself, trying to protect a girl who, as it turned out, just wanted to use him. All she cared about was being high and staying high. As for me, how was I repaying the favor? It was nothing but what Tessa had suggested might have occurred in his absence- how could he not have known it?
“Joel could see her walking towards him, in that moment he recognized her as a child, and apologized for what he’d said to her when she asked him if she could stay with him, when they arrived at Willow Tree. He offered to ask Margie, since she was still awake, if there was a room for her, perhaps she could stay in the house. He’d suggested leaving her at a hotel, but she said she wanted to fetch her things, from the farm, which is a short walk along the country road, but not a safe one and he wouldn’t have allowed it if he knew, the farm’s main building that she intended to collect something and try to return to Willow Tree Manor.
“ ‘But I am looking forward to seeing Alexei again,” she said, contrarily, smiling up at him, in the moonlight. Her hair was tangled and she smelt like the desert.
“ ‘I’m sorry; it’s been quite an ordeal for you,” he said, remembering how they had met, here, and how frightened she then was;
She had been working as a waitress in town and I made some promise to her that I could find her work in the film industry, inviting her to the studio. Sven knew of the jewelry, he insisted she post everything back to Prague. To him it was the only solution, after he’d called the Agency to arrange a place to meet after he waited for a few hours in Bremen for her, and had left messages for her, so they would know where he is and he knew they would look for her, and find her if they travelled to Knysna (but he still liked the idea.).
“They couldn’t fly with it anyway. She had only half of it by this time; the rest was left with Jans. It took so long to buy an envelope, address it and wait in a queue for postage stamps, meantime last calls were being made for the flight, and he hadn’t checked in yet, he had more luggage than she- a little red travel case that could easily go as hand luggage. He must have known she didn’t post anything and both knew that Leo might arrive at anytime, so they argued frequently, because her will power was so weak.
“When Sven left the Farm, Tessa didn’t want to stay, she had already visited me at the studio and liked it there. Joel had returned from his previous trip to pack the 4x4. The guest cottages were not ready in time for the arrival of the filmmakers, so he went with them into town. They were having a drink in the bar that Tessa worked in, that’s how she discovered I lied to her about being a talent scout, as Joel had not seen her face before that night.
“She was surprised that this was the man of whom I spoke. She imagined a big film director with a New York accent, not this good-looking South African with dark hair bleached to lighter brown by the sun, in a trendy jacket offset by a home knitted scarf of pure hemp. He didn’t act or have the movements and gestures of a man of his age -to Tessa, anyone over the age of thirty would seem old - but he began to talk to her and she liked him, because he scarcely drank much but a beer and had only agreed to join in a game of pool to even the numbers out so they could play two against two. He glanced her way occasionally, including her in his smile.
“He was not carrying much weight and he seemed out of place, moving the stick with his lanky arms, laughing in reply to whatever had been said without hearing it, looking out of the window as he felt more comfortable outdoors. When he walked away with a wave, leaving the Americans at the bar, Tessa was curious.
“A second meeting with her in the studio, following that night, was a rough one. Tessa knew she’d been a fool not to suspect that I was sent by the Dubanovic family, and she began to make a scene, removing her jacket and shoes and the earrings she was wearing and throwing them at me. “There- I spent the rest- - take it,” she shouted, throwing it in my face, accusing me of things I had done.
“ ‘You lied to me and you took my picture on false pretences and you have it up on the wall not to show the world who you are, but what you are not, and accuse me of things far less important as if I had stolen something, but I did not.” She sat down on the bare floor, overcome with tears. “I have nothing left- what are you going to do about it? Lock me up- drag me back to the family who sent you, as if they would ever really want to tell you the truth about why I was there!’
“It was painful to listen as I knew why and how she was there, but also why she was in the studio, and I had let her down. I felt sorry for her when she hit out at me and cried. I was picking up her things, asking her to have them back, when she threw something at the lamp and we were in darkness.
Joel heard her shout, and raced into the studio with a lit match, and Tessa ran to him. She was shaking, like a child, almost in a fit, asking him to take her away from that beast, and he did so at once- as far as the van he was packing things into, and talking calmly and easily, as was his way.
“ ‘Wait here for me,’ he said. I had no choice; I had work to finish for him to meet a deadline. We both knew that I was just trying to help him with editing of old footage that he wanted to show the Americans.
“ ‘I’m about done- you’ll come back later to collect it, it’s all here and I must get home.’ I packed the last items they would need to take along.
