‘Luděk! What are you doing?’
‘I can’t sleep,’ he said, but it was no use.
‘Bed!’ Babi yelled. ‘Right this second.’
Luděk knew he would not be able to sleep.
There was more talking, but it sounded like English. He tried hard to listen to the sounds, to the song. But he couldn’t grasp it.
English. He did not know it. He did not like it. It was a dumb, flat song that he did not care to learn.
What were Babi and Aunty Máňa up so late talking about anyway? Why couldn’t Aunty Máňa come back? No one ever told him anything. Like when Papa was sick and everyone just kept saying, Papa is tired, Papa is resting. And later, Papa is sleeping. Mama cried, and sometimes she screamed, and sometimes she just stayed in bed and couldn’t see him even when he was standing right in front of her face.
He’s just a small boy. He doesn’t understand. He’s just a small boy.
He stands in the hallway – just a small boy. Next to him is a little brown suitcase. Inside the suitcase are his pyjamas, his slippers, his toothbrush, his red toy car. His mama kisses him on the cheek. She is leaving him here.
‘Can’t I come with you?’ he asks, but his mama is going far away with The Magician to places he cannot go. She has joined his theatre.
Babi takes his hand. They walk down the hall together, but the light above them goes out and his small hand slips from hers. Now he’s falling, tumbling, down, down, and there’s that suitcase again. But this suitcase is big. And this suitcase has fluorescent yellow eyes that stare at him.
‘Your mama is inside,’ a voice says. It’s The Magician. It’s his suitcase. And the suitcase opens up wide like a giant mouth.
There is nothing inside. It’s just endless black, a void going on forever.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ The Magician says.
He knows he must run. He must get away – but he topples and falls inside, and the black goes on forever.
‘Mama!’ he screams. ‘Mama!’ But she does not answer him. She is not there.
Uncle Bill lit a long match and held it to his pipe. He puffed hard until white smoke rose and the tobacco was burning.
He took the pipe out of his mouth, held it in his hand.
‘I think that man is following us,’ he said, and his eyes moved up the path towards another bench.
Luděk looked over at the man. He was wearing a dark overcoat and he had a briefcase by his feet. His black shoes were shiny.
Uncle Bill nudged Luděk gently, and Luděk looked away.
‘I think I saw him at the airport,’ Uncle Bill said.
Luděk remembered how Mama said they were always at the airport, watching, taking photos. She said there would probably be photos of him from all the times he had waited at the airport with Babi.
Uncle Bill blew out a big plume of smoke and it hovered in the air for a second before it moved off with the breeze.
‘Well, he’s free to watch us all he likes,’ he said. ‘He can take as many photos as he wants of us sitting here on this park bench. He can even take photos of me peeing for all I care.’
Luděk grinned and he kicked out his legs. He wanted to ask where the man hid the camera, and how he took photos without anyone seeing.
He looked up at Uncle Bill.
‘Is it because of Mama?’ he asked.
He meant because Mama was always overseas, and because she said that the system was rotten. And he thought about how Babi talked on the phone when Mama called. How she would say strange things that made no sense, like they were talking in another language, talking in code.
Babi told him to never say anything important on the telephone.
Uncle Bill smoked his pipe for a bit, and his eyes were unfocused like he was thinking of somewhere far away.
‘Your mama has done nothing,’ he said after a while. ‘She is part of the famous Black Theatre and we should all be proud of that.’
Luděk nodded. Yes, it was good that Mama was showing the world how great their theatre was. His chest burned.
Uncle Bill continued to smoke. He took off his hat. Luděk looked at all the pigeon shit on the concrete path.
‘Maybe it’s because of me,’ Uncle Bill said. ‘This strange man comes here for six weeks and sits in the park and smokes his pipe. He does not work and he is not a tourist. He speaks Czech, and sometimes he has a small boy as an accomplice who can run very fast and jump from great heights.’
Luděk nodded. Yes, he could run fast. No one would ever catch him. He saw the man get up from his bench. He straightened his overcoat, checked the watch on his wrist, then walked slowly away down the path, briefcase in hand.
