THE small showroom of the Carlsbad Crystal Factories in Prague was on Příkopy, diagonally across from the Associated Bank. Shortly after noon of the day following my return from Carlsbad I left home as I had done for all the years when I worked in the bank, waved to Mother who stood watching me from the window as I left the courtyard, and took the same Number Nine streetcar.

Nothing can obliterate the memory of unusual events in one’s life so quickly and thoroughly as an old routine picked up again. Here I was, doing the same things in the same way as before my marriage. It made Toni seem a mirage and Paris a place in my dreams. The streetcar crawled through Smichov, past the street where I had been born, past the nonclassical school in Malá Strana, over the bridge where I had walked so often with Willy Kolovrat, and I left it as usual before it turned into Václavské náměstí.

This time, instead of crossing the street to the bank, I approached the old patrician house which now had a shop on the ground floor and a private bank above. There were two rather small showcases in the front of the shop and above the door the name of Carlsbad Crystal in neon letters. When I opened the door and went inside the place was empty. It was less than twenty feet deep and only about fifteen feet wide. There were no windows and the principal light came from a crystal chandelier in the center of the ceiling. Along both side walls and at the back were glass shelves, lighted indirectly and backed by mirrors, and in the center of the room was a showcase with a black glass top. The mahogany shelves at the back were separated by an archway curtained with velour hangings.

Everywhere there were pieces of crystal. They stood on the shelves all around the room behind sliding glass doors, a few fine specimens lay on the top of the table under the chandelier, and every one of them sparkled and threw off shafts and points of light. There were vases, compotes, candlesticks, cigarette boxes, ash trays, plates, and rows and rows of table glasses of every shape and size and kind. Some of the crystal was amethyst, some topaz, cobalt, olive-green, ruby. Most of it was untinted and translucent with the pure brilliance of cut diamonds.

As I stood there transfixed, the curtains at the rear of the room moved slightly. Slim fingers appeared through them, like a diver’s hands parting water, and then a slender young girl stuck her head through the aperture she had made and looked at me. Her hair was the color of pale primroses, her skin was fair and her eyes gray-blue. She smiled in a friendly, childish fashion, then asked if I wanted anything, her tone of voice implying that I had come to the wrong shop by mistake but it was quite all right.

I asked to see the manager, and now she looked rather like a child who has done the best she can with her tables but the answers just won’t come right. “He’s not here,” she said. “He’s having coffee at the Continental across the way. But he’ll be back after awhile.” She smiled again and I told her I would return in an hour.

Out on the street I found the light of day singularly flat and vapid. For the first time since my return from Paris I felt a sudden surge of excited interest. The crystal was tremendous. It was vibrant and responsive and alive. It was so much more than merely something to use. It was bold with beauty in its clear facets, its purity in which the eye could detect no flaw in transparency, even the way in which its fragility was accented by feathery decorations engraved to heighten the effect of the original mold. I knew nothing about types of glass or prices of sets or even the uses of many of the pieces I had seen. But I wanted very much to go back and find out, and I wanted more than anything else to be alone in that shop again, to let the rhythm of the glass flow into my mind.

There was nothing to do but wait for the manager, so I walked down Národní třída to the Café Slavia, one of the many popular coffeehouses in Prague. To my mind, such places are the mark of a civilized city. Certainly in Prague they tended to make life easy and graceful.

Each afternoon they were filled with men of the city who used them as an Englishman uses a club or a favorite pub. Here they sat and drank steaming brown liquid and munched sweet rolls while the pages of newspapers rustled through the rooms and eyes scanned the sheets for news of foreign markets and politics, local gossip, and the bad state of affairs in Germany.

So I sat in the Café Slavia on this day in early February, rustling a copy of Lidové Noviny, though I was too stimulated by thoughts of the crystal to read the columns of black type that ran up and down before my eyes. Around the room were other men and a few women, all reading if they were alone, or talking quietly in small groups. No one was hurried. The marble-topped tables were spaced sufficiently far from each other to avoid a sense of being crowded, and no one presumed to occupy a seat at another man’s table without invitation.

Ordinarily I would have been in no hurry to leave, but this afternoon was different. Shortly under an hour I was back at the shop on Příkopy. This time the manager greeted me as I came in. There was no sign of the girl with pale hair. He made a ceremony of welcoming me, for my appearance heralded his release. He said he was glad to see that I appeared an energetic fellow; I looked much the way he did when he started in this place. Never mind, my spirit and my ambitions would get broken soon enough.

He thought he was being friendly, I suppose. There were a thousand questions I wanted to ask him about the stock, the sales organization, his employees and his relations with the factory, but he wanted to talk about nothing except himself. He kept on making sweeping flourishes and saying that he was welcoming me as a new member of the White Cargo Club. Soon I would find out that the stupidity evident in the internal conditions of the firm could break a man’s spirit in Prague as easily as malaria, alcohol, solitude and native women could do it in the tropics. He felt as though he were going back to civilization, now that he was leaving the organization forever.

