Vodník

  She blinked twice, then looked at me and forced a smile. “Coming.” She started walking again.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’m fine. Just a bit of headache.”

  “Again?”

  “Don’t worry about it. There’s the theater.”

  I thought about pushing harder, but decided against it. Maybe the headaches were just from stress. The vodník problem was a tough one, and that could be how her body reacted.

  The movie proved to be about as far removed from American cinema as you could get. Apparently it was really popular back in Communist days, although why was beyond me. It focused on three guys who each got a special power from a gnome: one could make anything he wanted appear in his hat, one had a bottomless bag of gold, and the other could strum a harp and make people materialize to do his bidding. It was a cool premise, but the finale was a fifteen minute scene with a woman’s nose growing out of her face like a snake, then going on a cross-country tour from Slovakia, through the Czech Republic, into Austria, and then on up to Germany.

  Her nose.

  Still attached to her face.

  I am not making this up.

  Katka thought it was great.

  “Next time we go to the movies,” I said when we got out, “I get to choose.”

  My cousin shook her head. “I don’t see what your problem is. That film is a classic.”

  Clearly the definition of “classic” varied depending on your native country, but I let it slide.

  Katka had to run a few errands next. The two of us walked through the square and into the closest thing they had to a mall in Trenčín—just a big drugstore, really. Everything in Slovakia was smaller than I was used to. The shopping carts, the food portions, the cars, even the people. When we reached the meat section, Katka took some time sniffing at different sausages to find one she liked.

  Finally I asked, “How do you tell which one is good?”

  She handed me a package. “Smell.”

  I did. It was a sausage. “And?”

  She handed me a different one. “Now try this.”

  Still a sausage. I shook my head.

  Katka smiled. “You can’t tell a difference?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you’d taste one. These aren’t nearly as good as we could get from mäsiara, but they’re too far away. Still, we can at least get rolls from pekárne.”

  I looked back down an aisle we had passed. “There’re rolls right there. Why not buy those and save ourselves a trip?”

  Katka shook her head. “Those will be stale. The ones across town are much better.”

  We were on our way to pick up the rolls when I saw Gollum lurking outside the electronics store by the plague monument. He hadn’t seen me yet. “I’m hungry,” I said.

  Katka nodded. “We can get a few extra rolls.”

  “Not for rolls. Isn’t there something else?”

  Gollum blew his nose into a tissue, then dropped it on the ground.

  Katka shrugged. “There’s a bagetaren back the way we came. You might like it.”

  “Great,” I said. “Let’s go.” Gollum was just starting to turn our way when Katka and I did a one-eighty.

  It had rained while we were shopping, leaving the ground slick and the air heavy. As we walked, I noticed Katka massage her temple when she thought I wasn’t looking. Her headache again?

  The bagetaren was nestled into a row of shops with apartments above them, right off of one of the main squares. The food was okay, although I could have gone for an all-out hoagie instead of a weird tasting version of Subway. Strange deli meats with flecks of who-knew-what in them. Katka had sardines on her sandwich. A sardine sub?

  We took our food out and ate underneath one of the huge outdoor umbrellas scattered around the square. Technically, it belonged to one of the bars and we weren’t supposed to sit there unless we bought something, but what was the point of being a teenager if you didn’t act ignorant and stupid sometimes? Besides, someone was sure to shoo the dirty Gypsies away sooner or later. Katka was all for fighting the Man whenever possible.

  “So,” I said after taking a bite of my sandwich. “What’s up with your headaches?”

  The question sat between us like a two-ton gorilla. I wasn’t used to confrontations—especially not with girls—and holding Katka’s gaze was more difficult than I thought it would be. It must have been hard for her too—she broke away first, eyes dropping to her sandwich.

  “We should tell my father.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “About your visions and the fire víla. Ohnica.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” I said. So that’s what Ohnica was—a fire víla? “What’s the matter with you?”

  She ignored me. “He knows lot about folklore—he’ll be able to help us figure out what to do.”

  What could I do? If she didn’t want to talk, she wouldn’t. I knew that much about her by now. We ate in silence for a minute or two, but I had to try one more time. “You’re not going to budge on this, are you?”

  Katka stood. “Let’s get you your rolls.”

  Whatever. I liked Katka, but she could really get on my nerves sometimes. She had to have things her way. Always. And she had a tendency to treat everyone like they were against her. Maybe it had to do with growing up in a city where so many people really were.

  We walked in silence to the bakery. I could wait her out—she had to talk to me about the headaches eventually. I could be stubborn too. We went inside, and Katka sighed. “They’re almost out.”

  I checked the shelves. What was she talking about? They were loaded with every kind of bread I could imagine and some I couldn’t. Whole wheat, white, braided, with or without raisins, loaves or rolls or baguettes—you name it. “I’m sure something here will work. It’s just bread.”

  “Still,” she said, “maybe we should have gone here first. I should have remembered.”

  The lady behind the counter was short and as wide as she was tall. True to Slovak form, she stared at both of us. Rudely gawked would be a closer description. Katka ordered for me, and in a few more minutes we were back on the street with a bag of rolls, the sky threatening rain again.

