The Ghost of Frederic Chopin:

IThe cobblestones were damp and slippery but, all thingsconsidered, he decided it was better to risk twisting hisankle than to lose sight of the woman walking quickly a hundredfeet ahead of him; this woman who, according to Slaný,was in communication with Frédéric Chopin a century and ahalf after his death. A strange case… If anyone had told him,ten years before, that ten years later – on this gloomy Monday,an All Saints’ Day in the twilight of the century – he would nolonger be a member of the secret police but would be reducedto playing private detective in a country that had been sliced inhalf and converted to capitalism, he would have cursed the future.Then again, if that same someone had added that he would bespying on a former school dinner lady who transcribed dozensof posthumous scores dictated to her by the Polish composer,the fanciful part of his personality would have been awakenedand he would have thought that, on further consideration, thefuture merited a closer look. And if, moreover, that mysterioussomeone had told him that the woman in question wasthe widow of a recalcitrant individual whom he had followedyears before, he would have seen in his future occupation ofdetective the suggestive glow of destiny, of a torch handed onfrom past to present.Yes, this woman and her ghost made a change from thosedissidents who haunted bars into the small hours under theprevious regime, those damned dissidents who had given him somany nagging chest infections over the years, from sitting andwaiting in unheated cars, because this StB agent had sufferedfrom weak lungs ever since he was a little boy.The woman he was following, whose fame was starting to spreadfar beyond the mountains of Bohemia, had been called VěraFoltýnova since her marriage, twenty-six years earlier. She wasborn Věra Kowalski one June day in 1938 – nobody rememberedthe exact date – which made her fifty-seven on that particularAll Saints’ Day in 1995.When she reappeared in his field of vision, the former StBagent breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t the first time she’dbriefly vanished from sight that day, since leaving her apartment;each time he lost her like that, he started sweating, despite allhis experience of shadowing people from a distance. And thenher chubby figure would materialise again, a mischievous smileon her face. If that was the game, he was happy to play along.She had been constantly on the move since mid-morning.And the detective hadn’t had a chance to rest in the past week.Now that the street had straightened out, he thought thingsmight get easier. He would follow her more closely to make surehe didn’t lose her again. Where could she be headed? One thingwas sure: she wasn’t going home, because her home was in theopposite direction. It was almost noon… When she went intoa food shop, he exhaled and celebrated this brief respite bylighting a cigarette. Just then, he remembered that the journalisthad asked him to get in touch as soon as he had some news. Hespotted a telephone booth a dozen feet from where he stood. Itrang twice before the journalist answered.‘Ludvík Slaný, Česká televize.’‘It’s Pavel Černý. You asked me to keep you in the loop,and I’ve got a moment now because she’s nipped into a shop.She left home just before ten and went to Olšany to put flowerson her husband’s grave. Right now, I’m close to Vyšehrad.’He went on like this for a few more sentences, then suddenlysaid: ‘Hang on, she’s coming out. She bought another pot ofchrysanthemums. And now… yes, it’s just as I thought: she’sgoing up the street. I’ll call you again when I get a chance. Idon’t want to lose her…’