He could not see why I was still living in town, nor could he offer me a ride back, with Tessa in the car. He had wanted to take me with him to the desert- he didn’t know that by this time I had my eye only on the red suitcase when he placed it in the storeroom, Tessa’s, so he was still talking n a conciliatory way.
“ ‘We must install a fridge here, some couches-that will help –I will ask Margie to do so before I leave for Southwest- but I don’t know when – not tonight- tomorrow, earliest, there is a change of plan now.’
“ ‘It’s all fine- about done. You will have it by tonight.”
“ ‘I’ll take care of Tessa, it will be good for her, or I wouldn’t allow her to come along. ”
“ ‘I don’t know how much of it is hers, here-’ the lights were all on and now he could see the floor, and a string of some necklace, not really valuable, as Tessa had said, but merely beaded jewelry. It was something which had been around her neck and it was ripped off and broken, and the pieces of it were scattered around the floor.
“ ‘Leave it,’ he said. He was right, there wasn’t time. I could see, in-between the beads of glass from a necklace that was scattered around, a little golden earring, with a gap where a valuable stone had been set. Joel hadn’t noticed it, I felt sore to think that she was taking the jewelry to pieces to sell items one by one, to support a drug habit. I was curious about the extent to which she was doing this, and went into the storeroom to look for her suitcase. That’s when I saw the cocaine- a small amount in an empty film-case from an instant camera. Joel quickly said it was something he had to make an impression on the Americans, but had changed his mind after meeting them, and he didn’t use it himself, so he had no idea where to leave it but it wouldn’t be right if Tess found it.
“ ‘Stay in the car, I’ll collect your things.” He’d said to her, but it was not for her things, but his, that he had returned into the studio. He was thinking of what was best for her, when he stayed on to talk a little longer, she needed to calm her mind, where better than in the van, where she felt safe, from whatever she was projecting, and taking in the peace and quiet of Willow Tree at night.
He remembered her things when they were already on the road. She wanted him to turn back, and he stopped driving. He had people to meet, he would rather not keep them waiting.
“ ‘Why, don’t you trust Alexei? It’s only till tomorrow.’
“ ‘He is a vermin and a scum and we all know that sort, back home,’ she muttered quietly, blowing a smoke ring carefully, to make him smile.
“ ‘... and you hate him and suspect he will be wearing your clothing if you leave it there?’
“ ‘Oh no- I love him in my clothing.’ She coughed. The tobacco was strong, she had inhaled too much of it. ‘But I know he will steal my shirt if I let him.’
“ ‘It’s in the storeroom; he hasn’t a reason to go into it. He will have to answer to me, anyway-if anything is gone. We can turn around if it is that important’.
“What if Joel learnt the true story when they returned? ‘Let’s leave it till the trip is over, I don’t need anything,’ she said. He thanked her for letting it go and agreeing to travel with him to the desert. A few weeks in the open space and she would be a different person.
“But he didn’t have much time for her, she was left at the camp more than need be, and hung out with the younger crew. They were hard at work so they were not irresponsible, in the first week, but only towards the end, he had been happy to let her do whatever she pleased, until then. After that, he wanted to leave her at a Wildlife Reserve and lodge, rather than the roadside, when some of the Americans decided it would be a good distraction and there was one en route to George airport. They could spend four days at the lodge and then fly to George and save two days in the desert and two days of driving. But Joel couldn’t afford to pay for her and he wouldn’t let anyone else offer to, so he did the thing he least wanted to do, returning home with her to Willow Tree, after she turned down the option of a hotel in Knysna, and said he could leave her at the farm, but then reappeared.
“ ‘Well then, sleep in the van,’ he’d said. ‘I will unpack it firstly.’
“Tessa’s reply was as direct and honest as she could be- ‘I can’t- I have to get my things from Alexey.’ She had stopped at the Farm for a brief time, in case the bracelet, which she cherished the most, had been found- and heard from someone that a man was there asking about her- his name was Leo.
“ ‘I have a package that has to get to Leo - otherwise I’m done for.’
“He stopped and looked at her again, in the moonlight. “This time, you’re not pretending- you’re telling the truth, aren’t you?’
“ ‘Please help me, Joel.’
“ ‘I would have done so anyway- come, tell me the whole story.’
“I knew that Tessa was trying to make up for what she had done, even when I first met her she was trying to set things right, on the computer system. She wanted to turn back time. How much happened thereafter, to prove one can’t.
