Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Read online

  “My grandfather came from Romania. Northern Transylvania, actually. My grandmother came from the countryside of old Estonia but her brother ran away to Prague and disappeared. No one ever heard from him again. Perhaps he married and had children. We are family, perhaps, child. My grandmother looked for her brother in Prague on her way to New York with my grandfather but never found him. She learned how to read the cards while she was there, in Prague. She taught me how to read the cards when I was a little girl, here in New York.” The woman looked at her and smiled. “You seem so lost, child. So very, very lost. How can I help you find your way?

  “Yes! I will give you a really splendid reading with the cards. For other people, my child, I would have to charge fifty dollars for this. But I will give it to you, give it with the hope that it will help you find your way in this world. Would you like that, child?” she asked.

  Magdalena was speechless. Her throat was dry. She nodded and licked her lips with anticipation.

  The gypsy shuffled the tarot deck again, the cards crackling in her fingers as they flew from hand to hand. She cut the deck and laid the cards out: three in a descending line, three more ascending, making a “V.” She added another card at the downward point. Seven cards altogether. She studied them.

  “This is an old Czech way to spread the cards, dear.” She looked at Magdalena and smiled. “Did you think to come to New York and have cards read for you in an old Bohemian style?”

  Magdalena shook her head without taking her eyes from the cards spread out on the table.

  The old woman turned her attention back to the first card she had laid down. It showed a blindfolded woman, her arms tied behind her, standing in a swampy marshy area. Swords were planted in the mud around her, eight of them. It was the eight of Swords.

  “At home and with your family and friends you have always felt afraid, tied down, paralyzed,” the fortuneteller began. “You were so afraid of making a mistake that it seemed better not to act at all.” The gypsy paused and shook her head slightly. Magdalena thought she heard the old woman cluck her tongue quietly. Just like her grandmother. Magdalena nodded. This underscored the message of the Hierophant card in the first row of three the gypsy had put down.

  “Next, this card about your hopes is the High Priestess. You know the universe is larger than that part which you can see, touch, taste, or smell. There is more to the world than you have seen or experienced. You know that. The invisible reality is so much grander, but you have not been able to access it. You are hoping to contact that larger, invisible aspect of the universe and establish yourself in relation to it. You want to enter that portion of the world but don’t know how. Yet.

  “The Hermit is in the ‘friends’ and ‘relationship’ position. You are very quiet around your friends. You watch. You listen. You learn. But you feel alone. You take in everything but say little in return. You chew on what you have heard and sometimes you agree and sometimes you don’t. You hold yourself back somewhat from the group and feel yourself not really a part of your friends.

  “This next card is very important. If the High Priestess is about your hopes, it is about hopes that you are conscious of, aware of. This next card is about your deepest dream, your deepest wish. Maybe something you are not even aware of.”

  Magdalena peered at the card, close to the old woman but far from where Magdalena sat. “I see a woman and child in a boat, being rowed across the river,” she said. “By a man. But the boat is full of swords and the water on one side of the river is rough while the water on the other side is smooth.”

  “Very true,” the card reader agreed. “The mother and child are trying to avoid a conflict, hugging the edge of the water as they make their way across it. But the card is reversed. So they are unable to avoid the conflict and they must face it, in all its depth and tragedy. The sorrow they most want to evade chases them down and confronts them, forcing them to acknowledge it. This is always the message of the Six of Swords: conflict, tragedy. The question is whether it can be avoided.” The woman paused and looked into Magdalena’s eyes. “Do you know, dear, what it is you so deeply want to avoid? Or that you want—more than anything—to confront?” One eyebrow arched up.

  Magdalena sat dumbfounded. There were many things she might have wanted to avoid in her life, but they all seemed petty and superficial compared to what the woman was telling her about now. But confrontation? She had always dreamed of confronting life itself, of being bigger than herself, and braver. But she could never envisage herself doing that. She shook her head in mute denial.

