The Light at the End of the Day

3

ALICIA’S FATHER led her by the hand through the damp, misty streets towards the Glowny. Her breath billowed like smoke. Warm lights were beginning to glow in the windows of the bakeries; their cinnamon sugar doughnuts sat fluffy, piping out scent and heat. She slowed, pulling Adam back, to look at a tower of pastries. She shook his wrist, meaning Papa, I want. It was usually enough. But Adam had other plans, and pulled her mittened hand back into a stroll. She trotted along, confused, but a bloom of excitement tempered her instinct to stamp and pout.

Mama had said it would be a surprise. ‘I’m not coming,’ she’d said, ‘only your Papa and you. A special birthday treat.’ Her mother had smiled and smoothed down the red satin of Alicia’s new dress; it had been too thin for the wintry air but the seamstress had lined it for warmth that week. When Alicia and Papa left, her sister Karolina hadn’t said goodbye.

Alicia pulled the fur closer around her, used the edge of it to stroke her cheek. It smelled of her mother’s heady perfume: lilies and something like cake. The Glowny rose before them, the horses clopping around the cobblestones, the Cloth Hall standing in the centre, warm and inviting. Alicia wasn’t allowed to wander in there, where cheap curios were sold: her places were the boutiques and sweet shops of the boulevards off the square, like the Ulica Floriańska, the street Mama said could be Paris. It was coming to the hour, and so the bugler would be playing his thin wail soon. Adam slowed, stamped his booted feet in the cold, and enveloped Alicia in his arms to listen. He was always respectful of the bugler.

‘Think how cold he is up there, Alicia,’ he said. ‘Lucky us in our coats and furs.’

A small crowd gathered under the church spire to listen. Alicia admired their velvet capes and fur-lined hats, some in mink like hers. The women wore pearls over their coats and the men’s boots were shiny like Papa’s. Some of the men wore their small kippah at the back of their heads, white cotton or silk and decorated with coloured threads. Adam’s was slightly different, in a dark blue, with a white threaded design. It looked like a drawing of an ocean, with his red hair around it the sand of a volcanic beach. Alicia looked around at the gathered people and wondered what their servants were like, and if they were as ugly and kind as her Janie. Adam grinned down at her and danced with her clumsily to the tune as others around them hummed softly and applauded when the glint of gold from the bugle disappeared.

‘Happy Birthday, my Ala,’ he said. Was that it? A trip to Glowny to see the bugler? For her last birthday she had received a music box and a doll, handmade in Prague and dressed in silk. She’d felt too old for the doll, but propped it against the sill with the others.

‘Come,’ her father said, ‘I am taking you to dinner like a proper little princess!’

‘Dinner? Not at home?’

She thought of the silver platters, and her new puppy on her lap, Karolina ignoring her.

Her Papa beamed at her. ‘You shall sit and dine and you shall even drink wine. You are going to the best restaurant in town, as is fitting for a lady such as yourself. You are twelve now, no longer my little one.’

He made a little bow, stiff in his thick coat, and Alicia laughed as he darted a kiss onto her nose as he came close.

‘Come.’

Adam led her across the square, past couples laughing and leaning their way to restaurants, and past the horses, the man playing a violin with a hat for change, the last shoppers with their arms full of boxes.

The Wentzl stood proudly at the edge of the Glowny, its windows aglow. Piano notes and the tinkle of cutlery and conversation floated across the square. Adam stepped back to let Alicia go in pride of place. The waiter, a penguin with a full beard like her father’s, beamed down at Alicia in her satin and fur. She stood up straighter, and gave an imperious nod copied from her mother, eyes sliding away, neck turned just so.

They were ushered upstairs with an air of hurry, but Alicia moved slowly, her hand on the polished banister, feeling truly like a lady of a huge house, feeling like Mama, and enjoying the power of making everyone wait. Adam indulged her, and a waiter hovered with Adam’s great overcoat, heavy and slipping in his hands.

The room was as grand as home. The walls were buttercup yellow, so the wintry weather dissolved into a summer light, as though they had stumbled into a fairy land in a snowy wood. The Glowny stretched below, framed by plush golden curtains that Alicia itched to roll up in. The table was set with flowers and shining silver. The waiter danced with elaborate precision to place her napkin around her throat. Adam kissed her hand as she sat. ‘Happy Birthday,’ he said.

Alicia was in heaven: her father all to herself, her sister at home, an adult treat just for her, and to be admired by Adam and the room, who she felt certain was gazing at her pretty face and curled hair. This was perhaps all she ever wanted, as well as the occasional treat and sweet and pretty dress. The deep wells in her, the unsatisfied untapped springs of her heart, stilled and were silent.

