She glanced up. ‘I didn’t understand then. The power they have, I mean.’ She unwound the ribbon around the control bar. ‘I can see Milos tying this,’ and checked over the frayed strings. ‘Marionette strings should be attached to the head, the back, the hands and just above the knee.’ She looked up. ‘The lessons are not forgotten.’

Holding the control bar taut, she lowered Marenka down until the wooden feet touched the floor and manipulated her, ineptly, along the length of the sofa.

‘The different eyes were meant as a message,’ said Petr.

‘Were they?’

‘There’s no need to pretend any more, Laure. It was so easy to spot.’

‘Well then, you know how effective it was.’ Marenka shuffled to a halt. ‘You and…’ her voice hardened, ‘your colleagues might well have interpreted the special meanings in the performances. But so did others who took so much more from them than you possibly could. Comfort and laughter. Truths that couldn’t be spoken out aloud. The company was brilliant at that,’ she said. ‘Did you ever watch the Pierrot when you were snooping?’

He suppressed a flash of anger. ‘I did.’

Her eyes had grown huge. ‘It always made me weep. But it was a miracle. A marionette is technically dead but also alive in a way we cannot explain. The Pierrot suffers and we with him. He was the most tragic, most wonderful thing. You will never see the like. He refuses to be manipulated by the master. He knows the worst. He showed us that we could make choices and we could accept death.’ Tears now spilled over. ‘Because he was always about love, and loving life so much that he refuses to accept the compromise.’ She wiped her cheeks with her sleeve. ‘That’s why he plucked out his own strings.’ She added in a low voice, ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’

He thought of Jan and Maria batting through the leaves at the Kampa Park that summer’s day and of Eva stealing out of the apartment and hastening to her death. He thought, too, of the moments after the man from the Party in the pork-pie hat had taken away his freedom.

‘What happened to Milos and Lucia?’

Petr knew, sooner or later, Laure would ask him. Using his contacts, he had arranged for the relevant records to be opened up. ‘It’s an old Czech custom to gang up on public enemies,’ he said. ‘You probably know. Everyone feels safer. Lucia and Milos were associated with Tomas and Anatomie and, once Anatomie were arrested, they were known as public enemies.’ He brushed some dust from the newspaper off his sleeve. ‘It calmed down in the end. Things weren’t as bad as the sixties. If it had been then, undoubtedly, they would have disappeared. They are probably living quietly somewhere out of Prague.’

‘Aha…’ Marenka’s wooden limbs clicked and clacked as Laure eased her upright.