“Pride did not stop you from visiting my cot.”
Bedřich waits for the two of them to stop bickering then he continues his story. Lenochova frequently woke at night with that terrible pain in her stomach. Bedřich indicates the sleigh bed behind him. “I slept there, but I hear cries through vent. She wake up little Anežka and then both of them wail like banshees. What could we do? Put in stalls? Cows will upset and milk will spoil.” He laughs at his own joke.
One night in late summer, five months after Anežka’s first birthday, he woke hearing Rosalie bang into the corridor from the wing house. This was not unusual. It was Rosalie’s routine to come in after the inn where she worked the late shift for Jungmann closed, to check on Anežka and to deliver a dose of Lenochova’s “medicine,” corn rum from the inn. Rum numbed the pain long enough to allow Lenochova to sleep. Though he had to be up in a few hours to milk the cows, Bedřich magnanimously let the others sleep and went to the blue room to check on things.
“If this was the routine,” I say, “what woke you?” Rosalie watches my father chew toothpicks.
“Little Anežka crying so hard wake me up. But then I hear voice say kind words. Okay, I thought. So I go back in bed.” When Bedřich took breakfast to Lenochova later that morning, after finishing the milking chores, he was surprised to find her still asleep on the cot and the child gone. “I touched Lenochova hand. It was so cold.”
“She was only forty-two.” My father looks at me. “Your age.”
“We ask you, give to us baby. Anežka will be raised Lenoch.”
Rosalie stubs out her cigarette on a post but is too proper to drop the butt on the floor and instead places it in an empty pack in a pocket. “Lenochova was cold-hearted bitch. She only wished that I will be punished.”
“What did you expect?” My father has chewed through toothpick after toothpick. He gathers the slivers in a pile that looks like a game of pick-up-sticks.
“You want to know what really happen?”
My father passes a hand over his face. He wants to hear what happened to his mother but he doesn’t want to have to hear it from Rosalie.
“Tata, say what you have heard. They have right to know.”
Bedřich looks from me to my father to Rosalie, taps the table with his shot glass, gulps down another shot—his fourth, at least the fourth that I’ve counted. Eyes shining, he says, “Is not like I have said. I did not go straight back to bed.”
Rosalie says to my father, “I believed you went to Iowa because you are so angry with me. No, she told to me. He loves you. I could not allow it.”
“Tell to them, tata,” Milada says. “Tell to them what you saw that night.”
Rosalie offers my father a look that is part sympathy, part warning. “She say to me pain is too much.” Lenochova offered a deal. The Lenochs raise the child respectably and Rosalie goes away to live at Jungmann’s inn. In return, they pay Rosalie a monthly stipend so that one day she could have a dowry and properly marry. “I laughed to her face. You will never take my baby. Never, you old witch.”
Rosalie lights up another imported cigarette, leans over the table. My father turns his face away from her smoke. “She said, if you will not leave, then make yourself useful. I cannot have this pain. Put pillow to my face.”
She touches my father’s shoulder to make certain he is listening. “Your type, she said to me. Your type always wants what they do not deserve. She said she told you you must go away because I am sleeping with your father.”
“She had her suspicions,” my father says. “So did I.”
Rosalie says to a chagrined Bedřich, “And you. Peeping on me. That is why Lenochova put herself in blue room and move me out.”
“Was it true?” My stoic father in his old house with its patchings is begging from the woman who was once the maid. “Were you sleeping with my father?”
Mustering an indignation that sounds rehearsed, Rosalie says, “Isn’t it late to asking this now?”
“I don’t know that I would trust your answer anyway.”
“Your only good reason was your mother. You were her little puppy. She could tell you anything and you believed.”
“Jungmann wanted me to leave. I bet he never told you why.”
“Ach, he know nothing.”
“He ever say anything about Leoš?”
“Why do you speak about my brother?”
“That’s what I thought. Jungmann never told you what really happened.”
She eyes my father through her smoke and frowns and grows quiet.
“I saw. I saw them. Your brother and Jungmann.”
“Why you didn’t help Leoš? You know, he looked to you with high regard.”
