There was no security for this building—Cervenka simply pushed the door open with his shoulder and led them into a dank, unlit lobby area that smelt of piss and bleach.
Up the crumbling stairs they climbed, past walls that glistened with damp, until they reached the fourth floor. Cervenka hammered at one of the many battered doors with ham fists, shouting, “Pani Kasparova! Pani Kasparova!” to no apparent avail.
Lydia felt an obscure terror, as if a spectre might appear in the doorway rather than an elderly woman, and she clung to Milan, hoping he would think she meant only to offer him support.
Nobody came, even though Cervenka kept up the battery for a good few minutes. Eventually, an irate man in a vest with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth opened the door of the neighbouring flat. He uttered a few choice phrases.
“He says she is out,” muttered Milan to Lydia. “She is shopping.”
They turned, shoulders drooping in unison, to be confronted by a wraithlike figure in a headscarf at the top of the stairs. Her net bag fell open, and oranges and apples rolled out over the stairwell floor.
“Milan,” she said.
“Matka,” he replied.
Neither seemed to want to move first.
After a few split seconds of petrified stand-off, Milan swooped forward, gathering up the spilled fruit to give to his mother. She took it.
Lydia thought there was something metaphorical about the gestures.
She stuffed the fruit back into her bag and looked from her son to the other two. Eventually she said something that must have been the Czech equivalent of ‘okay’, and let them all into her flat.
The room was dark and shabby, but it was scrupulously clean, with a screened-off bed in one corner, a stove in another and a little table and chairs by the window.
Milan’s mother put down her shopping on the table and sat herself heavily in a rocking chair, saying something that sounded like an apology or excuse. Maybe it was something about tired feet and needing to sit down, Lydia thought.
Cervenka nodded and left, speaking to Milan as he walked through the door, but Milan didn’t reply. He simply stood in silence while his mother spoke, faintly, with a laboured rasp. The words sounded reproachful.
When Milan’s turn to speak came, he was impassioned and full of wild gestures. Lydia took a step back, wanting to hide in the shadows. It didn’t seem right that she was here, but Milan seized her forearm unexpectedly and yanked her back into the foreground.
“English,” said Milan’s mother.
Not sure if it was meant to be a question, Lydia nodded.
“I no speak,” she said, apologetically. “My son—you love?”
She nodded.
The old woman smiled for the first time, rose from her rocking chair and busied herself at the range, pulling out a dusty bottle of something and pouring them each a small glass.
Milan didn’t speak, apparently waiting for his mother to set the mood.
She turned to Lydia. “He…” she said, then she pointed to her heart and made a violent movement, signifying its splitting in two.
“I’m sorry,” said Lydia automatically.
“You? No. Him.”
“She’s still angry with me,” translated Milan. “But I think I can work on her. I think she’s pleased to see me, in her heart.”
“I can go back to the hotel, if you want to be left alone together…”
“No, it’s fine. Really.”
They sat at the small table and drank something that tasted of apricots with a fiery kick, while Milan and his mother continued to pour out streams of rapid Czech. Lydia tried her best not to feel like a spare part but was nonetheless relieved when, after an hour of this, Milan’s mother got up and opened the front door.
She nodded at Lydia, then drew her son into a tight embrace. Lydia was so moved by this she almost burst into tears.