Better You Go Home

by Scott Driscoll

  My father’s brown tweed jacket with elbow patches, the calico shirt, the pressed chinos, have been borrowed from Bedřich. He’s still in those Rockports, but he did eschew the yellow golf cap, at least, thank god. Catching me appraising his transformation, he says, “I want Jungmann to see I am still Czech.”

  “I brought up that business with Rosalie’s brother. She didn’t say much.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “What are we going to see? What do you think’s going to happen?”

  “I understand your worry—”

  “Don’t say ‘don’t worry.’ Don’t say that. Okay? I don’t mean to sound harsh. But this is it. If we blow it everything falls apart.”

  We’ve been waiting a good half hour when five guards rush us out of the waiting room and then escort us through a series of barred gates and down a long corridor to an unheated “processing” room. In the factory days, the room we’re led into might have been a dining hall. Windows two stories above the ground floor have been painted the same institutional taupe that covers the walls. The tower cupola appears as a hazy silhouette through the glaze. Guards in the tower watch over the prison yard. Our guards look young. Post-revolution. Good sign. So far they have been respectful, even deferential, apologizing for the long wait. But one guard, older, refuses to look me in the eye or join in the banter. He has the phlegmatic look of a lifer and I don’t trust him.

  The older guard wags his nightstick and commands us to stand facing a plaster wall mapped by the smudges of countless sweating hands. My father whispers the translation. This is not protocol, but we are best advised to cooperate and not argue. A younger guard asks us to spread our feet until our legs are spaced wider than our shoulders. My father immediately complies. When I look up, wondering why this is necessary, the older guard steps behind me and forces my feet apart. The younger guards are sent out of the hall. When they exit with what seems to me too much alacrity, I begin to worry that my father has underestimated Jungmann’'s need to intimidate.

  Lean against the wall, we’re told. Hands above heads. We’re pat-down searched, a needless precaution. It’s all about humiliation, of course. We are told to hold this uncomfortable position while we’re questioned. His questions are really veiled accusations, like why have we brought cash in our daypacks, do we imagine that we can buy justice for Anežka? She is accused of a serious crime. Is this how we serve justice in our country? America, land of freedom if you can buy it? Do we think we are better if we buy justice like everyone else?

  We are warned to hold this position until Jungmann arrives. The older guard, too, exits and my father and I are left alone in the hall. We wait. We wait some more. The light filtered through the painted windows high above us dims as the afternoon wanes. We wait like this, feet spread, hands on the wall, for what seems like an hour. My ankles and feet swell. My shoes tighten like clamps. Without consulting my obedient father, who has a Czech’s built in fear of authority, I shove away from the greasy wall and loosen my shoes. Not okay, apparently. The older guard with the nightstick re-enters. Back against the wall, he commands. My father insists that I do as I’m told and do it now. This is how dignitaries are treated? Perhaps I should not have said that out loud nor assumed that our guard spoke no English. When my back is to him—I sense him wielding that nightstick though I can’t see it—he replies, “Dignitaries know manners.” That stick whacks first one swollen ankle then, before I can duck or move, the other. “You think you are something special, my American friend?” There will be no scars and there will be no witnesses. What would the human rights watch group have had to say? We need evidence! Show us evidence!

  An intense sensation of burning courses up my legs, which are quivering from the strain. There is pressure pain, the swelling, but apart from that I’m lucky. The neuropathy in my feet for once is working in my favor. Throbbing blocks of wood, that’s what I carry down there. But now the swelling will worsen. I will have no choice but to remove my shoes.

  “Translate,” I tell my father.

  “Quiet,” he warns.

  Despite his age, he will, I realize, endure this. I whisper,“I have to get out of these shoes. Tell him the Universal Declaration of Human Rights prohibits the use of torture. This is torture. This is clean torture but it’s prohibited just the same. Tell him this is not okay. He doesn’t have to let me sit down, but I do have to be allowed to take off my shoes. Remind him of the Geneva Conventions.” How much of this has he understood? Hard to say. He’s too dull, too programmed by pre-revolution training to find this funny.“Okay, this is what you tell him. Tell him the Conventions require that they give me medical attention. I have to be allowed to protect my kidneys. Don't forget to mention I’m diabetic.”

