A Call From Strahov

0:00 A Wet Morning Behind the Bookshop

0:04 Narrator: Prague, the late autumn of nineteen ninety-three. Kos, the new night dispatcher, found us the morning after the robbery, wet from the Castle steps, while Antonín Zima and I sat over coffee behind my bookshop in Malá Strana. Kos: Mr Zima? Kos, night dispatcher at the Hradčany police station. May I come in?

0:25 Narrator: Come to the stove, man, you're dripping on my poets. Brno, by that voice? Kos: Uherské Hradiště. Further off, and worse luck.

0:35 Zima: You haven't been home. That's last night's shirt, with the station's cigarettes still in it. Kos: They kept me till ten. Four Dorvanes off the Marenic walls, one point four billion crowns, and I'm the— I'm the man who sent the car away.

0:53 Zima: Sent it where? Kos: Strahov. A call on the set, a patrol in trouble. The only car I had, so I sent it. What else does a dispatcher—

1:01 Zima: What did the caller say? Exactly. Kos: I'm not to say. Kapitán Novotný took my log at six and told me— told me to shut my mouth.

1:10 Narrator: Did he sound like a policeman, at least? Kos: He sounded like trouble. Shouting through static, out of breath. I'd not have known my own brother.

1:19 Zima: So the static covered him. You heard a man in danger and you went. Kos: Or it was just the set. Old army stock; half the nights the whole band crackles.

1:31 Zima: Then you had no reason to doubt him. That counts for you. Kos: Tell the Kapitán. They'll write me down careless, Mr Zima, and I'll never sit a desk again. I've a mother in Hradiště, and no other trade, and—

1:43 Zima: All right. Bank the stove, Hruška. We're going up the hill.

1:48 Floor Wax and Police Tobacco at Noon

1:52 Narrator: We climbed to the gallery at noon, into a smell of floor wax and police tobacco; Kapitán Novotný stood at the window, and the curator was on the telephone with her back to us. Ester: Nein, nicht hier... Ich rufe dich an.

2:09 Novotný: Ester, I said no calls from this room. Who was— Ester: A lender in Munich, Kapitán. They're nervous; the newspapers rang them first.

2:17 Novotný: Is that so. Zima: Kapitán Novotný. Zima. Your night dispatcher came to see me.

2:24 Novotný: Of course he did. Five minutes, Zima. Ester: Look, then. Four hooks. That's what's left.

2:31 Zima: And no broken glass on the floor beneath them. Ester: There's no glass to break. We never glazed the Dorvanes; they breathe better bare.

2:40 Narrator: Good heavens. Zima: Then he was gentle with the frames. He came in roughly, I'm told, and handled these like a nurse.

2:49 Novotný: He was carrying a fortune. Men go careful with that kind of money. Ester: Money. I've stood in front of these every morning for twenty years, and now there's a hook. A brass hook, and a pale square where the sun never...

3:04 Narrator: You'll have them back. Things that famous can't be sold. Ester: And I won't be here to hang them. My Party card. Nineteen seventy-four, to keep this job. And now it's— now it's why I'll lose it.

3:19 Novotný: Nobody made you sign it, curator. Ester: Nobody makes anybody, Kapitán. You're too young to know how it was done. Zima: I came about the dispatcher, Kapitán, not the Party.

3:31 Novotný: You want to clear the boy? Come and see the door.

3:34 Wet Gravel Behind the Gallery

3:38 Narrator: Behind the palace the garden fell away in wet terraces, and Novotný walked us down to what was left of a tall glass door. You'll ruin your knees on that gravel, Zima. Zima: The glass is all inside, on the parquet. He threw from where I'm kneeling.

3:56 Novotný: He threw that. The bench. Narrator: The stone bench from under the pear tree? I've eaten my lunch on it. It weighs what a piano weighs.

4:06 Novotný: Near enough. Zima: Then he brought no tools. He used what the garden gave him, so he knew the garden had a bench.

4:14 Novotný: Every tourist on the Castle walk has sat on it. Could be anyone in Europe. The patrol report. Night car to Strahov on a radio call, officer in difficulty. They found an empty street and a cat, while the alarm rang here.

