The Twelve Little Cakes

by Dominika Dery

  “Are these people who I think they are?” my mother asked.

  “Oh, yes,” my dad said calmly. “You only need to look at their hands to see they’re not laborers. And didn’t you just love the way they called me ‘mister’ instead of ‘comrade’? They’re definitely on the STB payroll. They might even be agents.”

  “But why? Why are they bothering us?”

  “It probably has something to do with the Germans I drove around the week before the flood,” my father shrugged. “I had a new guy in the cab who seemed to know an awful lot about the way things work in Prague. The cops had two cars outside his hotel.”

  “Jezis Marja!” my mother cried. “That’s the last thing we need. As if we don’t have enough problems already.”

  “You’re putting the cart before the horse, Jana,” my dad said mischievously. “We have plenty of problems, and our laborer friends might very well help us solve them.”

  “How?” my mother asked. “What do you intend to do?”

  My father pulled out his cigarettes and lit one with an aggressive flourish.

  “I intend to put them to work,” he grinned.

  BY THE END OF THE FIRST DAY, Mr. Pinos and his friends were already regretting the hazardous nature of their mission. They had been deliberately vague on the subject of how they found out we were looking for workers, so my dad was able to haggle them down to fifteen crowns an hour by simply pretending that his offer in the Rotten pub had never taken place. The three men looked at each other and were about to contradict him, when they realized that this would require them to name the person who had referred them. Instead, they took a deep breath, accepted my dad’s terms, and spent the rest of the day loosening mud under his close supervision.

  While this was going on, my mother called Klara and me up to the living room and briefed us on the situation. We were to be friendly to the laborers, but the minute they started asking questions about anything other than the work, we were to politely excuse ourselves and leave as quickly as possible. It would only be a matter of time before the men realized that their cover had been blown, and when they did, they would stop helping us in the garden. So the object of the exercise was to make Mr. Pinos and his friends believe that they were gathering useful information as they dug out our backyard. To this end, my father would send Klara down to the Under the Forest pub for beer in the late afternoons, and he would get the laborers drunk and tell them stories. Apart from that, he worked them tirelessly. My mother served them their lunches on little plates, and they spent their days loosening and shoveling mud while my dad tracked down the farmer who owed him a favor, and arranged to hire his tractor for a week.

  The STB must have been very interested in my dad’s German passengers, because the smiling Mr. Pinos appeared on our doorstep every morning for the next week and a half. Mr. Schlosarek and Mr. Moucha tried to match his enthusiasm, but my father’s merciless treatment quickly wiped the smiles off their faces. In the course of drinking with them, he had learned that Mr. Pinos had recently been in a car accident and was very nervous behind the wheel; Mr. Schlosarek suffered from a weak stomach and was prone to severe bouts of nausea; and Mr. Moucha was terrified of heights. My father tailored the work to suit their various phobias. After the backyard had been prepared for the tractor, Mr. Schlosarek was delegated the responsibility of salvaging roof tiles from the foul-smelling mud, while Mr. Moucha was sent up to the truss to prepare the roof for tiling. While they did this, my dad would take Mr. Pinos for a drive. They would roar down the hill and return with construction materials around the same time Klara would be carrying her beer pitcher up from the Under the Forest pub, and the combination of the bad roads and my father’s driving made poor Mr. Pinos even more miserable than his colleagues. The three men would stagger up to their truck and compare notes, then grimly return to our yard and spend the next couple of hours drinking toasts to the Czechoslovakian working class.

  “Excellent work as usual, comrades!” My dad would raise his glass. “You men are a credit to your profession.”

  The three laborers stuck at their jobs long enough for my father to not only salvage the yard but to prepare all the materials he needed to tile and insulate the roof before the winter. We had a quiet weekend, and then Mr. Pinos and his friends reappeared on Monday, determined to wage a weeklong assault on my father’s taxi-driving secrets. My mother was back at the Economic Institute, and the local school had reopened after the flood (to Klara’s great relief ), so it was just my dad, Barry, and me supervising. Mr. Pinos, Mr. Moucha, and my father worked on the roof, while I helped Mr. Schlosarek in the backyard. Mr. Schlosarek would dig tiles out of the mud and I would wash them and stack them by the side of the house. I quite enjoyed it in spite of the smell and Mr. Schlosarek’s bad temper.

