* * *
Our last two evenings have been devoted to revisiting our memories, which, I’m discovering, lurch and crash into one another like bumper cars that only rarely hum along peaceably in tandem.
This evening we put off talking until after dinner. Josef has joined us at Yveta’s flat in Chodov and has turned out to be quite the cook. Tonight’s menu includes celery root to clear the palate for garlic soup with floating sausages. The soup and sausages have too much sodium so I take nibbles and sips. After dinner, with Turkish coffee for Josef and my father, decaf tea with lemon for myself, we convene in the family room on the pine corner bench like three old bourgeoisie bachelors and nibble dumplings filled with plum compote—sweetened only with apples, no sugar—from the bounty of plums we harvested a few weeks ago out of that mossy old tree in Yveta’s garden. To give us a chance to talk privately, Josef retreats to his room and watches reruns of Dallas.
An American calendar hung on the wall near our corner bench features a photo of a river cascading through a canyon somewhere in the American West. A diesel locomotive races alongside the river on tracks that would send it roaring right over the viewer. The photo looks familiar. I bet I saw it in Life or Look Magazine when I was a kid. The prospect of travel would have excited me even at that age.
After elevating my swollen ankles on pillows, I take a good look at my father. He looks wary. Not without reason. He has for a fact become frail through the chest. The wall heater has finally warmed the cozy knotty pine paneled room. He’s down to his bleached undershirt. For the record, he does not think of himself as a contractor. He’s a wannabe historian. He would prefer starched white collar shirts with a bowtie.
I ask him to finish telling me what happened to his uncle, my real concern being to understand why he left but others, like his uncle, stayed. We start with dates. On October 5, 1938, Beneš fled to London. A month and a half later, on November 21, 1938, my father set out for Prague with the contingent that included two younger sisters and his father and the Kacalek woman and part of her brood, and by December, 1938, they were on a ship for Ellis Island with Iowa as their destination. In March, 1939, Slovakia declared independence and placed itself under Nazi tutelage. Within twenty-four hours, the Wehrmacht strolled into Prague like they were on vacation. The Czech army had been disbanded back in October. There was no one to resist the invaders.
“Why was your Uncle Alfons shot?”
He chews through a toothpick and a splinter is caught between his teeth. I ask if I can bring him something, floss maybe? A glass of water, he says, but my ankles have stopped throbbing and he sees I’m pretty comfortable on the bench so he gets up himself and brings me a glass as well.
“My uncle believed the Allied powers would stop Hitler. But he also knew nothing would happen until a protest got reported in the international press.”
Alfons and a cadre of dissidents gathered in Wenceslas Square, but only the local papers reported the incident. Accounts of protesters linking arms and singing Kde domov můj? “Where is My Home?” the Czech national anthem, did, however, attract the attention of the SS troops. Uncle Alfons and the others ran through the streets ripping route maps from the sides of the streetcars and throwing the hated signs—hated because they’d been translated into German—into the Vltava.
Two nights later, the Gestapo made an example of them. The press samizdats that found their way to Bohemie Town in Cedar Rapids reported that the Gestapo rounded up 1,200 students randomly from their dormitories that night and arrested them. Without trial, they were transferred by train in cattle cars to concentration camps, either to Terezín, near Prague, or farther to Buchenwald and Auschwitz. According to the papers, nine promoters of the protest, ratted out by students under torture, were shoved into the square and publicly shot. An additional twenty-two men, among them Uncle Alfons, and five women, fingered as organizers, were next paraded in front of an audience in Wenceslas Square that had been paid to hail the Führer. These additional “traitors” were similarly blindfolded and shot. The university was closed.
“I don’t know if they knew they would die. But I do think they believed they would rather die than live like prisoners in their own country.”
“You really admired your uncle, didn’t you?”
“Very much. I wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. I wanted to study history at the university like him.”
“How did you hear about his death?”
“Your grandmother wrote care of my sisters in Cedar Rapids.”