4:30 Narrator: Good Lord. And the call itself? Who was supposed to be—

4:33 Novotný: Police business, Mr Hruška. Zima: You've kept it out of the papers. You think the words—

4:39 Novotný: I think that's for me to judge. Not the newspapers. Zima: Kos says you've forbidden him even to repeat them.

4:46 Novotný: The caller's words stay in the radio log, locked in my drawer.

4:51 The Corner Table at Libuše's

4:55 Narrator: Libuše's pub stood on the square, a stone's throw from the palace passage; by four we had the corner table, with Vávra at the taps. Libuše: Two twelve-degree, Vávra, and quick. Sit, zlato, you look like the palace chewed you.

5:11 Vávra: Nine crowns each now, gentlemen. Went up Monday. Everything goes up but the wages.

5:17 Narrator: Daylight robbery. Libuše, you sleep over the bar. You'd have heard it.

5:23 Libuše: Heard it? It had me out of bed, zlato. Ringing across the square like the end of the world.

5:29 Zima: And the police? Libuše: Not a light, not a siren. I stood at the window and smoked two cigarettes, and nobody came.

5:38 Narrator: Typical. Zima: Two cigarettes. A quarter of an hour, then, with the bell going and no car.

5:45 Libuše: I smoke fast when I'm frightened. Ten minutes. Twelve, maybe...

5:51 Vávra: That's the new police for you. Lovely new uniforms, and where were they? Narrator: You'll not see Dorvanes on this hill again in our lifetime.

6:01 Vávra: A fortune for four pictures. My grandfather painted fences better, and got paid by the metre. Libuše: Ignore him. You want to know who did it, zlato, ask who hates that place. The curator. Sits in that corner over one coffee with a face like a funeral, cursing the Ministry.

6:19 Vávra: She tips, though. More than the Germans do. Libuše: Hah. Her Party card's finished her. Bitter enough for anything, I'd say.

6:29 A Slot Under the Roof, Filled with Smoke

6:33 Narrator: Ester's office was a slot under the palace roof, hardly bigger than a confessional, and she had filled it with smoke before Novotný climbed up after us. Ester: Sit where you can. The Ministry has already taken the good chairs.

6:47 Zima: Where did you sleep last night, curator? Ester: In my own flat on Nový Svět. In my own bed, and alone, before you ask that too. Zima: I wasn't going to ask it. You answered a second question, which makes me wonder about the first.

7:02 Ester: It tells me the old police never had you in a room, Mr Zima. You learn to answer everything at once. Zima: Fair. I'll let it lie.

7:11 Novotný: I won't. Your letter to the Hradčany station, in your own hand. Three weeks ago you were begging us for a guard on that garden door.

7:21 Ester: I begged everybody. The Ministry, the Castle office, your station. Nobody—

7:26 Novotný: Nobody came, and now there's a bench through it. Narrator: A woman who wants a door guarded isn't usually the one planning to break it. Novotný: Unless she wants it on paper that she warned—

7:36 Ester: That I warned you? Is that what the new police teach? That a warning's a confession?

7:42 Novotný: Three weeks early, curator. How did you know which door?

7:47 A Counter, a Telephone and a Hissing Radio

7:50 Narrator: The night desk at the Hradčany station was a counter and a telephone, with the radio hissing through an open door behind it, and Kos was back on his stool after dark. Kos: They put me back on nights, Mr Zima. Nobody else would take them.

8:06 Zima: Then the desk diary's still yours, Kos, even if the radio log isn't. Kos: Telephone calls only. The Kapitán didn't want it.

8:16 Zima: After the bell, you rang the keyholders. Kos: The director first, out in Dejvice. Then the curator, on Nový Svět.

8:24 Narrator: Nový Svět? Those cottages are the size of a hatbox. You'd hear the telephone from the street.

8:31 Kos: They are. Eight rings, and nobody. So I rang again, and— and again. I rang that flat every hour till dawn.

8:40 Zima: Eight rings, five or six times over. That's not a heavy sleeper. That's an empty bed.

