ENDRALON.SPACE · ČLÁNEK

10. 7. 2026

Chapter 9: The Empty Table

Petr arrived at quarter past seven. The restaurant was almost full. Families by the windows, older couples in the middle of the room, a group of young people at the bar sitting awkwardly — too relaxed to have come to eat, too quiet for the start of the evening. The waiters moved quickly. The candles on the tables were not lit yet, but they would be in an hour. From somewhere outside, the distant sound of a church bell reached them […]

Petr arrived at quarter past seven.

The restaurant was almost full. Families by the windows, older couples in the middle of the room, a group of young people at the bar sitting awkwardly — too relaxed to have come to eat, too quiet for the start of the evening. The waiters moved quickly. The candles on the tables were not lit yet, but they would be in an hour. From somewhere outside, the distant ringing of a church bell drifted in, once, twice — Petr didn't even try to count.

He chose the table where they usually sat. By the right wall, far enough from the kitchen, close enough to the window for Žaneta to have a view. Three places. Three glasses.

The waiter came right away.

„Just water for now,“ Petr said. „I'm waiting for my family.“

The waiter nodded and left.

Petr unfolded his napkin on his lap and looked toward the door.

Žaneta said she would come at eight. Or around eight. Actually, she didn't say it precisely. In the afternoon she and Markéta went somewhere into town, Petr stayed in his room and read news that wasn't worth reading. Žaneta texted him at half past six.

We're on the promenade. In a moment.

In a moment could be anything.

Twenty minutes passed.

Petr ordered a beer. The waiter brought it to him and said he would clear away the unnecessary glasses of water.

“Leave it,” Petr said.

The waiter nodded.

The restaurant hummed around him. At the next table, a family with two children was eating. The younger one was pushing vegetables to the edge of the plate, the older one kept an eye on their phone under the table, and the parents saw it and pretended not to see. A normal evening.

Petr took a beer and took a sip.

He looked at his phone.

Nothing new from Žaneta.

He wrote a short message.

I am at the restaurant.

He sent it and put the phone down on the tablecloth.

Quarter past eight.

The message was read, but no reply came. Petr read it again, as if the word count could change since the first reading.

Read. No reply.

He took his beer and shifted his gaze to the window. There was still light behind the glass. Two couples were sitting on the terrace. One of the men was laughing at something the woman beside him was saying.

Petr turned back toward the restaurant door.

People were coming and going. Couples, small groups, families. Some were waiting at the entrance for a table. Žaneta and Markéta were not among them.

He texted again.

Where are you?

This time shorter.

He waited.

The message remained delivered, unread.

It felt to him as if everyone in the restaurant knew what he was doing. As if the waiter was watching him from the bar, wondering when he would ask if he wanted to order. As if the family at the next table had noticed three seats and one person.

Petr straightened up in his chair.

Spokesperson. Twenty years of experience. He knew how to sit in a room without looking like he was waiting for bad news.

He reopened his phone.

Radúz. The last message is still delivered, unread.

Boss. Eight days of silence.

Markéta. Just under three hours ago.

Žaneta. We're on the promenade. Read. No reply.

Four people.

Four kinds of silence.

A waiter came over.

"May I offer you a starter before the others arrive?"

„No, thank you. I'll wait a little longer.“

The waiter bowed slightly and walked over to the neighboring table.

Petr looked at the three glasses in front of him.

One full, two empty.

He thought back to the afternoon. Žaneta had told him in the morning that she needed new sandals — one of the straps had started to peel. Markéta joined in because she wanted to buy something for Karimah. Petr stayed in his room. He opened his laptop, went through five emails, none of them important, and then lay on the bed staring at the ceiling until the cold air conditioning got him up.

At the time, it didn't seem important to him.

Now he realized it.

He didn't know which shop. Which part of town. Whether they went straight there or stopped somewhere. Whether they were still together or had split up along the way. Whether Markéta was with Yassin or with Karimah or alone.

Žaneta didn't answer the call.

More precisely: the call didn't even start ringing. It went straight to voicemail.

Her phone was either turned off, without signal, or she was ignoring him.

Petr pressed the dialed number one more time.

Voicemail.

Nine o'clock.

The waiter came over again.

„Would the gentleman like to order?“

Petr was about to say no.