“Speaking of letters. You know I still have those letters Rosalie wrote? One was stolen by someone Jungmann paid to spy on me, but I still have the others. Any idea why Jungmann is so interested in having those letters?”
He gives me that silent toothpick regard, and I’m thinking that’s all I’m going to get, but then he confides that he and Jungmann came from the two rival families in the valley. They were near in age, Jungmann a couple years older. Natural rivals, they fought for the attention of Rosalie. “She was the live-in maid in our house. At first I thought he was jealous.”
“At first?”
“I have never talked to anyone about this.”
I wait for him to go on.
“He turned up dead in the river. Drowned, they were saying. Pretty hard to believe that considering he was the best swimmer in the village, but that was Jungmann’s story. Somehow he got away with it.”
“What are you talking about? Who turned up dead?”
“Leoš Kacalek. He was Rosalie’s younger half-brother …” He stops, rubs his temples, fiddles with a splintered toothpick.
“And? There’s something you’re not telling me …”
He shakes his head. “I should have said something. I should have told everyone what I saw. But Jungmann threatened me. I didn’t say anything right away. Then it was too late. If I said anything later it would have made me look like I was trying to cover something up for myself.”
“Whoa, whoa. Jungmann threatened you? With what?”
“He knew me pretty well. He knew I was ashamed of my father. We had our family name to protect. If I told anyone what I saw happen to Leoš, he said he’d tell everyone what my father was doing at the Kacalek household and that Leoš was my father’s bastard. That threat probably didn’t really stop me from talking. Everyone in the village already knew what my father was doing, I’m sure of that. What really got to me is I thought this trouble would make my father leave with Rosalie like he was always saying he would. I couldn’t stand the thought of Rosalie going away with my father.”
“Were you already … hanging out with Rosalie?”
He clicks his tongue. “Kluci mají své sny. Boys have silly dreams.”
“Dreams?”
“I used to dream of marrying Rosalie and running away to Prague.”
“She must have known you’d inherit the farm?”
“Sure. But my father already owned the farm. Why would she wait for me?”
“Never mind that he was married to your mother and had six kids.”
He nods, refusing to look at me. “More. Two younger Kacaleks were probably his also. Including Leoš. Jungmann knew that. That’s why he knew it would be easy to blame the poor kid’s death on my father.”
“Was your father involved in any way? I mean in the drowning?”
“No. No, he had some principles. He’d never stoop to that.”
“When you guys left for Iowa, you knew Rosalie was pregnant, right?”
“We knew she was pregnant. Yes, we both knew that.”
I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t.
We sip our water. The two boys downstairs are being noisy while Yveta gets them ready for bed. The common stairwell connects our upstairs flat to the downstairs. The top landing is closed off by a heavy drape. On the bottom landing a door sequesters their flat, but sound travels up so we share a muted version of their domestic hubbub. The sound of the boys’ laughter reminds me of what a sad business this must have
been for my father all those years ago.
“Your grandmother had other ideas about who was going to Iowa. So did Barbora Kacalek.” His gaze roams over the photo of the train careening through a river canyon. When he talks again he chooses his words with care. “When we left, my mother was in good health. I thought my being gone was only temporary. I thought Rosalie would get kicked out of the house … my mother hated her … and she’d be sent back to live at the Kacalek farm. She would have her baby. Then I would come back.”
“So you’re saying you believed Anežka was—”
“I just don’t know,” he interrupts. “Only one person really knows. But then the Nazis marched in. Pretty soon it was impossible to get a ship back to Europe.”
He chews his toothpick. The knotty-pine paneling is warm, the radiator gurgles. You can’t miss the rat-a-tat-tat of the laugh-track from Josef’s program down the hall, courtesy of satellite TV. The boys are quiet downstairs. Yveta is glum these days. Chemo is not fun. Dialysis won’t be, either, I’m pretty sure.
“You ever write back to Rosalie?”
“Ano. Often. Maybe my letters were stolen by censors. Jungmann could have done that. All I know is her letters made it sound like she had not heard a single word from me. It was difficult.”
