The Infant of Prague

It had rained because it always rains in Brussels. The cobblestones of the large square called La Grand Place glistened in the yellow lights of the ornate streetlamps. The moon danced in and out of the clouds scudding across the night sky.

All the lights were on in the baroque city hall that dominated the south side of the square. The party was not sponsored by the city, but the city was glad to host it because so many famous people had come together. There were film stars from America and Britain and France, and even the Russian director and his entourage who had spent the morning trying to convince a Flemish banking consortium that the Soviet version of Huckleberry Finn would find a ready worldwide audience. The hall was a glittering place tonight full of glittering people. And at the center of things, as usual, was the bright star called Miki.

Everyone knew Miki, even the Hollywood actress with the sullen lips and spaced-out eyes who pretended not to know anyone. Miki was Miki, or he was “darling Miki” and “Miki dearest,” and he was going to receive an award tonight from the international film community for all he had done for them.

He pushed through the glittering crowd and offered his lips to this cheek or that. Miki was reserved, a man of small delicate gestures in an arm-waving community. He seemed to smile just for you and listened to just your words. Miki understood things, as so many actresses put it. He had light brown hair and wore a leather coat and a silk shirt and a gold chain around his neck. It was not the usual ensemble of the Prague bureaucrat. But then, as Miki himself would have pointed out, he was special.

“I can arrange that perhaps,” was Miki’s most useful line. He could arrange discreet amounts of cocaine for the doped-out American television star making a spy movie in Prague. Or he could find very young girls from Hungary for the important film director who relaxed off camera with Johnny Walker Black Label, a large waterbed, and hookers who pretended to be virgins. Not that Miki was a pimp; he was an impresario and a procurer to the stars.

The Czech Philharmonic was a triumph in America and that was because of Miki. And when the latest tennis star defected to the extreme annoyance of the Minister of Sports, it was Miki who smoothed things over by arranging an international tennis exhibition in Prague featuring all past Czech tennis stars who were now honorary Americans. This graceful acceptance of individual decisions to defect prompted Newsweek to do an admiring piece on Miki and his policy of “turning the other Czech.”

“Miki, when can I make a movie again in Prague?” called the fruity-voiced producer from halfway across the room.

Miki turned, smiled, gathered his audience. “My dear man, you must go to Prague tonight, do not waste a single moment. Prague is empty, the stage set of the world, waiting for all you dear people to give it life.”