‘See!’ Luděk said. He was right. Those lunch ladies were young and fat and they were thieves. ‘Someone should call the police!’
Babi’s mouth turned up at the ends. She turned away towards the wall. Luděk thought she might be laughing.
‘Room!’ she said, not looking at him, and Luděk went.
He didn’t feel like reading his comic now. He sat on his bed, kicked off his old slippers.
At least the food at school was better than the food at kinder. At school he could get the food down most days. Sometimes it was even good. Sometimes it was even fried potato pancakes. And he was used to school lunches now. But that first day at his new kinder had been the worst.
He had not known what it was on his plate and he’d wanted to cry. Brown things – round and flat and going cold. Brown slop. His teacher told him to eat, to try. But it smelt bad, the food. It smelt like dirt.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Lentils,’ the teacher said.
He put one small pea in his mouth and swallowed it down. He ate one at a time, slowly. One damn round slimy lentil at a time. Eventually, he got them all down and was told he could leave the table.
A new kinder. A new place. A new home.
He took his plate up to the lunch lady and told her he was finished. He felt a bit proud that his plate was empty.
‘Good boy,’ she said. ‘A hungry boy.’ And before he could say anything she scooped another ladle of lentils onto his plate.
He did cry then. And he was sick on the floor trying to eat this second helping. But when Babi came to get him, she was not angry with him. She hugged him tight and she went crazy at the teacher, crazy at all the lunch ladies.
‘Never serve my boy lentils again!’ she said.
Her boy.
They walked home together to the warm flat on the third floor, the place where he lived now, and Babi held his hand all the way. She made him his favourite dinner, potato dumplings with bits of bacon. He had no idea where she got the bacon from, but Babi seemed to be able to get things.
He ate it all down, every last bit, and Babi watched him eat.
‘Lentils,’ she said shaking her head. ‘Who serves children lentils?’
Luděk went to the toilet and he listened to the bath tap drip. God, couldn’t Uncle Bohdan have left some of the cake? Did he have to eat it all? Between him and Old Lady Blaža, Luděk had not had one bit of that cake.
He washed his hands and dried them on the hand towel. He looked at his face in the mirror, at his blue eyes, at the freckle on his nose. There was a knock at the door and Uncle Bohdan’s big head poked around.
‘Dinner,’ he said.
Luděk turned to him and held out his hand.
Uncle Bohdan stepped into the bathroom. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a copper coin – a five-pointed star, twenty haléřů. But Luděk shook his head. This whole cake business was worth more than twenty stinking cents.
Uncle Bohdan sighed. ‘Better you than me,’ he said.
He fumbled around in his pocket again, then placed a coin in the middle of Luděk’s palm. The lady planting crops. One koruna.
Luděk closed his hand up fast, made a fist. Then he screwed his face up at Uncle Bohdan. ‘You better fix that stinking tap!’ he said.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Uncle Bohdan said, waving him off. ‘Tomorrow. Next day. Soon.’
A way he had never walked before, a lane he did not know. Cobbled and worn, high walls on either side. At the end, an archway, a gateway, a statue sitting up high. And just like that, he had found him. Just like that, when he wasn’t even trying. The statue of a Titan holding up the sky.
Atlas.
His face so tired, his face so strained – muscles bulging out of every limb, out of his calves and his arms and all down his back. The sphere on his shoulders, the weight of it clear. The weight of it pushing into him.
Luděk wanted to speak. He wanted to tell Atlas how he had tried so hard to find him. He didn’t have any flowers; he didn’t have anything. And it suddenly felt as if he should not be there at all, like this lane was private – a secret. It was not his place.
Atlas. Would Mama know the story? She used to tell him stories, but that was a long time ago now.
Before Papa got sick.
Before Papa died. The tall man he did not really know.
Luděk remembered the stories about The Magician, about trousers that came to life on the washing line, about talking fish, about a flying bicycle. And that’s where Mama was now – in the world of stories. Far away, travelling with The Magician, dancing in his theatre.
