#GenghizInLove: Episode 22

"Who is it?" A languorous purr from behind the massive wooden door. Still panting from climbing six flights of stairs in this East Berlin apartment building, I gasped out my name. The door opened wide and I fell into Lulu's bare arms. "Darling! It is you! I thought it had to be some horrible sex-maniac at this time of the morning. I felt this wonderful frisson of excitement..." Lulu murmured delightedly, her little teeth affectionately nibbling my earlobe. "Come in, sweetie. You must be freezing. Do you want coffee or hot chocolate or brandy or all three?" Chattering away vivaciously, Lulu led me by the hand into her apartment. I leaned against a wall and looked on while Lulu glid around the dark kitchen, deftly pulling out a bottle of milk dangling from a string outside her window, pouring milk into a battered saucepan, lighting an ancient stove with a match, rinsing out two chipped mugs, pouring serious slugs of brandy into them, lighting two cigarettes and handing one to me with a smile which changed instantly to a look of concern when she saw my battered face. "What happened?" Lulu shrieked. "Have you been getting into fights, you bad little boy?"

"It's a long story, Lu. Do you happen to have any chairs in this apartment?"

"Well, there used to be a lot of chairs when I moved in," Lulu said, smiling wickedly. "But Michel managed to destroy most of them, just by sitting in them. Well, all right, he also threw one or two at me. I'll probably have to replace them all when I leave."

"Michel?"

"Oh, he's this rugby player who came up to me in a bar and told me that he had this terribly important match the next day and that he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to concentrate because he would be standing around on the pitch dreaming of me and so would I please sleep with him?"

"And so you did. Strumpet." I took a sip of my brandy-laced hot chocolate, sighed with contentment, and slumped onto the floor. "I hope they won."

"Oh, don't sit on the floor, love, it's so dirty. I'm sure there are cockroaches and mice all over the place." Lulu shuddered. "I haven't cleaned the place since I came. I'm such a slut." She led me out of the kitchen. "Come in here where it's comfortable." We walked into a small room which was all bed. The yellow flicker of a candle on a low corner table dimly illuminated the edge of the tapestries that billowed all around the mattresses and cushions and blankets and rugs on the floor. Lulu plumped cushions all around me and wrapped me in a comforter. "Isn't that better, honey?" she murmured, snuggling up to me.

"It's wonderful, Lulu," I said sincerely. I sniffed her fragrant hair, sighed fervently, and closed my eyes. "Where's Michel?"

"Oh, I didn't feel like getting involved with him."

"Because he threw chairs at you?"

"Oh, that was fun. But, no..." Lulu sighed. She snuggled up closer to me. "You know, dearest, a time comes in the life of every woman when she needs to get serious. When she has to ruthlessly eliminate all distractions, all frivolities. I feel like I have to get down to business."

"You're pregnant," I said, appalled. "What are you going to do, Lulu?"

Lulu sat up indignantly. "Of course I'm not pregnant!" she exclaimed. "Do I look like an idiot? No woman with a brain in her head has babies if she can help it."

"But everyone talks about this biological urge. Like a time bomb or something."

"Male propaganda," Lulu explained succinctly. "For centuries men have been telling us how much we really want to have babies. As though any rational creature would want to go through the harrowing sufferings of childbirth," she sniffed. "Would you want to put your foot on a landmine?" She glared at me.

"Lulu, I'm on your side," I said, trying to appease her. "I have never understood why people keep having babies. Why do they do it?"

Lulu smiled at me and put her head back in my lap. I stroked her smooth forehead. "Because they're stupid," she said. "And bored. They want a new toy. It's so important to stop little girls from playing with dolls."

"So what are you planning to do with your life now, Lu?"

"I'm going to eliminate sex."

"From the entire planet?"

"I would if I could, angel, but I'm going to start with my life. Oh, sex is fun sometimes but is it really worth it?" I could feel Lulu's warm breath high on my thigh. I squirmed and drank down my hot chocolate.

"So what are you going to do instead?"

"I'm going to work hard."

"No, Lulu," I responded crossly. "Now that really is stupid. Take drugs or something if you're so bored with sex. Climb mountains. Jump off bridges. Go jogging. I'm disappointed in you. I never thought you would say something so banal and trite and Puritan as that."

"But really," Lulu insisted, turning to look up at me. "Wouldn't it be fun to be Professor Louisa Frazer, forty something, hair pulled up in a severe bun and tortoise shell glasses and an intimidating academic reputation, rather than being Lulu, the cute flirt?"

"Professor Frazer is such a predictable persona, Lu. You'll turn into her anyway. Can't you just be both academic and flirt in the meantime?"

"It confuses men," Lulu sighed. "Especially big strong brainless men. The kind I like."

"You win some, you confuse some. Aren't you too young for a midlife crisis?"

"No. I had one last month. I almost got married."

"Anyone I know?"

"No. His name is Nectarino. He's Italian. I met him at a party given by Princess Fi."

"Is he big and strong and brainless?"

"Totally." Lulu smiled beatifically. "Absolutely brain-dead. Doesn't speak a word. He just grunts. He's yummy."

"Sounds like a husband made in heaven. So what happened?"

"I panicked at the last moment and cancelled the wedding after the arrangements had all been made. His family was awfully angry. I thought they would hire a hitman to get me."

"What made you panic?"

"When we met the Pope," Lulu replied. "Nectarino insisted that we have an audience. It's an old family tradition. Apparently all the Nectarini do it before they get married."

"Does the Pope look fake?" I asked, interested. "I knew this girl in college whose name was Caroline Wojdyla. She claimed that the pope was her third cousin twice removed. One time she went to the Vatikan and met the old geezer, and she swore that he didn't look at all like in the family pictures. Caro was convinced that the real Pope, her cousin, had been a liberal who wanted to legalize abortion and birth control and women priests and the marriage of priests and that he had been secretly bumped off in an evil Vatikan conspiracy by all these reactionary Monsignors and Cardinals who had found some old Polish look-alike as a replacement. Of course, Caro was a pro-choice campaigner and a frightful liar, so I didn't know whether to believe her and I've never met the man myself. Did you think the Pope looked real?"

"Actually, he looked like a wax doll." Lulu giggled. "I wanted to pinch him but Nectarino wouldn't let me. Apparently bankers aren't allowed to pinch their clients."

"Nectarino is the Pope's banker?"

"Well, the Nectarini are. His family has been financing the Vatikan since the Middle Ages."

"So is Nectarino filthy rich?"

"Obviously, sugar." Lulu sniffed. "He wanted me to wear all this ugly jewellery. Dripping with diamonds."

"You could always sell the diamonds after your divorce," I offered. "Alimony is a feminist's best friend."

"It was dynastic stuff," Lulu replied. "Passed on down the generations. The Nectarini would definitely hire a hitman if I tried to sell their jewels. Besides, Nectarino doesn't understand the concept of divorce. Marriage is for life."

"Sounds like a prison sentence. Is that why you escaped to Berlin?"

"Yes. I had to get over this perverse feeling of wanting to imprison myself for the rest of my life with one person. It's so addictive, this craving for commitment." Lulu sighed. "Even now, I wish some big strong man would just ride up on his white horse and take me away..."

"Shame on you," I scolded. "You even wrote a book on Freud. You know what white horses stand for."

"The big strong man's mother," Lulu said dreamily. "Or is that cows? Sweetie, I'm so tired. Let's go to bed."

"Okay." I looked at my watch before I blew out the candle. Six in the morning. A hidden dawn turned the tapestries a luminous purple as Lulu and I fell fast asleep in a chaste embrace, seeking nothing more from each other's bodies than the pleasure of animal warmth. Simple sins are so often the best.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 21

"So you're leaving? No skin off my nose," Fyodor declared, vigorously rubbing his small pink snub nose. He smiled, showing shiny steel fillings. I grinned back. Fyodor was probably my favorite student at the University of Truth and Justice, and certainly the most insane. I was bringing down my things when he accosted me in the elevator and forcibly took a couple of bags despite my protests.

"Unfortunately, I have to leave for now. But I wish you all the best, Fyodor. Don't stay up every night playing computer games, okay?"

