In the little airport, she stared in fascination at the big gold stars on the shoulders of the bored customs officers. She waited for her luggage, surrounded by French and German businessmen. In the taxi, as they drove past blocks of Stalinist housing developments, the Castle in the distance, she listened in inattentive confusion to the driver's tape of a choral group singing, "'Cause you've got personality! Smile! Personality! Charm! Personality..."
The hotel was a large, slightly run-down place built in the twenties. Her room was heavy in spirit in spite of its being both clean and nearly empty, the windows enormous and facing a building from the turn of the century, judging by the medallions of rather mournful Art Nouveau ladies who stared from the facade.
"Cheer up, girls," Margaret said to them, as she had no one else to talk to.
She herself was almost giddy. Without Edward, she felt off-balance, as if one eye were covered. She walked carefully down the wide steps to the dining room, drunk with solitude.
Dinner alone in a restaurant was a novelty for Margaret. When she somberly spread her napkin on her lap, she noticed its size and how severely starched it was; when she held the large, heavy menu, she consciously experienced its proportions, the sensation of its weight. She wondered what Lily, the menu maven, would have made of Margaret's almost awed response to the leather-bound multilingual price list. But alone, one took nothing for granted, not even the feeling of a menu in one's hands. One sensed everything: for, after all, there was nothing else to do.
Cabbage and dumplings and goose! At her round table, sitting in her soft, padded chair, Margaret rejoiced. She flipped through her Baedeker's Prague, which she had brought to dinner with her as company, leaned back, and was comfortable and content. They would cook her goose, and she would eat it. Ah, to be on one's own and make such feeble jokes to oneself! It was good that Edward was home, titillating his students with dirty poetry by Walt Whitman, perhaps, but never mind, for she was an authentically isolated soul being served stale rolls by a man in tails in the shadow of a towering bronze statue of a nude woman, her arms flung out dramatically, as if she were taking a bow, Ethel Merman's bow, a bangle bracelet high on each arm emphasizing her nakedness.
After dinner I will take a walk, Margaret thought. A short walk to the Old Town Square. I am in Prague. I am free in a free city. I am on my own. No one knows I'm here. I can do as I like. No one cares about me. They're too busy being free. I can stare at people and dress badly, and no one will care, no one will even know, because no one knows me.
She gently nursed her solitude. The sparkle of the silverware occupied her attention for a considerable period of time. She drank mineral water and heard herself swallow. The other tables seemed far away, insignificant islands in the foggy distance, across an impassable sea.
And then from the shore came a mighty roar, a tidal wave of chatter and exclamations and peals of laughter, a foaming surge of petite elderly women and petite elderly men, a crash of Belgians.
"We may join you, please? The room is so full. We are from Brussels. You are American? My son is visiting America next week. And New York City. Your address, please? New York City! I will pass it to him! First he is in Paris. You have been in Paris? I am from Brussels, un juge." The man, a trim little fellow in a cardigan sweater beneath his suit jacket, smiled serenely. "I put men in jail."
His wife nodded her head and said, "Oui! Oui!"
"My son goes to New York City for business, to Manhattan. This is near to you, Manhattan? We have never visited America—"
"Oui! Oui!"
Margaret smiled. The Belgians smiled. The Belgians sat down and smiled some more. At one end of the dining room, there was a podium on which stood a piano and a set of drums and a microphone. Margaret watched with foreboding as a man in a tuxedo sat down behind the drums, another behind the piano and, last, a third limped (his tuxedo seemed to contain at least one wooden leg) to the microphone. Was that a toupee? She had never seen one quite like it, combed down in front of the ears to create wide, flat black sideburns. He lifted a violin and began a whine of misery, bobbing and swaying with a resigned heartiness. Turn the pegs! Margaret thought desperately. Tune the instrument! The violinist grimaced in a kind of smile. The drummer too smiled unceasingly. Margaret was relieved she could not see the pianist.
"In America," said the juge, "many men are in jail, the black men and the poor men—"
"Oui! Oui!"
"Yes," Margaret said politely.
"Ah! You are so well informed about American criminal justice system!" said the man.