  “So should we head home?” I asked. When Katka didn’t respond, I turned to see she had her hand up to her temple, and she was frowning. “Katka?” I said. “You okay?”

  She shook her head slightly. “I—I think I need . . . to go—” Before she could finish the sentence, she dropped her bag and fell to the ground, rolls flying everywhere. I was at her side immediately, but there was nothing I could do. She was convulsing, her arms and legs jerking and flailing back and forth, and her eyes rolled up inside her head.

  Katka was having a seizure.

  Sooner or later, we all need help. Maybe you’ve got a demon that keeps eating your souls before you can get them, or there’s a witch who casts an entire city into endless slumber. That’s why we encourage every Death to have his or her very own hired assassin. We get it. You’re busy. Death’s Assassin can step in to take care of those trouble spots while you take care of business.

  Help!” I called out in English. “Pomoc!”

  A crowd had gathered, but no one stepped forward. What the hell was the matter with these people? I tried to remember anything I’d heard about seizures. Didn’t people swallow their tongue and choke? Or bite through it? Katka convulsed so badly that only her heels and shoulder blades touched the ground. Her scream rang down the street; her mouth clenched wildly. I unbuckled my belt and tried to slip it into her mouth so her teeth gnashed it, not anything else. On the third try, it worked.

  Everyone was still watching. What was I supposed to do? Katka had a cell phone, but I didn’t know how to call the equivalent of 911 in Slovakia. So I did the only thing that made sense—I tried to protect her from herself.

  I took the bag with the few rolls left in it and put it under her head so that she had something to cushion the blows. I caught her
shoulders and tried to keep them as still as I could, hoping that by doing that, she might stop convulsing so much. Trying to control her was like trying to hold back a pit bull. Her expression was blank, one cheek twitched uncontrollably, spittle streamed from her mouth.

  Just when I thought they’d never end, the spasms slowed. First I could hold her down more easily, and then they stopped altogether, leaving me breathless and drained. I glared at the people around me, but they were already dissipating. An ambulance pulled up. How long had the whole thing taken?

  Then the paramedics were out and helping Katka. They took out my belt and rolled her on her stomach, putting her face to the side so she could breathe freely. A line of spit hung from her mouth, pooling on the cobblestones beneath her. I had to look away. I felt embarrassed for her, and mad for feeling such a useless emotion, and stupid that I had been so clueless.

  When I turned back, Katka was coming to herself. The medics checked her eyes and mouth, and she sat up. One of them stood and came over to me.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “She just collapsed. I don’t know.”

  The man nodded. “We know her history. Take her home. Let her rest. She’ll be fine.” He grabbed his bag and headed for the ambulance.

  Katka was blinking. She seemed like she was back from wherever her mind had gone during the seizure. I stepped over to her. “Hey,” I said.

  She wiped her mouth with her hand. “Hi.” She stood and brushed herself off. Her clothes were wet from where she’d fallen onto the rain-soaked cobblestones.

  “Do you—are you sure you should be getting up this soon?”

  She sighed. “I know what I’m doing. This isn’t the first time this has happened.”

  Would she mind if I asked what it was? Or what I should have done? If I were in her shoes, I’d want to be treated normally, like nothing had happened. But I had no idea how to do that.

  “Come on,” Katka said. “Let’s go home.”

  I frowned. “Shouldn’t we go to the hospital or—”

  “I’m fine.” She stared down at the rolls, half of them on the street and the other half squished in the bag. “Although we’ll have to get some more rožky.”

  Just then, the lady from the bakery came out with a bag full of the bread. She offered it to Katka. “For you.”

  My cousin started to refuse, but the woman insisted. Katka took it. “Thanks.”

  The woman nodded and went back inside. I watched her go, my mouth open in surprise. Had someone just done something nice for a Rom? Maybe there was hope for the country after all.

  Katka started off. I followed.

  We walked in silence at first, our footsteps splashing through puddles and taking us back toward the park. Only after we’d gone through Smelly Tunnel did I feel ready to talk. “What was that?”

  It took her awhile to answer. “A seizure.”

  “Why did you have it?”

  Katka took a deep breath, then blurted it out. “I have a tumor in my brain. Untreatable. I’ll die within a year.”

  I stopped.

  She stopped.

  A truck roared by behind us, belching exhaust into the air.

  “Were you going to tell me about this?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “I—I was afraid to. When people see what happens to me, they change. I didn’t want you to find out too soon.”

  It was a novel concept: a girl scared I wouldn’t be friends with her. “I had no idea what to do to help. You could have been hurt.”

  She paused, then nodded. “You’re right. I should have told you. I’m sorry.”

  We walked in silence. I was trying to think about how to find out more information without being too tactless. I switched over to English, not sure if I’d be able to handle the Slovak vocabulary. “So . . . have they already tried chemo—”

  “Yes,” she said.

  I swallowed. “And they can’t—”

  “No.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You didn’t even let me finish my sentence.”