„I'll bring another beer,“ he said instead.

The waiter carried away the empty glass. The waiter's ring clicked against the glass more sharply than Peter expected.

The restaurant was slowly changing. Some tables emptied, others filled anew. The noise of children by the window had vanished; the family had left. What remained was the quiet of middle age, comfortable and indifferent to anything that wasn't happening right at the table.

Peter refolded his napkin.

Factory explosion.

It came to him suddenly, without apparent cause. A video from the first day. A flash. Smoke. A building collapsing from the center.

People talked about it constantly. On the promenade, in the hotel lobby, on the phones of strangers. Shards of sheet metal three hundred meters from the epicenter. The explosion came out of nowhere, from a warehouse that wasn't worth noticing. Someone walked down that street and an hour later it no longer existed.

Petr forced himself to stop.

This was irrational.

Žaneta goes shopping for sandals. Markéta spends time with Yassin or Karimah. They are in Malta, they are safe, they are adults. Žaneta is a woman who lives in a safe Central European city and goes on holiday to the sea once a year.

Nic se nestalo.

Still, it didn't sound convincing at all.

He walked out of the restaurant.

He left behind an unwrapped napkin on the table, three empty seats, and a beer he had taken only one sip from.

Several taxis were parked in front of the hotel. The doorman greeted him. Petr crossed the lobby and headed for the reception desk.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Have you seen my wife and daughter this evening?”

The receptionist, a young woman with the hotel logo on her blazer, looked at the computer screen as if the answer might be there.

“We don't keep track of guests' movements,” she said politely. “But if you'd like, I can try—”

“Never mind.”

Petr turned and walked back to the door.

Out on the promenade, it was warm and the streetlights glowed orange, just like every evening. The promenade looked exactly as it had for the past seven days. The same tourists, the same restaurants, the same light on the water. A gull flew overhead, cried out once, sharply, and disappeared toward the harbor.

Petr walked toward the harbor. They probably weren't there. He went there because standing in front of the hotel and waiting was worse.

He pulled out his phone three times in the first five minutes.

Žaneta.

Delivered. Unread.

Markéta.

Delivered. Unread.

He walked past a café where the locals were sitting. One of them had a phone on the table, playing loudly, and Petr caught a fragment of a sentence in Maltese, of which he understood nothing. Then English. Part of a news broadcast.

The investigation into the explosion—

He walked on.

There was a line of six people standing in front of a fish restaurant. A waiter came out of the door and announced something to them, the group shifted slightly and then settled down again. Everything normal. Petr walked past them and kept going.

He stopped by the fountain behind the marina.

He took out his phone. He called Markéta.

Ringing.

One. Two. Three.

Then a voice.

Not Markéta's. Automated, English, prompting to leave a message.

"Markéta, where are you? Call me."

He hung up.

He stood by the fountain and looked at the harbor. The boats bobbed on the waves in a regular rhythm, the wood creaking softly against the pier. On one of them, a light was on in the cabin.

He remembered Markéta on the rocks. How she leaped across the stones after Yassin. How she slipped. How it had seemed too dramatic to him—blood on the stones, a scrape that would heal in three days. Žaneta had hinted that he was exaggerating. Markéta told him: everyone slips.

Both were right.

And yet he was standing by the fountain now, waiting to see if anyone would call him back.

He turned and walked back to the hotel by another way. Through a narrow street parallel to the sea, where in the evening the number of people grew, leaving somewhere or heading somewhere. Restaurants, bars, a souvenir shop that was still open, and the light in the window was too yellow for this time of night.

He thought of Yassin.

Eighteen years old. Local. He knows that part of the island.

Markéta said: the sea caves. Apparently you can swim there. Yassin has been there many times.

Petr recalled that sentence from dinner. He had said it wasn't sensible. Markéta asked him why. And then: he's a local.

This morning, Petr hadn't seen Markéta. Nor Yassin. Žaneta went shopping alone — or with Markéta, but she hadn't told him exactly. Petr was in the room.

He didn't know where Markéta had spent the morning.

He didn't know where Žaneta had spent the afternoon.

He only knew that at half past six she was with Markéta on the promenade.

And then silence.

The phone in his pocket didn't vibrate.

He walked under a lamppost. The light illuminated him for a moment and then left him.