  Mr. Schlosarek was actually quite nice. He and Mr. Moucha were genuine laborers who worked as informers on the side. Mr. Pinos was a professional informer who had been given an apartment in Prague by the STB (we found this out after the revolution) and had coerced the other two into helping him on his intelligence-gathering missions. Mr. Schlosarek was a roof tiler by trade, and every day he and Mr. Moucha would practically beg my father to let them change positions, but my dad would move too fast and make too much noise to hear them, and poor Mr. Schlosarek would end up in the mud. He poured aftershave onto a handkerchief and tied it around his face like a bank robber, and then he ventured out into the yard to dig tiles out of the clay with a pitchfork. There were a surprising number of tiles scattered throughout the garden, and we were able to salvage most of them in the course of the week, but the work took its toll on Mr. Schlosarek’s stomach. His face had taken on a greenish hue and by Wednesday afternoon he was too sick to drink beer.

  “I don’t think I’ll be coming in tomorrow,” he told my dad and Mr. Pinos. “I feel really sick.”

  “That’s what you said yesterday,” my father said cheerfully. “Have a beer! The vitamin B will do you good.”

  “I can’t,” Mr. Schlosarek moaned. “You should have put me on the roof! This mud has completely turned my stomach. I haven’t been able to eat in three days!”

  “We’ll put you on the roof tomorrow,” my dad assured him. “We have to attach the gutters, which is going to be a difficult and dangerous job.”

  “It is?” Mr. Moucha said nervously.

  “Oh, yes. We don’t have enough scaffolding to go the whole way around the house, so we’re going to have to use a ladder. We might have to wedge it into the space between the cab and the bed of your truck.”

  Mr. Pinos frowned. “Why is that?”

  “I’ve measured all the ladders and they’re a couple of feet too short. What I’m thinking is, we can drive your truck down into the yard, wedge a ladder behind the cab, and drive around the house with one man on the ladder and the others on the roof handing the gutter down to him.”

  “That sounds completely insane,” Mr. Moucha gasped.

  “You want to drive the truck into the yard?” Mr. Pinos said incredulously. “Do you think it will fit through those trees?”

  “Of course,” my father snorted. “I’ve measured it already.”

  Mr. Schlosarek shook his head. “I’m staying in bed tomorrow. I can’t believe I worked in that mud for three days with my condition. I’m finished!”

  After the three men had left for the day, my father surveyed the backyard and pronounced it ready for the tractor. The truss was prepared for the roof tiles, and once the gutter had been attached, he was confident that he would be able to finish the house and yard by himself if the laborers abandoned their mission. He still hadn’t solved the problem of how to drive the tractor through the row of trees, but he intended to stage an experimental run with Mr. Pinos’s truck the following morning.

  “What if it doesn’t fit, Dad?” I asked him.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” he smiled. “In situations like this, I’ve always found that brute force and ignorance can work wo
nders.”

  “Do you think Mr. Schlosarek will come tomorrow?”

  “No,” my dad replied. “Do you?”

  “No,” I agreed.

  When Mr. Pinos and Mr. Moucha arrived at work the following morning, Mr. Schlosarek was unsurprisingly absent, and Mr. Moucha seemed determined not to climb any ladders, especially ladders attached to moving vehicles. Barry and I watched from a distance as the two men attempted to reason with my dad, but it was only a matter of time before Mr. Pinos was maneuvering his truck up the walking path and preparing to drive it down through the forest and into our backyard.

  Mr. Pinos’s truck was extremely tiny, with a two-seat cab and a bed the size of a small desktop. It was ideal for Communist-style transportation, as it gave an excuse to its driver to make lots and lots of trips between factory and work site. My dad’s experimental run was a success, and the truck miraculously managed to squeeze between an overgrown fir tree and my mother’s silver yew. But it was obvious he would have to find another way of getting the tractor into the yard.

  “That went well,” my dad told the two men when the truck was safely in the yard. “Why don’t you take a break while I bring my ladder down from the garage?”

  “I draw the line at working in unsafe conditions,” Mr. Moucha said firmly. “Attaching the ladder to the truck is madness. I simply won’t do it!”

