Guided Tours of Hell by Francine Prose Read Free Book Online Page B

misplacing his pitiful specs while Mr. Historical-Tragedy is having a coronary and dying.
    The waiter sighs and rolls his eyes as Landau scans the blurry menu. Could he borrow someone’s glasses? He and Mimi used to exchange reading glasses when they still pretended that growing old was a little joke between them and not (as it would soon become) a crime each blamed on the other. Poor Mimi, farsightedness isn’t her fault!
    Natalie’s wearing reading glasses, smudged with fingerprints and flecked with tiny white dots. Landau wouldn’t borrow hers, not if he were starving and this menu listed the last food on earth! His starry explosion of sympathy for Mimi, back home in New York, has failed to rain droplets of charity down on Natalie Zigbaum.
    Anyway, Natalie’s busy, speaking Czech with her handsome young waiter. Pointing at the menu, she’s debating her selection. She must think she’s in France or Italy, some country in which it makes sense to have informative chats on the subject of food for which you will soon pay tons of money. She must have forgotten that she’s here, where the only choice is between the deep-fried pork and the deep-fried chicken. Landau can hear his arteries wheeze, strangling along with his bowels. The minute he gets back to New York, he’ll go in for an angioplasty—forget the stress test, the heart monitors, cut directly to the chase.
    “Yes?” says Landau’s waiter. Landau looks across the table, thus bringing to four the number of men—Jiri, his waiter, Landau and his—boring into Eva with impatient hostile stares.
    Eva implores the waiter in Czech, touching her stomach and breast in the universal language for whatever a culture believes the sick and weakened can eat. Eva too must imagine herself in a country in which a cook can conceive of anything edible prepared without gobs of salt and duck fat.
    “Meat,” Jiri whispers. “I need meat. Not water! Not gruel! This bitch is trying to starve me.”
    Jiri is speaking English, but the waiters understand and are glad to be able to cut the bitch loose and deal directly with Jiri. Several talk at once in Czech, no doubt listing a selection of animal organs, available charred or deep-fried. Jiri’s too ill to care. Again he covers his face with his freckled truck driver’s hands, covers everything but his ears, with which he listens until at last he raises his chin and nods, still without looking up.
    Now both waiters focus on Landau.
    “The same,” says Landau, his teeth clenched so tight that he has to repeat it. “The same.” These will be his last words now: I’ll have what that other guy has. “The same” translates into Czech, it seems, and the waiters trudge toward the kitchen.
    Eva has to call them back to say that she too will have the same thing as Jiri and Mr. Landau.
    Then urgently she tells Jiri, “What you’ve ordered is terribly heavy. Very hard to digest. Do you really think you should—?”
    Jiri slowly peels back his fingers and rotates his face toward Eva. “Is this about money?” he says. “The conference saving a couple of kopecks? That’s all right! Thanks! We’ll skip the meat course! Grandpa will just have the soup.”
    “Jiri!” cries Eva. “Calm yourself! Please!”
    “I’m calm!” says Jiri. “Calm enough to see through your rucking plans. Persuading Jiri Krakauer to pimp for the Kafka Foundation, if there is a Foundation, if it isn’t the private account of Madame Eva Kaprova, maybe toward a hot new car or a week at some nudist beach in Dalmatia—”
    Eva covers Jiri’s mouth with her hand, which he promptly pulls away, and the lovers struggle while the conferees stare. Landau feels a sort of vibratory hum rising from Natalie Zigbaum, an energy that builds and builds until it rockets her out of her chair. Grabbing the table edge, she leans across toward Jiri. From Landau’s perspective—looking up—she’s the figurehead on a ship’s prow, an avenging mermaid with shelflike