‘Me? No.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I am German.’
‘I thought your mother was Russian.’
‘She is. But I was born in Berlin. East Berlin.’
‘How come?’
The barmaid, a wispy blonde with a pale translucent skin, put two glasses in front of them, and he put a note on the counter. George slid off the stool and stood up, put some money on the counter and grunted something.
‘What?’
‘I say thank you to her. Dekuju.’
To Joseph it sounded like dekweege, and he repeated it to himself, testing the sound. George grinned at him and picked up his glass.
‘Drink,’ he announced. ‘We go.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Joseph said. ‘Go where? What are you talking about?’
‘Home.’ George’s voice had lost all traces of uncertainty as if everything had been discussed and arranged. ‘My wife Radka, and my son Serge. They are in Prague. Yes. You eat with us.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Joseph told him.
He was confused again, because, in the last few minutes George had, somehow, subtly begun to take charge, in much the way he imagined an older brother would, as if Joseph had accepted the truth of his story, and as if, all of a sudden, they had an established and long-standing relationship.
‘There is no problem,’ George said. ‘You come. You are my brother. My son you are his uncle. Yes? There is no problem.’
‘I don’t know that,’ Joseph declared firmly. ‘Even if what you say is true this is still weird. I phoned my father in London, but he wasn’t in, and until I speak with him all bets are off. So cut the brotherhood shit till I know what’s going on here.’
George frowned, listening intently, his lips moving fractionally, as if mouthing some of the words.
‘I understand,’ he said slowly. ‘This is not easy for you. No one has told you. But for me, too. Because you are English you think this is some mad man from the East.’
‘That’s not it,’ Joseph cut in quickly. ‘That’s not how I feel. Not the way you think.’
He was about to say that he was troubled and disturbed, that he couldn’t begin to describe how he felt, but it struck him at the same time that to do so would be to enter George’s story, to tell him that it was real. He stopped, uncertain how to proceed. George’s eyes, he noted, a tremor starting somewhere inside his guts, were the same colour as his own. A few seconds passed while they stood staring at each other.
‘So,’ George said slowly. ‘You come?’
George’s car was a shiny dark-red Jaguar. It looked brand new. The interior was lined with soft cream-coloured leather into which Joseph sank, his muscles relaxing and coming to rest by an instant reflex. Through the darkened windows a premature twilight softened the harsh geometry of the city’s suburban fringe. Suddenly Joseph felt like a part of the surroundings, gliding imperceptibly through its streets, floating on a carpet whose discreet vibrations filled him with a sense of power and command. As soon as they’d got into the car the stereo had started up, playing a Stevie Wonder album that Joseph remembered buying as a teenager. George tapped his fingers on the wheel in time to the music, looking round and smiling at Joseph, but for a couple of minutes he said nothing.
In spite of his determination to maintain his distance, Joseph found himself studying George’s profile, searching it for signs of a resemblance to himself or his father. He was conscious of waiting for George to speak, to explain more about who he was, how he had arrived at this time and place, but in a few minutes he was also overwhelmed by the ridiculousness of the situation. He looked round the interior of the car again. There was no way, he thought, that George could be a common or garden confidence trickster. To drive a car like this he’d need to be making some serious money.
‘What do you do for a living?’ Joseph asked, pitching his voice above the music.
George grinned, as if the question amused him.
‘Business. I’m a businessman.’
‘All right,’ Joseph said. ‘What kind of business?’
‘Business, you know. I buy. I sell. Only business.’
There was something final about the tone in which he said this, as if he had no intention of volunteering anything further, and Joseph tried another tack.
‘How old are you?’
‘I was born in 1958. In Berlin.’
That would make him four years older than Joseph.
‘Is that where you live?’
George glanced sideways at Joseph, smiling reflectively, as if he understood the point of all these questions, and had no intention of giving too much away.
‘Sometimes.’
His enigmatic manner had begun to drive Joseph to a high point of exasperation. He peered out of the window, trying to control his irritation. On their right was some sort of wood.
‘Letinsky Sady,’ George said when he saw Joseph looking.
‘What?’
‘Letna Park.’
It didn’t look much like a park, Joseph told him. In England parks were man-made, manicured pieces of turf and garden reclaimed from the sprawling of cities. Even the royal parks, which had been there for a very long time, were designed and designated as places of leisure. In comparison Letinsky looked like a tract of forest which had somehow survived from prehistory, its tall dark trees climbing up a steep slope which was crowned by a rectangular block of rusting concrete. Even though they were close to the middle of the city the scene had a gloomy deserted air which made Joseph think of running wolves and bodies abandoned among the fallen leaves.
‘When Michael Jackson came to Prague,’ George said, ‘he placed a big statue of himself here in the park.’ Joseph peered out trying, without success, to imagine it. George nodded his head as if to emphasise a point. ‘I was here. There were kids fucking everywhere under the trees. It was great. Before that they say there was a big statue of Stalin, the biggest in the world.’ He looked round at Joseph, grinning. ‘In those days nobody fucked without permission.’
It was easier to imagine Stalin’s frown brooding over the dark wood.
‘So what happened to it?’
‘Oh, they exploded it many years ago.’
They had crossed a bridge, but they seemed to be climbing, going away from the centre of the city. Ahead of them reared a tower, three pillars of shiny metal like the needle noses of rockets thrusting upwards into the supine grey sky. Streaks of water, fine and delicate lines of wet beads, began tracing decorations along the outside of the glass.
‘All year it rains in Prague,’ George said.
‘My father never lived in Berlin,’ Joseph told him. ‘In 1958 he was in London.’
‘Yes,’ George said. ‘When I was born he was not there.’
He pulled over to the kerb and stopped. Peering out, Joseph saw that they were parked in a street where a gaggle of shopfronts alternated with offices and apartments, most of which seemed to be lined with scaffolding. Everywhere he went in the city it occurred to him, there was scaffolding. The façades of the building were usually long ruled blocks of plaster, like the grand streets of an English seaside town, but there was nothing elegant about them.