  The woman looked at her a moment longer, clearly not believing her. Then she continued with the next card.

  She pointed to the cards that began their line of ascent. “This card is about the forces that can hold you back you or push you along. It is the card of Justice. And it is reversed. See how the crowned woman holds the scales in one hand and the naked sword in her other? If the card had been upright, it would have signified that aspect of Justice found in doing what is right, what is appropriate for another person. But reversed, it signifies that aspect of Justice found in simply following the rules, in obedience, in seeing everything as black and white and ignoring all the shades of gray in between. This desire to ‘follow the rules’ can either save you or undo you.

  “The Queen of Swords is about your short-term achievements. She is an angry woman, a sad woman. Maybe you, maybe someone else. Probably, but not necessarily, even a woman. But a dark force in your life—of shame and loss and vengeance.

  “Finally, the longer-term resolution of this chapter in your life is the two of Swords. See how the blindfolded one holds the swords in each hand as she sits beneath the moon, in front of the sea? The scene seems still. But it is not. The tide is always flowing, either coming in or going out. The moon is always waxing or waning. And the swords are heavy. Eventually she must set one down or it will drop. She must choose and act, but not immediately. She has time to make her choice and consider her actions, but not forever.

  “That blindfolded girl with the swords is you, dear child. You have time to think, to choose. But you must act. You must choose, whether you want to or not. If you do not choose for yourself, another will choose for you. It is always better for you to decide yourself rather than let another decide for you. But a decision will need to be made and an action taken. Whether it is your decision is for you…”

  The woman’s voice trailed off. Magdalena became aware again of the world outside this little room: the footsteps in the hall, a phone ringing occasionally, the sounds coming from the other rooms down the hall. She realized that while the gypsy had been speaking, all those things had faded from her consciousness. Only she and the old woman had existed. The little room had been the sum total of the world. But now it was time to get up and go back to that other world, that world outside of this room. Out into the hallway, out into the street, back into the vast crowds of New York and then back to Prague.

  “Thank you, thank you so very much,” Magdalena gasped to the old woman, gathering up her things and standing. “Thank you—more than I can ever say.” She leaned across the table and kissed the old woman’s cheek. Then she stepped out the door and was gone, down the hall and out the door.

  That night, in her hotel room, Magdalena tried to relive the events of the afternoon and recall everything the cards had revealed. “I wish I had taken notes as the gypsy was talking,” she said to herself.

  Back in Prague, Magdalena told her co-workers about her trip to New York. She told her small circle of girlfriends about the gypsy who had read the tarot cards for her. It was this small circle of other women like her that had tried to read the cards for each other but had not been very successful. Nothing they had predicted had ever come true. Even in their search for “spirituality,” the little bit of Wicca that they practiced together never seemed to accomplish much: they tried simple spells to find love or to make the day sunny but nothing seemed to change in their lives. They followed the direct
ions in the books. They cast the magic circles and burned the right candles, repeated the correct rhymes. But no new man came into Magdalena’s life to sweep her off her feet. Or even to invite her to dinner. Or coffee.

  It was late March in Prague and the weather was extremely unpredictable. Some years it snowed: large fluffy, white flakes that descended on the city and made it look as if it had been dusted with confectioner’s sugar. Other years it was warm and sunny and felt almost like midsummer. This year it was neither. Days were gray with drizzle or overcast, but comfortable. The winter seemed to be over and the snow gone until next year. The sun also seemed less anxious to make its appearance, and so a comfortable in-between season developed.

  Magdalena returned to her work in the office of the Literature and Folklore Department of Charles University. The grand old mansion on Politickych veznu Street, just off Vaclavske namesti (Wenceslaus Square, as the tourist books called it), was a beautiful place to work. She threw herself into her typing and filing, keeping track of Professor Hron’s appointments and preparing his articles for publication. She preferred to spend her lunch hour reading whatever new book about folktales, legends, and mythology was available. Many were sent to the professor for his opinion and he was happy to pass them on to her when he was finished. In many ways, her life after the trip to New York was no different from her life before the trip.