Fyodor tugged at his scalp and made a face at the chunk of hair that came away in his hand. Fyodor didn't have much hair to spare. His father was Bulgarian and his mother Ukrainian and Fyodor had spent his childhood in a grimy village on the outskirts of Chernobyl, playing with stuff that glowed in the dark. An earlier bout with cancer had taken his spleen. He was far from unusual: most of our students seemed organ-deprived in one way or another. Sasha, the glowering Croat neo-conservative, had lost an eye (and his heart, according to the university wags) in the Balkan wars. Pretty little Natasha ate only kasha, oatmeal porridge, because of severe childhood malnutrition in Minsk. I was sitting opposite her one day at lunch when she ate some apple pie at the rash urging of her friend, Felicia. No one else noticed as Natasha held a napkin to her mouth and discreetly removed a bleeding portion of gum and tooth, still held in the delicious pie crust. Felicia was a plump jolly blonde from a provincial Romanian town, and unless you looked especially carefully past her carefree laughter, you would hardly notice that her left arm was paralysed and withered and that her laughter had a spluttering breathless edge to it from the black fumes that billowed from the giant aluminum smelter conveniently located near her town. I could attach poignant stories to familiar faces and as I left I knew that I would miss their old-fashioned courtesy and delight in conversation.

"Where are you going now?" Fyodor asked.

I checked my watch. "I'm meeting Immanuel and Divka for coffee, and then I have an appointment with some skinheads."

"Skinheads?" Fyodor seemed delighted. He ran his hand over the few remaining strands of red hair standing out in sharp contrast to his dead white scalp. "May I join you? I'm practically a skinhead myself."

As Fyodor and I took a tram down to the main train station, I looked back at the tall building that housed the University of Truth and Justice, its windows shining brightly in the orange blaze of a winter sunset. So much had happened in the few weeks since I had come to Prague. I felt a pang of nostalgia, tart and premature as unseasoned wine. I looked away and then looked back again. A green and white police car had turned the corner into the driveway of the university building, its lights casually flashing. And then another, and another. The tram pulled away and I lost sight. My nostalgia had disappeared in a hurry.

Fyodor was singing to himself softly, oblivious of police cars or of the heavy blank hostility of the other occupants of the crowded tram. He pulled out a mouth organ just as the tram lurched to a halt at the train station. I had a sudden idea.

"Fyodor," I hissed. "Have you ever been a busker?"

"A street musician?" Fyodor shrugged. "It's how I earned my train ticket to Prague this summer."

"Great. Let's find Immanuel and Divka and then do a little busking, okay?" We threaded our way through crowds of commuters and located Immanuel and Divka at the small café just inside the train station where we had arranged to meet. I greeted them and hurriedly explained my plan.

Predictably, Immanuel was flustered and confused, as philosophers tend to become at such moments. "Lemme get this straight," he blurted, contorting his thin face in an anxious grimace. "We should all try to hide in the crowd because the police are after the wrong person?"

"It's perfectly clear," Divka said impatiently. "The police want to use our poor friend here as a scapegoat. Since they are looking for him by himself, they will walk right by a group of street musicians. She turned to me, her face glowing. "And then you can get away!"

"I'm in." Fyodor took off his green corduroy cap and threw it onto the ground. He threw some change into the cap and pulled out his harmonica. "What shall we sing?"

"We'll make something up." Divka tugged at Immanuel's arm. "Come on, this is so much fun. I haven't done this since the last time the communists were looking for Wenceslas and we passed him on from one apartment to another by the fire-escape at the back of the building. They never figured out what was going on until he slipped and broke his ankle."

"You think the police will just walk by?" Immanuel sounded sceptical. "He's pretty distinctive, you know. Not that many Mongolians around here."

Divka shrugged. "We'll disguise him somehow."

I had an idea. "Divka, are you wearing stockings?" Puzzled, she squinted at me and nodded. "Will you give them to me?"

"My stockings will disguise you?"

"If I put them on my head."

"They're my only pair without holes," Divka pouted but then she relented. We stood in front, whistling nonchalantly as we shielded her from the stares of passers-by, as she hiked up her skirt and pulled off her pantyhose. An old drunk buying cigarettes behind Divka made an appreciative face when she mooned him.

Divka winced as I ruthlessly ripped her hose into two and pulled one half over my head. "I need holes for my eyes and mouth," I said, my voice muffled. Divka pulled out nail scissors from her capacious bag and carefully cut through the nylon. With growing enthusiasm, she began painting in eyebrows and applying a little rouge.

"There," she said, happily applying a little last-minute lipstick. "What a pretty skinhead you make."

The police car sirens grew closer. We went outside and took up position discreetly beside the main doors of the railway station. Divka and Fyodor struck up an impromptu a capella number, taking turns with each line, while Immanuel and I clapped and sang along, just as fat Lieutenant Boruvka breathlessly rushed up with a contingent of his men:



O Mister Fat Man

Whom do you seek?

Huffing, puffing

Out of breath

Why hunt the meek?



Think of your heart

Lard clogging your veins

Pushing, shoving

Always wrong

Why take such pains?



Do you want a heart attack

Turning blue, a falling cop

Jerking, convulsing

Dead fat man

Why didn't you stop?



The police gathered around after their unsuccessful sortie and the drug dealers and pimps cautiously emerged from assorted crevices in the cavernous train station. Immanuel raised his quavering tenor in an old Bob Dylan song. Boruvka and his troops retreated, crestfallen, having found no sign of their quarry. Just when I thought we were safe and began peeling off my stocking mask, Boruvka cast a last glance back and shrieked triumphantly. Many shirll whistle blasts later, the police hordes came galloping back in tidy formation.

"Get going!" Fyodor urged, shaking me out of my paralysis.

I regretfully abandoned my precious ostrich-skin bags. "Take care of my stuff for me, will you?"

Divka kissed me on the cheek and then my friends shoved me back into the train station. I looked at my watch and began to run. I had an appointment that I couldn't afford to miss. Fifteen breathless minutes later, I was shaking liberal Bob's hand in a deserted square in a working-class district. Desperate for cash, I had made a deal with Bob, a ticket to Berlin in exchange for a few photographs with some skinheads who wanted to punish me for being involved in the death of a white woman. The skinheads just wanted to teach a lesson to the Vietnamese community and the growing Chinese Mafia in Prague, and I had after all been working in an institution of higher learning., The skinheads quickly warmed up to their task of beating me up under the manic choreography of Bob and a photographer from his newspaper for Amerikan expatriates, Prahahaha!, and the additional impetus of a growing crowd of interested onlookers who jeered, hissed, tried to join in the fun, and when prevented, contented themselves with throwing rotten vegetables at me as I lay prostrate and bleeding from the brass knuckles and steel-toed boots of the skinheads, who then turned their attention to the photographer when he belatedly realized that he had enough pictures and tried to dissuade them from kicking me to death, but once he too lay unconscious on the pavement and the police sirens became louder, the skinheads left, still shaking their fists at me. All smiles, Bob gave me my ticket to Berlin and two hundred extra dollars, swearing that I had been the making of his newspaper and promising similar jobs in the future.

I staggered back to the train station. An hour later, I was gingerly applying antiseptic to my wounds in a small stinking train toilet, wincing at each shuddering jerk as the train jolted its way out of Prague. I would probably need stitches but I had cleaned most of my cuts and bruises for now. I stuck my head out into the narrow corridor and jerked it back in again. Lieutenant Boruvka stood on the fast-receding platform , vainly trying to stop the train. Just to be safe, I pulled Divka's stocking mask on again and stepped out into the corridor. As I came back towards my seat, a skinhead in full regalia, all swastikas and safety pins, cried out in fear and ran away screaming in guttural German. I stood baffled for a moment and then saw my grotesque reflection in the train window. Divka's makeup had smeared and run and my eyes and lips looked like they had melted. I was something out of Dali, a skinhead's nightmare. I smiled at myself and slipped into dreamless sleep.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 20

Who killed Lucy Setton? And why? I walked down the corridor towards my room in the University of Truth and Justice, remembering Lucy's angelic demeanor, her bizarre incapacity to comprehend money, her soft warm body… I was overcome by the memory of walking down this same corridor with Lucy just days before, laughing and idly talking as we set out on our ill-fated quest for vegetables, from which she had never returned. We had lost our vegetables and her death had brought no closure. I was still reeling from Steele's revelations. Why had Lucy changed her mind in the taxi with Steele and decided to go to the train station? Who had hired her at the University of Truth and Justice? How was it possible that she had no past? And who had killed her?

