They had been away for six long weeks, but now they were back – finally home. My grandpa was tired and my grandma was quiet. She sat in her chair, not watching TV, not really looking at anything.
‘How was staying with Uncle Joe?’ my grandpa asked.
‘We got McDonald’s,’ I said.
My grandpa smiled. ‘I guess that’s better than having to eat Uncle Joe’s cooking,’ he said.
They bought me a Czechoslovakian doll in traditional dress, with puffy white sleeves and embroidered patterns on her skirt – red and green and yellow. Black boots made of felt, a crown of white flowers in her hair. Her eyes closed when you laid her down and opened when you stood her up, and she had rosy, bright cheeks. Her name was Kateřina. It said that on the box.
‘Your grandma chose that,’ my grandpa said.
He did not care for dolls, and when my grandma was asleep in her chair, my grandpa gave me a small black box. Inside was a glass swan swimming on velvet. My grandpa told me that it was not normal glass but crystal, and that when he had seen it in a shop he had thought of me. The swan had its head resting down against its chest like it was sleeping, its long neck curled, and when I held it up to the light it caught all the colours and held them inside each feather of its graceful body.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and I hugged my grandpa, and his cheek was warm and rough with stubble.
Uncle Joe gave my grandpa a silver Beta video recorder and three blank tapes to say thank you for fixing his car.
‘It probably fell off the back of a truck,’ my grandpa said, and he raised his eyebrows at me. He carefully read the instruction manual, and he practised recording small snippets of TV until he had the hang of it.
The first important thing my grandma made him tape was the Sunday afternoon movie, Doctor Zhivago.
‘Don’t miss the start,’ she said and my grandpa waved her off. He pressed record as the music started up – the heavy drums, and the marching chants, the orchestra, and finally the melody of the balalaika.
At the first ad break, my grandpa paused the recording. My grandma was very pleased about this, it meant there would be no ads when we watched the video. It would be like a proper film, with no breaks, no talking, no distractions. But my grandpa said that there was no way he was going to sit there and watch the whole bloody thing. He really hated Doctor Zhivago.
‘How many times can you watch this rubbish?’ he asked.
But my grandma really loved Doctor Zhivago. I had to watch it with her many times. It was very long and it seemed very complicated to me – I could never follow the story. Endless fields of wheat, soldiers marching, snow forever, and the grey-black cold. I would fall asleep somewhere in those endless fields, and suddenly wake up to the Tuckerbag puppet yelling in his squeaky voice about ham, or a Stan Cash ad, a Southern Motors ad, or a song about hot stuff – Four’n Twenty pies.
‘Why couldn’t he just stay and stop all the ads?’ my grandma would say. And the movie would start up again and we would be thrust back into Russia, a different scene, a different season – maybe on a train pushing through snow, a hundred starving faces packed together in a carriage like cattle.
But the part of the movie I remember most is the beginning.
A small boy stands by a grave dug out of the cold earth. An open coffin is carried out – a beautiful woman lying inside, white lace around her head and face. Autumn leaves start to fall from the sky and the boy looks up. He watches the leaves. The coffin lid is put on and nailed shut with many long nails.
The leaves keep on falling. Hard, frozen soil is dropped on the coffin until the hole is filled. The boy walks over and puts flowers at the head of the grave. But the wind picks up, a snowstorm is coming. Everyone rushes from the grave and the boy is dragged along with them. There is only the grave now, and the snow and the howling wind. And the little boy’s flowers get blown away.
She was strong, my grandma, and when I lay in the bed next to her large body, I felt safe. I slept so well. There were no dreams, no nightmares – and I never even thought about my parents at all, and I did not need them – just the soft ticking of the Smiths clock and my grandma’s breathing. Nothing could touch me when I was with her in that room. But that sound of the balalaika made my grandma cry every time. Doctor Zhivago.
She must have watched that movie twenty times or more.
By Christmas, all three of the videotapes had movies recorded on them. One was Doctor Zhivago, one was The Return of the Pink Panther, which made my grandpa laugh, and the last one was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. My grandpa recorded it for me and every single ad was gone. He had sat through the whole thing and paused the recorder so that I could put the tape on and stay in that world of pure imagination, and not get pulled out by anything.
