Have you? A Druhástranian? Who?
No . . . Zola . . . émile Zola . . . and as a grown-up I could do things like—like look up all the people who translated Zola into Druhástranian and take them out for a drink.
You don’t have to be grown up to do that, Gretel said. We can probably do it tonight.
Can we?!
Yes, of course. Well, not all Zola’s Druhástranian translators, but one of the best ones, anyway. This guy Oskar Procházka. He taught my dad at university.
They paged through Marcus Kercheval’s book of contacts after he and Clio had gone to bed, and Gretel dialed Oskar Procházka’s phone number.
Hi, Professor Procházka, are you busy tonight? We’re two great admirers of yours, and we’d like to buy you a drink or two and thank you for translating Zola into Druhástranian. Is it OK if the drinks are nonalcoholic? We’re underage.
Harriet heard the professor saying he was in recovery, so meeting for nonalcoholic drinks was perfect.
Super, Gretel said, already unbuttoning her pajama top and looking around for something else to put on. Can you meet us at the Jedovna Café in an hour? Thanks so much! Ha ha, what do you mean you don’t care if this is a trick . . . my dad was a student of yours and speaks very highly of you . . . Marcus Kercheval . . . yes . . . see you soon. Please wrap up warm; it’s cold out.
As she spoke, she undid Harriet’s pigtails and held up an oversized white shirt against her. Harriet retied her pigtails, did up her bonnet, and said, You wear that yourself. So Gretel did, with tight jeans, floral-patterned bovver boots, a long black cloak, and a heap of woolen scarves. They went out of the residential complex arm in arm, Little Miss Muffet and a scarf model. They walked past Clio’s limousine, which should’ve been parked underground, so they went back and looked in at the window; Clio’s limousine driver was asleep on the front seat. Gretel banged on the window and said, What are you still doing here?
Clio had told the chauffeur he couldn’t go home because Gretel would most likely be up to something after dark. He thanked them for waking him up. He would have got the sack if he’d lost track of them.
So . . . where am I taking you?
Professor Procházka was already waiting in a booth near the back of the Jedovna Café when they arrived. He was short and bald and wiry and had shed his outer layers of clothing to reveal a very comfortable-looking pair of flannel pajamas. He spotted his fans at once and waved them over. He was drinking Harriet’s favorite, cold tea . . . not iced tea, but hot tea that had cooled. They liked him so much. They liked the way he talked when he talked, and they liked his quiet when he was quiet. He was a little sad, weary perhaps, distracted by some problem he wasn’t sure mere time and industry could solve. He said Harriet and Gretel were doing him good just by sitting opposite him, and Gretel said he was easily pleased.
He rubbed his beard. None of my students seem to think so.
Harriet asked him if he thought Zola was a misanthropist. He said, Oh—er—a misanthrope? I can see how it seems like that. To me his stories are like bandits that aren’t interested in anything you’d willingly flaunt but demand you furnish them with all that’s hypocritical and cowardly and self-satisfied in you. You deny being in possession of such trash, of course—why would you admit such things to a stranger? Wouldn’t the strange brigand rather have this lovely diamond necklace instead? But it would’ve been better to own up, to just own up to it all, because the next thing a Zola story does is frisk you and hit you ten times for each flaw you denied being in possession of. It’s oddly . . . I don’t know the word for it. Someone who searches you for the things that secretly make you miserable and then forcibly takes them from you, at least for a while—there is a bit of misanthropy in that, in the searching. And yet . . .
He also told them that there was another writer who was probably going to have a similar effect on them if they hadn’t read him yet . . . they hadn’t, so they wrote down that writer’s name: Honoré de Balzac. Then he said he had to get back to work. Harriet tried to stall him; he hadn’t drunk that much tea and had declined dinner, and she wanted to spend a lot of money on him. But they were the last customers left in the café, and all the chairs had been put up on the tables around them—a man with a mop was waiting to tackle the floor beneath their own table as soon as they got up.
I’m buying, Harriet said.
The professor demurred, but Gretel told him: We did say it was our treat . . .
Harriet went to the till, pulled a fistful of notes out of her pocket, and put them in the cashier’s hand. The cashier was nonplussed; it was either much too much or . . . she added more notes to the pile, just to be on the safe side.
The cashier handed the notes back to her with exaggerated politeness. That was . . . entertaining, miss, but I’d appreciate it if you paid with actual money now.
This isn’t money?
The cashier gave her an incredulous look. Harriet went back to the table where Gretel and the professor and the man with the mop were waiting, and the professor asked what was wrong. She showed him her money and told him what the cashier had said. Professor Procházka flattened the notes on the tabletop before him and then turned them over, smoothed them again, counted them. He asked her how many more she had, and she emptied out her pockets. The way he and Gretel looked at each other and at the note-covered tabletop . . . that gave her a very bad feeling.
It isn’t money?
They were searching for words. Harriet muttered that she hadn’t seen money up close before, so.
Harriet Lee, Professor Procházka said. I can see you’ve collected all this carefully, and that suggests you’ve been doing all you can to earn it, so these . . . items are valuable in that sense. But it’s not money, no.
What to do, Gretel murmured. I didn’t bring any out. And we were supposed to treat you!
I don’t—what is it, then, if it isn’t money?
The professor showed Harriet a banknote that bore a passing resemblance to the ones she had and said he’d go and pay with that, and it was his pleasure entirely, really, it was.
This is what Harriet would have liked to hear Gretel say: You mustn’t worry; we’ll go to Clio together and straighten everything out.
This is what Gretel actually said: Seems like there’s nothing to be done about you.
What? What do you mean by that?
Do you remember when I offered you half a lottery ticket and you asked: Is it money? After that you go away, hoard these worthless bits of paper, and ask: Isn’t it money . . . ?
You’re saying getting tricked is my own fault, for doubting when I should believe, and believing when I should doubt . . . ?
That’s not what I’m saying.
You are. You’re telling me I’m stupid.