Chapter 17: Miluj mě do krve

Petr stood by the window and looked down at the street where nothing was happening. Two men were loading boxes into a van. A waiter in front of the restaurant was wiping the tables. The sea was calm, almost without waves.

Žaneta was packing her things into a suitcase.

She did it methodically, without hurry. She folded her dress into a square. She packed her cosmetics in a plastic bag. She took the sandals out of the small bag in the suitcase, where they had been all stay, and sat down on the bed with them.

Petr turned away from the window.

“You never wore those sandals.”

Žaneta looked at him.

„I know.“

“Apparently you argued about them at the front desk.”

“Yeah.”

She looked at them for a moment, then wrapped them up again.

"They didn't exchange them for me after all."

Petr nodded.

Markéta came from the next room with a bag over her shoulder. Her hair was pulled back, no makeup, wearing the t-shirt she had bought the second day.

"Do you have everything?"

"Not yet," Žaneta said.

Markéta sat down on the edge of the bed next to her.

Petr watched them.

Two women he had known almost his whole life.

And yet, for the past few days, he had the feeling as if he were seeing them more clearly than before.

„Taxi is here in an hour,“ he said.

„I know,“ said Žaneta.

Markéta pulled out her phone, read a message and put it away again.

„Yassin said he'd be at the entrance.“

Petr looked up.

„Are you going to say goodbye?“

“Yeah.”

She said it calmly.

Žaneta closed her suitcase.

The sound of the zipper cut through the room and vanished again.

Petr se vrátil k oknu.

In an hour they will leave. In a few hours they will be in Prague. In a day they will return to work. To the apartment. To the things that were waiting for them before departure.

But this time he wasn't sure if he was returning to the same life.

He turned back into the room.

Žaneta was standing in front of the mirror, brushing her hair. Markéta was sitting on the bed, looking outside.

Petr realized that just two weeks ago, it would have seemed like an ordinary morning to him.

Not now.

Now he knew that some conversations cannot be postponed indefinitely just because one does not know their outcome.

“Do you have your passports?” he asked.

Markéta rolled her eyes.

„Dad.“

"I'm just asking."

„Máme pasy.“

Žaneta smiled to herself in the mirror.

Petr nodded.

And for the first time during the whole stay, he didn't wonder how to start the conversation.

He only knew that this time it would end only when it truly guided him.

＊ ＊ ＊

The hotel restaurant was still almost empty at this hour.

Petr took eggs and toast from the buffet and sat down at a table by the window. Outside the glass, the morning was white and seaside, without shadows. Žaneta arrived a few minutes later with yogurt and coffee.

Markéta arrived last.

She sat down, rested her elbows on the table, and looked outside.

„I can't believe we're leaving.“

„This afternoon,“ Petr said.

„I know.“ She shrugged. „Still.“

Žaneta poured herself some juice.

„Will you write to Karimah?“

„Definitely. And to Yassin, too.“

Petr ate his breakfast and listened.

“School starts in September,” he said.

“Dad.” Markéta looked at him. “I know.”

„Just like that.“

“I really know.”

Žaneta smiled over her mug.

Markéta leaned back in her chair.

“I’ll probably try some language course. Arabic or Turkish. I don't know yet.”

Petr raised his head.

“Arabic?”

“Or Turkish. Yassin says Arabic is hard, but not as hard as people think.”

Petr nodded.

Markéta took a piece of toast from the basket and began breaking it into pieces.

“He said that the first year just has to be endured. That it'll come naturally after that.”

Petr looked at her for a moment.

She spoke about things that were hers.

Not family.

Not shared.

Hers.

„That makes sense,“ he said.

Markéta looked at him, slightly surprised.

"Yeah?"

Petr nodded.

Žaneta folded her napkin and placed it on the table next to her plate.

Markéta went on breaking her toast.

Petr looked outside and thought about how quickly a person stops being surprised that their daughter is planning to learn a language for a boy she has known for two weeks.

＊ ＊ ＊

He walked through the hall from the restaurant, he could have gone straight to the stairs, he could have gone up to his room for the things that weren't fully packed yet. Instead, he turned left and found himself at the entrance to the lounge.

The room was almost empty at noon. One couple by the window with guidebooks. The bartender was rearranging glasses. Soft music was playing from the speakers, that nameless instrumental kind that neither begins nor ends.

The piano stood in the corner.

Petr walked over to the table that over those sixteen days he had grown used to thinking of as his own, and sat down.

He looked at the instrument.

The lid was closed. Nothing on top—no sheet music, no pencils, not even a glass of water. Just a smooth surface of dark wood.

Radúz wouldn't be here. He had known that since yesterday, from that short message.

Mother is better. I'll be back next week.

No explanation, no apology for the absence. Just a sentence that closed the matter so simply that it seemed almost absurd to Petr how many nights he had spent revolving around it.

The piano stood in its place. Without Radúz, it was just what it had always been. An instrument in the hotel lounge. Part of the room. Part of the hotel. Part of a day that would keep running even without him.

The couple by the window paid and left.

Suddenly the lounge was almost completely silent.

Petr looked at his hands folded on the table in front of him.

The taxi will be here in a moment.

Prague.

Žaneta.

Markéta.

Apartment.

Work.

The things that awaited him before departure and would wait for him even after his return.

He stood up.

He walked over to the piano and stopped in front of it.

He ran his palm over the lid. The wood was cold. He pulled his hand away.

He turned around.

He walked out of the lounge without looking back.

＊ ＊ ＊

The taxi arrived right on time.

Petr threw the last bag into the trunk and stood for a moment on the pavement in front of the hotel. The heat seemed to have made its bed on the stone paving. Markéta was getting into the back seat. Žaneta was closing her hand luggage.

Nobody looked back.

