Triptych Read online

  On the far edge of the lake stands a black marble palace. Inside, a huge ballroom gleams with mirrored walls and crystal chandeliers. Hidden in the shadows, Peter admires the princesses as they twirl around the polished floor. From a nearby whispered conversation, he learns their partners are the very suitors who had tried to unlock the princesses’ secret. One by one, they’d been discovered by the sisters and given a special potion that—like the spell controlling the princesses—has turned their hearts to ice and left them with nothing but a love of dancing.

  Just before dawn, the dancing ends and the couples partake in a sumptuous banquet. On the return trip through the enchanted forest, Peter decides to bring back mementos of the wonders he’s seen that night. He snaps off a stem of diamond, a branch of gold, and twig of silver. Elise hears cracking sounds and feels sure someone is following them, but her sisters dismiss her warnings, saying she’s just a nervous little mouse.

  The next day, in a spontaneous show of his feelings, Peter tucks the twig of silver into Elise’s bouquet. Elise, now aware that their secret outings are secret no more, wants to confront Peter. But, remembering how her sisters had teased her for taking notice of him, she remains silent. The next bouquet contains the diamond stem. Elise decides she must tell her sisters. They are furious. If Peter tells the king, their escapades will end.

  They devise a plan. They will invite Peter to the dance that night, and there give him the special potion. Unbeknownst to the princesses, Peter, wearing his flower, is present and overhears their discussion. He is sad that Elise is in on the plot, but he decides if this is what Elise wishes, he will not resist.

  At the dance, Peter looks handsome, even princely, in the suit he’s been given to wear. Both Elise and Peter are shy, and when he asks her to dance they find it difficult to look at one another or even talk. As the music ends, Peter whispers, “You needn’t have worried. I would never have forced you to marry a common gardener.”

  It is nearly dawn and time for the closing banquet. Peter finds he has no appetite. The eldest sister presents him with a goblet and offers a toast: “Let us all drink to welcoming Peter to our group.” For one brief moment, Peter looks directly at Elise, then lifts the goblet to his lips.

  “Stop!” Elise cries out. She takes the goblet from Peter and dashes it to the floor. And with this one act of love the spell is broken.

  A magical flower had eventually enabled Peter to solve the king’s puzzle, for which he was granted his wish to marry princess Elise. More than that, as a result of his courage and selflessness, he’d won Elise’s true love—the component critical to breaking the dark enchantment that held captive not only the princesses but the king and his subjects as well.

  My knack for helping refugees did not come from a magic flower, but came from my mother. Could she have known, on some level, how deeply her influence would impact me? Impact others? How I wish I had pressed her more, asked the questions I should have. Now I have only my memory to search for solving the unknowns of her death.

  ***

  The dark wooden door at the library’s entrance is inset with a large stained-glass rectangle of red, amber, and iridescent green. At the center, opaque pink-peach flowers and opalescent swirls filter through smoky-blue textured glass. I am still thinking of my mother, my hand closing around the brass door handle, when my breath catches. I have opened this door—what?—a thousand times over the past fifteen years and never noticed the trumpet-shape of the flowers. Calla lilies. My mother’s wedding flowers. It was as if she had been nearby all along.

  I am smiling as I shove open the door.

  Vaclav is in the hallway, hanging his exhibit. Vaclav doesn’t have a princess, but he has me. He is my lover.

  Vaclav is wearing faded jeans and a blue work shirt, neatly pressed and worn open over a white t-shirt. His work boots are lightly mud-caked, and there is a smudge of dirt along his thigh. Every month, a different local artist displays his or her art in the hallway’s glass display case.

  Vaclav is an artist and, like Peter, also a gardener. Had I cast him as the non-prince who will rescue me from my curse? The lingering guilt I bear for my mother’s death, piling up inside me like the princesses’ worn-to-shreds shoes?

