Winter 1995

A fresh layer of snow blanketed the Charles Bridge, where Hugo made his way toward the underground laboratory that consumed most of his waking hours. The winter in Prague, from the glistening spires to the powdery gusts blown from domed rooftops, resembled a snow globe forgotten in the corner of a haunted attic. Hugo kept his head bowed as he crossed the bridge to shield his face from the wind that whipped down the Vltava river. The baroque statues of saints and martyrs gazed down at his toiling form with blind indifference. Squinting in the morning light, he braced for another day of arduous research, like so many others in the past decade. As much as Hugo loved his work as a chemist, he feared that it would one day be the death of him.

As a postdoc at Charles University, Hugo’s job was to assist the senior faculty with the collection of experimental data. It was a form of academic limbo that Hugo hoped would someday lead to a prestigious research appointment. For now, there were dues to pay and covalent compounds to synthesize.  While he loved his work, the incessant demands of his boss made him feel like an indentured servant. It was not the glorious intellectual freedom that he had envisioned upon receiving his doctorate in Zürich last year. His career felt stuck in the mud at a time when it should be soaring into the stratosphere.

He heaved open the heavy oak doors of the medieval chemistry building. The rush of warm air tickled his frozen nose and flushed his numb cheeks. He brushed the snow from his shoulders and shook out his lapels. Ducking into the lavatory, he began to arrange himself for the inevitable encounters with his colleagues. His pale and gaunt Germanic reflection stared back at him in the mirror. Streaks of gray darted through his disheveled black hair. He winced at the prominent scar on his cheek from falling off his bicycle last summer. Only his brown eyes still sparkled brightly beneath his bushy eyebrows. 

At thirty-seven, his paltry diet of microwave dinners and endless hours in the lab had withered away the youthful bloom of his early years in grad school. His demanding schedule left little time for relationships, save with his mother whom he called every day. He wondered if he had sacrificed too much for his fervent pursuit of science. The idea of a wife or family, once an inevitability that he sought to delay, now seemed more of an implausibility with each passing day. Brushing his wind-lashed locks into place, he exhaled and steeled himself for the rigors of his work.

Downstairs, the lab was dark. Hugo hoped he would at least enjoy some peace and quiet as he resumed his experiments. He stepped inside and set his briefcase down on the desk. As he turned back toward the light switch, someone flicked on the fluorescent lights for him. It was Professor Petr Chrenko, chair of the chemistry department. “Good morning, Hugo”, he said, donning his glasses, “May I have a word with you?”

“Of course, Petr,”

“I have some bad news. I received the lab reports. The data is flawed. All the experiments will have to be rerun.” He tossed the printed reports on the table, red pen marks encircling the tables and scatter plots. 

Hugo breathed a heavy sigh. “What? How could this have happened?”

“I’m afraid there was a malfunction in the temperature system. The vials have been compromised,” said Chrenko.

“This will take months to recreate.”

“We don’t have months. We only have three weeks. I need you to do whatever it takes to make the grant deadline.”

Hugo chewed nervously on his thumbnail. He couldn’t fathom reproducing his work in such a short time but also couldn’t refuse a direct order from the department chair. His stomach felt tight like an overinflated basketball.

“I don’t think it’s possible,” he said.

“I hope not for your sake. But there is good news. You’ll have a lab partner.”

“A partner? Aren’t all the grad students assigned to other projects?”

“She’s not one of our students. She’s my sister’s adopted daughter. She doesn’t have a degree, but her training will suffice for this type of work.”

Hugo stifled an impulse to scoff. He was already working ten hours a day in the lab, plus nights spent writing grants in his small flat in the Old Town. Now he had been asked to redouble his efforts. A novice assistant recruited through some nepotistic connection did not strike him as much of a silver lining. Yet he had come to expect this type of treatment. Chrenko had won a Nobel Prize fifteen years ago and now felt justified making impossible demands of his underlings. A recommendation from him could be Hugo’s ticket out of purgatory. A censure would condemn him to the margins of the cosmic textbook to which every budding scientist aspires to contribute a chapter, a paragraph, or at least a footnote.

“She starts tomorrow,” said Chrenko, turning on his heel. “Be sure that you treat her well.” 

***

When Hugo arrived in the lab the next day, there was a woman busily arranging equipment with her back to him. He watched as she set up the phosphorus distillation apparatus. Her movements were quick yet graceful. She deftly screwed the long stem outlet into the receiver tube and paused to inspect her work with a look of intense concentration. Finally, he interrupted, “Excuse me, I’m Hugo.”

“Mara,” she said, fixing him in her steady gaze.

“Your name is Mara?” She nodded imperceptibly.