Fluorescent light – bright against the dark.
Pink and yellow and blue.
A giant spider.
An electric pig.
A week of dreams.
A place of nightmares.
A world where The Magician could bring objects to life.
His mama, graceful and slim in her black velvet suit, hidden from him, but there all the same.
His mama moving light in the dark.
He’d sit and watch the rehearsals, hour after hour. And he loved the lights, the costumes, the music. He loved the whole strange world.
But he didn’t like to think about the theatre anymore. He didn’t want to think about The Magician.
Luděk looked up at the statue one last time before he turned and walked away. He’d done it. He’d finally found Atlas.
This city was his.
Luděk passed the farmers’ stalls full of cabbage.
Goddamn cabbage.
He wished that Czechoslovakia would run out of cabbage. That would NEVER happen unless there was some kind of nuclear war. There was always cabbage. No one ever ran out of cabbage. It was so stupid – you couldn’t get bread, but you could always get cabbage. Cabbage soup. Fried cabbage. Pickled cabbage. Cabbage stuffed with more cabbage.
He hoped they would be having schnitzel for lunch. He hoped they would be having meatloaf. He hoped they would be having roast pork. His mouth filled with saliva, but he knew they would not be having any of those things. It could be potato cakes. That was possible. Fried potato cakes. Please let it be potato cakes. Please let it be something fried. It would probably be something steamed. Dumplings with cabbage. And if there was cabbage, which there most definitely would be, he would just have to eat it up quick and not chew, so the taste of cabbage would not ruin the taste of the dumplings and the taste of the sauce, so the smell of cabbage would not get up his nose and stay there all afternoon.
Luděk was hungry now, despite the thought of cabbage.
He turned onto his narrow street, the old apartment buildings high on either side. One white, one brown, one light blue, one a faded yellow – the paint cracked and peeling and coming off completely in parts.
In a darkened doorway, a man grabbed a woman and kissed her. His hands slipped down her back towards her round backside. They squeezed in on the tight white material, pinched her firm cheeks hard. They grabbed as much as they could hold. But she did not seem to mind. She just kept on kissing the man.
Luděk felt his cheeks flush. All these people smooching in the shadows – down alleyways and in the back of cars. All this going on and not one thing could stop it. It was this invisible force that was too strong for the world to beat.
A car horn blew. It was Uncle Bohdan. He pulled past slowly, waved out of the window. Luděk waved back. He must have just dropped off some supplies to Babi. Maybe there might be something good for Sunday lunch after all. And Uncle Bohdan would not be there to hog it.
Luděk flew up the stairs, two at a time, to the third floor flat. The door was unlocked and he pushed it open, yelled out, ‘Hi! Hi! Hi!’ like always. He could smell cooking, lunch, but it was not the smell of frying. Luděk hung his jacket on the coat rack, took off his shoes.
Babi was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking. She did not say hi. Luděk stared at her, at her face, her mouth turned right down against her chin bone.
<
br /> ‘Your maminka called,’ she said.
Luděk looked up at the wall, at the clock. It was 12.40 pm.
‘When?’ he asked, and Babi stubbed out her cigarette in the full glass ashtray. She shrugged. She would not meet his eyes. ‘An hour, maybe,’ she said. Maybe her and Mama had had a fight.
Luděk slumped down on a chair. He was just wearing socks. He had forgotten to put his slippers on, and suddenly there was this weight pressing in on him and he could hardly breathe. He leaned forward, rested his head on the table. How could he have missed the call? While he was out finding a statue. While he was out running around the streets. While he was out looking at a woman’s big, firm bottom. How could he have missed Mama’s call?
A hand on his head. Babi there next to his chair. She stroked his hair.
‘What did she say?’ Luděk almost whispered.
‘She’s in Melbourne. She was at Máňa’s place.’
