“How will we get the milk, Dad?” I asked. “Will the lady with the cows bring it over?”
“No, we’ll send Klara across the hill,” he replied. “She can carry the milk home in the pail, and then we can pasteurize and bottle it here in the kitchen. Not only is it healthier, it’s also much cheaper, and if we play our cards right, Mrs. Backyard might also sell us some fresh bacon every winter!”
That evening, Klara and my mother were less than thrilled when they learned about my father’s latest project.
“You want to pasteurize milk and churn butter. In the twentieth century,” my mother said. “Don’t we have enough to do without making more work for ourselves?”
“He wants me to be . . . a milkmaid!” my sister sobbed. “I won’t do it! I’d rather mix cement.”
It wasn’t often that my mother and Klara sided with each other, yet whenever they did, they were a formidable combination. But my father had already committed himself to buying milk from Mrs. Backyard, so buy milk we would, and no amount of door-slamming and complaining would convince him otherwise. From that day on, we bottled our own milk three times a week, and Klara was sent to Mrs. Backyard’s farm every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday afternoon. She hated this job at first, until word of her thrice-weekly pilgrimage spread like wildfire through Cernosice, and the road to the farm was suddenly filled with loitering boys. After that, Klara couldn’t wait to fetch the milk, and the hour it took her to fulfill her duties quickly stretched out to two hours, and then three. She would rush home from school and spend a lot of time dressing and making herself up for the occasion. Then she would seize her pail and disappear into the late afternoon, only to return around sunset smelling strongly of peppermint and complaining about the long delays she had experienced at the farm. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons weren’t so bad, but her Saturday milk runs always seemed beset by a lot of strange-sounding problems that required her to stay out until very late in the evening, and after she had missed three dinners in a row, my mother decided enough was enough.
“Klara, I was thinking that maybe Dominika can go with you to the farm from now on,” she announced. “She could keep you company during these long waits you keep having.”
A look of alarm appeared on Klara’s face.
“Oh, it’s okay, Mum. I don’t mind,” she replied.
“I think it’s a good idea,” my mother said firmly. “Certainly, if there’s a problem and it doesn’t look like you’ll be here in time for dinner, she can run home and tell us, can’t you, Trumpet?”
“Yes! I’d love to go to Mrs. Backyard’s farm.” I was oblivious to my sister’s furious glare across the table. “I’d love to say hello to the cows and help you get the milk.”
“Well, it’s settled then,” my mother smiled. “You’ll go together tomorrow afternoon.”
We finished dinner and I put on my pajamas and curled up with my brand-new copy of Sleeping Beauty. My mother had recently taught me the alphabet, so I was working my way through the easy sentences, most of which I already knew by heart. My sister took her time in the bathroom as usual, and after she had finally finished, she came into the bedroom and slumped down upon her bed.
“Come here, Little Trumpet,” she said pleasantly. She patted the sheets and motioned me to sit on the bed beside her. “Come and sit next to me. I want to tell you something.”
Klara hardly ever called me Trumpet and she never invited me to sit on her bed, but I was curious to see what she wanted, so I sat down beside her.
“What is it?” I asked.
My sister waited until I was sitting on the bed; then she grabbed my head and pushed my face between her breasts and then she rolled over and lay on top of me. I tried to wiggle out, but she was too big and heavy. She smothered my face with her cleavage until I ran out of breath.
“I can’t breathe! Let me go!” I begged. “Let me go!”
Klara rolled onto her side and let me take a big gulp of air, and then she rolled back on top of me again. I could hear her laughing as I struggled helplessly beneath her, and after what seemed like an eternity, she finally rolled off me.
“What was that for?” I sobbed. “What did I do to you?”
“It’s not what you did, it’s for what you’re not going to do,” Klara snapped. “When we go and pick up the milk tomorrow evening, you’re not going to snitch on me.”
“I won’t! I don’t even know what ‘snitch’ means!” I said angrily.