She had eyes like onyx marbles that peeped from behind a shock of black hair with thick bangs. Her expression was serene and inscrutable. She seemed to look right through him. 

“I’m glad to have an extra set of hands. It’s been difficult doing everything alone.”

“Of course it has,” she said.

Her response didn’t invite further small talk and there was much to be done, so they got right down to work. 

Throughout the day, Hugo found himself glancing over at Mara. He was uncomfortable talking to women but enjoyed watching them from afar as they went about their business. Like chemical reactions, he liked to observe how they behaved according to their own natural laws and properties. He found himself intrigued by her intense focus. She performed her tasks with precision, never seeming to hesitate or second guess herself. Her face was plain, almost forgettable, but combined with her translucent skin and odd stare, there was an ethereal air about her. He could almost picture her chiseled in stone and ensconced on the Charles Bridge among the other statues of venerated saints.

They worked twelve-hour days all week long, arriving in the frigid predawn and leaving well after the sun had set behind the castle spires on the hill. Finally, as distant bells tolled eight o’clock on Friday, Hugo felt overwhelmed by hunger. “My stomach is growling. I’m going to the tavern down the street. Good night, Mara.”

“Good night, Hugo,” she said.

He washed his hands and picked up his coat. Then he paused. “Mara…would you like to join me?”

“Yes,” she said. Her willingness caught him off guard. They walked several blocks with a pregnant silence hanging between them.

They sat in the dark tavern, where the bar was overhung by crumbling brick arches and flanked by candelabras. Hot air shimmered above black metal radiators along the brick walls, a talisman against the elements. Smoke curled from the pipes of old men hunkered down at their tables, steins glued to their clenched fists. Members of an accordion band scurried about in the corner, setting up their instruments. After his third drink, Hugo loosened up and began to talk.

“Where did you learn chemistry? You seem to know your way around the lab pretty well.”

“My mother was a chemist in Riga,” she said. “I used to watch her work and help her set up her experiments. I wanted to be a chemist…there’s so much to know about this world…but she got sick, and I had to take care of her. She died last year. After the Velvet Revolution, Prague seemed like a good place to start fresh. New ideas, new clothes, new opportunities. My uncle Petr was able to get me a job here.”

“I’m sorry about your mother. You’re very talented. You could still get your degree in chemistry.”

“If you want to know the truth, she wasn’t my real mother. I’ve never met my real parents.”

“Oh, I’m sorry again.”

“It’s okay. Never mind. Where do you come from, Hugo? What brought you here?”

“The same thing as you I suppose: the ‘noble’ pursuit of science. My parents were researchers in Germany. All they ever wanted for me was to become a famous chemist. This was the best job I could find, though it’s only temporary. My father also died when I was in school. I often wonder if I would be a disappointment in his eyes…”

“No, he would be proud of you,” she said with the same mollifying look. 

“You seem awfully sure. I’m not so certain. After all, we have no evidence of what the dead think. Our neurons stop firing when…”

The accordion band began playing. The quartet also featured an upright bass, saxophone and female singer. They played an old Bohemian folk song that Hugo recognized but couldn’t name. The haunting melody reminded him of his uncle’s farm where he had spent his summers as a child. One year he had seen one of the horses die in the heat. That was when the cruelty of nature and its indifference to life and death had struck him and made him want to know what laws and truths lurked behind its inscrutable surface. To his surprise, Mara stood up and began swaying gently to the music. He watched her move across the dance floor with the same self-assurance that she had showed in the lab. Hugo took a swig of his bourbon and admired her modest yet elegant steps. She seemed so at home that she could have been part of the band or one of the locals. She stepped forward and held out her hand to him.

Hugo had never danced in his life, but her proposition seemed irresistible. He was left-footed at best and focused simply on keeping time with her. They spun arm-in-arm around the dance floor to the lilting rise and fall of the folk melody. He didn’t know whether it was the exhaustion or the absinthe, but the background of the tavern seemed to blur and go dark around them. The handful of other dancers on the floor receded from view as well. They were enveloped in a heavy fog of pipe smoke, and even Mara herself seemed to fade in and out of focus. The song crescendoed in a flurry of cascading notes. They whirled faster and faster and Mara’s face glowed like a lantern against the background of roiling blackness

The band stopped to take a break. Mara and Hugo sat back down and finished their cocktails and sauerkraut fritters. Hugo laughed nervously, “You’re full of surprises. I wouldn’t have have figured you for a dancer, but I was wrong.”

“I wouldn’t have figured you for a dancer, and I was right,” she laughed.

