“You’re going away?” Nick said, incredulous.

“And you. Leave the hotel early, with your camera. There’s a lot to see in Prague. I can pick you up by the tram stop—”

“We have a car.”

His father smiled. “Rich Americans. I forgot. Even better. Two cars. You know the tank at the bottom of Holečhova?” This to Molly, who nodded. “Eight-ten. It’s quite safe. They never follow us there.”

His voice, growing faint, ended in a small cough. Then the coughing came again, stronger, until he was forced to give in to it, partially doubling over to catch his breath.

He took a handkerchief out of his pocket to cover his mouth.

Nick leaned forward, peering at him. “What’s wrong?”

His father waved his hand dismissively, still catching his breath. Then he managed a smile. “Nothing. Overcome with emotion.”

He tossed it out casually, and in that second Nick heard his father again, young, unable to resist an ironic turn. But he looked drawn, shaken by the cough.

“It passes,” he said, and fumbled in his pocket for a small tin box, the kind used for pastille candies. When he opened it, the pills seemed enormous. “Soviet medicine,” he said wryly. “Not for the weak.”

“There’s some water in the men’s room,” Nick said, turning to get it. To his surprise, his father leaned on his arm and began walking with him.

“Just a moment,” his father said to Molly, attempting to be jaunty, but his voice was raspy now, and Nick wondered if it really was just a coughing spell.

In the men’s room, people were lined up at the urinals. Nick’s father went over to the washbasin, taking his time with the pill. He chased it down with water and stood quietly for a minute calming himself. A few men left.

“Better?” Nick said.

His father nodded. “What we talked about before? It’s better, I think, not to say anything.”

“To Molly, you mean. Why?” A man at the urinal glanced in their direction, surprised at the English, but Nick ignored him.

His father was nodding again, stifling the beginning of another cough. “Not yet. Not even her. Not until I’m sure. I’ll explain.”

“You all right?” Nick put his hand gently on his father’s back, afraid that a stronger pat would set him off again.

“You think it’s crazy, don’t you? Whispering in corners,” he said, his voice now in fact a whisper. “You’re not used to it.”

Nick looked around the room. The overhead vents might be hiding mikes, but why? Who would bother to bug the men’s room at the Wallenstein Palace? It occurred to him for the first time that his father, this man he didn’t know, might really be paranoid, common sense and skepticism worn down by the years to a membrane too thin to stop suspicion seeping through.

“Is it always like this?” Nick said.

“No. Sometimes they really are listening.”

Nick smiled, relieved. It was the kind of offhand joke his father would have made on 2nd Street, having a drink with his mother before they went out. A throwaway, not a story, and she’d be smiling, just happy to be with him. His father smiled now too, pleased with himself. But when he spoke, his voice was serious. “I don’t do it for myself,” he said, looking straight at Nick. Then another cough, his face crinkling up a little in pain, and he turned around to the basin so that Nick had to look at him in the mirror.

“What’s wrong with you?” Nick said, alarmed, frustrated at not knowing how to react.

In the mirror his father lowered his head, eyes dropping out of sight, and waved his hand again. “It’s all right. You go. Please. I’ll be fine. Tomorrow. By the tank.”

But Nick wouldn’t let go. He took the back of his father’s shoulders, turning him. “It’s not all right. You’re sick.”

The man at the urinal had zipped and now came over, saying something in Czech. His father answered quickly, the sound of Czech surprising Nick.

“He thinks you’re molesting me,” his father said, his head still down, trying again for a wry joke. “You’d better go.”

“Tell me what’s wrong.” Nick still held him by the shoulders, but when his father lifted his face Nick let go, stung by the look of dismay.

“It doesn’t matter. Just a side effect. Please,” his father said quietly. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Nick looked down in confusion and saw the stain. His father had wet himself. When he looked back up, his father’s eyes were moist with embarrassment. “It’s all right,” Nick said, words to a child.

But his father shook his head. “No. Now you’ll always think of me this way.” He looked up, his eyes a kind of odd plea, past all the jokes. “I can’t make it up to you. I’m not expecting—” He stopped, his voice almost feverish. “But not this. Not some stranger with wet pants.”

Now it was Nick who reached out to him, bringing him close in the dingy men’s room, holding him, whispering into his ear so that no one could hear. “You’re not a stranger,” he said.

“He’s all right. He wants us to leave separately,” he said to Molly outside.

“He doesn’t look all right.”

“I know. He’s been sick.”

“You look a little shaky yourself,” she said, studying him.

He led her toward the last of the crowd funneling through the garden door.

“I can’t stand it,” she said. “What did he say? What did you talk about?”

He looked at her, unprepared. Why not tell her?

“He’s not just sick. He thinks he’s dying. That’s why he wanted to see me,” Nick said, surprised at how easily it came out. It had begun already, the convenient half-truths, covering tracks.

“Oh,” she said, deflated. Then, an afterthought, “I’m sorry. How do you feel?”

“Ask me later. Right now, I’m not sure.”

The street was a small eddy of Tatras and Skodas, loud motors and clunky headlights shining on the cobblestones. In the square a large crowd bundled in coats waited for late trams. Instinctively, Nick headed away, toward the bridge, where couples were still loitering by the statues.

“What else did he say?” Molly said. “I mean, why doesn’t he want anyone to know you’re here? What difference would it make?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want anybody to know he’s sick. You summon the family, it’s a land of tip-off. I don’t know.”

She shook her head. “There’s something else.” But when he stopped and looked down at the water, she let it go, sensing his reluctance.

“This is the way cities used to look,” he said. “Just enough light to see where you’re going.” A delayed thought from the walk over, when he had taken in the streets without ads and lighted shops, just corner lights like sconces and recesses that were really dark.

“Nick? What was it like, seeing him? Do you mind my asking?”

He turned to her. “It was easy. It was him.” He looked back at the mist gathering along the surface of the river. Soon everything would be covered, insubstantial. He glanced over his shoulder as if he could catch a last glimpse of his father on the streets twisting up to Hradčany, a proof he’d really been there. “All this time. For years–years –I thought he was, I don’t know, on the other side of the moon or something. But he’s been here. In an apartment.

“All you have to do is drive in, spend a few dollars. All this time.”

She put her hand on his arm. “He hasn’t always been here.”

“Moscow, then,” he said, a little annoyed. “What’s the difference? The point is, he’s been somewhere. I could have seen him. They stamp a passport. That’s it. What did I think it was? Some fucking Checkpoint Charlie? I could have seen him, not waited until he was sick. So why didn’t I?”

She was quiet for a moment. “Nick, you’re not the one who left.”

Nick nodded. “I know.” He reached into his pocket for a cigarette and handed her one. “He wrote to me.”

“Wrote to you?” Her face was caught in the glare of the match.