Free The Time of the Angels by Iris Murdoch

Riga?”
     
    “In Latvia. On the Baltic Sea.”
     
    “Oh. And how long did you stay there?”
     
    “Till I was twelve. My father was afraid that the Soviets would annex Latvia. They did in the end, but we were gone by that time. We went to Prague.”
     
    “Prague. In Czechoslovakia. Were you poor then?”
     
    “We were poor then. My father got a sort of clerical job with a firm of lawyers that knew our family. My mother gave Russian lessons. I gave Russian lessons too when I grew up. I went to the university in Prague.” Shut-in Prague. It had always seemed to him like a trap, a beautiful sinister cage. The big over-weighted buildings descended in cliffs of towers to the cooped-up river. They had had lodgings in a narrow street below the Strahov monastery. Being desperately, endlessly, cold in winter and listening to bells. Bells, bells in the cold.
     
    “So you’re a university man?”
     
    “Yes, I suppose I am a university man. But it was so long ago.”
     
    “Could you make enough money?”
     
    “Well, just. My father died when I was about twenty and things got more difficult. We all worked. My sister made clothes. Of course, there were a lot of Russians in Prague. We helped each other. We carried Russia with us. It lasted till then. But it was a sad time.” His father’s coffin tilts as it is carried up the steep street. The street is too narrow for the hearse. His mother and his sister stumble and weep but he is dry-eyed, hardening himself against pain. The hearse jolts on the cobbles. Bells.
     
    “And what happened then?”
     
    “Well, Hitler happened then. He cut short my studies.”
     
    “Hitler. Oh yes. I’d forgotten. Did you escape again?”
     
    “We tried to, but our papers weren’t in order. We were stopped at the frontier. My mother and my sister were sent back to Prague. I was directed to work in a factory. Later on I was sent to a labour camp.”
     
    “Was it dreadful? How long were you there?”
     
    “I was there till the war ended. It was fairly nasty, but others had a worse time. I worked in the fields. There was enough to eat.”
     
    “Poor—poor you.”
     
    “Look, I’ve been calling you ‘Pattie’ for days. Won’t you call me by my name, ‘Eugene’?” He gave it the English pronunciation of course. It had been a long grief to him that English people mispronounced both his first name and his surname. The beautiful Russian sounds had become a secret. Now he took almost a grim pleasure in the enforced incognito.
     
    “Well, yes, I’ll try. I’ve never known anyone with that name.”
     
    “Eugene.”
     
    “Eugene. Thank you. What happened to your mother and sister?”
     
    “My mother died of a stroke fairly soon. I never saw her after that time at the frontier, though I had some letters. My sister—I don’t know—she just—disappeared.”
     
    “You mean you don’t know what happened to her?”
     
    “Well, people did just disappear in the war. She disappeared. I kept hoping, for a while.”
     
    “Oh, I am sorry. What was your sister’s name?”
     
    There was a silence. Eugene had suddenly found himself unable to speak. A great lump of emotion rose inside him and seemed to surge out into the room. He gripped the edge of the table. It was years and years since he had spoken of these things to anybody. He said after a moment. “Her name was Elizabeth. Elizaveta in Russian.”
     
    “I’m terribly sorry,” said Pattie. “I shouldn’t have asked you to talk. Please forgive me.”
     
    “No, no. It is good for me to talk. I never tell these things. You do me good. Do go on asking me. I can answer any question you ask.”
     
    “What happened then when the war ended?”
     
    “I was in various refugee camps. Eventually I was in a camp in Austria.”
     
    “And how long were you in the camps?”
     
    “Nine years.”
     
    “Nine years? Why so very long?”
     
    “Well, it was difficult to get out. There was so much muddle and one was