  “Mr. Moucha,” my father said in his “sweet voice.” “If you and Mr. Pinos had a bigger ladder, none of this would be a problem. We’re working with limited resources here, and I have to say, for a couple of experienced laborers like yourselves, you do strike me as being ill equipped for the job.”

  “What are you trying to suggest?” Mr. Pinos blustered.

  “Not a thing,” my father said innocently. “Just let me get my ladder, and let’s see if we can improvise a solution.”

  Unfortunately for the two men, my dad had measured the ladder and the truck very carefully, and he had indeed devised a clever way of wedging the ladder between the cab and the bed. While Mr. Pinos and Mr. Moucha looked on with sinking hearts, my father tied the ladder firmly to the cab and then got Mr. Pinos to drive the truck to the side of the house.

  This was, of course, a ridiculous way to work. And my father did actually have scaffolding materials, but he knew that the time it would take to erect and pull down a scaffold was more time than he could reasonably expect Mr. Pinos and his colleague to stay on the job. The ladder was quicker and easier. But it was also much more dangerous, and despite his loud protestations, poor Mr. Moucha eventually found himself at the top of the ladder, bolting six-foot lengths of gutter to the bottom of the truss. As a concession to his fear of heights, my dad climbed up behind him and tied his legs to the ladder, and for the rest of the morning, Mr. Moucha’s screams could be heard throughout the valley as he completed a slow revolution of our house.

  In the meantime, I helped my mother prepare lunch for the men. We set up a table in what had once been Mr. Kozel’s living room, where the men could eat and drink beer with my dad. I carefully carried the small plates of sandwiches to the table and then I set the knives and forks, which was something I had recently learned to do. I had to stand on a chair to do it and was admiring my handiwork when I heard Mr. Moucha coming down from the roof. It sounded like he was shouting. When he was safely on the ground, I watched him remove his brand-new tool belt and throw it in the mud.

  “I don’t know which of you is worse!” he roared. “You”—he pointed at my dad—“for coming up with such an idiotic plan, or you”—he pointed at Mr. Pinos—“for going along with it! You guys are stark raving mad! I’m catching the train home, and don’t bother coming to pick me up in the morning!”

  Mr. Pinos tried to calm his comrade down, but it was obvious that Mr. Moucha had passed the point of no return. We went up to the garage and watched him storm off down the street. He really did seem very upset.

  “Well, that’s a shame,” my father said. “I quite liked Mr. Moucha. I liked both your colleagues, as a matter of fact. I do hope you’ll be able to work with them again.”

  “I hope so, too,” Mr. Pinos said grimly.

  When Mr. Pinos knocked on our door the next morning, he made no pretense at smiling. He and my dad had spent a very tense couple of hours getting his truck out of the yard, and its doors had been badly scratched in the process. He had lost his coworkers and had made absolutely no progress ferreting out information for the STB, so my father decided to go easy on him. When I came out into the garden, I found them drinking beer and staring thoughtfully at the trees. It was ten o’clock in the morning.

  “Hello, Mr. Pinos!” I said. “You’re all by yourself today.”

  “That’s right, young lady.” Mr. Pinos sighed. “Never send a couple of boys to do a man’s job.”

  “Mr. Schlosarek and Mr. Moucha weren’t boys,” I pointed out. “They were grown-ups like you.”

  “Yes, but when the going got tough, they ran for their beds,” Mr. Pinos snorted. “At the end of the day, when you sign on for a job, delivering the goods is the only measure of how seriously you and your work can be taken.”

  “Another beer?” my dad interrupted.

  “Please,” Mr. Pinos said. “So you see, the reason my colleagues work for me instead of the other way around is simply because I see things through to the end. My reputation depends on it.”

  He watched my father disappear into the kitchen.

  “Your dad tells me he’s been doing a lot of taxi driving lately,” he said casually. “I guess he sometimes brings people home with him late in the night, right?”

  “Oooh! I have to go now!” I exclaimed, and ran inside the house.