  One thing was different, though. She couldn’t keep the images of the tarot cards out of her mind.

  One day at lunchtime, instead of reading while she ate the sandwich she brought from home, she sat with her friend Victoria in a small park just up the street.

  “I can’t forget those cards, Victoria. Especially that one, the Six of Swords. The one about my deepest dreams and wishes.”

  “But do you have any idea yet what that dream might be?” Victoria asked, chewing a bite of her sandwich. She worked nearby and seemed happy to have this chance to spend her lunch hour with her friend.

  “No, but I keep thinking about it. Especially at night. I think I must be having trouble with this jet lag, because I’m waking up at odd hours and can’t get back to sleep. So I think about the images on those cards, and what she said. Especially that card. The woman and child in the boat, with the swords and the water—rough on one side and smooth on the other. I think about what her face must look like under her cloak. I wonder where she is going and what she is running away from. And I try to think of what there is about me in that image.” Magdalena couldn’t bring herself to say out loud her intuitions about what she was trying to evade. Or confront. Victoria was fun, a girlfriend, but she couldn’t stop talking and Magdalena didn’t really trust her with the deepest suspicions of her heart: that she wanted to be that woman in the boat, heading into some new, unknown territory and not the same places every day, where she did the same things.

  “Well,” said Victoria, chewing thoughtfully, “maybe you should do a reading for yourself about what that might mean. Or I could do it for you,” she added brightly, perking up.

  Magdalena shook her head. “I don’t think we’re supposed to ever do readings for ourselves, remember? Too much conflict of interest, the books all say. And I don’t think we know enough about the cards to help each other in that way, anyway. It would just confuse me. I could have asked her more then, but she was already doing me a huge favor to tell me that much for just five dollars. Besides,” she said, looking into Victoria’s eyes, “I had to go all the way to New York for someone who knew how to do a traditional Bohemian card spread for me. How likely is it that we could improve on what she said, if we don’t even know our own country’s traditional way of reading the cards?” Both women looked at each other, and then laughed.

  “But,” Magdalena continued, chewing another bite of her sandwich and sipping from her container of juice, “I will drive myself crazy if I don’t come to some kind of resolution about that image on the card. Maybe I can find out more from someone at work. You know, it never occurred to any of us—you or me or any of our friends—to ask if any of the instructors in your department knows anything about the tarot cards. You know, old stories, explanations of the images, that sort of thing. Maybe Professor Hron might know something,” she said. “Or he could at least suggest someone to talk to or a direction to head in.”

  Victoria nodded, her mouth full of sandwich. “Why didn’t we think of that before?” she finally got out. Magdalena shrugged.

  “Who knows?” she replied. “We don’t even know enough to know what we don’t know!” Both laughed again at themselves. Magdalena felt better here, sitting and talking and laughing with her friend. Maybe she would find a way forward after all. But she never really intended to ask Professor Hron about the cards. It would be too embarrassing to admit that she dabbled in such occult practices. Or worse, that she was fascinated by them. It might even mean she would inadvertently tell him about her interest in Wicca. What would he think of her? What might he say about her? Instead of chatting with her and passing on the books she so loved to read, he might decide that she was a crazy woman and avoid her. He might stop his friendly overtures and find someone else to pass the books on to. She couldn’t bear that. No, she would keep quiet at work about the cards and try not to let her fascination with them get in the way of her professional life.

  A week later, Magdalena sat bolt upright in bed. It was dark in her bedroom in the back of her apartment, and little light from the street reached that far. The kitchen, next to the bedroom, had a large window that opened onto the courtyard behind, which served as a small garden for her apartment. There were no lights there either, as it was surrounded by the back courts of all the other buildings around, especially by one particularly grand mansion. The digital alarm clock on the bedside table read 2:31 a.m. The only sound she could hear was her own labored breathing.