Luděk kept his eyes on the man until he was lost from view.
‘Ah, maybe he’s not following us,’ Uncle Bill said. ‘Maybe it was a different man I saw at the airport.’ He tapped his pipe out against the bench railing and hot ash fell on the ground.
‘But I have been watched before,’ he said, and he looked down at Luděk. ‘Because I was in the engineer’s union.’
Luděk didn’t know what Uncle Bill was talking about now.
‘Nazis,’ Uncle Bill said, and he handed Luděk a peppermint – one of the super-strong peppermints from Australia that he always kept in his pocket. They blew Luděk’s head off every time, but he took one anyway. He could never resist.
‘My father got me a job in London. Then my family were stuck here with the war, and they died with it, and that’s how I thanked them.’
Uncle Bill looked away. He rubbed at his forehead.
They sat together sucking on their burning-hot peppermints as a group of workers in stained overalls shuffled past them after another long day of trying to fix rundown machines that belched black smoke and needed parts that would never arrive.
Luděk sat next to Uncle Bill on the crowded bus to Strahov. Uncle Bill was wearing his dark grey hat and his suit and he was reading the newspaper. Luděk had his comic out, but he was too busy to bother with it. He was too busy looking at all the people on the bus. Everyone was dressed up and alive and people were chatting and smiling and some people were even laughing. There was this electric buzz charging through the city like it was Christmas Eve.
Babi and Aunty Máňa had been up and ready since 6 am and they had both been yelling at Uncle Bill – telling him to get up, to get ready, to HURRY UP. Uncle Bill had wanted to stay home but he had no chance against the two of them. Luděk saw the back of their heads, up near the front of the bus, bobbing around with nonstop chit-chat. They were like little kids, all dressed up and going to the circus for the first time.
‘I hate buses,’ Uncle Bill said, and he folded his newspaper in half, put it on his lap. Luděk looked down at the screaming headlines.
Československá Spartakiáda 1980
Eight hundred thousand of our finest citizens will perform
synchronised gymnastic routines at The Great Strahov
Stadium – the largest stadium in the world! And the
world will be watching.
‘Is it really the largest stadium in the world?’ Luděk asked.
Uncle Bill looked down at the newspaper and then at Luděk. He blinked. ‘Eight football fields,’ he said, ‘that’s how big it is.’
Eight football fields. Luděk couldn’t even imagine that. He had never been before, to the stadium or to Spartakiáda. His school had trained for over a year to get in but they were not good enough. Some kids in his class had cried when they missed out, but the head gym teacher told them that only the best in the country could perform, so they must be happy and cheer their comrades on. Luděk guessed that kids in the country had nothing better to do than practise the synchronised dancing all day, every day, and he was glad when he didn’t have to do it anymore. But today, with all the excitement, he thought that maybe it would be something to be out there performing in the big stadium.
‘We will show the world how great our nation is,’ the gym teacher had said.
> The bus was in a long line of buses, and it kept stopping and starting and it seemed to take hours to get to the stadium. There were so many buses that it felt like maybe every bus in the whole country was right there – packed to bursting with bright faces.
Finally, it was their turn to pull up in the designated area, and Uncle Bill looked relieved to be outside. He lit his pipe. He took off his hat and slicked back his white hair, then he put his hat back on. There were people everywhere, it was like a festival or a giant summer market. Stalls and food and gangs of teenagers in uniforms, laughing and screaming and doing handstands on the concrete. Today, the city was full of young people. They had come from all over the country and they were all here to shine – nervous and excited and tanned and strong.
Babi held his arm tightly as they squeezed into line after line, and marched along bare concrete corridors booming with sound. It all looked the same, the stairs, the corridors, the walls – grey and plain. Each giant rectangular doorway they passed let in light from inside the open stadium, but none of them were their doorway. They walked for miles. Aunty Máňa’s feet hurt. Babi was panting, but Uncle Bill just looked a bit pale. He took his hat off again and his hair was wet with sweat. There were so many people – all the bodies, all the legs, all the arms, all the sandals, all the white tennis shoes.