Soon, they heard the bells again over the din of the bar, now striking out midnight. “It’s getting late,” mumbled Hugo. They left the bar and stood outside under a street lamp. Snow was falling faintly through the cone of yellow lamp light onto the cobblestone street under their feet. “Good night, Mara,” he said and turned to leave. Then turning back, “And thank you for…” He looked down at her and saw her chin buried in her chest. Then her face turned up to him, shining black eyes flickering in the lamp light. Brief thoughts of Chrenko, the project and his career flashed through his mind.

And then, recklessly, he kissed her. She didn’t recoil as he feared but instead leaned in and gently brushed his chin with her fingertips. Her face got big and impossibly close, losing all form and boundary. He felt an unexpected catharsis, as though a long forgotten childhood wish had been granted. The snow fell thicker around them and, spurred by a fierce gust of wind, whited out their entangled forms as they floated upwards, buoyed on an island of warm light in the vast sea of winter.

Spring 1996

On a sunny morning in April, Hugo and Mara sat in Café Kafíčko with mugs of hot coffee. The chaotic energy of springtime coursed through the air. Prisms hanging in the antique window frames scattered rainbows around the white walls. The clinking of silverware and smell of baked bread filled the cafe with an aura of homey comfort. Hugo looked at Mara, her sunlit cheeks glowing like moons and her irises sharp like grapefruit wedges. She wore a blue dress with laced sleeves and an onyx pendant that belonged to her mother. Blowing steam from her cup, she sipped carefully. 

“Do you know why coffee doesn’t taste as good as it smells?” she said with a coy smile.

“I have no idea. I only know that my brain needs it to function.” He boldly took a large swig of the scalding liquid.

“I heard that there are hundreds of compounds produced in coffee roasting. Our nose detects the volatiles that give coffee its chocolatey aroma, but our taste buds pick up the sulfurous organics that make it dark and bitter.”

“Yes, the senses can be deceiving,” he sighed. “So many things that we crave in life turn out to be less satisfying that we’d hoped…” Then he added as an afterthought, “But not you.”

The remark could have sounded insincere, but Mara received it as genuine and beamed sweetly. She had seen the spark of Hugo’s affection grow into a flame and took this as another flicker of its warmth. He reached out and brushed his knuckles against her cheek, feeling the soft pressure of her skin. Her smile widened into a toothy grin. Mara rarely showed her teeth when she smiled, making her seem oddly vulnerable In this moment.

Hugo softened his gaze. At the ripe age of thirty-seven, he was in love for the first time. He felt the sublime singularity that accompanies a blossoming love affair, the opposite of the sense of depersonalization that arrived when he was overwhelmed by work. Mara was unlike any other woman he had ever met, an inexplicable anomaly like water boiling in a vacuum. His desire for her fed her desire for him, which in turn powered his desire for her, like a closed circuit coursing with electricity. The throbbing hum grew louder and louder in their ears.

Just as her smile peaked, a shadow of sorrow crossed her face and she furrowed her brow. The odd mixture of facial ingredients threw Hugo into confusion.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“I’m…I’m just worried about my uncle. If he finds out about us, he’ll be furious. I couldn’t live with myself if I damaged your career.”

They had decided early on to keep Chrenko in the dark about their relationship. Hugo’s reputation would be ruined if Chrenko thought he had taken advantage of her. And so they vowed to keep their love a secret. The illicitness of the affair served only to inflame their desires. They had been careful but sensed that Chrenko harbored a growing suspicion. Perhaps he could see through their meticulously professional conduct in the lab. Or perhaps, even for someone as tone deaf as Chrenko, the playful cadence of their speech carried strains of the erotic symphony they had worked so hard to suppress.

Hugo tapped on his mug nervously. “We should tell him the truth. We’re both adults. There’s nothing for us to hide.”

“You don’t understand. Petr is like a godfather to me. It’s his duty to protect my honor. Even the most educated men here are still very traditional.”

“He’s going to find out anyway. We can’t conceal this any longer. Wouldn’t you rather that he hear it from us?”

“It’s not that simple.” She leaned forward and inhaled steam from her mug, as though warding off a chill, and released it with a sigh.

“Why not? I don’t care what anyone thinks. I just want to stop pretending.”

“You’re so naïve. It’s charming,” she said teasingly. She spooned sugar into her coffee from a porcelain bowl, her sweet tooth belying her sullen exterior. “I’m starving all of a sudden. Let’s order some Medovik.” The honey cake was delightfully spongy and sweet. They shared it in silence, chewing thoughtfully. Even the threat of Chrenko’s wrath couldn’t dampen the splendor of the spring morning. Hugo felt that his fate had grown intertwined with Mara’s, yet he had barely begun to unravel her mysteries. “I feel much better now,” she said, “There’s nothing that can’t be cured by a good slice of cake.”

“You’re right, I used to think food was just a distraction. Now I feel truly replenished by our meals.”

“Let’s celebrate. I want to go for a walk in the Petřín Gardens.”