I was assailed by more than just questions as I opened my door: out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dark shape hurtling towards me. I ducked out of the way but not fast enough. A heavy object struck my shoulder and then smashed onto the floor in a crystalline clangour of shattering glass. I cried out in pain and turned towards my opponent. The lights went on and I was looking into the concerned faces of Marek, the big blond barman and pretty Annichka from the reception desk.

"What are you doing here? We thought you had left Prague already!" Marek and Annichka exclaimed.

"You mean you were trying to kill someone else?" I asked weakly, rubbing my bruised shoulder. "Or just practising your pitching? You nearly took my head off."

"I wanted to," Marek said with conviction. "Whoever raped and murdered Lucy deserves to die horribly."

"What are you talking about? Whom were you trying to get?"

"The murderer, of course."

"How did you know he would be here?"

Their faces were as confused as mine. "You told us."

"I did?"

Annichka nodded eagerly. "You called me half an hour ago. You sounded really excited. You said you knew who had killed Lucy and that he was going to go to your room to get some vital evidence. And you told me to get someone to wait here till the door opened. Whoever opened the door would be the murderer. You said to make sure to hurt him first because he would be very dangerous. So I ran up to the bar and got Marek. And he brought a bottle of vodka to throw."

"Like a grenade," Marek confirmed. "So it would look like an accident."

"Like the vodka bottle just spontaneously exploded?" I asked kindly. Marek looked blank. "Never mind. Annichka, why did you think it was me?"

"Well, he said he was you. And he knew my name. And he sounded Amerikan."

"A distinctive accent. Guess that rules out a lot of people," I said, exasperated. But then I saw her brimming eyes and sighed. "Don't cry, dear, I know you meant well. And it would have been lovely if Lucy's murderer were lying here right now in a pool of blood and vodka. Instead I've got a sore shoulder and we don't even have anything to drink."

Marek extracted another bottle from his well-worn leather jacket and held it out to me.

"Didn't trust your aim, huh?" I took a long gulp of vodka. The slow hot trail down my gullet took my attention away from my throbbing shoulder. "Here, Annichka, you'd better have some too. You're shaking. Let's get away from this broken glass. That's better. Now let's try to figure out what is going on here."

"Maybe I was speaking to Lucy's murderer!" Annichka's voice went squeaky with excitement.

"Or an accomplice. In any event we know they wanted to kill me. Or to cause me seriously bodily harm."

"Why would they want to do that?" Annichka asked, puzzled. I blessed her silently. "What makes you dangerous?"

"I wish I knew. What a strange story about wanting to retrieve vital evidence from this room."

"Maybe we should search the room," Marek suggested.

I shrugged. "Sure. I have to pack anyway."

Embarrassingly, it was little Annichka who found the panties as Marek and I messed around through my assorted clutter. She cleared her throat noisily and held them up for our inspection: a pair of white cotton panties, speckled at the top and sides with faded brown stains. "I found these in your bed," Annichka said reproachfully. "Buried under the sheets and blankets."

"Oh my God. The missing panties." My head felt oddly light. I felt rather than saw Marek reach over to catch me as I fainted. The next thing I felt was the vodka bottle being forced between my lips and teeth like a cold glass nipple. I coughed and spluttered and blinked open my eyes.

"Are those Lucy's panties?" Marek asked, wide-eyed. "What are they doing in your bed?"

"Good questions." I nodded woozily. "I have a couple more myself. Are those blood stains on the panties? Who planted the panties in my bed?"

"It's normal for blood to get onto panties," Annichka said boastfully. I remembered with an inexplicable pang that she was just sixteen.

I shook my head. "Lucy's panties were always spotless."

"How do you know?" Annichka asked severely.

"Go check for yourself," I replied evasively. "You have a master key, don't you? Lucy's room is right next door."

Annichka shook her head. "But all her stuff is gone. They took it away this morning."

"The Amerikan Embassy?"

"No, someone came from New York."

"From New York?" I repeated stupidly.

"One of Mr. Xox's people. Professor Masaryk came down to the reception desk with this guy and told me to open Lucy's room for him.

"What did he look like?"

"He was really tall and thin and kind of hunched over. I didn't really see his face properly because he was wearing this ugly hat but his voice was strange. He was speaking through his nose and it kept cracking."

"Was he Amerikan?"

"Nooo…" Annichka sounded unsure. "I don't know. He was nice, though. He thanked me and patted me on my head. Oh, and he gave me his card also for the Amerikan embassy if they had any questions about Lucy's things. Here…" Annichka dug into her jeans. I noticed that they fit her very nicely. She pulled out a card and gave it to me.

"No first name. Dr. Koroviev. Exponential Investments. That's Xox's company. Why would they…" I blew out a long slow sigh. The memory of Xox's joyous rutting with Lucy in the room next door came vividly back to mind. Was Xox trying to protect himself? From what? Had Lucy been blackmailing him? "Do you guys know if Xox is married, by any chance?"

Marek and Annichka looked at each other in bewilderment and shook their heads. Annichka was still clutching her discovery. I felt guilty for getting these two involved. Did fingerprints transfer to panties? Suddenly a thought flared across my mind. "Annichka," I said urgently. "Show me exactly where you found those. No wait a moment." I sprinted across the room to the wash basin and watched in the mirror as Annichka bent over the bed, her slim body obscuring my view. The rocket in my mind exploded into spectacular fireworks. "Rasputin!" I screamed. "Fucking Rasputin planted them!"

Gingerly avoiding the broken glass by the door, we went up to the bar and Marek made us all steaming hot whisky toddies. We turned off the lights and huddled around the fireplace. I watched Annichka's young face glow pink and gold in the flickering light as I began piecing together an explanation.

"Fact one: Lucy was sleeping with Xox." Annichka gasped in surprise. I nodded grimly. "It's true, Annichka. I saw them doing it. Fact two: nobody knows where Lucy came from or how she got her job at the university."

"That's not true," Marek piped up unexpectedly. "I was here when Lucy came to the university. She was wearing a tight white T shirt." He closed his eyes and licked his lips. "Man, she looked good…" Annichka punched his beefy arm hard and swore at him in Czech. Marek reddened. "She had a backpack. It was right by her chair."

"Who interviewed her?"

Marek looked surprised. "Professor Masaryk of course. He was her boss, no?"

I whistled. "Well, isn't that interesting. Let's change Fact two. Professor Masaryk falsely denies knowing how Lucy was hired. Fact Three: Lucy's stuff was taken away by mysterious Dr. Koroviev from New York who works for Xox. Fact Four: Lucy's panties were missing from her body." I nodded at Marek and Annichka. "The police told us. Fact Five: Lucy's panties were planted in my bed by someone who came to visit me… on the night that Lucy disappeared and was probably murdered." My voice faltered as I remembered asking Rasputin about the blood on his hands. "He told me he had an accident at the train station."

"But what was Lucy doing at the train station?" Annichka asked sensibly. I told them about our evening at the wine bar with Steele and about Lucy's peculiar change of plans.

"Maybe your friend Steele did kill her," Marek pointed out. "And just dumped her body. We only have his word that Lucy actually decided not to go home with him and went to the train station instead."

"You're right." I sighed. "Unfortunately, we also only have my word that Rasputin ever came to Prague and that he put those panties in my bed. If that fat detective found out, he would definitely put me in jail and throw away the key…"

"We won't tell him."

"I know," I said gratefully. "But the fact is that someone is trying to make it look like I killed Lucy. First Rasputin plants those panties. Then you get this mysterious phone call saying that vital evidence is hidden in my room, hoping that either you would kill me or that those panties would get found. I've got to figure out what is going on before they come up with something else."

"What are you going to do?" Annichka asked.

"Rasputin said he was going to Berlin. I've got to track him down somehow. Can you hide those panties for me? The blood on them is the only evidence we've got that Rasputin was involved."

"Sure." Annichka giggled. "I'll put them under a pile of my own panties. No one will notice."

"Okay. Just don't wear them or wash them, all right? Lucy was definitely murdered. This may involve some very important people. Like Xox. Or Professor Masaryk." I watched my words sink into their sober young faces. "We all need to be very very careful. Whoever killed Lucy will probably strike again."