  “Not another word,” my father, still straddled and pressed toward the wall, whispers through clenched lips. The older guard is behind me. Where have the others gone? If they were here, none of this would be happening. Jungmann must have arranged this. No other explanation makes sense. He runs the show. If news of this reaches the embassy or the press sees a juicy story—prison nightmare begins again—it will of course be fobbed off as the work of a rogue guard.

  My breathing is shallow. Hard to take a full breath in this position. They count on that. You feel light-headed, disoriented. Can’t see what the bastards are getting up to. I grab as much as I can of the clammy wall.

  The searchlight from the guard tower strobes the room. Between strobes it’s nearly dark. There’s an unpleasant smell of rust and cold sweat. Somewhere through the plaster wall I hear the clang of a gate in the corridor. Jungmann on his way? That how it works? Scare the b’jezuz out of you, then you talk?

  The first blow hits my left kidney. My knees buckle. As if from a faraway hall where someone is being beaten, I hear a cry of pain. The cry is muffled, like the poor guy still thinks dignity makes a difference. The second blow hits my right kidney. I crumple to the cold tile floor. Clumsy, heavy, boneless. A sack. I am the pheasant. A sack. Boom, down. A sack. The guard commands me to get back on my feet. My back clenches and spasms when I attempt to swivel to my knees. Can’t do it, not unsupported.

  Do I want more Geneva?

  Oh, god. Is that moaning? Who is that moaning? Another clang. Nearer this time.

  The older guard, boots scuffing on the filthy tile, exits. Maybe he really is just a sadist with a grudge to service. I do finally manage to hoist myself to my knees. Don’t look at Frank, you don’t want to see that stupid worry. Worry won’t do us any goddamn good now.

  No one comes back in. He straightens up from the wall. “You okay? I think he just wants to scare us.”

  The only furniture in the room is a long wooden table, four wooden chairs, a coat rack. An enormous tin ashtray on the table smells of vanilla-scented tobacco. Beside it a notepad, yellow graph paper. One of the chairs has been knocked over by a previous dignitary. I drag myself across the filthy tile floor to that chair. Right it. Take a ragged breath. Heave myself like a bag of concrete onto the chair.

  I remove my Teva shoes. The shiver and clang of another barred gate in the corridor. The thud of approaching boots. Sounds drive the fear in deeper than the pain. Is this Jungmann's idea? What has he put Anežka through? No, no, not her, he wouldn’t allow it. In his demented way he seems to have loved her. Maybe it was just the guard. Just our bad luck. Maybe.

  “Look at me?” My father clicks his tongue.“Look at me,” he insists. I look. Instead of that useless worrying, his eyes darken with resolve. He chews his lip for lack of a toothpick. “I better do the talking.”

  Late October. Windows painted. Nearly dark outside. Dark inside. Visiting hours must be over by now. Too late to see Anežka, no doubt. The tower’s spotlight strobes. When the lock on that door clicks and the door opens and Jungmann rushes in, alone, no guards, no Anežka. It’s a relief just to have the suspense over with.

  He greets my father with a distracted air, as though he were late for a meeting. Flips on a drop light over t
he table. Moans perseverate at unpredictable intervals. Jungmann gives me a look. Show some dignity says the look. What does that have to do with me? In stiff but fluent English, Jungmann apologizes for keeping us waiting. My father answers in Czech. Taking his advice, I keep my mouth shut.

  Jungmann is wearing his usual blue peasant shirt with the embroidered trim. Rosalie claims he has a need to be liked by the villagers. In this place it seems more a kind of uniform worn to exonerate him from following protocol.

  “My son is hurt,” my father says in English for my benefit.

  “I’m very sorry. That is strictly against procedure.”

  Giving me a look to remind me to stay quiet, my father says, “Your guard you’re saying acted on his own?”

  “We do not treat our guests in this manner. He will be taken care of.” To me, “I will have you escorted to see medical officer.”