Adam ordered for her while she pulled at her white under-gloves, noticed with horror a hangnail, and slipped them back on, glancing around to check no one had noticed. She caught the eye of a lady in an old-fashioned dress who seemed to be looking at her with disgust. The woman sniffed, an ugly look distorting her face. She must have noticed the hangnail, Alicia realised, and flushed. She put her hands into her lap as the woman turned away.

Alicia was distracted from this by the arrival of cheese and bread, plates of butter, pickles, glistening beef in a sticky glaze. It was not so different from the food at home, but prettily arranged on gold-edged plates, and with sweet red wine that she sipped as elegantly as she could. Adam tested her on German and French verbs, asked what she was reading; she told him about the swallowed, stolen ruby of Agrapur, cut from the thief’s belly by the Maharajah.

‘Your sister shouldn’t give you such things to read,’ he said, but smiling and, she thought, impressed.

‘Thank you, Papa,’ she said, when she remembered to.

‘You are welcome, my little Ala,’ he replied. ‘But this is not all,’ he said, leaning back in his chair and opening his arms wide. ‘There is another gift, but, really, it’s for me so you must indulge your Papa.’

‘Not a doll, Papa, please, I have so many … I’d like …’ she cast about, caught off guard by the unexpected opportunity; she rarely ever had to ask for anything at all, ‘a fur like this one of Mama’s, or for her to give this one to me, will you ask her?’ She stroked the fur against her cheek again. That wasn’t right, it wasn’t what she wanted at all, but since she didn’t know what she wanted, the white fur would do as well.

Adam laughed. ‘I’m sure you can have it, but what else? Let’s see if we thought the same.’ He smiled, seeming delighted with this idea.

Alicia tried again. ‘Lessons.’

‘Lessons? In what? You want your governess back? Poor Miss Paula, I’m not sure she would have us again!’

She faltered. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Piano? Riding?’

‘Yes, riding,’ she said, swallowing something.

‘All right, we’ll arrange it tomorrow.’ Adam drained his glass. ‘But you haven’t guessed! Because it’s a trick! It is something wonderful but also something that you will not like.’

His mouth twitched and Alicia understood. She slumped in her chair.

‘This is something for your Mama and me. So we have something to remember how pretty you are. It is a treat for us. You will do it for us? And you will not … sabotage?’

Now she laughed. She’d been five years old, already the favourite. The young genius her Papa had paid to paint her was irritated by her fidgeting. He made her stand for long, silent, still minutes in the natural light, and she wanted to play with her sister. That night she grabbed a pair of scissors from the sewing kit in Janie’s room and chopped off her hair in a jagged, spiteful line. Her parents had almost laughed themselves sick over her stubbornness, and paid the artist double when he said he would abandon the painting. Still it was left unfinished, her wild hair in wisps around a ghost-like chalky face. It hung in Papa’s study, where he often liked to point it out to visitors and tell the story.

And now he wanted another.

‘Is it the same man?’ she asked.

Adam laughed again. ‘No, darling Ala. I want to ask my friend Jozef Pienta. You’ll like him! He is a great artist, and you know, quite poor.’

Alicia wrinkled her nose.

‘He will then have the money to make even more beautiful things, and I will have another picture with your hair all shiny and long.’

Sweets arrived, pastries glazed with sugar syrup, creamy gelatinous pudding, ginger biscuits. Alicia tried to finish her wine, but its sharpness hurt her throat.

‘Here,’ Papa said. He came around to her side and dunked a biscuit into the wine, ate it.

‘Papa!’ she shrieked, deliciously outraged. ‘Manners!’ He laughed deeply, held out his arms to encompass the golden shining room, so people turned to look. Alicia’s awareness of the woman in the corner, the hangnail, came back to her, and she wished he would sit down again.

‘Why, isn’t this my city, my table? My biscuit, my wine?’ He laughed again, deep and mellow, and Alicia poured her wine over her dessert like a syrup, ate until her stomach swelled and her head swam.

Later, she’d return again and again to this night. The sharp sweetness of the wine and cream. The waiters crowding plates among the candles so the food caught some of the golden flame, and the whole room in gold, as the sun went down, so all was warm and full and her father laughing and laughing. Sometimes she’d hear again that woman’s angry sniff, try to remember the set of the woman’s mouth, and whether it was in fact the whole room that turned away after her father’s joking speech, or if that was only her mind playing tricks.