#GenghizInLove: Episode 19

I shivered as I stood outside the University of Truth and Justice building, waiting for a tram to carry me to my appointment with Steele. It was a cold grey day and the icy wind spat sleet in my face, like sporadic sniper fire announcing the approach of an advancing army, and even the vitamin I had taken could not entirely mask from me a chill premonition of the coming of winter. I felt an animal urge to find a snug shelter, to squirrel away a few nuts, to hibernate... I glanced around at the other passengers on the crowded tram as we slowly rode through the heart of Prague and I even half-envied them their shabby shoes, their drab nylon clothes, their bad haircuts, their shapeless bodies, their cramped apartments, their boring jobs, their security. Even half a loaf seemed better than no bread at all.

I got off the tram before my stop and walked over a bridge, a broad concrete span across the slow colorless wide expanse of the Vltava river. I was glad to enter the expensive warmth of the Cafe Classique, to walk across its marble floor towards the corner table where Steele sat morosely reading a newspaper, oblivious to the inviting glances and excessively short skirts of the painted women sitting all alone around him, sullenly ignoring even the intricately decorated moulding on the ceiling high above him.

"So what's with Tirana?" I asked Steele, sipping the cappuccino promptly brought to me by a portly waiter with a dignified white moustache and a manner redolent of old Vienna.

"Tirana?" Steele responded with fake cheeriness. "Why, it's the captivating capital of alluring Albania. The land of my dreams!"

"Why did they transfer you there?"

"They said I'd outlived my utility here." Steele's lower lip quivered. "Amerikan attaches should not be suspected of murdering their fellow nationals. The personnel department in Washington said that they had never heard of something like this before. They said that Congress would probably hold hearings. The Secretary of State is worried that Congress might slash the budget for the foreign service as a whole. Seriously bad publicity. I blamed it all on you but they said that I had to redeem myself somehow. So my boss, Shirley, told me to deal with shipping Lucy back home."

"Back to Utah?"

"Utah?" Steele looked puzzled. "Why Utah?"

"I've always wondered too. Lucy told me she was a Mormon. She told me that she had studied linguistics at Brigham Young University and that she was over here to convert people."

"First I've heard of it," Steele said. "Nobody seems to know anything about this girl's past. I called your university and they said that they had no records at all on Lucy. All they knew was her last name. Setton. No next of kin. No home address. Nobody even knew how she got her job at the university. Or at least that's what they said."

"Really? Whom did you speak with at the university?"

"Some old Czech guy, crotchety professor type. He was really snotty at first, wanted to know how old I was because he never again wanted to have anything to do with young Amerikans."

"It must have been Professor Masaryk," I said with glad recognition. The University of Truth and Justice already seemed very far away. Perhaps, one day it would seem so far away that I could tell funny stories about it. "She was his secretary. He really liked her."

"He sounded like he hated her. Said that she was nothing but trouble. Always on leave when he needed her."

"Huh!" I snorted. "He was always snivelling when she wasn't around to feed him vitamins."

"Vitamins?" Steele stared at me incredulously. I realized that I hadn't mentioned Lucy's propensity for dispensing her extraordinary mood-changing pills to everyone in the university. I told him all about it. "Sounds like psychotropic drugs to me," Steele responded robustly. "Vitamins, my ass!"

"You think Lucy was a drug dealer?" I asked cautiously. Steele and Luke had been good friends in boarding school but now that Steele worked for the government I wasn't sure whether to mention Luke's expertise in illegal substances. I decided not to tell Steele that I had asked Luke to analyse the vitamins.

"I don't know what to think about that chick," Steel replied dubiously. "The Records Office in Washington said that they had no records of any passport being issued to a Lucy Setton."

"But what about her personal belongings? She must have had photographs from home or something..."

"Nope." Steele shook his head decisively. "The university couldn't find a single thing that would identify her. It's like she had no past. No jewellery, no photographs, no letters. They turned her clothes over to us. They've all been bought in the last three months, all in boutiques here in Prague. Mostly stuff from Sellaton. Nothing distinctive, just whatever is cool these days."

I had a sudden inspiration. "What did she pay with?"

Steele stared at me. "Huh?"

"Cash? Credit card?" I was really excited. "She had a problem with money."

"An addiction or what?"

I shook my head impatiently. "No, she just couldn't grasp the concept. Cash to her was just dirty paper. She couldn't figure out why I wanted to be paid."

"Well, someone bought those clothes." Steel rubbed his chin with a long knobbly finger. "I think. Maybe they were shoplifted."

"Is there any way to check?"

"Not really. Who would remember? A tank top, a pair of jeans. A couple of dresses. White cotton panties. Generic stuff."

"And Masaryk couldn't tell you who hired her at the university?" The beginning of a suspicion began to coil lazily in my mind. Maybe Lucy really had no past. Or maybe someone didn't want to tell us about her past.

"I'm telling you. She came out of thin air."

"This is really strange." Why would Professor Masaryk hide information about Lucy? I had to return to the university to pack up my bags. Maybe I could ask a few questions.

"Tell me about it," Steele said bitterly. "I was the one kissing little Miss Thin Air, remember? Who knows what kind of diseases she had? I'll check out about this Mormon connection but I bet that Brigham Young and the Utah police say that they've never heard of her. We're stuck with a body and nowhere to send it. And everyone says it's my fault. So they're sending me to Tirana."

"Why?"

"Well, they want to check out Socks more carefully. Apparently they're beginning to wonder if he hasn't been double-timing the CIA all along. Not that he was ever a straight-forward agent or anything. As far as I know, the guy just passed on CIA bucks to dissidents, especially in this part of the world. Philanthropy is good cover, I guess. Nobody suspects you because they already suspect you, if you see what I mean."

"Yes," I said slowly, thinking of my friend Godfrey's remarks over the phone a few weeks earlier about the strategy of triple-bluff, of finessing one's way onto a higher level of uncertainty. "Yes, I see what you mean."

"And now, after Max Bulge fell off his yacht, all billionaires born in the Eastern Bloc are automatically suspect. So I'm supposed to find out about X-O-X's past in Albania. And because I worked on Wall Street they think I can find out whether he was a front for the Albanian communists. And since the Albanian regime was propped up by Beijing, maybe X-O-X has actually been working for the Chinese all along. In which case, maybe the revolutions of 1989 were all a Chinese plot? Shit." Steele scratched his head. "This is top-level CIA geopolitical analysis. Seriously classified stuff. Why the hell am I telling you all this?"

"It doesn't matter," I reassured him. "It's okay. I'm not working at the university anymore. I'm going to Berlin."

"Lucky bastard. They have cafes in Berlin. I bet they don't have places like this in Tirana," Steele grumbled. "I'll miss all this luxury. I've heard that they don't even have taxis in Tirana. Everyone rides around on bikes. It's exile. Deportation. A death sentence. It's the end of my career. It's like being posted in Rwanda or Burundi. I'll never make ambassador now. My father will be so disappointed. And it's all your fault."

"Oh, come on. Think positive," I urged brightly. "Maybe you'll do a great job and find out everything about X-O-X and then the Secretary of State will give you a medal."

"Fat chance. Maybe the Chinese will when they take over the world. This coffee's terrible. Let's switch to whisky."

"It isn't even noon yet."

"So what? They're all Muslims in Albania. I probably won't even be able to get a drink there. Adding injury to insult."

And so Steele and I sat all afternoon in the Cafe Classique drinking whisky after whisky, reluctantly brought to us by the portly waiter, his nostrils dilated with dignified disdain and his wizened neck shaking in palsied disapproval of the atrocious alcohol abuse he was being forced to abet. I felt adrift in a clammy fog through which I dimly saw a pretty blonde in a white dress sitting on a cloud, one little finger demurely raised to her rosebud mouth, one azure eye closed in an enigmatic wink. I had the uncanny feeling that I hadn't heard the last of Lucy Setton. Or her vitamins. Or the University of Truth and Justice. Or its mysterious founder, the cryptic Mister Xox. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. To err is human, to forget divine.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 18

After my arrest and interrogation in connection with Lucy's murder, I found myself ostracized by everyone I ran into in the corridors and rooms of the University of Truth and Justice. Lucy had been a general favorite: her wide azure eyes, the vitamins she had dispensed so freely, and, above all, her angelic demeanor had endeared her to all. People were too polite to spit at me in public and I tried to bury myself in my work and to drown my sorrows in strong drink. I hoped that the storm would soon pass over and that I would once again be loved and respected.