They finished their coffee and exited the cafe, their silhouettes dissolving into a plane of white light as they stepped through the doorway into the blinding sun. They walked a few blocks and embarked on the steep path up the hill, bypassing the funicular that carried droves of tourists to the top. Halfway up, Hugo stopped and planted his hands on his knees, gasping for air in joking exaggeration. She laughed gently at his mock weakness. GrabbIng his arm with both hands, she began to pull him uphill. Never having owned a car, she had cast iron calves.

The bustle of the city slowly dissipated and gave way to a bucolic scene from a pop-up storybook. Rolling meadows dotted with fruit trees carpeted the hillsides, broken only by castle spires craning over the horizon. The chirps of robins and cicadas permeated the air. Winding through apple and cherry trees in full bloom, the path took them higher and higher above the town. As they neared the summit, Hugo turned around and saw the mighty river reduced to a thin blue ribbon tied around the fat waist of the city.

They entered the rose gardens and encountered long beds in a thousand colors stretched out like plumes of fire. Mara knelt down slowly and gracefully by a patch of orange roses. She tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear with one hand and held up the rose to her face with the other, imbibing its sweetness through her nose.

“Why do they smell so good? It’s like nothing else in the world.” She inhaled again deeply. “Honey, cloves, violets, ripened fruit, and..”

“Decay,” Hugo said dryly. “The petals don’t last long. Soon the bloom is off the rose.”

“But for now they’re magnificent …and there are so many of them. It looks like the Garden of Eden.”

“Does that make you Eve or the serpent?”

She rolled her eyes like a bored teenager. “I don’t believe that whole story anyway. It’s all wrong. Death did exist before the serpent.” Hugo didn’t have the faintest clue what she meant.

They strolled through row after row of flowers flowing like a river of molten lava. The wind kicked up and petals swirled around them. Mara plucked a few petals out of her tangled black hair and, laughing, released them back into the breeze. Her eruptions of joy made Hugo’s heart race. From moment to moment, she seemed to flit from childhood to adulthood to old age. How gracefully she held the rose, her whimsy laughing at the gusts of petals, her subtle eye-rolls — life flowed through her all at once like a rushing river.

He spun her around and held her by the shoulders, kissing her deeply. Not taken off guard, she seemed to be expecting this and let out a small satisfied moan. The blizzard of petals reminded Hugo of their first kiss in the driven snow. The forces of nature seemed to align with their passions. For the first time, Hugo truly felt like part of the world, not just an observer.

The sky grew stormy as the wind continued to mount, the mad month of April shifting moods. Great cloud citadels mirrored the castles on the ground. In the tint of green thunder clouds, the garden’s mood darkened. Hugo looked toward the horizon and saw fishing nets of rain unfurling over the city. A feeling of inevitability crept over him as the nets swept westward, blotting out the last patches of blue sky.

Mara shot him a nervous look. “Let’s go, Hugo. We’re sitting ducks up here.”

He stuck out his jaw and put on a brave face. “It’s too late. We have to accept our fate now. But at least we’ll face it together.”

“Hugo, there’s something else I wanted to tell you…”

There was an awkward pause. Hugo suddenly felt the alarm of speculation. What if the closed circuit of love he had imagined was in fact broken? He knew that feeling didn’t always equate to reality. What if her attraction to him had just been a projection? What if she’d played along only not to hurt his feelings? Or in hopes that her feelings would develop if she went with the flow? He thought about the times she had seemed sad and distant. Perhaps his senses had deceived him again. Perhaps he had let wishful thinking blind him to obvious cracks in the facade. His heart raced again, now on the edge of panic.

She opened her mouth but no sound came out. “You’re right,’ she said finally. “I think we should tell my uncle. I don’t care what happens as long as we’re together. We just need to wait until the time is right. He’s very stressed about the latest grant project.”

Hugo’s heart dropped from his throat into his chest, and relief washed down his spine. His cold doubt turned into warm pride at Mara’s faith in him. Almost immediately, he imagined confronting Chrenko and became nervous again. Telling his renowned advisor, his only source of funding or hope of advancement, that he was involved with his young niece would be no easy task. Mara had been entrusted to Hugo as her mentor. It would look bad, no matter how much he swore to his pure intentions. But all these fears were dispelled, at least momentarily, in the light of her willingness to risk both of their futures to be together.

The rain came, first as a light patter and then as a heavy downpour. A ripple of thunder reverberated through their chests. They stood alone in the garden, the other visitors having already scattered. It was so dark that the greenery had faded from view and only the brightly colored flowers shone around them like stars in the night sky. Once again, they found themselves suspended in the void, dangling by a golden thread of fate that could be cut at any second. Bravely, they walked arm in arm down the path as though the sun were still shining and bird still singing. The driving rain and ferocious lightning didn’t frighten them. They knew the torrent was just beginning.