I clutch the program tightly to my chest. My grandma pushes me forward to the very front row, and when I look up to the domed ceiling, I am blinded by the lights that hang down, by the balconies shining like gold.
People sit down around me. There is the hum of voices, the hum of movement, but soon a hush comes down.
‘You must be quiet now,’ my grandma whispers.
Yes, I nod. Quiet now.
The lights go out.
My eyes burn wide in the dark.
I reach for my grandma’s arm and she takes my hand, squeezes it tight. She keeps hold of it.
Music begins – a violin’s soft call reaches out and fills the space. I can almost see it there, the shape of it moving. It keeps playing, and the sound rises all the way to the sky. The curtain opens.
Colours in the darkness. Pink and green and yellow fluorescent.
Hallucinations of bright light.
A week of stories.
A week of dreams.
A giant spider, an electric pig. A pair of trousers that dance alive on the washing line. A suitcase with yellow eyes – a suitcase with a mouth like a big black hole.
I was lost to the stories, to the creatures. I was lost in the dream, but the lights came on, bright like the sun, and the theatre erupted in noise, in applause. I stood up and clapped until my hands stung. Humans walked out onto the stage and took a graceful bow, all in a line. A dancer’s bow. Flowers were thrown, red and pink, and a woman with long blonde hair picked them up. She waved, blew a kiss to the audience. She was beautiful. I knew she had played the mermaid in the show, the mermaid who had visited a man as he slept. He had left the tap on before he went to bed, and his room had slowly filled with water. The mermaid swam around the room, swam above his bed and her long hair hung down and touched the skin on his sleeping face. But he did not wake. He stayed dreaming.
The clapping rose again as three more humans came out onto the stage. They were dressed completely in black, even their faces were covered. They peeled off their masks and they bowed and one of them was Alena. I clapped even harder. Even louder.
Alena – one of the invisible people. One of the ghosts that made all the objects move, made the magic real.
Backstage.
I got to stand with the dancers, to be near them, and they gave me apple juice and there were chocolates and my grandma even had a glass of champagne. Everyone was speaking Czech. I listened to the words floating above my head, felt the patterns they made. I heard the song, but I did not understand it.
There was a man in a white shirt standing on his own, and I could not stop staring at him, at his dark eyes and his sharp face. He was staring at me, too. He walked over, and he reached down and put a hand on my head.
‘You must join the theatre,’ he said, and his accent was strong and commanding and he did not smile.
I blinked and blinked, and his hand felt heavy on my head. He wasn’t tall, he wasn’t big, but I knew this man was The Magician. They were his dreams I had been watching. It was his theatre.
Someone squeezed my shoulder. My grandma. ‘Say thank you to Mr Srnec,’ she said.
‘Jiří,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ I said. And he still d
id not smile.
‘I will be waiting for you,’ he said, and he lifted his hand off my head. ‘You must come.’
Alena was suddenly there with her shiny black hair and she said, ‘Yes! You must come. You must come because I need to hug you.’
She grabbed me up and squeezed me into her. She felt so warm in her black velvet jumpsuit and her long hair fell all over my face.
‘I will hug you and I will not let you go.’
I listened to her speak Czech with my grandma, another song, another shape floating out into space. My grandma was smiling and she kissed Alena on the cheek and then she told me to be good – be a good girl – and somehow it was decided.
I was going.
The Victoria Hotel.
Alena said I could call her aunty. She wasn’t really my aunty because my grandmother was her aunty. She held my hand. The Magician walked ahead, he walked alone and he didn’t speak until we stepped through the glass doors of the hotel and into the foyer and stood under the huge glass chandelier. Then he said goodnight. I watched him move up the curved staircase like he was floating, like he weighed nothing at all. Then he was gone.
Some of the dancers headed towards the hotel bar. They were still wide awake – terribly awake and alive.
‘Is it sleep time for Little Fox?’ they said to me, and they waved goodbye. I wanted to stay awake with them, I wanted to stay, but my eyes blurred like they were trying to close.