To no avail. Everything was going wrong. Yeltsin had a heart attack and the Xox Foundation office in Bucharest was invaded by angry pig farmers protesting global capitalism and Xox's unwillingness to invest in a sausage factory in Ceaucescuville. Franta, our computer repairman, got a splinter in his finger which got infected and the doctors were threatening to amputate. A cyclone destroyed half of Bangladesh, killing 50,000 head of cattle and stranding twenty million people without food, shelter and drinking water. Three Bulgarian students got pregnant in the same week by the same man, a drunken florist across the street who believed in keeping his customers happy at all costs. Lady Snatcher was declared Person of the Century by Newsday magazine. And I was just beginning to get used to the stares and the polite insincere smiles and the nervous giggles when Professor Masaryk had me summoned to his office. He sat behind his desk, ostentatiously frowning at some papers. After a while he looked up, took off his glasses, and stared at me suspiciously. "Well, what do you want?" he snapped.

"You called me, sir," I said patiently. "They said you wanted to see me."

"Oh, yes, it is possible that you may be telling the truth," Masaryk conceded. "But I am very busy and I don't have much time to talk to you." He linked his hands together and his brow wrinkled in thought. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and waited. "Nevertheless, we must discuss this problem. We cannot evade the issue. It is always best to look things in the eye. Stare trouble in the face." Masaryk nodded weightily and sighed noisily. "That is my advice to you, young man. Confess!"

"Excuse me?"

"Confession was the great innovation of the Catholic Church," Masaryk went on ponderously. "A great relief for the sinner to feel the weight of sin lifted off his shoulders. As we all know, psychoanalysis is the pale substitute developed by our secular age. I understand they have very good psychoanalysts in our jails these days."

"Professor Masaryk," I said, grinding the words through my teeth. "I have nothing to confess. I did not kill Lucy. I had nothing to do with Lucy's sad demise besides identifying the body. Now will you please excuse me? I think I had better go speak to Lord Hades."

I turned on my heel and left the room. As I slammed the door I seemed to hear again from a great distance the plaintive cry, "Confess!" I strode down the corridor, knocked sharply at Hell's door, and went in. Hell was, as usual, writing. With his usual courtesy he rose and offered me a chair.

"Otto, I would like to offer you my resignation."

"Best thing in the circumstances," Hell said impassively. "Don't like to kick a man when he's down. But Masaryk told me everything this morning."

"Otto, since I no longer work for you, may I ask you a question?"

"You just did," Hell growled. "What is it?"

"Just exactly what did Professor Masaryk tell you?"

"You were arrested. Police think you did it. Embarrassment to the university. Asked me to get rid of you."

"Purely to set the record straight, Otto, the police released me because I proved that I could not be the serial killer for whom they are looking."

Hell shrugged. "Doesn't really matter, does it?" he asked reasonably. "What matters is perception. Can't have people thinking you did it. Bad for the image of the university."

"Why is my presence bad for the image of the university?"

"Seen Wiederkaufen lately?" Hell inquired ironically. "Man's going bananas. Wrote an open letter to Xox telling him that I was senile and that you were some sort of evil Asiatic eminence grise taking over the university for your own nefarious ends. Suggested that I should be retired and that he should be promoted from head of his department to take over the university for a while."

"But that's crazy!" I gasped. "Professor Hohenstaufen can't even run his own department. All the European Studies students are constantly threatening to go on strike because they don't want to learn how to curtsey."

"Man's mad," Hell replied laconically. "But he's got allies in the university senate. Attila Ugh in Budapest is still furious with us for postponing his courses on ethnic cleansing."

"What will you do?"

Hell shrugged. "Nothing. Tempest in a teacup."

"What should I do?"

"Lie low for a while. Let people forget. Maybe the police will find the killer. Go back to Amerika."

I winced. I knew that my mother would eventually find out and I dreaded the scene that would follow her discovery that her only son was a brutal sex-killer. I offered Otto my hand. "I enjoyed working for you," I said huskily, my voice breaking. I turned away to hide the single tear that was coursing down my cheek. I knew Hell hated displays of emotion.

I went back to my office and took my sole personal possession, a gold Mont Noir fountain pen I had inherited from my father, back up to my room. I sat down on the side of the bed, mechanically popped the last of Lucy's `vitamins' into my dry mouth, put my head between my hands, and drearily wondered what I should do now. Should I pack? I looked around at the untidy mounds of clothes dispersed all across my room and my depression grew deeper. I wanted to get into my unmade bed and pull the tangled heap of blankets over my head and to burrow blindly like a mole into a rich dark tunnel of careless velvet sleep… However, as usual, the vitamin soon took effect. A few minutes later, I was striding briskly down the corridor, whistling loudly, rhythmically clapping my hands; my head was high, my chest stuck out, my gut was sucked in, and a mysterious melody in my head grew louder and more distinct, bright voices chiming together in complex counterpoint, a shining carillon rising to ecstatic clarity... And then I was singing along to a brassy jazz tune, waggling my hips and shaking my head to the rhythm, as I took the elevator down to the reception desk, down, a dark eminence falling, a solitary majesty cloaked in resplendent robes of dark purple velvet:



Waves breaking on the sands

Better learn to read your hands

There is no future, the die is cast

And the first shall be the last

So don't you worry about a thing

But raise your voice high and sing



(Refrain) Peace and love, little baby

God's in heaven, maybe...



You can't know who I am

And I don't really give a damn

But when you hear that trumpet blast

And you have to face your past

Get down on your knees and pray

Or just smile bitterly and say...



Annichka looked up in alarm as I marched up to the reception desk, lustily singing the refrain. "You have messages," she nervously squeaked and held out two pieces of paper with trembling hands. I read them, still whistling. Call Steele and would I please try not to avoid offending his boss when she picked up the phone? And would I call Bob? Bob, the long-haired liberal from Santa Kruz? I called him first.

"Hi, how are ya," a voice drawled. "I've been trying to get a hold of you all day. Immanuel says hi. Hey, listen, how about givin' us an exclusive interview? You know, about this murder 'n' all."

"Wait. Is this for that English language newspaper you started here?"

"Yeah, for Prahahaha!. It would really boost our circulation, you know, if we could have a scoop. Exclusive interview with sex-maniac, that sort of thing."

"Look, Bob," I said patiently. "I hate to disappoint you but I actually didn't kill her. I'm sorry."

"That's a shame. We were kinda counting on this interview." Bob sounded disappointed but he cheered up quickly. "Immanuel and Divka don't think you did it either. We're thinking of polling our readers, you know, asking them to call in with their opinions. Say, did the police beat you up? We could do an exclusive on police brutality towards foreigners."

"How much will you pay me?"

"Hey... we're journalists. We got ethics. How much do you want? We don't have much money. We're just starting up the paper, you know."

"How about the price of a train ticket to Berlin?"

"Deal," Bob said happily. "You mind if we bring in the racist angle? Like if we take a few pictures of you being beaten up by skinheads or something?"

"No, that's just fine. You find the skinheads, okay?"

We made an appointment for next afternoon. I was exquisitely polite to the bitchy lady at the Amerikan Embassy when I asked to speak to Steele.

"Hey," Steele said despondently. "I've been transferred."

"I've been fired. Where are they transferring you?"

"Tirana." Steele laughed bitterly. "Because of my financial expertise."

"What are you talking about?"

"I can't talk on the phone. You want to get a drink? Meet me at the Cafe Classique in half an hour, will you?"

"I'll be there."

As I hung up, I felt the warm pressure of a soft hand on mine. I looked up in surprise into Annichka's pretty downcast face. I was touched, literally: it was my first physical contact with another human being in days. Little Annichka's big brown eyes were wet. "Are you going to leave Prague?"

"I think I had better get out of town for a while, Annichka."

"I don't think you killed Lucy," she whispered.

"Thanks," I replied, sincerely.

"We never played with crayons," she murmured. "And you never gave me any drugs, like you promised."

"I know, sweetie," I said sadly.

"Will you come back?" A solitary tear rolled down Annichka's porcelain cheek.

"Yes."

She raised her eyes and looked at me like a mistrustful baby. "Promise?"

I gently wiped the tear from her cheek and cajoled her into a smile. "I promise. I will return. In fact, I'll come right back after I've had a drink. Don't cry, all right? Everything will be just fine. Peace and love!"

