The Twelve Little Cakes
Page 16
“What do you think?” he asked me. “It’s pretty steep. Do you think you can handle it?”
“Yes,” I told him. “Even if I fall over, it doesn’t hurt because I’m so small!”
“Very well,” my father smiled. “You go first, and I’ll ski right behind you.”
“Okay!” I said. And promptly skied down the hill.
We had such a wonderful time in the mountains, we completely forgot about the morning confrontation, and so it was with some surprise that we arrived home to find our Skoda completely buried beneath a snowdrift that had been caused by a snowplow driving up and down the road beside it. My dad laughed at the petty nature of Comrade Berka’s revenge, but he stopped laughing after it took him and Mr. Glatz the best part of a day to dig the car out of the snow. We kept the car in our yard after that, but when we returned from skiing a few days later, someone had dumped a full pile of horse manure in our driveway. And then there was the problem with the people in the village. While the mountain folk on the ski slopes were friendly enough, whenever my mother and I went shopping in Semily, the villagers could be quite rude. One day, I accompanied my dad and Mr. Glatz to the pub to buy some cigarettes, and the room fell silent when we entered, just like in the Rotten pub in Cernosice. Comrade Berka and his driver were sitting at a table near the bar, and they met my father’s fierce smile with ferocious grins of their own. As we left, Comrade Berka muttered something to his friends, and the whole pub exploded in laughter.
“I’m going to have to do something about this,” my father growled as we walked to our car.
“What? Now?” Mr. Glatz asked nervously.
“No. But I’m going to have to confront this idiot publicly, otherwise he’s going to keep nipping at my heels.”
“What are you going to do, Dad?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ll think of something.”
We drove back to the cottage and hung our jackets to dry on the wooden rack above the stove, then we gathered around the table in our pajamas. It was the second to last day of our vacation, and my father spread his big map of the mountains out in front of us.
“I was thinking we might climb to the plateau tomorrow,” he said. “It’s supposed to be the best cross-country skiing in the region.”
“We could take Barry,” I suggested. “Poor old Barry has spent his holiday indoors and hasn’t even seen the mountains!”
“I don’t see him complaining,” my sister pointed out. “Do you?”
“We could tie a barrel of rum around his neck like a proper Saint Bernard,” Mr. Glatz laughed. “It might come in handy in an emergency.”
“Well, who will guard the cottage if we take Barry?” my dad asked.
“I don’t mind,” my mother volunteered. “I’ve never been particularly good at cross-country skiing. I’d just as soon stay at home with a book.”
“Hear that, Barry?” I dove under the table. “You’re coming to the mountains with us. Won’t that be good?”
I put my arms around his neck and buried my face in his fur. He looked up and wagged his tail a few times, and then he lowered his head onto his paws and fell right asleep.
We awoke before dawn the following morning and waxed our skis for the climb. I didn’t have cross-country skis, but I insisted on coming along. I balanced my little yellow skis across my shoulder as we followed the forest trail to the steep slope that led to the plateau. We finally climbed up through the clouds where the sky became blue and the sun shone brightly overhead, and a large white plain spread out in front of us.
“The hardest part is over,” my father said cheerfully. “From here, all we have to do is follow the blue markings to the mountain lodge.”
We put on our skis and set off across the plain. It was much easier skiing across the soft plateau snow than climbing the hard snow of the mountain, but as we rounded a patch of dwarf pines and saw the lodge in the distance, my father noticed that Barry was limping. We stopped to inspect his paws and discovered they were encrusted in ice. The soft snow had worked its way in between his toes, forming big packs of ice that turned his feet into hooves. We cleaned the snow out, but his paws were quickly covered with ice again, and after the third or fourth time they started to bleed. Saint Bernards are a famous breed of mountain dog, but their feet are not designed for soft snow. It took us a long time to reach the mountain lodge, and by the time we did, poor old Barry could hardly walk.
The lodge was a handsome wooden chalet surrounded by a fence of skis and a gathering of skiers sitting at the long, beer garden-style benches out front. As we staggered into view, the skiers became very excited by the appearance of Bohousek, and Barry was quickly surrounded by a group of admirers, all of whom were brandishing sausages and bread. Despite the pain in his feet, he rose to the occasion and theatrically ate all the food he was offered, and the manager of the lodge was eventually called outside to pose for a photograph feeding Barry a pot of goulash. By the time the photos had been taken and the manager had gone back to work, we discovered that Barry’s belly was twice its original size. He lay on his side panting heavily and groaning, and after my dad put him on the leash, he started to limp along behind us. The sun was low now, and the wind had turned sharp, blowing snow into our eyes. The ice continued to stick to Barry’s paws, and after half a kilometer, it was obvious that he could go no farther.
“Come on, Barry!” I cried, but the poor dog was having a terrible time. His paws were bleeding and his stomach was fit to burst. He fell over on his side and began to whimper miserably.
“I don’t think he’s going to make it down the mountain,” my father said worriedly.
“What do you want to do?” Mr. Glatz asked.
“I don’t know,” my dad said. “The snow is picking up and it’s starting to get cold. Maybe you should take the girls and I’ll try to get Barry down on my own.”
