Unfortunately she is up before I awake. Damn, I was looking forward to spending a great start to the day playing with this amazing girl.
I am wondering whether to attack her in the bathroom, but I am too late for that as well as here she comes through the door at a rate of knots. “Ah, so the lazy capitalist pig is awake. Get up and get dressed before I throw a bucket of cold water over you.”
Now she has her head in her suitcase which is balanced on a chair. “Get up lazy London boy, and stop staring up my skirt. Good communist working girl has lots to do. The train goes...” She stands up and turns round, pulls the bed-clothes off me, and stares at my erection.
“You are now in communist cage where we work. This is not decadent west where you lie in bed all morning.” She throws a bunch of my clothes at me. "The train goes in half an hour. No time for breakfast. Get up!” She almost screams the last two words.
Ten minutes later we are hurrying down the stairs. We get in the first taxi and it's the station next stop.
Thank god ladies underwear is not particularly heavy. But the suitcases are rather large.
We sit in the cafe by the station entrance. “You need a ticket to Bratislava frontier. Don't buy ticket to Budapest. You buy another ticket at frontier.”
“Is this a government price for filthy capitalists?”
“No. You buy same ticket as me.”
“You mean the government is missing a trick?”
“A trick? Why is a trick?”
“No, no. I mean trick as in cards.”
“Cards? What cards? Stupid boy. Buy your ticket and eat your breakfast, or I leave you in Czechoslovakia.”
“Don't you want to share my suitcases?”
“Don't argue. Get ticket, now.”
“Bossy-boots!”
“What is bossy-boots? For walking, or for kicking? You kick me I get Volodya teach you something.”
“Who is Volodya?”
“Get ticket. Train come. Train go. Ticket!” She is pointing to the office.
I grin at her. “Look after the money.” I point to the suitcases, and bend down and kiss her on the lips.
“Ticket!” she screams.
* * * * *
After meeting some of her friends plans were changed, and we have stayed in Prague for a second night. When I awoke Zsofya was already up and about, which was a trifle disappointing. I quickly dressed and followed the sounds from the other room.
“Oh, the great capitalist is awake.”
I tried, unsuccessfully, to grin.
“While you have been sleeping. I have sold most of the stock. All my friends will probably buy everything. They come round to choose.”
I couldn't think of anything suitable to say. I had never assumed this was going to be so easy. Usually great ideas take ages to set up and then after all the work and aggro they don't come to anything. Admittedly I'd had some luck. Meeting Zsofya was pretty well the clincher. I probably wouldn't have even got my suitcases across the frontier without her help.
“Well? Aren't you pleased?”
“I think you're wonderful.”
“Of course I am, darling. Shall we go out for breakfast to celebrate?”
“Sounds like a great idea.”
“I never make breakfast. It is simpler and cheaper to eat out. Come.”
I pretend there is no-one sitting in the chair at the end of the corridor. This is weird. I feel as if I am in some cold war spy movie.
As I am descending the ridiculously wide staircase I realise that this is still the cold war. This could be a movie. There is a sort of Third Man feel to life here. There is something dark and sinister all around me. It isn't just that there are no proper street lights so the city is seriously dark after sunset, there is a strange disconnect all around me.
There is a hotel, and on the first floor is a bristling commissar. What is she doing there? Is she really noting who comes up and who goes down the stairs? I mean, who bloody-well cares? Has she got one of those tiny cameras, and she is photographing us all?
I am being watched. I feel guilty already.
And then there are my two suitcases. I really am a criminal. I am living on the wrong side of the law. One false move and I could be in prison.
And then I look around me. Everything seems okay, but I know that not far away are the iron railings. I am, of course, already in a prison. I cant see the bars at the moment, but I know they are only a short run away. I am acutely aware that whichever way I run I will ultimately come up against the wire cage or the brutish commissar.
There is also that other strange discontinuity: the menu which is a fraud; the waiter who asks pointless questions. Why ask for your order when there is only one thing on the menu and that's what everyone has?
I am beginning to realise something that I had not really appreciated until I came here. Language is an odd thing. You can use it to describe something, or to communicate something, but that isn't what is happening here. In this country, so many people are using language to pretend.