Caves. These damned caves around the Maltese coast were a tourist attraction, Petr knew that, he had seen the excursions in the hotel brochure on the very first day. Safe, verified, with experienced guides.

But Yassin wasn't talking about guided excursions. He was talking about a place he knew. Where he had been many times.

Petr slowed down.

How long would it take to row a boat to the caves? An hour? Two?

And what happens if it gets dark early?

He stopped in the middle of the street. A pedestrian behind him had to step aside. Petr didn't even register the expression with which the man walked past him.

Markéta wasn't a good swimmer.

In the pool, yes. In the pond, yes. In the sea, no. They spent every other summer by the sea, and Markéta always stayed in the shallow area where she could touch the bottom. Petr knew this. He never made a big deal out of it. It was just a detail he remembered from dozens of vacations.

Yassin didn't know that detail.

Or he knew, and didn't care.

Or it wasn't important, because they were only going to the caves, not inside, not into the water, just to take a look.

Or they will go inside.

Or they are there now.

Or they are back long ago and Markéta is sitting in her room looking at her phone and it's not worth it to her to text him, because he is the one who thinks too much about things that aren't problems.

Petr started running again.

The hotel was in sight.

He walked quickly through the lobby, bypassed the reception desk, and pressed the elevator button. He waited a second, two, then took the stairs.

Third floor. The hallway. Their room.

He unlocked the door.

Darkness.

He turned on the light.

The room was empty.

Žaneta's book on the nightstand, her sandals by the bed, Markéta's trip bag draped over the armchair. Silence. Just the sea whispering softly outside the window, constant, indifferent.

He remained standing in the doorway.

He took out his phone.

Žaneta — delivered, unread.

Markéta — missed call, no return message.

Radúz — delivered, unread.

The Boss — eight days.

Petr sat on the edge of the bed. A hard mattress. The balcony light was on. The sea, black and calm, as if nothing had happened.

As if nothing had happened.

The explosion had come from an ordinary warehouse. People walked past and an hour later the street didn't exist.

The Boss had been silent for eight days. That didn't happen. In twenty years it had never happened for this long without a single word. I confirm. Nothing more.

Radúz hadn't come to play. Message unread. The green dot didn't appear.

And now Žaneta and Markéta, two hours past the scheduled dinner, with no answer on the phone, no message, nothing.

Petr vstal.

He walked over to the wardrobe and opened it. Žaneta's things in place. Markéta's backpack on the floor, open, full of sunscreen, a bottle of water and a single paper napkin crumpled in the corner. Normal things. The things of people who plan to return.

He closed the wardrobe.

He looked at Žaneta's book. It was open, with a picture bookmark on the page she had been reading yesterday or this morning. He ran his finger over the cover.

He didn't know what it was about.

Přízraky v Umagu.

He never asked.

The room was empty.

The phone was silent.

Everything in it was in its place, and yet Petr had the feeling that something was happening around him.

Not something visible.

Not something that could be pinned down as evidence.

Rather something that others knew about and he didn't.

Petr sat in the middle of a room where no one was, and for the first time during his entire stay he felt that he wasn't the one observing, but that he was the one left outside.

＊＊＊

Petr sat on the balcony and looked out into the dark.

At a quarter past ten, a message came from Žaneta.

We're heading back.

Nothing more.

Petr stared at it for a moment. Then he wrote:

Where were you?

No answer came.

He stood by the railing and listened to the sea. It was the same murmur as every evening, but now he heard it differently. Like a sound coming from afar that wouldn't arrive in time.

He picked up his phone. Opened and closed the messages. Opened them again.

We're heading back.

Two words that could mean anything.

He went inside. He closed the glass door and sat on the edge of the bed.

He waited.

A few minutes later, the click of a lock sounded.

Žaneta entered.

Alone.

She came inside, closed the door, and set her bag on the floor. She moved normally. Not tiredly, not quickly. Just normally.

Petr vstal.

„Where were you?“

„At the store. Then by the sea.“

„Celou dobu?“

Žaneta walked over to the wardrobe and put her sandals away.

„Peter.“

„Couldn't you have let me know sooner?“

She turned to him. Her face calm, without a trace of irritation.

„I could have.“

„Then why didn't you?“

„Because we were dealing with other things.“

„What things?“

Žaneta swept her gaze across the room. It stopped at Markéta's bag by the armchair.