#GenghizInLove: Episode 17

A jogger found Lucy early the next morning, peacefully hanging from a low bough of an old oak tree in a quiet park in a pleasant residential suburb of Prague, her shapely legs swinging and her swollen tongue protruding. The jogger, a well-preserved round-faced blonde woman named Irena Golemova, passed the body three times as she conscientiously ran her customary four laps around the park. On the first lap, her vision still obscured by lack of sleep and by the thick early morning mist, Mrs. Golemova believed that she had seen a particularly large beehive. On her second circuit, she felt a sentiment of vague benevolence towards this athletic young girl who was doing gymnastics at so early an hour. Mrs. Golemova was looking forward to the forthcoming Olympic Games in which she very much hoped that the Czech team would acquit itself well, bringing honor to the nation and setting a good example to the country's youth. It was only in the middle of her third lap, some three hundred meters downwind of the corpse, that Mrs. Golemova, still running, burst into hysterical screams, much to the bewilderment of a retired postal clerk who was walking his dog, a large bull terrier bitch named Matka.

The Czech police, efficient as ever, immediately concluded that the Park Killer had struck again in the latest of a series of outrages which had begun in November 1989, after Good King Wenceslas, flushed with the euphoria of the Velvet Revolution, had issued a general amnesty to all prisoners in Communist jails. The Park Killer had cunningly changed his modus operandi in this case, however; the corpse bore no sign of sexual violence, its hair had not been chopped off, and its clothing had not been ripped to shreds. The only thing missing were the panties. But this wily maneuver failed to deceive Lieutenant Boruvka, the experienced detective investigating the sixteen murders committed by the Park Killer: Boruvka immediately began to trace the whereabouts of all prostitutes who had not been seen in Wenceslas Square during the past two days. Boruvka's uncanny intuition also told him that the foreign labels on the corpse's clothing meant that the Park Killer had recently bought or stolen a complete set of women's garments, probably from one of the international boutiques which had recently opened outlets in Prague. Boruvka perceptively noticed that the clothes did not appear brand-new. He realized that this was a clue of vital importance since it obviously implied that the Park Killer was a transvestite whose secret fetish for Amerikan underwear had finally come out into the open. In fact, as Boruvka explained to his boss, Captain Jahoda, who stared with an air of stupefied admiration at his pudgy subordinate, the Park Killer's sexual deviance had finally overpowered his rationality. The very fact that the latest corpse had not even been sexually assaulted proved that the killer was not actually interested in sex itself, but rather in eliminating women since they frustrated the killer's desire to be a woman himself. Moreover, the Park Killer did not want to be just any woman: he wanted to be a Western woman. Czechoslovakia had been a closed society during those crucial years in which the killer's sexual orientation had been decisively formed. The killer had clearly been unhinged by the sheer rapidity with which young Amerikan women flooded into the country after the Velvet Revolution. At first, the killer had been content to express his hostility by violently attacking Czech prostitutes but now his psychosis had reached a stage in which no foreign woman was safe in Prague anymore. Captain Jahoda immediately agreed to launch a public information campaign warning Western women in Prague to guard their underwear and lives carefully. Young Czech women merely had to behave in a moral manner.

And so, later that morning when I came down to make a phone call to my friend Steele, I found cute little Annichka as usual behind the reception desk, but dressed in a long magenta skirt and a severe mauve tunic whose tight long sleeves ended at her wrists in a froth of ancient yellow lace. Her short dark curly hair had been painstakingly bound into two unruly plaits and a large cardboard hand-lettered placard hung lopsidedly from a loop of rope around her neck.

"What does the sign say?" I asked curiously. "And what's with the fancy dress?"

"It says that I am a nice Czech girl," Annichka said petulantly. "I'm not, but my mother said that I had to wear the sign. And she made me wear my grandmother's clothes as well."

"Is it some sort of national custom or something?"

Annichka giggled, but then a worried look came over her pretty young face. "No, it's because of this new murder in the park. Look!" She waved a tabloid at me. "It's horrible! The police are saying that all women who look like foreigners will be raped and murdered."

"Has a foreigner been murdered or something?" I looked at the paper but I could only see a full-page picture of a fat middle-aged man looking pleased with himself. "Is that the killer?"

"No, it's the detective investigating the case. The police aren't giving any details about the victim. They're just saying that she was a young woman. Oh, I don't feel safe anymore!"

"You'll be all right," I said soothingly but my mind was far from calm. "Just keep wearing the fancy dress. Do they think she was a foreigner? Have you seen Lucy anywhere?"

"No, I haven't seen her..." Annichka's big brown eyes widened. "I haven't seen her for days! You don't think..."

"Annichka, I'd better make a phone call," I said soberly. "Can you call the Amerikan Embassy?" Annichka nodded, dialled a couple of numbers, spoke briefly, and then handed the phone to me. "Hullo. I want to speak to Steele Remington. Look, I'm sure he works at the Embassy. It's extremely urgent. Look, lady, I do not give a fuck about how busy you are. I would not give a fuck even if you were Shirley Dimple herself. Oh, really? Well, get off your fat ass and find Steele for me. Now. Yeah, well, the same to you, bitch. Thank you." I glowered at the phone. Annichka looked taken aback at my language. I shrugged. At that moment I really didn't care about some starchy paper-pusher's hurt feelings. "Steele. Where's Lucy?"

"Hey, bud!" Steel sounded cheerful. I had a sudden vision of my mild-mannered old school friend laughing insanely as he chased a frightened Lucy with a machete. "What's up? My boss said she'd never been so insulted in her life."

"She said she had never heard of you. Where's Lucy?"

"How should I know?" Steele sounded puzzled. "She changed her mind about going home with me that night. She said she wanted to go to the train station."

"The train station?" I asked incredulously.

"Yeah. I don't know why but she was really insistent. One minute we were kissing, you know, and then the next..."

"Maybe you have bad breath."

"I don't think so," Steele said huffily. "I think your little pal is a little crazy. She said she had to change bodies. What is that supposed to mean?"

"Steele. Lucy has disappeared. Have you heard about this murder?"

"What murder? Oh, yeah, the body they found in the park this morning, right?" Steele laughed. "We've had at least five hundred phone calls this morning from all these worried mothers in the States saying that they haven't heard from their daughters recently. Look, there are millions of Amerikan chicks in Prague. What makes you think it's Lucy? She's probably gone for a holiday to Germany or something."

"She did ask me what Berlin was like," I said slowly.

"See. Well, there you go. She probably decided to go visit friends in Berlin."

"Steele. Lucy has disappeared," I repeated. "Nobody has seen her in nearly a week. She left no messages. She didn't tell her boss. She didn't tell me."

"Well, what do you want me to do?" Steele sounded tired.

"I want you to call the police and to arrange for us to see the body."

"Oh, come on, pal," Steele yelped. "Do you know what the Czech police are like? They'll probably arrest us or something."

"I'll be waiting for your call."

It took Steele two and a half hours to arrange everything. He sounded furious when he called back. "Okay. Everything's set. Meet me at the morgue in ten minutes flat." I hastily noted down the address and asked Annichka to get me a taxi. "I hope you're right," Steele said nastily, slamming down the phone.

I was right. The highlights of her ash-blonde halo had faded away as she lay with closed eyes on a steel table and there were small spots of decay spreading like age marks on the dainty little hands folded neatly over her breasts, in the perpetual twilight of the cold morgue. But it was Lucy's body, all right. Unfortunately, Steele was right as well. The fat man investigating the case had both of us arrested right away on suspicion of murder.

"See what you've done now?" Steele snarled as we sat in our prison cell, waiting to be questioned. "I'll never be able to live this down. It'll be in all the papers. This is the stuff of headlines." His steel-rimmed glasses glinted accusingly. I grimaced at my hands. I needed a manicure. "`Amerikan Attache Accused'," Steele intoned. "`Death-Dealing Diplomat To Dangle.' `Sex-Starved Slayer Spoils States' Standing'."

"Did you kill her?" I asked curiously.

Steele gasped. "Oh, my God. You've known me since we were in school together. Did I look like a killer back then? Do I look like a rapist now?" He buried his head in his large hands. "My best friend once upon a time," his muffled voice moaned. "And he thinks I'm capable of murder. God alone knows what my boss will say," Steele wailed. "She'll probably lead me by the hand to the electric chair."