“Milan was the first person she approached to try and help her to explain things away, to Leo and the Agency, but he didn’t know what she was asking- he didn’t like the idea of being followed, and he had not expected her to give him anything he could use- there wasn’t anything about her behavior that was right, but perhaps he did owe her something, after all.”

I woke to the sound of a car arriving. It was Philip returning early, as promised. Not even the kitchen staff had arrived, if there were any due to arrive, nor was there anyone to greet him but Alexei, who was leaving. I heard them greet one another and shake hands. Philip wasn’t alone, Margie had several suitcases.
By the time I went downstairs he was alone, in the kitchen, looking into the fridge, he or someone had knocked over the milk, and it was dripping down onto everything below it, and to the floor. “You know the old saying” - but he didn’t smile, he was as pale as the milk. “It’s nothing to cry about. Margie just has to face up to her life, but it was a surprise for me also, to see Alexey here. I’d never thought about you and how I would feel, if you invited someone home- this is your home, you do know it is, don’t you? It’s really all right but you shouldn’t have asked him, for Margie’s sake. She might not get used to seeing him here.”
“It was just a party, of Gerard’s, as you warned me would happen, but I do understand,” I said, wondering at how Margie came into the picture, why was she here? Is that where he was yesterday, fetching her from Paris?
“Some special guests are arriving- no one special, but the kind of guest who likes to be well treated- previous clients, of the Chateau Languedoc when it was pampering its clientele.” What was he saying? He didn’t even know himself. He opened the closet where a mop might be kept, but it fell out with a clatter and some brooms as well, he pushed it closed quickly and said, “if they don’t like it they can clean it up themselves- I’m going out.”
He returned quickly for his jacket and car- keys.
“I didn’t mean any of that in a bad way. I will write up a list of things to be done- I don’t mind about guests ...what am I saying? That Margie should not see Alexei at all, as it is Joel she is crying over and she wants our help to get back to him- but since when does anything go as planned. She can’t hide her feelings that well, but it’s no use for him to be around and be nice to her after making her feel hurt. I hate everybody sometimes- not you, just him.”
No wonder Alexei left so quickly. He had made a quick clean-up and moved ashtrays, glasses and bottles to one corner, and put away the records. He left a reminder of all he had told me, a little velvet ring box, in faded antique rose. I’d given him all the jewelry as soon as we had a minute alone at the chateau, but this wasn’t part of the collection.
The ring from the Agency’s files, which belonged to my mother, was in it, sparkling in the early morning light as I held it up to take a closer look. The box was old; the silk inside had faded to a dull dry rose-petal yellow. He’d also left his card- a business card, a new one, with just a number to call.
The weekend passed by quickly- Sunday morning arrived before I knew it. I did have a strange dream though, - I dreamt that someone was at the window, and I
and he was looking at me but didn’t say a word.
So much like the last time I saw him, but I was on the other side, looking in, and unable to reach him, because of the glass between us. Now he was on the outside, and I couldn’t understand what he wanted to say. The wind was blowing the curtain when I looked again, fully awake. If it were not a dream, I would have opened the window to let him in, as I had a thousand questions to ask him by this time.

Part Three

20 Ana Terekova

Go down to the river babe
Honey I will meet you there *

Milan was leaving the hotel he was staying in as a speaker at the health convention, on the second night there, he was called into the room which held some of the conference’s equipment and a small media centre, and asked what he wanted them to say to Henri, regarding Tessa’s arrest in Mauritius- Henri knew of it at the same time as Milan, somehow, but he was waiting for a response before deciding on a course of action.

The memory flashed before him of Fedor Valentyn walking towards him, arms in the air, and the crunch of leaves behind that made him turn- as another, single shot ran out, and the small child running from out of nowhere, crying “Papa!” as she tumbled and fell. A shot soared way above her head; it was never aimed at her, but at the trees.
She had tripped over a tree stump or a stone. Ted was hit in the leg and he couldn’t do anything, so Milan was closest to her by that time. The guard behind him had cried out and Milan heard him falling, so there would be no more shots from that direction.
Nothing happened for a moment, everyone was frozen, watching the young guard fall as Gina stood up and fell again, this time in fright, to land almost at Milan’s feet. He lifted her head to see her face. She was bleeding from a small cut in her forehead, nothing serious.
A second guard was approaching him and Gina, and he was shot down as well.
“Get down!” shouted the third one, who was beside his friend now. Milan could see a soldier heading towards them, partly hidden behind rocks and scattered trees, ready to shoot back if shot at, maybe, but not dangerous. Austrian – they were that close to the border already.