8:47 Kos: Or the receiver was off the hook. Zima: Off the hook, you'd have got the engaged tone, not a ring. Kos: Oh. No, it rang. Every time, it rang. I can still hear it.

9:01 Zima: And she told us this afternoon she slept at home. Kos: Then she's lying, and it's me they're writing up. So where— where was the curator all night?

9:10 Zima: Yes. Where?

9:13 A Strip Light Buzzing in the Duty Corridor

9:17 Narrator: Out in the duty corridor, under a strip light that buzzed, Novotný had caught Kos with a typed report, and we came through the door behind them. Novotný: The last paragraph, Kos. "The dispatcher failed to verify the caller." The word is negligent. Twice.

9:33 Kos: Verify him with what, Kapitán? A voice in a gale of static— Novotný: With questions. A dispatcher asks questions.

9:41 Kos: It was my first week alone on that desk. The old hands gone, every voice on the set a stranger's. Zima: You've carried that report down here instead of sending it up, Kapitán. A man who'd made up his mind would have posted it.

9:55 Novotný: A man who wants to be fair reads it to the one it names. Zima: Then be fair for three days. Give me three days.

10:03 Novotný: Three days? The Ministry wants a name by the end of the week. Narrator: He'll give you a better name than this one, Kapitán, if you give him the time.

10:13 Novotný: Booksellers always hope, Mr Hruška. Narrator: Booksellers go bankrupt. Optimism's all we've got left.

10:22 Kos: Kapitán. Please. Novotný: Three days, Zima. Then this goes up as it stands, and you with it, Kos. Finished.

10:31 Kos: Yes. Yes, sir.

10:34 Patience Cards by a Dying Stove

10:38 Narrator: My tin stove had nearly died by the time we came down the hill, and Zima sat with his coat still on, laying the day out like patience cards. Feed it or freeze, Zima. I'm not lighting it twice tonight.

10:52 Zima: In a minute. Three cards. A letter three weeks old, naming the one door that was broken.

11:00 Narrator: Two: a telephone ringing all night in a flat she swears she slept in. Zima: Three, in German. "Nein, nicht hier."

11:09 Narrator: "No, not here. I'll ring you." A nervous lender in Munich, she told us.

11:16 Zima: She said dich, the familiar you. Nobody says dich to a bank in Munich. Narrator: A friend, then.

11:24 Zima: A friend, or a partner, who rang her where he mustn't. Narrator: You'd make a partner of her that fast? Zima: Either way, she keeps a second life on a telephone line.

11:36 Narrator: I don't believe it of her. She loves those pictures. She'd never—

11:40 Zima: You'd be surprised what people sell once they've lost everything. Narrator: So where did she sleep, Zima, and who was she whispering to?

11:51 The Radio Room Behind the Night Desk

11:54 Narrator: Novotný guarded the radio room behind the night desk like a sacristy, one chair, one set, one locked drawer, and he let us in early, with Kos at his elbow. Novotný: The entry for the call, Kos. Read it to them.

12:09 Kos: He came on shouting, and the first thing he gave me was "This is Hradčany seven." Then Strahov, officer in difficulty. Zima: And you didn't know the sign.

12:19 Kos: I didn't know any of them then. I know them now. No car on my roster carries that sign.

12:25 Novotný: An old-regime sign. They renumbered the cars after the revolution. Narrator: Ah. Then who else heard him say it? Anyone in Prague with a set?

12:36 Kos: Not that night, Mr Hruška. The band was frying like fat; our roof aerial barely pulled him through. Zima: Then he wasn't across the river. He was up here on the hill.

12:46 Kos: Closer. A hand set, a few hundred metres off. And the car never heard him; I gave them Strahov, not his sign.

12:54 Narrator: So his name for himself sits in that book and nowhere else. Novotný: Nowhere else. Kos?

13:02 Kos: Not to a soul, Kapitán. Not to— not even my own mother. Novotný: Good. An old sign means an old set, and sacked men kept their—

13:11 Zima: Radios. So your thief was a policeman once. Novotný: His voice was. The plan was hers. She wanted a police guard on that garden door, so she knew the door, and she hired a man who knew the sets.

13:23 Zima: So she reads the old police like a timetable too? A curator? That's a lot to put on her, Kapitán.