"If you didn't kill Lucy then why are you so afraid?"

Steele made a face at me. "If we didn't kill Lucy then why are we under arrest?" he mimicked.

"They just want to talk to us."

"Great. Okay, let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that these fucking ex-Communist policemen don't want to frame Westerners. Maybe they're nice guys. Maybe they'll offer us coffee and a cigarette and tell us how much they like police shows on Amerikan television and then they'll let us go home. It's still not going to look good, you know, pal. Shirley Dimple will not be happy when she hears about how one of her attaches was questioned by the Czech police on suspicion of the murder of an Amerikan citizen. People will give me funny looks. A little cloud of uncertainty will poison their minds. `Did he kill her?' they will wonder and their smiles will be brittle and insincere and just a little bit too fucking polite. Pretty girls will refuse to go out for a drink with me unless they can bring along a seven-foot tall Marine to stop me from strangling them. My sex-life is ruined! My only consolation is..." Steele grinned at me mirthlessly. "The only thing that prevents me from throwing my glasses on the floor and stamping on them and slashing my wrists with shards of broken glass right this moment is that... your life is ruined as well."

"Glad it makes you happy." I morosely looked around at the bleak little detention room and pictured spending my life in jail. At that moment, two fat policemen waddled in. We rose. They motioned us back to our seats.

"I am Lieutenant Boruvka," the one who had arrested us said. "And this is Detective-Captain Jahoda. We want to ask you a few questions. Would you like some coffee?" He offered us cigarettes. Steele grabbed one. Boruvka lit it for him.

"Do you like underwear?" Jahoda barked at me suddenly.

"I wear it," I replied cautiously. Jahoda looked triumphantly at his lieutenant. With a pang of unease, I remembered pestering Lucy for her panties. I'm not big on sniffing but I like to fondle. But she had never given me any. For one terrifying moment, I wondered if I had in fact killed Lucy for her underwear and promptly forgotten all about it.

"Any particular kind of underwear?" Boruvka asked insinuatingly.

"Boxer shorts. Long sleeved T shirts in cold weather." I desperately tried to remember other varieties of underwear I had worn in my life. "When I go hiking, I wear long silk underwear."

"Silk," Boruvka breathed. Jahoda shook his head sadly at my depravity. Boruvka almost looked disappointed that I had broken so quickly. He turned his attention to Steele, but only as a matter of routine. "And you, Mister Remington?"

"What are you guys trying to get at?" Steele asked angrily. "I want to call the Embassy lawyer."

"You are not in Amerika, Mister Remington," Jahoda said smugly. "We have seen your television programs. We know your rights. But you don't have such rights in our country."

"I have diplomatic immunity," Steele responded belligerently.

"Just answer the question," Boruvka urged politely. "I'm sure we will let you go." His glance flickered briefly past me. I felt convicted.

"All right, I like wearing my girlfriend's panties," Steele said impatiently. "She's back in Amerika and I miss her terribly so she sends me her underwear by registered mail and I sniff it and... Hey, what is the matter with you guys?" he yelped as Boruvka whistled shrilly and a horde of grim-faced policemen burst into the room and began dragging Steele out of his chair by his armpits. "Let me go! What did I say?"

"What have you done with those panties, you filthy pervert?" Jahoda snarled, clouting Steele across the ear with a beefy fist. "Decadent capitalist pig. Admit it. You killed the girl and then stole her panties."

"Captain Jahoda," I interjected with a calm I did not feel. "If he killed Lucy then why did we take the trouble to come down to the morgue to identify her?"

Boruvka cast me a contemptuous look. "Obviously because he could clear himself that way."

"Can't you take a joke?" Steele called plaintively, his long legs slithering over the grimy linoleum. "I was only joking. I don't wear my girlfriend's underwear! I don't even have a girlfriend!"

"You don't have a girlfriend now because you killed her!" Boruvka bellowed. "Do you deny that you like women's underwear?"

Steele gasped for air. "I deny it. I despise women's underwear. It gets in the way. I despise everything even remotely connected with women... Guys, not again!" he pleaded as Boruvka blew his whistle again and the policemen rushed in again. "What did I say this time?"

"You said you hate women," Jahoda sneered, puffing smoke at Steele's prostrate face. "Where were you on the night of August 22, 1991? May 26, 1991? April 8, 1991? March 19, 1991? March 10, 1991? February 13, 1991? February 4, 1991? December 4, 1990? November 16, 1990? October 15, 1990? October 7, 1990? September 8, 1990? Do you deny that you knew this woman you have identified? Or Jana Movotna? Martina Pavratilova? Helena Zhukova? Well?"

"Stop," Steele begged. "I have no idea what you are talking about. The dates mean nothing to me. Nor do the names. The only person I knew was Lucy. And I had only met her that night. He introduced her to me." Steel pointed at me. Following his compass finger the two detectives turned towards me as though magnetized.

"Yes," I confirmed. "I introduced Lucy to Steele. We went out for a drink together. And then I never saw her again."

"I see it all..." Boruvka said softly. "You two work as a pair. You stalk these innocent girls. Well, some of them are prostitutes but you evil Westerners take advantage of their trust and you lure these poor unsuspecting little women to their deaths. Captain, we were wrong all along! So far we have been assuming that only one maniac was committing these heinous crimes. But actually it was these two fiends collaborating together." Boruvka nodded bravely, stood to attention, and saluted. "I take full responsibility for the error, sir!"

Jahoda shook his head magnanimously. "It was not your fault, Lieutenant Boruvka. How could we have known? The cunning of these devils..."

"Wait a second." I interrupted. "All these dates you mentioned. I wasn't even in this country then."

"Hey, that's right!" Steele shouted from the floor. "Me neither! I was in Washington until a month ago!"

Jahoda and Boruvka gaped at us. "Can you prove it?" Jahoda asked dubiously. Without a word, Steele and I fished out our passports (never leave home without it) and handed them over. Boruvka and Jahoda pulled out their reading glasses and flipped the pages carefully. They looked across at each other and sighed. "Go home!" Jahoda snarled crossly. "Don't leave the country without informing us. Decadent Western pigs..." he muttered to himself as we saluted and ran away, exchanging high-fives as we left the building.

"But who killed her if we didn't?" I asked as I got into a taxi.

Steele thumped the side of his head and stuck out his tongue idiotically. "Let the police ponder that one!" he giggled hysterically. "Call me," he yelled as my taxi pulled away. "Let's go drinking together. From now on nobody else will go out with us anyway..."

The news of our arrest and interrogation took up most of the next morning's newspapers. Annichka at the reception desk translated bits for me. One newspaper referred to Steele as the Amerikan ambassador's closest adviser. Another paper believed that he was the CIA representative in Prague. I was either Vietnamese or Indonesian or Malay or North Korean but everyone agreed that I was up to no good in Prague and ought to be deported to my country of origin. An important skinhead group were rumored to be hatching plans to kidnap me and then kick my head in and cut off my genitals for `defiling the honor of White women.'

"Oh, God. I need a drink," I groaned. "Come and have a drink with me, Annichka. Cheer me up. Tell me about your grandfather's preferences in drugs."

"Uh... Actually, I really can't have a drink right now," Annichka squeaked fearfully. I looked at her big brown eyes made even larger by terror and nodded sadly. She eventually relented but I noticed that she stood as far away from me as she could as we rode up in the elevator. "Marek's in the bar right now, isn't he?"

"Yeah, Annichka," I said heavily. "Don't worry. He's a big guy. He'll protect you from me."

"Oh, I didn't mean it that way," Annichka protested but for some reason our drink together failed entirely to cheer me up. Steele had been right. I was now a certified sex-killer and a pariah.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 16

"Where the devil is Lucy?"

I looked up in surprise. Professor Masaryk seemed agitated. His tie was askew and the buttons of his rumpled suit jacket were in the wrong holes. It was Monday morning and I didn't feel like telling him that his favourite secretary was probably carousing in the arms of an Amerikan embassy flack. "I'm afraid I don't know, sir," I lied sympathetically. "I saw her on Friday. Maybe she took a few days off."

"I don't know how I can work with you people!" the Director of the Prague college of the University of Truth and Justice said vehemently. He exasperatedly flipped through the papers on my desk with shaking hands and glared at the beer bottles and pizza boxes in my trashcan and at the bent butts in my ashtray. "How can we rely on you? You are untidy. You are irresponsible. You drink, smoke, and eat fattening foods. You take days off. You are young!"