He passed behind Milan, still holding Gina and helping Ted who was nursing his injury, and ran to look at the fallen man, wounded in the chest, and then the other one, lying bleeding from the back of his head, in the snow. Then he realized why no one else was moving and threw his threw his rifle on the ground.
The third Czech guard stood up, he had a bottle taken from the other’s pocket, and tears in his eyes. He had covered the dying man with his jacket. “I didn’t know there was a child here, in this god-forsaken hole.”
The Austrian soldier spoke to Milan quietly, seeing he had a small medical kit in a case.
“Can you help my friend?” He gestured towards the trees he had come from.
“I haven’t much but I will do my best.”
Random shots were being fired again, by whom? The third guard who was only waiting for Milan and the others, to take cover, was firing shots and shouting across the snow to the trees beyond.
“Stop shooting, no one is shooting at you” in contempt. He waved his arms in the air, stepped past his friends, and shouted again. “Come out- you cowards. No one is shooting at you, and your friend is hurt.”
Silence. Was there even anyone there?
Gina was not badly hurt, she was mostly frightened. She was with the Austrian soldier, wriggling in his arms, and crying. Ted was injured in the leg, but he could still walk to the car. He had not done any harm, had given himself up easily. He could have returned home and returned to work on Monday morning, but now, he faced imprisonment for the shooting, which was the result of the guards trying to prevent him, and others, from leaving.
The two Austrians shouldn’t have been there. The injured one had lost blood but was not in any real danger otherwise, once the bullet was removed, and Milan placed it in his kit. He wasn’t thinking of how close he was to being shot at as well, he was preparing to make a report to the police- he knew they would come back to him.
“Why don’t you return to your border post, you’re in trouble for being here, and take your friend with you, he will be able to make it that far.” He stood up again.
“I suggest you radio someone to meet you with an ambulance - and ask them to come down here- I haven’t the equipment needed to save these guards and I can’t move them. Your medical team would get here sooner than ours.”
Both were young men- the one had fired above the trees, which showed poor training.
He intended to give a warning, but he could have shouted.
The other fired at Ted. He didn’t look like a proper guard, he was a civilian, he had joined the guards as Milan sometimes joined them, if he met with them while out walking, from the hospital to Mkliv, as others joined them, asking questions. Or he was a friend, and planned to meet them, or something in-between, but he was armed. He had paid for that. Who would have thought the villagers would be armed?
Escapee émigrés usually leave silently in the night, no one knows until they don’t show up at work. They just ran, and if the guards gave chase- no shooting, not here- or no shooting back, in any case, unless the villagers shot first. Milan couldn’t know who fired the first shots, or if he was the only one who was attracted towards the scene by it, and whether the Austrians had a reason to come down this far.
“Come out!” The Czech guard shouted again towards the trees, losing his fear altogether, and he swore, as if unafraid.
“Don’t think they are your neighbors and will just respond to you even if you speak their language,” The Austrian said to him, in his own language, but the man didn’t want to listen.
He was still challenging the hillside with insults, “are you going to run? Well run then, we don’t need you- what do you think we need you for? Run to America, for all I care, but leave someone behind to help us, we have four injured people here.”
“Let it go” Milan said again. At the time, he didn’t find the guard’s any stranger than other events of the night, and later, he could not think of the event at without wondering why he had made it so difficult for himself, why he didn’t ask the Austrians to take Ted, who could be treated over the border and just walk on to Vienna and catch up with the rest.
He knew the guards weren’t shot by the émigrés from the direction in which the red-bearded Czech was hurling insults, nor was it the Austrians, who shouldn’t have been there, but had somehow saved the situation, as whoever was doing the shooting, from behind the trees a little south east of the Austrian post, did not want to be identified. If they were after Henri’s family, he could only hope they had not identified himself, whether or not the shooting was intentional and for what reason. This would have be a good time to withdraw. Why didn’t he?
It was because of the child, wasn’t it? He wasn’t sure that Ted would agree to leave her and if he would be Katerin if anything happened to her?
When returned later, no one remained, just traces of footprints, mud in the light snowfall. It was a late snow -past midnight, the day before Easter.

Ted managed it to the car and Milan helped him from it, to where he was lodging, a place he called his “surgery.” He didn’t look so good, he was pale and shaking, but Milan did not know it was mostly just fear. He called the hospital then for an ambulance, and cleaned Gina’s face, while Ted’s anesthetic took effect.