There was no answer I could make to all this, and after a time he parted the velour curtains at the back of the shop and ushered me into the room beyond. It was a close, cupboard-like affair, some fifteen feet by six or seven. The short wall on the left was taken up by a desk, a typewriter and a filing cabinet. There was no window anywhere. On the right were two heavy tables for wrapping parcels, and a washstand with a coat rack beside it. The girl I had seen an hour earlier was leaning against one of the tables. It seemed the room could scarcely hold all three of us, but the manager who was in such a hurry to leave pushed me before him and I squeezed against his desk while he went on with his irony about the positions we were trading.

The strong distaste I had originally felt for the man was rapidly turning to hatred. His manners were pleasant enough and his type as an individual was inoffensive, but unconsciously he was trying to destroy me as he had already been destroyed. All the energy which Karel Berounský had injected into me was steadily being sapped, along with the delight in this new work which the sight of the crystal had given me an hour earlier. Knowing how little that injected energy amounted to, and how easily the thought of the beautiful, rhythmic glass could be effaced, I was sick with fear of the results if he kept on talking much longer.

He began to open drawers and hand me catalogues and books and files and sales slips, all the time covering me with his vitriolic disappointment in the half-dark room. In the front part of the shop there was silence. I felt it was imperative that I get some air, get away from this man, get out of this place altogether. I turned my head away from him instinctively, and as I did so I caught the eyes of the girl who was leaning against the table in the shadows. It might easily have been my imagination, but I thought she was trying to give me some kind of negation to his words. She didn’t move and she made no sound, but her eyes were gentle and friendly. Whatever her intent, her communication was an encouragement, giving me the support I needed badly at that moment.

With the sound of an opening door in the salesroom, I was freed from the rising sense of claustrophobia. My predecessor went back to the showroom, and when I followed him through the curtains I saw him talking to a haggard, begrimed individual whose cap was still on his head. “This is Novotný,” he said, without giving my name in turn to the other man. “Miroslav Novotný. He’s the stockkeeper.”

Novotný hated me on sight. He was sullen, he coughed continually, and he was deliberately rude to both of us. In my country an employee is not expected to adopt a slavish manner toward his employer, but he must at all times be dignified and aloof and even-tempered. This man obviously wanted to kill all bosses, of every breed, and he made no attempt to hide his feelings.

It was decided that I should see the stock room, which occupied additional space behind the building in the courtyard. It turned out to be a windowless, filthy, damp, neglected cellar. The air was heavy and humid and I found myself unable to breathe without coughing. There was no question now as to the cause of the man’s behavior. I would have wanted to kill a few bosses myself had I been forced to work in such a hole. But the glass was stored with order and efficiency on clean shelves. Novotný followed us as we went back to the shop.

Now a youngster of fourteen was talking to the primrose-haired girl. “Well, here’s your whole staff,” the manager said. “Milada Beranová . . .” indicating the one I had seen first, “. . . and Paula. Paula runs errands for us and helps Beranová when I’m not around.”

So this was my staff: an arresting, sensitive girl of perhaps twenty-three; a mad, sick man; and a young female apprentice with a turned-up nose, a large mouth and swinging arms, and the manner of an urchin who has seen too much on city streets at night. The man who was about to leave pulled out his key ring and detached one for the shop door and another for his desk, handing them to me along with a fistful of letters which had not been opened. “They’ve been here quite awhile,” he said. “Why should I read them? I’m going back to civilization. They’re no concern of mine.”

He went into the back room to get his coat and hat, and the other three stood there silently. Novotný watched me like a dog that has been beaten and starved. But he seemed to smell the possibility of change and a look of suspicion weakened almost imperceptibly his savage expression. He was still ready to growl at my approach, but he was no longer snarling. Paula watched me boldly, fresh, knowing and waiting. Milada Beranová turned quietly and began to dust the crystal pieces in the showcases, touching each one lovingly with her slim fingers and then putting it in place again.

As soon as my predecessor left I retired to the back room and began to go through the files of correspondence, hoping to learn how customers had been approached and attended. In the drawers of the desk I found a confused mess of sales slips, cash reports, stock books and unanswered letters. It took me four months to make order out of this chaos, working until three and four o’clock every morning. But this first day I could merely observe the confusion and resolve to put it right as quickly as possible.

Late that first afternoon I heard the shop door open and then voices that sounded like customers. Novotný had gone back to his cellar stockroom and Paula had disappeared. I sat still and listened, grateful for the opportunity to stay hidden until I could become familiar with the stock. Beranová was out there, capable of handling any possible sale better than I could. And then suddenly I knew I must face the customers now, this first day, regardless of my lack of knowledge and my disinclination to sell anything to anyone at any time.

