Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

The Combinations

poste restante . Well, time has its own way of passing— they were busy years. Once, in ’68, I thought I saw her, Alžbětka, standing in the street, like St Bára. On Neru- dova. I thought they’d come back. But it wasn’t her. Lat- er, they did return. They’d changed, of course, but I still recognised them immediately. I never felt bad about it. I knew why they’d had to leave. And why I’d waited for them. You see, I’ve never stopped living here. I always knew the time would come when we would all be to- gether again. But then that terrible thing happened…’ As she spoke, Mrs Severínová’s voice and gestures be- came halting, like a windup doll whose mechanism was flawed. Taking her seat again, the old woman started to cough and groped around the table for a cup of cold tea. It seemed to relax her. I was still thinking of the caretaker’s story when she held the keyring out to me. ‘Take these, you’ll need them if you intend to stay with us.’ I took the keys and was about to say something by way of a thank you when she cut me off. ‘It isn’t for others to judge,’ she said. ‘It required courage to live as they chose to live. And to die, Lord have mercy on them.’ With that, she ceased paying me any atten- tion and took her knitting from the sidetable and began looping the yarn between her fingers and around the long grey knitting needles. I could hear the parrot whistling from the shadows of the caretaker’s kitchen as I left the house through the

213