  For the rest of the day, my father and Mr. Pinos walked up and down the row of trees, drinking beer and discussing various strategies for getting the tractor in the yard. At one point, my dad went up to the garage and returned with Mr. Glatz’s chain saw, and a lot of time was spent studying tree trunks and ferrying beer from the kitchen. By the early afternoon, Mr. Pinos’s good humor appeared to have returned, and he and my father were in high spirits as they ate my mother’s sandwiches. Empty beer bottles littered the garden, and while my dad hadn’t made much progress solving the problem of the tractor, I did notice that he and Mr. Pinos kept coming back to my mother’s silver yew. It was a pretty, slender tree that could be cut down very easily, and it was perfectly positioned in front of the side gate. The rest of the trees were much too big to control, and if they fell the wrong way, they could damage the house, whereas the yew could be cut in such a way that it would fall into the forest through the open gate. Mr. Pinos was very much of the opinion that this was the only way to solve my father’s problem.

  “I keep thinking I should take down the fence,” my dad muttered for the hundredth time.

  “You’re crazy!” Mr. Pinos told him. “Taking down the fence is a serious job, not to mention even trying to cut down one of those firs or pines. You’ll wreck your house!”

  “Or I’ll wreck my marriage,” my father said ruefully. “I can’t believe there’s no other way around this.”

  The two men continued to stare at the trees until the blare of a horn announced the tractor’s arrival. We went up to the garage and found a massive flatbed truck reversing slowly up our street. Sitting on the bed was an extremely old tractor that looked like it hadn’t been driven in years. My father had made two very long phone calls arranging to hire this semiderelict vehicle, and judging by the way the farmer had haggled, my dad had assumed he was dealing with a first-rate piece of machinery. He gaped at the tractor in astonishment.

  “You’ve got to be joking,” he growled.

  An old man and a teenage boy climbed out of the truck, and as the man wandered over to talk to my dad, the boy busied himself at the back of the flatbed, arranging a ramp for the tractor to drive down. As Barry and I watched, taking care to keep away from what was quickly shaping up to be a heated argument, the boy lowered the ramp and back
ed the tractor down to the start of the walking path.

  My dad, the old man, and Mr. Pinos walked over to the tractor.

  “Jezis Marja, it’s ancient!” my father groaned.

  “It’s old, yes, but it works just fine,” the old farmer reassured him again. “I’ve plowed many a field with this tractor, let me tell you.”

  The farmer was obviously the boy’s grandfather, and he reminded me of Mr. Doskar, my grandmother’s fiancé. His hands trembled, too. It would have been many years since either he or the tractor had been anywhere near a field that needed plowing.

  “The question is,” the old man wheezed, “how are you going to get the tractor into your yard?”

  My father squared his shoulders to take the weight and responsibility of a tough decision, and pointed his chain saw in the direction of the trees.

  “Okay, I’ll cut the silver yew and you help me move it,” he told Mr. Pinos. Then he turned to the farmer. “When we’re done, you can drive the tractor through the gate.”

  A look of alarm appeared on the farmer’s face.

  “Drive it?” he said. “Oh, I couldn’t. I’m too old. I couldn’t possibly drive it through the forest.”

  “Fine,” my dad shrugged impatiently. “Get your grandson to do it.”

  “He doesn’t have a license,” the old man said quickly. “He’s not yet sixteen.”

  “So?” my father asked. “He drove the tractor off the truck without any difficulty.”

  “He wasn’t supposed to,” the farmer told him. “He’s really not allowed to drive. Are you?”

  “Not really,” the boy admitted.

  My father glared at the hapless collection of men standing around him.

  “Get the tractor ready,” he snapped at Mr. Pinos. “And you come with me,” he told the boy.

  Mr. Pinos opened his mouth to protest, but the look on my father’s face made him close it. He climbed behind the wheel of the tractor and asked the farmer to explain the gears and levers, while the boy, Barry, and I followed my dad to the gate and watched him apply brute force and ignorance to my mother’s silver yew. With a slow and terribly sad creaking of timber, my mother’s birth tree fell into the forest without touching the gate, and our garden was suddenly a lot less attractive. My father trimmed the stump with his chain saw, and then he and the boy moved the fallen trunk so that Mr. Pinos and the tractor had a clear shot at the yard. The tree had been growing for over thirty years, and we had cut it down in less than thirty minutes.