Babi told him to stay away. She said that the city was falling to pieces. She put her hand on her forehead when she said this. She could be dramatic as hell sometimes. But Luděk loved the mess, the decay. His city wasn’t clean, it wasn’t pretty. And there were wires everywhere in the sky and they crisscrossed like a million black lines. Everything was covered in stinking soot, in pigeon shit, covered in old rusted scaffolding, but Luděk did not want to live in a pretty doll’s house. He did not want to live in the country and be bored to death in the fields.
Prague was his city, the flat his whole world, and he loved it all.
Luděk washed his face in the bathroom of their new house, and Max came in to see what he was doing. Max was the best of dogs, one of those dogs who was up for anything. Alert and ready. Max was his dog.
Luděk looked in the mirror. He studied his lips, his nose. Maybe he would look like Děda when he grew up. Or maybe he would look like his papa. Babi looked like Aunty Máňa, and Mama looked like Děda. Uncle Bohdan had Babi’s face, her cheekbones. Luděk’s baby sister didn’t look like anyone yet – she was just a baby. Maybe she would look like Aleš.
Luděk closed his blue eyes, he shut them tight. He wanted to look like no one else at all. He wanted to be something completely new.
Max barked. He wanted to run.
‘Okay,’ Luděk said. ‘Let’s go!’
Melbourne
1981
The blue Ford Telstar pulled out of the garage and my grandpa switched on the radio. Talking – news – the haze of AM radio. Then a song came on that I knew, a flute and soft cymbals and a strumming guitar – ‘Nights in White Satin’. I looked out of the window at all the cars and the trams and the life that rushed by. The song was like a long dream, like soft clouds moving inside your eyes. It was like floating – drifting. I could tell that my grandma was smiling even though I couldn’t see her face properly from the back seat.
We were going to the airport.
We stood in the international arrivals hall and the automatic doors opened and closed – opened and closed. People came through in twos and threes. They looked dazed, pushing trolleys loaded up with suitcases. My grandma held my hand tight and her skin was sweaty. We waited.
My grandpa refused to get a trolley because they cost fifty cents. He said they should be free, that they were a public service, and how were you meant to find fifty cents if you’d just arrived from somewhere overseas.
‘It’s a rort,’ he said. He would carry Aunty Eva’s luggage, but he hoped to God she didn’t bring too many suitcases.
She only had one, and when she came through the automatic magic doors, my grandma let go of my hand and started to cry. Aunty Eva cried, too. My grandpa and I just stood there waiting for the hugging and crying to end. It took a long time.
Aunty Eva.
I could not stop staring at her. She had the same face as my grandma’s face. Their mouths the same, their lips downturned like an upside-down smile. Their eyes the same – large and brown with flecks of green deep inside. They both wore the same gold and garnet earrings that sparkled on their large earlobes. The ones that were like bright flowers made out of delicate petals of glistening red stone. The ones my grandma told me she had worn since she was very small.
One had to be repaired once because it fell on the floor in the bathroom and a tiny stone came loose. The man at the jewellery shop fixed it quickly, and he told my grandma there was no charge. He said the gold was very old, and that if my grandma ever wanted to sell the pair, he would be very interested. He noticed my grandma’s ring – the one she let me try on sometimes. It was way too big, even for my thumb, and the gold band was always warm from my grandma’s skin.
‘Ruby?’ the man asked and my grandma nodded, the fingers of her other hand rubbed the stone protectively.
‘I cannot sell,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
When we left the shop, my grandma put her earrings in right there on the street, finding the holes in her earlobes by feel. She looked like herself again. She stood taller.
‘Malá Liška,’ Aunty Eva said, and she picked me up and hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. When she put me down she took my hand, and it was so familiar. The feel of her skin, the size of her palm, the ruby ring on her wedding finger.
Aunty Eva sat in the front seat, and my grandma sat next to me. The sun was bright and Aunty Eva shielded her eyes with her hand. My grandpa flipped her sun visor down.
‘It’s a thirty-minute drive,’ he said – in English. Aunty Eva lit a cigarette. It was already hot in the car and I wanted to put the window down, but my grandma never let me put the window down because the wind messed up her tightly hair-sprayed beehive. Grandpa let me put the window down if it was just us, but today I knew not to ask.
My grandma pointed out things on the way home – in Czech – and Aunty Eva nodded and nodded. We passed the huge cemetery with iron gates and old stones and angels that went on forever.
‘People are dying to get in there,’ my grandpa said – in English – and he winked at me in the rear-view mirror. It was what he always said when we passed that cemetery. Aunty Eva turned in her seat – What? she gestured with her arms, with her hands, and my grandma leaned forward and whacked my grandpa on the shoulder. ‘Idiot!’ she said – in English.
Aunty Eva lit another cigarette. She had a whole golden carton of them on her lap that she had bought duty free. I knew my grandpa would light a pipe as soon as we got home, and that he would be thinking about that right now. He said it was too hard to smoke a pipe and drive safely, but I knew it was because he knew the smoke made me feel a bit sick when we were in the car.