13:30 Novotný: Twenty years under the old regime. She learned. Zima: Did she.

13:35 Novotný: Not a word outside this room. Tomorrow, her keys.

13:40 Sweeping the Step at Dusk

13:44 Narrator: Dusk was settling as we crossed from the Castle gate; Libuše was sweeping her step, and Vávra was rolling barrels in off a cart. Libuše: Mind your feet, zlato. Vávra! That's my door frame, not a skittle!

14:00 Narrator: Evening, Libuše. You sweep like a woman with a grievance. Libuše: Grievance, he says. Any news for that poor boy at the station? The square says— well, the square says he sent the police chasing a cat at Strahov.

14:14 Narrator: The square's well informed. Libuše: A Moravian lad, new. You can't blame him, zlato.

14:21 Zima: Somebody does. Libuše: The Ministry should, for their meanness. Vávra says it every night over the taps: one car for the Castle by night, and the whole nation's pictures up here.

14:33 Zima: Then one false call empties the whole hill. Libuše: So it does, and the boy pays for it. Zima: You've swept that one flagstone since we came round the corner, Libuše. Whatever you're sweeping round, say it.

14:46 Libuše: The curator's had a German at her corner table. Twice this month. Good coat, talking low. Paid in marks.

14:54 Narrator: Half of Prague pays in marks this year. The other half wishes it could. Libuše: Not with their heads that close, they don't. Mark me, though. The curator. She's your thief.

15:07 Chairs Going Up as the Fog Pressed In

15:11 Narrator: By closing time fog pressed at the windows of the pub; the chairs were going up, and Vávra was rinsing glasses behind us. Libuše: Drink up, zlato, or sleep under the table with the cat. Vávra: Last tram's at a quarter to twelve, gentlemen, and I'm not walking to Žižkov in this soup.

15:31 Zima: We're keeping you from your tram, Vávra. Vávra: From my bed. The tram's only the way there.

15:38 Libuše: Before you go, zlato. Is she caught? The curator?

15:42 Zima: Tomorrow, I expect. Libuše: There. What did I tell you on my own doorstep?

15:49 Vávra: Good luck to the new boys proving it. Some fool on a police radio. Calling himself Hradčany seven, if you please, and off they go like dogs after a stick.

15:59 Libuše: Vávra, mind your mouth. These gentlemen are helping that boy. Vávra: Then they'll want the truth. Fresh uniforms, empty heads.

16:08 Narrator: Zima? You've stopped halfway. Libuše: Not to your taste, zlato? It's the bottom of the barrel, I'll grant you.

16:17 Libuše: Well, I never. Narrator: Put it on my slate, Libuše. Zima, wait, you'll lose yourself in that fog!

16:25 Five in a Little Office Under the Eaves

16:29 Narrator: Five of us crowded into Ester's little office under the eaves; Kos held his desk diary open like a hymn book, and Ester had not yet lit a cigarette. Zima: Curator, I'll be plain. I want one thing answered before I look anywhere else.

16:46 Novotný: There's nowhere else to look, Zima. Zima: Then the answer costs her nothing. Kos.

16:53 Kos: Your number, curator. Eight rings each time, and— and nobody. Zima: Kos rang your bed every hour till dawn, and it never answered. You told us you were in it.

17:04 Ester: Perhaps I sleep like the dead. Zima: Through the police, all night long? That isn't sleep, curator. That's absence.

17:12 Novotný: A letter naming the door. A German on your telephone. An empty flat. So where were you, Ester, that whole—

17:18 Ester: Where I was is my own affair. Novotný: Not any longer it isn't. Ester: You want my keys? Is that what this parade is for? Then take them.

17:28 Novotný: Now, there's no need— Ester: Take the hooks, take the office, take the twenty years— Kos: Curator, I— I only rang because it's the rule—

17:35 Ester: You! The boy who sent the car away, up here with his little book! Narrator: Ester. Sit down, please.

17:42 Ester: Sit? I begged them, Mr Hruška. And every night two police cars crawl down Nový Svět past my door, slow as hearses...

17:51 Novotný: Curator— Ester: Two cars every night, and neither came!