Fall 1996

In the depths of his laboratory, Hugo squinted at the graduated cylinder and scribbled down measurements. He hoped to finish his work soon, since the days had been getting dark earlier and earlier. The afternoon cast long shadows across the squares with the churches and the food carts and the children playing after school. On his walks home, Hugo smelled the last sweetness of strawberries mingled with a whiff of chimney smoke that made him shiver in anticipation of the winter to come. Despite the fading of the immense summer, Hugo’s spirits sparkled like white sand. His research seemed less onerous since his relationship with Mara had begun. She had set both his heart and his mind alight. His intellect felt lean and thirsty. The work that had been slowly poisoning him now nourished him.

Hugo glimpsed an elongated shape through the cylinder and heard footsteps approaching. Standing up straight, he came face-to-face with Chrenko.

“Hugo, can you step into my office?”

Hugo followed the older man up the stairs, watching his lumbering form sway menacingly in front of him. They took seats in his office, a dark and cluttered cave in the heart of the building. Stacks of books and papers covered every surface, forming a dense sediment of erudition. The office smelled of mildew and burnt coffee. Chrenko tented his fingers by his chin.

“Do you know why I wanted to speak with you?”

Hugo shook his head.

“I think there’s something going on in the laboratory. Something unprofessional.”

“Pardon?”

“As scientists, we have a duty to be objective . We can’t let passion corrupt our judgement. I believe you’ve neglected this duty. Both you are Mara have, but I hold you responsible.”

“Petr, I wanted to speak with you…when the time was right.”

“I’ve entrusted you with my only niece, and you have betrayed my trust.” He laid his thick hands flat on the desk and stared daggers at Hugo. 

“Mara and I are in love,” Hugo blurted out. “We didn’t plan for this to happen. It just did.”

“I’ve seen many men like you in my career. Weak men who take advantage of impressionable women. Stunted men who think a woman is just one more laboratory instrument for their use. Even if you don’t have any honor, I have a duty to protect the honor of my niece.”

Hugo squirmed in his chair. He could see his career aspirations evaporating before him. The years of work that he had invested into his discipline, the countless hours in the laboratory, the immense personal sacrifices in the pursuit of knowledge and legitimacy. All were being incinerated in the raging fire that burned in Chrenko’s eyes. It would be one thing if he had failed in his research, but to be accused of an ethical breach by a leading light in his field would be fatal. He needed to do something drastic, not just to save himself but to protect Mara. Something that would appeal to Chrenko’s traditional sensibility. He had nothing to lose.

“Sir, I’d like your permission to marry Mara,” he blurted out. “Since her father’s gone, I believe it would be your honor to give her away.”

Chrenko looked stunned, the flames in his eyes dwindling to smoldering embers. His face relaxed somewhat. He leaned back in his chair, letting out an uneasy laugh.

“That will never happen,” he said coldly. “If you want to work here, you must end this affair. If you don’t, I’ll make sure that every chemist in Europe knows about your dalliances.”

Hugo wanted to protest but bit his tongue. He knew that nothing he could say would improve his situation with Chrenko, and that anything he did say would make it much worse. Defeated, he gave up and went home to tell Mara of the crisis they had long dreaded.

***

Mara sat on Hugo’s living room couch hugging her knees to her chest. Hugo paced back and forth, having just finished telling her of Chrenko’s ultimatum. During Hugo’s account, she remained silent. A pall of misery fell over the room as the gravity of the situation sank in. Hugo had hoped that Mara would offer some decisive solution. She had a serene calm to her that stood in contrast to his nervous ratiocinations. And Chrenko was her uncle, so she would know best how to placate him. This made her silence unbearable, because it signaled the the inescapability of their predicament.

“Say something,” he pleaded.

She looked up at him with her eyes red but determined. “Hugo…this is probably for the best.”

Hugo straightened up and looked directly into her eyes. “I told you that either my career or our relationship has to end. Which one of those is for the best?”

“It’s best because this was always going to end. I’ll only bring you sadness.”

“Sadness? I’ve never been happier than when I’m with you.”

”I’ve made you happy so far. The truth of this life is that, quickly or slowly, you will lose everything. Everything comes to an end. Eventually, I’ll bring you misery. You pretend to know me, but you don’t. You pretend to love me, but you don’t.”

Hugo paced even faster. He knew this would be a hard conversation, but it was spiraling downward faster than he had imagined. He wanted to take control of the situation, but he couldn’t seem to find his footing. He began wringing his hands as he continued to pace back and forth.

