To
my mind, she would be ideal in the role of Tana Standish in The Prague Papers and its sequel The Tehran Text!
The
Tana stories begin with Tana in Czechoslovakia in 1975, combatting the crushing
Soviet presence. She meets again Laco, an old flame who is younger than her
(she’s 38, he’s 25), rekindling a romance begun in 1968. But even in intimate
moments, Tana is lonely, because she is psychic and must shut down her thought
processes…
And in the exquisite throes of their lovemaking one
special private part of her mind saddened, for Laco was right, so horribly
right. She had known love, idealistic and physical, and she loved Laco as much
as she was capable. But always her psyche must provide an impenetrable barrier
between her and her lover.
Once, when she’d let an older man, Paul, talk her
into letting him ‘go all the way’, she had absently spread out her prescient
awareness as the man she loved entered her. Contrasts of pain and ecstasy, not
too dissimilar, threshed in her body. Then she grasped hold of Paul’s thoughts,
just at the pinnacle. The soaring onrush of pleasure from him accentuated her
own, pushing her into multiple orgasms. But his thoughts had not been of her,
nor of their lovemaking: he’d been reliving some lost love of long ago, far
away, long-since dead. After that disturbing experience, she always shut down
her mind’s receptors at intimate moments.
Rachel
Weisz also likes the Angelina Jolie spy movie Salt, which was originally written for a man, and contains betrayal,
action and blighted romance. In a similar (but different) vein, Tana is
involved in plenty of action, intrigue and tragic loss as she discovers a
shattering secret beneath the Sumava Mountains.
The
crowds around them seemed to be aware that something was amiss. The nearest
guide was forcefully shepherding her tourists out of the way, towards the Holy
Rood Chapel in the southeast corner of the courtyard. Behind them Tana glimpsed
a khaki uniform, the soldier wearing a blue hat banded with cerise:
presidential guard from the main entrance, with a rifle, the only weapon in
sight, which was a blessing, she supposed.
Grishin hurried ahead of the others. Doubtless the
fool was anxious for the glory. His weedy face twisted into an evil grimace as
he grabbed Demek’s arm.
Demek swore and ineffectually tried jerking free.
Tana’s swift side-kick sank into Grishin’s back just
over his kidneys and the force of the blow broke his grip on Demek and sent
Grishin cannoning into the fountain.
One of the secret police shouted.
She grasped Grishin’s arm and heaved him round in
the path of his oncoming comrades. The weight of the man and the sharp quick
movement tore the dressing Laco had placed over her arm’s bullet-burn and she
winced with the sudden pain.
“Get out!” she snarled at Demek. “I’ll hold them
off. Go on!”
For all his rebellious nature, Demek’s instinctive
hesitation was only a second. He scurried across the courtyard and through into
the Third, heading for the back of the Cathedral and Golden Lane, to lose
himself amidst the numerous stalls along the laneway.
Grishin’s flailing body bundled into the leading StB
agent, unbalancing him.
Tana sidestepped them and sank a lightning-fast
instep in the other agent’s solar plexus. He doubled-up in time to receive the
rigid knife-edge of her hand on his neck. Her bandaged arm was already
throbbing as she gritted her teeth and grabbed the man and swung him at the
ceremonial sentry. As the two collided, the sentry dropped the rifle he’d been
raising.
Grishin, half-supporting himself on the courtyard’s
stone flags, called to the onlookers to apprehend Tana, explaining she had
escaped from an asylum. But she met no resistance. The bystanders, having no
love for the secret police, backed off and Tana raced past them, through the
courtyards and out into the square.
Shallow steps, some two hundred of them, fringed the
Castle on the town side. She descended them at a jog-trot, conscious of many
eyes on her.
At the foot, she caught her breath and turned right
by the Red Cross building, and came to a small slope.
Gaining her second wind, she hurried down Kamecka
Street, turned left at the end, to find herself in a square virtually divided
in two by the imposing church of Saint Nicholas and its adjacent buildings.
Franz Kafka was born near here, though the actual house was demolished. He’d
have been unsurprised at the schizoid nature of the Soviet mind, she mused,
stopping for a moment to ease her pulse.
Well, most authors dream of bringing their stories to the screen.
After
all, we’re dreamers.
Dreamers
who transpose those images from mind to the page.
The Prague Papers
Amazon UK here
Amazon
COM here
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