Aunty Máňa who was just here, who gave him his warm jacket, and the too-big denim jeans. Here, just a month ago, now all the way across the world.
Aunty Máňa was free. She could come and go, not like Babi. Not like him. They were stuck here while everyone else in the whole world could move around anywhere they wanted to.
‘She says she misses you,’ Babi said, ‘She loves you.’
Babi’s hand was on his shoulder now. It was warm and solid and he felt her take it all like always – take the weight, the bad feelings. They lifted off him and sunk down into her large body. They became solid in her flesh.
‘Okay,’ Babi said after a while. ‘Go and wash up.’
Luděk paused in the doorway. He looked at her – his babi. All those years of carrying so much. All the years of being stuck and having to keep everything going. And he knew that Babi held it all so that he did not have to. Babi held it all so that he could stay free.
He was not like Atlas – but she was.
Eva
21 AUGUST 1968
It is happening again, and now she is on the street trying to walk fast with her shopping in two cloth bags, and the street is clear of cars, clear of trams, and the tanks roll on and on in a thick rumbling line, cracking the old streets – squealing and shrieking in slow motion.
She puts her hand to her forehead, closes her eyes. She tries not to faint, and one of the shopping bags falls from her hand. A jar of gherkins rolls out along the street towards the moving tanks. It does not break.
The Soviet flags fly. The huge guns point ahead.
‘You should get home.’ A voice behind her – soft. A man, bright eyes burning.
He bends down, picks up her shopping. He puts the gherkin jar back in the bag.
‘Those bastards!’ he says. He is young, maybe a student. She is old. She cannot do this again. She cannot fight anymore.
‘You should get home,’ he says again. She takes the bag. She nods.
Home.
She starts to walk along the street in the opposite direction to the tanks. It is still early, and the streets are filling with people on their way to work. It seems like nobody knows what to think, or how to be – but people are pale. People are serious.
She keeps on walking, away from the tanks and the smell of thick diesel smoke.
No one is coming. Just like before. No one is coming to save them.
The Curtain will become solid, made of steel and concrete, and it will not bend, it will not open. They are all stuck inside – forgotten. They must all go to sleep.
She keeps on walking.
She must get home.
Melbourne
1980
Huge yellow wheels of cheese sit behind the glass.
The man behind the counter gives me a slice. It is the kind that has round holes in it like the cheese in cartoons. It is the cheese I like best because it doesn’t really smell like cheese.
‘Say thank you,’ my grandma says, and I do. The man winks at me. People know us at the market because we come almost every day.
At the bread counter, my grandma buys three Kaiser rolls, and the woman hands them to her in a paper bag. My grandma pays with coins from her purse, but instead of moving away, she stands there moving coins around with her finger. There is a man right behind us, and he keeps moving his feet, shuffling. He keeps sighing. I don’t want to turn around and look at him. I look ahead.
‘Do you have any rye bread with caraway left?’ My grandma asks and the woman behind the counter turns. She checks the rows of loaves.
‘None left,’ she says.
‘I’ll take the normal rye,’ my grandma says, and the woman grabs a loaf.
‘Oh, not the dark one, the light rye please,’ my grandma says, her eyes wide and the woman puts the dark rye back on the shelf. She picks out a loaf of light rye.
The man behind us is tapping his foot now, banging it hard on the ground. He sighs again. ‘Hurry up, stupid wog,’ he says suddenly.
I stand very still.
My grandma smiles at the woman behind the counter. She hands over the money for the rye, the coins, and she puts the wrapped loaf in her fabric shopping bag.
‘Thank you,’ she says in her best accent. She takes my hand, and we walk away from the bread counter, and away from the man. I turn and see his blue jeans and his black shoes – the ones that were tapping against the concrete.
I look up at my grandma, and she looks completely normal – her face still like stone. But then a tear, just a small one, spills down her soft, powdered cheek and she does not wipe it away.