“I was angry. Even you, too. You and my father. But it wasn’t Leoš’s fault. That poor kid. Now I’m so ashamed.”
Milada is streaming translations for me. My father is speaking Czech. He’s forgotten I’m here.
I stand up, nauseous from the brandy and the endless uncertainty. “Tomorrow we’re going to the prison to see Anežka. Is she my sister or isn’t she?”
“Já jsem jeho noční můra,” Rosalie says quixotically.
Milada, before translating, looks at me a good while. “She is saying she could be your father’s nightmare.”
Rosalie announces that she will not be joining us tomorrow at the prison after all. She wants nothing further to do with that “ungrateful child.”
Milada, the fixer, tenders a plan of action. I will catch the bus to Žamberk where she’s booked a room for me at the hotel. My father will stay the night here. She’ll join me later. Meanwhile, her mayor friend, Mr. Anton Zámečník, is making progress on his human rights case. He has found a witness willing to speak to the court. They have documentary evidence. Enough to compel Jungmann to cooperate. Bedřich reacts to this news by leaving the table and going off to stare out the window looking west toward the fields. “Don’t worry about him,” Milada says.
“Nepůjdu zítra do toho vězení, aniž bych věděl o osudu o Anežčiny kočky.” Milada is translating for Rosalie my rash declaration that I would refuse to go to the prison tomorrow without first knowing the fate of Anežka’s cat. Rosalie haughtily says that I should go to the orphanage and see for myself since I don’t wish to take her word. Milada jokingly adds, “Unless you will be too busy with your boopsy clerk at hotel?”
“That’s not funny,” I say, “considering my ‘boopsy’ was one of Anežka’s children.” Milada apologizes.
Nothing more is said. We leave.
Outside has that green freshness that follows a hard rain. Wanting to clear my head in the crisp air, I refuse Milada’s offer of a ride and instead walk back under the dripping canopy of defoliated chestnuts to the bus stop near the skeleton of Jungmann’s inn. The poisoned mud hole is now a pond. Its banks are covered with black plastic sheeting. After the spring thaw new plantings will sprout. The river is running clear under its many little footbridges. As I was leaving Milada gave me a funny look and said, “Chico, I know you are worried, but have faith. Tomorrow Jungmann will be forced to cooperate. Anežka will cooperate. Soon all will be well.” This seemed optimistic for her, which led me of course to assume she believed the opposite, which of course led me to worry even more. But then, I thought—as I waited for the bus and smelled the rain-washed air and looked back at a bricolaged village, battened down for the approaching winter—maybe here is where my journey ends. I can languish on dialysis here as well as anywhere, yes?
Chapter Twenty-Three
Later that Night at the Hotel
My “boopsy” Dana is not at reception. Her baguette ponytail friend offers me the key to 201, the same upstairs corner room I had a couple of weeks ago overlooking the square. In the Landa painting, the exalted Madonna thrusts her arms outward as though she were Christ hung on the cross. Against that backdrop of chalky snow clouds you have to look closely to notice the slender olive branch. Madonna wields it like a baton, like a conductor gentling
an orchestra overstuffed on Sturm und Drang. I should be napping, but first, I decide, I’ve got some Sturm und Drang of my own to conduct.
I write Dana a note: What happened to my letters? Does it even matter now? My father is here. But, she took advantage of my trust.
Back down in the lobby, I surprise Dana behind the counter. Ear piercings, nose stud, black hair shimmering like the coat of a foal. How young she is. I have to summon the indignation I felt while writing the note, indignation that had been simmering like a sauce kept warm just for this moment but now feels stale.
She asks in her German English idiolect whether I read her note.
“Note?”
“I put in your packet.”
“Look, Dana, how much did Jungmann pay you to steal my letters?”
“Was! Sind Sie total verrückt?”
“You’re calling me crazy?”
“Okay, I take your stupid letters,” she says, defiant as ever. “But you think I give love letters to sadistic old bugger?”
“Yes, I do. Why else would you have taken them?”
“Liebe, du dumme Kerl.” She reaches across the counter and punches me in the heart region of my chest.