“And you said what in your letters?”
“It was so long ago. I was so young. I probably bragged about my gymnastics tournaments. I probably told her I was angry. I probably blamed her for what she did with my father.” He rubs his temples some more. “These are difficult memories.”
We clear the table and leave everything in the sink for Josef to face in the morning, and I follow him in slippers, courtesy of Yveta—“no shoes allowed on inside”—down the corridor. There’s much we still have to talk about, but he’s tired.
The flat has three separate bedrooms, each adjacent and entered by a door off a long hall. The typical Soviet-era flat had no living room. Space was a premium, no tolerance for a room to show off nice crystal to guests. This flat once housed three families. Yveta had western renters in mind when she renovated but she still didn’t catch the concept of comfy beds. Each of the three sleeping rooms has twin boxes like pedestals, each box covered by a thin mattress. Each room has a set of tall German windows that snap open with a view out back to the garden. Like he did last night, he throws on a jacket and strolls in Yveta’s garden before bed. I watch from my darkened room, behind the curtain where he can’t see me. Despite the night cold, he sits on that bench under the leaning, mossy old plum to let his thoughts settle. At moments like this, he seems a sad old man who was better off leaving the past in the past. Were it not for his old rival having arrested Anežka, and now me needing Anežka’s kidney, I doubt very much he’d have come back here, if the pain I saw in his expression at the table is any indication. In the morning, you can be sure, he’ll have a smile ready when he brings me my coffee. Yesterday morning, before we caught the metro line into Old Town, reflecting on a question I’d asked the night before, he told me he was very clear on one thing: I did not want to leave. I left because I was told I had to.
* * *
The next morning, the call comes from Anežka’s legal counsel. He has arranged clearance for us to visit her in the prison in Žamberk. She’s being kept in a low security wing. Clearance was a formality. Anežka’s legal counsel advises that we should nevertheless bring an envelope with plenty of cash. The plan is for Jungmann to join us at this meeting. A prison visiting room isn’t exactly how I’d imagined this family reunion, but at least it’s really happening.
The meeting at the prison is set for tomorrow. It’s decided after a call to Milada—today is her day off in the rotation—that this afternoon we’ll visit the farm in Písečná and my father can spend the night catching up with Bedřich and I’ll stay in the comfort of the hotel in Žamberk and we’ll plan our assault on Jungmann. That leaves one thread untucked. Rosalie. Milada calls Mr. Anton Zámečník, her mighty mayor, to see if he can lure Rosalie to the farm to meet us.
Chapter Twenty-One
That Afternoon at the Farm
At the Kacalek farm someone is in the yard clucking and throwing grains to honking geese. A diesel tractor putt-putts off toward the fields; a gate clangs shut. Cows low plaintively to register their dissatisfaction at having been made to wait so long. On our side of the creek, the Lenoch farm is as quiet as a ghost town. No smoke curls up from the chimney.
It’s a chilly fall afternoon with leaden skies. My father asked for time to collect himself before we enter the farmhouse where he grew up, the home he hasn’t seen in more than half a century. Walking through the grove of birch by the creek, listening to the rustle of the dry yellow leaves, he recalls fond memories. Sleeping in the loft buried under mounds of downy comforters. The games they played with the chamber pot. In winter the contents would freeze. He, being oldest, owned the chore to thaw it by the stove and empty it each morning.
Milada went ahead to greet her father. They’re waiting.
A limestone corridor connects the house to the stalls. The stone over the centuries has absorbed an aroma of animal funk and musty straw, an odor that remains sharp in the nose, though there have been no animals other than Bedřich’s angora rabbits on this farm for nearly four years. My father looks around with a boyish grin. The funk from the stalls must be raising ghosts of forgotten pranks.
The room at the end of this corridor used to be the tack room. Rosalie stayed there when she worked here as the live-in maid. My father calls it the blue room. At the back of the house is a tiny chapel where his mother went nightly to pray. This part of the building has never been modernized so there’s no light switch in the corridor. I fish my keychain out of my daypack and unclip the LED light and shine it on my father. That eager look has stiffened into his default toothpick chewing long-distance stare. Something about the blue room seems to be having this sobering effect.
