Free Siren of the Waters: A Jana Matinova Investigation, Vol. 2 by Michael Genelin Page B

to a cast party for the close of a show, or a celebration in SNP Square, or a jazz concert where he knew several of the musicians. Maybe it was an old friend from school days who needed help, or his mother’s cousin, a Slovak who had produced a play in Moscow. All of them suddenly represented a possible danger.
    Trokan had given her fair warning. And now, if they had reports on her, they had reports on Dano. The entries in the secret dossiers had to be stopped. The more paper, the more serious the charges would be. And that meant calling no further dangerous attention to themselves, an impossible task to demand of an actor.
    The budding playwright was the one who first increased the pressure on them. Dano came home elated. One of the new writers—a friend of Vaclav Havel, the world-famous Czech author—had seen Dano as Hamlet, and the man wanted to write the lead character in his next play with Dano in mind. They would stage the play in Bratislava with a mixed company of Czechs and Slovaks. Czechs and Slovaks understood each other’s languages, so each would speak in his native tongue.
    The play would be about unity: unity in the family leading to unity in the country and the world. It would fit in with the current SSR concept of a unified republic, and when the writing and staging problems had been worked out in Bratislava they would take the play on the road to Prague. It was the next step for his acting career, said Dano breathlessly, and he had invited the playwright to their apartment. Jana and her mother were to provide the meal.
    It was a wife’s duty to help her husband, so Jana, despite the increasing caseload and responsibilities she was taking on in her own job, accepted the task. When the day came, Jana bought the wine and, with the rare good fortune that crime had taken a day off, she managed to get home early, in time to aid her mother. Together, they made a number of Slovak and Czech dishes to carry out the theme of the play.
    Except that, when the playwright arrived, he came without Dano, but with an entourage of eight people whom Dano had neglected to tell Jana about. Adjustment time. She and her mother made do, her mother scrambling to the neighbors to borrow this and that, additional silverware and crockery to supplement their meager supply. All the while, their guests smoked up a visible, acrid haze which invaded every corner of the apartment. Every thirty seconds, Jana would run to the phone, trying to find out why Dano was not there.
    He arrived an hour late, with two other actor friends in tow, as well as a man who claimed to be a director, and who was, in fact, Zibinova’s informant, the secret police officer from the cast party. Jana was angry with Dano for being late; she was more afraid than angry when she saw the director. Everything that was said or done that evening would appear in a report and become part of their dossier.
    Dano, making up for being late, was even more charming than usual. He apologized to everyone individually, claiming that the artistic director of the National Theatre had insisted on talking to him about their new season, indicating the roles he thought Dano was suitable for. Dano said he had laughed at the man. Time for me to think of Prague, he had informed the artistic director; time for me to develop my own vehicles. He left the man, Dano said, with his own vision, the one that Dano held of his personal future. He was now no longer sure that he would take any of the roles the National Theatre had just offered since, as Dano put it, he was the “premier young actor in Slovakia.”
    His apartment audience, particularly the Czech playwright, cheered Dano on, all of them gabbling about the need for change in the system, a change that would give the actors more choice of the roles they were asked to play and of the plays themselves.
    While Dano and the others talked, Jana watched the agent provocateur, knowing he was taking mental notes of who was saying what and who was