The airport was crowded, as always at noon. The check-in queues stretched across the entire hall. Petr stood behind Žaneta and pushed his luggage with his foot. The display above the counter kept rewriting the numbers. The loudspeakers announced departures in English and then in Maltese.

„Passports,“ Žaneta said.

Petr reached into his jacket pocket.

At the next counter, a man was arguing with the attendant about the weight of his suitcase. The attendant pointed to the scale. The man didn't back down. Petr watched the exchange and thought about nothing.

Check-in took fifteen minutes.

At security, Markéta took a bottle of water out of her backpack, which they confiscated.

„I knew I'd forget.“

„You'll buy it inside,“ said Žaneta.

They walked through.

Gate B7 was at the end of the corridor, past souvenir shops and baguette stands. Markéta walked half behind them and half alone, phone in hand, eyes down. Petr followed her a few steps behind.

Then he saw her stop.

Yassin was standing by a pillar opposite the duty-free shop entrance. He was waiting there as if he knew exactly which way they would walk. Maybe he did. Petr slowed down.

Markéta walked over to him. They exchanged a few words that Petr couldn't hear. Yassin smiled, but not in the way Petr had feared earlier. Calmly. Like someone who was used to saying goodbye to people who were leaving.

Markéta hugged him.

Briefly. Without hesitation.

Yassin said something else, Markéta nodded, then turned and walked back to her parents. Her face was neutral.

Petr turned around one more time.

Yassin stood there and watched them go. Then he took out his phone and walked away.

The gate area was crowded. Rows of seats half-occupied, children who couldn't sit still. Žaneta found a spot by the window and took out a book. Markéta lay down across two seats with a pillow over her face.

Petr stopped.

He walked over to the window.

Outside stood a airplane. Behind it the runway and beyond that the sea, which in the midday light didn't look like a sea, but like a reflection of the sky.

For sixteen days he hadn't seen it through any other window.

Always from the hotel balcony, from the promenade, from the cliffs. Each time the same sea, each time a different light.

He thought of Radúz. Of his mother, of the photograph that he hadn't even taken himself. Of the apartment he knew better than the people who lived in it. And of the sentence that went: Sorry. I had to go to my mom's.

And that was all.

Žaneta turned the page.

Markéta rolled over onto her other side and pulled her pillow higher.

Someone in the next seat was eating a sandwich wrapped in translucent paper.

The loudspeaker announced boarding.

Petr reached into his pocket for his boarding pass. The paper was crumpled in the corner.

The queue began to move.

Žaneta got up, closed the book. Markéta knocked off the pillow and lifted her backpack. They joined the queue.

Petr went after them.

None of the people around them knew anything.

And at first glance, there was not a single reason why he should.

＊ ＊ ＊

The plane tore away from the ground.

Peter felt it only in his stomach. A brief pressure, then leveling off, then the roar of the engines, which after a few minutes ceased to be noise and became part of the space.

Žaneta had an aisle seat, only she wasn't with them right now, she had gone to the restroom.

Peter sat by the window, Markéta in the middle.

Just like back then. Markéta was quite small at the time, and during takeoff she would hold onto the armrests and look at him every time the plane banked.

She took out her phone now.

She scrolled through the photographs for a moment.

Petr looked outside.

Malta shrank beneath them. The coastline, the harbor, the roads that from above resembled lines drawn on a map. In a couple of minutes, nothing of the island would remain except a pale spot in the sea.

“Look.”

She turned her phone toward him.

Photographs from the cliffs. She and Yassin stood with their backs to the lens, looking out at the sea. Then another. Karimah in front of the church. The harbor. The promenade. Yassin with ice cream melting down his hand faster than he could eat it.

Petr fotografie sledoval jednu po druhé.

Malta, kterou neznal.

„Nice photos,“ he said.

“Yeah.”

Markéta swiped to the next one. Then she paused for a moment.

“You know,” she said, “my mom told me something here.”

Petr looked away from the window.

„Which one?“

Markéta shrugged.

“We were talking about Yassin. About how sometimes you meet someone and then they leave.”

She was silent for a moment.

“And she said that sometimes you stay with someone even though you love someone else.”

Petr didn't move.

Markéta looked straight ahead, as if repeating a sentence that she herself found strange.

“I don't know why she told me that.”

She swiped her finger across the screen.

„Maybe because of me.“

Then she went back to the photographs.

As if the conversation were over.

Petr turned to the window.

Sentences he had heard over the past few days began to form in his head. You didn't ask. You are somewhere else. I don't want answers that aren't whole. One by one, without hurry. Like streetlights turning on in a long avenue.

Beside him, Markéta was silent. She was leafing through photographs. The plane's engine droned monotonously.

There was movement in the aisle.

Petr raised his head.

Žaneta was returning to her seat. She walked slowly between the rows, steadying herself with one hand on the seat backs. Someone moved out of her way, she offered a brief thank you, and continued on.

Petr watched her.

Žaneta, who had told him she remembered different things than he did. Žaneta, who had paid for the coffee and bought him a dark blue mug because it reminded her of his. Žaneta, who one night had stood beside him on the balcony in her bathrobe and said nothing that would pressure him into anything.

Žaneta, who told Markéta that sometimes a person stays with someone even though they love someone else.

Žaneta walked up to their row.

Markéta stood up to let her in.

Žaneta smiled at her daughter.

Then she looked at Petr.

Just for a moment. Calmly. Directly.

And at that moment, Petr's heart pounded violently.

Not because of Radúz. Not because of Malta. Not because of what had happened.

Because of what might have happened long before he noticed.

Žaneta sat down. She fastened her seatbelt. Markéta put on her headphones. Outside the window, there was only light.

Petr looked straight ahead and listened to his own heart.

Malta was no longer visible beneath the airplane's wing.