17:55 Under the Four Empty Hooks

17:59 Narrator: Ester led us down to the gallery and said nothing until she stood under the four empty hooks, Novotný a pace behind her. Ester: Here, then. If I'm to be shamed, let it be in front of them.

18:13 Novotný: The night of the theft, curator. Where were you? Ester: The Inter-Continental, by the river. Fifth floor, with an— with an engineer from Stuttgart. Married. Not to me.

18:25 Novotný: Ah. Narrator: The German at Libuše's corner table. Good coat, talking low.

18:32 Ester: Libuše. Of course. That woman sells gossip by the litre. Zima: And the voice on the gallery telephone was his, not a lender's.

18:41 Ester: Every call. He rings where I've begged him not to. He likes it. The risk. It's never him that gets caught.

18:50 Novotný: All right, that's your bed, curator. It doesn't get you out of the plan. Zima: Any plan for that night rests on one fact, Kapitán. How many cars watch this hill after dark?

19:02 Novotný: One. Since the cuts. Zima: And she swears two police cars pass her door. She hears the one car climb Nový Svět and come back down, and counts it twice.

19:14 Ester: Twice? Novotný: She needn't count anything. Her hired man knew—

19:17 Zima: Then her partner kept from her the one thing the whole raid needed. You'd tell a partner that first. Nobody told her, because nobody planned it with her.

19:27 Novotný: The hotel register will say so, or I'll be back up these stairs. Your keys, curator. Ester: The register, the porter, whatever you need. Only—

19:37 Narrator: Only what, Ester? Ester: His wife. She writes to him every week, and he reads me bits of it, and laughs, and I... I laugh too... Please. Please don't tell his wife.

19:50 Circling the Plague Column in Fog

19:54 Narrator: Fog had swallowed the top of the plague column; Zima circled its railings twice before he spoke. You've chewed on something since last night. Spit it out.

20:06 Zima: Two sentences, Hruška. One from a radio room, one from a bar. Narrator: Lay them down, then, like your patience cards.

20:15 Zima: Kos, with the log open under his hand: not one car on his roster carries that sign. Narrator: And Vávra over the rinsing water, sneering at some fool giving himself Hradčany seven. Zima: Novotný keeps that sign in a drawer with a key. A tapster had it on the end of his tongue.

20:34 Narrator: In the old police a sign went with the man, not the car. My uncle was Malá Strana four for eleven years. Zima: Then a dead sign was a living man's once. Whoever used it didn't make one up. He reached for a real one.

20:50 Narrator: Then whose sign was Hradčany seven, once?

20:55 Police Before Ten in the Morning

20:58 Narrator: Libuše had barely unbolted when we came in off the square, Novotný at our heels and Kos hugging a cardboard file from the station cellar. Libuše: Police before ten in the morning, Kapitán Novotný? Sit, zlato, all of you. Vávra, glasses.

21:14 Novotný: Kos, from the night desk. The old roster, Kos. Read it out.

21:19 Vávra: So that's the lad who chased the cat. They've let you off the leash, son. Kos: Hradčany station, duty roster, nineteen eighty-nine. Hradčany seven: Vávra. Hand set issued. Dismissed nineteen ninety. Set never returned.

21:36 Libuše: No... Vávra: Me and a few hundred others. Swept out like broken chairs.

21:43 Novotný: And the set? Vávra: Lost it, somewhere between the revolution and you lot. Try the Vltava.

21:50 Libuše: Oh, listen to him. Novotný: Tell him the rest, Kos. Kos: The man who sent me to Strahov came on shouting, "This is Hradčany seven."

21:59 Vávra: Those rosters went round by the hundred, son. Anyone can pick a dead sign off the floor. Narrator: Kos, you've been listening to him. Is it the voice?

22:10 Kos: It was a shout in a gale, out of breath. I— no. I couldn't swear to it, and I'll not hang a man on a guess. Zima: Then the voice won't convict anyone. But a thief off the street makes up a number. This one used a real sign. Yours.

22:28 Libuše: Zlato. He'd— One car for the Castle, he'd say, every night. Then he'd look at my clock, say there she goes, and there went the car past the window.

