She was saying goodbye on the phone when he opened the door, and he stood there for a moment, waiting and apprehensive.

“Dinner?” he said finally.

She shook her head. “Some other time. They’re busy tonight.”

Nick looked at her in disbelief, the tone of her voice, social and pleasant, making the moment unreal.

“Busy?” he said dumbly.

“Mm. A concert,” she said evenly, looking straight at him. “At the Wallenstein. We might think about that, actually. It’s pretty. What about it? Are you too tired?”

“What’s the Wallenstein?” They were going to see him.

“A palace in the Malá Strana. They give concerts in the courtyard. It’s nice. What do you say?”

“Can we get in this late?”

She pointed to the phone. “Try the concierge.” She raised her voice, taunting the microphone. “You have dollars. You can get anything you want with dollars.”

Chapter 7

THE STUDENTS WERE lighting candles in the middle of Wenceslas when they left the hotel. The crowd was small, a fraction of the old rallies, but the police were out in force, patrolling the long street and pretending to ignore the students. No one wanted any trouble. From the candles Nick assumed it was a memorial service, but the signs they held up, in Czech, might have meant anything.

“I wonder what it says,” he said idly, looking at the quiet group. Behind them the street rose up to meet the giant columns of the National Museum, still scarred from the previous year’s shelling.

“‘Be with us. We are with you,”’ she said.

“You can read Czech?”

“No. It was the slogan. You used to see it everywhere. It’s their way of telling the police they’re all on the same side.”

Nick wondered what they expected the police to do –drop their guns and walk off the job? But it was all, from the incomprehensible signs to the sad, divided loyalties, someone else’s problem.

They walked down toward Národni Street, past the párky stalls, then threaded their way through the narrow streets of the Old Town to the river. This was the tourist route, full of marvels and medieval towers, but Nick found himself hurrying, oblivious. The Charles Bridge, with its ornate statues, was full of couples looking down at the water, arms around each other, the girls all with bleached-blond hair that seemed to hang straight from poor chemicals. On the other side, the Malá Strana, there were thick arcades and cobblestones, lit by dull street lamps and the glow of passing trams.

The Wallenstein was not far from the river, and when they got there a crowd had already gathered on Letenska Street, waiting to get in. Most of them wore coats against the spring chill, and Nick saw that they had dressed up, men in ties, women in cloth hats. No one was young. The street door led through the honey-colored stone wall directly into the formal gardens. At one end of the central courtyard, musicians sat in front of the high arches of a portico, tuning instruments. Folding chairs had been set up on the pebbled ground, and people claimed them, first come, first served, then stood looking around for their friends, waving and chatting, just as they must have done when the palace was first built. Behind the walls, away from the tanks and the lines for carrots, Prague still had its evenings.

Nick found chairs toward the back, so he could look out over the crowd, and stood watching the people file in. What would he look like? Was it possible he wouldn’t recognize him? He would be how old now? In his sixties, like most of the audience. Gray? White?

“Don’t crane. It’s too obvious,” Molly said. “Maybe we’d better sit down.”

“No one else is.”

It was true. People stood talking, their voices rising over the violins and cellos being stretched into tune. Did they all know each other? A few people near them stared frankly at their Western clothes. Why so public a place? Why meet in front of an audience? The lights were being lowered now, people finally taking their places.

“What are we supposed to do, save seats?” Nick said.

“He just said he was coming to the concert. Don’t worry. He’ll find us.”

A couple sat down next to them and the man nodded at Nick, but it was just a concertgoer’s greeting, polite and vacant. The music started, a series of Mozart divertimenti, as formal and airy as the gardens. Only the portico was lighted now, and Nick looked around the dim courtyard at profiles and shapes of heads, waiting for someone to turn in the dark. How would his father find them? It was Nick who would have changed, no longer a boy. It occurred to him–a new thought–that his father would know him only because he was sitting with Molly.

At the intermission, while people smoked and drank beer, he stood near the bright stage, impossible to miss, but no one came up, and only a few people looked toward him at all, glancing at his shoes. Molly said nothing, but he could tell from the way she bit her lower lip that she was worried, that it should already have happened. Czech, fluent and guttural, surrounded them, making him feel isolated, not even free to eavesdrop.

When they sat down again, he knew his father wasn’t coming. Something had happened, or maybe he had balked, unable to go through with it after all. Nick stared at the Baroque walls, not hearing the music, and realized that he felt a kind of relief. It was better in so many ways to keep things as they were. His body began to sag a little, coming down to earth. The past wasn’t meant to come back. Except there it was again, the walking away. In the pretty courtyard, listening now to Brahms, he was at the back door again, being left.

“I’ll be right back,” he whispered to Molly, and when she looked alarmed he smiled and said, “Bathroom,” and slid out of his seat, crouching as he slipped farther back into the dark garden, trying not to crunch pebbles.

A long arcade led back to an ornamental pool, and he stopped for a cigarette near one of the pillars, away from the crowd. Phones were tapped. Maybe he had had to change plans at the last minute, to keep the secret. Who knew what his life was like now? Maybe he would be idling on Letenska Street when they came out, a chance meeting. And maybe not.

Nick went into the bathroom. Damn him, anyway. He wasn’t going to do it twice. Molly said he lived here; she’d spoken to him. What did it matter if Nick called? Who cared who listened? He was still taking precautions, and in America nobody even remembered his name. Old politics, all forgotten, as dated as a hemline. But his son was here. How could he not want to see him?

Nick came out into the soft light of the arcade and stopped. The man near the other end was walking carefully, as if he had forgotten his cane in his rush to get to the bathroom. No, not that old. The waves were gone, thinned to a dusting of hair across his scalp, and his body had thinned too, so that the suit hung loosely, the sleeves too wide for his wrists. He kept coming. Nick couldn’t move. There hadn’t been years to watch the change, just this one minute. An awful mirror. He was looking at himself old. This is what he would be like, bony, almost bald, shoulders slightly drooped. And the face. It was coming into the light now, as inevitable as a ghost. Paler than before, the skin still tight over the cheekbones, then a little slack, a gravity pull. His own face. But the eyes. The shine of liquid full to brimming over, catching all the light, so full Nick thought he might drown in them.

“Nicku.”

The voice seemed to touch the back of his neck like a shiver, drawing him nearer. Voices didn’t change. The same sound, wrapping around him, his earliest memory.

“Nicku. My God.”

And now the eyes did spill over, a wetness at the corners, as he raised his hands, putting them on Nick’s arms. Nick thought of the day they had left Washington, when his heart had literally hurt in his chest, a kind of practice death. He felt it now. Take a breath. He had wondered what it would feel like, this moment, and now he saw that it was like falling. His stomach was light; the ground had slid away. But his father had taken him in his arms. He could feel his cheek, the head leaning into his shoulder, the arms circling his back, holding on to him for dear life.