Free The Best American Short Stories 2013 by Elizabeth Strout Page B

clothes, they walked down Bělohorská toward the spot on the map where the chapel was supposed to be. In the late-summer morning, Susan detected traceries of autumnal chill, a specifically Czech irony in the air, with high wispy cirrus clouds threading the sky like promissory notes. Elijah took her hand, clasping it very hard, checking both ways as they crossed the tramway tracks, the usual
Pozor!
warnings posted on their side of the platform, telling them to beware of whatever. The number 18 tram lumbered toward them silently from a distance up the hill to the west.
    Fifteen minutes later, standing inside one of the chapels, Susan felt herself soften from all the procreative excess on display. Elijah had been right: carved babies took up every available space. Surrounding them on all sides—in the front, at the altar; in the back, near the choir loft, where the carved cherubs played various musical instruments; and on both walls—were plump winged infants in various postures of angelic gladness. She’d never seen so many sculpted babies in one place: cherubs not doing much of anything except engaging in a kind of abstract giggling frolic, freed from both gravity and the earth, the great play of Being inviting worship. What bliss! God was in the babies. But you had to look up, or you wouldn’t see them. The angelic orders were always above you. At the front, the small cross on the altar rested at eye level, apparently trivial, unimportant, outnumbered, in this nursery of angels. For once, the famous agony had been trumped by babies, who didn’t care about the Crucifixion or hadn’t figured it out.
    “They loved their children,” Susan whispered to Elijah. “They worshiped infants.”
    “Yeah,” Elijah said. She glanced up at him. On his face rested an expression of great calm, as if he were in a kingdom of sorts where he knew the location of everything. He
was
a pediatrician, after all. “Little kids were little ambassadors from God in those days. Look at that one.” He pointed. “Kind of a lascivious smile. Kind of
knowing
.”
    She wiped a smudge off his cheek with her finger. “Are you hungry? Do you want lunch yet?”
    He dug into his pocket and pulled out a nickel, holding it out as if he were about to drop it into her hand. Then he took it back. “We just got here. It’s not lunchtime. We got out of bed less than two hours ago. I love you,” he said matter-of-factly, apropos of nothing. “Did I already tell you this morning? I love you like crazy.” His voice rose with an odd conviction. The other tourists in the chapel glanced at them. Was their love that obvious? Outside, the previous day, sitting near a fountain, Susan had seen a young man and a young woman, lovers, steadfastly facing each other and stroking each other’s thighs, both of them crazed with desire and, somehow, calm about it.
    “Yes,” she said, and a cool wind passed through her at that moment, right in through her abdomen and then out the back near her spine. “Yes, you do, and thanks for bringing me here, honey, and I agree that we should go to the Kafka Museum too, but you know what? We need to see if we can get tickets to
The Marriage of Figaro
tonight, and anyway I want to walk around for a while before we go back to that hotel.”
    He looked down at her. “That’s interesting. You didn’t say you loved me now.” His smile faded. “I said I love you, and you mentioned opera tickets. I hope I’m not being petty, but my love went out to you and was not returned. How come? Did I do something wrong?”
    “It was an oversight. No, wait a minute. You’re wrong. I did say that. I
did
say I love you. I say it a lot. You just didn’t hear me say it this time.”
    “No, I don’t think that’s right,” he said, shaking his head like a sad horse, back and forth. “You didn’t say it.”
    “Well, I love you now,” she said, as a group of German tourists waddled in through the entranceway. “I love you this very