  Vaclav does not see me. He is retrieving a handkerchief dropped—deliberately?—by elderly Mrs. Nixon. Mrs. Nixon has been a library patron for longer than I have worked here; perhaps longer than all of the librarians who work here combined. She is bent and slightly gnarled, reminding me of the elderly woman who gives Peter a cloak of invisibility in one of the many versions of the tale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. Not that Mrs. Nixon is an unpleasant woman; she is, in fact, so charming—especially around the men—that she is affectionately known behind the scenes as Mrs. Vixen.

  Her tittering laugh echoes in the hallway as Vaclav presses the handkerchief into her palm and, with a gallant bow, kisses the back of her hand.

  I hold open the door for Mrs. Nixon. I turn back and there is Vaclav, a festive nosegay of flowers in his outstretched hand. It must have been hidden behind one of the crates or portfolios resting against the wall.

  “My muse,” he says softly. “I very much love you.”

  Broken English, my fate, I think, as my heart runs out of me.

  I blush, looking slyly right and left to see if anyone is watching. Vaclav is just two years younger than me, thirty-five, but he has a boyish face, making him appear more youthful yet. His thick sandy hair is a little on the longish side and at the moment a disheveled clump is sticking up. I reach out to brush it with the flat of my hand, but immediately pull back.

  Vaclav is handsome in that Eastern Bloc way with a somewhat fleshy nose and full lips, but it is his eyes that get to me. Deep Adriatic blue. At the moment, they reflect his confusion.

  In the fairy tale, Peter’s big dreams made him the target of the villagers’ taunts. The teasing only increased Peter’s desire to seek his fortune elsewhere. Vaclav is from Prague. The persecution he endured while there was meted out by Communists. Like Peter, he knew he had to leave his roots. He’s been in Willow Grove for three years, arriving in 1983.

  I reach for the flowers. We touch, and I am aware of the heat of his flesh. My face burns and I know this time beneath my streaked blonde hair, even my scalp must be glowing bright red.

  I steal a second glance around the hall. There is another reason besides the difference in our ages that’s making me edgy about being seen accepting flowers from Vaclav and blushing like a coquettish schoolgirl. Vaclav is married.

  “You don’t need a muse,” I say. “You’re innovative and talented. Look what you’ve done!”

  Vaclav’s puzzled expression has been replaced by a penetrating gaze. I glance fleetingly over my shoulder, fearing the turn of another romantic phrase.

  “Ahh, but it is your innovate idea behind this showing,” he says.

  Two months earlier, while sorting books for a library book sale, I noticed our discard stacks getting larger and larger. A volunteer helping me saw it too. “What a waste,” she said. “Too bad there’s not a way of spinning this straw into gold.”

  I approached Vaclav, thinking he might be able to craft something from the damaged books. The gold he made from the straw shone before us, just inside the open glass cabinet.

  Out of a gardening manual, he’d created a hanging paper sculpture—a spray of fuchsia, pink, and yellow orchids with stems in shades of greens and browns. Recipes from a cookbook formed a giant pot holder glove, the boldly scrawled inscription, To my very own Julia Child, cut in a heart shape, at its center.

  I am drawn to a modernistic painting in muted tones with splashes of blue, purple, and yellow. The cover and torn pages of a self-help book, Becoming Visible, have been integrated into the design. A sheer veil drapes the entire piece.

  On the ledge below the veiled piece, a bird, folded origami style, had once been a nature
book cover. The bird ascends, as if in flight, from a royal blue painted branch. The branch is adhered to a substantial piece of granite.

  “Phoenix rising from the ashes?” I ask.

  Vaclav smiles. “Yes, rebirth.”

  “And the blue branch? Sky?”

  Vaclav nods. “Peace and calmness. Safe haven for the bird.”

  I do not need to ask about the rock. It is symbolic of a strong foundation on which to rest. I brush the smooth, solid surface with my fingers. The familiar longing stirs. “Home,” I whisper.

  Vaclav doesn’t hear me. He is removing a small canvas from one of the portfolios in the corner.

  He sets it on the ledge inside the case. “My personal favorite,” he says.

  I blink, unsure how to react. How will our patrons react?