A quiet knock at the door. “I am Ana Terekova. My husband went out walking and hasn’t yet returned home. I was anxious so I stepped out of our house and headed this way. Then I saw your lights on and came to ask. I am a nurse.”
Milan didn’t recognize her, and he didn’t k now what to say, so he spoke about what he was doing, as if to a patient. “I have some tape that will work. No need for more scars than is needed. She will have a slight scar for a time- but see now, it’s bled clean, and there won’t be any infection,” he spoke as if to no- one, as the woman remained silent and expressionless and it made him uncomfortable. “Why did you try to take this route? It is known to be a way across. That was a routine patrol. They stopped me yesterday, on the way from the next village, and last week as well. They were even then on their way to mend the fence. You were planning to head for the border and meet up with Henri in Vienna, right?”
She pursed her lips, tightly. “I know this family. What was on Ted’s mind- to leave her with you alone, and give himself up, like some sort of a hero? Can it be that you weren’t alone, where is her mother, and where is your husband?”
He had seen the ring on her finger, so that part of her story could be true. She glanced at the clock before answering. So she would feel better answering when she knew he was safely past the border town and halfway to Vienna, Milan gathered. He didn’t doubt she was with them when they set out, and had responded to the third guard’s challenge to them to send someone to help. He had followed the Austrians to ensure they left again, and maybe went after the villagers- he had no right to cross over, but he was reckless and outraged…..in any case, Milan never saw or heard from him again.
At the time, he wasn’t sure of what had happened, but that he had a chance of helping Ted to get away and he had to take it…he knew of Henri’s plans, naturally, this was the night that a car had been arranged for him and he was most likely here and with someone following him.
He had seen a brief flash of a light when he first opened the surgery and counted on it as a signal from Henri, he was still waiting.
“There will be more regular patrols after tonight. If anyone else was with you, there won’t be another chance, I hope they didn’t turn back to wait for you.”
“I know this man and the child, and his family. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. We have been sharing a house.” Ana spoke at last, in a voice that was careful but not submissive, if anything, a little bit accusing.
He tried to smile; he realized he sounded too threatening.
“So you turned back to help an injured old man and this child, who were left behind as hostages, while her mother and father get away? Did they agree to allow this, because the state will be more lenient on elderly and children? What really happened?
“Are you are afraid of the truth which will lead to more questions? I admire your courage, and you don’t have to make things up to protect them or yourself from me.”
“I don’t know who her father is, no-one does,” Ana said quietly. The doctor looked at her quickly, was she trying to undeceive him, after her original remarks?
“It would be best if you could take her to her mother at once, as her grandfather, can’t go anywhere now.”
Ana didn’t know what to reply. She knew that Milan had thought she was someone else- he had almost said her name when he first saw her approaching, “Katya” and felt sure he meant Fedor Valentyn’s daughter. She wanted to trust Milan and even explain the reasons why they chose to leave, but was hesitant, so he continued his persuasion.
“Don’t be afraid of me, I am a stranger to you but also a friend, and I can help you, or you can help me. I have either to allow you or the hospital to take this child as that is where the old man must be, after I have done my best. She would spend the night and I don’t know what else, considering she hasn’t any parents at home, as her mother is most likely halfway to Vienna, to meet her cousins. She was with you, wasn’t she?”
The woman pursed her mouth. He knew too much already. He felt more annoyed than he should have, under the circumstances, and he took a breath and started again. “I am assuming that Henri’s who he says he is, and his wife is his wife- and your husband is there also, and someone else, trained and mercenary, who actually did the shooting. He didn’t mind if he killed us all, so long as you all made it across the border, that’s what he was paid to ensure, wasn’t it?”
She tightened her mouth and did not contradict him; her expression was similar to someone who is falsely accused. He tried to change his tone of voice to be as friendly as he could, but the facts themselves weren’t light-hearted.
“You knew the risk when you came here. I knew it- now, I must write a report, and give all their names; it’s my duty, and yours to tell me. If you wish to leave without answering, I can’t keep you here, against your wish, but I could help you to leave, to get away as planned, with the help of a car.”
What a night. He knew of the enterprise from the start…Henri’s release on condition he left the country, a week ago, had given him time to visit his family and he had also returned to see Alphonse, another patriot playwright, but Alphonse was not on his own, they had been watching him- Henri took shelter with someone else and waited for Milan to arrange something again. He did not know how to just leave the country and wait- he was too attached to it, he wanted his children not- yet born to grow up in it, he felt he owed them something already and that he could change the world. He was also quite dependable sometimes, and Milan was sure he would arrive later.