My grandma never spoke to me about what happened. We never talked about it, and my grandma did not tell my grandpa about the man at the market when we got home.
I did not know what the word wog meant, but I knew that it felt like a giant spotlight suddenly shone on my grandma to make sure that everybody knew she did not belong. To make sure she felt ashamed of her accent, ashamed of her face, ashamed of the way she loved the taste of caraway seeds in her light rye bread.
‘Who watches the tennis?’ my grandpa asks.
‘The bourgeois,’ I answer.
My grandpa gets up out of his armchair and he moves towards the TV at pace, like he is going to change the channel, or even turn the TV off altogether. My grandma throws a couch pillow at his head, but he catches it with ease. He winks at me, hands me the pillow.
‘Right, I’m going to bed,’ he says. His afternoon nap before he has to become a night watchman.
Grandma pats the space on the couch next to her. That means, Come and sit with me. I do. I give her the pillow and she puts it behind her head and leans back.
The match has started. There’s that whack of tennis balls being smashed hard against the tight strings of rackets. And there is a lot of grunting. But there is no clapping. People can only clap quickly when a point or game or match is won. I can only talk quickly when a point or game or match is won.
‘Fifteen–love.’
My grandma loved the tennis. If a Czech player was playing she loved it even more. If a Czech player was playing, my grandpa even watched for a few minutes. If Ivan Lendl was playing, then my grandpa might even watch the whole match with us.
I didn’t really like the tennis, but I think it was probably my grandma’s favourite thing. It was only on the TV in summer. I was glad it wasn’t on all year round because by the end of the summer I had really had enough of it. Tennis meant less time in the lounge listening to music and playing cards. It meant less trips out in the afternoon. Tennis meant sitting for hours in the hot lounge room listening to a man say, ‘Fifteen–love.’
I’d watch my grandma’s bare feet resting on her footstool. They would flinch every so often with the action on the screen, with the flying tennis balls.
My grandma’s legs resting.
Good to get off her feet.
Good to rest.
All that weight.
My grandma’s soles were thick, solid like concrete slabs. She used a pumice stone and it lived on the corner of the green
bath top. It worked very hard, that stone. All the weight it tried to scrub away but never could. All the weight her feet carried, heavy and solid.
But she could be light on her feet sometimes, my grandma. Light somehow when you least expected it. Sometimes she even seemed weightless – like when she’d come into the lounge in the morning with her girdle half on and say, ‘Pull me up!’
I’d stand on the couch, balancing as best I could, and I’d grab onto the tight tan material. I’d try to get my fingers right in under the thick cross-hatched stitching, and I would pull!
I’d pull up against my grandma’s ample flesh using all my strength. I’d pull against the bulging, rolling waves. I’d feel her soft brown skin against my fingers and I would pull!
And it felt like I was pulling her body right up into the air. I’d imagine her feet off the ground, her legs dangling free. She seemed to hover there for a time, like she was up in space.
I know it is impossible. She was too big, too heavy, and I was only small.
Still, I have the feeling of it in my hands – lifting her up into the air. My grandma.
When that underwear-armour covered everything except her arms and legs, my grandma would pat the sides of her girdle, finally ready for the day. I’d watch her walk to her bedroom, her feet moving quickly. No stomping, no sound – as if her body was somewhere far away and the person I could see was just a projection. A silent film.
She’d get dressed. Put on her tights and one of her bright nylon dresses. She’d fix her long hair in a high beehive, spray it tight with hairspray. She’d do her face, finish it off with powder that smelt like fresh rose-petals. Then it would be time for the market. We would leave the flat, walk down the stairs together, and my grandma would hold my hand all the way to the market and all the way home. We would eat lunch in the kitchen with my grandpa, clean up – and my grandma would make some coffee so it would be ready when the tennis started on the TV.
Then the man would say over and over, ‘Fifteen–love, thirty–love, forty–love, game, set, match.’
There Was Still Love Page 8