My grandpa made coffee in the kitchen, and my grandma studied the photos Aunty Eva handed her, one by one. She said something – in Czech – and Aunty Eva nodded, and then my grandma looked at me and said, ‘He’s getting big’ – in English. She handed me the photo. A boy standing in the snow, wearing a parka just like mine, his eyes alive. And even though the photo was still, it was as if the boy was moving, buzzing, like he was about to run out of the photograph and into the room, panting and breathless.
‘Luděk,’ my grandma said. Aunty Eva nodded. She winked at me.
There were other photographs. A bright green car that looked like a spaceship from a cartoon. A man with a big belly standing next to a TV. A photo of Alena, her hair cut short – her hair not long and shiny anymore. A photo of a bridge, a castle, a river – just like the tapestry on the wall.
My grandpa came into the lounge room with a tray and put it down on the table. Coffee in the good cups, the cream and brown ones that had orange saucers. There was a small glass of milk for me and I drank it down. Aunty Eva pulled something out of her handbag, something wrapped loosely in tissues.
‘For you,’ she said – in English, her accent strong and sharp, and she unwrapped the tissues. Underneath, a little clay bird with holes down its sides. A little clay bird painted blue. Aunty Eva brought the tail of the bird to her lips and blew – her fingers moving over the holes. She played a tune, a song, and the happy notes flew out of the bird’s open beak. I watched her face, and it was soft, her eyes closed.
She opened her eyes when the song was over. She held out the bluebird to me.
‘Ocarina,’ she said. ‘I teach.’ My grandma nodded and she said ‘Later’ – in English. Then she said, ‘Say thank you.’
I took the ocarina in my hands carefully, like it was a real bird that might fly away. I hoped I would be able to make it sing like Aunty Eva could.
‘Thank you,’ I said – in Czech. This made my grandma smile.
I could say a few things in Czech. I could ask a few simple questions, but I did not always understand the answers. Sometimes I got the order of the words muddled up, and this made the adults laugh. I wished that I could speak better for my grandma. But my grandpa told me that it did not matter, and maybe I could just understand if I listened very carefully.
‘That is the best wa
y to learn,’ he said. ‘Just listen to the music of people talking, and you will understand the song.’
I’d sit in the lounge and listen to my grandma and her sister talk on and on – faster than I had ever heard. It was like they were five years old again and had secrets and a language all of their own. Sometimes I’d close my eyes and imagine pictures, shadows, a time long ago. Remember our sled? Going down Petřín hill? Remember how Babi would snore all night and she sounded like a monster? Do you remember Mama’s voice? Poor Papa – he worked so hard.
And they would call each other soft names – nicknames.
Máňa, Madlenka, Maruška, Mařenka, Majka, Márinka.
Eva, Evka, Evička, Evinka, Evelína, Lina.
So many names – like soft snow falling. The days went by like this. The flat full of new happy songs. Songs from the past. But one day the song changed.
I’m in my spaceship – the upside-down cream footstool. There is no music playing, only the sound of the electric fan blowing warm air around the room, and my grandma and Aunty Eva talking on the couch, their voices getting faster, getting louder.
‘You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know. You got out!’ Aunty Eva stands up.
My grandma is silent. She stays on the couch.
Aunty Eva lights a cigarette and throws the lighter down on the coffee table. She paces the room.
‘Papa lost an eye.’
‘I know.’
‘They hit him so hard.’
‘I know.’
‘They made him work as an undertaker.’
‘I know.’
‘It killed him, the war. It killed him!’
Silence.
Another cigarette. Aunty Eva blows a cloud of smoke up to the ceiling.
‘It was all right for you,’ she says. ‘I was stuck.’
My grandma stands up now. She has turned into a huge bear on the inside like she does sometimes. A huge bear woken up too soon.
‘I knew no one – nothing. I cried myself to sleep every night! I worked until my hands were raw every day!’ Now my grandma is pointing at Aunty Eva. Pointing right at her face.
‘And it was your fault I wasn’t there – it was your fault I couldn’t help Papa.’
I watch Aunty Eva, her face, but she gives nothing away. Her face is stone. She squashes her cigarette out in the ashtray and walks out of the room. I hear the front door shut, footsteps going down the stairs.
I stay still in my spaceship. My grandma looks at nothing. One of her fists is clenched – the ruby ring squeezed tight between her fingers. The moment goes on and then we hear the front door. But it’s not Aunty Eva. It’s my grandpa.
We looked, my grandpa and me.
We walked to the market and went to every stall. We walked up and down the main road on both sides and peered in every shop window. We looked in the park, down all the side streets, at the football oval. We looked in all the places that Aunty Eva could walk to on her own, but she was nowhere.
My grandpa’s forehead was sweaty and he stopped to wipe it with his hanky. He said he didn’t know where else to look. We stood on the street corner and he told me to run back to the flat and see if Aunty Eva had come home. I did, but she was not there. My grandma looked like she had been crying.
My grandpa put his hanky back in his pocket.
‘Let’s go back to the shops,’ he said.