22:40 Zima: To the minute, Libuše? Libuše: Near enough to set the clock by. Vávra: Some fool used my old sign. Prove it was me.

22:49 Hops and Cellar Damp in the Back Room

22:53 Narrator: The back room smelt of hops and cellar damp; Libuše would not be shut out of her own house, and stood by the crates beside Vávra. Zima: Last night you laughed at a fool calling himself Hradčany seven, Vávra. Nobody at that table had said a word about any sign.

23:12 Vávra: So I've got ears. All right— all right, I kept the set. I lie in bed and listen to the new boys tie themselves in knots.

23:23 Zima: Ten minutes ago it was in the Vltava. Vávra: A Kapitán was at my taps ten minutes ago. Novotný: The call came at two. Its words have been locked in my drawer since six that morning; no newspaper has had them.

23:36 Narrator: And the crew in the car? Novotný: Kos gave them Strahov, nothing more, and swore to me he's told no one. Libuše: That boy never set foot in my pub till this morning. The square had the cat and the Moravian lad, nothing else.

23:50 Narrator: Libuše, did either of us say a sign at that table? Libuše: I asked after the curator, and he said tomorrow. Not a word more.

23:59 Vávra: Then I had it off the air, like I said. Keeping a set's no hanging— Zima: Off the air where? You take the last tram to Žižkov at a quarter to twelve. That night too?

24:09 Vávra: Every night. Slept like a baby. Zima: Then you heard nothing. That night the band was so foul the station's own roof aerial barely dragged the caller in, a few hundred metres off.

24:21 Vávra: That's— no, that's not how— Narrator: On a hand set in Žižkov? Fat frying in a pan.

24:28 Zima: So which, Vávra? Asleep across the river, hearing nothing? Or up here at two, near enough to the station to catch every word—

24:36 Vávra: I was in my bed— Zima: Near enough to be holding the set that spoke them. Vávra: Get me a lawyer, then, Kapitán. You've the new rules for that now.

24:45 Novotný: You'll have one at the station. Come on, Vávra. Libuše: Give me that apron. You'll not be pouring where they're taking you.

24:53 Libuše: A year at my taps, and I'd have trusted you with the till.

24:58 One Bare Bulb and a Knocking Radiator

25:02 Narrator: The interview room had one bare bulb and a radiator that knocked like a lodger; Vávra sat under the bulb, with Kos at the door. Novotný: You're charged, Vávra. Now, the paintings.

25:16 Vávra: In a minute. First the Moravian hears something. Kos: From you?

25:22 Vávra: You think I picked that night for the Dorvanes? They've hung there for years. I picked it for you, son.

25:28 Kos: My first week alone. You'd counted the days. Vávra: Every old hand on that desk knew my voice. You'd never heard it in your life. A shout, a real sign, and you'd jump.

25:42 Kos: And I jumped. Zima: So the call was aimed past the car, at one new pair of ears. Novotný: The paintings, Vávra.

25:51 Vávra: I lifted them myself, seventeen minutes, while your bell rang for nobody. Two lads with a van carried them off; I'll write you their names. Novotný: And where are they now?

26:02 Vávra: A lock-up in Žižkov, in my mother's blankets. I'd have had marks for them, and the last laugh on the men who sacked me. Novotný: Kos. The day car, to Žižkov.

26:13 Kos: Right away. Narrator: Your one car, Kapitán? Novotný: By daylight I have three.

26:20 Zima: One link nobody joined, Hruška. Ester counted the night car twice from her window, and Vávra timed it to the minute from behind Libuše's taps. Narrator: So the same car cleared her and marked him?

26:35 Zima: Both. And it never once came when the bell rang.

26:46 Novotný: Novotný. Yes... all four? Not a scratch. Bring them up the hill.

26:53 Novotný: My report goes up with a new last paragraph, Kos, and the curator's engineer stays out of it. You're kept on. Kos: Kept on... I'll ring my mother in Hradiště.

27:05 Narrator: So: Vávra charged, four Dorvanes recovered, and Kos kept on the desk, while the Castle bells ring noon as if this hill had never lost a thing.