First there is the waiter. He is a fraud. He distributes big thick menus to customers who don't even pick them up, let alone look inside. They know the menus are long and interesting to show, not what is available, but to show that this is a serious restaurant. The language is not telling anyone what I would normally expect to hear. There is an underlying nonsense which nobody takes seriously. And that in itself is odd. The language seeks to emphasise some pretence, and yet nobody believes the pretence,
The waiter is doing something which fools no-one, but that is what he is paid to do.
What is the fat lady paid to do? I could ask, but my new friend has at least three different personas, and I am likely to get at least three different answers, depending on which persona is on duty at the moment. She can give me a real answer, but I don't expect that. She will make a joke at my political expense, but I'm not sure who the joke is really on. Maybe the joke is on me, but I hope it is just another stupid fraud, or maybe it is even a joke against the government, or should I call that the system?
I am sure the people here are living on several levels of pretence at the same time in order to cope with the insanity which is what holds the system together.
Ultimately the wire is there, and ultimately these people are all in prison, but they cant see the wire when they are at home or at work, but they know it's there, but they have to believe they are free in some sense. They are living a lie. But is it any different from those people who live encompassed by some religious system which also imprisons them in some way?
Actually, if I follow my thoughts much further I shall begin to feel really in jail. I think I need to either stop thinking or start taking on a protective persona.
I follow good high class comrade lady into a cafe. She stops a waiter, says two or three words and heads for a table.
We sit down. I smile. “And you've already ordered?”
“Of course.”
I could ask her what she's ordered, but I think I already know. She has simply asked for breakfast, and breakfast will be what they deliver. I guess you go to the cafe that serves the breakfast you like and that's what you get. Simple really.
I am surprised to see a whole panoply of plates arrive on our table. There is a plate of something looking like bagels. There are plates of eggs and bacon. There is something that looks like grated cheese, a couple of boiled eggs, and cups of coffee. Whatever they are short of in Eastern Europe it isn't food.
Zsofya is a very chatty lady. She explains that in order to survive inside what she calls the cage you have to observe certain rules and then everything becomes simple. “There are those who wish to change the system, and then there are those who use the system. My mother showed me how to use the system. That is best. That way you do not fight, but get what you want by doing the other thing. It is easy when you know how.”
“And who.”
“And...? Oh, yes, and when you know who.”
Even the coffee tastes alright. I'm surprised. Isn't this some awkward import?
“Do you like your good communist breakfast?”
“If this is communist breakfast, then is very good. But what about the coffee?”
“What is wrong with coffee?”
“But you have coffee.”
“Of course we have coffee.”
“But no bananas.”
Zsofya grins and puts down her cup. “I can get you bananas.”
“You just... yeah, yeah, I get it.”
“We go. Do business. We sell a few nice clothes and we make good money.”
I add my money to hers and do a quick calculation. My breakfast has cost me pennies. “Thank god I don't have to show my passport in the cafes.”
“Why would you have to show passport? Strange boy.”
“If I did, I'd have to pay four times what you pay.”
“That is only when the government is involved. The hotels have to register foreigners. Shops don't. Come foreign boy, we go back to the hotel. We do interesting business which the lady commissar will not see.”
We sit in the hotel lobby, which is huge.
Soon a lady comes in and the girls hug and kiss and chatter furiously, and we go upstairs.
I watch them almost playing with the clothes. The new lady fills two carrier bags with various items. I'm sitting there watching, and wondering why I didn't bring two more suitcases. I could do this trip every month and make a fortune.
Half an hour later Zsofya divvies up the money. This is crazy. I have never had so much money. Where the heck am I going to keep it?
“Well, foreign boy, my other friend no here, so tomorrow we go to my house in Budapest. We sell the rest of the clothes in two or three days, and you have lots of money. Isn't Zsofya a clever clever girl?”
“Zsofya is wonderful.” I am about to say something else, but I am surprisingly nervous about broaching the subject. I have this feeling that she will broach it in any case. I think it would be a good idea to leave this delicate matter to the girl.