Section 8, row 12.
They had seats, lines marked out on the bare concrete benches: 20–24. They were near the top. There were standing sections below, but there was no way Babi and Aunty could stand all day. They sat down next to each other and Luděk knew they would not move again until it was all over and time to go home. He already needed to go to the loo.
Babi and Aunty took up more room than their two marked spaces on the bench, so Luděk was squashed into about half the space he should have had between Babi and Uncle Bill. Uncle Bill had strangers next to him and Luděk was glad he did not have to be squeezed in next to a strange man. Aunty Máňa had the end of the bench and that was the best seat. Luděk wanted that seat but he knew there was no chance. Anyway, he’d probably just get pushed off the bench completely from the combined weight and excitement of Babi and Aunty Máňa.
When they were finally seated, Luděk could take in the stadium. It was so large that he could not see all of it at once. It made him dizzy – the scale of it. The amount of people packed into it. A gigantic concrete rectangle as big as a city. It would probably take hours to walk around the outside. It would take forever. It was too much. It was too crazy. Luděk gripped the rough concrete seat with his fingers. What if you had to get out in a hurry? What if there was an evacuation? He looked down at his feet, at Uncle Bill’s feet. Uncle Bill had shined his shoes.
There was a high-pitched squeal and the speakers crackled and popped and then a man’s voice said, ‘Welcome to Československá Spartakiáda 1980.’
The whole world erupted in clapping and the concrete ribs of the stadium shook. Everyone got to their feet as a giant flag of the nation was carried across the stadium floor and the national anthem rang out – Where is my home, where is my home? Babi was singing loudly with her hand pressed to her heart – The Czech land, home of mine! Aunty Máňa had her hand on her chest, too. But she wasn’t singing. Uncle Bill’s eyes were closed.
Fanfare, speeches, anticipation. Luděk waited for the spectacular to begin.
Parents and toddlers.
Parents and toddlers in overalls dancing together. Thousands of them moving side to side, some dumb song playing. Luděk’s heart sank. Everyone was clapping after every few steps, after every circle formation. Was this what it was going to be like for the whole day? Luděk looked up at Uncle Bill. He was staring ahead, no expression. His eyes were not really watching as the toddlers and parents kept on dancing – side to side, round and round – all the same. All the same.
The kinder kids came on. More clapping. More ‘Ooooohing’. More horrible music. Babi was swaying from side to side with the beat and pushing into him. Uncle Bill’s suit smelt like pipe tobacco and fried bacon. God, he really wanted something to eat. He really needed to go to the toilet. He tapped Babi on the shoulder but she shooed him off with her hand. Her eyes were large and full and she was following every single step. Aunty Máňa had her camera from Australia in her hands, and she was snapping away – in between rounds of clapping. Snap, snap. Applause. Luděk was pretty sure her photos would be terrible. They were so far away from the ground, the performers would look like ants. Ants wearing little green jumpsuits.
The sun was beating down. There was no cover – everything was open. It was lucky it was a clear day. Babi had told him that one Spartakiáda it had rained and the stadium floor was mud instead of packed dirt.
‘Still the gymnasts went on,’ she said, ‘with muddy feet,’ and she beamed with pride. With memories.
Luděk recognised the next song as it blasted out of the speakers. It was the song his class had trained to. Kids sprinted onto the field at full speed in blue uniforms carrying white hoops. Luděk knew the song by heart. He had had to dance to it twice a week for the whole year. It was such a stupid song – the stupid words, the stupid synth drums. And now here it was in concrete surround sound. He wondered if he knew any of the kids out there. He wondered how many boys called Luděk were dancing on the stadium floor. Maybe twenty. Maybe one hundred.
Another song – another thousand performers.
A moving ocean of colour.
‘The women,’ the commentator said, ‘look at our women – their physical condition, their fitness, their athleticism.’
The crowd applauded.
Babi was beaming. Aunty Máňa took about five hundred more photos.