“Love? What are you talking about?”
“He say these are his love letters.” When I shake my head disgustedly, she admits that he promised to take her on holiday to Munich, all expenses paid.
“And to think I fucking trusted you.”
“Fucking fucking fucking. Nice talk.”
“Sorry, you’re right. No need for that.”
With tears welling in her eyes, she says, “Anežka is mother to me. Now she is in jail. It is terrible what I have done. Please can you forgive? How I can repay?”
“You should have thought of her before you got greedy.”
“Please. Allow me to help. Sie werden schon sehen.”
Stealing the letters probably made no difference. Regardless of what he hoped to learn from Rosalie, he’d have arrested Anežka with or without the letters. Still, a contrite Dana could be useful. “There is something you could do.”
“Prosím. I will do anything for her.”
“Try to find out what deal Jungmann is going to offer us tomorrow. We don’t have much to go on. Find out tonight if you can.”
She promises to devote her evening to this “mission.” I smile, thinking of how she shamed the Germans at the shelter with her naked dance. If anyone can help us it will be Dana. My lawyerly instincts tell me that this time her loyalty will be to our cause.
Back upstairs in my room, curious, I open the armoire and remove from my travel bag the manila folder I never bothered to get rid of. This time I thoroughly search inside. To je ono. There it is, a folded note just like she said, penciled crudely on the back of a receipt. Dana writes: “Sie sind ein guter Mensch.” You are a fine man. This is followed by lines in English that she must have labored over: “I hope you will have joy when you meet your sister. She is beautiful woman. Please say her love from me.”
I cross to the French doors and peer out. The lights shimmer around the petite palaise enclosing the square. The remaining dry leaves of the lindens and chestnuts in the park glisten from the earlier downpour like stars from a faraway galaxy. Why has my father come back here, really? To face Rosalie’s humiliation? To own up to whatever happened to Leoš, Rosalie’s younger brother who drowned? To apologize to his daughter, if indeed she is his daughter? Wasn’t she better off believing that her father had been shot down over France? Ah, Anežka. If I could do one thing for you. It might be too late for the cat, but the orphanage could still be yours.
* * *
A rapid knock at the door wakes me from my nap. Assuming it’s Dana with something urgent to report, I call out groggily, “Come in, come in.”
But it’s Milada. “Whom you are expecting?”
Inside—I left the door unlocked—she hesitates rather than approach the bed. She’s changed. Short leather jacket. Skinny jeans. Platform heels. Pretty, in that hard, Eastern European way. It’s the same outfit she wore in the photo from the Herald that I keep in my passport. She now knows I carry that photo.
“You must have a date with Mr. Anton. Don’t forget, after we eat, you said you’d drive me to the orphanage.”
“Cat from Anežka is not going anywhere.”
Let her squirm a little. “It’s the right thing to do.” She remains by the door, looking at me sadly or wistfully, hard to be sure which. I mention confronting Dana. “Don’t give me that look. Dana felt bad. She loves Anežka.”
“Have you make sex with your boopsy?” Milada hoists imaginary breasts. “She is va-voomy. You are American. She will believe you have money. Why not.”
“Isn’t it a little disingenuous for you to be asking me that?”
“May we talk?” She motions toward the other bed. “We can talk there?”
She’s indicating the undisturbed bed nearest the French doors and balcony. I had chosen the most interior bed in order to be away from the cold, but I switch over and tuck my bare legs under the downy comforter and pat the bed beside me.
“Is good to see your father here? What he think of his home now?”
“Tell your father he doesn’t need to try so hard to impress him.”
“He is only happy to have someone ear to stab.”
“Bend. Ear to bend. What do you think will happen tomorrow?”
She kicks off her pumps and stretches out beside me. The radiator pings under the window beside the French doors. Heat coming on.
“You will ask Anežka to give to you kidney.” She adds, “No pancreas. You must take pancreas from cadaver.”
“The University Medical Center just started doing pancreas-only transplants three years ago. There’s a shorter line for a pancreas only.”
“Tomorrow I expect to hear blood results from lab. I tell to them they must phone to Anton. His phone is good.”