“Listen. I don’t need my work anymore. I’ve spent my whole life studying chemistry. It’s nothing without human chemistry. So much of my time has been been gray, inorganic matter. Now my life has heat and color. I would give up everything for you.”

Hugo couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. Almost every waking moment had been devoted to his career. It was the essence of his identity and his family’s. What would his father think had he still been alive? Who would he be without his work?

Mara was stone faced. “You said it yourself. The reaction has been started. You don’t need me anymore. I was only the catalyst.”

“But we’re bonded now. Don’t you feel that separating us would be like splitting apart an atom?”

She suddenly became angry. “If you actually knew me, you wouldn’t say these things. For such a smart man, you’re a total idiot. You see what you want to see. I won’t let you ruin your career over an illusion.”

Hugo slumped down next to Mara on the couch and turns toward her. She looking down at the floor, her profile silhouetted in the lamp light. Her form once again reminded him of a classical statue, from the soft curve of her forehead to her celestial nose and gently parted lips. Even her heaving bosom seemed carved out of marble. If he never saw her again, he knew this would be his enduring image of her. Time slowed down as he considered his next words.

“Okay,” he admitted. “Maybe I was blinded by who I thought you were. I never saw behind the veil. The labs, the snow outside the tavern, the rain in the gardens. It has all felt like a dream. Maybe it was inevitable that we would wake up.”

Hugo couldn’t tell if he was speaking his words out loud of merely thinking them. He felt disconnected as though he was talking to an old photograph of Mara that he clutched in his hands many years later, trying to soothe his feelings of remorse.

She got up and looked down at him with pity. “It’s over, Hugo,” she said. “You’ve put me on some kind of pedestal, because you were tired of your mundane life. And I went along with it because I always wanted to live out some kind of storybook romance. Now our beautiful little fantasy is over.” A rivulet of tears escaped the corner of her eyes.

“Wait, I’ll go in tomorrow and tell Chrenko I quit!” he pleaded. “I won’t let this come between us.”

She shook her head and flashed a teasing cat-like smile. “Even if you can’t face reality, one of us has to. Goodbye, Hugo.”

With that, Mara walked out, leaving Hugo with only his memories and a handful of clothes strewn about his apartment like the remnants of a dead star that had once been the center of his orbit.

***

Cold November brought pale sunlight and dustings of snow. Two months had passed since his breakup with Mara. Hugo wandered the streets on a cloudy Sunday, in search of nothing in particular but too restless to stay in his apartment. On a side street that he had never bothered to venture down, he came upon a faded wooden sign engraved with faded gold letters that spelled out “The Last Chapter”. It hung over a stairwell that led down away from the street. Intrigued, Hugo descended the stairs to a rustic arched doorway. The door was old and so small that he had to stoop down in order to enter. Bells jingled when he pushed open the door. The interior was cramped and dimly lit. A single sunbeam slanted through the grimy windows and exposed motes of dust settling back to the floor after being stirred by his entrance. Spiderwebs hung in the corners of the floor and ceiling, Three narrow aisles of bookshelves stood at odd angles, overstuffed with volumes that lay in and on top of the shelves in every possible orientation. A musty smell evoked primal memories of the basement in his grandfather’s house.

Hugo expected a hunched over shopkeeper to emerge from the back, coughing his lungs out. Instead he saw a young blonde girl of about fifteen sitting behind the counter with a book almost as big as her torso. She seemed to take no notice of Hugo, no matter how exceptional the arrival of a visitor may have been. “Hello,” he said gently, trying not to startle her.

“Hello,” she said sweetly without looking up from her book. “Let me know if can help you with anything.”

“Is the owner here?” Hugo’s curiosity was growing by the minute. He had to know what kind of eccentric might preside over this peculiar place.

“My father will be back soon. Feel free to look around.”

She clearly had no interest in making chit chat with him. He shrugged and walked over the creaking floorboards to the stacks of old books. They all seemed to be from another epoch. The leather and cloth bindings were cracked and tattered, the titles barely legible. He carefully brushed a finger along the spines, afraid they’d crumble at the slightest pressure.

One book stood apart from the rest. The cover was black and decorated in arcane elemental symbols. He carefully extracted it from where it was wedged between two other books and laid it on top of the bookshelf. The title page announced it as The Thanopticon, a compendium of mythology about death. He turned through page after page of ancient lore and symbolism about death from pagan religions to dancing skeletons representing the Black Death. Finally, he stopped cold on an illustration that depicted a family of deities — a man, woman and child in the center. The child was Mara. At least it bore a striking resemblance to her. At first he didn’t trust his eyes. His obsessive mind had been seeing Mara in every shop window and street corner. He would catch his reflection in the pool of a fountain and feel that her image had escaped from him just moments before. She was everywhere he looked and now in the pages of an antique treatise on death. As he continued to stare, the resemblance only grew stronger. It was Mara, who he had lost and now found in the unlikeliest place, staring back at him with her characteristic quizzical look.