  “I go with him,” says my father.

  “I am sorry, but this will not be possible.”

  “I’ll be okay. But I need my insulin kit.”

  He agrees amiably enough to have my daypack returned. “Now you will please stand. It is proper for son to stand and allow father to sit.”

  “I would love to stand. I was standing before.”

  “This is not request. You have said you do not require medical attention. Then you will stand and allow your father to sit. If you need medical attention I will call guards.”

  My father sits. Jungmann takes the chair opposite. There are two unoccupied chairs. I brace myself between them and haul myself more or less upright. The room is cold, but I’m sweating profusely. My back is spasming. My ankles screaming. I lean on the chair.

  “Stand,” says Jungmann. To straighten requires breathing until I can relax my back. He calls for the guards to escort me away. My father objects.

  I kick my shoes are off and slide them under the table. If he sees, he lets it go. We are not here to discuss my posture. This little annoyance, this whiny American, please. Jungmann produces a leather tobacco pouch. He lights a vanilla scented plug in his briar pipe, the pipe with the hairline crack. “Sorry I have no smokes to offer.”

  “We wish to have Anežka’s lawyer present,” my father says.

  Jungmann observes him over his pipe. The vanilla scent reminds me of the air freshener my ex-wife used to hang in my Saab to cover the odor of moldy half-eaten apples collecting in the cup holder. The familiarity of that sweet vanilla induces a Pavlovian urge to trust him, to believe that he had nothing to do with this, that he is here to negotiate Anežka’s fate in good faith. Irrational? How can I still, possibly, want so badly to believe it?

  “So, at last my old friend, you have come home.” Tar oozes from the hairline crack in the pipe. “You have not changed so much.”

  “Nor have you.”

  “Oh, I have. But you. You always had this look … how can I say … like you were too good for us.”

  “Where is Anežka?” says my father.

  “I have sent for her. Guards will bring soon.”

  “Let’s not waste each others’ time. We need to get her to Prague for an emergency medical procedure. Her legal counsel has the court’s authorization.”

  “Excellent. And she has agreed?”

  “We haven’t been given access to talk to her. As you know.”

  “Ano, is problem. She signed confession.” He shrugs. “What can I do? She must go before judge before she can release.”

  “A judge can be persuaded. Tell us what you want.”

  “What I want.” He puffs his pipe, fiddles with it, dumps the hot ash plug, refills, relights. A wave of nausea breaks over the room like a rogue tide. I’m swaying, sweating, shivering. My back clenches like a fist. “What I want is to fix some misunderstanding.”

  “Go on,” my father says cautiously.

  With my kidneys on the precipice of failure, I suddenly realize why I’m here, why I’m really here. “Anežka gets the orphanage.” Speaking helps me steady myself. “If you want compensation I will buy it for her. How much—”

  Jungmann laughs. “I love how you Americans make business.”

  “I am Czech,” says my father.

  “Are you?” He sucks at his pipe.

  “I do not forget.”

  “Then you are not so Czech as you think.” Jungmann regards him with that feminine mouth, ill camouflaged by the goatee, looking drolly amused. “What do you think you remember?” Watching them is like watching two chess players, each wary of the other’s move, both aware that one has the power to end the game.

  “What I saw.”

  “What you saw? I am sorry. You have come so far to be … to be so mysterious?”

  “Leoš.” My father shakes his head. “I saw you and Leoš.”

  Jungmann stands to his full height, removes the pipe, slams the flat of his hand on the table like a petulant child. “He was Kacalek trash. He was no one. We were boys playing games.”

  “For you it was a game. Did you know that he loved you? Leoš told me this once.”

  Jungmann presses a button hidden under the table. “I am very sorry Rosalie has not come today. Without her we cannot make deal. But I do not wish that you will feel your journey has been wasted. You would wish to speak with Anežka, yes?” The door opens. The four young guards, who look like they’d rather be anywhere else in the world, usher her in. The older guard, the one who beat me, brings up the rear. He does not look at me. His expression is blank.

