The Woman from Bratislava Read Online Free PDF Page B

better if Gorbachev had been allowed to reform socialism a little at a time, instead of having the system suddenly collapse like that. Not that I actually believe this. I am glad that the rotten Soviet system came tumbling down like the vile, absurd house of cards that it was, but I knew exactly which buttons to push to get Klaus going. So we sat there yelling at one another like a couple of idiotic teenagers while the more sensible members of the delegation took themselves off to bed and eventually Klaus stomped off in high dudgeon leaving me alone, like the stupid fool that I was.
    So there I was, caught in the straitjacket of toothache, with my earlier inebriation reduced now to a raging hangover, when there came a knock at the door. It was long past midnight. I got up off the bed, peered through the little spy-hole. Outside was that woman. My first thought was to just leave her there, but then I opened the door. She stared at me. I stared back at her. For a moment I thought I was seeing things. She looked like my older sister. They had the same ears and nose and the same dark green eyes. The same features one saw in the few pictures of our father.
    ‘Yes,’ I snapped.
    She gave a faint smile, as if she were shy, then she put out her hand and said in slow, heavily accented, but perfectly lucid Danish:
    ‘Good evening, Teddy. My name is Maria Bujic. I plucked up the courage to come here. I almost didn’t dare to, but I did so want to meet my brother.’

2
    IT TOOK ME A MOMENT to grasp what she had said. I was still a bit woozy. Nor0mally the only people likely to come knocking in the middle of the night in Central Europe are hookers, but she did not look like a hooker. She bore an astonishing resemblance to my older sister Irma. She was possibly a couple of years younger. It was the mouth mainly, and that piercing green gaze, with which Irma had a way of transfixing her students. I stepped aside and invited her in. Even at this late hour she looked fresh and almost youthful, her skin clear and with the usual age lines, neither overly pronounced nor invisible. Which was just as it should be. One should be able to tell by looking at a person that they have lived. The short hair curling and waving softly around her head looked almost black. Did she dye it, I wondered. She wore a smart skirt and a shirt-blouse, with a small string of pearls at her throat. She was carrying a good-sized briefcase in soft calfskin. She could almost have been a successful modern businesswoman, the sort you see on any morning flight to Århus, but only almost. Because there was an emptiness in her eyes, a look of coldness or pain which at first glance was hard to fathom. I did my footman act, waved her into the spacious hotel room. The bed was unmade, but I shifted some newspapers and offered her an armchair.
    She shook her head. We stood facing one another. Both uncomfortable with the situation.
    ‘What the hell is all this?’ I asked, with anger in my voice.
    She looked me in the eye.
    ‘Could we possibly speak Russian or English?’ she said in Russian, fluently and with hardly any accent as far as I could tell. My own Russian is excellent, although I read it better than I speak it.
    ‘Fine by me,’ I said in English.
    But that too she could speak without any difficulty.
    ‘Who are you?’ I asked.
    ‘May I sit down?’
    I motioned again to one of the armchairs and she took a seat, perching on the edge of the chair with the briefcase in her lap. She looked as if she was attending a job interview.
    ‘First I must tell you how sorry I am about the death of your, our, father,’ she said.
    ‘Now hang on a minute!’ I said. ‘What are you talking about? My father died almost fifty years ago. I never really knew him. He left us when I was very young. A hundred years ago, it seems like. In another time.’
    With neat, efficient movements she opened her bag, produced a large manila envelope, removed a black-and-white photograph from it