“The car and passports are no longer required for Alyonka and her sister; there will be space for you and the child.” They were quiet lenient at the border-post in allowing holidaymakers through and it was Easter weekend- they would not be suspicious- it was still the best plan he could think of. “Please trust me. Didn’t I prove myself willing to risk some danger – I could have walked past, and done nothing?”
She knew that. This strengthened his resolve. “I can help you further. Ted’s in no position to travel now but he won’t be harmed- I can help him once he is safe to leave the hospital. He’s older than I thought he was, and his health may be delicate, he needs to be under observation with medical staff. The state can expect him to work for another five years, at the most, and with this injury, he may walk with difficulty, who knows? They will agree to his leaving, rather than pay the pension.”
Milan was exaggerating Ted’s frailty and injury, but he meant her to realize from his words that he could arrange a pension for him and it would be easier on him, considering his age. “The fact that he doesn’t have a wife makes it easier to ensure his departure.” He was hoping for more information. Ana sensed it.
“We don’t need your help,” she said.
“I need yours- there will be an enquiry, and I can deal with it if I know you are safely away. I’ll show this bullet- the one unlike the others- it could have been Ted was shot by one of your team, but his name isn’t known to me.”
He took it from his kit to place it on a side table “ and no one knows who it was who came here with Ted, and how you left, excepting that it happened sometime before sunrise, when I left to show the police the scene of the shooting, and you promised to wait with Ted for the ambulance.
“How would I know that you would abandon the man and run with the child or where? By the time anyone asks me anything at all, you will be safely away- I might have to give your name if I knew it, but it happens I don’t.”
He reached for his jacket with the idea of walking to the police station just then. It was a bit of a risk. Ana considered his words for a moment, and then she grasped what he was saying. He was offering assistance, in exchange for which, she must leave Ted behind and take Gina only, until this doctor could arrange for them to meet again- and that meant further trust, and no turning back, even if Pavel Terekova was not in Vienna, or if Katerin didn’t want to join them.
“Yes, Henri’s who he says he is” she said. “His wife is by now close to Vienna.”
Ana hesitated. Katya wasn’t with them, she was in Prague. If the doctor knew that, it might make all the difference, but they had to leave, or she may not see her husband and they would, with the remaining family “Valentyn” be trapped in the circumstances. But how could she leave Ted in danger, if he had volunteered to stay behind while the others went ahead?
“Why do you care for the risk, to save yourself? Write in your report that you helped him, and he was able to walk home again, let him come with us. They won’t offer him a pension, they will ask about Henri and make his life miserable. Already he was asked to leave the house- it had been always been his home and his family’s home, but after the death of Vanya, they want to take it away from him. They promised us the whole house, but we don’t need it. We don’t have children- how can we?” she bit her lip and turned pale. She knew of the danger of having children for those who were contaminated by a leak at a local factory and spoke openly, but had given her husband’s place of work away. For Milan it was enough, he knew she would see reason and agree to his plan, and he reassured her again,
“But there’s a fair chance, and we are working on the cure,” speaking as a medic, rather than a patriot, with no intention of asking her to stay.
Even if that third Czech guard returned, no one would contradict the report that Milan could make, if Ted agreed to it, and he was sure that the worse of the night was over. He sent her to fix a hot drink for them both, having changed his mind about going to the police just yet, although it placed him at risk of more enquiries later as to why he didn’t, but he couldn’t risk Ted becoming worse in his absence, or the police running into Henri on their return from the hillside, so he decided to wait, and play safe.
Men like Henri don’t come by every day, was his reason for having become involved thus far. He had friends everywhere- it could even be that the Austrian soldiers were Henri’s friends. He didn’t like to speculate.
The whole plan had flashed through his mind as the woman appeared - for a moment when he had seen her, he had thought it was Katya and the relief he felt at e. It wasn’t the old man’s fault that Henri didn’t leave when he was first released, couldn’t keep his word on that one, or that his daughter had a habit of deception, an over active imagination.
Milan wasn’t as sure of the outcome of his plan as he would like to be, regarding Ted, but what else could he do, he would at least still be alive, and able to walk again, and Ana and Gina had the chance of a safe journey. The extent of his involvement with Henri and his family ended there - there wasn’t one of them who hadn’t lied to him.