  My father is seeing his daughter in the flesh for the first time. It’s unfortunate that Anežka’s wrists are manacled in front of her with plastic cuffs, that this is how he must see his daughter. Wearing that same fifties-era schoolgirl outfit she had on when she was arrested, the limp gray sweater, white smock, plaid skirt, white knee-high stockings. Everything clean, steel gray hair washed and brushed. This time her shoulders are slumped. Her eyes are sunken, but not bruised or swollen. No sign that she has been beaten. Likely sleep deprived. Denied the use of her cane, she throws her hip jerkily as she makes her way to the table. The younger guards remove the cuffs and then leave the room. The older guard lingers, as though he still has some purpose here. Jungmann considers whatever it is he has in mind—evidently challenging the guard for his behavior isn’t one of those things—and then with a small flip of his hand sends that guard away as well. It’s just the three of us. A strange family. Both of those two claim to be her father. I am claiming to be her brother. What is she looking for? Her cat. Her child. Of course, she will want news.

  I wait for some flicker in her expression to give away what she’s been through, but she looks away.

  “Anežka.” Frank is staring at her. “You okay?”

  There is some resemblance. Both have a round head with a back sloping forehead. That same faraway look, as though something vital had been misplaced.

  That feminine mouth of Jungmann’s purses. His pipe has gone cold. The tar oozing from the crack has left a black smear on his finger that looks like feces. I’m careful not to let on that I’ve seen this smear.

  Jungmann takes his time relighting his pipe. “One day of course Anežka will be free. But I think you do not have so much time. Yes?”

  It’s not really her. It’s a shell of her.

  “Anežka, I went back to the orphanage.” I ignore my father’s remonstrance to keep quiet.

  “How is she?” Her eyes are glazed with a patina of deadness that reminds me of the older guard, dead to any belief that what you value matters, and yet at mention of her child some unvanquished bud of desire blossoms. Anežka presses her hands together. “How is my little golden bug? She has missed me? You told to her that her mother will come home soon?”

  “Enough,” says Jungmann.

  I can’t, I can’t tell her, I can’t do it. Has she lost track of how long she’s been in here? But, I can’t tell her a lie, either. I can’t be complicit.

  “Guards!” Jungmann shouts. The younger guards hurry in and re-manacle Anež
ka. The older one waits by the door, back stiff, shoulders straight, no sign of his earlier swagger.

  “Anežka.” To say nothing is to send her back with false hope, and that isn’t right, either. “She died peacefully in her sleep. We gave her a nice burial.” Even as my father is translating, the guards are leading her away. Just before the door she stops and looks back. With her eyes in shadow I can’t see her expression and it’s this that haunts me, the not knowing what she wants to say, what she wants me to do.

  Then she’s gone. My father says angrily to Jungmann, “This is unnecessary.”

  “I absolutely agree.”

  “For god’s sake let her go. We’ll settle this. You and me.”

  “Such an unpleasant habit,” he says, considering the smear of tar he wiped from his hand onto the table. “You have come to make deal. Okay. Here is my proposition. Rosalie must agree to my proposal for marriage. You will both sign papers giving paternity of Anežka to me. I will change will. Anežka will inherit everything.”

  “She gets the orphanage now,” I say.

  He seems amused that I would have the temerity to imagine I am in a position to demand anything. “Very well. If you care so much.”

  “You are a bastard,” my father says.

  “You ran away like scared rabbit. I took care to her.”

  “Taking care of her includes false arrest?” I say.

  “You think to insult me by this? You know where to find us. It is you I think who will hurry. I will expect to hear from you.”

  He exits. One of the younger guards beckons for us to follow him into the corridor. I slip on my shoes loosely and accept my father’s supporting arm. The guard unlocks and opens three barred gates and then we are back in the main corridor and follow him through three more. Along the main corridor we pass guards moving prisoners. With their tattoos and bad teeth and crude language, the guards can be distinguished from the inmates only by their blue uniforms. From the toothless granny at the front we retrieve our possessions. The cash envelope is still in my daypack, the money untouched. Would they have taken bribes? Could I have paid my way out of that beating?