Prague by Arthur Phillips Read Free Book Online Page A

antiquarians the morning he walked between the two matching cannons that guarded the entrance of the Gellert Hill shop. Having thus far spent his European research time in libraries, this was his return to fieldwork and he was prepared to meet, in this city of renamed and re-renamed streets, another odd soul making a fair to poor living selling off the histories of others.
     
    The door closed behind him with the predictable tinkling of a bell, the shape and placement of which he knew without looking. After the bright sun, he stood for a blind moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the shop's intentionally dim light and, he knew, allowing the still invisible owner to inspect him and assess his likelihood to buy.
     
    'American? Deutsch? Franfais?"
     
    The voice was the Hungarian male drone, and Mark answered before he could locate its owner. "Kanadai. Beszel angoMP" He rashly used all three of his Hungarian words at once.
     
    "Yes, yes, of course. But you talk very good Hungarian. We should do that." And the voice behind a desk, behind a gold floor lamp, had a face: thick black hair, thick and drooping black mustache, pale, bags under the eyes, the head tilted slightly back, polo shirt and a gold-link bracelet.
     
    "Oh no, no," Mark said politely, still at the door, the bell just fading away. "Nem, I mean," he said, now truly exhausting his Magyar vocabulary. "I only know how to ask Beszel angolul"
     
    "Canada, you say? Your mama and papa are Hungarian, of course." "No, actually. Irish. And English. Some French and German. Cherokee, claims one grandmother. I'm a mongrel."
     
    "So how do you talk Hungarian so nice? You have the Hungarian girlfriend, I think."
     
    'Actually, ah, no. I just came last month." "Plenty of time." "Yes, but actually, no."
     
    "You find them pretty, though, yes? Our Hungarian girls? The most pretty anywhere? Like French girls?"
     
    "Yes, sure. Very pretty."
     
    "Well, you know what is true. The best place to learn a language is in the bed."
     
    "Yes, I've heard it said." The Hungarian looked down at some papers on his desk and Mark looked away, ready for the inevitable shaving mugs, the incomplete sets of silverware, the refuse of dead people's mantels.
     
    Instead, his eye snagged on a photograph on the man's desk, a small framed picture of a group of soldiers, vintage World War II. Payton could not identify the uniforms, but he did recognize almost instantly the pale soldier squatting in the front row, second from the right, staring at the camera with sleepy eyes and a droopy black mustache. "You were a soldier?" As soon as he spoke, Mark knew the question was foolish; this man would not have been more than a child.
     
    "Yes, how do you know this of me? Oh, I see. No, that is my father. Many say we have similar looks. It was with friends who joined together, this picture. Right when they start. He had to shave his mustache soon after this. This was a farewell-to-mustaches picture." Mark picked up the photograph and stared at the antiquer's absolute double (but for the fatigues), the soldier's head thrown back, allowing him to look down his nose with ironic martial bravado. "Come to look here." He led Payton to a corner of the store, where oil paintings in golden frames lined the walls and leaned against each other on the floor. "My grandfather."
     
    High on a yellow wall hung the same man's face again. Here, his mustache was slightly longer and his hair swept back. He wore a blue cavalry uniform with golden braiding on the shoulders, and he stared, in three-quarters view, from out of the dark background tones. The haughty officer's eyes, from a head thrown slightly back, followed Mark's with military frankness as the scholar walked back and forth in front of the painting.
     
    "He wears the uniform of the emperor's guard. We have it still, there." The man waved across the shop at a headless cloth mannequin in a braided blue jacket, matching tight trousers, and spurred black leather