“Snitch means, ‘Tell Mum and Dad,’” my sister replied. “The trouble with you is that you can’t keep your mouth shut. If you’re going to come with me, you’re going to do exactly what I tell you, otherwise—”
She pushed me down on the bed and rolled on top of me again.
“Get off me!” I gasped. “Let me go or I’ll tell Mum you’re hurting me!”
“Where’s your evidence?” Klara laughed. “You have no bruises to prove I’ve even touched you. It’s your word against mine.”
“All right! I won’t tell!” I cried. “I won’t tell! Now get off me!”
“You’d better not,” my sister said sharply. “Because if you do, I’m going to take you to bed with me every evening and turn you into my new teddy bear. Capisci?”
“Okay,” I sniffed. “I understand.”
The next day was Saturday, so Klara and I had to get up early and work in the yard as usual. We mixed and shoveled cement all day, and it was a great relief when my mother finally announced that it was time to go and fetch the milk. After Klara had changed and attended to her makeup, we grabbed the pail and left the house, turning left and walking up the track that led into the forest. As soon as we were hidden by the trees, Klara wedged the pail between the roots of a massive oak tree and then led me down a trail I had never seen before. We pushed our way through a dense thicket of elderberry bushes and came out onto the main road that led down to the local shops.
“I didn’t know that trail was there,” I said excitedly. “It’s like a secret path!”
“There are lots of things you don’t know,” my sister snorted.
We walked past the grocery store and the beauty salon, and then, to my great surprise, we crossed the street and hurried through the front gate of the Hotel Kazin. There was a small parking lot in front of the pub, and a collection of teenagers were standing around beneath the chestnut trees. The girls were dressed in tight jeans and sleeveless home-knitted sweaters, and they chewed gum and talked with the same bored and haughty expressions I had seen my sister practicing at home. A few of the older boys had tiny motor scooters known as “goat’s breath,” on account of the stream of yellow exhaust smoke they spewed. The boys stood around their bikes and tried to look as Italian as possible, calling each other volé, which is the Czech way of saying “man” but actually translates as “you ox.”
“Here comes trouble,” one of the boys drawled when he saw us. He kicked his scooter to life and rode it in a lazy circle around Klara and me until his goat ran out of breath and spluttered to a halt.
“Ciao, bambina!” he nodded at my sister. “I see you’ve brought an actual bambina with you this time.”
“Ciao, volé,” Klara blushed. “This is my little sister, Dominika.”
“Hello!” I said. “We ’re not supposed to be here. We ’ve snuck away without telling our parents!”
“Have you now?” the boy on the bike smiled. He pulled a comb out of his pocket and began to comb his hair. “And where do they think you are?” he asked me.
“They think we’re collecting milk from Mrs. Backyard’s farm!” I told him. “But I promised Klara I wouldn’t tell, because otherwise she’ll lie on top of me and squash me!”
“Shut up, you idiot,” my sister snapped.
“She’s a noisy little thing, isn’t she?” the boy laughed. “Hey, Martin! Come here, will you, volé?”
He snapped his fingers and summoned a short, nervous-looking boy who was standing nearby.
“This is Klara’s sister
,” he said, handing the boy a ten-crown note. “How about you take her inside and buy her a lemonade or something.”
“Sure, volé,” Martin shrugged.
He pocketed the money and led me inside the ballroom at the back of the pub. The room had been set up for the weekend disco, with a mirrored ball rotating from the ceiling, casting an array of colored light across the walls. Two rows of pillars supported a small balcony on either side of the room, and the dark space between the pillars and the walls was filled with tables and chairs. As Martin led me to the bar and bought me a lemonade, I noticed that my sister and the boy she had been talking to had ducked behind the pillars and were standing very close to each other. Before I had the chance to investigate further, Martin handed me my lemonade and took me over to the jukebox. He studied the catalog briefly and slotted a crown into the machine.
“Would you like to dance?” he asked wryly.
“Yes, I love dancing!” I told him. “In fact, I’m going to be a dancer when I grow up.”