  “I didn’t have to. I went to doctors for the past four years. Nothing worked. When you see so many different doctors, and all of them start out optimistic but end up shaking their heads, why go to another?”

  “Why not?” I asked. “I mean, you can’t just die.”

  “Things work differently here in Slovakia. Maybe in America, I could keep trying. But we can’t afford to.”

  “Isn’t the health plan here all socialist and whatever? My social studies teacher always talked about how great Europe was for that. That you don’t have to pay all the bills.”

  Katka scoffed. “The bills are not problem. It’s the bribes that add up.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She explained in Slovak. “My mother had headaches, just like me. We went to the hospital to run some tests. They put her in a room and said they would start as soon as the doctor had time. But it never happened. Every morning, it was the same. Emergencies had come up, and the doctor would have to run the tests later. Finally my father asked what was happening. The nurse was nice. She told us the doctor was waiting for extra money before he did the tests.”

  Katka paused. We had left the park and were into the residential area, the apartments looming over us, gray and somber. She swallowed. “My father took my mother home. He doesn’t make enough money to pay for silly bribes. That’s what my mother said. She was full Roma, and the bribes were even more than they would be for a normal Slovak. My father let her talk him out of it. Four weeks later, she had her first seizure.

  “We paid the bribe then. Tumor, they said. We paid another bribe to operate. Unsuccessful. More bribes to get radiation treatment. Unsuccessful. She died soon after. The treatments had left her shattered and us poor.”

  What do you say when someone tells you that? “Whoa” was all I managed. Across the street, two toddlers were sitting in an apartment window, staring at us.

  “Right,” Katka said. “So when I started getting the same headaches, your parents helped pay for the bribes. But it was like before, except now we’re all out of money. There is no point in going to doctors. I’d rather live the rest of my life than be frail, sickly, and bald when I die.”

  It wasn’t possible. She seemed so healthy. “Didn’t any of the treatments help your mother?” I asked.

  “Not a bit,” Katka said.

  “What can I do?”

  She tried to smile. “What you’ve been doing. I haven’t had a real friend in years. I have a hard time trusting Slovaks, after what happened to my mother. People in school either dislike me because of my race, or I dislike them because of how their friends treat me. Don’t let knowing this change you too.”

  I swallowed. “I won’t. What do you do now?”

  Katka started walking again, her footsteps fast and sure. “Rest. I’ll be fine. The doctors—when we were still talking to them—said I shouldn’t feel much pain or even notice many differences up until the end. Maybe a day or two of coma, and then death.”

  “How can you—”

  “It’s something I’ve learned to deal with,” Katka said. “I might as well enjoy what I have. Having you come has really helped.”

  It wasn’t every day somebody told you that you made their life better. In the end, I just nodded. “I’m glad to be here too.”

  We reached Katka’s apartment building, and she waved before going inside.

  I went straight to my place and into my room, grateful for the chance to think. Katka was going to die. This was even worse than the house fire. I knew something terrible was going to happen, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it.

  Things had to work out. We were in the twenty-first century—somebody should be able to fix her. But what did I know about Slovakia? Those bribes were crazy, and to go back and get things done right in America would cost money.

  Money we didn’t have. Damned money. Money money money. Every
where I turned, I needed more of the stuff. It might not buy happiness, but it bought just about everything else.

  Dinner was quiet. My parents must have found out I knew, because we all sat there moving food around on our plates and avoiding conversation.

  “We wanted to tell you,” Mom said finally.

  “She asked us not to.” That was Dad.

  I shoved my plate back. “Yeah? Well that makes everything okay, then. At least you wanted to tell me something for once, but couldn’t, instead of just not wanting to tell me anything at all.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Mom said.

  I glared at her. “I mean communication in this family sucks. There are secrets. I know there are. You know I know. So why don’t we just put them all out on the table? What else aren’t you telling me?”

  My parents exchanged glances, then Mom spoke. “Tomas, have I told you I’m proud of you?”

  What? I frowned, but didn’t know what to say.

  “I am.” She put her fork down and leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “You’ve really been coming out of your shell since we moved here. It’s what your father and I always wished would happen. It’s been three days since you even asked me when the surround sound system would be delivered. You’ve been dealing with all these changes so well. Yes, there are some things we haven’t told you. We have our reasons. Can’t you just trust us?”

  Trust her? I wanted to. But I also wanted to yell at them. Demand answers. Instead, I did neither. I stood up from the table without another word and went back to my room. My parents came after me. Knocked on the door. I ignored them. Let them be the ones wishing I’d talk to them for once.

  Part of me felt guilty. Katka was the one who was going to die—what place did I have for feeling sorry for myself, just because I was going to lose the closest friend I’d ever had? I’d still be able to go to college, get a job—do all sorts of living stuff.

  Katka wouldn’t.

  Hours later, my mind was still going in circles. I’d been lying there for too long, and I still couldn’t fall asleep. When I checked the clock, it was past midnight. Too late for a movie, but there were other options. Lying there was doing nothing but make me crazy.