Josef has been sent to help Mr. Zámečník find Rosalie. She was here earlier but then she panicked at the prospect of facing my father after all these years and fled.
Saloon-style swinging wooden doors close off the blue room. “Your grandmother paid a carpenter to carve those doors. I always thought they were beautiful. She wanted Rosalie to have her privacy respected.”
“By you?” I suggest playfully.
“Your grandfather.”
He takes the light from me and examines the figurines carved on the doors. On the right side, he points out Libuše, the princess in Czech origin tales. She floats like a fairy on a breeze. Stars circle her crown. For lack of a male heir, Libuše took over the kingdom. To silence her critics, she married a plowman named Přemysl, an alliance that turned out to be her Trojan horse.
Instead of carving the unfaithful and treacherous Přemysl on the left door, my grandmother paid the carpenter to mate Libuše with Bořivoj, the ninth-century prince who was the first Czech ruler to convert to Christianity. Midget-sized Bořivoj wears a pointy crown, a robe, and a beard. The real Bořivoj died at the ripe old age of thirty-five.
“A perfect love story. Bořivoj the pious dies young. Libuše prevails.”
“Knowing my mother, she had a lesson in mind.”
I suggest we take a look in. His mouth hangs half open in anticipation, as though he were once again that sixteen-year-old boy. The first thing you notice is the chill and the stench of stale cigarettes and the medicinal odor of booze. A black heat pipe, roughly six inches in diameter, protrudes through the wall like a cannon barrel. It must draw heat off the stove in the main house. The pipe is cold. The plaster walls and ceiling have been washed in a cobalt blue. Blue as twilight or blue as dawn? Guess it depends on your mood.
“Someone sleep here last night?” I nod to the disheveled duvet slopping over a cot pushed against one wall.
A jar lid on the stone floor next to the cot is filled with butts from cigarettes that are brown and longer than ordinary cigarettes and look imported and expensive. The filters are sm
ooched with maroon lipstick. Under the corner of the duvet I find a bottle, cap missing. Slivovice. Glistening plums on the label. Half-liter. Empty. Judging by the smell, whoever drank this drank it not that long ago.
“Someone in your old family a heavy drinker?”
“Your grandmother never would have tolerated this.”
No toothpick this time. His narrow face is solemn. When my mother died, he was rather matter-of-fact about everything. Of course he’d had plenty of time to prepare. This is different. He doesn’t know what to expect from Rosalie. “Think of today,” I say, attempting to reassure him, “as a rehearsal for tomorrow. Enjoy this. It’s your old home.”
* * *
Massive smoke-cured wooden beams give the great room the feeling of a lodge when you first walk in. The impression fades immediately when you look at the details, at the legacy of decades of communist degradation. Judging by my father’s crestfallen look, the fall must have been precipitous. What was he expecting to find? Obviously not cheap pasteboard cabinets. Not cupboard doors strapped on with string. Not cracked floor linoleum patched with sheet metal. Still, this was his home. For one frozen moment, that long stare disappears, and if I’m not mistaken—admittedly it’s hard for me to see details—he’s got tears in his eyes.
Milada has posted herself by the far window. On the lookout for Anton Zámečník, who is supposed to deliver Rosalie. The view through the double-window—the walls are as thick as an arm is long—is distorted. Everything vertical looks slanted and the distance is foreshortened. The fields looking west butt flush against a careening Žampach Hill, site of the robber baron’s castle that was dismantled by my grandmother’s family to build the church. The Quonset hut dairy built by the SS cooperative appears flattened between them. To the right is that unpaved farm road bordered by the chestnuts that were dropping their pods the last time I was here. At the start of that road is the blackened skeleton of Jungmann’s inn. The pond, I noticed on our drive in, has been refilled in time for the winter freeze to provide skating for fledgling hockey stars.
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