by George Foy
‘Eduard?’ he said softly. ‘Is that you, Eduard?’
The pilot’s grin faded, a little. He walked into the room and said, ‘It’s Joey, Papi. Joey.’ Side to the light so his father could see him better.
‘Of course, Joey. It’s you. I meant you.’ The old man made sure there was lots of welcome in his voice. ‘I didn’t know you vas coming, son.’ He shifted around slowly to peer down the cellar stairs. ‘Mama,’ he yelled, ‘come look who’s here!
‘Your ma’s in Canada,’ he added. It was the oldest joke in the house.
Maria Marak came slowly up the stairs from the cellar, carrying a basket full of raw turnips on a bed of hay. The pilot’s mother was quite short but did not look it because she was so thin and angular. Her eyes were very blue. Her face, like channels of a complex delta, was webbed with wrinkles. ‘Joey!’ she said, and hugged him. ‘What a surprise. Joey!’
The old dog, Herb, bumbled up after her. She was half blind and all deaf but she wagged her tail like a propellor when she smelled him. Stanislaus the cat gave him a resentful look and went back to sleep on the shelf over the stove.
‘I brought some friends, Mami,’ the pilot said. ‘We’ll just spend the night. We’re going to Montreal in the morning. And I got a parrot for you to take care of.’
He brought the others in. His father was very polite; he did his little Germanic bow for the girl’s benefit. His mother looked at Ela with the female-chips all firing at once. Rocketman, PC, and Ela checked out the kitchen curiously, taking in the big enamel stove, the red-checkered curtains, the dried lavender. Most of all they looked at the framed pictures of old locomotives and train stations, and the long bed of HO-scale track that rested on angle brackets against the wall, leading all the way around the kitchen at eye level and out again through a square hole cut in the double doors of the parlor.
‘My dad fixes model trains,’ the pilot explained. ‘It’s his test track.’
He went out to get the parrot. Roman Marak looked at it carefully, sucking on his empty pipe. ‘That’s not a parrot,’ he announced. ‘That is a macaw.’ Maria Marak clapped her hands in overplayed delight. ‘Roman. You must make a cage for it.’
The parrot turned its head this way and that, and made little chirrupping noises. The pilot relaxed; he had worried the bird would let fly with some of the Anglo-Saxon invective he had recently learned. Then he caught himself relaxing, amazed at the persistence of training, that he should still worry about offending his parents with the bad language of a bird.
‘Always he does this to us,’ the pilot’s mother told PC. ‘Always he brings in stray animals. Like Stanislaus here.’ She pointed at the cat.
‘I haf to get to work.’ Roman Marak tamped tobacco in his pipe. He lit it with a long splinter from the vents of the hot stove. He nodded at Ela, and disappeared, like a locomotive, following his own line, smoke fading in his wake. A wooden sign hung on the door he closed behind him. ‘Dominion of Canada,’ it read. On the other side of the door hung another, similar sign, with ‘United States of America’ carved in tall, burnt-in letters.
Ela asked for a bath.
‘You should haf told me, Joey,’ his mother said, after she had shown Ela the bathroom. ‘I vould have bought more food.’
They both knew this was a lie. The pilot’s mother might make excuses for her table, but she was never short of food. Her root-cellar was filled with potatoes and turnips, onions and carrots, parsnips and apples, all carefully insulated in dry hay. Her basement shelves hung heavy with pickled cabbage and beets, beans and corn. Roman had bought her an industrial freezer fifteen years before and this was kept filled with beef, pork, and sausages. The kitchen cupboards were crammed with tinned goods. Cans were stashed in the barn and buried under the woodshed. Maria Marak had spent the war years and a few after either starving or on the verge and she was resolved, somewhere deeper than her stomach, never to let that happen again.
And so supper was plentiful. It consisted of a stew with cabbage, potatoes, and pork, followed by apple dumplings with fresh cream. Maria Marak had broken through the shock of country dwellers who suddenly find city people thrust upon them, with all their strange rhythms and sharp reactions. Now she seemed happy to have guests to serve. The old man did not say much but tried hard to ensure everyone ate more than they really wanted.