It was hard to believe they had both been out there prancing around in little, coloured leotards A LONG TIME AGO, when the stadium was made of wood and not concrete. But they had been.
‘We used to perform. We used to be the best.’ It was all they had talked about for days and they were still talking about it now. In between the clapping, in between the held breaths of anticipation. Oh, the nostalgia.
Sokol gymnastics. If you got Babi talking about Sokol, she would never shut up. Her eyes would light up and her hands would dance and she would go on and on. Somewhere hidden away in the roof was an old suitcase with a blue Sokol blazer inside, the emblem worn and faded but still there – A Strong Mind in a Strong Body. Aunty Máňa loved Sokol so much she had even planned to be a physical education teacher. Luděk imagined she would have been good at that. She would have enjoyed yelling orders at kids – Higher! Straighter! Bend further. Keep in rhythm. Heads up! Eyes ahead.
His mama could do all that stuff – move her body in crazy ways, bend her back right over. She could even put both legs over her head when she was sitting on the floor. Years of ballet, years of gymnastics. Years of pain and training.
‘She could have been a great gymnast,’ Babi always said, but his mama hated Spartakiáda, and she hated organised gymnastics. She just wanted to dance.
Uncle Bill stood up suddenly and he started to push past the knees of people sitting next to him. Babi stared up at him, covered her eyes from the sun with her hand.
‘Take Luděk,’ she said.
‘I need to go to the toilet,’ Luděk said.
‘And get something to eat,’ Babi yelled loudly, waving Luděk away, her eyes back on the stadium floor, on the giant creature made up of thousands of purple and white women.
Applause followed them down the concrete corridor. It was good to get away from the crowds, the sun. Uncle Bill lit his pipe, puffed heavily on it until it began to smoke white. He was sweating on his forehead. He looked down at Luděk’s busting face and jiggling legs.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s find the toilets.’
They sat in a canteen and Uncle Bill bought Luděk a sausage and an orange drink and he said, ‘For Godsake, take your time eating so we don’t have to go back out there.’
Luděk stabbed his sausage with the fork and took a bite. It
was salty. Uncle Bill’s sausage was covered in onions. Luděk hated onions. He only liked mustard but there was no mustard. He chewed slowly. The brassy music was coming through the speaker on the wall. On and on it went. On and on. Maybe there was still hours to go. Maybe they would be stuck here for days.
Luděk took a gulp of his drink. He knew Uncle Bill really hated the Spartakiáda. He hated all of it. But Luděk had seen him clap when the engineers came on. Just one clap but a clap all the same. The Engineers: Keeping the nation moving.
‘Is the world really watching?’ Luděk asked, suddenly remembering the newspaper.
Uncle Bill swallowed, wiped his mouth on a paper napkin.
‘If Poland and Hungary and Russia are the world, then yes,’ he said.
Luděk felt a bit disappointed then because he guessed it was pretty good even if it was a bit boring and long. The Union Collective had all these large metal curved ladders, and when they put them together, they made giant metal wheels. Men and women climbed on them and rolled around with the wheels, controlling them with strength and movement. And some of the formations had been good, the scale of them. All those giant pictures made out of people. Luděk didn’t know how it was even possible to organise such a thing. How did they come up with it?
‘We are invisible,’ Uncle Bill said, and he looked down at his empty plate.
‘No one knows we are here but us.’
At long last, it was the grand finale. Thousands of men in white shorts came running into the stadium screaming like warriors in battle. A mass of yelling topless men – The Nation’s Soldiers: Bravery, difficulty, valiant battle.
Babi and Aunty Máňa went crazy. Babi was clapping so hard her cheeks were shaking. The soldiers must have sunbaked every single day to get that tanned. They were bronze like brand-new statues. They made pyramids of human strength, they held handstands for the longest time, they flew into the air like arrows, and tumbled and rolled. They were young and fit and strong and the applause grew like a fireball sweeping the stadium. Luděk’s ears rang with it all the way home on the bus.
There Was Still Love Page 3