  On a black-and-gray textured background is a torn book cover. Lolita. On it, a middle-aged Humbert Humbert hovers at the shoulder of the nymphet Dolores Haze, Lolita, as if ready to devour the young, short-shorts clad girl. A blank paper with a prominent teardrop eye in one corner shows behind the ripped cover. Along the bottom of the piece, in words and phrases torn from pages of the book: Tears for the destruction of books AND the hatred that inspires it.

  “You give unusual commission,” Vaclav is saying beside me. “Difficult to show depth and meaning as I would like.”

  “Your political and social views, you mean,” I say, my brain already working on my defense against the controversy the piece is sure to stir up.

  Vaclav and I met three years ago when he joined my first English conversation group. This was before we learned that both genders would be more relaxed, uninhibited, in groups formed of the same sex. When I initiated the assignment of bringing in an article of native clothing or costume, Vaclav brought in a pair of thick-soled shoes.

  “Tell us why what you brought is special, what it tells about the world you lived in,” I had said.

  “One January snowing day in ’72,” Vaclav began, “I am artist living very poor life. By this I am meaning there are some artists whom the regime likes. They get work from government, have good life. But I am not regime approved. I was activist from my university days and dissension meet with persecution. So, we move opposition to underground or to the occasional act of protest. Jan Palach, you know of him?”

  One of the women in the group, Russian-born Natascha answered. “A student at Charles University. Set himself on fire, his protest against tyranny. Wenceslas Square, January 1969.”

  “Yes. And Palach’s funeral, it turn into big protest against Russian occupation.” Vaclav’s expression deepened in intensity. “I am there. My presence is noted.

  “After I leave the university, state-owned commissions for me not possible. Only way for to make money is sell work private. So on this very cold winter day, I am just leaving small restaurant where owner he is kindly showing my work. All of sudden, two men wearing dark coats and hats arrive. One goes inside restaurant, the other stop in front of me. He ask, ‘Where you get those Imperialist shoes?”

  “He look me up and down like he want to striptease me. I keep my mouth shut.”

  “‘From where the hell did you have those Imperialist shoes?’”

  “And then I do not know until today where I had the courage to answer, ‘I am terribly sorry. I do not understand what you are speaking. In Prague there are nothing but state-owned shops. As you see, it is snowing outside. I sold a painting and went to a state-owned shoe store to buy a winter shoe for me.’”

  “‘Did you buy these in a state-owned shop?’” he say.

  “‘Where else can I buy it?’” was my answer.

  “The other man came out of the restaurant and the two men left. I went inside again and took seat. Half an hour I was trembling. Why?”

  No one in our conversation group breathed a word.

  “Because my mother had acquaintance who once had shoe shop, pre-regime. Somehow this acquaintance had in reserve many pairs of beautiful winter shoes. He tell my mother, ‘If Vaclav is interested he must come and see.’ I go. Find these.” Vaclav held up the shoes he’d brought to the group. “So why the trembling? Inside the shoes, in small letters, is written: Made in Italy. So this is an Imperialist shoe! If the man at restaurant he say, ‘I do not believe you. Take off shoes.’ One week later—who knows? They cannot find me somewhere in Siberia.”

  Vaclav had not been in my conversation group for long. He’d studied English before coming to the U.S. His wife, Manka, also Czech, also well-educated and fluent, was a former professor at Charles University where Vaclav had once been her student. Now she is a poetry instructor at our local university. I met her at their apartment two years ago when the couple threw a party to celebrate the day Manka signed her full-time teaching contract.

  At the party, Vaclav showed me the shoes, now displayed as art, titled “NO MORE SECRETS,” on a stand in his living room. “My tribute to Jan Palach.”

  I could see a small section of leather on the sole had been removed to reveal a small compartment. From it, the hidden contents—a tightly folded piece of paper—spilled out. I strained to read the text, but it was Cyrillic. “Page from dossier secret police keep on me,” Vaclav said.