Stepping out, rewrapped like a present, Alicia was grateful for the warm fullness of her belly and glanced back at the gleaming rooms.

‘When can we come back?’ But Adam didn’t hear, stamping and re-knotting his scarf around his throat. The wind had dropped, an icy stillness descended, and glittering ice crystals had grown on the stones of the square. As they came further away from the Wentzl, the dark and cold seemed to leach away Alicia’s pleasure. Adam held out his hand for a cab, but none stopped. Pinched faces hurried past.

‘Let’s walk home, then,’ Adam said. ‘It will be fun.’

A couple were sitting on the steps of the old town hall, leaning against one of the lazy stone lions. The woman’s legs were bare, Alicia noticed with a small thrill of shock. Her Papa hurried her along, then dropped her hand to rub his own together inside his gloves, and in the moments he stopped, Alicia took greedy sips of the strange sight on the steps, the urgency of the man’s hands, the small sounds of distress of the woman. The back of the man’s head was pressing, pressing, and the woman was shrinking back. When the man shot his hand up the woman’s skirt, exposing a shock of white flesh, Alicia gasped, and tugged Adam’s hand. Her Papa looked at her in indulgent expectation, before catching sight of the couple behind her.

He took an instinctive step forward, then stopped, his head slightly cocked, as though trying to see clearly.

‘Hello,’ he called. To Alicia his voice sounded soft, almost comforting. She had stopped watching the couple, and saw only her father’s form, striding forwards.

‘Hello, hello, stop,’ he said, much more strongly now, his familiar voice. Alicia felt her blood quicken, watching him pace, his long coat billowing behind him, towards the man with the urgent hands. Adam flicked his gaze back to her. ‘Stay here,’ he barked, and she ignored him, trotting after him just as the couple responded to the approach.

The man had stopped crushing the woman against the stone lion, and was smiling, biting his thumb and looking down. Alicia recognised the look as one of her own, when she was disciplined by someone she didn’t respect. He had long girlish eyelashes and he seemed small, much smaller than Papa. But the hands, his thumb in his teeth, were large and dirty. He wasn’t wearing gloves in the cold, which made Alicia think he must be very poor. She sneered, emboldened by this realisation, and the bulk of Papa beside her. The woman shrank even further into the stone, pulling down her skirt, her face blank. You should say thank you, Alicia thought savagely. Her mother’s voice came to her, the cadence of overheard gossip in the house, unguarded chatter in the kitchen. Having your legs out like that. Instead the woman looked at her shoes.

‘Hello,’ Adam repeated. He hesitated, glanced back at Alicia. ‘It’s cold and late. Is everything well?’

Alicia glared at the woman, who still hadn’t said thank you or taken the chance to run away. She had a sudden, unbidden image of the woman from the restaurant, her pursed lips and stony face, the angry straightness of her back.

The man continued to nod and bite his thumb, smiling, on the cusp of laughter even. Perhaps he isn’t poor at all, but mad, Alicia thought, and that’s why he doesn’t feel the cold. Perhaps he will be taken to the mountains to lie in a room painted white and with starched clean bedsheets. The man, slow and unsteady, lurching to hold onto a lion’s mane, pulled himself to stand. The woman at his feet hissed something. Adam settled into his feet, crossed his arms as the man belched smoke into the cold air between them, brought his face level to Adam. He had to get on tiptoe to do it, and swayed dangerously.

‘Go fuck yourself,’ he said.

Alicia’s shock made a laugh fall from her mouth before she could cram it back into her chest. The man narrowed his eyes at her, and Adam began to back away.

‘Come,’ he said to her, soft. When he took her hand, she felt his fingers inside his mittens were trembling. Then they were wrenched from her, there was the dull sound of something hard on flesh, and her Papa was on the ground. The stranger kicked him as he lay there, silent and only curled up with his hands around his face. Once, twice. Adam was silent. Alicia cried out, an animal sound. The man looked her up and down, taking in her rich clothes, the glint of red silk.

‘What’s that, little bitch?’

‘Don’t,’ Adam said, pulling himself up.

A small crowd had formed, almost a circle. Alicia looked around at them. ‘He kicked my Papa.’ She tried to scream it, but it came out very small. Some were shaking their heads, others were sneering. Disorientated, Alicia watched Adam slowly pull himself to his feet, a bloom of red near his temple. His hands shook as he removed his kippah, knocked askew, and put it in his pocket. He faced the man, so much taller and stronger. Kill him, Papa. Throw him to the ground, make his blood splash across the ice. Adam followed Alicia’s gaze and looked out at the gathering crowd too.