“I’ll help you, Dad,” I volunteered. “I’m not cold!”
“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine,” my father said. “Tom, if you could carry my backpack and poles, that would be a great help. Take Klara and Dominika down to the cottage, then get the car and meet us in the village.”
“Are you sure?” Mr. Glatz asked doubtfully.
“Not really, but I don’t see any alternative, do you?” my dad replied.
“I’ll stay!” I insisted. “I want to help.”
“Now is not the time, little one,” my dad said. But then he unexpectedly relented, and as Klara and Tomas skied away across the plain, we crouched down beside Barry.
“What are we going to do, Dad?” I asked. “I don’t think he can walk.”
“No. His paws are frostbitten,” my father agreed. “I think I’m going to have to carry him down on my back.”
“On your back? But he’s even bigger than you are!”
“He’s as big as a house,” my dad laughed ruefully. “And I’m wearing cross-country skis. But at least we’re going down instead of up. Do you think you can stay with me the whole way down the mountain?”
“I’ll try,” I said. “Will we be going very fast?”
“With Barry on my back? I don’t think so. Just stay ahead of me so that I can see you, because once we get started, I don’t think we’re going to be able to stop.”
“I bet I can do it,” I said confidently. “I’ve had lots of practice.”
“Yes you have,” my dad agreed. “Just stay in front of me, okay?”
He squatted down like a weightlifter, and we somehow managed to get Barry to climb onto his back. The dog must have weighed at least seventy kilos, and my father’s skis sank deeply in the snow as he straightened his knees and took the weight on his shoulders. He rose slowly and took a couple of experimental steps. Satisfied that he could ski with Barry on his back, he told me to flatten the snow ahead of him by skiing across it as heavily as I could.
“All right. Let’s get this over with,” he growled.
The wind howled across the plain as w
e began our descent. When we finally reached the edge of the plateau, my knees were shaking and my face was frozen, but it was nothing compared to the challenge of skiing the whole way down the mountain without stopping. I quickly realized that the trail was steeper than the pleasant slopes I had been skiing on all week, and as we progressed, we gathered speed like a train without brakes. I desperately tried to keep my balance, concentrating harder than I had ever concentrated in my life. My little yellow skis were made of cheap plastic, and my dad’s cross-country skis were completely wrong for fast skiing, but somehow we hurtled through the forest like a couple of downhill racers. Looking back, it was a miracle that we made it to the bottom in one piece. Suddenly, we were out of the trees and whooshing down the slopes that overlooked the village, and just when I thought the worst was over, I found myself trying to brake on the icy street that led straight to the local pub. But the road gradually leveled out and we finally came to a halt in the middle of the village. The pub door flew open and a group of drinkers came out onto the balcony. Comrade Berka was with them, and as my dad crouched down to let Barry off his back, the cooperative chief let out a hoot of derision.
“Look, it’s the famous film-star family from Prague!” he jeered. “Their dog is so special, they carry him everywhere!”
I turned to look at my dad, and he was so exhausted he could hardly stand up again.
“Having a bit of trouble there, comrade?” the cooperative chief threw his beer glass in the snow and lurched down the stairs.
“You think you can just breeze into town and we’re going to kiss your ass because your dog was in a couple of films?” he laughed. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that around here.”
“Who’s we?” my dad panted. “The only person I see kicking up a stink is you, you fat bastard.”
He drew himself to his full height, but he couldn’t hide the fact that his legs and arms were shaking. Barry lay in a shivering heap at his feet and, as I watched, a few of the local villagers followed Comrade Berka as he swaggered over to my dad. I was much more afraid than I had been on the mountain.
As I stood trembling in the middle of the road, the side of the pub was lit by car headlights, and before I knew what was happening, my mother had swept me up in her arms and carried me over to my father’s side. She thrust herself between him and the cooperative chief, whose eyes were bloodshot and puffy and whose breath reeked of cigarettes. His fists were up and he was glaring at my dad, and he didn’t register my mother’s presence until she was standing right in front of him.
“Excuse me! Can’t you see that my husband is exhausted?” she snapped. “Our dog has had an accident, so he has just skied down a mountain with a Saint Bernard on his back!”
“You’re kidding!” one of the men from the pub said incredulously.
“It’s true!” I cried. “Barry’s paws were bleeding and he couldn’t walk, so my dad had to carry him the whole way down from the plateau.”
“The whole way down track two?” another villager gasped. “That’s the steepest slope on the mountain. Why on earth would you go down track two?”
“I didn’t know there was any other way,” my dad admitted.
“That’s incredible,” someone else said. “I can’t ski that slope on a good day!”
“You could probably use a shot of rum, comrade,” a fourth man said. “Your dog looks like he could use a shot of rum, too. He really is Bohousek, right? From the movies?”
As Comrade Berka looked on in disbelief, his drinking companions insisted that we accompany them to the pub for a shot of rum. We were really too tired to accept, but we accepted anyway, and my father won his public confrontation. He sat shivering near the fire with a stunned look of triumph on his face. Even the toughest-looking drinkers were charmed by Barry, and the story of my father carrying him down the mountain passed into local folklore. From that moment on, we were characters, not enemies, and as we left the pub and Mr. Glatz drove us home, it was as though half the town had gathered outside to see us off.