When I parted the curtains and stepped into the showroom I saw two middle-aged couples and an elderly man with the cap of a tourist guide from one of the travel agencies in his hand. From my experience in Paris I guessed that these were Americans. They were rather noisy and they flashed money around easily, by word if not in actual fact. They spoke no Czech or German and were trying to tell the guide what they wanted to see. My English was poor at that time, but I risked my limited knowledge to ask their wishes. They didn’t want to buy anything, one man said; they were just shopping around. One of the women added that they were interested in drinking glasses. The shelves along the walls held nothing but sets of table glasses, so I led her to one side. Beranová stayed quietly at the rear, saying nothing, and the guide stood near the door. There were hundreds of samples, from sherry glasses to champagne to liqueurs to port. Some were hand engraved, some were ornamental in design, some were heavy with gold rims and gold patterns adapted to exotic tastes, some were severely modern with emphasis on faultless material and utility of line. All of them were scintillating in the reflected light. I looked back and forth from the tumblers which Europeans insist on using for ordinary drinking water, as distinguished from the smaller tumblers for mineral water, large goblets liked by Americans for water at dinner, huge tumblers used by the English for whisky and soda and by Europeans for beer, glasses used for champagne in Europe and ice-cream in America, to those of a special color used only for Rhine wine. It was a bewildering array.

“Just . . . what kind would you like to see?” I said to the American woman. Her husband and two friends were standing behind her now, their eyes going back and forth along the shelves.

“Well, I’m not sure,” she said. “Every place we go, they talk about empire and rococo and baroque styles of glass. What do they mean?”

I had no idea. In my wanderings about Paris through the museums I had gained some knowledge of French Renaissance furniture, but I had never thought of the same styles as applied to glass. Baroque . . . rococo . . . empire. The words rolled in my mind. Their sound alone ought to tell me something. My hand went out and picked up a glass with delicate painted figures in gold and enamel on its face. It looked the way rococo sounded . . . gay and light. I set it on the table in the center of the room and the woman looked at it.

Again I tried to let my imagination guide me. Baroque sounded heavy and round and pompous. I picked up a goblet that was heavily gilded and deeply cut, with a bulging bowl and a thick pedestal. I put it on the table beside the rococo wineglass, by now quite pleased with myself. To find a goblet that would show the influences of empire style was fairly easy. All the trappings of Napoleon that I had seen in France gave me the clue. Scrolls and square-cut designs were characteristic of this period. I found a severely simple goblet with an outward-flaring rim, a diamond-cut base, decorated with diamond cuttings on its bowl. Then I lined up the three glasses and told the waiting Americans which was which. The palms of my hands were moist and my knees were unsteady, but they had no way of knowing it.

Their interest became more specific. One couple decided to buy a complete set of table glasses, twelve of everything, but they still weren’t sure what style would best suit their dining room in a place called Nyack. “What would you suggest?” the woman said to me, explaining her color scheme and the style of her furniture.

I turned back to the shelves as though considering her problem, but I knew I could keep up the deception very little longer. At my side a white, slim hand reached to the shelves and handed me a glass as though I had asked for that particular one. She handed me another. I took them from Beranová and set them on the table, and all the time she said nothing. The guide had been translating their English into abbreviated Czech.

The woman was delighted with Beranová’s choice, and after considerable discussion with her husband and her friends, she chose one of the two samples. “Now I want the whole set,” she said. “You don’t sell from stock? Well, how much will the whole thing be, and how long will it take to have them made? We’ll be back here in a month.”

Again the slim, delicate fingers put a piece of paper on the table before me, written over in Czech in a funny, childish scrawl. The prices of all the glasses were there, and an approximate date of delivery. The gesture went unnoticed by everyone else, and I gave the information as though it had come straight from my own head. How easily Beranová could have shown herself the expert in this sale! When it came to writing up the order, Milada Beranová was there with the proper forms, taking my dictation and inserting the information I couldn’t give her. I was filled with admiration and gratitude for the generous manner in which she had not only given me full credit for the sale on my first day, but had bolstered my confidence.

As the four Americans turned to leave, the man whose wife had given the order held out his hand. “Here,” he said. “Here’s a good-luck charm for you. Thanks for taking so much trouble with us.”

I took his hand and a small coin fell into my palm. “Don’t lose it,” he said. “It’s a rarity these days.”

When they had gone I turned it over. The head of an Indian was stamped on one side and a buffalo on the other. I had no idea what kind of coin it was, but I knew the man had meant it as a gesture, so I treasured it as a charm and a symbol. Even when I discovered years later that it was worth only five cents in America, I still kept it and I have it yet.

Novotný came in just as Beranová finished the sales slips. I rather expected she would give me a certain smile of superiority now that the customers were gone, just to show how much I needed her. Instead she said quietly, hardly looking up, “I’m so happy about your first order.” Then she turned to the glasses and began to polish them. There was no underlining of the word “your” in her voice, to give it a double meaning.

Novotný looked at her and then he turned his head slowly and looked at me. His hand went up to his head and he took off his old dirty cap and put it into his pocket. Neither of us said anything, but slowly and almost painfully he smiled. Whether he knew it or not, from that moment he no longer had any need to fear dismissal, though I had been given full authority by the Meyers to engage a new staff if I desired one.