  Manka and Vaclav’s apartment was decorated entirely with Vaclav’s art. I suggested that maybe there was a niche in teaching his innovative style.

  “My wife, she is teacher. I no have proper papers.”

  We were in a narrow corridor approaching another of Vaclav’s works. My breath caught. A membrane of sheer powder blue fabric cut to resemble the airmail sheets on which my mother had corresponded with her family in Budapest covered the piece. On it, the content of a letter written in Czech was blurred as if the fabric had been washed. The words near the beginning of the text, Chicago River, and at the end, River Vltava, stood out, inscribed in black ink. Above the signature Vaclav Nemecek—miluji tě, I love you—in Czech and English. The sheer overlay was tightly fitted over a deep-set, back-lit frame. Behind the washed-out communiqué, the sketched busts of a man and a woman, in profile, appeared as ghostly apparitions.

  “My parents,” Vaclav explained, then nodding to the small plaque with the caption: ‘WORLDS APART…Like the rivers, we forever are separated.’

  Seeing the page from Vaclav’s Communist secret police dossier had reminded me of Tibi, the freedom fighter who’d visited the parsonage when I was a child. Broken teeth, pried off fingernails. “A time of no freedom, no trust, everyone had their secrets,” he’d said. Including my Aunt Rózsa in Budapest. In 1956, the AVO’s grip on her had been so firm that more than a year passed before she had let my mother know that their sister, Kati, had gone missing.

  I was thinking these things as I viewed Vaclav’s homage to his parents, and surprising myself, said, “I’ve been longing to visit my parents’ homeland, Hungary.”

  I asked Vaclav if he would be allowed back in Prague, more importantly, would he be free to leave again.

  Friends had done it, and he thought it was possible. “But…” he had added, gesturing to the homage with a devilish grin, “I have problem with the flow of my rivers, also with the flow of my cash.”

  I laughed. “I’m in the same boat.”

  Vaclav looked over, eyes twinkling. He was flirting with me.

  A door off the kitchen swung open, spilling cigarette smoke and animated voices into the corridor. Vaclav’s eyes had not left mine. “Perhaps you like drink something?” I did. Taking me by the elbow, he shoved the door open and led me into the faintly lit kitchen.

  My eye traveled immediately to his wife, Manka. At nearly six feet tall with shoulder-length raven-black hair, she was a commanding figure amid the cluster of men and women near the sink. She tossed her head, flipping a long strand off her face. Everyone in the small group held either a tall glass of beer or a stemmed glass of wine, smoldering Gauloises propped between thei
r fingers. They seemed to all be talking at once, the brown sticks of tobacco punching the air for emphasis. It was a warm summer evening. The window over the sink was open, but smoke hung in a mushroom cloud.

  Manka did not immediately notice us. A woman almost as tall as Manka stood next to her. Reed-thin, with sharp features and a short, spiky hairdo, she smiled, showing wide-spaced teeth. Her free arm was draped around Manka’s shoulders. A man across from them, waved his cigarette, made a comment. The spiky blonde laughed and turned to kiss Manka’s cheek.

  Specks of color appeared on Manka’s sculpted cheekbones. She leaned into the blonde and laughed. Deep lines formed around her eyes and mouth, scoring her sunken cheeks, and underscoring her age. Manka had left her country via the underground, arriving in the States with her husband and one suitcase. I was surprised the lines were not more harshly etched.

  Were Manka and the woman lovers? I wondered. How could that be? She had Vaclav. Handsome, talented Vaclav. Perhaps they were just friends; the affectionate gestures a European thing. Possibly the pair had simply had too much to drink.

  I continued to stare until I felt the weight of Vaclav’s hand on my shoulder. I flinched. “Is okay,” he whispered.

  I turned to look at him. My forehead felt tight.

  Vaclav rubbed a finger along a frown line as if to erase it.

  We were still in the doorway. Manka looked over. She smiled and her dark eyes softened. She really was lovely. Especially for that millisecond when her eyes met Vaclav’s, and it was as if a shield dropped.