The Night Crossing
The curfew had been set at nine in the evening for Czechs, with the usual exceptions for night workers, tram drivers, those with the correct stamp on the back of their *Kennkarte*. Zdenka had the stamp, because the ferries were allowed a small grace for late commercial crossings in the summer season and the river office had not bothered to revise her paper when the summer ended. The stamp had been, until May, a technicality. In May it stopped being a technicality.
Father Vojtěch did not come to the landing this time. He sent word through the sacristan, a boy of sixteen named Jiří who brought her a holy card on a Wednesday afternoon and said only, quietly, "Father asks whether you can say a rosary with him tonight at ten." She had looked at the card — a cheap print of Saint Christopher carrying the child across a river — and she had understood that this was a phrase she was being taught, and that from now on a holy card and a suggested hour would mean a crossing, and that the saint on the card would tell her, in some way she would work out, which bank and how many.
Saint Christopher, who carried a single traveller. One passenger, then. At ten.
She did not eat supper. She sat in her kitchen with the blackout paper pinned over the window — everyone in Prague had the blackout paper up by then, and she had got used to the particular darkness it made of the room — and she waited