  In the days since her lunch with Victoria, the Six of Swords had come not simply to be an object of fascination during odd, available moments at night when she couldn’t sleep but to haunt her waking life as well. She saw it in her mind’s eye as she was at work: as she was filing paperwork unlikely to ever be looked at again, as she was typing address labels for packages that would doubtless be discarded upon delivery, as she filled the pot with water to make the professor’s morning coffee. Her contemplation of the image was not limited to her sleepless periods at night, either. It filled her dreams. The image became a central touchstone, an anchor that would suddenly intrude into whatever dream she was having. It would grow larger and larger, crowding out whatever image had been present the moment before. As it grew, she could see every wrinkle in the woman’s cloak as she huddled in the boat, every ripple in the water, every muscle straining as the man paddled forward. She could hear the swift “plop” and “swish” as the paddles entered and swung through the water. She could hear the rower’s heavy breathing, the soft and muffled tears—the remnants of great, heartfelt sobbing—of the woman. Even without seeing the child’s face, she could sense the curiosity of a child facing forward, leaning forward to both look down into the water and to see what was approaching as the boat was propelled to someplace unknown. The image obsessed her.

  Now, she sat there, gasping for breath as if she had been the boatman pushing the boat through the rough water. The instant before she had been fast asleep, inhabiting the reality of the image: first, as the mother trying to find solace; then as the child, eager for adventure; then as the boatman, doing the mother and child a favor by bringing them to wherever it was that only the boatman knew. She was sweating, though the night was cool. She shivered, the sweat evaporating into the night.

  This last vision of the image on the card had been so realistic, so alive, it seemed more real than most of her waking life recently. She had to find the place depicted on the card. She had to touch it, experience it herself, now that she was awake. She stood and quickly dressed in the darkness, putting on a handy sweater to keep herself warm—but not too warm.

  She stepped out into the dark
hall of the apartment building. Luckily, she lived on the ground floor (which was why she had the small back garden) and did not need the hallway lit to make her way out of the building. The landlady lived upstairs and insisted that the electric bills were driving her into bankruptcy. She turned the lights off in the hallways if a tenant ever left them on and Magdalena had heard—on more than one occasion—a tenant coming home in the early morning hours, drunk enough to be unsteady on his feet, loudly cursing the landlady’s frugality. Magdalena slipped out into the night.

  Her building was a block or two up a side street from the American embassy in Prague, on the Little Town side of the great Charles Bridge. She made it down the narrow, twisting cobblestone way to the embassy and then turned left towards the Little Town Square and the Charles Bridge. There were a very few others out on the streets at that hour, mostly people straggling home after a drinking binge or indulgence in one of the other so-called pleasures of the flesh. No one seemed to notice her.

  She came out onto Mostecká, the main street through this lower portion of the Little Town and turned toward the river. The tourist shops were all closed, the restaurant windows all dark. A dog barked momentarily. Her dream-vision of the card seemed to be drawing her to the one place in Prague that might replicate the image she had seen in New York: the riverbank under the foundations of the bridge.

  She passed a courtyard on her left with the Biskupsky Dum Hotel. If Magdalena had continued walking straight ahead a few more feet, she would have begun to cross the Vltava River on the great Charles Bridge, passing the statues of St. Vaclav, “Good King Wenceslaus,” on one side and that of the Turk with his stone prison holding Christian hostages for ransom on the other. Instead, she veered to the left and passed between the bridge’s foundations and the small restaurant abutting the stonework beginning its graceful leap across the river. A few feet further along, as the narrow way descended, she found herself standing at the edge of the small cove where the river swirled under the bridge. On the other side of the bridge, the river parted, a small arm of it slicing through the neighborhood known as Little Venice, while the main river ran through Prague and constituted one of the major natural highways of Central Europe.