The Empty Spaces of Prague

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The day I arrived in Prague, so had the Rolling Stones.  There was a banner in the train station that said, “Welcome to the Rolling Stones”, though I could only imagine that the banner was for concert-goers and not the Rolling Stones themselves.  Imagine Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in second class seats!  Prague opened their arms to them as if they were prodigal sons.  Once where a giant portrait of Stalin stood in the old square, on the day I arrived, there was a giant pair of lips and a tongue, as per the Rolling Stones’ emblem, but I wondered if there wasn’t a double meaning there.  Czechoslovakia was getting some satisfaction, for the first time in decades.

There was such a marked difference between Vienna and Prague.  Where the train station in Vienna was filled with light and glass, the train station in Prague was gray with concrete, cinderblock, and years of overuse.  It’s not that the train station was particularly dirty, but it was more decidedly unwelcoming.  The paint for the lines and the walls looked to be of poor quality and was peeling in places.  No art on the walls.  No benches.  The music was along the tune of a grand review for a military march. 

            The station was not as cool as I imagined it would be as it was in the shade.  When I got off the train, I was hit with a blast of hot, heavy air that smelled like a mixture of urine and oil.  Looking at the platform, I wasn’t sure if I should put my bag down or continue to hold it.  I decided that holding it was my best answer.

            The woman whom I imagined was Zdenka, a tall, blond woman with a pressed blue suit and high heels, turned out to be the lover of one of the men on the train.  As I approached her, so did the man, sweeping her up in an embrace like I’ve always imagined GIs coming back from World War II would have done.  They walked off happily, never noticing me with my backpack and suitcase.  The platform began to be deserted, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do.  I scanned the now thin crowd for a sign of recognition.

            A muffled voice came over the loudspeaker in Czech, giving some sort of direction.  I imagined that it was information that a train had just arrived or was just leaving.  People seemed to not notice the voice, to tune it out.  Meanwhile, limping through the crowd came a thin woman, with a pinched face, severe jet-black bob haircut, and a suede cranberry suit on.  She had no cane, but it was obvious that something was wrong with her leg.  She was squinting at me, shielding her eyes against the bright light beyond the station, methodically moving closer.  She came right up to me, stopped, and held out her weathered hand.

            “Eliska, you must be Eliska,” she said. (She pronounced it Eleeshka.)

            “Please call me Elisha,” I replied. 

            “What? Eleeeshka is a good Czech name.  It has a long lineage.  You should be proud of it.  Not many people use it any more.  Too Jewish.”

            I was surprised by this.  I told her that I was named after my grandmother, who was Hungarian.  She looked at me and crinkled her eyes as if she had a secret, put a finger to the side of her nose, then pointed between my eyes and said, “Believe me, it is a Czech name.  The Hungarians do not have such a name, they are not as cultured.  They are barbarians, Atilla the Hun!  My name is Zdenka.  I believe we spoke on the phone.”

            We shook hands and she began to walk, without offering to take my bag or to give me any indication what we were doing.  The best I could do was follow her.  I noticed now that one of her legs was longer than the other.  I wondered if that was the only problem; surely the height of the shoe on her bad leg could be adequately adjusted so that her limp was not so pronounced. Why was it left undone?