The Infant of Prague

Anna sat on the floor in her jeans and listened. She never wore anything but jeans unless she had to go to court with Stephanie. Those times, somewhat truculently, she agreed to dress as a little girl because Stephanie thought it best and because Stephanie had bought her the jeans in the first place. First one pair, then two, and now three. She washed them by hand, with reverence.

The music was acid, full of words that expressed an unearned contempt for the world. The blocks of notes had a comforting sameness and the boy with a girl’s voice on the tape lisped his contempt with ritual cant. It was like listening to the words in church.

“Can you turn it down, dear? I’m talking on the phone.”

Anna sighed and turned down the tape on her boom box and went to the door and looked at Stephanie.

Stephanie was sitting at her desk in her blue terrycloth robe. From the first, she had sheltered Anna — from the press, from the representatives of the United States and the Czech governments, from the various and inevitably strange religious figures who wanted to contact the little girl who saw a miracle. She had installed Anna in her own apartment on Seminary Avenue in the quaint Victorian neighborhood around DePaul University on the north side. The rooms were not so large, but the ceilings were high and the tall windows filled the rooms with the gloomy November light during the days.

Stephanie listened for a long time and Anna Jelinak listened at the door. Something made the little girl frown. She crossed back into her room and turned the boom box off and went back to the door.

“I don’t know, Kay,” Stephanie said at last. “You’re sure you’ll be fine with—”

She broke off and listened some more.

“You really should come here.”

She listened more.

“All right, then. All right. No. No. I won’t. No, it’s all right. Yes. I will. Yes. Yes. All right. See you in the morning. All right.”

She replaced the receiver. The night scratched against the tall windows. The street side of the apartment was colored by immense sodium vapor lights with an orange glow. The trees in the parkway were bare and the wind made the panes rattle.

“Are you all right?”

Stephanie glanced up at Anna at the door as though she were startled. Then she nodded and got up. She went through the apartment to the kitchen and checked the locks on the large kitchen door. There were grates on the kitchen window that opened on a gray wooden back porch. The door had a small pane of glass. The door carried three locks. She tugged at the door with her thin arms extended.

Next to the kitchen was a maid’s room with another window that opened above the gray backstairs that led down to the second floor of the three-flat building. The window was ungrated but someone would have to prop up a ladder on the stairs in order to reach the window. She checked the lock in the sash.

Stephanie went from room to room of the narrow flat, checking the locks on the tall windows that opened on narrow light wells between the row of brick three-flats along the block.

Anna trailed behind her. Because Stephanie said nothing, Anna felt afraid.

The front door led to the common hall and the stairs that connected the three apartments in the tall building. The stairs were steep and lighted. The front door was solid oak. She checked the locks on the front door. The top lock was a chain, the second a deadbolt, the third a second deadbolt.

When she was finished, they went into the front room and sat down in front of the nonfunctioning gas fireplace that contained a television set in the hearth. They always sat in front of the television set but Stephanie rarely turned it on.

“Kay called just now,” Stephanie said. Her voice sounded odd to Anna. There was a cold edge to it that did not contain life. Stephanie’s voice was usually loud or angry or even gentle, but it had life in it.

“Kay said a man attacked her in her apartment. She said she was fired this afternoon when she refused to dump the story.”

Anna sat on the straight chair and did not understand. She tried to smile through her puzzlement. It was the way you smiled at old people or crazy people, to make them understand you meant no harm.

“I’m sorry,” Stephanie said. She shook her head. She had very white skin and small dark curls. She tried to wear her hair straight and boyish and it came out curly and too feminine for her taste.

Anna appreciated the returning smile. Stephanie talked to her like an adult. Stephanie told her the first day she really didn’t believe in miracles or God but that she could appreciate people who did. They got along.

“I’m afraid because Kay is afraid and because I don’t believe in coincidences.”