“Hezky vecer!” they called out as we drove away. “Have a good evening!”
We arrived at the cottage where Klara was waiting anxiously, and hurried inside to the warmth of the stove. My mother wrapped me up in a blanket and boiled some water for my bath.
“Poor Trumpet,” she whispered. “I do hope you’re not going to catch a cold.”
After my bath, she tucked me up in bed and piled sleeping bags on top of my blanket. I floated deliriously in a sleepy haze, listening to my father tell Klara and Mr. Glatz about our trip down the mountain, and as I listened, I could see his words floating through the air and piling up beneath the ceiling like balls of wool. Just before I drifted into a feverish sleep, I had a vision of the little god from the Czech fairy tales. He sat on top of the wool as though it was Heaven, and contentedly blew smoke rings from his pipe. I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or not, but there was no mistaking the barefoot old man with a white beard and piercing blue eyes.
“Hello!” I said. “Are you the little god?”
The old man smiled delightedly, and my body was filled with the most incredible warmth.
“Thank you for watching over us all the way down the mountain,” I told him.
He nodded and waved his arm as if to say “Not at all,” and as I tried to think of some more questions to ask him, his wool cloud drifted into the distance and I fell asleep with the smell of his tobacco in my nostrils. It was the only time I ever saw the little god, but I spent a great deal of my childhood trying to see him again. Every time I went to sleep, I would secretly hope that he would appear and smile at me once more, and I often found myself talking to him, especially when I was sad and lonely.
I woke up with a fever the following morning, and my dad and Barry were very sick, too. Tomas Glatz had to drive us home. I snuffled and coughed the whole way back to Cernosice, watching poor Barry through the window as he lay in his trailer. When we finally arrived at home, he crawled out of the trailer and slunk down to his kennel. My father and I went straight to bed, and Mr. Glatz carried his backpack down to the train station and went home to try and patch things up with his wife. It was a disappointing end to a wonderful vacation, but there would be many other opportunities for us to go back to the cottage and talk and laugh around the stove.
On Monday morning, my father forced himself to get up and go to work, and my mother took me to the local pediatrician, who took my temperature and ordered me to stay in bed for the whole week. My mother was due back at the Economic Institute, so Klara was delegated the responsibility of looking after me, which she did with surprising tenderness, feeding me a steady diet of chicken soup, camomile tea, and fairy tales. I lay in bed for the full five days, but as soon as I was back on my feet, I hurried down to tell Mrs. Sokolova about our adventures up in Semily.
“Hello, Mrs. Sokolova!” I knocked on her door. “I’ve been sick for the whole week. I had to stay in bed because my dad and Barry and I skied the whole way down a mountain without stopping, and the three of us caught a nasty cold!”
There was nothing but silence.
I knocked again but nobody answered, and when I tried the door handle, it was locked. I pounded some more, and then I raced around the side of the house and up the stairs to the apartment of Mrs. Sokolova’s daughter and her husband.
“Hello!” I called out desperately. “Is anybody home?”
“Who is it?” a voice replied, and after a few moments, Mrs. Sokolova’s daughter came outside. Mrs. Bendova was a worried-looking woman in her late forties, and while I was always welcome in her mother’s apartment, I could tell she disapproved of my frequent visits.
“Why, it’s Dominika.” She sounded worried. “What are you doing up here?”
“I’m looking for your mum,” I sobbed. “She hasn’t gone away, has she?”
Mrs. Bendova smiled bravely. “I’m afraid she has, sweetie,” she said. “She had a nice long rest and then she went peacefully.”
As I stood on Mrs. Bendova’s balcony, I suddenly noticed that the floor was covered with trays of food. There was smoked salmon and hors d’oeuvres and many different kinds of cheeses, and even though I didn’t know much about the preferential system of shopping under communism, I knew enough to understand that this was the kind of food that ordinary people couldn’t buy.
I stopped crying and looked at the food in amazement.
“That’s a lot of food,” I sniffed.
“Yes, it is,” Mrs. Bendova agreed. “We’re having a—” she faltered. “Our West German relatives will be here tomorrow, and this is the food I couldn’t fit in the fridge. Please try not to step on the trays. In fact, maybe it would be better if you went home now.”
“Okay,” I whispered. “Do you know when your mother will be back?”
Mrs. Sokolova’s daughter shook her head and sighed. “Perhaps you should ask your parents to explain this to you,” she said. “You’re old enough. You’re not a baby anymore.”
I retreated down the stairs, and as I walked home past Mrs. Noskova’s and Mrs. Liskova’s empty apartments, I felt terribly sad. My three fairy godmothers had gone, and the abruptness of their departure made me think that I might have done something wrong. As I opened the front gate and wandered down to Barry’s kennel, the full realization hit me: I had no one to talk to and no one to play with. My mother and father were frantic with work, and my sister was spending more and more time away from home. All I had was Barry, and while I loved him very much, all he ever did these days was sleep and eat.
“Hello, Barry! How are you feeling?” I asked him.