„Where is Markéta?“

„She went straight somewhere else.“

Petr froze.

„Where to?“

„I don't know. She said she'd be back in a minute.“

„In a minute when?“

Žaneta went into the bathroom without answering. The water splashed. Petr remained standing in the middle of the room, listening to a sound that didn't calm him down.

When she came back, she had a towel in her hand and her face was wet.

„Did something happen?“ he asked.

„Nothing happened.“

„Žaneta.“

„Nothing serious happened.“

She sat on the edge of the bed. She folded the towel into a square and placed it beside her.

„So something happened.“

She watched him for a moment. Then she nodded.

“Yeah.”

„What?“

„Markéta has to tell you that.“

Petr took a step closer.

“Why can't you tell me?”

“Because it's not my story.”

„Žaneto—“

“Petr.” She raised her hand. Not a grand gesture. Just enough to make him stop. “Wait for her.”

„Where is he?“

“I don't know exactly. Maybe in the hallway. Maybe outside. She said she needed a minute.”

"She needs a moment why?"

Žaneta stood up and walked over to the wardrobe. She started picking out something from the bag she had brought. Little things. A receipt that she looked at and then crumpled up. A store loyalty card. A small plastic bag with something inside.

Petr watched her.

„Zaneta, tell me what happened.“

She stopped. Her hands resting on the edge of the wardrobe.

„Marketa is going to be fine.“

„That's not an answer.“

„It's the only answer I can give you.“

She turned to him. Her face calm, but in her eyes something that hadn't been there in the morning. More like the fatigue of a person who had been holding something together all afternoon and could now let it go.

Petr opened his mouth.

The bedroom door opened.

Markéta walked in.

She had red eyes. More from the wind, or from staring fixedly at a single point. Her hair was loose and mussed on one side. T-shirt normal, jeans normal. Nothing visibly torn or dirty.

But that face. It looked like a phantom.

“Markéta,” said Petr.

She stood in the middle of the room and looked somewhere between him and Žaneta. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, but her fingers were trembling slightly.

„What happened?“

She didn't answer right away.

Žaneta walked over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. Briefly. Then she let go.

„I'm going to wash my face,“ Markéta said quietly.

„Yeah,“ Žaneta said.

Markéta headed to the bathroom. She closed the door behind her. The water rushed. Then it fell silent. Then again.

Petr turned to Žaneta.

"What the fuck happened?"

Žaneta pressed her lips together.

„Peter.“

„Řekni mi to.“

“I said that she has to tell you herself.”

„Ale ty to víš.“

“Yeah.”

„Tak mi to řekni.“

Žaneta nodded toward the bathroom.

„Not now.“

Petr took a step toward her.

„Was she with Yassin?“

Žaneta closed her eyes for a moment. Then she opened them.

„Byla.“

„And what happened?“

„Petr—“

„Did he do something to her?“

Silence.

Žaneta looked at him. Calmly. For a long time. As if weighing how much of it to say and how much to leave to Markéta.

„Nothing physical happened.“

„What does that mean?“

“It means she isn't hurt. That she's okay. And that she has to tell you the rest herself.”

Petr turned toward the bathroom door. Beyond it was silence.

"I mean it," Žaneta said quietly.

Petr glanced back at her over his shoulder.

“How long have you known?”

“Since six.”

“And you didn't reach out to me.”

„No.“

“I sat in the restaurant for an hour and a half.”

„I know.“

“And you didn't call me back.”

Žaneta sat down on the bed.

“Because I needed to be with Markéta.”

„Žaneto—“

“And you wouldn't have handled it.”

She said it calmly and truthfully.

Petr stopped.

The bathroom door opened.

Markéta came out with her face washed to a rosy glow. She walked over to her side of the bed and sat on the edge. Hands folded in her lap. Eyes on the floor.

Petr stepped closer. Not too close. Just enough to stand facing her.

„What happened?“

Markéta raised her head. She looked at him. Then at Žaneta. Then at Petr again.

„Nechci o tom mluvit.“

“Did something happen to Yassin?”

She was silent for a moment.

Then she nodded.

Just once.

“Yeah.”

Peter paused for a moment by the wall.

„What?“

Markéta closed her eyes.