The pilot watched the dynamics with amusement. Rocketman appeared to get along almost instinctively with his father. PC seemed fascinated with Maria. He had never met a woman who could garden and can and cook as easily as a city woman popped around the corner to the Korean. He showed off his knowledge of Central European food for Ela, pronouncing slivovitz and goulash correctly.
Ela didn’t say much, but she and Maria Marak moved carefully for each other’s benefit. I have nothing to do with him, the girl said, with wrists and neck movements. You are young and pretty, and with my son, the pilot’s mother answered, in the way she handed over a bowl of pickled cabbage – a touch quicker, with a shade less care, than how she handed it to the men.
As for the pilot, he felt like he had strayed into a no-man’s-land in his own life. In the cabinet on the wall all his speed-skiing trophies were displayed. Over the mantelpiece, in a frame too big, hung a black-and-white enlargement of his brother Eduard, aged sixteen. In frames along the railroad tracks were articles Eduard had written for the Prague Young Pioneer Youth Journal.
In the table below his plate was a scar the pilot had created when he repaired his Flexible Flyer on the living-room table. It had cost him a spanking and no sledding for a week. It was odd how familiar objects, like props in an old play, could suspend the animation of your life and take you back, mentally speaking, to whatever period of time they were associated with. The smell of cabbage, pipe tobacco, and 3-In-One Oil; the whisper of trees outside, his father’s phlegm; all brought back a feeling of childhood that was specific as a strand of DNA.
He still treated her like a servant. She still fought him with silence, and good timing.
Roman Marak offered to show PC and Rocketman his workshop after dinner. Ela helped Maria Marak clean up. The pilot went upstairs to his room, the ECM over his shoulder. He was sitting on the bed with the light out, listening, on audio only, to the scanner, looking through the window, when the door opened behind him.
‘They came. Four days ago. The secret police,’ his mother said.
He nodded. She meant BON, but for Maria Marak, who grew up under the GSP, the SS, the SD, the NKVD and finally the SSP, secret police were secret police. Only the initials changed; the men were always the same.
‘Computer things,’ his mother said, without hope or judgment. The secret police never needed reasons, so what did the words on paper matter?
‘Yes.’
‘Do you need money?’
‘No, Mami. Thanks.’
A silence. The ECM was silent, too. BON had come and gone. The danger was big. The stillness of the scanner meant little. They could have set up silent surveillance – watch-posts, wiretaps. The excitement buzzed in him, but there was nowhere for it to go, no job for it to do. If BON was still around, it was already too late.
He took off his flying helmet. She walked around the room, absently checking the chest of drawers for dust.
‘You know, Josef,’ she said, in Czech. ‘He needs you. Eduard is only – only his obsession. Like an icon, for him. Don’t forget.’
‘I won’t forget.’
‘He is making you a present. A travel-box. For your rat.’
The pilot said nothing. She sighed, hopelessly, and left as quietly as she had come.
He stroked the old stuffed dog that lay as it always had by his pillow. He kept looking out the window. How could the scene look so exactly the same? he wondered. He’d taken down the chicken shack, was all. The apple trees were trimmed like they’d always been. The snow shone against the darker woods, the hills, the sky. The moon hung bashful behind the same dip in Shoot Flying Hill. The axe was slammed into
the chopping block at the same angle it was always slammed into the chopping block. Same block, same axe. He supposed the handle was new. Someone knocked at the door. ‘Yeah,’ he said.
He thought it was his mother again, by how lightly the boards squeaked; but the voice belonged to Ela.
‘This is your room?’ she asked. ‘The one you grew up in.’
He said nothing. The answer was obvious. His models were everywhere. Miss Benthol I and IV, P-47s, F-15 Tomcats all still dangling from the light fixtures. Posters of bobsled and speed-skiing heroes. He felt a slight edge form on his metabolism, it always happened when she was near, nothing unpleasant, like that first hit of jisi, or the rush of acceleration from a 545 Pratt and Whitney. It almost cut the effect of his mother’s words.
‘I’m not disturbing you, am I?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s all right. I’m just – thinking, I guess. It’s weird to be back here.’
‘But you’re not all right,’ she said. She had come around the bed and could see his face from the doorway shine. ‘It’s hard for you.’ She stepped back. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—’
‘Don’t go.’