‘Sleep tight,’ a man called Aleš said to me. Aleš with his dark beard. He kissed me on the cheek.
Alena led me up the curved stairs, then down a very long corridor that went on forever and ever. Her room was small – a chair, a bed, a darkened window. The curtains were open but no light came through the glass.
She put me to bed and sang a song from a place far away. I lay in the warm bed and my eyes started to close.
‘Luděk,’ I heard her say.
And maybe she was crying. But my eyes were heavy. I tumbled into sleep. I tumbled into dreams.
I tumble through space. I see Neptune, blue and brilliant, and then I see the sun. I fall towards Earth and land on the back of a white swan that carries me above an old city covered with snow. There are stone towers, and stone bridges over a long, curving river. I see a small boy running the streets, running and running, and I want to run with him, I want to call out, Wait for me. But then I am alone in a room, empty and bare, except for an old suitcase. It’s the suitcase with yellow eyes. Don’t open it – don’t look inside. But its mouth opens wide, and I tumble – I fall into endless black. I wake, and it’s light. Alena is dressed and she is sitting in the chair, her face turned towards the window that looks out onto a laneway. Her eyes are lost, unfocused. But then they find me. She smiles.
‘Hello,’ she says. ‘Time for breakfast.’
Alena drinks black coffee and she watches me eat. The toast and the eggs and the baked beans and the bowl of canned fruit salad. It is the good fruit salad, the one that has bright-red, squeaky cherries in it. There are two cherries in my bowl. I spoon up the sweet syrup and drink it down.
‘Eat! Eat!’ Alena says. ‘Have some more.’
‘Yes – eat!’ It is Aleš and he sits down at our table. He only has toast on his plate, a cup of black coffee in his hand. He looks very tired, his eyes sunk right down into the deep hollows above his cheekbones. His hair hangs limp.
The Magician is not in the breakfast room. I look for him. I keep my eyes on the door, but he never comes through. I see the other dancers – I see the mermaid and the man who flew on the bicycle. I see the man who left the tap on while he slept. But I do not see The Magician.
Aleš’s cup of coffee is empty now. He looks at Alena. He rests his big hands on the table but then one of them moves to Alena’s shoulder, just gently, just touching, and he smiles at her. She shakes her head slowly, and her eyes move towards the door. Aleš follows her eyes with his, and he lifts his hand from her shoulder. He moves it to his empty cup. I turn and see a man walk from the door to an empty table. He sits down. He is wearing shiny metal glasses and a dark-blue tie. He opens the newspaper but he’s not really looking at it – his eyes move around the room, from table to table. He watches.
I turn back to Aleš.
‘Our beloved manager,’ Aleš whispers, and he winks at me.
Alena leans forward, her elbow on the table, and her delicate hand covers her mouth. But her eyes smile. I can see that. Her eyes almost laugh. They look at Aleš.
My grandpa was there to pick me up suddenly, tall and booming in his dark-blue night watchman uniform. He looked tired and I held his hand as we walked to the car.
We drove out of the city, on the big busy roads, and I told my grandpa about the breakfast at the hotel – about the trays of sausages and scrambled eggs, the trays of baked beans, roasted tomatoes, fried bacon. The piles of toast, the butter, the jam. The fruit salad.
‘How lucky,’ he said.
Back at the flat, I watched my grandpa eat his breakfast, his bread and dripping, his hardboiled egg, and he winked at me. He knew I hated dripping, even the smell of it, but he could not do without it. He said it was from all those years in London, because even after the war rationing went on and on, and there was never any butter, only dripping, and he got so used to it that now he loved it. When he made himself sausages in the heavy black frypan, he wouldn’t wash up. He’d leave the pan there on the stove, and later there would be white fat congealed like a pond that froze in the night, and he would scrape it up and put it in a china dish and spread it on his toast and that was dripping.