Hugo closed the book and hurried to the counter. “How much for this book?

The girl peered over her own book at the item on the counter. “Sorry, that isn’t for sale. It’s part of my father’s collection. Until the Velvet Revolution, it was banned, considered subversive material.”

“Please,” he said intensely, “it’s important to me.” 

Setting her book down, the girl studied his face more closely. Her eyes widened. “Oh, you must be him.”

“Who?”

“The one she chooses.”

“Sorry?”

“Well, you can borrow the book, but you have to promise to return it. Otherwise papa will get mad.”

Hugo left the store and hastened to Charles Square, where he sat on a bench near the fountain with forlorn Renaissance lions spewing water from their yawning mouths. He cracked open the book and flipped backwards from the page with the portrait of the girl who looked like Mara. The illustration was part of a chapter on Latvian folklore. The traditions were muddled, it said, intertwined with Christian and Eastern influences. According to most accounts, Mara was the Mother Earth, giver and taker of life and protector of birth and fertility. She represented the feminine side of a cosmic duality, ruling over the universe along with her masculine counterpart, Dievs, supreme god of the sky, light and creation. The author believed Mara to be a composite of the Mother Mary and the Buddhist demon of the same name who personified death, rebirth and temptation. Mara herself had a dual nature, seen as both a benevolent protector of birth and fertility and a malevolent disturber of sleep and stealer of dreams. She commanded the forces of nature, waited on by her elemental servants, the mothers of Wood, Milk, Sea, and Wind.  She makes her home under great willow and aspen trees. Her mystery and grandeur inspired myriad folk songs, poems and magic incantations. Stories of Mara had been suppressed during the Soviet era, but the Velvet Revolution had allowed her to re-emerge into cultural consciousness. 

Hugo stared at the illustration in confusion. His rational mind refused to believe that he had fallen in love with a mythical goddess of death. Such a notion was alien to the scientific thinking he had cultivated over his whole life, but the likeness of her name and image was too uncanny to ignore. He finished reading the chapter. It ended with a story about Mara’s appearance on Earth. As the goddess of death and rebirth, Mara herself would die and be reborn in human form once a century. She would choose a human partner, and they would conceive a child. Once the child was born, the man would die unless someone else were sacrificed in his place. A life would be sacrificed to beget the next era of the cosmos, perpetuating and sustaining the cycle of creation. While his body would die, his soul would survive for eternity joined together with Mara’s divine spirit and at home in her bosom.

Hugo stopped reading. He refused to believe the silly fairytales in the book. But somehow, he felt Mara’s presence in its pages. It was the dark energy that had attracted him to the store and the book in the first place. The faint feeling of Mara’s presence calmed the bitter absence that had tormented him over the last month. He took the book home with him, clutching it to his chest, and read the chapter three more times before finally falling asleep.

He awoke to the sound of birds chirping. A pale pink light emanated from the window panes. The heavy book still rested on his chest, his heart thumping against its sturdy cover. With some effort, he hoisted the book from his chest and shifted it to the night stand. His head felt foggy with half-remembered dreams, yet he knew immediately what he had to do. Hugo rose from bed, changed into fresh clothes and went outside. The air was crisp and sharp and felt like it could snow at any moment. He pulled up his collar and walked the winding streets to Petřín Gardens.

As he began his ascent, Hugo followed the exact route that he had taken with Mara, passing the apple groves and rose gardens. Seasons had transformed the landscape. The  lushness of summer had faded into the hushed barrenness of late autumn, branches trembling on the precipice of winter. On the far side of the rose garden, there was a great weeping willow. Most other trees had lost their leaves, but the willow was still in bloom with yellowing leaves cascading down like waterfalls. The tree shimmered in the ill breeze. Hugo walked toward the base of the tree and parted the hanging branches like curtains.

Exactly like his dream, Mara was sitting against the massive tree trunk, her uplifted face illuminated by diffuse sunlight that shifted with the swaying branches. She was feeding a group of ravens crowded around her feet. Her black hair had grown longer since he had last seen her and was falling off her shoulders. She looked wild and untamed and at home in her natural element. The restrained countenance he had known in the lab had been shed and replaced with a look of primal beauty. He felt a pang of hesitance as though he were approaching a completely different person. In her face, he saw his past, his future and his doom.

She looked up at him and smiled softy. She tossed the last handful of bread to the ravens, who snatched it up and took to the air cawing their satisfaction. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Who are you?” he said, sitting down in front of her at the base of the tree. 

“You already know. I’m Mara.”

