Reunion in Prague by Richard Wake

Author:Richard Wake [Wake, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Manor and State, LLC
Published: 2024-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

PART III

23

“But I really want to stay,” Alex said.

“You don’t know what you really want,” said Otto, his uncle. “You’re 16 years old. We’re in the middle of a goddamned war about who-knows-what. The world is upside down, and you don’t know what you want.”

“I do. I want Vienna.”

“You’re thinking with your dick.”

“What does that mean?”

“Don’t kid a kidder,” Otto said. “I mean, don’t even try. All the girls here, so many more than in Brno — come on. I’ve seen you. Don’t even try.”

“It’s not that,” Alex said.

“Your smile says otherwise.”

“It’s not that. And you know it’s not that. You tell me not to kid a kidder. Well, I’m saying the same thing back to you. You know what I’m saying. You know me. Fuck, you were me back in the day.”

“Fuck, is it?”

“An adult conversation between adults,” Alex said.

They were sitting in a café on the Karntnerstrasse. There was a war going on, sure, but it had not touched Vienna. Food was still plentiful, goods available. It was a Sunday and it looked like every Sunday when the weather was nice. People dressed for church, walking home from the Stephansdom, window shopping. Packs of girls and boys in their teens and twenties, eyeing up each other. Otto and Alex each sipped a beer. The fun uncle. “But just one.”

The sun was in Otto’s eyes. He adjusted the angle of his chair and faced Alex just a bit more directly.

“I wasn’t you, I was older,” he said.

“How much older?”

“Four years. A big difference, those four years. A lot happens to a boy in those four years.”

“I have had sex, you know,” Alex said.

Otto made a face. A questioning face.

“Well, with our hands,” Alex said.

“Quite an adult conversation.”

Otto took a sip and took the measure of his nephew. It had been less than a month, but Otto had clearly seen it. He knew what the kid was saying was correct. They were the same. Goddammit.

“You were older, but it will be easier for me,” Alex said. “You came here by yourself. You opened the office by yourself. You went to the meetings with the clients by yourself. Did you have to find the clients?”

“No, a group of them were already established,” Otto said. “I added new clients — I almost doubled the number over the years. But the initial list, those contacts were all by mail, for the most part. Some telephone in an emergency — not everybody had one back then — but mostly by mail or wire. It really wasn’t a satisfactory arrangement for either side. The clients wanted more hand-holding and my father wanted more personal selling to get them to up their orders. I came up with the idea of being the rep in Austria and Germany. That’s why my father agreed in the end — because it was a damn good idea and it made him money.”

“I can make money,” Alex said. He had gotten quieter.

“It’s not the same.”

“You can teach me.”

“It’s not the same,” Otto said.

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