“Do we have to involve him?”
“I am Czech. You are not. I know how things are done.”
This might be the worst possible time to bring this up, but I’ve hardly seen Milada since returning with my father and I have to settle this. “I have to ask you something. Please don’t be offended. Promise you won’t be?”
“No I do not make promise.”
“Okay, but be honest with me. Are you sleeping with Mr. Anton?”
“Jakým právem mě soudíš? Kdo si myslíš, že jsi? Who give you right to judge?”
Dark shells ring her eyes. She hasn’t been sleeping well. She takes both of my hands in a firm grip. “I want you to know this. I have fallen in love with you that day by river. This has not changed. But we cannot be together.”
She slips off the bed and switches off the light in the room. Standing beside the French doors, her back to me, facing the balcony and the galaxy of lights from the square, she unbuttons her tight jeans, wriggles, slides them down over her hips, kicks them off. Silhouetted, she looks small and vulnerable.
“If your dignity must know, ne, I am not sleeping with Anton.” Still facing the balcony, she tugs off her underpants. Her parted thighs are long and shapely and sinewy with athletic cord-like muscles. Dropping her leather jacket unceremoniously but keeping her turtleneck blouse on, avoiding my look of surprise, she slides under the comforter and touches my cheek with her warm hand. I’d stripped to my thermal shirt and boxers. She smells of soap and baked eggplant. Her hair is coarse from the cheap dye she applies herself.
“I worry your father is disappointed. My father has no money for make repairs. Since my husband take Russian loan I cannot go to bank.”
“I thought you said your father doesn’t care.”
“Ano, he say he don’t care. But he have dignity, too.”
“My father could help. It’d do him good. He’s been in a rut every since my mother died. This is the first time he’s gone anywhere. He doesn’t take vacations.”
Without explaining what she’s up to, Milada leans over and pulls
something crinkly from the pocket of her leather jacket. Not likely a condom. She knows I had a vasectomy, a unilateral decision I made when I learned I couldn’t count on seeing many days past my next birthday. That unilateral move accelerated the march to divorce. She places a Snickers bar on the bed between pillows. Smiles, pats my cheek again, toying with me. “Let us nap. I just want to hold you. Is okay? You are not still angry with me because I send you away?” We stretch out and she folds like an “S” against my abdomen and bent thighs. Drifting into that calm before sleep, feeling her warm bottom against my edematous belly, it occurs to me that there is a lot that can go wrong tomorrow, and probably will. Better savor this.
* * *
A knock on the door? Who could that be? I tug on jeans and check.
“Ich habe für dich ein Geschenk.” Dana is holding a gift behind her back.
How long have we been sleeping? “You found Jungmann?”
She ignores my question. “I wish to say I am sorry for stealing letters.”
The amber vase she shows me, if I’m not mistaken, is the very amber vase the clerk refused to sell me at that shop in Letohrad.
“I remember you say about this glass. I send my friend to shop.”
“Děkuji. That’s really sweet. How much do I owe you?”
“Ne, ne. You will please forgive. And tomorrow, when you visit prison, you will please say my love to Babi.”
“Babi? You call her Babi?”
“She like us to call her Babi.”
“Babi is what she called my grandmother.”
“There you are.”
“I’m sure she’d love to see you. Did you track down Jungmann?”
She gives that customary little hop and her breasts heave and she says, “I will keep him happy. He will talk. I will report tomorrow morning.”
With that she turns and is gone. The amber vase, solid but for a narrow hollow, weighs more than you’d expect, as much as a sizeable cat. Quietly, trying not to wake Milada, I place the vase on the sill above the pinging radiator. The vibration sets off a slight wobble. The light from the square casts through the vase a reflection suffused with voluptuous colors ranging from carrot orange to tea to copper to verdigris to slate blue. It’s a stunning thing to see and leads me to wonder what color really was that bowl on my father’s desk in the basement? The color that comes to mind is butterscotch. In my child’s eye that amber bowl was butterscotch. Butterscotch was the color of my childhood. Rich and sweet. I should forgive my father.
Better You Go Home Page 21