“Mara, the charming lab assistant? Or Mara, the eternal spirit of death?”

“Both. In this body, I have the same hopes, dreams, and fears as any woman. And when this body dies, there will never be another one like it.”

“Why me?”

“I never wanted to hurt you. You kissed me, remember? You were in love with death before the day I met you. You never wanted to be with anybody, because you would both be bound to die. So you thought your work would gain you some kind of immortality.”

“And now what? I think about you every day. I can’t live without you, even if living with you means I have to die.”

Mara languidly lay back into the grass with one arm stretched above her in a balletic pose. “Come lie next to me, Hugo.”

Hugo stretched out next to her on the grass. Mara took his hand, and they lay on their backs staring up at the canopy. The willow leaves danced above them, creating hypnotic patterns of light and shadow. Hugo felt as though he were standing outside time and watching galaxies be born and die before his eyes. He had spent his life studying nature as an observer, but now he felt consumed by the whirl of generation and destruction present in the undulating patterns of the leaves. His sense of self dissolved in the boundless web of energy that surrounded him.

“I’m pregnant,” said Mara. Hugo heard the words but remained in a deep trance.

“Does that mean I’ll die after the baby is born?” he asked calmly.

“Yes, unless you choose someone else to sacrifice in your place. I tried to save you from the prophecy.”

“Then I have a choice to make.” Hugo rolled onto his side and kissed Mara, running his fingers through her wild black hair. Leaves rained down around them, turning the branches barren. Bark peeled away from the huge willow tree, and the trunk shriveled and cracked. The grass turned brown around them and fallen branches decomposed as mushrooms sprouted from the rotting wood. Day turned into night and the constellations above them spun faster and faster, tracing concentric rings of starlight in the void. The rings multiplied and overlapped like a cosmic spirograph until a field of pure white enveloped Hugo’s vision. In this moment, he saw what he had to do.

Spring 1997

Chrenko’s body lay in a casket in the university chapel. Wreaths of white roses flanked the body on either side. Guests spoke in the hushed whispers that are customary for somber events. Every so often, the silence was broken by a shoe squeaking on the waxed floor. Hugo stood in front of the casket, gazing at Chrenko . For all the times that he had seen Chrenko as an adversary, he couldn’t help but look at him with pity. The startling innocence that comes over even the cruelest people when they are sleeping radiated from his face. Hugo couldn’t look at him without being reminded of his own father. Compared to the cold and distant demeanor of Hugo’s father, Chrenko’s overbearing concern with Hugo’s progress had been unnerving but strangely touching.

Nor could Hugo stop himself from feeling guilty. It wasn’t because he felt responsible for Chrenko’s death. The old man had been battling colon cancer for several years and had been too stoic to tell anyone. Still, Hugo felt that he had not done justice to his mentor. Can we really do anyone justice? Before their falling out, he couldn’t deny that Chrenko had been an invaluable teacher. Hugo had too often mistaken fatherly concern for manipulation. Perhaps, especially in the final months of his silent struggle, he could have offered a few words of kindness and respect. He could have said something to show gratitude for the passing of his formidable knowledge down to the younger generation. It was too late now. It would always be too late.

Staring at the casket, Hugo knew that he had made the right choice. After all the trouble that Chrenko had caused him, it would have been easy to save himself by wishing for the old man’s demise. But something had changed within Hugo as he had laid under the willow tree with Mara looking into the abyss. Glimpsing the formation and destruction of galaxies had shown him that the impermanence of love was not an imperfection. If anything, it only made mortal love more valuable. He had thought that what made Mara special was her immortality, but something in the stars had made him realize that he was in love with Mara the woman and not Mara the goddess. It was then that he knew what he had to do. The person he would sacrifice would be Mara herself. So he had wished for the death of death, for the divine spirit to leave Mara’s body and render her mortal once and forever more. Both of them were now doomed to die one day. He had at best bought them some time, and that would have to be enough for now.

After paying his respects, Hugo walked slowly to the entrance of the chapel and stepped outside into the cold spring morning. Buds were just barely forming on the limbs of the beech trees. Mara was waiting for him at the bottom of the steps, holding their infant daughter. Her cheeks glowed pink in the brisk air. Her ethereal aura had faded and been replaced by a more natural coloration, the rosiness of motherhood. Hugo encircled her and the baby with his arms and looked deep into her eyes. 

“So this is how it feels to be alive?” she said with a tenuous smile. “It’s not so bad.” Hugo kissed her and then kissed the baby. A sparrow trilled in the tree above them. They both looked up at the bird. The sparrow’s cries reverberated off the chapel walls, and its tiny body etched a vivid silhouette against the budding branches and indigo sky.  Hugo paused to enjoy this slice of eternity. At last the apotheosis was complete.

The End