My grandpa was always happy when he was eating food. Maybe he liked it more than anything else. Maybe he wished that there was more on his plate, more in the cupboard, more in his wallet. Maybe he wished he could say, Let’s go out for lunch, Let’s go out for dinner, Let’s go and get some cake. But my grandpa had to be careful with money and that was how it was. It was everything, and it held us together like packing tape on a cardboard box. But one day I hoped that I could take my grandpa to a hotel so that he could eat as many sausages and as much bacon as he wanted. Just one time. I knew that’s what I would do if I had lots of money. I’d take my grandpa to a hotel buffet breakfast and watch him eat until he could eat no more.
We went to the theatre two more times, and even though it was the same show, I was never bored. There was more and more inside each dream, more inside each story.
I stood with Alena backstage in her black velvet jumpsuit and she talked to me half in her language and half in mine. Somehow I understood it all: her life at home, her son – a small boy called Luděk who liked to run. She told me that before things had been not so good, and that the days and nights had rolled together like one.
‘My husband died,’ she squeezed my hand, closed her eyes. ‘He was so young.’
Alena bent down, whispered in my ear, ‘I’m going to try to stay here.’
I wanted to ask her what she meant, but it was time to go. My grandma wouldn’t let me stay at the hotel again.
‘Alena needs to rest,’ my grandma said.
I waved goodbye.
‘See you on Sunday,’ she said.
Sunday. Three days away.
In the car, on the way home, I asked my grandma if Alena was coming to live with us. She was quiet, her face still. No one said anything.
‘Is Luděk coming, too?’ I asked.
My grandpa cleared his throat. ‘It’s nothing for you to worry about,’ he said.
But later, when he came to tuck me into the big double bed, he told me that if Alena stayed here then no other family would be able to leave Czechoslovakia, not even her son. He spoke quietly.
‘It’s like a guarantee,’ he said. ‘They only let her come on tour because her son stays there, her mother stays there, her brother. You see?’ I nodded, but I didn’t really understand.
‘Will she stay?’ I said, and I wanted her to stay. I wanted her to live with us.
‘It’s very
complicated,’ my grandpa said, and he let out a long sigh.
I knew my grandpa loved Czechoslovakia, that he missed it, that he looked forward to going there. So wasn’t it a good place?
‘It is home,’ he said, ‘but there is not much freedom. There is food, clothes, electricity, but no dreams. That is very hard for some people. That can make you go crazy.’
‘Will she have to leave her son?’ I said, and my grandpa sniffed.
‘It’s very complicated,’ he said.
He tucked me in even tighter, so tightly I could hardly move.
‘Nothing is all good or all bad,’ he said. ‘There are problems everywhere.’
I knew my grandpa was talking about the workers – about unemployment and interest rates and the rent going up again. I knew he was worried that they would have to move to a smaller flat with only one bedroom. Somewhere without a garage workshop. I did not want to think about them losing the flat, their home, and I could feel myself falling asleep. The doona was warm, my eyes heavy, and maybe I was already asleep. Maybe I was dreaming, but I could hear my grandpa’s voice, just softly.
‘It is easy to think somewhere else is better. But when you leave home, there are things you miss that you never imagined you would. Small things. Like the smell of the river, or the sound of rain on the cobblestones, the taste of local beer. You long to have those things again – to see them, to smell them – and when you do, you know that you are home.’
My grandpa told me that Pavel, the man with the shiny metal glasses, was a spy.
And maybe that’s why the rest of the theatre did not wake him when he fell asleep in the sun. They left him there for hours and he got cooked, pink like ham.
It wasn’t even hot – it was only spring – but still the sun was strong enough to burn and strong enough for me to run into the sea and run out again, and for Alena and Aleš to run in with me. Even my grandma put her feet in the water.
Elwood Beach – with the skyscrapers of the city in view.
My grandpa and Pavel were the only two people who didn’t swim, or even wade, in the water. My grandpa because he never, ever swam or even put his feet near the water. And Pavel because he fell asleep on a towel on the sand almost as soon as we all got to the beach. And he stayed like that until it was time to leave. Then he didn’t feel so good. He had a headache and he had to go back to the Victoria Hotel, and a doctor was called. The doctor said he had sunstroke and he had to spend the night in hospital.
There Was Still Love Page 5