The words had scarcely left my mouth when the jukebox began to play a popular song by Olympic, a government-sanctioned rock band that dominated the charts during the normalization era by writing the most politically harmless songs imaginable. As the raspy voice of the lead singer burst out of the speakers, I ran to the middle of the room and began to dance. The music and the colored lights were very atmospheric, and it was easy to imagine that I was dancing on the stage of the Smetana Theater. I stood on my tiptoes and pirouetted and kicked my legs to the great amusement of the boys and girls who were sitting at the tables, and as I danced, I was surprised to notice that my sister was easily the most popular girl in the room. Every time she finished her drink, a boy would rush over to the bar and buy her a new one, and after a while her breasts were heaving voluptuously beneath her blouse as she laughed delightedly at all the jokes the boys were telling her. Martin continued to feed the jukebox, and I drank my lemonade and practiced my ballet until Klara glanced at her watch and leapt out of her chair.
“Jezis Marja!” she cried. She dashed across the dance floor and grabbed me by the hand. “We’re going to have to run to the farm, otherwise there’ll be hell to pay at home!” she told me. “Ciao!” she called out to the boys. “See you next weekend!”
We ran out of the pub and retraced our path through the forest, collecting the milk pail and hurrying across the hill.
“That was fun!” I panted as I trotted behind Klara. “I would like to do that again! Do you think we can?”
“That depends on you,” my sister replied. “If you snitch, Dad will definitely stop us, and I’ll lie on top of you every night for a month. Do you think you can keep your mouth shut?”
“I won’t say a word,” I declared as we arrived at Mrs. Backyard’s front gate. “I promise!”
MRS. BACKYARD’S FARM had once been an expensive Art Deco villa, and it was surrounded by a lavish and overgrown garden. Cow sheds and stables stood at the bottom of the yard, and a long row of dog kennels lined the side of the house.
The second we walked through the gate, we were besieged by a yapping pack of badger dogs.
“Mrs. Backyard!” my sister called out as we fought our way to the house. “It’s Klara! I’ve come for the milk!”
A few moments later, a tired-looking woman appeared at the door. She was tall and bony, and with her close-cropped hair, she looked like a man in her dirty overalls and boots.
“Shut up!” she snapped at the dogs.
“Sorry we’re late,” my sister told her. “We were held up at home again.”
“It’s true,” I agreed. “We were very, very busy!”
“Were you indeed?” Mrs. Backyard frowned. “And who are you?”
“I’m Klara’s sister, Dominika,” I told her. “I’ve come to help Klara get the milk.”
“I see,” Mrs. Backyard sighed. “Well, follow me to the cow shed, then.”
We walked down to the bottom of the yard, and Mrs. Backyard took our pail into the shed to fill it from a milk can. The cows lazily shooed flies with their tails, and I could hear the horses stamping in the stables next door. As we waited, I tried to make friends with some of the badger dogs, but they scampered away whenever I tried to pat them. In the end, I crouched down beside a very old dog who was too slow to avoid me. I scratched his ears and he began to wag his tail.
“His name is Maximilian Ferdinand von Ackerman, but we call him Max,” Mrs. Backyard told me as she finished pouring the milk. “He’s the granddad of the whole litter.”
“Hello, Max,” I said. “Aren’t you a handsome fellow.”
The old dog rolled over on his side, and I stroked his tummy.
“That will be ten crowns.” Mrs. Backyard handed Klara the milk.
My sister’s jeans were so tight she had trouble extracting the money from her pockets. As she fished around, one of the badger puppies darted over and lifted its leg and peed on her socks.
“Oh, no!” my sister shrieked. “He’s done it again!”
“Fuj, Argo!” his mistress scolded. The puppy ran away before she could punish it, and Mrs. Backyard tried very hard not to smile. “Isn’t that strange?” she said. “He’s never peed on anyone else. He must be attracted to your smell.”
“He does it every time,” my sister moaned.
She took off her socks and wiped her feet on the grass, and Mrs. Backyard led us back to the front gate.
“I’ll carry the pail home,” I told Klara. “It can be my job.”
“Whatever you say,” my sister shrugged.