We had not looked at the supermarket, at the Safeway, because it was quite far down the main road. We had only been there once with Aunty Eva because my grandma wanted to get ice cream for dessert. She got the one that was on special – coffee flavour. I had never had coffee flavour and I didn’t think it would be very good, but we never had ice cream so I was happy anyway.
The glass doors opened, the supermarket buzzing and bright, and there she was, standing near the cashiers, staring at all the items being put into bag after bag after bag. Aunty Eva. My grandpa touched her shoulder, said something in Czech, very softly – very close. I did not catch the words. Aunty Eva’s face was still and pale and did not move. Then she blinked.
‘Home,’ she said.
We went home, walking slowly, and Aunty Eva did not speak. She went to bed as soon as we got to the flat, not looking at my grandma or at anything at all.
‘She’s not herself,’ my grandpa said to me. And I did not know what that meant, but I saw her eyes, how she looked like she was in pain.
‘She has never left her country before. Maybe there’s too much water under the bridge.’
The bridges of Prague, the river flowing strongly.
The old city that I had never seen, but knew so well – the streets, the apartment buildings, the sky.
A small boy running, running – always running.
A white swan.
A little brown suitcase in an attic.
A black theatre of fluorescent light.
Aunty Eva stayed in the flat. She did not want to go out, she just wanted to go home.
‘Home,’ she said, over and over.
Home – to one kind of bread, one brand of milk, one type of apple. Home – with one type of coffee, one type of tea. How can people cope with so much choice? How can they choose every day?
She never knew, never understood what it was like, even though people had told her – her daughter, her sister. But somewhere deep inside, she believed in her country. The workers. The state. The system. Even though she was unhappy, even though she was stuck – it was a world she understood. She just wanted her flat, her radio, her Russian TV. She just wanted to sit in her kitchen and not have to think about the past or the future. She wanted to go back to the Kingdom of Forgetting. To go back to sleep. It was all she had known for so very long. It was too loud here, too shiny, too bright.
All the things she had missed. The world had passed her by. And now she was old.
I brought the clay bird into the kitchen and my grandma was making tea. I asked her if she could play a song like Aunty Eva. My grandma took the bird in her hand, held it in her palm. She shook her head.
‘This was our mother’s,’ she said. ‘She died when we were just babies, and Eva and I both wanted this bird. We tried to share but it was no good, there were too many fights. My papa told me that Eva needed it more than I did. He said that I was stronger than her, and couldn’t I give her this one thing. So, I did it for my papa.’
My grandma handed me back the bird.
‘Papa was right to give it to her. She was really good at playing it.’
In the lounge, Aunty Eva sat and stared at nothing. She was going home tomorrow. She had already packed and now she was just waiting to leave.
I walked over and put a cup of tea on the coffee table.
‘Čaj,’ I said.
She looked at me but her eyes were unfocused.
‘Luděk,’ she said.
‘It’s me,’ I said.
‘It’s you,’ she said.
I sat down next to her.
‘Everybody gone.’ She patted my hand.
I held the bluebird up to her. ‘Will you play?’ I asked.
She shook her head, but I put the bird on her lap anyway. I knew that it should go home with her even though I wanted to keep it very much. It belonged to her and maybe it would sing for no one else.
Maybe it wanted to go home, too.
They spoke in Czech, softly. Voices crisscrossed the room – over and over until I could no longer tell who was talking. They had become one person. A person who had lived two different lives – separated by so much distance – but one all the same.
And it was as if they were saying sorry to each other.
‘I forgive you.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘It’s okay.’
And sometimes there was laughter and sometimes soft crying.
‘I would never have survived like you have.’
‘I am not strong like you.’
They fell asleep on the couch, heads t
ouching, holding hands like children.
The Twins
1921
Two girls are born – identical. Prague, 1921.
When they are six months old their mother will die and a streak of hair near the centre of their forehead will turn white. That streak will stay for their whole lives. No relative had it before them and no relative will have it after them. It is theirs, and theirs alone.
One sister will keep her hair long. She will wear it up in public, but at home, she will let it loose because it reminds her of her childhood. The other sister will cut her hair short in 1968, and she will keep it short for the rest of her days. Short with a slight curl from rollers, from having it set. But the streak will still be there – clear and bright, right in the centre of her forehead.
A bolt of lightning.
Both sisters will wear the gold and garnet earrings they were given at birth until the day they die in 1991 – 157 069 kilometres apart.
A Pack of Cards
Cribbage is my grandpa’s favourite game. It is very compli cated and you have to add up in your head all the while as you go – 15–2, 15–4, 15–6, plus 3 for a run. Grandpa is proud of me now I know how to play. Round and round our pegs move on the cribbage board that my grandpa carved himself. ‘Streets ahead,’ my grandpa says when his peg has rounded a corner ahead of mine. I’m streets ahead.
But right now my grandpa is teaching me how to play patience. It’s so I can play cards by myself when there is no one to play with, or when my grandpa is working or sleeping or just smoking his pipe and resting. He says that patience is very good for your mind.
‘When you play patience, you just concentrate on the game and the cards in front of you – one move at a time. It’s all about the cards that are underneath, like an iceberg. The game is about the cards you cannot see.’
There Was Still Love Page 11