"Don't worry, sir, we'll get older," I said, emptying the ashtray into the garbage in an effort to calm him.

"Yes, but it will be too late by then!" Masaryk replied heatedly. I bent to pick up the papers that he had sent flying all over the parquet. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled around on the floor looking at each piece of paper. "Where is it, oh, where is it? Otto will shout at me, I know it..." he mumbled tearfully.

"What exactly are you looking for, sir?"

"The agenda of this afternoon's meeting," Professor Masaryk replied, his cheeks waxen with worry. "Lucy typed it and sent copies to everyone, and now I've lost my copy. And she's not here. Oh, Lucy, where are you? Nobody has given me vitamins for days!"

I handed The Director a sheet of paper and a pill. His enormous sigh of relief made the papers on the floor fly like confetti all over the room and his large sunken eyes jumped back into place. He ran out of the room, whistling and skipping. I blinked a few times and picked up the remaining papers. I noticed a small crumpled piece of coarse toilet paper with a blotchy scrawled message on it. It was my turn to sigh. My boss, Otto Hell, had the unhygienic habit of scribbling his memoranda in the hours he spent closeted in the water closet. I tried to decipher his latest missive. It seemed to read `Gone fishing. Best wishes, Otto.' I looked out the window and pouted. It was a beautiful afternoon outside and I wished Hell had taken me fishing with him.

And as I sat in the dim conference room, panelled from ceiling to floor with somber walnut wood, reluctantly inhaling its musty odors of wood polish and stale air, I dreamed of the shady bank of a gurgling brook, of the drowsy drone of cicadas, of the dappled iridescence of leafy trees in bright sunlight, of pretty girls in white dresses and straw hats, of wicker picnic baskets and thick green bottles and thin stemmed glasses of champagne and bowls of strawberries, of blithe laughter and naive games, sweet dreams of an innocence I had never known... With a start, I realized that the meeting had already begun and that Professor Masaryk was impatiently asking me to take the minutes.

"As chairman, in the absence of our rector Lord Hades, I call this meeting to order," the Director began pompously. "As you know, we are gathered here to organize the activities of the Department of Culture. Novak is the chairman of the department but..." Masaryk turned to Professor Jiri Novak with an avuncular smile and palpitated his shoulder with a series of painful squeezes. "I hope he will let me give a few suggestions from time to time as an older colleague." Novak giggled, wriggled his neck from side to side, muttered something inaudible, and surreptitiously massaged his shoulder, making sure that nothing was broken. "We must introduce our students to the delights of culture!" the Director exclaimed excitedly, spreading his arms out wide. "To the delights of Central European culture! Welcome to Prague! This is what we must say to them. Welcome to the world of Schopenhauer, Schnitzler, Weininger, Freud, and Kafka! Welcome to the charms of Weltschmerz!"

A short balding man crossed his arms across his barrel chest and yawned ostentatiously. "Ah, yes, Piknik!" Masaryk exclaimed warmly. "You must give us the benefit of your advice." Everyone stared curiously at the famous ex-dissident. Cain Piknik cocked his head back on his thick neck and stared at the ceiling through closed eyes. A hush fell over the room, broken a few moments later by the sound of loud rhythmic snoring. "We will let him think," Masaryk said graciously. He turned again to Novak. "Now, Jiri. Introduce your staff to me. Tell me what they will teach our students."

"Well, Tomas..." Novak began hesitantly. "Shouldn't we begin with what we will teach?"

Masaryk seemed surprised. "Why, sociology, of course! I thought it had all been settled, my dear fellow."

"Well, Tomas, I don't think it has been settled..." A fierce red glint began to glow at the back of Novak's normally mild brown eyes as he rolled up the sleeves of his jacket in preparation for the usual brawl.

I gathered up my courage and decided to intervene. "Gentlemen, with all possible respect," I said firmly. "May I remind you of Lord Hades' solution to this issue? Neither Philosophy nor Sociology, the great man has said, but Culture." I sat back, satisfied, having said my piece.

Both men looked disconcerted and dissatisfied, like boxers who had been stopped from entering the ring at the very beginning of a championship fight and told that the prize money would be split between them and that there was no reason in the world for them to inflict brain damage on one another. "But what is culture?" Novak said rebelliously. Masaryk didn't seem to know the answer to that one either. Silence sat heavily in the room.

Piknik opened one eye briefly. "Half and half," he said enigmatically in a husky baritone and then closed his eye again. Satisfied snores again punctuated the baffled silence.

Immanuel meekly raised a hand at the end of the table. "I think I know what Mr. Piknik means. He wants us to split the spoils. We should hire one person from each related discipline. A sociologist." Masaryk nodded. "A philosopher." Novak nodded. "An architect." Masaryk nodded. "A philologist." Novak nodded. "An anthropologist." Both men shook their heads. "A historian." Both men burst out simultaneously in horrified disagreement.

"Coffee," the oracle murmured huskily. Eager hands filled a cup and raised it to Piknik's lips. He drank it down in a gulp, smacked his lips, shook himself, opened his eyes wide, and spoke in a pleasant tenor voice. "Are you a philosopher, my boy? I thought so. Only someone trained to decipher cryptic utterances pregnant with profound meaning can understand what I mean. This is the problem with the editorials I write for my newspaper. Novak and you can teach philosophy. Masaryk, I will persuade Flysenko, the famous Polish sociologist, to join you. And Hachek Katastrofski can be your architect. He is young and he still has some fascist leanings which proves that he is a bright lad with ambition. I know nothing about philology. I must go. I have a plane to catch. Be so kind as to give me ten thousand dollars immediately as my regular consultation fees. Thank you very much. I will mention your department and this university favorably in my next editorial. You will then have many Polish students. You will give me five thousand dollars per student. My fees for headhunting. The circulation of my newspaper is now over seven million since I decided to print soft pornography. Can you explain to me why men like to look at large uncovered breasts when they eat breakfast? I must run. Is the limousine downstairs? My private jet is waiting. Being a dissident was much more fun. Please give my best regards to Xox. Goodbye." Piknik walked rapidly around the conference table, shaking hands cordially with everyone except Divka, whose hand he raised to his lips with a fervent flourish and kissed with a self-satisfied smack, and then, slamming doors and whistling heartily, the oracle was gone.

"I know a philologist," Divka said uncertainly, breaking the thoughtful silence. "But I don't know if she will join the department."

"Why not?" Masaryk and Novak both looked offended. "We are both famous intellectuals. We have won prizes. Our weighty tomes are published in many languages. No conference is complete without our presence. Surely it would be an honor for any woman to work for us."

"I'm talking about Marya Madlenova," Divka said succinctly. Man whistled softly and both Masaryk and Novak looked alarmed. As well they might: Madlenova was not merely a world-famous intellectual who had won every single prize going, including the Goebbel for her nostalgic novel Before Calvary, and whose incredibly erudite academic writings were translated into every language, and whose presence at a conference would be reported on the front page of the New York Times; she was a legend. The only daughter of a Bulgarian diplomat of secretly noble extraction, Madlenova had been given a special scholarship at the age of sixteen to study philology in Paris. Within a year the Bulgarian sylph had become the last muse of the ageing Jean-Saul Fartre: in the renewed vigor of this senile infatuation, Fartre wrote his late masterpiece, the Critique of Heartless Reason, and died a year later, leaving his papers, library, and enormous fortune to Madlenova, who, catapulted to prominence by this inheritance and by the student revolt of 1968 in which she played a conspicuous role, published a series of immensely difficult books and became a full professor of the prestigious College des Hautes Etudes at the age of twenty-seven. Rumor had it that Madlenova's rise to fame and fortune was largely caused by her blinding beauty and by the utterly heartless calculation with which she chose her lovers, rumors which made Madlenova the role model of such aspiring feminist philosophers as my friend Lulu.

"Deride tells me that Madlenova is a very... difficult woman," Jiri Novak said nervously.

"It would be an incredible coup to have her," Man declared. His eyes shone with enthusiasm. Divka looked a little worried.

"We will have to ask Lord Hades." Professor Masaryk looked at me timorously. "Will you ask him?" I nodded. "Good," Masaryk said, brightening. "I think we have resolved everything, haven't we? Otto will be pleased with us. But where, oh, where is Lucy?"