He did not want to be alone. More – he wanted to tell her.
She stopped, by the foot of the bed.
‘I feel I should explain,’ he said. ‘If you got a minute? About my parents.’
She sat on the bed, by way of answer.
‘They’re from Prague,’ he began. ‘Anyway, my dad is. My mother’s from a village outside Prague. I lived in Prague too, in Stare Mesto, till I was seven.’
‘The accent,’ she said, encouraging him with her voice, ‘the way your father bows.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My dad was an engine driver,’ he went on. ‘For the state railroad. That’s why he’s so crazy about trains.’
‘They’re beautiful,’ she said. ‘His trains.’
‘Uh-huh. That’s not where I meant to start. I don’t know where to start. My mom had a horrible time in the war. Half the people in her village were deported and killed by the Germans. She met my dad in the black market, she was buying vegetables. I was the second son. My brother, Eduard, he was nine years older than me. I think she had trouble bearing kids, somehow, because of the war.’
‘Where is he now?’ she asked. ‘Your brother.’
‘I’m getting to that.’ He had a story to tell. For some reason it was important to him that she get it whole; the logic, the balance of a story were killed if you shortened or broke it.
‘I don’t remember Eduard that much. That gives you a clue, huh? But I do know I idolized him. He was big and funny and strong. He was good at soccer, and swimming. He liked me, too. He used to grab my hands and whirl me around, centrifugal, like one of those rides at the county fair, the Zipper or the Octopus, so fast everything was a round blur and I couldn’t stand up afterward. This was in the years between the Prague Spring and the ‘velvet revolution’ – before the Russians left. The regime was getting softer, but it was still pretty hard, especially when Solidarity happened in Poland, they got downright paranoid. Anyway, right around then, Eduard started writing essays for a youth journal. They were pretty funny, I guess. They made fun of the old regime. My mother was nervous about them, but she was proud of him too . . .’
The girl ambled around the room as he talked. The new moon had made it over Shoot Flying Hill and its light shimmered through the window. He saw her move among the small air force suspended from his ceiling, touching the planes with one finger so they twirled gently, or swung. The light favored edges; it silvered her nose and cheeks and the leading edge of her wrists; it flashed on the aircrafts’ wings as they rolled.
‘It turned out he had joined a secret society at that time. “Free Prague Youth,” or something. They would go and hand out leaflets at army posts. A couple weeks after the Jaruzelski crackdown in Poland, real late at night, there was a knock on the door. It was a man with a beard, someone from Eduard’s school. He stayed for a long time. I could see them through the door. My parents were weeping and yelling. Eduard was smoking. I didn’t know he smoked till then. When the man left, my parents immediately started to pack. I was scared. Cigarette smoke, and flashlights, and my parents were so frightened you could almost touch it. Only Eduard was calm. He made sure I brought my stuffed dog.’ He touched the smooth-worn toy, reflexively.
The trip came back to the pilot in little details. They’d left the following night, late – the feel of cobblestones, cold and unfriendly as steel on sleepy feet, and night air – he’d never been up so late before. He sat in the cab of the coal truck, behind the seat, with two other kids. There was a crowd of people in the back, covered with canvas. No one said anything except the men. They only said ‘Go,’ or ‘Turn left.’ They drove to the marshaling yards and boarded a freight train.
The cars usually carried livestock. They smelled foul. The wind ran through their car like a banshee as they traveled south. It stirred up the dried cow dung and made them sneeze.
‘The train stopped by some fields,’ the pilot continued. ‘They made us walk very carefully, in a straight line, across a field. We came to a river, the Moldava. There were men in little boats, waiting near some trees. They rowed us across. Everything was so dark, the river seemed like ink. We were almost across when a motorboat came down the river. It caught us with searchlights. There was lots of shouting, the men were rowing like crazy. Then the motorboat began to shoot. Some of the people in our boat panicked; some of them tried to jump overboard, other people tried to stop them, and the boat tipped over. Eduard grabbed me, and swam me to shore. You could hear this rustling overhead, I never realized it was bullets. Then Eduard cried out. He pushed me up on the bank. I don’t know what happened to him. My mother came up and started screaming. I remember her running up and down the bank calling for Eduard, while the boat was still shooting. But he was gone.’