I said good-bye to Mrs. Backyard and Max, and followed Klara home across the hill. The milk pail was very heavy and I had to hold it in both hands and rest it on the ground many times as I walked, but whenever my sister offered to help, I proudly refused. It was almost dark when we reached the house, and as I kicked off my sandals, Klara reached inside the shoe chest and pulled out a bag of strong mint candy called haslerkas.
“Not a word to Mum and Dad,” she reminded me sternly.
“Okay,” I promised. “I won’t say a word.”
Klara gave me a haslerka and slipped one in her mouth, then she zipped the candy and her cigarettes inside one of her old winter boots. “All right, let’s get this over with.”
We went down to the kitchen and found my dad smoking and listening to Radio Free Europe, while my mother stood beside the oven and looked tired and unimpressed.
“It’s not my fault!” Klara blurted before my mother could get a word in. “Dominika had to pat every single animal. It took me ages to get her out of there!”
“It’s true,” I told her. “Mrs. Backyard has lots and lots of dogs. And guess what? One of them peed on Klara’s socks!”
“Again?” my mother said. “That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”
She reheated our dinner, and as we ate she emptied the pail into the big enamel pot, stirring the milk until it pasteurized and then skimming the cream from the top. After the news broadcast had finished, my dad threw on his jacket and drove off to Prague. Klara ladled the milk into glass bottles, and my mother took me upstairs.
“So,” she said casually as she ran the bath and helped me take off my clothes. “You and Klara went straight to the farm. You didn’t stop anywhere else along the way?”
“No, Mum,” I said nervously. “We went straight there.”
My mother lowered me into the water and poured some shampoo onto my head. “Your hair smells funny,” she observed. “It smells like you’ve been sitting in a pub.”
“No!” I cried. “We didn’t go anywhere near the Hotel Kazin! We didn’t!”
“The Hotel Kazin,” my mother frowned. “I see.”
WHEN WE FETCHED THE MILK the following Tuesday and Thursday, Klara and I were very careful to be home in time for dinner. I was worried that I might have accidentally snitched, but as the week passed, it looked like my mother and father really didn’t suspect anything. We worked in the yard on Saturday as usual, and
when it was time to get the milk, I ran to the bathroom and washed my face and brushed my hair. Klara framed her eyes with black eyeliner and checked herself approvingly in the mirror, and then we grabbed the pail and disappeared into the forest, taking the secret trail down the hill to the Hotel Kazin.
“Ciao, bambina!” the boys called out as we appeared in the parking lot.
“Hello, volé!” I exclaimed. “Is Martin here today?”
“No, he had to stay at home,” Klara’s friend with the bike said regretfully. “But maybe you can dance with one of the girls. Hey, Martina! You want to look after Klara’s little sister?”
“Sure, why not?” the leader of the gum-chewing girls shrugged. “We’ll take good care of her, won’t we, Sarka?”
“You bet,” one of her friends laughed.
The two girls slouched over and made a show of examining my cheap skirt and cheap sandals.
“You Furmans really know how to dress,” they observed.
“What you need is some makeup,” Martina suggested. “Come with us and we’ll have you looking terrific in time for your afternoon performance.”
“That sounds good!” I said excitedly.
I followed them to the ladies’ bathroom where they sat me up on the sink and went to work with the lipstick and eyeliner. Then they rubbed several handfuls of styling gel into my hair, teasing it so that it stood on end like I had jammed my fingers into an electric socket.
“What do you think?” they smirked.
“I like it!”
We emerged from the bathroom to a round of ironic applause from the boys, and Martina and Sarka led me to the dance floor. The mirrored ball rotated lazily above us as we danced to the Communist rock on the jukebox, the girls shaking their bottoms and wiggling provocatively. I noticed that their haughty smiles were gradually replaced by genuine ones. The room filled up with cigarette smoke, and more and more couples ventured out onto the dance floor until everyone, including my sister, was dancing. Song after song thundered out of the jukebox, and right at the point where I was sure that this was the happiest moment in my life, the door of the ballroom flew open and my mother and father walked in.
The Twelve Little Cakes Page 18