The Ghost of Frederic Chopin by Eric Faye

Author:Eric Faye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2021-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Until now, the letterbox had not revealed anything suspect whatsoever. Thanks to the incestuous relationship between the intelligence services and the press, and to the somewhat blurred legal status of such activities, Věra Foltýnova’s telephone was now being tapped. The surveillance operation was in full swing and, every morning, Pavel waited inside his car for the woman to come out so he could follow her. He knew all her favourite shops and could have made most of her daily walk with his eyes closed: along the Masaryk embankment, or sometimes – on the other side of the river – the Jánaček embankment; after that, she would wander through back streets on the Left Bank and then enter Petřín, where she would stroll more slowly before emerging above the Lobkowicz Palace. She seemed indifferent to the cold and the rain, and on sunny days this solar-powered pedestrian would walk even further and faster, as if her intention was to exhaust poor Černý, who cursed her.

She was a loner and a home bird. This was good news for her pursuers, who at least never had to leave the city or take a taxi. She almost always walked everywhere, only taking public transport for journeys to the most distant parts of town.

She was a loner, but not always. She had two friends, whom she would meet in a café in the city centre, sometimes just one of them, sometimes both. She would regularly meet one of them at the Lucerna, for endless games of chess. The two women would sit at a table near the alcove, above the covered passageway, while Černý leant on the bar, a dark and monstrous thing like the prow of a ship splitting the room in two. The detective never took off his black leather jacket, as if he didn’t plan to stay there long, and lost himself in the pages of Lidové noviny, which he pretended to read from front to back while in reality he watched his prey in the large mirror opposite him. Sometimes there would be a rush of voices coming down the stairs that led from the cinema next door: a film had just ended and they were all discussing it. The detective gritted his teeth. Another lost day. This woman was leading him by the nose, always several steps ahead of him. She probably had dozens of works by ‘Chopin’ lying in drawers around her apartment, enough to sustain a long siege. But in that case, what was the point of this surveillance? Černý’s back and bottom were aching from the hours spent on bar stools. Sometimes he would slip away as a group of cinemagoers descended the stairs and walk towards Vodičkova or Štěpánská while, at the women’s table, a pawn or a knight were finally taken after intense cogitation.

How many afternoons had Pavel Černý spent at the bar, or at a distant table, near the piano or the door? He had too much time to think, and his thoughts were as untimely as they were absurd.

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