The girl was watching the planes. Made restless by the memory, the pilot got up and went to the window.
‘We spent two and a half years in DP camps, then we came here. But my parents might as well have stayed. They never got over that night. They never got over losing him. They’re still lost in that time. I think they still believe he might be alive, even though the GrenzPolizei searched and searched. I don’t know why. I never understood it—’
Her arms were quick and strong. They laced around his middle, comfortable as a girth on an old saddle. She was only planning a quick hug but the comfort was so good he grabbed her arms and kept them there and she had the grace not to resist.
Through the surplus value of her touch he felt Eduard’s face form in his brain. But the face had brown eyes and a ‘come-on-I-dare-you’ grin and its features were those of Roberto. He tried to recall the face of his natural brother, but all he got was Roberto’s. It bothered him that he could not visualize Eduard’s features. He supposed the love he’d felt for Roberto had been some kind of twisted compensation for losing his own sibling.
‘You don’t have to make excuses for them,’ she said. Her voice was low, almost a whisper. ‘It happens all the time. It becomes easier to live with it. With losing people. Easier than to take care of the living, anyway. Though the living are the ones who suffer.’
‘There was nothing easy about it, for them.’ He winced a little, without knowing he did so. ‘You saw their eyes.’
‘I know their eyes,’ the girl replied. ‘I saw them every darn day in my mother.’ She pulled her arms away from him, gently but firmly. ‘Why do you think I’m doing this?’ she said. ‘It’s not just because I was bored crazy. It’s not just ’cause me and Roger weren’t working out. It wasn’t just Lakewood. What it is, it’s I’ve lived with her losing my father every day of my life. I’ve lived with her being so desperate to reject him and everything he stood for she turned herself and me into people just like everyone else in Lakewood. Junior League. Girl Scouts. Cheerleading. Jeess!’ She walked over to the bed and kicked it, hard. ‘Ow!’ she yelled. ‘
Dang it!’ She rubbed her toes, and gnashed out words she was not supposed to say in company. ‘Shoot! Fudge! Dang!’
‘Ela,’ he began.
‘Don’t “Ela” me.’ She turned her pain on him. ‘I’ve been “Ela” ’d ever since I was three years old. I’m sick and tired of being “Ela” ’d. I’m sick and tired of being good. I’m sick and tired of never having anything important in my life! Everything is in two dimensions – the only things in three dimensions are the people in Pain in the Afternoon. The only thing urgent and important in my life, is, is the absence of anything important. And I’m sick and tired of living with the knowledge of loss, that love can be lost, forever.’ She swung around on herself. ‘I want to find him, darn it! I want to find what went wrong, and prevent it from happening to me.’
She faced him at the window. Her eyes were full of moon. He put his arms round her neck and rested his cheek against hers. She smelled of his mother’s cream and lavender soap – odd Oedipal concoction, strange check and balance. He remembered the bath she’d taken here. He wanted to kiss her so much he trembled from it. But she said ‘Don’t,’ and added ‘Roger,’ in a tone full of confusion at her own new losses, and they ended up going downstairs instead.
In the living room, Roman Marak had taken out his best plum brandy. Maria sat beside him, falling asleep from the liquor. The room was thick with tobacco smoke. A 1/96 model of the 1938 Balt-Orient Express – a couple of 4.8.2 locomotives, Compagnie des Wagons-Lits sleeping coaches, restaurant, mail, and luggage cars – clicked and chirred around the walls of the dining room, emitting little clouds of graphite dust. The passenger cars glowed with lights, as if 1/96-scale humans sat inside discussing this fellow Chamberlain, and what the conference in Munich might bring. The tiny train disappeared into the kitchen.
‘They stood for all the best things in our country,’ Roman Marak said, a little vaguely. ‘Nezval, Hasek. We had a great tradition. Rabbi Loew. He created the first golem, a mechanical man. Eduard loved Franz Kafka the most. He attended a special meeting in Bohemia, in Langberg Castle, with the best literature students in all the schools of Prague. It was to bring back Kafka as a writer. It was one of the most serious charges, when the police came . . .’